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– So much for peaceful transitions of power in Syria and Egypt, where regime forces brutally cracked down on protesters today. In Syria, the day after officials agreed "in principle" to let the Arab League oversee a peace process, troops invaded a region near the Turkish border and a town in search of government opponents. One civilian was reported killed. Troops also gunned down two army defectors near the Lebanese border, the AP reports. In Egypt, just 9 days before national elections, troops opened fire on thousands of demonstrators in Tahrir Square. Some 500 were wounded with rubber bullets, Reuters reports (see their compelling video here.) The fighting erupted when troops moved in to remove tents set up by protesters, after last night's 50,000-strong rally opposing military rule, the Guardian reports. "We are being hit with showers of US-made tear gas canisters, and I've watched with my own eyes at least five people being struck by rubber bullets," says one protester.

Egypt has been hit by another wave of major violence ahead of parliamentary elections after security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters demonstrating against the military junta.

 Two people were reported dead and more than 600 injured in central Cairo after riot police sent volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and "birdshot" pellet cartridges into the crowds. The clashes put further pressure on the ruling generals and cast doubt on the ability of police to secure the poll, scheduled to begin on 28 November.

 "All options are on the table, but right now – given the state Egypt is in – nobody can see how the military council can pull off these elections," said Mahmoud Salem, a prominent blogger who is running for parliament but who has now frozen his campaign. "I'm at the international eye hospital at the moment with my friend Malek Mustafa, who has been shot in the head by police with a pellet cartridge and looks likely to lose his eye. How can I continue?"

 Mustafa was one of dozens of demonstrators left with serious head wounds during the police assault on Tahrir Square. Trouble began after riot police moved to disperse tents set up after a large rally calling on Egypt's Supreme Council of Armed Forces (Scaf) to return the country to civilian rule.

 Protesters succeeded in driving the security forces from the square and captured one of their trucks. Crowds jumped up and down on the vehicle, chanting "The interior ministry are thugs" and calling for the downfall of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the country's de facto leader since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in February. It was later set ablaze.

 By mid-afternoon police had returned to Tahrir in far larger numbers and began firing from armoured vehicles. Pro-change activists sent out calls for solidarity and as darkness fell police and the protesters saw their ranks swell. As the night wore on and control of Tahrir shifted back and forth between the security forces and demonstrators, running battles spilled down side streets and along several of downtown Cairo's most important thoroughfares.

 The Observer saw heavy fighting along Talaat Harb street, a key shopping district and one of the main roads running into Tahrir Square. Street lighting was cut and amid the gloom hundreds of protesters tore up paving stones to throw at police lines, sporadically falling back as clouds of tear gas filled the air.

 "The scenes are reminiscent of the Friday of Anger," said journalist and pro-change activist Hossam el-Hamalawy, referring to 28 January, the day protesters beat Mubarak's security forces off the streets during the uprising against his regime. "We are being hit with showers of US-made tear gas canisters, and I've watched with my own eyes at least five people being struck by rubber bullets."

 A military police car which at one point approached the centre of the unrest was chased away by protesters, another sign of public support for the junta apparently waning. "Ordinary people are making a stronger link than ever between Scaf and the hated troops of the interior ministry," added el-Hamalawy. "The police and Scaf are revealing their true colours with this brutal attack on Egyptians. They have succeeded in only one thing today, and that is mobilising even more of Egyptian society against them."

 By late evening the number of demonstrators had grown to several thousand with the arrival of the ultras – hardcore fans of Cairo's main football teams, some of whom played a significant role in the anti-regime uprising earlier this year – and some Islamist political groups, forcing police units to fall back from Tahrir where protesters quickly built barricades and fires continued to burn.

 The retreat marked a significant blow to the security forces, which over the past few months have generally avoided attacking large protests, preferring to wait instead until numbers dwindle and the remaining activists can be isolated and labelled as hardcore troublemakers. On Saturday that tactic appeared to have backfired, with the police assault provoking a strong public response.

 "Considering the small numbers that we had this morning, it's amazing," said Hady Kamar, a 26 year old artist who was hit twice by rubber bullets, once in the foot and once in the head. "When things looked darkest and the police had pushed us out of Tahrir, we returned in huge numbers. To see this many on the street and feel this much energy, is special. Today it feels like the revolution is back up and running, but we'll see what tomorrow brings. It's always been a day by day struggle."

 Reprising many of the slogans used during mass protests against Mubarak, demonstrators vented their anger at Scaf and chanted 'Here is the revolution, nothing else'.

 Many expressed scepticism about the elections, saying they were designed to entrench military control over the country, but most insisted they still wanted the vote to go ahead. "The generals want to rule Egypt, but this is our revolution," said Ahmed Mohamed, a 24-year-old accountant. "Look around you – you don't see different political parties or rival candidates, you just see the Egyptian people. People have come down from their homes to join the fight; we are battling the remnants of Mubarak's regime who remain in power at the moment, and both this and the elections are all part of that same process."

 Solidarity rallies also erupted in the large cities of Alexandria and Suez. Egypt's interior ministry claimed its forces had acted with restraint, and blamed protesters for escalating tensions so close the parliamentary vote.

 On Friday a group of prominent intellectuals, including former UN nuclear weapons chief Mohamed ElBaradei, unveiled an alternative transition plan which would involve postponing the parliamentary ballot and wresting executive control of Egypt away from the armed forces whilst a new constitution is drawn up.

 The ruling generals have yet to respond to the proposal. ||||| 1 of 6. Egyptian riot police clash with protesters at Tahrir Square in Cairo November 19, 2011.

 CAIRO (Reuters) - At least one person was killed and more than 650 wounded in clashes between riot police and protesters in Cairo's Tahrir square on Saturday, official said, after a protest demanding the ruling military transfer power swiftly to a civilian government.

 Protests also erupted in other cities, including Alexandria and Suez, witnesses said.

 Egypt holds its first parliamentary election, from November 28, since president Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a popular uprising in February and parties and the ruling military are jostling for position.

 Police pulled down the tents of about 100 protesters who had camped in the square overnight after a demonstration on Friday of about 50,000 people, mostly Islamists, against the military leadership.

 That prompted around 5,000 protesters to return to the square and clashes erupted. Police fired rubber bullets and buildings and two cars in the square were set on fire, witnesses said. A third vehicle, close to the Arab League's headquarters, was also on fire.

 "The people want to topple the regime!" hundreds of youths chanted as they rushed toward a line of police.

 State news agency MENA cited the health ministry's spokesman as saying 676 people had been hurt and Ahmed Mahmoud, a 23-year-old demonstrator, died in hospital after being shot.

 Riot police, who used tear gas to clear the area in the early evening, later fired more tear gas at protesters who had regained control of the square, witnesses said. Police beat protesters with batons while protesters broke off chunks of cement from sidewalks to throw at the police.

 "We are fighting them non-stop," shouted one protester.

 Egyptian state television said Prime Minister Essam Sharaf called on protesters in Tahrir to clear the square.

 The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party said it "denounced the break-up of the Tahrir sit-in by force. (This is) reminiscent of the practices of the defunct regime's Interior Ministry."

 The April 6th Youth Movement said it opposed the use of force against peaceful protesters and demanded the interior minister quit.

 The demonstrators denounced Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of Egypt's ruling military council, while some criticised the Muslim Brotherhood, whom they accused of working to further their own political ends.

 "We are not political parties and we hate the Brotherhood who gave up on the revolution and the people," Medhat Fawzy said. "We are Egyptian youth," he added, flashing victory signs and chanting "down down Tantawi."

 In the northern port city of Alexandria demonstrators chanted against the military council: "This is their understanding of change, they beat our brothers in Tahrir!"

 In the eastern city of Suez, protesters tore down banners of members of Mubarak's disbanded National Democratic Party who are running in the election.

 "TROUBLEMAKERS"

 State television said 40 of the wounded were police officers and said "18 troublemakers" had been arrested.

 Friday's rally appeared to be the biggest Islamist challenge to military rule since the largely secular uprising that toppled Mubarak. The demonstration was mostly comprised of Brotherhood members and their harder-line Salafi rivals.

 Protesters expressed anger at a draft constitution that Deputy Prime Minister Ali al-Silmi showed to political groups earlier this month which would give the army exclusive authority over its internal affairs and budget.

 The election could be disrupted if parties and the government fail to resolve the row over the draft constitution that had denied parliamentary oversight of the army, potentially allowing it to defy an elected government.

 As clashes raged in Tahrir square, al-Silmi and the Brotherhood appeared to be negotiating, through press statements and the state news agency, on percentages of members of parliament (MPs) needed to approve the assembly that will write the constitution.

 MENA reported that al-Silmi had amended some clauses of the constitutional proposal, including one to say Egypt is a "democratic state" instead of "democratic civil state," a move likely to anger liberals who fear that a parliamentary majority could seek to turn Egypt into an Islamic state.

 Al-Silmi said the committee chosen to write the constitution would not be confined to the larger groups in parliament to ensure "a constitution that reflects national consensus and receives the consent of all segments of society."

 Political analyst Ezzedine Fishere said he did not expect the amendments to appease Islamist groups.

 "(Islamists) see that they will get a majority in parliament and hence want total freedom in choosing the constitutional committee and writing the constitution," he said.

 Analysts say Islamists could win 40 percent of parliament seats, with a big portion going to the Brotherhood.

 "What is happening now is a showdown between the two factions ... an on-the-ground confrontation with each party trying to enforce its will, the military council from one end and the Islamist currents from the other," Fishere said.

 MENA reported that al-Silmi had amended the constitutional proposal to say members of the constituent assembly writing the constitution would be chosen by a "majority" of elected MPs instead of his earlier announcement that they would be chosen by a "two-thirds majority."

 (Reporting by Shaimaa Fayed, Marwa Awad, Omar Fahmy, Patrick Werr, Tamim Elyan and Abdel Rahman Youssef; Editing by Janet Lawrence) |||||


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This "Survey" crawl was started on Feb. 24, 2018.

 This crawl was run with a Heritrix setting of "maxHops=0" (URLs including their embeds)

 Survey 7 is based on a seed list of 339,249,218 URLs which is all the URLs in the Wayback Machine that we saw a 200 response code from in 2017 based on a query we ran on Feb. 1st, 2018.

 The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| The world’s first all-Disney dating website launched this morning. Mousemingle.com is the brainchild of Dave Tavres, a self-proclaimed “software geek” from Culver City, and it caters to those obsessed with all things Disney. “Niche dating sites are more common these days,” Tavres said. “There’s a dating site for pot lovers and JDate for Jewish people. The first time I saw Farmers Only I thought it was a Saturday Night Live sketch.”

 Users are asked to check boxes asking about your favorite Disney songs, Disney shopping habits, and “Disney nerd level” in the hopes of finding a match. “All the normal sites,” according to Tavres, “don’t have Disney questions.” Anyone can view user profiles and photos, but contacting someone requires a $12.55 (the “55” is a nod to the year the park opened) monthly membership fee.

 Tavres used to live in Anaheim and was even an engineer on the Disneyland Railroad but still had trouble finding dates. “I’m not the guy who hits on women at the park,and there’s no flag that says, ‘hey I’m single,’” Tavres says. “I found it hard to find women who were as interested in Disney as I am.” Good luck to Tavres, I hope he finds a date. What is that old saying abut the bare necessities being the mother of invention? ||||| Obscure Disney knowledge might soon pay off romantically, thanks to a highly specific new dating site that wants to take you from this:

 ...to this:

 It's called Mouse Mingle, and it's a website where people can connect with one another over a shared love of all things Disney. Creator Dave Tavres tells Mashable that his website's been in the works since a 2011 trip to Disneyland with a few friends.

 "As usual with my friends, they asked about my dating status and why I wasn't trying the online dating sites," he wrote in an email. "I told them I had tried them, but there was no way to narrow down the searches to find women in the right distance and age range who loved Disney. That was the inception moment." After some brainstorming, he registered the domain name that night.

 See also: 8 ways introverts can crush online dating

 The website features all the traditional elements of a dating site, with customizable profiles, photos and ratings. For $12.55 a month, users can private message and partake in online chats with other users. Where the website differs from other sites is in its questions, which ask users to share their favorite Disney songs, characters, parks and memories.

 "My hope is that people literally around the world will find the site useful," Tavres said. "Just as there are big Disney fans near Disneyland and Disney World, that same single fan-base also lives near Tokyo Disney, Disneyland Paris and other Disney parks. However, there are countless single Disney fans that live in the spaces between Disney parks. Those people often have a greater passion for Disney, as they don't get to visit as often."

 Mouse Mingle joins the ever-growing list of niche dating sites like Whovian Love (for Doctor Who fans) and Date Vampires (for...vampires?).

 Go forth, Disney fans, and brush up on those Little Mermaid factoids. You'll need them on the first date.

 [H/T: Los Angeles Magazine] |||||

– Looking for your Prince Charming or Cinderella? Set your sights on the new dating website exclusively for Disney fans: MouseMingle.com. Creator Dave Tavres—a former engineer on the Disneyland Railroad—says "the inception moment" for the site came back in 2011 when he was telling friends how hard it was to find women who loved Disney as much as he did, per Mashable. He adds the project isn't all that unusual when you consider there are already dating sites that cater to marijuana users and even Doctor Who fans. In this case, users rate their favorite Disney songs, characters, parks, and movies, as well as their "Disney nerd level." Anyone can create a profile, but you'll need to pay a $12.55 monthly membership fee to contact other Disney buffs, reports Los Angeles magazine. (The 55 in the price is a wink at the year the first Disney park opened.) "Traditional [Internet] dating sites don't understand the passion people have for all things Disney. But we do," the site says. Many user photos already up on the site show people dressed as their favorite prince or princess.


Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| The annual Shark Week television marathon puts many marine biologists and shark enthusiasts on edge. We love that it draws attention to sharks and that it sometimes includes some real science and conservation. We hate the way it's done: maximum menace and blood, a two-note soundtrack and, occasionally, a gross indifference to facts.

 The Discovery Channel, which bills itself as the "#1 nonfiction media company" opened this year's Shark Week with a fictional "documentary". Confused? Apparently, the producers were, too. They opened the documentary these words:

 None of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents. Though certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized, sightings of "'Submarine' continue to this day. Megalodon was a real shark. Legends of giant sharks persist all over the world. There is still a debate about what they may be.

 If that reads like drivel, it's because it is (though I suspect it's true that no one with any sense approved of this film). It's also true that megalodon existed, but the film's title, Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, doesn't exactly point out that the animal has been extinct for two million years.

 This was merely the latest example in Discovery's long trend of sensationalizing sharks and dumbing down science. Wil Wheaton put it well:

 Remember when #SharkWeek was about science and biology and learning? — Wil Wheaton (@wilw) August 5, 2013

 Christie Wilcox, who has long made this point, cut Discovery down to size for "peddling lies and faking stories for ratings". SyFy at least peddles nonsense honestly with its recent hit Sharknado.

 Discovery's own bipolar programming illustrates why many feel ambivalent about Shark Week. A third of their primetime specials have Jaws in the title, an association that hasn't served sharks well. Others include the words "alien", "voodoo" and "serial killer", or feature awkward portmanteaus in the Sharknado style, such as "Sharkpocalypse". Marketing is one thing, but these tactics approach the ahistorical conspiracy mongering of shows like Ancient Aliens.

 For every conversation with an expert, there is an interview with Tara Reid or a shrimp fisherman named Blimp. For every program that actually explores how sharks live, socialize, and evolved, there's Top Five Eaten Alive and Shark Rebellion. Many of these programs pay lip service to conservation efforts, but we've yet to see anything like the 2009 documentary The Cove's brutal exposé of dolphin fishing. Sharks do need help, and Discovery should use its clout to help them by telling the real stories.

 Shark attacks on people are extremely rare, yet they get plenty of screen time. Survivors' stories can be inspirational, but Discovery often plays them for fear, airing "dramatic reenactments" and using the same camera tricks that made Steven Spielberg's monster movie famous. This mimicry of horror tropes doesn't tell us anything about sharks except – wrongly – to fear them.

 What happened? Shark Week has been an institution for over 20 years, and it's undoubtedly helped raise awareness, dispel myths, and make people interested in sharks. Perhaps success went to the executives' heads; one insists about megalodon: "The stories have been out there for years and with 95% of the ocean unexplored, who really knows?"" This is the talk of a very cynical man or a true believer in the lost tribe of the yeti.

 But this isn't Yeti Week, it's Shark Week, and Discovery needs to remember that. Shark Week needs more sharks. I don't mean more footage of great whites breaching, which, although spectacular, can only be repeated so many times. Sharks are too diverse and strange to limit to top 10 lists and slow motion HD. Show us the rest of cast.

 How about threshers tail-whipping sardines? Or angels lunging out of the mud, wobbegongs hiding in caves, and cookiecutters glowing.

 Porbeagles merit some air time, too. Warm-blooded and hyperactive, like their bigger, more famous relative the great white, the young sharks roll in kelp and chase each other around. If these were sea lions or dolphins, there'd be no question that the animals were at play.

 And great whites, who've gotten all the press, haven't had their full story told, either. They sometimes move in "clans", have splash fights, and seem to have complex social lives, despite their solitary hunting habits. They fear killer whales; after an orca dispatched a great white, the entire region's population of sharks vanished, including a tracked shark who dove 500m and then swam to Hawaii to escape.

 Discovery made its name as a champion for science, but it's been abandoning that mission for years. Shark Week was once a paean to marine biology. It's been reduced to a monster movie disguised as documentary. Wheaton has called for an apology, saying that the channel "betrayed its audience". He's right, and if Discovery wants Shark Week to remain beloved, it needs to right its ship.

 If it doesn't, Shark Week may not survive – at least not in any recognizable form. Sensation may sell in the short term, but it's going to keep irking viewers until only a few remain. Worse, it misrepresents sharks as mindless killers, rather than the important, diverse animals they are. Discovery owes its annual success and fans' loyalty to them. It would be doing right by the fish, the viewers, and us to get back to them. |||||

Write a summary.

– The Discovery Channel's Shark Week is under way again, but it can't end soon enough for Alan Yuhas at the Guardian. Discovery now prefers schlock to science, as evidenced by the fictional documentary Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives that kicked off this year's festivities. When it began 20-plus years ago, Shark Week actually served a useful purpose in educating people about sharks and marine biology. Now, it's a joke. "Discovery made its name as a champion for science, but it's been abandoning that mission for years," complains Yuhas. The network is reinforcing the myth that sharks are mindless man-eaters instead of "the important, diverse animals they are." Can't we talk about real sharks? After all, Discovery owes its success to them. "It would be doing right by the fish" and the viewers to do so. Click for his full column. Need a dissenting view? Let's not forget that Discovery is a "for-profit business," writes Marc E. Babej at Forbes, who notes that Megalodon was a huge ratings success. "Anyone who relies on Discovery’s Shark Week for their education about sharks isn’t too serious about scholarship to begin with," he adds. Critics should lighten up and enjoy. Click for his full column.


Article:
Iraq's military was trained and equipped by the U.S. and coalition forces. When attacked by insurgents in several cities this week, Iraqi soldiers surrendered without a fight. What went wrong? What is the U.S. prepared to do? WSJ's Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.

 The U.S. since last year has been secretly flying unmanned surveillance aircraft in small numbers over Iraq to collect intelligence on insurgents, according to U.S. officials.

 The program was limited in size and proved little use to U.S. and Iraqi officials when Islamist fighters moved swiftly this week to seize two major Iraqi cities, the officials said.

 Before... ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Paul Wood met refugees who have fled to the Kurdish countryside

 US President Barack Obama says his government is looking at "all options", including military action, to help Iraq fight Islamist militants.

 But the White House also insisted it had no intention of sending ground troops.

 The remarks came after the cities of Mosul and Tikrit fell to Sunni Islamist insurgents during a lightning advance.

 The US has begun moving defence contractors working with the Iraqi military to safer areas.

 "We can confirm that US citizens, under contract to the government of Iraq, in support of the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme in Iraq, are being temporarily relocated by their companies due to security concerns in the area," state department spokesperson Jen Psaki said.

 Several hundred were being evacuated from Balad air base to Baghdad, a US defence official told AFP.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Obama: "The US will do our part, but... it us up to the Iraqis as a sovereign nation to solve their problems."

 Led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the insurgents are believed to be planning to push further south to the capital, Baghdad, and regions dominated by Iraq's Shia Muslim majority, whom they regard as "infidels".

 Unconfirmed reports on Thursday said Iraqi forces had launched air strikes on Mosul and Tikrit targeting the militants.

 Correspondents say that if ISIS can hold Mosul and consolidate its presence there, it will have taken a giant step towards its goal of creating an Islamist emirate that straddles Iraq and Syria, where insurgents control a large swathe of territory.

 Fears of ISIS sparking a wider Sunni uprising have increased with reports that former Baath Party members loyal to Saddam Hussein have joined forces with the jihadists.

 One resident in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's former hometown, told the AP news agency that fighters raised posters of the former dictator after driving the army out.

 The United Nations Security Council said on Thursday it unanimously supported Iraq's government and people in their "fight against terrorism".

 Earlier it said the humanitarian situation around Mosul, from where up to 500,000 people have fled, was "dire and... worsening by the moment".

 Analysis: Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor

 If ISIS can hold Mosul and consolidate its presence there it will have taken a giant step towards its goal of creating an Islamist emirate that straddles Iraq and Syria.

 It would be the most significant act by a jihadist group since al-Qaeda attacked the US on 11 September 2001. It could also lead to other changes on the borders Britain and France imposed on the Middle East a century ago, starting with break-up of Iraq on sectarian lines.

 The success of ISIS can only make the turmoil in the Middle East worse. ISIS is an ultra extremist Sunni Muslim group. Its success will deepen the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias that is already the most dangerous fault line in the Middle East.

 Iran, which is a majority Shia Muslim country, shares a border with Iraq. It has a direct line to Iraq's Shia Muslim Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, and close links with some Iraqi Shia militias. The Iranians could direct their proxies, and even their own special forces units, at ISIS.

 That might end up further inflaming the anger of Iraqi Sunnis, who have already helped the advance of ISIS through Iraq.

 US air strikes, if they happen, might do the same thing. Once again in the Middle East, the Americans have limited options. Its invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 helped create and strengthen jihadist groups.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Iraq's former PM Ayad Allawi says the country could be facing a break-up as a result of the insurgency led by Islamist militants

 Insurgent advance

 "There will be some short-term immediate things that need to be done militarily," Mr Obama told reporters at the White House as he met Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

 "I don't rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in Iraq, or Syria for that matter."

 White House spokesman Jay Carney subsequently added that President Obama was referring to not ruling out air strikes. "We are not contemplating ground troops," he said.

 Iraq's ambassador to the US, Lukman Faily, earlier told the BBC this was the "most serious situation" faced by the country in recent years.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Iraq state TV airs footage said to be airstrikes on the ISIS-held city of Mosul

 Image copyright AP Image caption Iraqis gathered at the army's recruitment centre in Baghdad, after officials urged them to fight the militants

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Footage allegedly showing captured vehicles of Iraqi security forces with the ISIS flag in Mosul

 A parliamentary vote to grant PM Maliki emergency powers was delayed earlier after MPs failed to turn up.

 Just 128 out of the 325 MPs were present for the vote.

 Correspondents say the failure of the Iraqi parliament to achieve a quorum to vote on emergency powers says much about the fragmented state of Iraqi politics.

 In the north of the country, Kurdish forces have claimed control of the oil city of Kirkuk, saying government forces have fled.

 The Kurds - seen as a bulwark against the Sunni Muslim insurgents - have also been locked for years in a dispute with Baghdad over Kirkuk, seeking to incorporate it into their own autonomous area.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Rami Ruhayem reports from Irbil in Kurdish-run northern Iraq, as an audio recording of ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani is released

 They are clearly happy to fill the vacuum left in Kirkuk, an area they historically claim as theirs, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Kurdish-run Irbil.

 Iraqi government forces slowed the insurgents' advance on Wednesday outside Samarra, a city just 110km (68 miles) north of Baghdad.

 But reports have emerged of the rebels bypassing Samarra and seizing the town of Dhuluiya, 90km north-west of the capital.

 Security in Baghdad has been stepped up after a video emerged of the militants threatening to march on the city.

 ISIS in Iraq

 Image copyright AP Image caption An Islamist fighter near a burning Iraqi army Humvee in Tikrit

 The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has 3,000 to 5,000 fighters, and grew out of an al-Qaeda-linked organisation in Iraq

 ISIS has exploited the standoff between the Iraqi government and the minority Sunni Arab community, which complains that Shia Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is monopolising power

 It has already taken over Ramadi and Falluja, but taking over Mosul is its greatest achievement

 The organisation is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an obscure figure regarded as a battlefield commander and tactician who was once the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the groups that later became ISIS.

 Critical test ahead for Iraq

 Six things that went wrong for Iraq

 How did Iraqi militants take over Mosul?

 In pictures: Iraq cities attacked |||||Summary:

– The US rebuffed Iraq's request for airstrikes as insurgents gained strength, but American drones were already collecting intelligence on the militants. The secret drone program, carried out with the consent of the Iraqi government since last year, failed to predict the rapid advance of militants who have now seized several cities, officials tell the Wall Street Journal. "It's not like it did any good," one US official says. President Obama says "all the options" are being considered to help Iraq and while the use of ground troops has been ruled out, officials are considering expanding the drone program. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants have vowed to take the fight to Baghdad, and although the capital is not expected to fall, Americans in Iraq are keeping an eye on the exit. Officials say they have stepped up plans for the evacuation of the US Embassy in Baghdad, and the BBC reports that American defense contractors working with the Iraqi military are being shifted to safer areas. Hundreds of contractors "are being temporarily relocated by their companies due to security concerns in the area," according to a State Department spokeswoman.


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A Pinellas County man is accused of decapitating his mother on New Year’s Eve with an ax.

 Christian Jose Gomez, 23, admitted to killing his mother, Maria Suarez-Cassagne, 48, after deputies arrested him Wednesday, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.

 The murder occurred about 7:30 p.m. at the Oldsmar home the mother shared with her two sons.

 Deputies said they received a call from Mario Gomez, Cassagne’s other son, saying that his brother had killed their mother.

 "It's just really sad because she's wonderful,” said neighbor Carrie Rivera. “She's really, really nice."

 Investigators said Christian Gomez attacked his mother with the ax in the garage, then put her head in a trash can in a small side yard.

 He then tried to do the same with her body, but wasn’t able to, deputies said. He left, leaving his older brother, who’d been in a bedroom at the time of the murder, to find the gruesome scene.

 "You could definitely see that he was traumatized, and he was just bending down and crying and talking to the police," Rivera said.

 When deputies arrived, Christian Gomez had already fled the home. Deputies set up a perimeter, and Gomez was spotted riding his bike several blocks away. A short foot pursuit began, ending with his arrest.

 Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Gomez admitted to killing his mother and said he was upset that she had asked him to put some boxes away.

 Gomez had a history of mental illness and had been planning to kill her for two days, the sheriff said.

 "In a very calm, cool way he explained what he did, why he did it, what happened, and by talking to him you wouldn't know he had any mental illness, he had any trouble at all. And you know that's very scary," Gualtieri said.

 Gomez is charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond in the Pinellas County Jail. ||||| Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office Christian Gomez, 23, used an ax to cut off his mother's head on New Year's Eve, authorities said.

 A Florida man is accused of decapitating his mother with an ax on New Year's Eve because she asked him to put some boxes away, authorities said.

 Christian Gomez, 23, flashed a toothy grin while being booked for first-degree murder Wednesday after his brother called 911 to report the gruesome scene at the house near Tampa around 7:20 p.m., authorities said.

 There, outside the family's Oldsmar home, Pinellas County deputies found the body of 48-year-old Maria Suarez-Cassagne near some garbage cans. The murder weapon was also recovered, they said.

 Gomez had already fled the scene but was found a few blocks away when a 911 call came in about a "suspicious person riding a bicycle in the area," said the sheriff's office.

 After a brief foot chase he was arrested and allegedly admitted to the crime during an interview with detectives, revealing that he had plotted out his mother's death for two days, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told WFTS.

 Facebook Maria Suarez-Cassagne's headless body was found near garbage cans outside her family's Oldsmar, Fla., home Wednesday evening.

 Gualtieri also said Gomez has a history of mental illness.

 Jailhouse records show he was arrested in 2009 for resisting an officer without violence and disorderly conduct. He was arrested again in March for loitering and prowling.

 Gomez's brother, who met officers outside the home, was found unharmed.

 ngolgowski@nydailynews.com ||||| Story highlights Florida man calls 911 to report his brother just decapitated their mother

 Police found Maria Suarez Cassagne's decapitated body alongside garbage cans

 Sheriff's Office said son was angry over mother's "nagging"

 (CNN) When the cops showed up to a subdivision Wednesday night in Oldsmar, Florida, it wasn't to break up a loud party or for any sort of bacchanalian revelry typical of New Year's Eve.

 No, Mario Gomez called 911 to report something far more sinister and ghastly: His brother had just cut off their mother's head with an ax.

 Christian Gomez

 Responding deputies found the decapitated body of 48-year-old Maria Suarez Cassagne alongside garbage cans outside of the Tampa-area home, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. Her head was inside one of them.

 Gomez told the authorities that his younger brother, Christian Gomez, had fled the scene, but he didn't make it too far. The Sheriff's Office said it found the 23-year-old some 30 minutes later on a bicycle about a mile from his home and took him into custody.

 What could possibly lead a son to be accused of cutting off his own mother's head and then disposing of her body as if trash?

 Read More |||||

– A 23-year-old man beheaded his mother with an axe on New Year's Eve and explained to investigators that he was fed up with her nagging him to put some boxes away, authorities in Oldsmar, Fla., say. Cops were called to the Tampa-area home after the older brother of Christian Gomez discovered his mother's decapitated body near garbage cans outside, CNN reports. The younger Gomez had already fled the scene but he was captured a few blocks away after police received a call about a suspicious person riding a bicycle. The local sheriff says Gomez, who has a history of mental illness, confessed to the killing and said he had planned it for two days. "In a very calm, cool way he explained what he did, why he did it, what happened, and by talking to him you wouldn't know he had any mental illness, he had any trouble at all. And you know that's very scary," the sheriff tells WFTS. Gomez, who has been charged with first-degree murder, was arrested in 2009 for resisting an officer without violence and disorderly conduct and in March 2014 for loitering and prowling, reports the New York Daily News.


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After President Trump and Republicans in Congress spent much of the year trying to repeal the health law and cut spending on Medicaid, a half-century-old entitlement program that covers one in five Americans, the pro-expansion side in Maine is hoping to benefit from energized public support for it.

 Turnout may be the biggest challenge for the advocacy groups leading the effort. There are no national or statewide races here to drive people to the polls this year. And Mr. LePage’s stance on government safety net programs appeals to many voters in the state’s more rural regions. He derides Medicaid expansion as “pure welfare” that would burden the state’s taxpayers.

 Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the few Republicans who firmly opposed the Obamacare repeal bills, is not taking a position on the ballot measure — she never does on referendums, according to her staff. But leaders of the campaign are hoping her outspoken support for Medicaid during the repeal battles will help.

 About 80,000 additional Mainers would become eligible for the program if the ballot measure were to succeed, according to the nonpartisan Maine Office of Program and Fiscal Review, although those with income above the poverty line currently qualify for subsidized coverage through the Obamacare marketplace. In all, more than 2.5 million poor uninsured adults across the country would gain access to Medicaid if the holdout states expanded the program, joining about 11 million who have already signed up under the law. ||||| Gov. Paul LePage attacked Maine’s hospitals on Friday for supporting the Medicaid expansion referendum on the Nov. 7 ballot, which if approved would provide free health care to about 70,000 low-income Mainers.

 LePage aimed criticism in particular at Maine Med president and CEO Richard Petersen, who expressed support for the ballot question in a hospital newsletter.

 “It’s obvious the CEO of Maine Med and other hospitals do not care about taking resources away from our most vulnerable Mainers – including our elderly and intellectually and physically disabled people – just so they can give free, taxpayer-funded healthcare to adults who should be working and contributing to the cost of their own health insurance,” LePage said.

 Maine Medical Center responded in a statement provided to the Portland Press Herald by hospital spokeswoman Caroline Cornish.

 “While we do not share his point of view, we understand that the governor has had a consistent position regarding Medicaid expansion, as has our organization. We hope Maine people will take the time to learn about this important issue and vote on Nov. 7,” the statement said.

 Medicaid expansion would result in a number of benefits to Maine, supporters say, such as making the population healthier and more likely to access preventive care, creating 4,000 jobs in the health care industry, and driving down the uninsured rate. Maine’s uninsured rate was 9.1 percent in 2016, according to Gallup polling.

 LePage has vetoed five attempts by the Legislature to approve Medicaid expansion, but would not be able to do so if voters approve the referendum on Nov. 7, a consideration that spurred the effort by an advocacy group to put the measure on the ballot.

 LePage remains a steadfast expansion opponent, and he argued that hospitals would benefit financially “on the backs” of Maine taxpayers. About 265,000 Mainers currently have Medicaid.

 “Since hospitals are nonprofit organizations, they don’t have to pay taxes on much of their vast real estate holdings. Mainers do not have that luxury – in addition to paying their own high premiums and deductibles, they will have to pay to give ‘free’ healthcare to adults who should be working,” LePage said in a statement. “As I always say, ‘free’ is very expensive to somebody. If hospital CEOs have their way, that somebody would be Maine taxpayers.”

 LePage’s relationship with Maine hospitals has soured considerably since 2013, when he fought a successful battle with the Legislature to pay off $105 million in unpaid MaineCare reimbursements to hospitals. The money came from a bond financed with state revenues from a new wholesale liquor contract. LePage characterized the payoff as an investment in jobs because of the capital it would provide to hospitals, and he was so adamant about making the reimbursement that he threatened to veto every bill that landed on his desk until lawmakers agreed.

 In his statement blasting hospitals on Friday, LePage repeated his frequent contention that Medicaid expansion would cost Maine taxpayers $500 million over five years, or $100 million per year.

 But that’s incorrect, according to the Legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal and Program Review.

 State taxpayers would be on the hook for $54 million per year, but Maine would receive $525 million per year from the federal government for Medicaid expansion, the office said.

 The federal government is paying 90 percent or more of the cost of covering the expansion population. Maine is one of 19 states – and the only one in New England – that hasn’t approved Medicaid expansion. Instead, the state has reduced Medicaid eligibility since LePage took office in 2011, cutting off Medicaid for childless adults and tightening eligibility for parents.

 Ann Woloson, public policy director for Maine Equal Justice Partners, the group behind Medicaid expansion, said many rural hospitals are struggling financially in part because of the free health care they must provide to the uninsured. Medicaid expansion would put these hospitals on more solid financial footing, Woloson said.

 “These hospitals are in danger of closing their doors, and Medicaid expansion would not only help with that, but also help these hospitals with workforce shortages to attract doctors and nurses to work there,” she said.

 Jeff Austin, vice president of government affairs and communication for the Maine Hospital Association, said that hospitals have “supported expansion for four years and continue to do so.”

 “Hospitals see tens of thousands of patients every year who don’t have insurance and need care,” Austin said. “The question is about what is the smartest way to take care of that population and we believe the answer is Medicaid expansion.”

 Austin declined to get into a point-by-point refutation of LePage’s statements against the hospitals.

 LePage framed expansion as a move that would take money away from others, saying “hospitals are only concerned with their pocketbooks, and they don’t care about the hardships it will cause for taxpayers, the elderly and the disabled.”

 Medicaid expansion would not take away care for the elderly and disabled, expansion advocates say. States have some leeway on how to spend Medicaid money, they said, and expanding Medicaid would not hamper programs for the elderly or intellectually disabled.

 Joe Lawlor can be contacted at 791-6376 or at:

 [email protected]

 Twitter: @joelawlorph

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– On Nov. 7, Maine will take an unprecedented step for a state when it allows residents to vote on expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the New York Times reports. Maine is one of 19 states where Republicans have blocked Medicaid expansion available under the ACA. The Maine legislature has voted repeatedly to expand Medicaid only to have Gov. Paul LePage veto expansion five times. However, if expansion is approved by voters through a referendum next month, LePage would be unable to veto it. If the referendum passes, approximately 80,000 more Maine residents making up to 138% of the poverty level will be eligible for Medicaid. In addition to decreasing the number of uninsured Maine residents, supporters of the referendum say it will add jobs and help rural hospitals stay open. LePage, while attacking Maine hospitals for their support of the referendum on Friday, said it would take "resources away from our most vulnerable Mainers" to "give free taxpayer-funded healthcare to adults who should be working and contributing," the Press Herald reports. Under the ACA, at least 90% of Medicaid expansion costs would be covered by the federal government. The other 18 states where Medicaid expansion has been blocked are carefully watching what happens in Maine. It's estimated more than 2.5 million Americans would gain access to health care if all 19 holdout states allowed Medicaid expansion.


News article:

"Come a Little Closer" by Cage the Elephant, from Melophobia, courtesy of RCA Records. Buy It Now

 Published in the November 2013 issue

 THE FIRST HOUR:

 THOUGHTS ON PENMANSHIP, BLOODLESS CAREERISM, AND SLEEPING

 Four-fifty on a Thursday afternoon, deep in a shadowy bar at a hotel called the Nomad, downtown Manhattan, and Scarlett Johansson actually wants to write. I give her a little hotel pad, maybe four-by-six, which she grabs in her small, ringless fingers. She takes my pen eagerly.

 "What do you want me to write?" she says. She will write what I tell her, she says.

 I don't know. "Don't you have a little passage memorized?" I ask. "A little Shakespeare, maybe? 'Oh, for a muse of fire,' something like that?"

 She clicks her tongue. "I think it should be neutral," she says, shaking her head. "Shouldn't involve any acting. I'm afraid I'll emphasize the Oh or something." As she thinks, she purses her lips, looks down, casting a little furtive charm. This one. She came in here  and this place is hung with velvet curtains and underlit by 40-watt bulbs; it's seriously dark  with her sunglasses on, walked six feet in front of me, at her publicist's side, in her gray cotton tracksuit, half pointing at tables that might work for her. All movie star up in here. And I didn't look at her ass. I don't know that she wanted me to. Probably not. Surely not. In any case, I didn't.

 She bites the inside of her cheek when she thinks. There is an extremely large platter of cut vegetables on the table. "Crudités." I say it out loud, a word no one used ten years ago.

 "My God," she says when it arrives. "So many vegetables."

 Her voice is a raspy frequency in the air. Legitimately as pertinent and defining a component of her physical makeup as her lips, her cheekbones, her legs. When you're with her, you feel that voice. This bar is loud with cocktail hour, but the matter of her voice, the fact of it, hangs in the air even so  always a little sandy, somehow broken down, as if she'd been singing all day. Whether she breathes right or projects well I do not know, but her voice cuts the murmuring clatter of forks against small plates, ice spun in highballs. You can hear it no matter what.

 "I wish I could write a parable," she says. "Or maybe just an adage. I could write that one where I never know what the hell it means. Well, I guess if I thought about it  I mean, I have thought about it, of course, and figured it out. But it eludes me the first time I hear it. Every time. It's not logical. At first, I mean."

 "Like 'A stitch in time saves nine?' I never get that one."

 "Exactly," she says. "But it's about birds. 'A bird in the bush.' Or "

 "Oh, yeah."

 Scarlett Johansson

 So these are the words she writes: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Twice. Once in cursive. Once printed. Then she slides the pad to me and says, "Now you do it." And so I take the pen. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, after all.

 "Come on," she says.

 "Okay," I say. "But you're making me nervous."

 I write it once. "Now print it," she says. And, of course, I screw that up. So my printed line reads A BIRD IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BIRD.

 Scarlett Johansson clucks into the air. "That's gotta be bad for the bird," she says. Me, I want to start it all over again. "No, no, it's fine," she reassures me. "Just give it to them that way." She bites a thin hook of sweet orange pepper. "See what the words tell you."

 We're creating a handwriting sample. Scarlett offers hers for me to take to a graphologist for an analysis of character. You could say she was eager, a movie star all the way, uncowered and free. When she's like this, willing  wanting even  to give in to harebrained plots, you really feel like you're talking to a bombshell, because bombshells are fun. To her, it sounds like fun to have a stranger deconstruct her penmanship in the sidebar of a magazine article. It's part of a search for truth, after all. Not exactly bungee jumping, but Scarlett is brave like that. She's not one of those who pine for the privacy lost to celebrity, nor does she tell teary stories of some paparazzo who stalked her in the doorway of a cupcake shop. Scarlett just plain operates in the world, which can make her seem a little chilly at first, even sour.

 She's only twenty-eight. She's been at it long enough to have done most of it before. Critical success, commercial success, action movie, its sequel and re-sequel. Lost in Translation to Vicky Cristina Barcelona to the various iterations of the Avengers. She's now been the Sexiest Woman Alive twice  well earned, too. But what do they say about impressions?

 The first of her: She seems not to care, to be bored, aloof. But that's as if drawn only from looking at pictures and not reading the text. Truth is, Scarlett is a politically astute, card-playing, magic-loving smart-ass, fairly generous in her time and attentions, a woman who will share her sandwich, a woman who likes horsing around in a bar on a muggy afternoon, a platter of hand-cut vegetables at the ready.

 This year, Scarlett says, has been the busiest of her life. One movie released, two more coming out in the next five months, and two more in production. She finished a full run of a Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in March. In the movie she has out right now, Don Jon, she plays the hot, manipulative girlfriend of a porn addict. She makes a hootchie girl elegant, offering ascendant beauty in every scene. Hers is an unstressed beauty, which may be why her look is so mutable, more slender than buxom and fleshy. Her next movie is Under the Skin, a horror film in which she plays a flesh-tearing supernatural wandering across Scotland.

 In this bar today, she does not look like that horny Catholic in Don Jon for a dozen reasons you already know: She's wiped out from the photo shoot, wearing no makeup, different shoes, different bra, and so on.

 "I'm exhausted and this is my last day in the world," she says, sunglasses off now. "This is the last day, and this is the last piece of work. Then I'm taking a month-long vacation. But I'm not going anywhere, which just makes it more of a staycation. There's luxury in being near home. When you spend a lot of time, like I do, just standing around and waiting, or being moved from place to place, every minute gets consumed by something someone else has set up for you. And it's not like I'm always in a beautiful place wearing something gorgeous. I've stood around bogs wearing half a million dollars' worth of jewelry, up to my knees in the rot, thinking how much more or less the place smelled like a sewer than it did the day before. And that is not what you'd call a problem exactly; it just wears you out. What I want to do right now is sleep late, read the paper. I've come to see that there's something pretty great about having two hours to read."

 Why accept the title Sexiest Woman Alive if everything is so busy just now?

 Here, she shrugs. "I'm the only woman to win it twice, right?" she says.

 She is correct.

 "You know, I gotta hustle. I'm a twenty-eight-year-old woman in the movie business, right?" she says. "Pretty soon the roles you're offered all become mothers. Then they just sort of stop. I have to hedge against that with worktheater, producing, this thing with Esquire."

 Then, as if she hears herself, she looks straight at me and says: "Sounds pretty bloodless, I guess."

 She'll spend her vacation on the beach in the Hamptons, in a house she rents with friends. "It's a contemporary house, with a modern Swedish slant." For whatever reasonmy own prejudices, a tone I mistakenly pick up on in her voice, beach houses I have knownI assume she's saying, the way people do when they rent, that the furniture sucks but it's fine because the water's right outside.

 And here I say, too casually, "Swedish? Like what, like Ikea and that shit?"

 She smiles wryly and speaks softly, unruffled and clear. "No," she says. "Not like Ikea."

 KEEP READING, FOR MORE FROM SCARLETT (AND MORE PHOTOS, TOO) >> ||||| (Click Prev or Next to continue viewing images.)

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 FILE - In this Feb. 28, 2014 file photo, U.S. actress Scarlett Johansson, left, and her partner Romain Dauriac arrive at the 39th French Cesar Awards Ceremony, in Paris. Johansson is a first-time mom.... (Associated Press)

 In this Feb. 28, 2014 file photo, U.S. actress Scarlett Johansson, left, and her partner Romain Dauriac arrive at the 39th French Cesar Awards Ceremony, in Paris. Johansson is a first-time mom. A spokesman... (Associated Press)

 A spokesman for the 29-year-old actress told The Associated Press Thursday that Johansson and her fiance, Romain Dauriac, have welcomed a baby girl, whom they've named Rose.

 Marcel Pariseau says mother and daughter are doing well.

 He added that the couple is seeking privacy and are supporters of the No Kids Policy, the celebrity effort to keep famous folks' children out of the public eye.

 Johansson and Dauriac, a French former journalist, have been engaged since September, 2013. She was previously married to Ryan Reynolds.

 Johansson's recent credits include the films "Lucy," ''Chef," and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Kevin Mazur/Getty

 Alyssa Milano has a new little boss in her life: her baby girl!

 The Mistresses star welcomed her second child with husband David Bugliari on Thursday, Sept. 4, her rep confirms to PEOPLE.

 Daughter Elizabella Dylan Bugliari arrived weighing 7 lbs., 7 oz. and measured 19½ inches long.

 “Mommy and baby are doing wonderfully,” her rep says in a statement.

 Milano, 41, announced in March that she and Bugliari were giving their son, 3-year-old Milo Thomas, a sibling — a milestone the former Who’s the Boss star had been looking forward to.

 Two weeks later, the mom-to-be debuted her baby belly and, in May, revealed the couple were thinking pink. But finding out the sex wasn’t much of a surprise for Milano, who told Fit Pregnancy that she always knew she was expecting a daughter.

 “With Milo, I didn’t have a minute of morning sickness. So I knew it was going to be a girl,” she explained.

 As for bouncing back after giving birth, Milano is putting regaining her pre-baby body on the back burner and is determined to spend the time enjoying motherhood.

 “A female body is not made to look good in a bikini. It’s made to give birth and have a baby and be a cozy companion for it afterward,” she has said.

 My daughter! My daughter! My daughter! Elizabella has made my heart swell and ache with love. Thank you for your sweet messages❣ — Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) September 5, 2014

 — Anya Leon with reporting by Jennifer Garcia

 Want more stories like this? Sign up for our newsletter and other special offers: sign me up Thank you for signing up!

 Morning Sickness Helped Alyssa Milano Guess She Was Having A Girl |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Esquire's "sexiest woman alive" has given birth to her first child. Scarlett Johansson welcomed baby Rose with fiance Romain Dauriac, reports the AP. The 29-year-old Lucy star, who was previously wed to actor Ryan Reynolds, has been keeping under the radar of late and hopes for the same for her little one: Her spokesman says she and Dauriac are fans of No Kids Policy, a celeb-driven initiative to keep their children away from paparazzi. ScarJo's not the only one making maternity news: Alyssa Milano welcomed her second child, Elizabella Dylan Bugliari, yesterday, reports People. The Mistresses star, 41, and her husband, David Bugliari, also have a 3-year-old boy, Milo. Joan Lunden of Good Morning America fame has her own baby news: She's a first-time grandma. Daughter Lindsey Krauss Weinberg gave birth Aug. 30 to her own girl, Parker Leigh, reports People. Carrie Underwood offered up a Labor Day surprise: On Monday, the singer tweeted that her two dogs, Ace and Penny, had an announcement to make and showed a pic of them wearing sweaters that said "I'm going to be a big brother" and "I'm going to be a big sister," respectively. She added, "Their parents couldn't be happier!" It will be the first child for Underwood and husband Mike Fisher.


Summarize this article:

Published on Jul 29, 2018

 A comedy from Sacha Baron Cohen.

 All Episodes Available Now, only on SHOWTIME.

 #WhoIsAmerica

 Learn More About WHO IS AMERICA? https://s.sho.com/2JuGkPH

 Subscribe to the SHOWTIME YouTube channel: http://goo.gl/esCMib

 Get more WHO IS AMERICA?:

 Follow: https://twitter.com/SHOwhoisAmerica

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 Website: http://www.sho.com/who-is-america ||||| Former U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore is the latest person to face a prank by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

 Moore appeared on Cohen's Showtime series "Who Is America?" Sunday night. After failing what Cohen's character called a pedophile detector test, Moore walked off the fake interview set.

 Moore, a Republican, lost a special election for U.S. senate last year to Democrat Doug Jones. Several women made accusations during the campaign that Moore had made unwanted romantic or sexual advances towards them throughout his career, including one woman who said she was 14 years old when the former Alabama Chief Justice approached her.

 Cohen posed as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert Col. Erran Morad, who was interviewing Moore when he mentioned a new piece of technology-- a device that detects a hormone from pedophile's sweat.

 "Sex offenders and particularly pedophiles secrete an enzyme for DDHT, which is actually detectable," Cohen's character told Moore. "In Israel they've developed a machine that is used in schools to detect anyone coming in and if they detect the pedophile it alerts the law enforcement."

 Cohen took out the supposed device, and waved it in front of himself. The machine didn't alert.

 Then, Cohen waved the device in front of Moore-- and it beeped. "Obviously a problem, must be faulty - malfunctioning," Cohen said.

 Cohen also waved the machine in front of another man on the set, and the device stayed silent.

 Again, it beeped in front of Moore.

 "I've been married for 33 years, I've never had an accusation of such things," Moore said. "If this is an instrument, then it's certainly... I'm not a pedophile, okay? Maybe Israeli technology hasn't developed properly."

 Moore walked off the interview set, saying he was "cutting this conversation." He said, "I support Israel, I don't support this kind of stuff."

 In a statement sent out before the episode aired, Moore threatened legal action against Cohen and criticized its satire of American values.

 "I am involved in several court cases presently to defend my honor and character against vicious false political attacks by liberals like Cohen," Moore said. "If Showtime airs a defamatory attack on my character, I may very well be involved in another. As for Mr. Cohen, whose art is trickery, deception, and dishonesty, Alabama does not respect cowards who exhibit such traits! It's been a long time since I fought for my country in Vietnam. I'm ready to defend her again!" ||||| Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore announced today he was duped by comic actor Sacha Baron Cohen in his upcoming Showtime series, "Who Is America?"

 Moore, a Republican who lost a special election for U.S. senate last year to Democrat Doug Jones, released a statement today with details of how he was fooled.

 "In February 2018, I was invited to Washington D. C. to receive an award for my strong support of Israel in commemoration of her 70th anniversary as a nation," Moore said. "Because Alabama has always been at the forefront of support of Israel and because I share a strong belief in God as the Creator and Sustainer of all life, as does Israel, I eventually accepted the invitation. Expenses were paid, and I received no private remuneration for my time or participation. I did not know Sacha Cohen or that a Showtime TV series was being planned to embarrass, humiliate, and mock not only Israel, but also religious conservatives such as Sarah Palin, Joe Walsh, and Dick Cheney.

 "I do not apologize for my belief in God or the common religious and cultural heritage that Israel shares with America.

 "As an Alabamian, I believe in truth and honesty, which the shadowy media groups behind this illicit scheme do not. Obviously, people like Cohen who mock not only Israel but those who support Israel and the principles upon which America is based, do not share my beliefs.

 "I don't need Sacha Cohen to tell me who America is, but I can tell him that America is a proud Nation which sprang from humble beginnings and a strong belief in God, virtue, and morality.

 "As an American, I would never hide my identity and deceive others only to mock and ridicule them as this Showtime Series is designed to do. America is not only about being proud but about being brave and standing for what we believe.

 "I am involved in several court cases presently to defend my honor and character against vicious false political attacks by liberals like Cohen. If Showtime airs a defamatory attack on my character, I may very well be involved in another. As for Mr. Cohen, whose art is trickery, deception, and dishonesty, Alabama does not respect cowards who exhibit such traits! It's been a long time since I fought for my country in Vietnam. I'm ready to defend her again!"

 Alabamians have been spoofed before numerous times by Baron Cohen on his earlier TV comedy program "Da Ali G Show" and in movies including "Borat" and "Bruno."

 For the satirical half-hour Showtime series that debuts this Sunday night, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders were also duped.

 In the first episode, Cheney is asked by Baron Cohen in a "Borat" voice to autograph a jug of water described as a "waterboard kit," and he agrees. "That's a first," Cheney says. ||||| No one comes out of a Sacha Baron Cohen show looking good. Your mere presence on Showtime’s Who Is America? means you’ve already been duped by a guy in a costume. It’s an impossible game to win, but some guests make it out relatively unscathed by refusing to play along.

 The people who look the worst on Who Is America? tend to look that way because they are the worst — egged on by Baron Cohen’s characters, they reveal their own deeply held, morally repugnant beliefs. Or, just as bad, they reveal that they’re willing to say morally repugnant things in order to be on television. Here is a ranking of all the guests in Who Is America? episode three, from those who leave with their reputations intact, to those who … do not.

 5. Ness Lee

 Photo: Showtime/SHOWTIME

 For just one second, Ness Lee actually seems irritated by the cadence and rhyme-challenged rap style of Sacha Baron Cohen’s milquetoast liberal snowflake character, Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello. But it turns out the Atlanta battle rapper is just waiting to deliver another crushing blow to an opponent who never had a chance. And when Cain-N’Degeocello manages to conjure up something halfway resembling an actual diss — “You talk, uh, in bragging terms about the size of your phallus/I believe the inverse is true/I, myself, am ashamed that I have a larger phallus than you” — Ness Lee and the crowd at the Music Room offer up nothing but love in return. Perhaps a divide was actually healed in this stress-free segment?

 4. Bone Crusher

 Photo: Showtime/SHOWTIME

 The other Atlanta rapper in this episode was mostly content to just roll his eyes at Cain-N’Degeocello, and to kick back — bemused but chill — while his fellow interviewee got more and more worked up. You can’t blame him for getting wide-eyed when Cain-N’Degeocello talked about a particular thrusting motion.

 3. Roy Moore

 Photo: Showtime/SHOWTIME

 Roy Moore looks bad just by virtue of the fact that he’s Roy Moore, the disgraced-yet-unashamed former Senate candidate from Alabama who was accused of sexual misconduct against teenage girls. (And who was still fully endorsed by Donald Trump, and who lost by a shockingly slim margin for an accused pedophile.) But there wasn’t a ton to disgrace him any further during his interview with Baron Cohen’s Erran Morad, the Israeli commando. Moore mostly acted as a prop here, with Morad getting him to deliver such hilarious but empty lines as “Alabama has always been a place for equality.” Moore clearly sees where Morad is headed with his pedophile-detecting technology, and he’s not having any of it. If he had seemed more scared of the pedo-wand, it would have been more effective, but he only seemed indignant, and maybe even aware that he was being pranked. Also, Moore has made himself look way worse on TV on a regular basis in recent years, which makes this appearance far less effective.

 2. Chip Limehouse

 Photo: Showtime/SHOWTIME

 Chip Limehouse, a former Republican State representative from South Carolina, wasn’t having it practically from the start of his and Bone Crusher’s joint “Heal the Divide” interview. Granted, the Cain-N’Degeocello character is deliberately off-putting, but instead of trying to be polite, Limehouse just gets more and more agitated. He scoots his chair away at the mention of gay sex, and condescendingly pats Bone Crusher on the shoulder and defends his right to be called black (rather than Cain-N’Degeocello’s preferred “Afro-marginalized”). His true, prickly colors jump out even further when he claims to have three doctorates — which sounds like something Cain-N’Degeocello would say. Unlike the worst Who Is America? guests, he doesn’t reveal himself to be a blatant racist, but he is clearly a blatant asshole.

 1. The Quinceañera Commandos

 Photo: Showtime/SHOWTIME

 What are old white conservatives so petrified of, and how did they get so ignorant and gullible? In a stunt that feels inspired by the Nathan for You playbook — Nathan Fielder is credited as a consulting producer on Who Is America? — Baron Cohen recruited three potential commandos to bait and then trap undocumented immigrants. That all three of these truly scary (and scared) candidates go along with everything they did speaks volumes about their sense of blind allegiance: Whatever scenario confirms their worldview, no matter how insane it might seem, is to be embraced without hesitation or analysis. If that means wearing a fake vagina and drugging immigrants, well … a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do to make America great again.

 It would be funnier if it weren’t so frightening: Each of these three guys is immediately willing — eager, even — to conflate the innocent idea of a quinceañera with the rape of 15-year-olds, simply because the traditional party is outside of their culture. It’s hard to decide which of the three is scariest, but let’s hand it to Joe — chairman of something called Citizens for Refugee Resettlement — who, when asked what they needed to use as “bait” for immigrants, said, “Pussy, pussy, young girls, pussy.” He also describes Morad’s fake vagina as “dry, but I get the idea.” (If there’s a wall to be built, maybe it should be around this guy’s house.)

 But let’s not forget about John, listed only as “Trump supporter,” whose desperate need to protect America from its imaginary enemies leads him to dress as the 15-year-old girl, complete with pink party dress, wig, and, yes, fake genitals. (If the cops showed up on their own, great, but hopefully they were part of Cohen’s vision for this occasion.) Maybe John, Jack, and Joe will see this episode and take some time to reflect on what fractured state of mind led them to be duped into participating in a fake quinceañera featuring a rubber vagina and Rohypnol-laced guacamole. Could there be a lower, more embarrassing point from which to try to gain some perspective?

 'Who Is America?' Guests, In Their Most Gullible Moments |||||

– Roy Moore's Who Is America? segment aired on Sunday night's episode of the Showtime series, and it featured the former Alabama chief justice and failed US Senate candidate storming off the set after supposedly failing a "pedophile detector test," AL.com reports. Sacha Baron Cohen's Israeli anti-terrorism expert character, Col. Erran Morad, told Moore—who has been accused of molesting teen girls—about the newly developed test that detects a hormone from a pedophile's sweat. When waved in front of "Morad" and another man on set, the device didn't go off, but when waved in front of Moore, it beeped every time. "I've been married for 33 years, I've never had an accusation of such things," Moore said. "If this is an instrument, then it's certainly ... I'm not a pedophile, OK? Maybe Israeli technology hasn't developed properly." Moore released a statement in early July explaining he agreed to the Baron Cohen interview because he thought he was receiving "an award for my strong support of Israel"; he said he'd sue if the episode aired. "I don't need Sacha Cohen to tell me who America is," the statement adds. "As an American, I would never hide my identity and deceive others only to mock and ridicule them." Meanwhile, "Morad" posted on Twitter he "was honored that ladies man Roi Moore took time away from his busy schedule of hanging round shopping malls to talk to me." Vulture ranks the segments in this episode from least to most damning: rappers Ness Lee and Bone Crusher, Moore, ex-member of the South Carolina House of Representatives Chip Limehouse, and three "old white conservatives" Baron Cohen duped into thinking they were being trained to "bait and then trap undocumented immigrants."


– We’ve seen the long form certificate, but the birther issue just won’t die. Author Jerome Corsi’s new book Where’s the Birth Certificate? debuts at number six on the New York Times’ Best Sellers list out Sunday, according to CNN. The book argues that President Obama’s citizenship has never been verified by a legal authority. Despite the White House release of the president's Certificate of Live Birth, 17% of Americans think he was definitely or probably not born in the US, according to a recent poll taken after Obama's birth certificate announcement.

Expand this summary.

Crawl of outlinks from wikipedia.org started March, 2016. These files are currently not publicly accessible. Properties of this collection. It has been several years since the last time we did this. For this collection, several things were done: 1. Turned off duplicate detection. This collection will be complete, as there is a good chance we will share the data, and sharing data with pointers to random other collections, is a complex problem. 2. For the first time, did all the different wikis. The original runs were just against the enwiki. This one, the seed list was built from all 865 collections. ||||| 6 years ago

 (CNN) - A new book, now number six on the New York Times' Best Sellers list, is putting the so-called "birther" issue back on the national stage.

 "Where's the Birth Certificate?" by Jerome Corsi, which debuted on the list out Sunday, argues President Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen and therefore cannot be president.

 "Corsi demonstrates conclusively that no legal authority has ever verified Obama's legal eligibility to be president," the book reads.

 Corsi also wrote "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command," a 2004 book about Sen. John Kerry that focused on the "Swift Boat" television ads.

 The "birther" controversy was front-and-center earlier this year, as billionaire businessman and real estate mogul Donald Trump repeatedly discussed the issue while considering a run for the White House. President Obama ultimately released the long-form version of his birth certificate that shows he was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Soon after, Trump announced he would not make a bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

 Despite the president's actions, 17 percent of Americans think the president was definitely or probably not born in the U.S., according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll taken after the president's announcement.

 The survey showed a drop from the March poll numbers when 25 percent of those surveyed said the president was definitely or probably not born in America. |||||


Write a summary based on this article:

On paper, Miss America 2015 Kira Kazantsev reads like a forward-thinking person's dream of what a beauty queen could be. She's a trilingual honors student who's publicly passionate about women's health and down to clown with Jimmy Kimmel; she's got a squeaky-clean image and a squeaky-clean resume. But it's missing one unflattering detail.

 In late April 2013, Jezebel has learned, Kazantsev and a friend were both kicked out of the Alpha Phi sorority at Hofstra University on Long Island after hazing pledges. At the time, Kazantsev was serving as the sorority's head of recruitment.

 Kazantsev is well-spoken, quick on her feet, and perky. She's the third consecutive Miss New York to win the title of Miss America, and she did with the added handicap of a hammy Anna Kendrick impression. In the days since she earned the crown, Kazantsev has diplomatically but firmly addressed the loud-mouthed buffoons who have taken issue with her past internship at Planned Parenthood, telling Cosmopolitan, "It was close to my university and I care about women's health. It's really important that teens know what resources are available to them and learn to be respectful of their bodies and other peoples' bodies."

 Kazantsev's Miss New York press kit describes a daughter of Russian immigrants who is fluent in Spanish and Russian and maintained a 3.6 GPA while triple majoring in Political Science, Geography, and Global Studies at Hofstra. And under "leadership roles," listed right under a platform called "Love Shouldn't Hurt"—a timely and important advocacy push against domestic violence—you'll learn that Kazantsev served as "Alpha Phi Sorority New Member Educator and Recruitment Committee President."

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 After Kazantsev's win last week, neither the national Alpha Phi organization nor the Hofstra branch of Alpha Phi (Theta Mu) publicly acknowledged that one of their own had just won the most prestigious beauty pageant in the world; nor did the local chapter and national organization recognize Kazantsev's considerable achievement. The organization's affiliated foundation was also silent, despite the fact that pictures of Kazantsev participating in Alpha Phi events are all over Facebook.

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 According to a tipster close to Kazantsev, those omissions were no accident. After returning from her fall 2012 study abroad semester in Spain, Kazantsev began her term as Alpha Phi's Recruitment Committee President for the incoming pledges. Kazantsev and her best friend (another Alpha Phi sister who was also her roommate), our source says, were exceptionally harsh toward the pledges. (In the tipster's words, they made the recruits' lives "a living hell.") Under Kira's supervision, according to the source, pledges in the incoming class were called names, berated for their perceived physical flaws and imperfections, and made to perform physical tasks to the point of bruising and exhaustion—standard sorority pledge stuff paid forward by a person who our source says was herself brutally hazed upon entry into Alpha Phi.

 Hofstra's attempts to control hazing predate Kazantsev's time in Alpha Phi. In an attempt to cull the campus's headline-making abuse (and the ensuing student health and PR nightmares that followed in its wake), Hofstra has been quick to act decisively in response to hazing. According to the University's code of conduct, hazing includes:

 Any action or situation that recklessly or intentionally endangers mental or physical health or involves the forced consumption of liquor or drugs for the purpose of initiation into or affiliation with any organization. Any other act or series of acts that cause or are likely to cause mental or physical harm or danger. Mistreatment by playing stunts or practicing abusive, humiliating or ridiculous tricks that subject an individual to personal indignity, humiliation or ridicule. Harassment by exacting unnecessary, disagreeable, or difficult work or harassment by banter, ridicule or criticism. Some examples of such prohibited activities are: Abnormal or unusual dress holding the wearer up to ridicule, e.g., extraordinary headwear, costumes, underwear, body painting, etc. Performing unusual or abnormal acts, e.g., dancing on tables, standing at attention, standing on windowsills, blindfolding, etc. Excessive or unusual physical activities, e.g., crawling, duckwalk, push-ups, sit-ups, skipping, hopping, squatting, etc. Verbal or written harassment or abuse, e.g., yelling, making demeaning remarks, etc.

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 Student leaders are told in no uncertain terms that if they're caught hazing, the entire frat or sorority risks being tossed off campus.

 But just because rules exist doesn't mean they're followed, and socially-enforced silence among fraternity and sorority members has allowed remnants of a particularly nasty culture to flourish underground. A recent graduate who attended Hofstra at the same time as Kazantsev told Jezebel that the final two steps of pledging in one (unnamed) sorority involved making all of the pledges remove their underwear and sit on newspapers while the older members forced them to watch lesbian porn. Anyone whose newspaper stuck to them at the end of the video, the former student said, was branded a dyke, ridiculed, and tossed out. The remaining girls were then forced to perform oral sex on their sorority "big sisters." Other Greeks required pledges to sit in circles around bowls of cat food and other various inedibles. They'd take turns eating and as soon as someone threw up, they had to eat the puke. Another sorority would wrap completely naked pledges in tinfoil, take them to bars, and instruct them to dance until last call. Patrons would pull pieces of foil off, and pledges were considered sexually up for grabs.

 These, of course, are extreme examples, and not necessarily attributed to Kazantsev's sorority. Students can be suspended from Greek life or removed from campus for much less, and for much more. In the last decade, more than a dozen college students have died while participating in the pledging process, and uncounted thousands have been hospitalized due to alcohol abuse encouraged as a routine part of many Greeks' hazing processes. But it's impossible for university officials to know what's going on if everyone keeps quiet.

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 When someone reported Kazantsev and her friend for "dirty pledging," Hofstra didn't turn a blind eye. After a months-long investigation into their actions, our source says, the pair was expelled from Alpha Phi in late 2013 and told they could no longer participate in any sorority activities, including the end-of-year formal. Kira and her bestie attended the formal, anyway, but had to sneak in with their dates.

 FERPA rules prohibit university officials from discussing details of disciplinary cases publicly or divulging details of what specific behavior got Kazantsev booted, but when I called Hofstra University to look into allegations I described as relating to "a high-profile individual who was expelled from her sorority in late April 2013," the representative who spoke with me responded, "Was this person, by chance, in Atlantic City last Sunday night?" She then assured me that she'd tell me what she could, which amounted to very little, aside from that damningly leading hypothetical. Additional Hofstra students who were on campus at the same time as Kazantsev corroborated the story that Miss America had been kicked out of her sorority for behavior her University characterizes as abusive.

 The Miss America organization was more forthcoming. When I reached out to them last week to ask them if they were aware of Kazantsev's hazing history, a kind and personable representative who seemed taken aback by the allegations told me that they'd get back to me with a statement. Hours later, a spokeswoman from the organization sent this statement:

 Kira has been fully transparent with the MissAmerica Organization about her termination from the Alpha Phi sorority. It's unfortunate that this incident has been exploited to create a storyline that distracts from what we should be focusing on: Kira's impressive academic achievements at Hofstra University, including earning a triple major from the Honors College and her commitment to serving her community. Kira is an exceptional ambassador for the MissAmerica Organization, and we are excited to be a part of her journey as a force for good across our nation, promoting education and service and working to empower young women.

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 The Miss America and Miss New York organizations weren't exactly as "transparent" with the viewing public as they say Kazantsev was with them.

 This news shouldn't serve to take down Kazantsev; if anything, it might even be an opportunity for her. Good people sometimes do bad things, and discussing how they happened, how they developed, and how to keep other good people from doing the same bad things could make some kind of dent in a collegiate culture of hazing abuse. Because—to adapt a quote from Kira Kazantsev's platform—sisterly love shouldn't hurt. ||||| (Read more from Tuesday morning: Miss America goes on Good Morning America to deny hazing abuse)

 Miss America, Kira Kazantsev, poses for photographers during the traditional toe dip in the Atlantic Ocean the morning after she was crowned. (Julio Cortez/AP)

 (Updated Monday night with statement from Kazantsev below saying the allegations of hazing are not true.)

 Beauty pageants are frequently a source of controversy after the fact, and Miss America is no exception. Barely a week after Miss New York Kira Kazantsev won the crown, pageant officials acknowledged that she had been kicked out of her college sorority last year. Why? They would not discuss the matter, but their statement appeared to confirm a new report that she was involved in hazing pledges.

 Yes, in case you’re wondering, this is the new Miss America whose social cause is protecting women against domestic violence.

 Jezebel broke the story on Monday afternoon and cited an anonymous source who detailed acts of hazing during Kazantsev’s reign as recruitment committee president in the Alpha Phi sorority at Hofstra University:

 Under Kira’s supervision, according to the source, pledges in the incoming class were called names, berated for their perceived physical flaws and imperfections, and made to perform physical tasks to the point of bruising and exhaustion — standard sorority pledge stuff paid forward by a person who our source says was herself brutally hazed upon entry into Alpha Phi.

 Kazantsev — who made headlines during the pageant with her quirky talent singing “Happy” while playing a beat on a red plastic cup— was kicked out of Alpha Phi after someone reported these incidents and there was an investigation, Jezebel said.

 Pageant officials released a statement to the site, saying that “Kira has been fully transparent with the Miss America Organization about her termination from the Alpha Phi sorority.”

 “It’s unfortunate that this incident has been exploited to create a storyline that distracts from what we should be focusing on: Kira’s impressive academic achievements at Hofstra University, including earning a triple major from the Honors College and her commitment to serving her community,” they added, going on to praise Kazantsev as a worthy ambassador of the crown.

 When contacted by The Post, a pageant spokesperson didn’t answer specific questions about when and how Kazantsev was “transparent” about the incident — it certainly didn’t come up during the live broadcast on Sept. 14. The spokesperson sent us the same statement as it had to Jezebel, though instead of the phrase “fully transparent,” they said Kazantsev “has been very open and candid about her termination from the Alpha Phi sorority.”

 “Kira is an exceptional ambassador for the Miss America Organization, and we are excited to be a part of her journey as a force for good across our nation, promoting education and service and working to empower young women,” the statement said.

 UPDATE, Monday night

 A pageant spokesperson said that Kazantsev will appear on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday morning to address the allegations of hazing, which she says are not true. Monday night, Kazantsev also posted a long entry describing the incident on her Web site, explaining that she was kicked out of the sorority because of a hazing joke in an e-mail chain that was taken out of context. When she didn’t show up for her disciplinary hearing about the issue (it was the end of her senior year and she was focused on graduation) her membership was terminated.

 Kazantsev said when she was pledging, there was some “so-called hazing” in Alpha Phi, the worst of which involved “standing in a line reciting information, a few sleepless nights, and crafting.” (The sorority was later reprimanded by Hofstra and the national chapter.) Kazantsev admitted that when she became the new member educator, she was in charge of similar events, but that was unrelated to her termination.

 “I was never involved with any name-calling or use of profanity toward a girl during my time with the sorority. I was never involved in any physical hazing or any degradation of physical appearance of any kind,” she wrote. “This has all been immensely taken out of context and manipulated purposefully because I am now in a public position.”

 “The nameless source that is saying these things is doing exactly what it is that I was wrongfully accused of,” she added.

 For the record, this is the second PR crisis the Miss America organization had to deal with on Monday. John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” took the pageant to task for claiming to “provide” $45 million in scholarships. He fact-checked the numbers and found it’s actually the amount technically available for theoretical contestants — but a much higher figure than the amount doled out in reality. Obviously, the video went viral: |||||

– Kira Kazantsev was kicked out of the Alpha Phi sorority at Hofstra University last year, and it wasn't for banging plastic cups around, a source tells Jezebel. According to the source, the future Miss America and a friend were expelled from the sorority for hazing pledges, who were "called names, berated for their perceived physical flaws and imperfections, and made to perform physical tasks to the point of bruising and exhaustion." Kazantsev, the president of the sorority's recruitment committee at the time, was banned from all sorority-related activities after an investigation, the source says, but sneaked into the end-of-year formal anyway. Pageant officials, however, say Kazantsev has been "fully transparent with the Miss America Organization about her termination from the Alpha Phi sorority" and the "incident has been exploited" to distract from her impressive achievements at the Long Island university, reports the Washington Post. On her website, the beauty queen says she never bullied anybody and the worst hazing she witnessed involved "reciting information, a few sleepless nights, and crafting." She says she was expelled from the sorority after an email in which she joked about hazing was forwarded to the national organization—and says the "nameless source that is saying these things is doing exactly what it is that I was wrongfully accused of." (Click for more about Kazantsev's controversial talent performance.)