Story highlights Police spokeswoman says authorities are looking at possible links to right-wing groups

 Attacker, shot by police, dies at hospital

 A teacher and student were killed; another student and another teacher were injured

 (CNN) A masked man wielding a sword or a knife killed a teacher and a student in an attack Thursday at a school in Trollhattan, Sweden, before police fatally shot him, authorities said.

 Two others -- another teacher and student -- were wounded in the attack on the Kronan primary and middle school. The injured were reported to be in serious condition at the hospital in Trollhattan, hospital officials said.

 "This is a dark day for Sweden," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said. "My thoughts go out to the victims and their families, pupils and staff, and the entire community that has been affected. There are no words to describe what they are going through right now."

 Law enforcement officials said police shot the suspect at the scene and he died later at the hospital.

 Posing with students before attack?

 Read More ||||| 21-year-old suspect confirmed dead

 Teenage student and teacher dead and another pupil and teacher being treated in hospital

 'If I had not run, I would have been murdered,' student tells The Local

 PM Stefan Löfven: 'A dark day for Sweden' The attack took place on Thursday morning at the school, around 75km from Gothenburg, after a man wearing a mask walked into a building on the premises wielding "several knife-like objects", police said. One male teacher, 20, died following the incident, along with a pupil, whose age was confirmed by police in the evening as 17, despite initial statements suggesting he was 11. A 21-year-old suspect was confirmed dead just after 4pm, with officials adding that they did not think that anyone else was involved. Another teacher and an older pupil are understood to remain in hospital.

 "The assailant knocked on two classroom doors and he attacked the two students who opened the doors," police investigator Thord Haraldsson told a press conference in Trollhättan.

 He said that officers called to the scene had fired two shots, with one of them hitting the assailant, after the suspect had first attempted to attack the police.

 Haraldsson said if the police hadn't reacted as quickly as they did, the situation could have been much worse. Pre-school children had been visiting the school's library earlier in the day.

 Some pupils have described how they initially thought the man's appearance was a prank.

 "When we first saw him, we thought it was a joke. He was wearing a mask and black clothes and (carrying) a long sword. Some students wanted to take their picture with him and feel the sword," one unidentified pupil told TT.

 A picture reported to be of the alleged attacker was circulating in Swedish media on Thursday afternoon.

 Här är Saras bild på skolmördaren: ”Han sa inte ett ord” https://t.co/x33HVlaPKs pic.twitter.com/dcRw8Ka0vE — Aftonbladet (@Aftonbladet) October 22, 2015

 The scene outside the school shortly after the attacks. Photo: Mikael Svantesson. ||||| A knife-wielding masked man stabbed four people Thursday at a school in southern Sweden, killing a teacher and a student before being shot dead by police, authorities said. One student thought the man had something to do with Halloween.

 Students fled from the Kronan school in Trollhattan, near Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city, as the attack took place in a nearby cafe just after 10 a.m., police said. The school has 400 students ranging from pre-school to high school.

 Police arrived to find one male teacher already dead and three other people seriously wounded - two male students aged 11 and 15 and another male teacher, police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg told The Associated Press. Police fired two shots, one of which hit the attacker, he said.

 One student and the attacker died later at the hospital, authorities said.

 The attacker, a 21-year-old from Trollhattan, knocked on the doors to two classrooms and stabbed those who opened them, police spokesman Thord Haraldsson told a press conference. He said the man had "sharp stabbing weapons," which another police official told the AP may have included a sword.

 Police searched the attacker's home and found "interesting" things, Haraldsson added, without elaborating.

 Police spokesman Stefan Gustavsson said authorities knew the attacker had killed the teacher "because of the wounds he had."

 Laith Alazze, a 14 year-old student at Kronan, said at first he thought the attacker - who was clad in black and wearing a mask - had something to do with Halloween.

 "One of my friends walked over to him to challenge him, but when we saw he stabbed him (the teacher), we ran away," Alazze told Sweden's TV4.

 The attacker had gunshot wounds to his lower chest and died later Thursday at the hospital, officials said.

 Police spokeswoman Maria Randsalu said the second victim was a student, but did not say which one.

 The three wounded, all in serious condition, underwent surgery at the Norra Alvsborgs Lanssjukhus hospital. Dr. Lars Spetz told reporters the teacher had been stabbed in the abdomen while the two students were stabbed in the abdomen, liver and chest.

 "They hover between life and death," Spetz said.

 Swedish media said the school held a meeting Thursday morning to discuss teachers' fears that they could not control access to the school. The Dagens Nyheter newspaper said students must go through a public cafe to reach the school's cafeteria and other parts of the building.

 Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who went to the scene, described Thursday as a "black day."

 "My thoughts go out to the victims and their families, the students and staff, and the whole community that has been affected," Lofven said. "No words can describe what they are going through right now."

 King Carl XVI Gustaf said Sweden was "in shock" following the attack and that the royal family received the news "with great dismay and sadness." ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption The suspect apparently posed for photos with pupils ahead of the attack

 A masked man armed with a sword has killed a pupil and a teacher at a school in Sweden.

 The suspect, clad in black, apparently posed for photos with students ahead of the attack, in the western town of Trollhattan.

 Two further victims, a pupil and a teacher, are seriously injured. The attacker was shot by police and has died of his injuries. He was 21 and resident in Trollhattan, police said.

 The king has said Sweden "is in shock".

 Eyewitnesses described chaos at the school, with hundreds of students fleeing from the building screaming.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Maddy Savage, an editor at The Local Sweden, says police are looking into claims that the attacker had links with the far right in Sweden

 Police responded to an emergency call reporting an attack in the cafe area of the Kronan school, at around 10:10 local time (08:10 GMT) on Thursday.

 Arriving at the scene, they found a dead man - a teacher - near the entrance.

 Two male students and another teacher were rushed to hospital. One of the boys, aged 17, has since died of his injuries.

 The other pupil, who is 15, and the teacher, a 41-year-old man, are being treated in intensive care for knife injuries. Their condition is described as serious but stable by the hospital.

 The attacker was also taken to hospital with gunshot wounds and has since died.

 Police have said several knives were used in the attack.

 Officers have identified the suspect but not released his name. They have searched the suspect's home and have found "interesting" things, spokesman Thord Haraldsson told a news conference.

 He was not previously known to police, he said.

 Asked about possible links to far-right extremism, Mr Haraldsson refused to comment, Swedish radio reports.

 Local media have reported that the suspect's accounts on Facebook and YouTube suggest an interest in Hitler and Nazi Germany. In a photo given to media by a student at the school, he appears to be wearing a black trench coat and a helmet resembling those worn by German troops in World War Two.

 Image copyright EPA Image caption The school has around 400 children from kindergarten up till the age of 16

 Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published an account (in Swedish) of a girl, who they refer to as Sara, who witnessed the attack.

 The girl left her classroom and met two school friends who stood with a masked man holding a bloody knife, she said. He was playing "horrible, Halloween-type" music and did not speak, she said.

 Her friends thought it was a joke and wanted to be photographed with the man, so Sara took a photo, Aftonbladet reports.

 A teacher came out and asked the man what he was doing, the girl said.

 "You're scaring the children, you can go," the teacher said.

 The man just nodded then stabbed the teacher in the side with his knife, Sara said.

 She and her friends ran. The man chased them but they managed to escape.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Sweden's PM Stefan Lofven visited the school on Thursday afternoon

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Candles were lit outside the school to commemorate the victims

 Image copyright AFP Image caption There was confusion at the school in the aftermath of the attack

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Police have searched the house where the suspected attacker lived

 King Carl Gustaf said in a statement that he had learned of the events in Trollhattan "with great dismay and sorrow".

 Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has arrived in the town, and said it was a "black day for Sweden".

 "I think of the victims and their families, students and staff, and the whole of the affected community. No words can describe what they are going through right now. We must ensure that they receive all the support they need," he said.

 Trollhattan is an industrial town in west Sweden, located around 75km (50 miles) north of Gothenburg, the nation's second largest city.

 School attacks are rare in Sweden - with just one incident on record in the past 20 years, in which one pupil was shot dead. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– A teacher and a student were killed and another student and teacher were seriously injured in a sword attack at a school in the Swedish town of Trollhattan on Thursday, before the assailant was shot by police and taken to a hospital. Police say a masked man in his 20s used "several knife-like objects" as weapons in the cafe area of the Kronan school around 10am, per the Local and CNN. Two boys, 11 and 15, suffered serious stab wounds; one of them died later in the hospital, while the teacher died at the scene, per the BBC. A hospital rep adds the attacker "is seriously injured and is being operated on." The scene outside the school is still chaotic, where "parents are running around to find their children," says a witness. "I can't understand why it happened here." A student tells the Local, "I was in a classroom with my class when one of my classmates' sisters called her to warn her that there was a murderer at the school." He says he and a few others left the classroom to warn their teacher, who was in the hallway. "Then I saw the murderer, he was wearing a mask and had a sword. Our teacher got stabbed," he says. "The murderer started chasing me, I ran into another classroom. If I had not run, I would have been murdered." Earlier in the day, the school held a meeting based on teachers' concerns that anyone could gain access to the school through the entrance to the cafe, which is reportedly attached to the school and is meant for adults, per CBS News. There are about 400 students at the school, aged 6 to 15.


Article:
Dear Gwyneth Paltrow, Once upon a time (okay, last year) you said that anyone who was going to fuck with you had better bring their A game. This, I was led to believe, was a response to concerns that I and others had raised about the quality of the advice and value of the products … Continue reading → ||||| Dr. Jen Gunter, an obstetrician and gynecologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, didn't mean to pick on Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle and wellness e-commerce company. In fact, she's a fan of Paltrow's acting.

 "'Shakespeare in Love' is one of my favorite movies," Gunter said. "She was so wonderful in that movie."

 But she doesn't think much of the stories posted by Goop on health and sex. One that sent the doctor to her blog earlier this year was the suggestion in a Goop story that women insert jade eggs into their vaginas to improve their sex lives.

 "I read the post on Goop, and all I can tell you is it is the biggest load of garbage I have read on your site since vaginal steaming," Gunter, 51, wrote on her personal blog, which carries the tagline "Wielding the Lasso of Truth."

 Another Goop story that said bra-wearing may increase the chance of breast cancer also irked Gunter. "It's breast size that increases the risk of breast cancer," she wrote in retort.

 Five nutrition lies ruining your health

 What about another practice recommended by a doctor interviewed on Goop: cleansing the body with goat's milk as a hedge against parasites?

 "I'd just write it off as crazy except some people are going to follow this advice and waste a lot of money," Gunter wrote, adding a certain modifier before "crazy."

 Goop, which held the In Goop Health conference last month in Culver City, California, for acolytes who paid $500 to $1,500 a ticket, had 1.8 million unique U.S. visitors to its website in June, a 62 percent increase from the previous June, according to comScore, an analytics company.

 Comparatively, Gunter's blog is small potatoes. It is hard to navigate and antiquated in design, and failing to meet comScore's threshold of about 50,000 unique visitors a month, its web traffic is too meager to be measured.

 However, after posting a few viral essays in recent years, Gunter has emerged as the most ardent critic of Paltrow's website, routinely responding with snark and medical data to its pronouncements on diet and female genital health.

 It may have been the lectins -- which are plant proteins that have been targeted on Goop by one of its contributors, Dr. Steven Gundry -- that finally got to Paltrow and the Goop team. After Gunter posted a sweeping rebuke of several of the alternative health trends promoted by Goop, including a diet low on lectins, Goop posted a retort, which Paltrow tweeted to her nearly 3 million followers, along with a line that alluded to a Michelle Obama speech: "When they go low, we go high."

 The post was intended to take a stand for open discussion about alternative approaches to health and wellness, said Elise Loehnen, head of content for Goop. The doctors interviewed by Goop are "highly vetted" and offer advice based on "evidence from their own practices," Loehnen said, adding that Goop's wellness stories include a standard disclaimer.

 Titled "Uncensored: A Word From Our Doctors," Goop's "we go high" post seemed to single out Gunter (without naming her but referring to her "wielding the lasso of truth" line) as looking to "critique Goop to leverage that interest and bring attention" to herself. In a section attributed to "Team Goop," it went on to note Gunter's "strangely confident assertion that putting a crystal in your vagina for pelvic-floor-strengthening exercises would put you in danger of getting toxic shock syndrome."

 The rest of the post was written by two of Goop's featured doctors, including one who cited Gunter by name and castigated her for using swear words. "Now, it's fine to get into a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of lectins without throwing F-bombs," Gundry wrote. "Dr. Oz and I just had a friendly discussion on this topic -- you might learn something if you tune in."

 The flame war continued with another post from Gunter titled "Goop's Misogynistic, Mansplaining Hit Job."

 "I am not strangely confident about vaginal health; I am appropriately confident because I am the expert," Gunter wrote. She then cited her credentials, which include a medical degree from the University of Manitoba, a residency at the University of Western Ontario and a fellowship in infectious disease at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The post has generated 157,000 page views, Gunter said. Other medical professionals have written in support of her.

 Gunter, who works as a gynecologist and obstetrician for Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, began to blog in 2010, around the time she published a book, "The Preemie Primer." She has long written about "snake oil," she said, focusing on trends and products marketed to women to better their sex lives or vaginal health. "Every single day I am talking to women about how you shouldn't use this product and why you shouldn't use that product," she said.

 She said she doesn't check the Goop website every day. She usually ends up there after she has grown frustrated with political tweets.

 "I try to shift my indignation to something I can do something about," Gunter said.

 © New York Times ||||| Michigan State UniversityArchive-It Partner Since: Jan, 2011Organization Type: Colleges & UniversitiesOrganization URL: http://archives.msu.edu MSU is one of the top research universities in the world on one of the biggest, greenest campuses in the nation. Home to nationally ranked and recognized academic, residential college, and service-learning programs, we're a diverse community of dedicated students and scholars, athletes and artists, scientists and leaders.University Archives & Historical Collections of Michigan State University is a place of discovery. More than 150 years of MSU history can be explored, including original letters and diaries, photographs, and oral histories. Our collections span the entirety of MSU's history and also contain historical materials not related to MSU. Some of our collection highlights include materials that document the physical campus and grounds, early student life, the lumber industry, environmentalism in Michigan, and the Civil War. ||||| UPDATE 10/2/17: A month after TINA.org provided Goop with a list of URLs harboring illegal health claims, the company has removed a number of inappropriate health statements from its site. These include claims to prevent uterine prolapse (Better Sex Jade Eggs), as well as claims to treat acne, eczema and psoriasis (Black Rose Bar). However, the vast majority of problematic health statements catalogued by TINA.org on Goop.com remain at this time, with one claim to treat infertility now attributed to what “fans of the product” have to say.

 Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness empire, Goop, approaches health … differently.

 From the brand’s famous yoni eggs to its Shaman-inspired medicine bags and crystal therapy readings, to quirky supplement names like “Why Am I So Effing Tired?” and a mineral-infused oxygen bar that the company apparently breaks out at corporate events — it’s easy to get caught up in the world according to Goop. So easy, in fact, consumers may overlook the serious conditions for which Goop products — and the third-party products it promotes — are prescribed.

 But a TINA.org investigation into Goop’s marketing has revealed more than 50 instances in which the company claims, either expressly or implicitly, that its products (or those it promotes) can treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, or reduce the risk of developing a number of ailments. These include crystal harmonics for infertility, rose flower essence tincture for depression, black rose bar for psoriasis, wearable stickers for anxiety, and vitamin D3 for cancer. The problem is that the company does not possess the competent and reliable scientific evidence required by law to make such claims.

 Additional problematic health claims can be found in this passage in an article on Goop’s website titled, “Earthing: How Walking Barefoot Could Cure Your Insomnia & More”:

 (Of note, while the speaker here, Clinton Ober, does not lay claim to any specialized medical training in the post, he does have an undisclosed material connection to Earthing — the company whose “grounded” bed sheets and patches are listed for sale in the article — as an inventor whose name appears on three of its patents.)

 TINA.org warned Goop about its unsubstantiated, and therefore deceptive, health and disease-treatment claims in an Aug. 11 letter to the company and its celebrity founder and CEO. In the letter, TINA.org signaled its intent to alert government regulators if Goop did not take corrective action by Aug. 18. On Aug. 17, after communicating with Goop’s outside counsel, TINA.org provided the company with a list of Goop and Goop-promoted webpages containing illegal health claims. Despite being handed this information, Goop to date has only made limited changes to its marketing.

 As a result, TINA.org on Tuesday filed a complaint with two California district attorneys, urging the regulators to investigate Goop’s marketing and take appropriate enforcement action. (The district attorneys are part of the California Food, Drug and Medical Device Task Force, which last October reached a $1 million agreement with MyPillow after TINA.org supplied the task force with the findings of a deceptive marketing investigation into the pillow company.)

 TINA.org is not the first group or person to question the science behind Goop’s health claims. Everyone from “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert to a former chief scientist at NASA has accused Goop of promoting pseudoscience, while Paltrow has challenged anyone who seeks to criticize the brand she founded nine years ago to bring their A game.

 TINA.org Executive Director Bonnie Patten said:

 Marketing products as having the ability to treat diseases and disorders not only violates established law but is a terribly deceptive marketing ploy that is being used by Goop to exploit women for its own financial gain. Goop needs to stop its misleading profits-over-people marketing immediately.

 TINA.org’s complaint comes one year after NAD opened an inquiry in which it requested that Goop provide substantiation for brain claims made in the marketing of Moon Juice dietary supplements sold on Goop.com. At the time, Goop said it would permanently discontinue the claims in question. But the inquiry made clear that Goop has an obligation as a marketer to verify the efficacy claims of all products it promotes.

 From musings to millions to one helluva wellness summit

 What began as a “homespun weekly newsletter” of Paltrow’s whimsical thoughts on everything from travel and cooking to health, fitness, and the psyche in the fall of 2008, Goop is now a wellness empire that markets a plethora of specialty items aimed at a variety of physical and mental health issues.

 After reportedly raising $15-$20 million in venture capital in 2016, Goop entered the $37 billion supplement industry in March when it launched Goop Wellness, a line of supplements that sold more than $100,000 worth of product the day it debuted, according to Fast Company.

 Then in June, Goop hosted its first-ever wellness summit, “In Goop Health,” in a lavishly decorated industrial warehouse outside Los Angeles. Attendees, which included a TINA.org staffer who went undercover, paid $500-$1,500 for the chance to sit in on panel discussions about leech facials, snack on “Kale cookies and cream” vegan ice cream, and get hooked up to a mineral-infused oxygen bar whose administer, clad in a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of the Goop summit, touted the purported cognitive benefits that the essential oils in the oxygen are said to deliver.

 At the conference TINA.org also crossed paths with a barista rocking the same Goop-y tee who was serving cups of Bulletproof Coffee, a Goop partner. The barista claimed that the grass-fed butter in the coffee increases brain function. It also helps with cancer and weight loss but the brain, we were told, that’s “the moneymaker.” But when we asked how, exactly, brain function is improved, we got this garbled answer:

 After two weeks you notice, like, your … increase of, like, perceptions of the world around you, you notice how you feel is a little bit different.

 The response was reminiscent of one Paltrow herself gave in an interview with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel just a few days earlier, when she struggled mightily to come up with a coherent definition for “earthing.” The Academy Award-winning actress eventually conceded (at 1:17 in the video below) that at times “I don’t know what the [expletive] we talk about.”

 Nevertheless, Goop proclaimed the inaugural summit a rousing success, pointing to media coverage like a Refinery29 article whose author allegedly gushed about the master of ceremonies, “Paltrow created the Disneyland of wellness summit.” But the blurb on Goop’s site is taken out of context and therefore quite misleading. The full quote shows the observation was not intended to be a compliment but a complaint:

 And this comes after the author remarks higher in the article that “[i]t’s not hard to see why [Paltrow] has been criticized for promoting pseudo-science — some would even say misinformation…”

 (TINA.org has notified Refinery29 about the deceptive use of the “Disneyland” quote on Goop’s site.)

 Whose doctors?

 Last month Goop issued a response to one of its harshest critics with a strongly worded post titled, “Uncensored: A Word from Our Doctors.” Among other things, the post suggested that maybe it’s not smart to trust evidence-based science all of the time:

 Studies and beliefs that we held sacred even in the last decade have since been proven to be unequivocally false, and sometimes even harmful. Meanwhile, other advances in science and medicine continue to change and save lives. It is not a perfect system; it is a human system.

 But not long after the post went up, one of the two doctors who Goop recruited to write open letters to feature in the piece, Dr. Aviva Romm, told STAT that she doesn’t actually see herself as one of Goop’s doctors at all.

 “In fact,” STAT reported, “she said she’s advised Goop that if it wants to be more than a ‘caricature of everything alternative health for women,’ the editors need to do an audit of all their content, in consultation with physicians.”

 TINA.org would agree that a site-wide audit is in order.

 In addition to the ailments that TINA.org’s investigation found Goop deceptively markets products to treat, there are other conditions, which are not medically recognized, such as adrenal fatigue and postnatal depletion that the company claims its Goop Wellness supplements combat (“Why Am I So Effing Tired?” for adrenal fatigue and “The Mother Load” for postnatal depletion). Moreover, while product packaging indicates that supplements in general are needed because “the modern American diet often calls for extra vitamin and mineral support,” that message conflicts with scientific studies that say there’s “no overall benefit” from taking them.

 Goop has two more wellness summits scheduled for next year, the first of which will take place in New York City in January. But before the company takes any more requests for tickets, Goop needs to shape up its marketing when it comes to being truthful about what its products and those it promotes are really capable of achieving.

 Read more about TINA.org’s investigation into Goop here. ||||| The rest of the post was written by two of Goop’s featured doctors, including one who cited Dr. Gunter by name and castigated her for using swear words. “Now, it’s fine to get into a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of lectins without throwing F-bombs,” Dr. Gundry wrote. “Dr. Oz and I just had a friendly discussion on this topic — you might learn something if you tune in.”

 The flame war continued with another post from Dr. Gunter titled “Goop’s Misogynistic, Mansplaining Hit Job.”

 “I am not strangely confident about vaginal health; I am appropriately confident because I am the expert,” Dr. Gunter wrote. She then cited her credentials, which include a medical degree from the University of Manitoba, a residency at the University of Western Ontario and a fellowship in infectious disease at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The post has generated 157,000 page views, Dr. Gunter said. Other medical professionals have written in support of her.

 Dr. Gunter, who works as a gynecologist and obstetrician for Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, began to blog in 2010, around the time she published a book, “The Preemie Primer.” She has long written about “snake oil,” she said, focusing on trends and products marketed to women to better their sex lives or vaginal health. “Every single day I am talking to women about how you shouldn’t use this product and why you shouldn’t use that product,” she said.

 She said she doesn’t check the Goop website every day. She usually ends up there after she has grown frustrated with political tweets.

 “I try to shift my indignation to something I can do something about,” Dr. Gunter said. |||||Summary:

– Goop is getting called out again. Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle site should be investigated by California regulators, according to the watchdog group Truth in Advertising. TINA announced on its website this week that it has compiled more than 50 instances of Goop claiming, directly or indirectly, that certain products "treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, or reduce the risk of developing a number of ailments," Fortune reports. Those products, of course, are either sold by or promoted by Goop, but Goop doesn't have the scientific evidence legally required to make such claims about the products, per TINA. The watchdog group has submitted a complaint letter to two of the California Food, Drug, and Medical Device Task Force's district attorneys requesting enforcement. A Goop spokesperson reached out to BuzzFeed (which has helpfully compiled some of the products TINA takes issue with, including a crystal said to treat infertility, hair treatments for depression, and a vaginal egg to prevent uterus slipping) to say that TINA's claims are "misleading ... unsubstantiated and unfounded." Goop was also recently called out by NASA over body stickers supposedly containing spacesuit material, and soon after, a San Francisco OB-GYN made headlines when she called out Goop for promoting the aforementioned vaginal eggs, among other things. In fact, Dr. Jen Gunter's posts about Goop spurred the website to issue a defense, with Team Goop writing: "As women, we chafe at the idea that we are not intelligent enough to read something and take what serves us, and leave what does not. We simply want information; we want autonomy over our health."


Write an article based on this summary:

– Emerson College will soon offer a degree "for those who want their studies to be a joke," cracks MassLive.com: a bachelor of fine arts in comedic arts. Thanks to the "marked rise of comedy's impact on American culture and its global influence," the Boston school will offer students a chance to learn the history and theory of comedy, traced back to Greeks and Romans, plus comedy performance, production, editing, and writing. "It's not going to be just lecturing," program creator Martie Cook tells the Boston Globe. "I think what this program offers that's unique is that you are going to have to actually do it." She notes former students of the school, including Jay Leno, Denis Leary, Bill Burr, and Henry Winkler, may even pop in as guest lecturers. Officials decided to introduce the four-year program, which begins in the fall of 2016, after offering a minor program in comedy last fall. The response was overwhelming. "Comedy is more relevant than ever," Cook says, per CBS News. "For millennials and Generation Z, it's a second language for expressing and reflecting the world as they understand it." Alum Doug Herzog, the president of Viacom Music and Entertainment Group who oversees Comedy Central, says the program has found a perfect home. "Some schools develop NFL quarterbacks," he says. "We develop great comedic talent."

Jay Leno is among the famous comedians to graduate from Emerson College.

 Did you hear the one about the Boston school that’s offering students an opportunity to major in comedy?

 There’s no punch line here — it’s happening at Emerson College next year.

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 Beginning in September 2016, undergraduates looking to brush up on their on-screen performance skills or comedy-writing abilities will be able to work toward a bachelor of fine arts degree in the “Comedic Arts.”

 “This is going to be a hands-on program,” said Martie Cook, Emerson’s associate chairwoman of visual and media arts department. “If you want to be a sitcom writer, we are going to take you through sitcom writing, and you will walk out of here with several scripts in your hand that you can then show to agents and producers, so you actually have a portfolio.”

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 Cook said the college’s new program will offer classes that run the gamut. Students will learn about the history of the subject, dating back to the Greeks and Romans, and how to perfect a sketch comedy performance.

 “It’s not going to be just lecturing,” she said. “I think what this program offers that’s unique is that you are going to have to actually do it.”

 Students will be trained in how to write jokes for both the stage and the screen, so they can find their voices as comedians. There will also be production courses, comedy editing courses, and classes geared toward students who want to study the art and theory of laughter.

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 Emerson is known for churning out some of the industry’s top talents — Jay Leno, Bill Burr, Harris Wittels, and Denis Leary all attended the school — and Cook expects there to be some famous guest lecturers.

 “Many of our faculty are people who have had experience in the industry, and who continue to work in the business,” she said. “The plan is that we will also be offering master classes and events with a lot of event speakers.”

 Emerson will make use of both its Boston and Los Angeles campuses for the new initiative.

 “This is a great moment for Emerson to bring what has become one of our distinctive strengths to the forefront,” said Doug Herzog, an Emerson alumnus and president of Viacom Music and Entertainment Group, which oversees Comedy Central, in a statement. “Some schools develop NFL quarterbacks. We develop great comedic talent.”

 Last year, Emerson announced the rollout of a minor concentration called “Comedy: Writing and Performance.” Cook said the success of that program was so overwhelming that making it a major, in a time when comedy is so prevalent for millennials, was a no-brainer.

 “They live in a world that’s comedy based,” she said. “Look at how they get their news: They don’t turn on network news, they go to the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, places like that. Everything is comedy driven. Comedy is just hotter than it’s ever been.”

 Noah Garfinkel, who graduated from Emerson in 2006 and now writes for the Fox sitcom New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel, said the school has long been a destination for people interested in humor.

 “There are so many people who went there when I was there that went for comedy writing,” said Garfinkel, who has also written scripts for Comedy Central’s Workaholics.

 He said the academic experience could be a big help, teaching students to write comedy scripts before they enter the field full time, for instance.

 “I think you’re either going to be good at it or you’re not,” he said. “You’re not going to learn to be funny, but if it’s something you wanted to do or are capable of doing, this major is certainly something that will help that. It’s not the easiest career to navigate.”

 Boston-bred stand-up comedian Ryan Doon, who rose to fame using Twitter’s six-second video app, Vine, said he would have pursued a comedy major if one had been available to him.

 “I wish I went to Emerson in the first place,” he said. “I think if you’re a creative person and want to be in show business or in that world, I would suggest going there.”

 But Doon added that aspiring stand-up comics need experience to go along with their education.

 “If you want to be a stand-up comedian, don’t go to college,” he said. “Work at a Starbucks and do open mikes every single night. It’s the best way. If someone is in a position where they can pay for college and do open mikes, that would be ideal.” ||||| BOSTON (CBS) – Emerson College students will soon be able to use their comedic talents for more than just laughs.

 The school announced that starting in the fall, it will allow students to register for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Comedic Arts.

 Classes in the new major will begin in the fall of 2016.

 According to the college’s website, classes in the major include elements of sitcom production, modes of comedy production, comedy writing for late night, comedy editing and several others.

 Last fall, Emerson launched a minor in comedy program called “Comedy: Writing and Performance.”

 Emerson College officials said they expect to have more information about the new major on the school’s website during the summer months.

 “Comedy is more relevant than ever,” Martie Cook, creator of the Comedic Arts major, said on the school’s website. “For Millennials and Generation Z, it’s a second language for expressing and reflecting the world as they understand it.” ||||| For those who want their studies to be a joke, Emerson College is introducing a new major: a bachelor's degree in comedic arts.

 Emerson announced the news on Wednesday and says classes will begin to be offered towards the major in the fall.

 “This new degree strengthens Emerson’s commitment to the study of comedy by adding academic rigor and institutional resources from faculty and industry professionals at the main Boston campus and at our Los Angeles facility,” said Emerson College President Lee Pelton. “In keeping with the college’s rich teaching tradition, the new major will combine an academic focus with hands-on opportunities.”

 Course work will intertwine learning the history and theory of comedy while performing on stage. Emerson has partnered with the Upright Citizens Brigade to offer classes and performance opportunities alongside improv professionals.

 Many alumni have gone onto find success through comedy including: Jay Leno, Henry Winkler, Denis Leary, Iliza Shelesinger and Doug Herzog, president of Viacom Music and Entertainment Group.

 “This is a great moment for Emerson to bring what has become one of our distinctive strengths to the forefront,” Herzog said, who oversees Comedy Central. “Some schools develop NFL quarterbacks. We develop great comedic talent. With its charged creative and academic atmosphere, no one can deliver what Emerson will to this truly one-of-a-kind program. And that's no joke.” |||||


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In this Thursday, April 9, 2015 photo, divers emerge from the water as debris believed to be from a car floats to the surface where a car went off the berth and into the water at the San Pedro Slip, across... (Associated Press)

 In this Thursday, April 9, 2015 photo, divers emerge from the water as debris believed to be from a car floats to the surface where a car went off the berth and into the water at the San Pedro Slip, across from Ports O'Call in San Pedro, Calif. U.S. prosecutors have charged an Egyptian father with fraudulently... (Associated Press)

 In this Thursday, April 9, 2015 photo, divers emerge from the water as debris believed to be from a car floats to the surface where a car went off the berth and into the water at the San Pedro Slip, across from Ports O'Call in San Pedro, Calif. U.S. prosecutors have charged an Egyptian father with fraudulently... (Associated Press) In this Thursday, April 9, 2015 photo, divers emerge from the water as debris believed to be from a car floats to the surface where a car went off the berth and into the water at the San Pedro Slip, across... (Associated Press)

 LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Egyptian man was held without bail Tuesday on federal charges of fraudulently collecting insurance payouts after driving his severely autistic children to their deaths when he sped off a pier into the Port of Los Angeles.

 Ali Elmezayen (EL-mah-ZION) plotted for over two years before launching his plan into action April 9, 2015, when he barreled down a commercial fishing dock in San Pedro, turned his Honda abruptly toward a parking space and gunned the engine, federal authorities said.

 "Witnesses heard the tires of the car screech loudly and saw the car accelerate before it flew off the edge of the wharf, crashed into the water and immediately sunk," FBI agent Matthew Parker wrote in an affidavit in support of Elmezayen's arrest last week.

 Elmezayen, 44, did not enter a plea in the case in U.S. District Court, but he has told investigators and others he may have accidentally accelerated instead of hitting the brake, according to court papers. He blamed the city, Honda, and Jiffy Lube and others for negligence, but his lawsuit was tossed out.

 The Los Angeles County district attorney declined to bring charges in the deaths because of insufficient evidence. A police mechanic found evidence that the brake pedal didn't properly work, but couldn't tell if that was the case before the tragedy or because of salt water corrosion.

 While a county prosecutor said the father's explanation could create reasonable doubt, they suggested police tell federal prosecutors about evidence of insurance and other fraud.

 Federal investigators said they found that Elmezayen spent about a quarter of his reported $24,000 salary to insure himself, his longtime partner and three sons for $6 million.

 Elmezayen repeatedly called insurers to confirm they wouldn't automatically investigate a claim made more than two years after a policy was written, federal prosecutors said.

 The deadly plunge occurred two years and 12 days after the final policy took effect, authorities said.

 Elmezayen's car window was open, and he surfaced within 30 seconds and swam to a ladder on the pier. His partner, Rabab Diab, couldn't swim, but she was rescued by a fisherman after surfacing and screaming, "My kids, my kids."

 "The poor lady was screaming hysterically," said fisherman Ray Prince shortly after the incident. "I thought she was going to drown."

 Two boys, Abdelkarim, 8, and Elhassan, 13, couldn't swim and were strapped in child seats. They were pulled lifeless from the car by rescue divers and died from drowning.

 Elmezayen collected more than $260,000 in insurance payouts for the deaths and wired more than $170,000 back to his native Egypt, prosecutors said.

 Prosecutors argued that Elmezayen should not be free awaiting trial because he was likely to flee to his homeland. They also argued he still posed a danger to Diab because he had intended to kill her and still pays premiums on her life insurance policy and that of another son, who was at camp when his siblings were killed.

 A public defender representing Elmezayen argued that nothing had happened to Diab and the other son in over three years. He asked to have Elmezayen use $250,000 in equity in two houses he owns to secure his bond.

 Elmezayen and Diab came to the U.S. in 2000 and overstayed their tourist visas, prosecutors said. Both married other partners in hopes of becoming permanent residents. Elmezayen has acknowledged his was a sham marriage.

 Judge Alka Sagar said Elmezayen lacked credibility and she denied bail, in part, because of what she called the "ghastly scheme to obtain insurance benefits." ||||| LOS ANGELES – A Hawthorne man is due in court this afternoon after being arrested last week on federal charges that allege he intentionally drove his domestic partner and two severely autistic children off a pier into the ocean to collect proceeds on accidental death insurance policies he had purchased on their lives.

 Ali F. Elmezayen, 44, is scheduled to appear before a United States Magistrate Judge, who will consider a motion by prosecutors to have him held in jail without bond.

 Elmezayen was arrested on November 7 by special agents with the FBI after being charged with defrauding insurance companies. Elmezayen made his initial appearance on November 8, when he was ordered held without bond pending this afternoon’s detention hearing.

 According to a criminal complaint, Elmezayen purchased several accidental death insurance policies providing more than $6 million in coverage on himself, his domestic partner and his children in 2012 and 2013. Elmezayen allegedly paid nearly $6,000 a year for these policies – even though he was earning less than $30,000 a year – and he called at least two of the insurance companies to confirm they would not investigate claims made two years after the policies were purchased.

 On April 9, 2015 – two years and 12 days after he bought the last of his insurance policies – Elmezayen drove a car with his partner and two youngest children off a wharf at the Port of Los Angeles. Elmezayen swam out the open driver’s side window of the car. His partner, who did not know how to swim, survived when a nearby fisherman threw her a flotation device. The two children, ages 8 and 13, were unable to escape the car and drowned.

 Elmezayen then collected more than $260,000 in insurance proceeds from American General Life Insurance and Mutual of Omaha Life Insurance on the accidental death insurance policies he had taken out on the children’s lives, according to the complaint. In addition to posing as his domestic partner in communications with the insurance companies without her knowledge, Elmezayen allegedly made several false statements, including stating that the cause of his children’s deaths was accidental and that he had no other insurance policies on his children.

 “This case alleges a calculated and cold-hearted scheme to profit off the deaths of two helpless children,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna. “The alleged conduct shocks the conscience, and we will use every tool available to us to ensure that justice is done.”

 “The defendant is accused of orchestrating a scheme to defraud insurance companies by taking the lives of his vulnerable young sons,” said Paul Delacourt, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “The defendant faces serious consequences as we seek justice on their behalf.”

 “IRS Criminal Investigation is proud to flex our financial fraud expertise in bringing this alleged killer to justice,” stated R. Damon Rowe of IRS Criminal Investigation’s Los Angeles Field Office. “Would-be fraudsters should be warned that it is very difficult to profit from death and steal from life insurance companies with impunity.”

 The criminal complaint specifically charges Elmezayen with mail fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for posing as his domestic partner in calls to the insurance companies.

 A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

 During last week’s court hearing, a preliminary hearing was scheduled for November 23, and Elmezayen was ordered to appear for an arraignment on November 29.

 If he were to be convicted of the charges in the complaint, Elmezayen would face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each of the fraud counts. The charge of aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory consecutive sentence of two years in prison.

 This case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and IRS Criminal Investigation. The federal investigators received substantial assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Port Police and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office.

 The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Alex Wyman and David Ryan.

 Assistant United States Attorney Michael Sew Hoy of the Asset Forfeiture Section obtained a seizure warrant that led to the seizure Thursday of approximately $80,000 from an Elmezayen bank account. |||||

– What at first appeared to be a tragic accident is now labeled a "coldhearted scheme." Two children, ages 8 and 13, died on April 9, 2015, when the car their father was driving sped off a Los Angeles wharf and sank. Ali Elmezayen, whose window was open, quickly emerged, followed by his domestic partner, Rabab Diab, but their severely autistic children, strapped in the back seat of the 1998 Honda Civic, were pronounced dead once divers freed them. Prosecutors now say it was a double murder planned by Elmezayen, 44, for more than two years, per the Washington Post. In 2012 and 2013, Elmezayen allegedly purchased several accidental death policies providing more than $6 million in coverage for his family, costing him 20% of his annual salary, which was less than $30,000, per a DOJ release. Prosecutors say he even confirmed that claims wouldn't be investigated after two years. The crash allegedly came two years and 12 days after the last policy was bought, per the AP. "The alleged conduct shocks the conscience," says US attorney Nick Hanna. The problem is that the evidence may not prove murder. Elmezayen, who initially speculated about an "evil inside of me that pushed me to go," later said the car's brakes failed, and saltwater corrosion has made it difficult to determine their condition at the time of the crash, per the AP. Citing insufficient evidence of murder, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has instead charged Elmezayen with mail fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, alleging he posed as Diab in interactions with insurance companies. Held without bail, Elmezayen faces up to 20 years in prison for each fraud count if convicted. (Cops say a mom's "moment of frustration" led to her toddler's death.)


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Lean asynchronous computer mediated communication is often considered poor for communicating emotion, yet individuals continue to use it for business, personal, and even romantic communication. We used a lab experiment to investigate the influence of media (email and voicemail) and task type (romantic and utilitarian) on both the psychophysiological responses of senders and the content of the resulting messages. Message senders had more arousing physiological responses when sending emails than when leaving voicemails. An interaction exists between media and task such that the content of romantic email messages was more positive than romantic voicemails; while the opposite was true for utilitarian tasks. Thus the choice of media triggers different emotional responses in the sender and leads to different message content. ||||| 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. ||||| To email or not to email? For those in love, it's better than leaving a voice message

 Sept. 1, 2015

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- In her hit single, Carly Rae Jepsen may have sung, "Here's my number, so call me maybe." But according to a new research study from Indiana University, she might be more successful in finding love if she asked him to send her an email.

 The research, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, suggests that, in this digital age, an email can be more effective in expressing romantic feelings than leaving a voicemail message.

 Previous research and conventional wisdom suggested the opposite, that a voicemail message is a more intimate way to connect with others, but that may not be true, particularly among millennials.

 “The bottom line is that email is much better when you want to convey some information that you want someone to think about,” said one of the authors, Alan R. Dennis, the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems in IU’s Kelley School of Business.

 Dennis and co-author Taylor M. Wells, an assistant professor of management information systems at California State University-Sacramento, set out to learn more about how we respond emotionally to these newer forms of communication.

 Although voicemail, email and texting are part of everyday life, very little is known about how their characteristics influence and distort communication in work and personal settings.

 Using psychophysiological measures from 72 college-age people, Dennis and Wells found that people who sent romantic emails were more emotionally aroused and used stronger and more thoughtful language than those who left voicemails.

 “When writing romantic emails, senders consciously or subconsciously added more positive content to their messages, perhaps to compensate for the medium’s inability to convey vocal tone,” Dennis and Wells wrote in the paper, “To Email or Not to Email: The Impact of Media on Psychophysiological Responses and Emotional Content in Utilitarian and Romantic Communication.”

 “Email enables senders to modify the content as messages are composed to ensure they are crafted to the needs of the situation. Voicemail lacks this feature,” they added. “A sender records a voicemail in a single take, and it can be sent or discarded and re-recorded, but not edited. Thus senders engage with email messages longer and may think about the task more deeply than when leaving voicemails. This extra processing may increase arousal.”

 Previous research suggests that email and text chat are considered poor for communicating emotion. This is believed to be the first research study on how we respond to email using physiological measures.

 Dennis and Wells’ findings weren’t just about pulling heartstrings -- the use of email induced more arousing psychophysiological responses than voicemail, regardless of whether the message was utilitarian or romantic. Gender was not found to be a factor and was omitted in the final analysis.

 In an interview, Dennis noted that their findings run counter to media naturalness theory, a commonly held evolutionary standard suggesting that the further we get away from face-to-face communications, the less natural and less effective it becomes.

 “In this case, we found people adapted,” Dennis said. “Email’s been in the popular consciousness since the 1990s, and if you look at the new generation of millenials, and that’s who we studied, they’ve grown up with email and text messaging. So it may not be as unnatural a medium as we at first thought.

 “There’s a lot of theory that says email and other text communications don’t really work very well,” Dennis added. “We should probably go back and reconsider a lot of the stereotypical assumptions that we hold about email and text messaging that may not hold true when we take a deeper look at how people react physiologically.”

 The researchers did not see much use of emoticons and emojis in their emails. Rather, they found that when writing emails, subjects took more time to choose their words carefully to make sure the language conveyed the full meaning.

 The study also demonstrated that the medium used can shape the content of the message. Senders of utilitarian messages sent less positive emails than voicemails for the same communication task. However, when composing romantic messages, senders included the most positive and most arousing emotional content in emails and the least positive and least arousing emotional content in voicemails.

 “We expected that using email for romantic communication would be more frustrating than using voicemail, but our data do not show this,” the authors wrote. “There was neither greater emotional arousal nor greater negative emotional valence when using email for romantic tasks versus utilitarian tasks.

 “These results taken together suggest that ‘the medium is the message’ (as famously coined by philosopher Marshall McLuhan in 1964) in a more fundamental way than we have previously understood,” they added. “Our results show that the medium changes how message senders feel and what they say.”

 Dennis warns managers against misinterpreting these findings to suggest that face-to-face meetings, personal phone calls and other direct forms of communications aren’t as useful.

 “If something isn’t really clear and you want to make sure that everyone has the same understanding of what something means, that’s best done in phone calls, face-to-face meetings or video conferencing,” Dennis said. “You have different cues, and it’s also synchronous discussion, as opposed to email, where time goes by before the receiver gets to it.”

 The research was conducted by placing skin sensors on the subjects’ faces to measure muscle movement associated with positive and negative emotion, and on their feet to measure arousal. Subjects were randomly chosen to do voicemail or email first and produce a utilitarian or a romantic message first.

 Wells conducted the research with Dennis while he was a doctoral candidate at the Kelley School.

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– If you want to convey something affectionate or romantic and you can't do it in person, it may be better to send an email than leave a voicemail. So report researchers at Indiana University Bloomington in the journal Computers in Human Behavior after analyzing both the messages being sent and the physical state of those doing the sending. Contrary to previous research and conventional wisdom suggesting that a voicemail message is more intimate than email, this study finds that, at least among the 72 college-age millennials analyzed, the act of writing produced in the sender far more emotional arousal and greater use of emotional language. The effect endures, too, since people tend to respond to messages using the same medium, thus the recipient may in turn experience similarly heightened emotions when replying, reports Pacific Standard. "When writing romantic emails, senders consciously or subconsciously added more positive content to their messages, perhaps to compensate for the medium's inability to convey vocal tone," Dennis and Wells wrote in the paper. "Senders engage with email messages longer and may think about the task more deeply than when leaving voicemails. This extra processing may increase arousal." What's more, the students they studied have, they feel, adapted to the medium. "If you look at the new generation of millennials, and that's who we studied, they've grown up with email and text messaging," one researcher says. "So it may not be as unnatural a medium as we at first thought." Or, perhaps, voicemail is just more awkward. (Check out how men and women tend to differ during breakups.)


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RESULTS: The response rate was 66% (534 of 815). In a typical month, 93% reported some parents of children <2 years requested to spread out vaccines; 21% reported ≥10% of parents made this request. Most respondents thought these parents were putting their children at risk for disease (87%) and that it was more painful for children (84%), but if they agreed to requests, it would build trust with families (82%); further, they believed that if they did not agree, families might leave their practice (80%). Forty percent reported this issue had decreased their job satisfaction. Most agreed to spread out vaccines when requested, either often/always (37%) or sometimes (37%); 2% would often/always, 4% would sometimes, and 12% would rarely dismiss families from their practice if they wanted to spread out the primary series. Physicians reported using a variety of strategies in response to requests but did not think they were effective. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 A wide majority of pediatricians and family physicians acquiesce to parents who wish to delay vaccinating their children, even though the doctors feel these decisions put children at risk for measles, whooping cough and other ailments, a new survey has found.

 Physicians who reluctantly agreed said they did so to build trust with families and to avoid losing them as patients.

 The survey, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, asked a nationally representative sample of 534 primary care physicians in 2012 how often parents in their practices postponed one or more vaccinations for children younger than age 2.

 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that children be vaccinated for 14 diseases before age 6 on a schedule, which entails roughly 29 shots, sometimes several at once.

 Ninety-three percent of doctors reported that in any given month, they had been asked at least once to delay vaccines. A fifth said more than 10 percent of parents in their practices had asked them to delay vaccines.

 One-third of doctors said they acquiesced “often” or “always”; another third gave in only “sometimes.”

 Such deference is in keeping with today’s doctoring style, which values patients as partners, said Dr. Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who was not involved in the study.

 “At some level, you’re ceding your expertise, and you want the patient to participate and make the decision,” he said. The downside is that “you have to be willing to stand back and watch them make a bad one.”

 Too many doctors compromise on vaccines, instead of mounting a passionate plea, Dr. Offit said.

 “It is sad that we are willing to let children walk out of our offices vulnerable to potentially fatal infections,” he said. “There’s a fatigue here, and there’s a kind of learned helplessness.”

 Part of the problem is the lack of a proven strategy to guide physicians in counseling parents.

 “Unfortunately, we don’t have a solid evidence base in terms of how to communicate to patients about vaccines,” said Saad Omer, an epidemiologist at Emory University. “A lot of approaches are wisdom-based, not evidence-based.”

 Dr. Omer said that he did not sanction the use of alternative vaccine schedules, but that he understood why primary care physicians keep treating these patients — just as doctors do not kick smokers out of their practices when they fail to quit.

 “Physicians recognize it’s not ideal, but they’re saying, ‘Let’s continue this relationship’ to the family,” he said.

 The American Academy of Pediatrics advises doctors to keep skeptics in the fold, lest the doctors lose the opportunity to educate, cajole or persuade them.

 Physicians in the survey reported trying various strategies, like telling skeptical parents that they had immunized their own children, or warning them that outbreaks will continue if too few people are fully vaccinated.

 A disproportionate amount of time is spent discussing vaccines during doctor visits, the survey also found. For hesitant parents, counseling can take 10 to 14 minutes or longer — more than half of the average 18-minute visit.

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 Guidance on safe sleep or toilet training is being crowded out, the study authors said. Forty percent of the doctors reported that dealing with changes to vaccine schedules had decreased their job satisfaction.

 In late February, Dr. Nivedita More, a pediatrician in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., sent letters ending her relationship to parents who refused all vaccinations.

 “If they aren’t getting their act together to even start the process, I’ll discharge them within 30 days,” said Dr. More, a board member of the Orange County chapter of the pediatrics academy.

 By contrast, her stance on vaccine delays is much more flexible. “I do allow that most times,” she said. “The reason is, ultimately they will get vaccinated.”

 Many of those parents are simply hoping to limit the number of shots their children receive at once, she added, and are willing to accept combination vaccines.

 But “the people who didn’t want to vaccinate at all — I had a really hard time converting them,” she said. “They are never going to change.”

 In the midst of the current measles outbreak, which began nearby at Disney parks, Dr. More said she also felt the need to safeguard vulnerable patients in her waiting room from unvaccinated patients. Infants in particular do not get their first measles-mumps-rubella shot until age 1.

 Dr. Allison Kempe, the study’s lead author and a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, thinks the time has come to acknowledge that the idea that “vaccine education can be handled in a brief wellness visit is untenable.”

 Dr. Omer said doctors should be paid separately for vaccine counseling in cases where a “substantial proportion of time is being spent on vaccines.”

 In addition to compensation, Dr. Kempe said, vaccine counseling should begin during a woman’s pregnancy, and pro-vaccine parents — perhaps even celebrities — should star in marketing campaigns to help “reinforce vaccination as a social norm.” |||||

– Doctors are reluctantly delaying vaccine schedules for kids, despite knowing the risks of doing so, because they don't want to alienate parents altogether, reports the New York Times. A study published in Pediatrics that surveyed 534 primary care physicians found that 93% of them were asked to delay a vaccine by a parent in any given month; a fifth of respondents said more than 10% of parents in their practice had asked for delays. More than one-third of the physicians copped to giving in "often" or "always"; another 37% said they did "sometimes." "Doctors are feeling really conflicted because they overwhelmingly think this is the wrong thing to do, and is putting children at risk, but at the same time, they want to build trust with their patients and meet people halfway," the study's lead author says, per Time. It's not for lack of trying to reach these vaccine-wary parents, the researchers note: Doctors will often use a variety of strategies to convince parents to stick to the traditional schedule, including telling them their own kids have been vaccinated, bringing up possible future outbreaks if they buck vaccination, or even warning that the alternate schedules haven't been studied adequately. But in the end, the doctors still often acquiesce and are faced with a stressful decision. "To know I'm going to pick one [vaccine] and leave the other behind, despite all the time I spend explaining the risks and benefits to the parents—it's very difficult for me," a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine tells Time.


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 OSWEGO, Ill. -- A man armed with an AR-15 rifle helped stop a knife attack during an argument in Oswego.

 It happened on Monday at an apartment building on Harbor Drive.

 Police say it all began when someone with a knife attacked another person during an argument.

 Neighbor Dave Thomas, who witnessed the attack, went into his home, got his rifle and ordered the suspect to stop.

 "I ran back into the home, into my house and grabbed my AR-15. Grabbed the AR-15 over my handgun. It's just a bigger gun. I think a little bit more than an intimidation factor definitely played a part in him actually stopping."

 No shots were fired.

 The suspect was able to get away briefly, before police captured him.

 The stabbing victim was taken to a hospital, and is expected to recover.

 Police say Thomas has a valid firearm owner's identification card and a concealed carry permit. Thomas says he is also a firearms instructor.

 "The AR-15 is my weapon of choice for home protection," Thomas said. "It's light, it's maneuverable. If you train and know how to use it properly, it's not dangerous. And this is just a perfect example of good guy with an AR-15 stopped a bad guy with a knife. And there were no lives taken, so all in all it was a good day." ||||| A man armed with an AR-15 saved a neighbor who was being attacked with a knife Monday in Oswego Township, Illinois.

 WGN 9 reports that the incident unfolded at an apartment complex on Harbor Drive, “when someone with a knife attacked another person during an argument.”

 Dave Thomas (pictured) witnessed the attack on his neighbor, retrieved his AR-15, and ordered the attacker to stop.

 Thomas said, “I poked my head out the door. There was a pool of blood, blood was everywhere in the hall. There was still a confrontation going on, there were about three or four people involved at this point. So I ran back into my house and grabbed my AR-15. I grabbed the AR-15 over my handgun — bigger gun, I think a little more of an intimidation factor. Definitely played a part in him actually stopping.”

 Police arrived and arrested the suspect, while the victim was taken to the hospital in an unknown condition.

 Thomas gave a statement afterward, saying, “The AR-15 is my weapon of choice for home protection. It’s light, it’s maneuverable. If you train and know how to use it properly, it’s not dangerous. And this is just a perfect example of good guy with an AR-15 stopped a bad guy with a knife. And there were no lives taken, so all in all it was a good day.”

 AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. |||||

– A story involving an AR-15 is making headlines, with a twist: Police near Chicago say a man used his weapon to stop a knife attack, reports the Chicago Tribune. The resident of Oswego Township tells WGN that he witnessed a confrontation among neighbors turn violent and decided to act. Dave Thomas says he ran back to his house and "grabbed the AR-15 over my handgun—bigger gun, I think a little more of an intimidation factor. Definitely played a part in him actually stopping." The Kendall County Sheriff's Office confirms that Thomas stopped the stabbing attack with "only the threat of force." The suspect fled but was quickly apprehended by deputies, while the stabbing victim was hospitalized with multiple injuries. The victim's condition wasn't known. Thomas says the incident shows that the AR-15 is a good weapon for home protection in the hands of someone properly trained, and the incident is likely to draw attention in the current debate over gun laws. Exhibit A is the headline at Breitbart News: "Bad Guy with Knife Stopped by Good Guy with AR-15."


Article:

Part philosophical treatise, part pulp fiction, part pure horror show, Ridley Scott 's "Prometheus" ends up with less to say than it thinks it does. Though more involving than much of this year's summer blockbuster competition, by the standards set by its wizardly director it's something of a disappointment.Scott's "Alien" (1979) and "Blade Runner" (1982) are two of the preeminent science fiction films, and so it was inevitable that "Prometheus" would be compared to them. But it's especially the case because "Prometheus" — starring Noomi Rapace Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron — shares, as Scott himself has said, some DNA strands with "Alien."Anyone who is unfamiliar with "Alien" need not worry — "Prometheus" stands on its own. But those with vivid memories of what happened to Ellen Ripley aboard the Nostromo 33 years ago will find several points of reference in common with this latest iteration.Aside from Scott's expert first-time use of 3-D, the main differences between "Prometheus" and those earlier films are that the new venture is more creepy than it is scary, and it's considerably more self-conscious about the ideas that lie beneath the action.Although the director remains a master creator of alternate worlds, "Prometheus," unlike its predecessors, does not wear its themes lightly. It pushes too hard for significance, which is dicey in and of itself for genre material and contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting.As written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof (co-creator of TV's "Lost"), "Prometheus" begins, after an arresting but baffling prologue, at a dig on Scotland's Isle of Skye in the year 2089.Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway ( Logan Marshall-Green ), a pair of romantically involved archaeologists, have made a startling discovery: a 35,000-year-old pictogram that shows humans worshiping an enormous figure who points to the stars.This same image has also been discovered in a number of far-flung sites all over the world, leading Shaw and Holloway to conclude (as an unacknowledged Erich von Daniken claimed in his 1968 book "Chariots of the Gods") that beings from outer space had a big hand in creating life on Earth.Messianically determined to find these aliens and answer once and for all big questions like "Where do we come from? What is our purpose?," the pair persuades the world's richest human, Peter Weyland of Weyland Industries ( Guy Pearce under a ton of makeup), to spend a trillion dollars, give or take, to fund a trip to outer space with the purpose of tracking those "engineers" down."Prometheus" proper begins on a spaceship ominously named after the character in Greek mythology who suffered greatly for challenging the gods. Though Janek (an excellent Idris Elba ) is the nominal captain, the ship is really run by Meredith Vickers (Theron), a Weyland Industries bigwig who is not shy about saying things like "my job is to make sure you do yours."Theron, who has clearly found her comfort zone with ice-cold roles, is strong here, but from the acting point of view "Prometheus" belongs to the protean Fassbender, who excels as David, the spaceship's resident android.Considered by Peter Weyland to be the closest thing to a son he has, albeit with the drawback of not having a soul, David (who watches "Lawrence of Arabia" for tips on being human) is smarter and more capable than anyone on the ship and very much knows it. Fassbender gets David's almost-but-not-quite human character exactly right and is especially good at conveying the can-he-be-trusted aspect that always comes with android territory.More hit and miss is Rapace (of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), who never quite connects with the tree-hugger aspects of Shaw's character but really comes into her own once things start to go south in a major way.For it will not come as a surprise to anyone that everything is not exactly sweetness and light on the planet where the Prometheans land in search of those creative aliens. All kinds of awful, increasingly grotesque and horrific stuff starts to happen, and having someone with Shaw's indomitability around turns out to be a major plus for mankind.(In an odd convergence, both "Prometheus" and the benighted "Battleship" share a press material reference to scientistStephen Hawking'swarning that intelligent life from other planets "might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." True story.)Making up for the expected nature of some of the film's plot twists is Arthur Max 's spooky, H.R. Giger-influenced production design, Dariusz Wolski 's fluid cinematography, as well as Scott's moment-to-moment storytelling skill. Though the thrills here are less visceral than "Alien" and the world imagined less mind-altering than "Blade Runner," those gifts continue to impress in any galaxy you care to mention.'Prometheus'R for sci-fi violence, including some intense images, and brief language2 hours, 4 minutesIn general release ||||| A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race. Video courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

 Ridley Scott has been quoted as saying that fans of "Alien" will recognize strands of its DNA in "Prometheus." They're impossible to miss, both in the brilliant visuals and in some aspects of the plot. Yet his new film suffers from crucial chromosome breaks. What was then a model of narrative clarity and seductive suspense—"In space no one can hear you scream"—is now diffuse and often assaultive. In part that reflects the evolving priorities of the movie business in the intervening three decades. "Prometheus," in efficient 3-D, places most of its bets on the wonders that today's... ||||| Prometheus

 June 6, 2012

 Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers. It's in the classic tradition of golden age sci-fi, echoing Scott's "Alien" (1979), but creating a world of its own. I'm a pushover for material like this; it's a seamless blend of story, special effects and pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract.

 A scene at the outset shows a world with apparently only one animal being, a pale humanoid who stalks a high ridge surrounded by spectacular scenery. This person eats something that causes painful vomiting and rapid body decay. The vomit is followed into flowing water, where it seems to morph into living cellular structures. Where is this place? Is it Earth? Who is the being, and why is it alone and naked? Is the scene a visualization of the theory that life first arrived on Earth from outer space?

 Cut to a human spaceship in the year 2093, qualifying "Prometheus" for a flash-forward spanning more years than the opening of "2001." The trillion-dollar ship Prometheus is en route to a distant world, which seems pointed to in prehistoric cave paintings. There's reason to believe human life may have originated there. It's an Earth-sized moon orbiting a giant planet, and at first it seems a disappointment: no growing things, unbreathable atmosphere. But the crew notices straight lines on the surface, and as we all know, nature makes no straight lines.

 The lines lead to a vast dome or pyramid, and the film will mostly take place inside the dome and the Prometheus. But let's put the plot on hold and introduce two of the crew members: Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) wears a cross around her neck and believes life ultimately had a divine origin. Her boyfriend, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), accuses her, a scientist, of dismissing centuries of Darwinism. What they find in the pyramid leaves the question open. Alien humanoids, in suspended animation, incredibly have DNA that's a perfect match for our own. So they could somehow have brought life to Earth — but why? And from this moon where they slumber inside their pyramid, or from another planet around a distant star? Why did they stop here? What are they waiting for?

 The film then develops horror scenes comparable to "Alien," although it depends more on action and weaponry than that film's use of shadows and silence. For me, the most spellbinding scenes involve the crew members exploring the passages and caverns inside the pyramid, obviously unvisited in aeons, and their experiences with some of the hibernating alien beings. One of the key members of this crew is David (Michael Fassbender), an android, who knows or can figure out more or less everything, even alien languages, and is sort of a walking, talking, utterly fearless HAL 9000.

 The alien race in "Prometheus" shares a body characteristic that reminds me of "Alien" and countless films since: Elements can detach from them and enter into other bodies as hostile parasites. This leads to an astonishing sequence in which Elizabeth, alone on the ship, discovers she is pregnant with an alien Something and somehow finds the will to control a robot surgery device that removes it. Her later showdown with a waning oxygen supply shows equal resourcefulness; Noomi Rapace ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," 2009) continues here the tradition of awesome feminine strength begun by Sigourney Weaver in "Alien."

 Another strong woman is on board, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a representative of the corporation that privately financed the Prometheus. She treats the others like her employees, which they are, and believes she always speaks for the company's wishes. The ship's captain, Janek (Idris Elba), makes no pretensions of scientific expertise like the others but is a no-nonsense working pilot. Janek has the most interesting evolution, from the irreverent hipster in his first scenes into a man with the ability to intuit the truth about what he's seeing.

 The most tantalizing element is how it plays with the role of these DNA twins. Did they create life on Earth? The possibility of two identical DNAs as a coincidence is unthinkable. Charlie digs at Elizabeth, suggesting their existence disproves her beliefs. Her obvious response: Where did they come from? This puzzle is embedded in an adventure film that has staggering visuals, expert horror, mind-challenging ideas and enough unanswered questions to prime the inevitable sequel. ||||| Still courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Film.

 After you've seen Prometheus, come back and listen to our Spoiler Special:

 Dana Stevens Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic.

 Prometheus (20th Century Fox), Ridley Scott’s return to visionary science fiction three decades after Alien and Blade Runner, opens big, with an aerial 3-D camera sweeping low over panoramic landscapes so vast and bleak it’s as if the location scout actually visited outer space. (The sheer cliff drops and glacial expanses seen in this stunning opening sequence are in fact located in Iceland.) At the edge of a waterfall in this austere setting stands a humanoid creature whose marble-white skin and exaggerated muscle definition recall classical statuary. He ingests a small dish of what looks like bubbling caviar—then immediately and spectacularly crumbles to dust. As the organic material of his body washes away, we watch DNA-like structures twist and form in CSI-style micro-closeup.

 This is a whiz-bang beginning for a movie, with its implicit suggestion that the origin of human life may have involved some form of alien self-sacrifice. Unfortunately, nothing that happens for the rest of Prometheus equals or, for that matter, explains its striking prologue. Co-scripted by Damon Lindelof of Lost, this film shares that series’ love for nested mythologies and involute philosophical riddles. Prometheus is more interested in piling on big questions than in answering them. It’s deep without being particularly smart, although the dazzling design and special effects keep you from noticing that basic flaw until at least an hour in.

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 After Caviar Man takes his fateful dive, we move to Earth in 2089, a few decades before the beginning of Alien (to which this movie positions itself as a kind of prequel). Two archeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), explore a prehistoric cave whose wall paintings suggest contact between early man and an alien visitor—a pattern the scientists (who are also a couple) have noticed in sites around the world. On the strength of this pair’s crackpot-sounding theory, an ominous group known as the Weyland Corp. (Put it this way: The chairman is a dead man who appears only in the form of a pre-recorded hologram) agrees to underwrite an exploratory space mission to seek out the origin of human life.

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 The titular ship (which, like many unwisely named sci-fi vessels, might as well be christened the USS Hubris) sets out for an Earth-like planet in a distant solar system, manned by a crew that’s placed in suspended animation for the bulk of the journey. The only creature minding the ship is David (Michael Fassbender), an unsettlingly lifelike android. He passes his time on the empty, silent vessel monitoring the ship’s progress and watching Lawrence of Arabia for tips on human behavior. As they approach their destination, David begins to rouse his fellow crewmembers from their sleep pods: the ship’s laconic pilot, Janek (Idris Elba); an uptight representative of the Weyland Corp., Vickers (Charlize Theron); the archeologist couple; and a few other characters who (not to spoil anything) might not be worth getting overly invested in.

 Once the crew lands on the planet’s surface and begins exploring the huge ancient structure they find there, their mistakes pile up pretty quickly. It probably wasn’t a smart idea for Elizabeth to bag up the fossilized head of a dead alien they find in one chamber and bring it onboard the ship for examination. It definitely didn’t make sense for two disgruntled geologists (Rafe Spall and Sean Harris) to peel off from the main group and start back for the ship on their own. And if you’re stranded for the night in a vast, labyrinthine structure on another planet, you might think twice about approaching the gray-green phallic snake-thing that rises up suddenly from a puddle of black ooze and addressing it with a cajoling, “Hey, little guy.”

 After the first round of redshirts meet their grisly ends, things really start to get weird aboard the Prometheus. Looking in the mirror, Charlie sees, or imagines he sees, a tiny worm peeking out of his eyeball (an effective moment of minimalist body horror that evokes David Cronenberg’s The Fly.) Later, David coolly informs Elizabeth that she’s pregnant with an alien life form, resulting in a gynecological horror scene that’s both the movie’s most memorable set piece and the mark of its irrevocable descent into implausibility. The last half hour is a blur of chases, explosions, and battles (man-on-man, monster-on-man, and monster-on-monster).

 Prometheus could have been an elegant, moody sci-fi actioner if only it didn’t strain so hard (especially in the final scenes) for weighty existential meaning. There’s an ongoing theological debate between the atheist android David—who, as a manmade being, resists the idea of a divine creator—and the Christian truth-seeker Elizabeth, who insists on wearing a cross under her spacesuit even as the evidence pours in that the creatures who engineered us are indifferent if not outright malevolent. “Where do we come from? What is our purpose? What happens when we die?” David asks a human character at one point, enumerating the questions that drive the ship’s mission. Thanks to Fassbender’s precise, witty performance—when he’s on screen, the movie snaps to attention—David sounds both mocking of human curiosity and wistfully envious of it. |||||
What is a summary?

– Critics agree: The visuals in Ridley Scott's Prometheus are stunning. As for the story—about a space crew tracking the aliens who may have created us—it's a little too heavy for its own good. "Prometheus could have been an elegant, moody sci-fi actioner if only it didn't strain so hard for weighty existential meaning," writes Dana Stevens at Slate. The film "is more interested in piling on big questions than in answering them. It’s deep without being particularly smart," though its design and effects are so "dazzling" you won't realize "that basic flaw until at least an hour in." Joe Morgenstern echoes Stevens in the Wall Street Journal. "This tale of an interstellar search asks cosmic questions about the meaning of life, but comes up with lame answers in a script that screams attention-deficit disorder," he notes. Still, it's "worth seeing for the quality of its sci-fi sights." In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan notes that the movie "pushes too hard for significance," which "contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting." For "its wizardly director, it's something of a disappointment." But at the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert raves that Prometheus is "a seamless blend of story, special effects, and pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract." And Ebert finds it "all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers."