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FILE - In this July 12, 2017 file photo, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facial recognition device is ready to scan another passenger at a United Airlines gate at George Bush Intercontinental Airport,... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this July 12, 2017 file photo, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facial recognition device is ready to scan another passenger at a United Airlines gate at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, in Houston. Florida’s busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this July 12, 2017 file photo, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facial recognition device is ready to scan another passenger at a United Airlines gate at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, in Houston. Florida’s busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan... (Associated Press) FILE - In this July 12, 2017 file photo, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facial recognition device is ready to scan another passenger at a United Airlines gate at George Bush Intercontinental Airport,... (Associated Press)

 ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Florida's busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens, according to officials there.

 The expected announcement Thursday at Orlando International Airport alarms some privacy advocates who say there are no formal rules in place for handling data gleaned from the scans, nor formal guidelines on what should happen if a passenger is wrongly prevented from boarding.

 Airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington already use face scans for some departing international flights, but they don't involve all international travelers at the airports like the program's expansion in Orlando would. The image from the face scan is compared to a Department of Homeland Security biometric database that has images of people who should be on the flight, in order to verify the traveler's identity.

 U.S. citizens at these airports can opt out, but the agency "doesn't seem to be doing an adequate job letting Americans know they can opt out," said Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center.

 U.S. citizens at the Orlando airport will be able to opt out just like at the other airports if they don't want to provide their photograph, Jennifer Gabris, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in an email. However, a notice about a possible rule change for the program states that "U.S. citizens may be required to provide photographs upon entering or departing the United States."

 The Orlando announcement marks a step up in the scope of the face scan program, Rudolph said.

 "We're not talking about one gate," he said. "We're talking about every international departure gate, which is a huge expansion of the number of people who will be scanned. Errors tend to go up as uses go up."

 Orlando International Airport had about 6 million international passengers in the past year.

 Rudolph said he has concerns about the face scans' accuracy, since some research shows they are less accurate with racial minorities, women and children. Researchers say this is because photos used to train the face-scanning software underrepresent minorities, women and young people.

 Two U.S. senators last month sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, which is home to the border protection agency, urging that formal rules be implemented before the program is expanded.

 "It will also ensure a full vetting of this potentially sweeping program that could impact every American leaving the country by airport," said the letter from U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. and U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. ||||| ORLANDO, Fla. -- Florida's busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens, according to officials there. The expected announcement Thursday at Orlando International Airport alarms some privacy advocates who say there are no formal rules in place for handling data gleaned from the scans, nor formal guidelines on what should happen if a passenger is wrongly prevented from boarding.

 Airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington already use face scans for some departing international flights, but they don't involve all international travelers at the airports like the program's expansion in Orlando would. The image from the face scan is compared to a Department of Homeland Security biometric database that has images of people who should be on the flight, in order to verify the traveler's identity.

 U.S. citizens at these airports can opt out, but the agency "doesn't seem to be doing an adequate job letting Americans know they can opt out," said Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center.

 U.S. citizens at the Orlando airport -- which had about 6 million international passengers in the past year -- will be able to opt out just like at the other airports if they don't want to provide their photograph, Jennifer Gabris, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in an email. However, a notice about a possible rule change for the program states that "U.S. citizens may be required to provide photographs upon entering or departing the United States."

 A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer instructs an international traveler to look into a camera as he uses facial recognition technology to screen a traveler entering the United States on February 27, 2018 at Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

 The Orlando announcement marks a step up in the scope of the face scan program, Rudolph said.

 "We're not talking about one gate," he said. "We're talking about every international departure gate, which is a huge expansion of the number of people who will be scanned. Errors tend to go up as uses go up."

 In seconds, facial recognition technology can compare a picture taken at the gate against a flier's passport picture stored in a government database. Rudolph said he has concerns about the face scans' accuracy, since some research shows they are less accurate with racial minorities, women and children. Researchers say this is because photos used to train the face-scanning software underrepresent minorities, women and young people.

 Two U.S. senators last month sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, which is home to the border protection agency, urging that formal rules be implemented before the program is expanded.

 "It will also ensure a full vetting of this potentially sweeping program that could impact every American leaving the country by airport," said the letter from U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. and U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

 As CBS News transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave has reported, more than 2 million people move through the nation's airports per day, and airlines have been testing new technology to improve security and speed up the boarding process.

 New biometric technology has expanded beyond boarding. Delta announced last year it would launch a self-service bag drop powered by facial recognition technology -- the first of its kind at U.S. airports. There's also Clear, a private company that stores and verifies customers' biometrics, allowing fliers to go to the front of the security line at 24 airports nationwide.

 "Marrying all of the technologies at each of the steps in the travel ribbon is a game changer for the experience," said Gareth Joyce, senior vice president of airport customer service and president of cargo at Delta. "You can literally go from, you know, curb to plane without having to interact with a human being if you so desire." |||||

– The latest in airport security: Get ready to have your face scanned if you're flying into or out of Florida's Orlando International Airport on an international flight. Other airports already use facial scanning for some departing international flights, but Orlando will be the first airport to require the scans for all passengers on all arriving and departing international flights. The image from a facial scan is compared to a Department of Homeland Security biometric database containing images of those who should be on the flight. At all the airports that use facial scanning, US citizens may opt out, but privacy advocates say not enough has been done to make Americans aware of that fact, the AP reports. Plus, a notice about a possible rule change for the program says US citizens "may be required to provide photographs upon entering or departing the United States." They are also concerned about how any data gleaned from the facial scans will be used, and some are raising concerns about the possibility someone will be mistakenly barred from boarding a flight. "We're not talking about one gate," says one privacy expert. "We're talking about every international departure gate, which is a huge expansion of the number of people who will be scanned. Errors tend to go up as uses go up." He points out that some research shows the accuracy of the facial scans goes down for racial minorities, women, and children. Two US senators have urged DHS to implement formal rules and ensure a full vetting of the facial scanning program before it's expanded. The scanner works by comparing a passenger's image to their passport photo, which is stored in the database, CBS News explains.


Barack Obama came to Washington just six years ago, having spent his professional life as a part-time lawyer, part-time law professor, and part-time state legislator in Illinois. As an undergraduate, he took courses in history and international relations, but neither his academic life nor his work in Springfield gave him an especially profound grasp of foreign affairs. As he coasted toward winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2004, he began to reach out to a broad range of foreign-policy experts––politicians, diplomats, academics, and journalists.

 As a student during the Reagan years, Obama gravitated toward conventionally left-leaning positions. At Occidental, he demonstrated in favor of divesting from apartheid South Africa. At Columbia, he wrote a forgettable essay in Sundial, a campus publication, in favor of the nuclear-freeze movement. As a professor at the University of Chicago, he focussed on civil-rights law and race. And, as a candidate who emphasized his “story,” Obama argued that what he lacked in experience with foreign affairs he made up for with foreign travel: four years in Indonesia as a boy, and trips to Pakistan, India, Kenya, and Europe during and after college. But there was no mistaking the lightness of his résumé. Just a year before coming to Washington, State Senator Obama was not immersed in the dangers of nuclear Pakistan or an ascendant China; as a provincial legislator, he was investigating the dangers of a toy known as the Yo-Yo Water Ball. (He tried, unsuccessfully, to have it banned.)

 Obama had always read widely, and now he was determined to get a deeper education. He read popular books on foreign affairs by Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman. He met with Anthony Lake, who had left the Nixon Administration over Vietnam and went on to work in Democratic Administrations, and with Susan Rice, who had served in the Clinton Administration and carried with her the guilt of having failed to act to prevent the Rwandan genocide. He also contacted Samantha Power, a thirty-four-year-old journalist and Harvard professor specializing in human rights. In her twenties, Power had reported from the Balkans and witnessed the campaigns of ethnic cleansing there. In 2002, after graduating from Harvard Law School, she wrote “A Problem from Hell,” which surveyed the grim history of six genocides committed in the twentieth century. Propounding a liberal-interventionist view, Power argued that “mass killing” on the scale of Rwanda or Bosnia must be prevented by other nations, including the United States. She wrote that America and its allies rarely have perfect information about when a regime is about to commit genocide; a President, therefore, must have “a bias toward belief” that massacres are imminent. Stopping the execution of thousands of foreigners, she wrote, was, in some cases, worth the cost in dollars, troops, and strained alliances. The book, which was extremely influential, especially on the left, won a Pulitzer Prize, in 2003. Critics considered her views radical and dangerously impractical.

 After reading “A Problem from Hell,” Obama invited Power to dinner. He said he wanted to talk about foreign policy. The meal lasted four hours. As a fledgling member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and an ambitious politician with his sights set on higher office, Obama agreed to have Power spend a year in his office as a foreign-policy fellow.

 In his first news conference after winning election to the Senate, the press asked whether he intended to run for President, but he assured reporters, as well as his aides, that he would not even consider it until 2012 or 2016. He knew that he could not have a serious impact on issues like Iraq or the Sudan as a junior committee member, but he was determined to learn the institution and to acquire, as Hillary Clinton had, a reputation not for celebrity but for substance. In foreign affairs, as in so much else, he was determined to break free of the old ideologies and categories. But he would take it step by step.

 Obama entered the Senate in 2005, at a moment of passionate foreign-policy debate within the Democratic Party. The invasion of Iraq was seen as interventionism executed under false pretenses and with catastrophic consequences. Many on the left argued that liberal interventionists, particularly in Congress and in the press, had given crucial cover to the Bush Administration during the run-up to the war. Hillary Clinton, who often sided with the humanitarian hawks in her husband’s White House, and who went on to vote for the Iraq war, in 2002, seemed to some to be the embodiment of all that had gone wrong.

 One reaction among liberals to the Bush years and to Iraq was to retreat from “idealism” toward “realism,” in which the United States would act cautiously and, above all, according to national interests rather than moral imperatives. The debate is rooted in the country’s early history. America, John Quincy Adams argued, “does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all,” but the “champion and vindicator only of her own.”

 In 1966, Adams’s words were repeated by George Kennan, perhaps the most articulate realist of the twentieth century, in opposing the Vietnam War. To Kennan and his intellectual followers, foreign-policy problems are always more complicated than Americans, in their native idealism, usually allow. The use of force to stop human-rights abuses or to promote democracy, they argue, usually ends poorly. In the fall of 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, Kennan said, “Today, if we went into Iraq, as the President would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.”

 As Obama sorted through the arguments, other foreign-policy liberals were determined to prevent Iraq from besmirching the whole program of liberal internationalism. Humanitarian intervention—which Power helped advance, though she vigorously opposed the Iraq War—should not be abandoned because of the failures in Baghdad. Nor should American diplomacy turn away from emphasizing the virtues of bringing the world democracy. Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor of international affairs at Princeton and a Democrat, wrote in the liberal journal Democracy that an overreaction to the Bush years might mean that “realists could again rule the day, embracing order and stability over ideology and values.” ||||| Thank you, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous Obama Adviser Speaking on Background to Ryan Lizza. Thank you for so boldly and visibly injecting into our politics the phrase “leading from behind.” Thank you for associating it with your boss. Thanks for confirming that our current president believes his task is to accommodate American decline. Thanks for reminding us how high a priority he places on appeasing those who revile us. And thanks for explaining that our Leader from Behind sees his role as “shepherding us through this phase” of appeasement and decline.

 Nonetheless, Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” That’s not a slogan designed for signs at the 2012 Democratic convention, but it does accurately describe the balance that Obama now seems to be finding. It’s a different definition of leadership than America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world. Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength. “It’s so at odds with the John Wayne expectation for what America is in the world,” the adviser said. “But it’s necessary for shepherding us through this phase.”

 After all, we, like sheep, had gone astray. Under the spell of John Wayne, Rambo, and Ronald Reagan, we’d come to believe in American exceptionalism, in a special American global role and responsibility. Or perhaps we’ve been astray from the very beginning, with all the talk from the Founding on about our distinctive task and national destiny. But now a new shepherd has come to guide us, stealthily and modestly (though, one must add, with a fair amount of personal self-promotion) away from foolish thoughts of national assertion and exertion. And toward a future of . . . what?

 Whatever this future world will look like, it will not be pretty, nor will it be friendly to America. Lizza’s piece is titled “The Consequentialist.” The claim is that Barack Obama is a hard-headed pragmatist who judges policy choices by their real-world consequences. But who now wants to defend the consequences of Barack Obama’s foreign policy?

 As Americans, we will have to hope and work for the best for the next year and a half. But, as Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, “from President Obama’s shocking passivity during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate,” Obama’s has been “a foreign policy of hesitation, delay, and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) ‘international community’ to do what only America can.” The consequences of leading from behind have been grave. Another four years could be disastrous.

 Of course, the talk of leading from behind is mostly rationalization. When Barack Obama was only a teenager, Harvey Mansfield noted that, “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism.” Mansfield asked, “Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?” Not President Obama. His administration’s lack of strength and confidence in defense of liberty, its trembling before illiberalism, its failure to lead, is now dressed up and sent out into the world as “leading from behind.”

 The world isn’t much fooled. Dictators aren’t fooled. The American people aren’t fooled. Even liberals are getting hard to fool. Lizza’s article gave the Obama adviser the last word. But did even the typical New Yorker reader nod in approbation as he put down his May 2 issue and picked up his glass of Chablis?

 We doubt it. It’s getting pretty difficult to avoid noticing the grand mugging by reality that we are experiencing, both abroad and at home. And the notion that the Obama administration is effectively dealing with the muggers—from Qaddafi to the budget deficit—is becoming increasingly laughable.

 How do you defeat a leader from behind? With a leader from the front. All the Republicans have to do is nominate a real leader: a workhorse not a show horse; a steady hand not a flip-flopper; a profile in courage not in cleverness; a competent man or woman with strength and confidence in defense of liberty at home and abroad.

 Surely this isn’t too much to ask? ||||| Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.”

 — Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker, May 2 issue

 To be precise, leading from behind is a style, not a doctrine. Doctrines involve ideas, but since there are no discernible ones that make sense of Obama foreign policy — Lizza’s painstaking two-year chronicle shows it to be as ad hoc, erratic and confused as it appears — this will have to do.

 And it surely is an accurate description, from President Obama’s shocking passivity during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate. It’s been a foreign policy of hesitation, delay and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) “international community” to do what only America can.

 But underlying that style, assures this Obama adviser, there really are ideas. Indeed, “two unspoken beliefs,” explains Lizza. “That the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world.”

 Amazing. This is why Obama is deliberately diminishing American presence, standing and leadership in the world?

 Take proposition one: We must “lead from behind” because U.S. relative power is declining. Even if you accept the premise, it’s a complete non sequitur. What does China’s rising GDP have to do with American buck-passing on Libya, misjudging Iran, appeasing Syria?

 True, China is rising. But first, it is the only power of any significance rising militarily relative to us. Russia is recovering from levels of military strength so low that it barely registers globally. And European power is in true decline (see Europe’s performance — excepting the British — in Afghanistan and its current misadventures in Libya).

 And second, the challenge of a rising Chinese military is still exclusively regional. It would affect a war over Taiwan. It has zero effect on anything significantly beyond China’s coast. China has no blue-water navy. It has no foreign bases. It cannot project power globally. It might in the future — but by what logic should that paralyze us today?

 Proposition two: We must lead from behind because we are reviled. Pray tell, when were we not? During Vietnam? Or earlier, under Eisenhower? When his vice president was sent on a goodwill trip to Latin America, he was spat upon and so threatened by the crowds that he had to cut short his trip. Or maybe later, under the blessed Reagan? The Reagan years were marked by vast demonstrations in the capitals of our closest allies denouncing America as a warmongering menace taking the world into nuclear winter.

 “Obama came of age politically,” explains Lizza, “during the post-Cold War era, a time when America’s unmatched power created widespread resentment.” But the world did not begin with the coming to consciousness of Barack Obama. Cold War resentments ran just as deep.

 It is the fate of any assertive superpower to be envied, denounced and blamed for everything under the sun. Nothing has changed. Moreover, for a country so deeply reviled, why during the massive unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Syria have anti-American demonstrations been such a rarity?

 Who truly reviles America the hegemon? The world that Obama lived in and shaped him intellectually: the elite universities; his Hyde Park milieu (including his not-to-be-mentioned friends, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn); the church he attended for two decades, ringing with sermons more virulently anti-American than anything heard in today’s full-throated uprising of the Arab Street.

 It is the liberal elites who revile the American colossus and devoutly wish to see it cut down to size. Leading from behind — diminishing America’s global standing and assertiveness — is a reaction to their view of America, not the world’s.

 Other presidents have taken anti-Americanism as a given, rather than evidence of American malignancy, believing — as do most Americans — in the rightness of our cause and the nobility of our intentions. Obama thinks anti-Americanism is a verdict on America’s fitness for leadership. I would suggest that “leading from behind” is a verdict on Obama’s fitness for leadership.

 Leading from behind is not leading. It is abdicating. It is also an oxymoron. Yet a sympathetic journalist, channeling an Obama adviser, elevates it to a doctrine. The president is no doubt flattered. The rest of us are merely stunned.

 letters@charleskrauthammer.com |||||

Write a summary.

– The "leading from behind" theme looks to be emerging as a conservative line of attack against President Obama. The phrase comes from an Obama adviser describing the Libya strategy in a New Yorker piece on foreign policy by Ryan Lizza. (Read it here.) The gist is that Obama is a pragmatist who recognizes that US power is declining and that a lot of people hate us. "Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength," writes Lizza. It's the anti-John-Wayne approach, adds the Obama adviser quoted earlier. Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer weighed in at the Washington Post, criticizing the piece for turning a "foreign policy of hesitation" into a doctrine. "Leading from behind is not leading," Krauthammer writes. "It is abdicating." Now William Kristol at the Weekly Standard is on the case, sarcastically thanking Lizza for making clear that Obama is "shepherding" the country through this age of "appeasement and decline." He wants Republicans to take note: "How do you defeat a leader from behind? With a leader from the front." The party, therefore, needs a "workhorse, not a show horse."


A volunteer for Ben Carson's Republican presidential campaign died Tuesday after a van carrying four staff members flipped over on a patch of ice in Cass County, Iowa, and was rammed by another vehicle, hospital officials confirmed Tuesday night.

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 Carson immediately suspended his campaign for at least two days to travel from South Carolina to Omaha, Nebraska, where Braden Joplin, 25, was rushed for treatment at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the campaign said.

 Joplin died at 4:30 p.m. (5:30 p.m. ET), the hospital said. The other passengers — Drew McCall, a field director for the campaign, and volunteers Aaron Ohnemus and Ryan Patrick Shellooe — weren't seriously injured and were released from a local hospital, the campaign said.

 Rest In Peace Braden Joplin. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. pic.twitter.com/p87TCnD44p — Dr. Ben Carson (@RealBenCarson) January 20, 2016

 Joplin, of Midland, Texas, was a student at Texas Tech University, NBC station KWES of Midland reported. The Carson campaign said it would cover travel expenses to Omaha for Joplin's family in Texas.

 Speaking to reporters Tuesday night in Omaha, Carson called Joplin "an amazing young man."

 "I just hope that maybe his death might help some people to think about the hardheartedness that has infested our land," Carson said. "People are just mean, and they just say things to try to hurt people. They don't care about anybody but themselves."

 Joplin was "just the opposite of that," he said. "And I hope his death will not be in vain."

 Carson was campaigning Tuesday in South Carolina when he got the news and canceled the rest of his schedule for the day, as well a scheduled event Wednesday in California. The campaign projected that he would return to campaigning Thursday in Iowa, where the critical Republican caucuses are scheduled Feb. 1.

 Other candidates, including Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Democratic former Secertary of State Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump's campaign manager sent their prayers and wishes Tuesday:

 I'm so sorry to hear about this terrible tragedy. My heart goes out to Braden's family and colleagues. -H https://t.co/zqI0JBfiJ5 — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 20, 2016 ||||| OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A volunteer for Ben Carson's presidential campaign died Tuesday after being hospitalized with injuries suffered in a car accident in western Iowa that hurt three other campaign workers.

 FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2015 file photo, Republican Presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson speaks to the media before a town hall event at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. A volunteer for Carson's... (Associated Press)

 Carson was in South Carolina at the time of the Tuesday morning accident and suspended his campaign events.

 An official for a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, said the Carson campaign volunteer, 25-year-old Braden Joplin, died late Tuesday afternoon.

 Campaign spokesman Jason Osborne said the crash occurred when a van carrying three Carson volunteers and a paid staffer flipped onto its side on an icy road and was hit by another vehicle. The others in the van were treated at a hospital in Atlantic, Iowa.

 Carson posted a picture of himself and Joplin on Twitter Tuesday night, writing: "Rest In Peace Braden Joplin. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family."

 In a statement released by his campaign, Carson wrote: "One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf. America lost one of those bright young men today."

 Chris Cook, spokesman for Texas Tech University, said the death of Braden Joplin, who attended the university in Lubbock, was a great loss.

 "The loss of life, especially one of our own, is always tragic. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Braden during this difficult time."

 Other presidential candidates from both parties, including Republican Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Democrat Martin O'Malley, also offered condolences on Twitter. And Democratic contender Bernie Sanders paid tribute at the beginning of a rally in Iowa City, Iowa.

 "I have a lot of respect for any young person who gets involved in the political process," Sanders said. "Our hearts go out to the family of the young man." ||||| Twenty-five year old Braden Joplin, right, died Tuesday in a car crash in Iowa while volunteering for presidential candidate Ben Carson. The retired neurosurgeon canceled the remained of his events Tuesday and flew to Nebraska, where the other passengers in the car were taken via medevac helicopter. | Photo courtesy Ben Carson campaign Volunteer for Ben Carson dies from crash injuries

 A volunteer on Ben Carson's campaign succumbed to injuries sustained in a car accident on an icy Iowa road earlier Tuesday.

 The volunteer, 25-year-old Braden Joplin, died late Tuesday afternoon at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

 Story Continued Below

 "Rest in peace, Braden Joplin," Carson tweeted. "Our thoughts and prayers are with his family."

 Three others in the Carson van were injured in the Interstate 80 crash near Atlantic, Iowa. According to Carson's campaign, they were all treated at a nearby Iowa hospital and released.

 The GOP presidential candidate subsequently issued a statement: "One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf. America lost one of those bright young men today.

 "I had the privilege of knowing Braden Joplin personally, and am filled with a deep and profound sadness at his passing. While we mourn this profound loss, I am thankful that our other campaign colleagues, Drew McCall, Aaron Ohnemus and Ryan Patrick Shellooe, have all been treated and released from the hospital."

 According to the Daily Toreador of Texas Tech University, Joplin was a student at Texas Tech. The newspaper said Joplin had been a volunteer for Carson in Iowa since earlier this month. He had attended Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas.

 "I find solace in the knowledge of God’s redeeming grace," Carson said, "and I pray that Braden's family finds comfort in the mercy of the Lord. Across America today, I ask everyone to take a moment to reflect on the preciousness of life and remember and honor the memory of Braden Joplin."

 Earlier reports indicated three student volunteers and a campaign staffer for Carson had been hospitalized — with one volunteer in grave condition flown to a trauma center in Nebraska. The van they were riding in struck a patch of ice, flipped on its side and was struck by another vehicle.

 Atlantic is the county seat of Cass County in southwestern Iowa. It is 53 miles from Omaha.

 Carson, who was in South Carolina at the time of the crash, canceled his remaining campaign events (as well as events Wednesday) and flew to Nebraska. "Dr. Carson is asking people to join him in prayer for all the individuals and families involved," a campaign spokesman said at the time.

 According to the Daily Toreador, Carson's campaign chartered a private jet for Joplin's family to fly from Texas to Omaha.

 "The loss of life, especially one of our own, is especially tragic," said Chris Cook, managing director of Communications & Marketing at Texas Tech, in an official statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Braden during this difficult time."

 Most of Carson's rivals — certainly familiar with the energy and idealism that volunteers bring to the campaign trail — weighed in to offer sympathy to the accident victims.

 Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and the Hillary Clinton campaign's Iowa leader also offered kind words.

 "Thoughts & prayers with @RealBenCarson's volunteers & staff- involved in a car accident this morning," Lewandowski tweeted.

 "Sad #iacaucus news today," wrote Matt Paul, Clinton's state director. "On behalf of IA HRC Team, Our thoughts and prayers go out @RealBenCarson's staff and their families."

 After the news of Joplin's death, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and GOP contender Jeb Bush issued statements of sympathy.

 “Young volunteers like Braden Joplin are the heart and soul of the democratic process. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family," Sanders said.

 "Praying for the family of the young Ben Carson volunteer Braden Joplin, who was killed in a tragic car crash in IA," Bush said. "A life taken too soon."

 Authors: |||||

Write a summary.

– A sad day for the Ben Carson campaign: The GOP candidate canceled Tuesday and Wednesday campaign events after the death of a volunteer in a car crash in western Iowa. Braden Joplin, a 25-year-old from Midland, Texas, was fatally injured and three other campaign workers were hurt Tuesday afternoon when their van flipped over on an icy road and was hit by another vehicle, reports NBC News. Joplin was flown to a hospital in Nebraska, while the other three were treated locally and released. Politico reports that Carson, who was in South Carolina at the time, flew to Nebraska when he heard the news and paid for a private jet to bring Joplin's family out from Texas. "One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf," Carson said in a statement. "America lost one of those bright young men today. I had the privilege of knowing Braden Joplin personally, and am filled with a deep and profound sadness at his passing." Other candidates, including Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton, tweeted their condolences, while Bernie Sanders mentioned Joplin at the start of a rally in Iowa City, the AP reports. "I have a lot of respect for any young person who gets involved in the political process," Sanders said. "Our hearts go out to the family of the young man."


– Being implicated in the contamination of a state's water supply is not so good for business. Freedom Industries, the company whose tank leaked a chemical into the Elk River in West Virginia, filed for bankruptcy today, reports the Charleston Gazette. The move for Chapter 11 protection comes amid of flood of lawsuits from businesses and individuals who had to go without municipal water for several days. Most of the 300,000 affected residents have water again. The company listed its liabilities at a maximum of $10 million, which might be wishful thinking. "I think they underestimated the liabilities just a tad," an attorney who filed a class-action suit against the company deadpans to the Wall Street Journal. In its filing, the company shed a little more light on what it thinks happened: A water line broke during "extraordinarily frigid temperatures," and that made the ground freeze beneath a storage tank. The tank then got punctured by an unknown object, reports AP. "Authorities have taken note of a hole in the affected storage tank that appears to have come from an object piercing upward," the filing reads.

Expand this summary.

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. ||||| Freedom Industries Inc., facing multiple lawsuits and state and federal investigations after the Jan. 9 spill, filed a Chapter 11 petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of West Virginia.

 Company president Gary Southern signed the paperwork, which lists the company's assets and liabilities as a range — both between $1 million and $10 million. It says the company has at least 200 creditors and owes its top 20 creditors $3.66 million.

 The water was tainted after a chemical used to clean coal leaked from a storage tank and then a containment area at a facility owned by Freedom Industries. The water ran into the Elk River, contaminating the state's largest water system.

 The bankruptcy document says the leaky storage tank appears to have been pierced through its base by some sort of object. It also says a current theory for the hole is that a local water line that broke near the Charleston plant could have made the ground beneath the storage tank freeze in the cold days before the spill.

 After the spill, residents in a nine-county area around the state capital of Charleston were told not to use the water for anything other than flushing toilets. Some businesses and schools were forced to close for several days. The water restrictions have since been lifted for most residents.

 The terminal that leaked had not been inspected by state officials since 2001, when it was owned by a different company operating under more stringent rules. State officials said Freedom Industries bought the terminal last month. |||||


– Two years after the disaster that killed 32 people, captain Francesco Schettino today returned to the Costa Concordia wreckage in the course of his manslaughter trial. Schettino went aboard in order to help court-appointed experts inspect generators, which the captain claims were partly to blame for the incident, the AP reports. Judge Giovanni Puliatti was careful to qualify that Schettino was on board the ship "as a defendant, not a consultant," reports the BBC. "They want to show that I am weak, just like two years ago. It's not true. I want to show I'm a gentleman, not a coward," Schettino told Italian media. Standout detail from the BBC: It was quite the safe morning for Schettino, who participated in a health-and-safety briefing before donning a life vest and heading to the ship. (The tragedy actually claimed a 33rd victim this month.)

Expand this summary.

Captain Francesco Schettino, third from left, talks on the upper deck of the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, just off the coast of the Giglio island, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014. The captain of... (Associated Press)

 Captain Francesco Schettino talks on the phone as he waits to board the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, just off the coast of the Giglio island, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014. The captain of the Costa... (Associated Press)

 Captain Francesco Schettino talks on the phone as he waits to board the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, just off the coast of the Giglio island, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014. The captain of the Costa... (Associated Press) ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Captain Schettino: "The ship is the custodian of all these little secrets, the trial is still unfolding all these things"

 The Italian captain of the Costa Concordia ship, Francesco Schettino, has returned to the wreck for the first time as part of his manslaughter trial.

 The ship hit a reef near the island of Giglio in January 2012 and capsized, with the loss of 32 lives.

 Mr Schettino was taken to the wreck on board a small boat, two days after travelling back to Giglio.

 He denies the charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship, which could see him jailed for up to 20 years.

 He arrived on the island off the Tuscan coast on Tuesday and is said to have wept when he saw the wreck from a ferry taking him to Giglio.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How the disaster happened

 He attended a health-and-safety briefing at a hotel on Thursday morning to prepare him for the short boat trip out to the wreck, on which he was accompanied by a group of court-appointed experts.

 Mr Schettino was taken out to the wreck on a small boat and was then seen standing on the ship itself.

 He was being allowed on to the ship "as a defendant, not a consultant", said Judge Giovanni Puliatti.

 The 290m-long vessel was righted in September 2013 in one of the largest, most complex salvage operations ever, but remains stranded after its ill-fated journey.

 Memories of tragedy

 The captain has been accused of leaving the luxury liner before the 4,229 people on board the ship were taken off.

 "They want to show that I am weak, just like two years ago. It's not true. I want to show I'm a gentleman, not a coward," Italian media quoted him as saying.

 He lambasted the media "frenzy" surrounding his return to vessel, describing those who accused him of abandoning the ship of not understanding "a bloody thing".

 "There is a frenzy that is making me nervous," Mr Schettino told journalists and cameramen who surrounded him. "You have to respect civility."

 Correspondents say that he grew increasingly angry on the dockside after the visit, frequently gesticulating as he nervously paced around.

 He has already accepted some degree of responsibility, asking for forgiveness in a television interview last year as he talked of those who died.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Correspondents say that the technical inspection attended by the captain focussed on a lift where several of the victims died and on an emergency generator which the defence says malfunctioned

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Captain Schettino could be seen (centre without a helmet) in a blue sweater standing on the wreck of the ship

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Captain Schettino strongly criticised the "media frenzy" surrounding his return to the stricken vessel

 But he denies abandoning the ship after it hit a reef near the island.

 He maintains he managed to steer the stricken vessel closer to shore so it did not sink in deep water where hundreds might have drowned.

 His lawyer Domenico Pepe said the captain's former employer, Costa Crociere, had shifted the blame towards him.

 "It is very, very difficult because Schettino does not have the economic resources of Costa," he said. The firm is believed to be the biggest cruise operator in Europe,

 "Schettino is confronting the whole world on his own."

 An Italian court convicted five others of manslaughter in July 2013.

 They had all successfully entered plea bargains, whereas Mr Schettino's request for a plea bargain was denied by the prosecution.

 His return to the island will undoubtedly stir memories of the tragedy among locals, says the BBC's Alan Johnston.

 "Schettino's here, he cried, so what?" one woman on the island told the AFP news agency. "We're tired of this story! We want him and the boat gone."

 But Giuseppe Modesti, 67, told AFP: "There's no real anger here any more. Two years have passed and it's time to make peace with what happened."

 The complex operation to salvage the Costa Concordia took 18 hours and followed months of stabilisation and preparation work by a team of 500 engineers and divers.

 Ports in Italy, Britain, France, Turkey and China are now bidding for the lucrative contract to dismantle it.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption The wreck sits in the harbour of Giglio |||||


Here is a news article: illustration by Charlie Powell.

 Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday at age 62. He will be missed greatly here at Slate, where he wrote the “Fighting Words” column starting in 2002. To honor Hitch, we are collecting tributes from those who knew him best—his friends, colleagues, and fellow writers.

 June Thomas, Hitchens’ editor at Slate

 Editing Christopher Hitchens, who died Thursday at the age of 62, was the easiest job in journalism. He never filed late—in fact, he was usually early, even when he was clearly very sick—and he managed to make his work seem like a great lark. His weekly e-mails always read the same jaunty way: “Herewith. Hope it serves, As always, Christopher.” READ MORE

 Julian Barnes, novelist

 In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety. I gave copies to my friends, including some of those I had worked with until recently on the New Statesman. Most of them acknowledged receipt; most attempted to make the encouraging noises the skinless first novelist needs to hear. But there was no response from the Hitch. READ MORE

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 Jacob Weisberg, Slate Group chairman

 Amazing about Hitchens: his generosity to young people. He sought them out and befriended them. He responded when they called with requests to speak at their college, contribute to a symposium, or stand with any oppressed minority. He hated to say no to anything worthwhile, and cared less about getting paid than anyone I've ever known. After doing unaccountable favors for unimportant people, he named them comrades, which meant welcoming them into his circle of solidarity and acting as if they belonged in his home, with cocktails. READ MORE

 James Fenton, poet and critic

 I asked Christopher not long ago if he had felt, at the time that he made his decision to move to America, that in England there was always something holding him back. He had indeed felt something like this, although I cannot say I always felt it was for good reasons. Christopher, from the time that I knew him at Oxford, was always a brilliant speaker and debater, and in conversation incomparably interesting and engaging. I regularly turned to him before writing on any political subject, for that jumpstart he could administer so well. READ MORE

 Gully Wells, author of The House in France

 Walking down a mossy, medieval alley in Oxford, dressed in preposterous hot pants and high heeled suede boots (don’t ask, it was 1969) with my then-boyfriend, Martin Amis, we ran into two men I vaguely knew—Christopher and James Fenton—coming toward us. We stopped, I introduced them to Martin, we chatted briefly, and we all moved on.

 I like to think that was the beginning of the deep, enduring friendship—actually more of a love affair—between Martin and Hitch that was to last 42 years, longer than either of their marriages. READ MORE

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 Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard law professor

 It is hard to believe it was six years ago that Christopher and I took a road trip to Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home, Monticello. Christopher was to do a talk about his short biography, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, and I was to introduce him. I came down to Washington from New York the night before to stay in his home so that we could set out early and get there at a leisurely place. The pre-trip evening was convivial, with good conversation with Carol and their daughter Antonia, who made occasional appearances. READ MORE

 Jonathan Karp, publisher, Simon & Schuster

 I had the privilege of publishing two books by Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great and Hitch-22. Here are 10 things about him I found particularly admirable:

 1. He didn’t need much editing.

 2. He had good ideas in the shower. That’s where he came up with the title for God Is Not Great. READ MORE

 Andrew Sullivan, blogger

 I could sense it coming. But I couldn't write anything beforehand and I cannot write anything worthy of him now. So I just sat down an hour ago when I heard the news—Aaron told me as he clicked on Gawker—and sat a while and got up to write and then blubbered a bit and, staring at the screen, read through some emails from him. READ MORE

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 David Corn, Washington bureau chief, Mother Jones

 Here is how I came to hate Christopher Hitchens. Hate—as in envy.

 In the early 1980s, as a twentysomething trying to start a career as a crusading journalist, I was fortunate enough to share an office with Hitchens. It was just the two of us. And one phone line. We were both working at The Nation. He had come to it as part of an exchange program with the New Statesman, a British publication, and had elected to remain in the wonderful and wild New York City of the late disco era. I was an editorial grunt. The magazine was running short on workspace, and we were assigned a small, windowless office on a floor apart from the main offices. READ MORE

 Anne Applebaum, journalist and director of political studies at the Legatum Institute

 “I see you were feeling eeyorish about Macedonia last week.” As far as I recall, those were the first words Christopher Hitchens ever said to me. They threw me completely. What was this new adjective, “eeyorish”? From which language did it derive? READ MORE

 Fred Kaplan, author and Slate columnist

 I met Christopher Hitchens in the early 1980s, soon after he first moved to America. We were both in D.C. I was friends with a few expat British journalists, who of course were old chums of “the Hitch,” so it was natural that we’d be introduced. READ MORE

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 Alexander Chancellor, Guardian columnist

 In retrospect it seems obvious that Christopher Hitchens always needed a larger canvas on which to perform in his many roles as a journalist, debater, and public intellectual, but it nevertheless came as a surprise to many in London when this left-wing British Marxist, apparently happily ensconced in the socialist weekly the New Statesman, suddenly took off for the United States in 1981, never to return. READ MORE

 Matt Labash, senior writer, the Weekly Standard

 No secrets are being divulged when I report that Christopher liked a drink every now and then. Preferably now. He wasn’t sloppy about it. In fact, he always seemed in perfect control (I once saw him steer a beach bike through the streets of Key West without spilling his Scotch.) He just liked to keep the machine well-oiled so he could get on to more important things, like liberating oppressed peoples of the world, knocking out his 10,000 words a day, or starting fights with God, assuming there is one, which he doesn’t. In some ways, his affection for drink brought us together, setting in motion my most vivid memories of him. READ MORE

 Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts

 There was one year, 2003 I think, we kept him onstage all day at Hay. He started on Waugh with Bill Deedes, the model for William Boot in Scoop. He argued the influence of the Congress of Vienna with Eric Hobsbawm for a couple of hours. Instead of lunch, he delivered an extraordinary lecture on Tom Paine and constitutional law. There was a 20-minute Rothmans break. About eight cigarettes. He hadn’t stopped drinking Johnny Walker Black Label at any point from 10 a.m. READ MORE

 Hussein Ibish, writer

 Because Christopher Hitchens was so politically confrontational and devastating to his opponents, the public is largely unaware of his intense personal generosity and kindness. Time and again, he went far beyond the normal duties of friendship. As our mutual friend Michael Weiss aptly puts it, "Friendship was his ideology." READ MORE

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 Victor Navasky, former editor and publisher, The Nation

 I became editor of The Nation in 1978, and one of the first and best things I did that year was to ask, via old-fashioned snail mail, a writer I didn't know, but whose elegant pieces I had been reading in the New Statesman, and everywhere else, since he seemed to be traveling the world anyway, why not write an occasional article forThe Nation? Which he proceeded to do with elegance, wit, and brilliance. READ MORE

 David Wolpe, rabbi

 My first moments with Christopher Hitchens were interrupted by a man who pointed out that on the back of my book on faith, a reviewer was quoted saying “even Christopher Hitchens might find his heart warmed.” So, the man asked Hitchens, was your heart warmed? Hitchens regarded my book as an enforcer from Men in Black might look at a particularly repellant alien. “Oh no,” he said, “my heart is far too reptilian for that.” READ MORE

 Peter Pringle, author

 Christopher covered the bloodless Portuguese revolution in April 1974, that brought down the 20th century's oldest fascist regime. He arrived at the Tivoli Hotel in Lisbon ahead of most of us, as usual. (I was then working for Harry Evans'Sunday Times.) As I got out of a taxi, he was standing on the hotel steps. He was wearing a white suit, well, it might not have been a suit, but it was white, and he was puffing on a cigarette. From the top of the steps, he called out, "Hello, comrade. This is a real revo." READ MORE

 Craig Raine, writer and founding editor of Arté

 Hitch took part in a Vanity Fair debate at the Oxford Union with Sidney Blumenthal and Alan Clark. It was organized by the then editor, Tina Brown. Hitch got to his feet: “I stand before you, without shame, reeking of cigarettes and alcohol …” (The debating topic was public and private morality in politicians.) READ MORE

 Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue

 This past July, I gave a book party for my friend Gully Wells. Christopher Hitchens—or Hitch, as he was known to me and just about everyone else—came, as did Martin Amis and James Fenton, who were among his closest friends. It ended up being a reunion of sorts. We’d all known each other for a long time; a million years ago, in London, I’d dated Hitch, and Gully had dated Martin. READ MORE ||||| What I'll Miss About HitchensBy Lee Siegel

 The price paid for celebrity is caricature, and by the end of his rich, accomplished life, Christopher Hitchens had become everyone’s lovable curmudgeon. In the pages of publications that once would have nothing to do with him—The New York Times (they didn’t like his anti-Zionism), The New Yorker (they didn’t like his strong opinions)—he was suddenly extolled for exciting copy as “The Contrarian,” “The Drinker,” The Partygoer.” The relentless comparisons to George Orwell made you wince, not because Hitchens didn’t deserve the extravagant praise—in many ways, he did—but because comparisons tend to diminish. He was not someone like Orwell (a comparison he himself nurtured and invited). He was Christopher Hitchens, unique and unduplicable. He was the most distinctive personality in Western literary journalism. If he was like anything, he resembled some larger-than-life 19th-century figura. He was journalism’s Lord Byron. And unlike certain other Washington-based literati, he didn’t spend his professional life hurling thunderbolts from behind the shelter of a title and a desk. He made his own way. Always.

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 Christopher Hitchens's Best LongreadsBy David Sessions

 From his epic takedown of Henry Kissinger to his petty crime spree in Bloomberg’s New York, The Daily Beast picks just a few highlights from Christopher Hitchens’s prolific career.

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 A Man of Passion, Prose and WitBy Stephen Fry

 We shared a love and passion for P. G. Wodehouse and such things form a bond. Wodehouse, who adored the Pekingese breed of dog, liked to judge people on whether they were sound on Pekes. Evelyn Waugh, who like the Hitch and myself, revered the Master, judged people on how sound they are on Wodehouse.

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 Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

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 Andrew Sullivan's Greatest Hitchens Memories

 Andrew remembers his dear friend and dedicates much of The Dish to celebrating the rich life of Christopher Hitchens, from the best tributes on the web, his favorite memory of him, his finest moments on TV, to an Auden poem Hitch once read to Andrew. Follow the latest on his blog.

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 RIP, Dear FriendBy Andrew Sullivan

 He once wrote to me: "Dearest Andrew I always think of Sunday lunch as beginning at about 2.30 ('a lavish and ruminative feast', as Waugh says about elevenses). Want to come here?"

 Yes, I do, Hitch. Yes, I do.

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 Final Hitchens Memoir Out Next Year

 A final memoir by the late Christopher Hitchens will be out early next year, and will likely be a collection of essays called Mortality. It will include many of his columns for Vanity Fair, and will be released by Atlantic Books, which published his bestselling God Is Not Great, Hitch-22 and Arguably. Hitchens died late Thursday night after battling esophageal cancer. "Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to'do' death in the active and not the passive sense," Hitchens wrote recently in his final column for Vanity Fair. "However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings.” He went on to dispense with familiar principles and maxims, including “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”—a defiant and courageous takedown, to the end.

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 How Will Hitchens Be Remembered?By Jason Crowley, Editor of the New Statesman

 In his final interview, conducted with Richard Dawkins and published in the Christmas issue of the New Statesman, Hitchens spoke of how the one consistency for him in his long, four-decade career as a writer was in being against the totalitarian, on the left and on the right. “The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.” And the ultimate totalitarian was God, against whom (or the notion of whom) he was raging until the end.

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 Hitchens’s Best ZingersChristopher Hitchens’s most valuable asset was his scathing wit. From his famous digs at religion to his humiliating takedown of Sarah Palin—and even some snippy comments aimed at cats—read the brilliant writer’s most incendiary jabs. READ MORE>>

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 Hitchens Articles in Newsweek MagazineThe writer was known for weighing in on all topics—no matter how controversial. From the presidents to religion to foreign policy, see some of Hitchens’ best work for Newsweek. READ MORE>>

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 My Friend and MentorBy Eli Lake

 It is fitting that Christopher Hitchens would die one day after the official ceremonies in Baghdad to end the Iraq war. I befriended Christopher and his family in the fall of 2002 in the run up to that war. I will never forget the evening we met. I had just started dating a woman I nearly married and we returned to a party hosted by one of my editors. There was Christopher, holding court, surrounded by journalists and aspiring intellectuals. Even though that evening the pending war was on everyone’s minds, Christopher wanted to talk about the Balkans.

 READ MORE>>

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 Hitchens In IranBy Roya Hakakian

 I never knew him to take his time, squander words to be merely decorous. He loved or loathed immediately, and he did both as voraciously as he smoked, spoke and drank.

 READ MORE>> ||||| See Slate’s full tribute to the life of Christopher Hitchens. Read Slate’s complete collection of Christopher Hitchens' columns.

 Here is how I came to hate Christopher Hitchens. Hate—as in envy.

 In the early 1980s, as a twentysomething trying to start a career as a crusading journalist, I was fortunate enough to share an office with Hitchens. It was just the two of us. And one phone line. We were both working at The Nation. He had come to it as part of an exchange program with the New Statesman, a British publication, and had elected to remain in the wonderful and wild New York City of the late disco era. I was an editorial grunt. The magazine was running short on workspace, and we were assigned a small, windowless office on a floor apart from the main offices. These were the days before voice mail—and much else—and we would take phone messages for each other on pink slips of paper from “while you were out” notepads.

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 You can learn a lot about a person by sharing an office—and taking phone messages for him.

 This is how the average day proceeded: I’d arrive in the morning around 9-ish. The phone would soon start ringing—with calls for Hitchens. I’d tell the callers he was not yet available, and they would leave messages: “Tell him, that was a wonderful dinner last night.” Or, “Mick was so pleased to meet him.” Or, “We may all get together again this evening.” Within an hour or so, the nature of the messages would shift to cover plans for lunch that day: “Tell Christopher we’re all meeting at the Spanish place.”

 About this time, Hitchens would saunter in. He’d say hello, turn to the pink slips I had placed on his desk, and return the calls. Did I say this was a small office? We each could hear everything the other said on the phone. He’d first phone his compatriots from the previous evening and review what had transpired. He then would talk to his lunch-mates for the day and arrange the details. Then it would be time … to leave for lunch.

 While he was gone, calls would come in for him with invitations for afternoon drinks. (In those days, youngsters, late-afternoon drinks were practically obligatory in certain journalistic circles. Think of it as Manhattan teatime.) After a, shall we say, longish lunch, Hitchens would stop back in the office and return the calls regarding the pending drinks. Then it was, ta-ta, once again.

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 By now you are getting the picture. But I’m not done yet. After afternoon drinks, the general practice was to return to the office. Upon his arrival, Hitchens would sort through the latest pink slips with phone numbers from his friends, colleagues, and adversaries who had called about dinner plans and after-dinner drinks. (Yes, in those days, after-dinner drinks were a separate stop.)

 Soon, it was time for Hitchens to head out to the dinner engagement. He would start packing up. About now, Elizabeth Pochoda, the literary editor of the magazine, would poke her head in the door. “Christopher, you’re going to have that review of the Disraeli biography for me tomorrow, right?”—a soft touch of menace in her voice.

 “Oh, yes, of course.” And as soon as she had departed, he’d open his desk, rummage through a drawer, and pull out an 800-page biography of the British prime minister. It was clear to me that the book had yet to be opened. He’d tuck the volume into his bag and say goodnight.

 By this point in the day, I knew all his plans for the evening, including the 11-ish rendezvous for cocktails. I wondered how he would be able to read this book and write a review by the next morning. But come the following day—after the calls about the previous night and the calls about the lunch to come had started—he’d trundle into the office, Pochoda would show up, and he’d hand her a 1,500-word essay. And it was—you know the punch line—brilliant. Did I mention this was in the days before computers? Next, it was off to lunch.

 I did learn much from Hitchens, but never how to function in quite this manner. What allowed him to live such a packed life was a trait that any of us would relish: He never forgot what he had ever read or learned. His mind was always expanding. That was a natural gift that few of us possess. He could not teach it. But observing Hitchens practice his craft and thrust and parry with intellectuals almost as sharp as him was as valuable an experience as I could have imagined. It sure beat attending J-school. And I much appreciated his sense of social egalitarianism. I found that few journalists of his stature paid much serious attention to the young wannabes nearby. I recall one particular moment, at some social/literary event, when I heard him utter what at the time seemed to be these improbable words, “Carly, you do know David Corn, don’t you?” (It was that Carly.) She, of course, didn’t. Hitchens, as a journalist and as a colleague, was inspiring.

 In later years, Hitchens and I had our differences. I was not heartened when he provided left-of-center and intellectual cover to the impeachment crusade waged by extremist radicals of the right in the 1990s. And we had words over his support for the Iraq War—including within the pixels of Slate. I wish I could forget the time, a few months into the war, when he assured me, “Wolfowitz has the rats on the run and this will all be over soon.”

 Yet policy and political debates, as important as they are, come and go. Examples remain. Hitchens set one for me. And I know there is no reason to ask him to rest in peace. |||||
A summary of this is?

– There is no shortage of reflections on the life of Christopher Hitchens today, filled with memories and anecdotes that all seem to include the word "cocktail." Writing for Slate, David Corn recounts his "Hitchens tale," one that occurred some three decades ago while the two shared a tiny, windowless office at The Nation. It seems that Corn spent most of his day taking phone messages for Hitchens. In the morning, they'd be along the lines of "'Tell him, that was a wonderful dinner last night.' Or, 'Mick was so pleased to meet him.'" Then they'd shift to invitations for lunch, afternoon drinks, dinner, and an 11pm cocktail date, with Hitchens popping in just long enough to get those messages, then depart for said restaurant or watering hole. At some point, an editor would stop by to double-check that Hitchens would have, say, the review of a biography ready for her tomorrow. He'd say yes, then slip an 800-page book that clearly "had yet to be opened ... into his bag and say goodnight." What he somehow turned in the next day was—"you know the punch line—brilliant. Next, it was off to lunch." Corn writes that he learned many lessons from Hitchens, but "never how to function in quite this manner. What allowed him to live such a packed life was a trait that any of us would relish: He never forgot what he had ever read or learned." It's not a skill that could be taught, but watching Hitchens "practice his craft and thrust and parry with intellectuals almost as sharp as him was as valuable an experience as I could have imagined."


Article:

CNET

 Oyster, a subscription service for e-books that launched two years ago, is calling it quits.

 The service's founders announced in a company blog post Monday that they will move toward retiring the existing service in the next few months. The blog post did not give a reason for the closure but hinted that there were other ambitions for the service.

 "We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade," they wrote. "Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks."

 Representatives for the New York-based company did not immediate respond to a request for comment.

 Google confirmed that it has hired "a portion of the Oyster team" to work at Google Play Books but declined to provide further details. A report in Recode said, citing unnamed sources, that the hiring includes Oyster's CEO and two co-founders. Google was not immediately available to comment to CNET.

 Oyster, which was founded in 2012 and launched its service a year later, took a novel approach to the e-book market, formerly offering only a subscription book service for $9.95 a month. The idea attracted the attention of Amazon, which last year launched a rival subscription service dubbed Kindle Unlimited that offered all-you-can-eat e-books and audiobooks for $9.99 per month.

 Despite Amazon's entry into subscription ebook market, Oyster's model did little to replace traditional book sales, mostly because binge-reading is more difficult than binge-watching movies. Consumers, who are flocking to other subscription services like Netflix and Spotify, appear reluctant to sign up with the equivalent for books. Even Amazon has declined to discuss how well its service is performing.

 Oyster, which had raised $17 million, changed its model in April when it announced an expansion into online retail with an e-book store that would sell individual books, with hopes of attracting new customers to its service.

 The move came at an auspicious time for the book industry, as publishers have begun setting prices evenly across the e-book market. By expanding into online sales, Oyster was gunning for Amazon, estimated to control more than half the US e-book market and even more abroad.

 However, Oyster did make early headway within the book industry by signing up three of the five biggest US publishers, amassing a library of more than 1 million titles. But even these publishers have chosen to wait as long as six months to release their newest titles on subscription services like Oyster.

 Oyster users could also only access the service through an app for smartphones, tablets and computers -- but not Amazon's popular Kindle e-reader. (Oyster does have an app for the Amazon's Fire tablet, though).

 Update, September 22 at 7:34 a.m. PT: Added information on Google's reported hiring of some Oyster employees. ||||| Oyster, a company that provides a Netflix-like book subscription service, is shutting down. And most of its team is heading over to Google.

 In a blog post on Monday, Oyster’s founders said they were “taking steps to sunset” the company’s service, which launched in 2012. “We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade,” they wrote. “Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for e-books.”

 Those opportunities may happen at Google. A rep for the search giant confirmed that “a portion” of the Oyster team has joined Google Play Books, its online store for books. People familiar with the company say that CEO Eric Stromberg and co-founders Andrew Brown and Willem Van Lancker are part of the team joining Google.

 Google is resistant to the notion that it bought Oyster. But sources said it will end up paying investors, who put a reported $17 million into the company, for the right to hire some of its staff. In other words, this is an “acqhire.”

 Google went through this sort of exercise recently. In July, the company swooped in when Homejoy, a startup connecting customers with professional cleaners online, retired. Google hired around 20 of Homejoy’s engineers, as Re/code first reported. Later that month, Google launched an advertising product for professional services that looked remarkably similar to Homejoy’s model.

 So does Google want to launch its own version of Oyster’s book subscription? The company declined to comment. If it does launch a service, it will end up competing with Amazon, which launched its own $10-a-month e-book service in July 2014. ||||| It’s not so easy to offer a Netflix-like experience.

 The Oyster e-book subscription service that launched with much fanfare in 2013 has posted a note on its blog stating it will be exiting that business over the next few months and offering refunds to subscribers who request them. The service provides access to more than 1 million e-books... ||||| We have REALLY big news for you. We’re talking Infinite Jest big. 1 Today, in addition to your Oyster subscription, you can also buy any book you could ever want in our brand new ebook store (including Infinite Jest!).

 With our new ebook store, virtually any book you can think of is available on Oyster, including all new releases and pre-orders like Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman and Jonathan Franzen’s Purity. And through our unlimited subscription service (now known as Oyster Unlimited), you still have access to the same million books—from Harry Potter to American Sniper—for the same monthly price.

 Everything we do at Oyster is focused on connecting readers like you with books you’ll love. Over the past year and a half, we’ve worked hard to create the leading subscription service for books and build the best ebook discovery and reading experience for mobile and tablets.

 We’ve been so thrilled by the enthusiasm we’ve seen for Oyster so far and at how much you’re reading on Oyster—over a 100 million pages a month, up from just 8 million in December 2013. It’s clear that there is huge demand from readers for an app that helps them find great books and lets them read them in beautiful, easy-to-use environment.

 Now we are expanding Oyster so you can access all your options—subscription and for-purchase—in one place. You’ll never have to go anywhere else to get a book, because everything you’re looking for is on Oyster. Go ahead, try it out.

 The Girl on the Train? Absolutely. Becoming Steve Jobs? It’s right there. Dead Wake? Look no further.

 The store includes all of the biggest five publishers in the US (that’s Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) and many more from Scholastic to Harlequin and Norton to Chronicle. It’s the center of your books universe.

 And the best part is that whether you buy, subscribe, or both, you can always enjoy the full Oyster experience—the best content across subscription and for-purchase books, beautiful design built for mobile reading, and a great discovery experience with spot-on editorial, algorithmic, and social recommendations.

 Wondering how to purchase a book from our store? You can buy books on our brand-new website or in the Android app. Purchases will automatically sync to all of your devices.

 On top of that, we added a toggle and banners to help you see what books are available in subscription, redesigned the Explore tab to add new categories (43 in all!), added tons of new complementary colors to book detail pages, and incorporated a lot of nice tweaks and improvements throughout. To get started, update your Oyster app to version 2.0 through Google Play or the App Store, or visit our website to see all the new books.

 And to celebrate, we’re giving away three of our top new books to a lucky winner: Open City (which our editors at The Oyster Review named the Best Book of the Decade So Far), Becoming Steve Jobs, and The Girl on the Train. We want to see where your favorite place to read is! Tag a photo on your instagram with #whereiread for a chance to win.

 1

 Bigger than the Great Concavity. Bigger than the O.N.A.N. circa the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, though perhaps a non-physical comparison is more appropriate, in which case it is bigger even than James O. Incandenza’s complete filmography. |||||
What is a summary?

– A service billed as a Netflix for books is calling it quits after failing to attract enough voracious readers willing to pay $9.95 a month for access to 1 million books. Oyster, which launched in 2013, announced in a blog post that it's going to "sunset" the service over the next few months, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company says it believes "more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade," but it feels "this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for e-books." Those new opportunities will apparently be at Google, which has hired Oyster's CEO, co-founders, and other team members for Google Play Books, reports Re/code. Sources say Google has paid off Oyster investors in what Re/code dubs an "acqhire." Where did it go wrong for Oyster? Consumers stayed away "because binge-reading is more difficult than binge-watching movies," and it didn't help that the service couldn't be accessed on Amazon's Kindle readers, writes Steven Musil at CNET. The company ended up in direct competition with Amazon after it added e-book sales to its subscription service, he notes. People seeking an all-you-can-read service still have the option of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service (which was introduced the year after Oyster made its debut) or, as this columnist notes, libraries.


FILE -- In this July 5, 2013 file photo, worshippers visit the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. State-linked Saudi news websites reported an explosion has gone off outside the Prophet's Mosque,... (Associated Press)

 FILE -- In this July 5, 2013 file photo, worshippers visit the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. State-linked Saudi news websites reported an explosion has gone off outside the Prophet's Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites in the city of Medina on Monday, July 4, 2016, the same day that two... (Associated Press)

 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — State-linked Saudi news websites reported an explosion Monday near one of Islam's holiest sites in the city of Medina, as two suicide bombers struck in different cities without killing anyone.

 Sabq news site and other local media, quoting unnamed sources, said the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber near a security building outside the Prophet Muhammad's mosque. Several cars caught fire. Local media showed images of what appeared to be a fire outside one of the buildings overlooking the Prophet's Mosque. It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed or wounded in the blast.

 The sprawling mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried is visited by millions of Muslims from around the world each year during pilgrimages to Mecca. The area would have been packed with pilgrims for prayer during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday.

 The Interior Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

 Qari Ziyaad Patel, 36, from Johannesburg, South Africa, was at the mosque when he heard a blast just as the call to sunset prayers was ending. People were breaking their fast with dates so the mood was subdued, he said. Many at first thought it was the sound of traditional, celebratory cannon fire, but then he felt the ground shake.

 "The vibrations were very strong," he said. "It sounded like a building imploded."

 Also Monday evening, a suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, according to a resident there, several hours after another suicide bomber carried out an attack near the U.S. Consulate in the western city of Jiddah.

 The possibility of coordinated, multiple attacks across different cities in Saudi Arabia on the same day underscores the threat the kingdom faces from extremists who view the Western-allied Saudi monarchy as heretics and enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

 The attack in the eastern region of Qatif did not appear to cause any injuries, said resident Mohammed al-Nimr, whose brother is Nimr-al-Nimr, a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric executed in January. He told The Associated Press the bomber detonated his suicide vest when most residents of the neighborhood were at home breaking the daily Ramadan fast.

 Qatif is heavily populated by Shiites, who are a minority in the Sunni-ruled kingdom. Al-Nimr said that near the body of a suicide bomber was a car bomb that also went off around the same time.

 The IS group's local affiliates in the kingdom have previously attacked Shiite places of worship, including an attack on a Shiite mosque in Qatif in May 2015 that killed 21 people.

 Earlier Monday, the Interior Ministry said a suicide bomber had detonated his explosives when security guards approached him near the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah. The attacker died and the two security men were lightly wounded, according to the ministry statement, which was published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Some cars in the parking lot were damaged.

 Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki was quoted in the statement as saying the guards noticed the man was acting suspiciously at an intersection on the corner of the heavily fortified consulate, near a hospital and a mosque.

 The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia confirmed there were no casualties among consular staff, and said it remains in contact with Saudi authorities as they investigate.

 No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

 The Interior Ministry did not say whether the bomber intended to target the U.S. diplomatic compound, adding that an investigation is underway to determine his identity.

 The state-run news channel al-Ekhbariya, quoting the Interior Ministry, said the bomber was not a Saudi citizen, but a resident of the kingdom. It gave no further details on his nationality. There are around 9 million foreigners living in Saudi Arabia, which has a total population of 30 million.

 Footage aired on the channel after the attack showed crime scene investigators and police casing the area for evidence and dusting for fingerprints. Al-Ekhbariya said security forces detonated six explosive devices found at the scene.

 A 2004 al-Qaida-linked militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah killed five locally hired consular employees and four gunmen. The three-hour battle at the compound came amid a wave of al-Qaida attacks targeting Westerners and Saudi security posts.

 More recently, Saudi Arabia has been a target of Islamic State attacks that have killed dozens of people. In June, the Interior Ministry reported 26 terror attacks in the kingdom in the last two years.

 The U.S. Embassy regularly issues advisory messages for U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia. In a message issued Sunday and another one issued after the attack Monday, the embassy urged Americans to "remain aware of their surroundings, and take extra precautions when travelling throughout the country." It also advised citizens to "carefully consider the risks of traveling to Saudi Arabia."

 In neighboring Kuwait on Monday, security forces said they had arrested several suspects with alleged ties to IS, including an 18-year-old man who was planning to attack a Shiite mosque in the final days of Ramadan. Officials did not say when the arrests took place. An IS affiliate claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing carried out by a Saudi man last year in one of Kuwait's oldest Shiite mosques. That attack killed 27 people.

 ___

 Associated Press writer Adam Schreck contributed to this report. ||||| GENEVA/DUBAI (Reuters) - The king of Saudi Arabia warned his country would strike with an “iron hand” against people who preyed on youth vulnerable to religious extremism, a day after suicide bombers struck three cities in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks.

 In a speech marking Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that celebrates the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, King Salman said a major challenge facing Saudi Arabia was preserving hope for youth who faced the risk of radicalization.

 “We will strike with an iron hand those who target the minds and thoughts... of our dear youth,” Salman, 80, said.

 Four security officers were killed in Monday’s attacks that targeted U.S. diplomats, Shi’ite Muslim worshippers and a security headquarters at a mosque in the holy city of Medina. The attacks all seem to have been timed to coincide with the approach of the Islamic Eid holiday.

 The U.N. human rights chief on Tuesday described the bombing outside the Prophet Mohammed’s Mosque in Medina as “an attack on Islam itself” and many Muslims expressed shock that their second-holiest site had been targeted.

 No group has claimed responsibility but Islamic State militants have carried out similar bombings in the U.S.-allied, Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom in the past year, targeting minority Shi’ites and Saudi security forces.

 Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and a member of the Jordanian royal family, delivered his remarks via a spokesman in Geneva.

 “This is one of the holiest sites in Islam, and for such an attack to take place there, during Ramadan, can be considered a direct attack on Muslims all across the world,” he said. “It is an attack on the religion itself.”

 ATTACK UNNERVES SAUDIS

 Militant attacks on Medina are unprecedented. The city is home to the second most sacred site in Islam, a mosque built in the 7th century by the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam, which also houses his tomb.

 Muslim worshippers gather after a suicide bomber detonated a device near the security headquarters of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, July 4, 2016. REUTERS/Handout

 Attacks on Mecca, the holiest place in Islam, have been extremely rare. The Al Saud ruling family considers itself the protectors of both sites. Islamic State says the Saudi rulers are apostates and has declared its intention to topple them.

 Saudis were rattled by the rare, high-profile attack.

 “I apologize to everyone if I don’t congratulate you this Eid,” Khaled bin Saleh al-Shathri, a Saudi businessman, wrote on Twitter. “I am shocked by the deaths of five of my brothers and the wounding of four others as they guarded the holiest places.”

 Iran, the region’s major Shi’ite power, also condemned the attacks.

 Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and anti-terror tsar, Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, sought on Tuesday to reassure Saudis of the country’s security.

 “The security of the homeland is good, it is at its highest levels and thanks be to God it gets stronger every day,” the state news agency SPA quoted him as saying during a visit to some of the wounded in the Jeddah attack.

 Slideshow (3 Images)

 Prince Mohammed has been credited for ending a bombing campaign by al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006.

 Monday’s bombings happened days before the end of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn until dusk.

 Saudi security officials say Islamic State’s supporters inside the kingdom mainly act independently from the group in Iraq and Syria, its main areas of operations.

 Salah al-Budair, the imam of the Prophet’s Mosque, warned young people about being lured by the “malignant” ideology of Islamic State. “(The bomber) is an infidel who has sold himself to the enemies of his religion and his country,” he said. |||||

Write a summary.

– Yet more high-profile terror attacks: Suicide bombers struck three cities in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, including in Medina near one of the holiest sites in Islam. In the latter incident, the explosion took place outside the mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried, reports AP. Several cars caught fire, and local media showed images of what appeared to be a fire outside one of the buildings overlooking the Prophet's Mosque. The number of casualties was unclear, though Reuters reports three bombers and two security forces officers were killed. The sprawling mosque is visited by millions of Muslims from around the world each year during pilgrimages to Mecca. The area would have been packed with pilgrims for prayer during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday. Also Monday evening, a suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, several hours after another suicide bomber carried out an attack near the US Consulate in the western city of Jiddah. Neither of those two attacks killed anyone but the bombers. The possibility of coordinated, multiple attacks across different cities in Saudi Arabia on the same day underscores the threat the kingdom faces from extremists who view the Western-allied Saudi monarchy as heretics and enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia is part of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The violence follows attacks in Iraq, Bangladesh, and Turkey.


Another day, another charitable donation by Taylor Swift.

 The country music pop princess has vowed to help the victims of the devastating Louisiana floods by donating $1 million to the state’s disaster relief fund.

 Big-hearted Swift, 26, released a statement to the Associated Press on Tuesday, August 16, revealing how warmly she was greeted by Louisiana residents when she performed there last year.

 “We began the 1989 world tour in Louisiana, and the wonderful fans there made us feel completely at home," she said. "The fact that so many people in Louisiana have been forced out of their own homes this week is heartbreaking.”

 So far 11 people have been killed by the historic flooding, which has damaged at least 40,000 homes.

 “I encourage those who can to help out and send your love and prayers their way during this devastating time,” Swift added.

 This is far from the first time the singer — who has an estimated worth of $250 million — has dug deep for a good cause.

 Last year she donated $50,000 to a young fan battling cancer, as well as giving the same amount to the nephew of her backup dancer, who was also suffering from the disease.

 In 2014 she donated $50,000 to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and back in 2008 she gave $100,000 to the Red Cross in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to help the victims of that flood too.

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  ||||| FILE - In this April 3, 2016 file photo, Taylor Swift arrives at the iHeartRadio Music Awards at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Swift is donating $1 million to Louisiana after torrential rains caused... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this April 3, 2016 file photo, Taylor Swift arrives at the iHeartRadio Music Awards at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Swift is donating $1 million to Louisiana after torrential rains caused... (Associated Press)

 NEW YORK (AP) — Taylor Swift is donating $1 million to Louisiana flood relief after torrential rains caused massive flooding in the state and killed at least 11 people.

 Swift told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Louisiana residents graciously welcomed her when she kicked off the U.S. dates of her "1989 World Tour" in the state last year.

 "We began The 1989 World Tour in Louisiana, and the wonderful fans there made us feel completely at home. The fact that so many people in Louisiana have been forced out of their own homes this week is heartbreaking," the 26-year-old said in a statement.

 The flooding is some of the worst in Louisiana history, damaging at least 40,000 homes. More than 60,000 people have registered for disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after widespread flooding hit the state, according to Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards' office.

 "I encourage those who can to help out and send your love and prayers their way during this devastating time," Swift said.

 Over 30,000 people have been rescued since Friday, with more being brought to safety by the hour. |||||

Write a summary.

– Louisiana was good to Taylor Swift and now the singer is giving back in the form of a $1 million donation to help victims of the devastating floods that have killed at least 11 people, reports the AP. The 26-year-old says the donation is a big thank you to her “wonderful fans” in Louisiana “who made us feel completely at home” when Swift kicked off her last world tour there. “The fact that so many people in Louisiana have been forced out of their own homes this week is heartbreaking," she says in a statement, urging "those who can to help out and send your love and prayers their way during this devastating time." The contribution isn’t Swift’s first. Last year the pop idol gave $50,000 each to a young fan battling cancer and an ailing nephew of one of her backup dancers, notes US Weekly. Among others: $50,000 to Philadelphia Children’s Hospital in 2014, and $100,000 to flood relief in Iowa in 2008. (For much more on the scope of the devastating flooding, click here.)