– Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran who helped smuggle six American hostages home from the country in 1980, died Thursday of colon cancer at the age of 81, his wife tells the AP. For three months, Taylor and his deputy, John Sheardown, hid at their Tehran homes the six US hostages who escaped from the American Embassy after it was overrun by Iranian student radicals on Nov. 4, 1979. Along with the CIA, Taylor helped arrange the hostages' escape by procuring plane tickets and fake Canadian passports. It was an incredibly risky operation that included passport foul-ups and a suspicious airport official, but the six hostages flew to safety from Tehran's airport on Jan. 28, 1980, the New York Times reported. Taylor's Iran exploits were chronicled both in the 2013 documentary Our Man in Tehran and in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo, though critics complained of the latter movie's inaccuracies, saying it minimized the Canadians' role in the rescue and gave most of the credit to the CIA. "Canada was not merely standing around watching events take place," Taylor told the Toronto Star in 2012. "The CIA was a junior partner." (Affleck later apologized and reworked the closing credits that mentioned Taylor's role, the Atlantic notes.) Meanwhile, Taylor's wife of 50 years, Pat, remembers one of her husband's most notable traits: his generous spirit. "He did all sorts of things for everyone without any expectation of something coming back," she tells the AP. "It's why that incident in Iran happened. There was no second thought about it."

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The experience always impresses two things on Canada’s former ambassador to Iran.

 NEW YORK—It hasn’t been unusual over the last 20 years, when Ken Taylor returns to his home in New York from abroad, for a U.S. customs inspector to look at his passport, glance up, back at the photo and name, and say, “Hey, I studied you in high school!”

 That’s why Taylor is, understandably, a little touchy about the new Ben Affleck movie Argo to be released this week, in which Canada’s role all but vanishes while the CIA and one of its agents, played by Affleck, become stars of the show.

 It’s a place well earned by Taylor and his colleagues at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran — who put their lives on the line to harbour the half-dozen diplomats who slipped away from the U.S. Embassy as it was besieged by Iranian militants who took more than 60 Americans hostage and held most under harsh conditions for more than a year.

 One, even for celebrated international heroes, time passes. And two, that for his role in rescuing six U.S. diplomats in 1980 after the tumultuous days of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution, he has a place in history.

 “You cannot go around New York without seeing this. It’s on buses. It’s on a three-storey building in Soho. They’re spending a lot of money. They’re banking on an Academy Award.”

 And the movie, he said, is a big deal.

 For them, he said, the movie will probably “be the story.”

 But, as he told the Star at his Upper East Side apartment building in Manhattan, he also knows that for those under age 45 or so, the hostage-takings of 1979, and Canada’s courageous support for its neighbour, “is a part of history that they may only vaguely remember.”

 Taylor, still fit, fashionable and unflappable at 77, understands full well that Argo is Hollywood, not history.

 “The movie’s fun, it’s thrilling, it’s pertinent, it’s timely,” he said. “But look, Canada was not merely standing around watching events take place. The CIA was a junior partner.”

 That’s why Taylor is happy — and he’s still sufficiently famous to be getting media calls from all over the world — to politely “offer some interpretation of what went on in reality, rather than in Hollywood play time.”

 Not only was that analysis demonstrably true, the period was hardly one of glory for U.S. intelligence and military operations. The CIA was blind to rising threats to the Shah’s regime in Iran. And the so-called “Eagle Claw” rescue operation aimed at freeing the remaining hostages in April 1980 ended in flaming fiasco in the Iranian desert with the death of eight American commandos.

 In buffing up America’s “tarnished” image from the time, Argo tries to do what the CIA agent, Antonio Mendez, accused Iranian extremists of in his book on which the movie is based.

 “Much like actors in a Hollywood movie,” he wrote, “the militants saw themselves as the heroes and expected the whole world to see them as such.”

 On Nov. 4, 1979, outraged that the despised Shah had been admitted to the United States for medical care after fleeing the country, thousands of Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

 Sixty hostages were seized in the embassy. Three were confined at the Foreign Ministry. (Thirteen women and black hostages were later released on the grounds they represented the oppressed of America.)

 But a handful had slipped away, out of the U.S. consular office into the rainy streets of Tehran. Most were quickly captured by the Revolutionary Guard. Six weren’t.

 Of these, five were taken in a few days later as soon as they called Canadian consular official John Sheardown for help. A sixth, who hid out for weeks with a Swedish diplomat, joined his countrymen a few weeks later.

 The Canadian response was as unhesitating as it was high-risk.

 For three months, it was Taylor and his colleagues who housed the six Americans, who moved them around Tehran when the need arose, who tried to boost spirits, who visited and smuggled the odd banned libation to the three Americans confined to the Foreign Ministry, who fought for the release of all the hostages, and — in Taylor’s case — collected intelligence for Washington on possible rescue operations.

 Canadians shared the emotional ups and downs of the Americans, their boredom, their anxiety, the constant simmering fear of a leak through the Iranian staff at their houses or discovery if someone was spotted through a window.

 Though long gone from the Canadian foreign service, Taylor retains the delightfully droll understatement of the diplomat.

 “What would have happened if one way or another it would have gone awry? . . . I may have had to stay around awhile” in Iran.

 Had his intelligence-gathering for Washington been discovered, “that would have been a difficult consequence, I think.”

 It’s not for nothing the movie is set mostly in Washington and Hollywood and only fleetingly in Tehran, Taylor notes. Neither Mendez nor any other Americans under the tormented administration of President Jimmy Carter had much of a clue what was going on in Iran.

 When Taylor heard a few years ago that Mendez had sold movie rights to his book (which, to be fair, is much more generous than the movie about Canada’s role), “I said, ‘Well, that’s going to be interesting.’

 “But how do they know what’s going on, because Tony Mendez was only there for a day and a half? The six diplomats were in (Canadian safekeeping) for three months, and they had no idea what was going on outside.”

 Some of Taylor’s friends tried to convey to the film-maker that there was “another side to this other than Tony Mendez’s book, since he was in Washington and Hollywood, he had no idea what was going on in Tehran.”

 Eventually, Taylor’s wife, Pat, did receive a call from Page Leong, the actress who plays her.

 “She had a long talk with Pat and Pat went over what happened,” Taylor laughs. “And then Page says, ‘Well, you know this is a thriller?’ What you’re saying isn’t necessarily going to be in the movie.”

 How right she was.

 When the movie was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, the former ambassador wasn’t invited, even though he was in Toronto at the time.

 Friends who saw the opening were outraged on Taylor’s behalf, however, at how much history had been sacrificed to thrill. And after the Star’s Martin Knelman reported on this, Taylor was deluged with international attention.

 Soon, Affleck phoned, Taylor recounts, and said, “ ‘You’ve got issues?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got issues.’ ”

 So Affleck invited Taylor and his wife to Los Angeles, screened the movie, and offered — “although it’s going to cost money” — to cut the postscript and let Taylor “write what you want.”

 The new postscript says: “The involvement of the CIA complemented efforts of the Canadian Embassy to free the six held in Tehran. To this day the story stands as an enduring model of international co-operation between governments.”

 Even that hardly does Canada justice.

 Although the short-lived federal government of Joe Clark was fully supportive and deeply involved, in Argo’s version Canada was not much more a factor than Iceland.

 Another Canadian hero who gets short shrift is John Sheardown, the first Canadian official the Americans approached for shelter.

 “Why didn’t you call me before?” he said. “What took you so long?”

 Sheardown, now in his late 80s and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and his wife, Zena, took in four of the Americans — at considerable risk to Zena who wasn’t a Canadian citizen and had no diplomatic immunity.

 “To make the movie work, I guess, they assumed that everybody was with Pat and me,” Taylor said. “And John and Zena did yeoman work.”

 For Mendez’s part, he didn’t even learn of the six hostages until weeks after their escape. The CIA agent had his idea for the Hollywood angle in January. Then he arranged a back story to portray them as Canadian film-makers, created some disguises and documents.

 “But for every moment in Washington,” Taylor recalls, “there was an equal moment in Ottawa.

 “All the documentation to authenticate the diplomats as Canadians, the business cards, credit cards, the passports, the academic credentials, everything came out of Canada.”

 Not only that, Canada had already devised “exit strategies” — which didn’t use a Hollywood angle Mendez had dreamed up — that Taylor believes “we could have pulled off.”

 “We thought the (Mendez) plan was OK,” he said. “But we didn’t think we really needed something that intricate.”

 The key was that the Americans were travelling as Canadians. Whether they were purported to be petroleum engineers, nutritionists, agronomists — instead of film-makers — probably didn’t much matter, he said.

 In Tehran, moreover, Mendez “was totally in our hands,” Taylor said. His involvement over his weekend in Tehran was “not much . . . just some visa stamps. Ottawa had provided everything else.”

 In fact, the CIA almost scuppered the plan by making passport notations that used the wrong Iranian calendar and would have essentially had the Americans leaving the country before they arrived.

 Canadian official Roger Lucy, who spoke Farsi, spotted the error. Otherwise, Taylor said, “that would have been game over.”

 On the departure date, Taylor arranged embassy cars to pick everyone up — Mendez from his hotel, the diplomats from the Canadian residences — in pre-dawn Tehran.

 He ensured the flight got off before leaving Iran himself forever with the last of the Canadian embassy staff.

 As for Argo’s car chase and Mendez/Affleck’s various on-screen heroics, “it makes a great movie,” said Taylor, who was played in an earlier movie on the Khomeini revolution by Gordon Pinsent and is this time portrayed by Victor Garber.

 If Argo has a useful message, he said, it is on the importance and need for diplomacy and the fact that “what happened 32 years ago could happen tomorrow.”

 For Taylor, his life changed utterly after his exploits in Tehran. He left the foreign service, spent four years as Canada’s consul-general in New York, and has since enjoyed a successful career in the private sector.

 “It became a different life entirely,” he said. But not so much that the past isn’t these days ringing his phone off the hook.

 Recently, he was called by the BBC World Service for Tehran to comment on the closure of the Canadian embassy in Iran and on Argo.

 They told him “they still remember you in Iran,” he said.

 And they wanted to know whether Canada had closed its embassy in Tehran to “coincide with the showing of the movie in Toronto.

 “I said, ‘Well, I doubt it.’ ”

 Whatever goes on in Hollywood, life goes on, and rather sweetly, for Ken Taylor, who will travel to Washington this week for a screening of Argo at the Canadian Embassy.

 The other morning, the phone rang once more in his 26th-floor apartment overlooking the East River.

 It was the BBC World Service calling back to inform him they owed him £40 for the interview.

 He told them it was very thoughtful, but not to bother. ||||| Please consider disabling it for our site, or supporting our work in one of these ways

 Ken Taylor, the Canadian diplomat who sheltered six Americans in Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis and clandestinely aided their flight from the country, died Thursday in New York City. He was 81. “As Canada’s ambassador to Iran during the Iranian Revolution, Taylor valiantly risked his own life by shielding a group of American diplomats from capture,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement. “Ken Taylor represented the very best that Canada’s foreign service has to offer.” Except for those three months in winter of 1979, Taylor’s public career evinced little of the drama that would characterize one of the most famous moments in Canadian diplomatic history. He worked in Canada’s industry ministry and specialized in foreign trade commissions before Pierre Trudeau elevated him to the diplomatic corps. An initial New York Times description of Taylor after the escape from Iran perfunctorily described him as a diplomat “whose career has been spent primarily in furthering his country’s commercial interests.”

 That changed on November 8, 1979, when John Sheardown, a Canadian consular official, telephoned Taylor and informed him that five Americans had escaped from the U.S. embassy in Tehran after it was stormed four days earlier, and that they were in hiding in Sheardown’s house. (Sheardown died in 2013.) Taylor moved two of them to his own residence, where they were joined by another American who had found temporary refuge among Swedish diplomats. In the tumult that followed the Iranian Revolution, the U.S. and Canadian governments feared what would happen if the six Americans and their Canadian protecters were discovered. Taylor and his remaining staff, in coordination with Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark and the U.S. State Department, orchestrated the six Americans’ escape from Iran. Every possible avenue of escape posed its own risks, as Taylor explained to The New York Times in 1981. At first, Canadian officials in Teheran considered driving the four men and two women to Tabriz, in the northeast, and over the border to Turkey. But Mr. Taylor said that Tabriz was “up in arms with local revolts and once they left our residences we would lose control.” Next, a dash for a Persian Gulf port and a friendly tanker was considered. But Teheran was lawless, he said, “to say nothing of the countryside.” Moreover, this move would have meant traveling through Khuzistan, the Arab-populated province that was in turmoil and later became the focus of the war with Iraq. “We couldn't say goodbye to our house guests with any degree of confidence on that route,” Mr. Taylor said. “So we decided to confront the Iranians head on,” he added, and fly out the six Americans directly from the Teheran airport. Taylor gave Canadian passports to the Americans so they could pass through customs, while the CIA forged exit visas and sent an agent, Tony Mendez, to aid their flight. As the Americans left, Taylor also evacuated the few remaining Canadian personnel and closed the embassy on January 28. The six Americans’ safety was originally kept secret by both governments for fear of retribution toward the hostages. ||||| By the 1970s, many Iranians were fed up with the Shah’s government. In protest, they turned to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a radical cleric whose revolutionary Islamist movement seemed to promise a break from the past and a turn toward greater autonomy for the Iranian people. In July 1979, the revolutionaries forced the Shah to disband his government and flee to Egypt. The Ayatollah installed a militant Islamist government in its place.

 The United States, fearful of stirring up hostilities in the Middle East, did not come to the defense of its old ally. (For one thing, President Carter, aware of the Shah’s terrible record in that department, was reluctant to defend him.) However, in October 1979 President Carter agreed to allow the exiled leader to enter the U.S. for treatment of an advanced malignant lymphoma. His decision was humanitarian, not political; nevertheless, as one American later noted, it was like throwing “a burning branch into a bucket of kerosene.�? Anti-American sentiment in Iran exploded.

 On November 4, just after the Shah arrived in New York, a group of pro-Ayatollah students smashed the gates and scaled the walls of the American embassy in Tehran. Once inside, they seized 66 hostages, mostly diplomats and embassy employees. After a short period of time, 13 of these hostages were released. (For the most part, these 13 were women, African-Americans and citizens of countries other than the U.S.–people who, Khomeini argued, were already subject to “the oppression of American society.�?) Some time later, a 14th hostage developed health problems and was likewise sent home. By midsummer 1980, 52 hostages remained in the embassy compound.

 Diplomatic maneuvers had no discernible effect on the Ayatollah’s anti-American stance; neither did economic sanctions such as the seizure of Iranian assets in the United States. Meanwhile, while the hostages were never seriously injured, they were subjected to a rich variety of demeaning and terrifying treatment. They were blindfolded and paraded in front of TV cameras and jeering crowds. They were not allowed to speak or read, and they were rarely permitted to change clothes. Throughout the crisis there was a frightening uncertainty about their fate: The hostages never knew whether they were going to be tortured, murdered or set free. ||||| The Canadian plan that allowed six American diplomats to escape the takeover of the American Embassy in Teheran was produced after six weeks of coded telex messages between Teheran, Ottawa and Washington.

 ''By mid-November I was convinced we were certainly going to have to look for an exit,'' said Kenneth D. Taylor, the Canadian Ambassador who gave the six sanctuary and who is now Consul General in New York. That conviction came to him 10 days afer the United States compound was seized.

 ''I didn't envisage that it would take 14 months before they were all free,'' Mr. Taylor said in his office yesterday. ''But it did seem to be an endless affair.''

 Mr. Taylor began planning the best exit route on the telex to the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa. That ministry, in turn, discussed the plans with the State Department. Two Escape Routes Ruled Out

 At first, Canadian officials in Teheran considered driving the four men and two women to Tabriz, in the northeast, and over the border to Turkey. But Mr. Taylor said that Tabriz was ''up in arms with local revolts and once they left our residences we would lose control.''

 Next, a dash for a Persian Gulf port and a friendly tanker was considered. But Teheran was lawless, he said, ''to say nothing of the countryside.'' Moreover, this move would have meant traveling through Khuzistan, the Arab-populated province that was in turmoil and later became the focus of the war with Iraq. ''We couldn't say goodbye to our house guests with any degree of confidence on that route,'' Mr. Taylor said.

 ''So we decided to confront the Iranians head on,'' he added, and fly out the six Americans directly from the Teheran airport. By early January the Canadian Cabinet had agreed to issue the Americans with Canadian passports. Mr. Taylor will not say who did it, but entry visas were then affixed to the documents. Consternation Over Visa

 When the passports arrived through the diplomatic pouch in Teheran, however, there was consternation at the embassy. One of Mr. Taylor's Persian-speaking aides, Roger Lucey, saw that the visa makers had followed the calendar used under the Shah and not the traditional Islamic calendar brought back by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The visas would have had the Americans leaving before they had arrived.

 ''We might have argued it out with immigration,'' Mr. Taylor said, ''and told them, 'Don't blame us for your administrative foulup.' '' Instead, he said, ''we fixed it up,'' but he will not say how this was accomplished. By Jan. 28, with the embassy staff gradually reduced to half a dozen, the six Americans were ready to go. Mr. Taylor posted two aides at the Teheran airport to keep an eye on things and to telephone him at his residence.

 He was worried. ''After three months with us,'' he said, ''the six were healthy but their degree of resiliency, their ability to respond to the unexpected was limited.''

 The Americans passed through five checkpoints without difficulty. ''There was a bad moment at the next,'' Mr. Taylor said. The official there insisted on taking the passports to a private room and reading them carefully. He found nothing, however, and the Americans boarded a Swissair flight to Zurich.

 Another bad moment came when the plane was held up because of ''mechanical difficulties.'' ''We were prepared for that,'' Mr. Taylor said. All six had tickets on other planes, and a four-bedroom house had been rented in case the Americans had to return to Teheran.

 Twenty minutes later, however, the ''technical difficulty'' was fixed and the plane took off for Zurich. |||||


An airplane is seen on the tarmac at the United Parcel Service (UPS) Regional Air Hub in Rockford, Illinois, December 9, 2014. Picture taken December 9, 2014.

 United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) said on Tuesday it will start applying surcharges for residential packages this year after its costs soared during the recent disappointing holiday season.

 UPS also reported that fourth-quarter profit fell from a year ago but forecast earnings within the range of estimates.

 UPS, the world's largest package delivery company, warned in late January it would report a fourth-quarter profit below its forecast and market expectations.

 The Atlanta-based company had mobilized more workers and equipment for an anticipated surge in holiday packages, but the extra business failed to materialize. The additional costs primarily affected the company's domestic ground package unit.

 As a result of the poor quarter, UPS Chief Executive Officer David Abney said on a conference call that the company would apply surcharges for residential packages in particular. The additional charges will be applied over several years as contracts with major customers are renegotiated.

 "These pricing strategies will be designed to ensure we are properly compensated for the value we provide," Abney said.

 UPS went through a second consecutive challenging peak season. In 2013, the company was caught off-guard by a late rush of online packages that left an estimated 1.3 million parcels undelivered on Christmas Eve.

 UPS spent $500 million last year on network improvements and worked closely with retail customers to prevent a repeat of the miscues in late 2013, but the rising popularity of e-commerce made forecasting volumes a moving target.

 UPS forecast full-year 2015 earnings in a range of $5.05 to $5.30 per share. Analysts estimated $5.15 a share this year.

 UPS reported fourth-quarter net profit of $1.15 billion, down nearly 2 percent from $1.17 billion a year earlier.

 Earnings per share came in at $1.25, unchanged from a year earlier and matching the expectations of analysts.

 Quarterly revenue rose 6 percent to $15.9 billion from $15 billion a year earlier, including a 7.5 percent increase in revenue from its domestic ground package business.

 Operating expenses jumped more than 20 percent to $9.2 billion from $7.65 billion, which caused a more than 60 percent drop in operating profit at the domestic ground package unit.

 On a GAAP basis, the company reported adjusted earnings per share of 49 cents due to pension-related charges.

 In early trading, UPS shares were up 1.2 percent at $101.47.

 (Reporting by Nick Carey in Detroit; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jeffrey Benkoe) ||||| United Parcel Service Inc. said Tuesday that its once highly profitable peak season will continue to be a drag on fourth-quarter and full-year earnings even though it plans to boost some prices to try to offset the added expenses of keeping up with increased holiday loads.

 The company averaged more than 30 million deliveries a day during the latest holiday season, executives told analysts in their fourth-quarter earnings call. That was about six million more a day than in the same period in 2012 and 75% more than on its average... ||||| UPS Hates Coming To Your House, To Begin Tacking On Surcharges For Residential Delivery

 Last week, in advance of its quarterly earnings report, UPS admitted that it over-spent on holiday shipping in 2014 and that it wouldn’t make that mistake again . Today, with those quarterly earnings announced, the company announced how it’s going to make back some of its money — by tacking on surcharges for residential deliveries.

 The surcharges aren’t something that you’ll see immediately applied everywhere, but will be rolled out as UPS renegotiates its shipping contracts with its largest customers, reports Reuters.

 “These pricing strategies will be designed to ensure we are properly compensated for the value we provide,” explained UPS CEO David Abney.

 So why put a surcharge on residential deliveries?

 According to UPS, because you’re usually only bringing a single package to a home while many businesses receive multiple parcels each day, these home deliveries cost three times what it costs to make deliveries to businesses.

 As companies renegotiate their deals with UPS, expect to see fewer free shipping offers or for e-tailers to increase their minimum orders for free shipping.

 You should also expect to see a push toward centralized delivery locations, like the Amazon Locker depots that are set up in retail locations like 7-Eleven stores. These allow shippers to bring multiple parcels to one spot where customers can pick them up at their leisure. Don’t be shocked to see Amazon try to make these more attractive, especially for Prime subscribers, and other companies attempt to replicate this model.

 After a dismal 2013, in which weather and consumers’ growing love of e-commerce conspired to leave more than a million parcels undelivered by Christmas day, UPS went all-in for 2014, sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into improvements and hiring around 100,000 seasonal workers. And while it all meant that packages were delivered in time for the holidays, there wasn’t enough business for UPS to ultimately recoup those expenses.

 “UPS customers were delighted with the high quality service we delivered during the holiday season,” said Abney in a statement. “However, the financial results were below our expectations.” |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– It wasn't a very happy holiday season for UPS—for the second year in a row. In 2013, the company landed in hot water over an unexpected surge in gifts needing delivery, resulting in some 1.3 million packages that weren't delivered by Christmas Eve. This year, things went the opposite direction: The company hired an extra 100,000 seasonal workers, Consumerist notes, but the uptick in business didn't quite pan out as hoped. The result of all this is new costs for consumers. UPS plans a surcharge for residential deliveries, set to take effect over the course of a few years, Reuters reports. "We absolutely will charge our customers more for the extra costs that we had in peak," CEO David Abney tells the Wall Street Journal. Home deliveries can place a special burden on the company, it says, because homes typically get just one package at a time, whereas a business might receive a pile. Customers may end up seeing higher shipping costs at online retailers, as well as more emphasis on pickup locations like Amazon Lockers in retail stores, Consumerist notes.


A wild turkey is released from a plane flying over Crooked Creek during the 72nd annual Turkey Trot in Yellville, Arkansas, Oct. 14, 2017. An investigation by the FAA into the event released their report in November 2017 saying they found no violations.

 Domestic turkeys can't fly — but that hasn't stopped people in a small town in Arkansas from dropping the birds from small planes at an annual festival event that has drawn opposition from animal-rights activists.

 While turkeys can't flap their wings and soar as many other birds can, they can slow their falls somewhat, Michael Habib, a professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California, told Live Science. "A lot of flightless birds have wings that can produce lift; it's just not enough to fly," said Habib, who studies the evolution of flight in birds.

 The festival is the annual Turkey Trot in Yellville. For the past 50 years during the festival, a local pilot has flown a plane and dropped domestic turkeys from a height of about 500 feet (150 meters) over local fields, according to the Huffington Post. [10 Weird Facts About Turkeys]

 The problem for the domestic turkeys is that, while they can slow a fall, they can't do it forever — it depends on how long they can keep flapping their wings. Habib noted that turkeys are very powerful for short periods, just like human sprinters. However, they can't keep up that activity for long. So, during the first part of the descent at least, the turkeys likely flap their wings wildly, and they "fly" similarly to their wild cousins.

 According to the "Ask the Van" site at the University of Illinois physics department, when birds fly, their wings push air down and generate thrust, pushing the bird up. And as the wings come up, they bend and push less air because they aren't spread out anymore. That's what allows the average flying bird to keep itself up and, just as importantly, generate some forward motion. The forward motion creates lift, because as air flows over the bird, the layer of air above it is less dense than that below, and the bird rides on the more-dense layer. This is also why some bird species can soar, like eagles and vultures. Given enough forward thrust, a bird can glide and "coast" along, because the shape of the wing creates an airflow that is less dense on top of it, just like an airplane's wing. The birds that do this really well like albatrosses have long wingspans and small bodies.

 But domestic turkeys are so heavy relative to their wing area that they can't really do either powered flight or gliding well, Habib said. The combined upward thrust and lift simply isn't enough to overcome the bird's weight. [Amazing Physics: How 245 People Jumped Off a Bridge at Once — and Survived]

 This is why, as reported by Arkansas Online, out of a dozen turkeys dropped at the 2016 event, two died on impact. The turkeys can't really glide well, given their shape and weight, Habib said. Even though turkey wings can create a little bit of lift, they don't have the optimal shape to do so, and their bodies are too heavy for it to work, according to Habib.

 Other birds have even less ability to slow falls in this way. "Ostriches wouldn't have any more success than you or I would," he said. That's because their wings are simply too small relative to their body size to generate any significant lift at all, he said.

 Domestic turkeys can't fly, but wild turkeys can, Habib said. Like other birds in their order, called Galliformes, wild turkeys just can't fly for long — just long enough to get up into a tree or out of danger.

 Some young birds in this order — which includes chickens, geese and peacocks — sometimes use their wings to help them climb up trees or inclines. When they need to get down, they use their wings to break their fall. This happens a lot with a bird called the chukar, which is native to Eurasia. The altitude they can reach — limited by trees and small cliffs — is nowhere near the altitude the turkeys are dropped from at the Turkey Trot.

 This flight ability (or inability) can be seen in the "color" of the birds' meat. Habib noted that the metabolism of the muscles in their legs and wings are one of the reasons the meat is light or dark. Dark meat — in the legs, for example — has muscle that contains myoglobin, an oxygen-carrying molecule that allows them to work efficiently for longer periods. When it cooks, it becomes darker.

 White meat is "fast-twitch" muscle that doesn't use as much oxygen because it isn't designed to work for long, but it's powerful. The breast (which powers the wings) is fast-twitch muscle, and it's why the breast meat is lighter in color. Myoglobin is why long-distance flyers, like ducks, have dark meat in the breast that looks more like steak. That powerful, fast-twitch muscle explains why a relatively heavy bird — the wild turkey — can fly but tires quickly, Habib said.

 Flightlessness can be bred in birds; that's what happened with domestic turkeys and chickens. But it can also appear in birds that live without any pressure from predators because there's no reason to have escapist skills. The kakapo (in the parrot family) and the dodo, which was related to pigeons, became flightless in that way. Habib noted that, in both cases, there were few ground-level predators on these animals' island habitats. Kakapos are native to New Zealand and were driven to near extinction when humans introduced rats and cats to the area. Dodos, which lived on Mauritius, are thought to have been killed by humans for food, but they also became victims of the rats that humans introduced. The last dodos died in the 17th century.

 But regardless of turkeys' abilities, it's not good for them to be dropped. "It's really unethical," Habib said.

 Originally published on Live Science. ||||| Heavy-metal rocker and animal-welfare activist Tommy Lee has called for an end to the chuckwagon races in Calgary, Alberta, and the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

 This story is only available from the Arkansas Online archives. Stories can be purchased individually for $2.95. Click here to search for this story in the archives. ||||| The Federal Aviation Administration has found no violations with an infamous Arkansas event that involves dropping live turkeys from a plane ― but that may be because no one ever thought they’d need a rule about that.

 “FAA regulations do not specifically prohibit dropping live animals from aircraft, possibly because the authors of the regulation never anticipated that an explicit prohibition would be necessary,” an FAA spokesman told HuffPost in an email. “This does not mean we endorse the practice.”

 The Associated Press and WREG reported last month that the FAA would be looking into possible laws or regulations broken during the annual Turkey Trot festival in Yellville, Arkansas. This year’s Turkey Trot took place on Oct. 14.

 Though the fall festival includes many events, it’s best known for the “turkey drop,” in which live turkeys are dropped from a plane 500 feet in the air. Festivalgoers chase and catch the surviving turkeys. Last year, a dozen turkeys were dropped and two died on impact, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. ||||| Turkeys dropped from Arkansas plane find refuge in Fairfield

 Photo: Genevieve Reilly / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Image 1 of 5 Joan Poster plants a kiss on Ringo, one of four turkeys rescued from an Arkansas turkey drop. Susie Coston, from Farm Sanctuary, delivered two of those turkeys to Poster’s farm in Fairfield on Wednesday. Joan Poster plants a kiss on Ringo, one of four turkeys rescued from an Arkansas turkey drop. Susie Coston, from Farm Sanctuary, delivered two of those turkeys to Poster’s farm in Fairfield on Wednesday. Photo: Genevieve Reilly / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 2 of 5 Ringo, a rescued turkey, checks out his new digs at the Poster family's farm in Southport. Fairfield,CT. 11/22/17 Ringo, a rescued turkey, checks out his new digs at the Poster family's farm in Southport. Fairfield,CT. 11/22/17 Photo: Genevieve Reilly / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 3 of 5 John, in front, and Ringo, are rescue turkeys who made themselves at home Wednesday at the Southport farm owned by veterinarian Joan Poster. The turkeys were part of a turkey drop in Arkansas. Fairfield,CT. 11/22/17 less John, in front, and Ringo, are rescue turkeys who made themselves at home Wednesday at the Southport farm owned by veterinarian Joan Poster. The turkeys were part of a turkey drop in Arkansas. Fairfield,CT. ... more Photo: Genevieve Reilly / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 4 of 5 Ringo, a rescued turkey, starts to strut his stuff at a Southport farm Wednesday. Fairfield,CT. 11/22/17 Ringo, a rescued turkey, starts to strut his stuff at a Southport farm Wednesday. Fairfield,CT. 11/22/17 Photo: Genevieve Reilly / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 5 of 5 Ringo, left, and John, two turkeys rescued after an Arkansas turkey drop, make themselves at home at a Southport farm. Fairfield,CT. 11/24/17 Ringo, left, and John, two turkeys rescued after an Arkansas turkey drop, make themselves at home at a Southport farm. Fairfield,CT. 11/24/17 Photo: Genevieve Reilly / Hearst Connecticut Media Turkeys dropped from Arkansas plane find refuge in Fairfield 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

 FAIRFIELD — Two turkeys arrived Wednesday afternoon at Joan Poster’s home, but they weren’t there to grace Poster’s Thanksgiving table.

 Poster, a well-known local veterinarian, is a vegetarian, and the two turkeys — John and Ringo — were part of a quartet of injured birds rescued from Yellville, Arkansas’ annual and infamous turkey drop.

 The turkeys were injured during the October event and found bleeding on the pavement. Some of the turkeys are dropped from a plane, while others were tossed from the top of the Marion County Courthouse.

 John, Ringo, George and Paul were rescued by Farm Sanctuary and brought to the group’s shelter in upstate New York. George and Paul are still recovering from their injuries.

 Poster said she had never heard of the turkey drop. “It’s a crazy world,” she said, as John and Ringo got acclimated to their new home at Poster’s Southport farm. “I’ve always had turkeys. I love them.”

 There are about 100 animals at the 17-acre farm, Poster said, if you count the chickens. There are 30 rabbits, goats, pigs, Clydesdale horses, a cow, some roosters and a peacock. And now, two turkeys.

 The two were delivered by Susie Coston, from Farm Sanctuary. She said PETA had a group of activists on the ground during the turkey drop and were able to convince the people who captured them to turn them over.

 “They look very happy,” Coston said. “These two weren’t as badly injured.”

 Ringo, she said, was a Black Special, while John appeared to be a Narragansett, both of which are heritage breeds, and not wild turkeys. Heritage breeds, she said, are slower to grow, and don’t get as big as the industrial broad-breasted turkeys most are familiar with.

 Poster said turkeys live about five or six years, usually getting too big for their legs.

 This is not the first time Poster has offered shelter to rescued turkeys. In 2010, she welcomed Mordecai and Fiona, two Bourbon reds, who came from an organic farm. The Farm Sanctuary each year runs an Adopt a Turkey program, and its Turkey Express brings the rescued birds to their new homes. Poster has been adopting rescued turkeys since 1996.

 While wild turkeys can fly, it is usually just from tree to tree. Domesticated turkeys can only fly short distances.

 The turkey drop is held the same weekend as the Yellville Chamber of Commerce’s Turkey Trot, a festival to highlight the state’s spot as one of the country’s top turkey-producing states. Activities include a road race, music, dancing and a pageant. According to an Associated Press story, the chamber stopped the turkey drop in 1989, but the tradition was continued by local pilots. Dropping the turkeys from a plane is apparently not in violation of FAA rules, so long as they don’t cause damage to people or property.

 Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Image 1 of 8 | 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot Turkey toss starts as first bird is tossed from low flying plane in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Turkey toss starts as first bird is tossed from low flying plane in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 2 of 8 | 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot Children watching a boy climbing a tree to grab turkey which landed in branches in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Children watching a boy climbing a tree to grab turkey which landed in branches in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 3 of 8 | 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot Up the elm tree after fast climb a farmer snares a bird that had found itself a handy roost in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Up the elm tree after fast climb a farmer snares a bird that had found itself a handy roost in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 4 of 8 Miss drumstick contest, putting best drumstick forward Miss Arkansas Auto Auction Miss Gold Nugget Feed, 21 more vie for title given solely on leg appeal in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Miss drumstick contest, putting best drumstick forward Miss Arkansas Auto Auction Miss Gold Nugget Feed, 21 more vie for title given solely on leg appeal in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 5 of 8 | 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot Peggy Mears winner of the Miss Drumstick contest in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Peggy Mears winner of the Miss Drumstick contest in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 6 of 8 | 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot The Turkey calling Contest in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. The Turkey calling Contest in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 7 of 8 | 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot A boy crossing the square toting a turkey he caught in the kids' scramble in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. A boy crossing the square toting a turkey he caught in the kids' scramble in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Image 8 of 8 | 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot Winning legs of Peggy Mears, of the Miss Drumstick contest are shown from behind a cutout in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Winning legs of Peggy Mears, of the Miss Drumstick contest are shown from behind a cutout in Yellville, Arkansas in 1952. Photo: Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images 1953 Yellville, Arkansas Turkey Trot 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

 A story on the Baxter Bulletin advancing the Turkey Trot said, “The weather forecast in Yellville this weekend is sunny with a chance of falling turkeys.” The Bulletin wrote that the turkeys, “which usually flutter to the ground are chased down and claimed by festival attendees.”

 It has been said that the famous “WKRP in Cincinnati” Thanksgiving episode in 1978, where live turkeys were dropped from a helicopter, may have been inspired in part by the turkey drop in Yellville. |||||

Write a summary.

– No matter how busy the holiday travel season, you're pretty much guaranteed to have a smoother flight than the unfortunate turkeys involved in Arkansas' Turkey Trot. The annual October festival in Yellville sees turkeys hurled from buildings and a plane flying 500 feet above the ground. Disturbed? You're not alone. Tommy Lee is among those to bash the "sick" tradition, reports Arkansas Online. Live Science explains the uproar: Domestic turkeys are bred for flightlessness, their bodies too heavy for their wings to get them off the ground. While their wings can slow a descent, there's no guarantee domestic turkeys will survive falls from great heights. The same is true of wild turkeys, which can only fly short distances. Indeed, two turkeys dropped from a plane last year died on impact. At least four turkeys dropped this year were found injured and bleeding, though they've since found refuge at a New York shelter, where they were named John, Ringo, George, and Paul, per the Fairfield Citizen. The town of Yellville technically stopped throwing turkeys in 1989—continuing the Turkey Trot festival started in 1946 with a dance, race, and parade—but local pilots continue to throw turkeys, per the Citizen and Baxter Bulletin. Despite animal activists' appeals, the FAA says it doesn't have the authority to intervene. "FAA regulations do not specifically prohibit dropping live animals from aircraft, possibly because the authors of the regulation never anticipated that an explicit prohibition would be necessary," a rep tells the Huffington Post, adding, "This does not mean we endorse the practice."


Article:
NEW PRAGUE, Minn. (WCCO) — A driver who was texting when she hit and killed a 79-year-old New Prague man will spend four days in jail after a judge ordered her sentence on Monday.

 A Le Sueur County judge sentenced 48-year-old Susan Ann Russo for the accident that happened nearly one year ago on Oct. 28, 2015.

 The victim, Joe Tikalsky, was a school bus driver who was walking out to his mailbox outside of his home when he was hit.

 The Tikalsky family is choosing action over anger.

 Emma Jean Tikalsky, who was married to Joe Tikalsky for 54 years, said Monday was the first time she and her children met with the driver who hit her husband.

 “We cried together and they begged us, my daughter and myself, ‘Would you please find it in your heart to forgive us?'” Emma Jean Tikalsky said. “I knew that was the godlike thing I would be expected to do and we did. We said yes.”

 The Tikalskys hope other drivers will realize it only takes a split second to take a life and change the lives of so many more people.

 “Four days or 400 days, it really doesn’t matter,” Emma Jean Tikalsky said. “I know she didn’t mean to kill anyone.”

 Joe Tikalsky drove a New Prague school bus for almost 50 years.

 He was wearing his reflective jacket from work when he walked out to get the paper and was hit near his mailbox.

 “It’s even more scary knowing that we have this society that is, I’ll say, addicted to their phone,” Joe Tikalsky’s son Greg said. “His kids were his pride and joy and his grandkids were his pride and joy.”

 The family is working with lawmakers to lobby for more strict and defined distracted driving laws and consequences in Minnesota.

 It is illegal right now to read or send texts while driving, even when stopped at a light.

 “We care about people living and something must be done,” Emma Jean Tikalsky said.

 Russo will spend two days in jail on the anniversary of Joe Tikalsky’s death this year and two days next year on the anniversary as part of the agreement.

 Russo will also pay a $3,000 fine that the family wants used to raise awareness against distracted driving. ||||| Calling for wholesale change in societal views on the public health epidemic of distracted driving, a Le Sueur County judge sentenced a New Prague woman to community service, probation and four days in jail in the death a year ago of a 79-year-old school bus driver.

 "You are a gifted teacher, use that gift," Judge Mark Vandelist said to Susan Ann Russo, seated at the defendant's table in a quiet courtroom filled with a couple dozen friends and family members of both the late Joseph Tikalsky and Russo.

 The judge encouraged Russo because he hoped she would become a force for change after the "absolute tragic consequence" of her distracted driving — likely while texting.

 Russo, 48, struck and killed Tikalsky on Oct. 28 as he collected his morning newspaper from a box on the road in front of his home. Tikalsky was wearing a reflective jacket at the time and was on break from his work as a school bus driver, a job he didn't need but continued because he loved being with kids.

 Amid teary statements from Tikalsky's widow, a son and two granddaughters — as well as from Russo herself — about the tragic crash, there was a call for help with distracted driving laws, especially pertaining to electronic devices.

 Tikalsky's youngest son. Greg, told the court he's begun lobbying for tougher laws, but to no avail. "We have to view distracted driving as we view drunk driving," he said, adding that the latter was once more socially accepted than it is now.

 Susan Ann Russo

 While Minnesota law bans text messaging for all drivers, felony convictions for texting drivers who injure or kill others have been uncommon.

 Emma Jean Tikalsky said of her late husband, "I would wish the way he died might be an example to other drivers to forgo electronics and concentrate on driving."

 Tikalsky's family spoke of a grandfather who never missed a sporting event or confirmation and taught the next generation how to make sauerkraut.

 From the defendant's table, Russo listened quietly. When it came her turn to speak, she tearfully read a letter she had written to Tikalsky, starting with, "Dear Joe." She said her heart aches for him and his family every day and that she would trade places with him "in a heartbeat" if she could.

 "I'm struggling to know how to move on," she said. "It is very difficult to comprehend what I did and make sense of it all."

 Russo said the Tikalsky family will forever be in her thoughts, heart and prayers. "I will spend my entire life trying to make up for my mistake," she said.

 Vandelist then imposed a sentence that had been agreed upon as part of a plea deal. Russo must complete 40 hours of community service with Minnesotans for Safe Driving within the next year, but Vandelist said he hopes she continues beyond the required hours to try to end a growing problem.

 "I would bet that everyone in this courtroom has looked away from the road while driving," Vandelist said. No one shook their head in disagreement.

 The case underscored how difficult prosecuting distracted driving incidents can be. Reading or sending texts while behind the wheel, even when stopped at a light, is illegal in Minnesota.

 Russo told officers at the scene of the crash that she was reading a text before the crash and preparing to send one. But after she entered her plea in August, a forensic investigation found no activity or texts on her phone.

 Based on the forensics results, she attempted Monday to withdraw her plea. Vandelist denied that motion, saying regardless of whether she was texting, she should have seen Tikalsky.

 Russo will spend four days in the county jail divided in two stints coinciding with the anniversary of Tikalsky's death. She serves her first two days beginning Oct. 28 and the next on the same date in 2017.

 Vandelist put Russo on probation for two years, barring her from having active electronic devices in her vehicle or using drugs or alcohol. She also must pay a $3,000 fine that can be used for a billboard warning against distracted driving.

 In a quiet hallway after court ended, Emma Jean Tikalsky and her daughter Mary Jo Dorman approached Russo and hugged her. Tikalsky said it was a moment of forgiveness she had long prayed for.

 Added Dorman, "I wanted her to see that we're moving on, and she should, too."

 Twitter: @rochelleolson ||||| 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. |||||Summary:

– A Minnesota woman who struck and killed a man while allegedly texting and driving will spend just four days in jail over two years. As part of a plea deal, Le Sueur County Judge Mark Vandelist on Monday sentenced Susan Ann Russo to four days behind bars, 40 hours of community service with Minnesotans for Safe Driving, and two years of probation for reckless driving, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Russo, 48—who killed school bus driver Joseph Tikalsky, 79, as he was getting his morning paper on the road outside his home on Oct. 28, 2015—must also pay a $3,000 fine to be used to erect a billboard warning about distracted driving. She'll spend two days in jail beginning on the anniversary of Tikalsky's death, and again on the same date in 2017. Russo initially told officers she was reading a text and about to respond before the crash and pleaded guilty to reckless driving and misuse of a wireless communication device before an investigation found no activity on her phone at the time. Vandelist then threw out the misuse of a wireless device charge, per Le Center Leader. However, he said Russo should have seen Tikalsky—who was wearing a reflective jacket—regardless. "You are a gifted teacher, use that gift," Vandelist told Russo on Monday, advising her to educate others on the dangers of distracted driving. Russo said she "will spend my entire life trying to make up for my mistake." "Four days or 400 days, it really doesn't matter," adds Tikalsky's widow, per CBS Minnesota. "I know she didn't mean to kill anyone." (Texting is the worst kind of distraction.)


– Rihanna's derriere isn't as ample as it once was, and the singer doesn't like that fact. "I'm a size 0—and not happy about it!" she tells Us Weekly. "I went way too far. I prefer myself a bit chunkier. I want my old butt back!" The 24-year-old lays the blame on her crazy schedule, which apparently has her losing out on sleep ... and landed her in the hospital post-Met Ball. "It's harsh on your body!" she says of her jam-packed life. And her run-yourself-ragged approach has many worried she's falling apart. Chris Brown and Drake apparently don't mind the size of Rihanna's booty; click for the latest on their reported bar brawl over the singer.

Expand this summary.

Chris Brown Talks to Cops Lawyer Goes After Drake

 EXCLUSIVE

 has spoken with New York Police Dept. detectives about the bar fight that left a gash in his chin ... and law enforcement sources tell us his lawyer has given the NYPD "physical evidence" which allegedly showswas involved in the melee.We're told Chris' lawyer, Mark Geragos, went to the NYPD late Thursday to present evidence showing that Drake and Meek Mill were the aggressors, but earlier in the day Chris spoke with Detectives at an undisclosed location in NYC. Cops tell us Chris is not currently a suspect but rather "a witness and a victim." We're also told Drake is not currently a suspect.On the other side, we're told Drake has been "cooperating" with authorities, but we do not know if he has spoken to cops -- it appears his representatives have had conversations with detectives.Sources tell us ... the bad guy here may be someone in Chris' camp, who was inciting Drake and his people all night.As we previously reported both Chris and Drake were trash talking each other before the fight, flipping each other off and what not. ||||| Actress/Singer Rihanna attends the Los Angeles premiere of "Battleship" at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on May 10, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. Credit: Kevork Djansezian/WireImage.com

 Rihanna is running herself ragged.

 The unattached, "Where Have You Been" singer, 24, is at work on her seventh CD -- and trying to squeeze in some more zzz's! Recently, she opened up to Us Weekly about her jam-packed calendar -- and the effect it's having on that famous beach bod.

 PHOTOS: Rihanna's sexy bikini bod

 Recently, the pop diva made the leap from the recording studio to the big screen with her star turn in Battleship. "I want to do two more [movies] before touring again next year," Rihanna gushed to Us of her filming experience, even though, "My schedule is crazy!"

 So crazy, in fact, that the Barbados-born beauty was hospitalized for fatigue following her appearance at the Met Ball last month, where she stunned in a black, reptile-inspired Tom Ford gown.

 "I got no sleep [beforehand]," Rihanna explained. "It's harsh on your body!"

 PHOTOS: Rihanna, then and now!

 Her hospitalization -- and her shrinking bod -- have some fans fretting that she's dealing with something more serious, though Rihanna assures Us her nonstop schedule is the only thing to blame.

 "I'm a size 0 -- and not happy about it!" she says. "I went way too far. I prefer myself a bit chunkier. I want my old butt back!" |||||


Article:
Peter Hamby is a national political reporter at CNN and the author of the recent Joan Shorenstein Center report “Did Twitter Kill the Boys on the Bus? Searching for a Better Way to Cover a Campaign.”

 By now, everyone knows that Mitt Romney’s inner circle was righteously peeved at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for spending the final days of the 2012 presidential race arm-in-arm with President Obama as they toured the Jersey coastline after its thrashing by Hurricane Sandy. The buddy-buddy act boxed Romney out of national media coverage for days while lending the president some bipartisan street cred.

 But it wasn’t just the storm. Christie had rankled Romney’s team throughout the campaign: He held back his endorsement as long as possible, flirted with big-shot GOP donors who begged him to jump into the race and used his prime-time address at the Republican National Convention to puff up his Garden State record — without mentioning Romney once.

 For Romney’s aides, dealing with Christie’s overbearing team was about as pleasurable as a traffic jam on the New Jersey Turnpike. For Christie’s staff in Trenton, the feeling toward the Romney machine was pretty much mutual.

 Many months after Romney’s loss, that toxic relationship is revealed in page-turning detail in “Double Down,” a chronicle of last year’s grind-it-out election by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. The authors deploy the conversation-driving formula that propelled their previous book, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,” to bestseller status and a movie deal with HBO. (The same network has already optioned the rights to “Double Down.”) The duo’s M.O. — translating insider politics for mass-market readers with behind-the-scenes reporting and Gonzo flair — is custom-built for today’s news cycle, in which scoops explode on Twitter and oblige the rest of the political media to chase, confirm, refute, scrutinize, analyze to death. The digital blast radius for “Double Down” is infinite.

 “Double Down: Game Change 2012” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (Penguin Press). (Penguin Press)

 And it will hit Christie first. Halperin and Heilemann make abundant use of a vice-presidential vetting file dropped into their hands by someone in Romney’s orbit to illuminate secrets about the governor. Delivering the documents to the authors was a stunning breach of political decorum that can only be read as a giant middle finger at Christie and his aides.

 According to the authors, Romney and his team were shaken by what they discovered about Christie during “Project Goldfish,” as the hush-hush veep search process was known. His “disturbing” research file is littered with “garish controversies,” the authors write: a Justice Department investigation into his free-spending ways as U.S. attorney, his habit of steering government contracts to friends and political allies, a defamation lawsuit that emerged during a 1994 run for local office, a politically problematic lobbying career that included work on behalf of a financial firm that employed Bernie Madoff. And that’s not to mention the Romney team’s anxiety about the governor’s girth.

 For Christie, who is coasting to reelection on Tuesday and already laying behind-the-scenes groundwork for a 2016 presidential bid, the book’s revelations are a Drudge-ready public relations nightmare that will send his advisers scrambling to explain awkward aspects of his record and his personal life just as he is stepping onto the national stage.

 For Halperin and Heilemann (and their publisher), this means one thing: mission accomplished.

 Coming off the history-making spectacle of the 2008 race, the borderline nihilistic presidential campaign of 2012 presents a challenge to authors seeking to spin a compelling tale. That may explain why the pair devotes considerable attention to the Republican primary contest, a more topsy-turvy drama than the trench warfare between Obama and Romney.

 The book lacks the made-for-Hollywood scenes of “Game Change”: Elizabeth Edwards ripping off her shirt to reveal her mastectomy scars in an emotional tarmac confrontation with her cheating husband, or anything Palin-related. But there’s still click-bait aplenty: Obama meditating on drone strikes and telling his aides that he’s “really good at killing people”; Christie’s raging temper; Romney adviser Stuart Stevens vomiting backstage after Clint Eastwood’s performance art in Tampa; Romney’s fascination with fat people, including his habit of ribbing male campaign staffers about dating overweight women; George W. Bush calling Rick Perry, his gubernatorial successor in Texas, “a chicken-[expletive] guy”; Obama’s team secretly polling and focus-grouping the notion of replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Democratic ticket; and so on. It’s a book that will launch a thousand listicles.

 Such goodies were mined over three years from deep-background interviews with the candidates, their aides and the small galaxy of Washington fixers who surrounded the campaigns. The authors explain their hazy sourcing in a note at the book’s conclusion; media snobs will have a field day. The Halperin-Heilemann method, a number of those who sat for interviews told me, is to invite a subject to a private room at a restaurant or a plush hotel suite, ply them with booze and let the stories flow. But the alcohol was unnecessary; the wild success of the first volume guaranteed that insiders would talk this time. Indeed, in a summer’s worth of casual conversations with veterans of all the campaigns, it was difficult for me to find anyone who didn’t consent to an interview with the pair.

 The book’s loose argument is that both Obama and Romney placed their bets about the race early on and “doubled down” throughout the contest. It’s an apt take on Obama World. The “Obamans,” as the authors call them, set out to annihilate Romney almost two years before the election and executed their plan with brutal efficiency. There were hiccups along the way, specifically Obama’s dreary debate-prep sessions and his cringe-worthy performance in Denver, but his deputies in Chicago rarely deviated from their search-and-destroy mission. Romney’s campaign, though, with its bad habit of reacting to news cycles with snap decisions, always felt more ad hoc, with tactics trumping strategy.

 Though the gossip merchants of This Town might be disappointed, readers are for the most part spared staff-level infighting and post-campaign score settling. There are exceptions: Former White House chief of staff Bill Daley comes in for rough treatment, depicted as a feckless outsider lost in the youthful, clannish and data-reliant Obama-verse. Although Romney’s chief strategist, Stevens — a popular punching bag for know-it-all Republican consultants after the loss — emerges mostly unscathed, we witness some flashes of impetuousness. He was frustrated, it seems, to be the lone voice on Team Romney lobbying for Christie to be on the ticket instead of Paul Ryan, who is as much a cipher in the book as he was during the campaign: rarely mentioned and barely consequential.

 The authors’ main project is to get into the minds of the candidates, even if the book does little to alter our understanding of the campaign’s main players. Obama is brilliant but peevish, allergic to the nitty-gritty of politics. Romney is a decent man but hopelessly ham-fisted on the stump and oblivious to why voters can’t seem to appreciate his private-equity résumé.

 As for the vice president, Biden is as Uncle Joe as ever: loyal to Obama and desperate to be in the arena, but prone to gaffes and rhetorical indulgences that give the president and his aides heartburn. Richard Ben Cramer’s “What It Takes” remains the great ur-text of Bidenology. But the “Game Change” guys do dredge up what might be the Bidenest quote of all time: “I don’t understand why everyone’s so mad at me,” he tells a confidante, after endorsing same-sex marriage before the president did. God bless him.

 Obama’s evolving relationship with Bill Clinton is one of the more intriguing tales of “Double Down.” Aware that Clinton would be a crucial asset to the campaign, Obama World lured the former president to its side, even agreeing to pay off Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign debt in exchange for Bill’s help. The two presidents slowly warmed to each other throughout the race. “He’s luckier than a dog with two d----,” Clinton told his friends of Obama.

 The real drama of the 2012 campaign unfolded on the Republican side: the Newt-killing, Perry-on-painkillers, 9-9-9, couple-of-Cadillacs theatrics of the Republican primary. After opening with some 80 pages of Obama portraiture, the authors gorge themselves on the hot mess of the GOP race for the next 200 pages. The most enjoyable action plays out among the “Romneyites” (yes, the authors have an annoying habit of sprinkling their text with gnomic nicknames; let this be the last time Rick Santorum is called “Santo”). The Romney campaign’s methodical destruction of Gingrich, first in Iowa and again in Florida, is detailed, as is Romney’s problematic lurch to the right as he fought off a conservative insurgency fronted by Santorum and his sweater vest.

 If Halperin and Heilemann have a bias, it’s toward the candidates who stood a chance of winning — except for their recurring obsession with Donald Trump. Tim Pawlenty’s campaign merits four pages. Ron Paul is an afterthought. Iowa straw poll winner Michelle Bachmann gets five pages, and the most memorable thing we learn is that she gets her hair done at a place called Fantastic Sam’s.

 Jon Huntsman is the exception, and the authors’ rendering of him is not pretty. Perhaps most damning for a candidate who professed to be above politics-as-usual, the authors report that the Huntsman campaign was behind two of the cycle’s roughest news hits: peddling dirt to reporters on Mitch Daniels’s wife, Cheri, a warning shot intended to keep the former Indiana governor out of the GOP field; and facilitating Politico’s splashy story about Cain’s apparent extramarital dalliances, a revelation that drove the pizza magnate from the race.

 Halperin and Heilemann fixate just as much on the Republicans who never set foot on a debate stage and who handed Romney enough breathing room and financial support to capture the nomination. Christie gets an entire chapter (titled “Big Boy”). Daniels, Haley Barbour and Mike Huckabee all receive more attention than Cain, who once topped the national polls.

 The Nate Silver wing of the Internet will almost surely gripe that the book is an example of political journalism’s worst instincts — it’s too dependent on the hunches and agendas of sources rather than hard measures of why Obama won. The authors ascribe colossal import to the tactical decisions and shouting matches inside campaign war rooms, but their dishy portraits often skimp on the larger forces that drove the race, from an improving economy and demographic shifts to Romney’s charisma deficit and the Obama campaign’s superior voter-contact machinery.

 Campaigns, though, aren’t just about number-crunching and statistical analysis. Candidates matter. Voters tell pollsters that they make their choices based on issues such as education, health care, taxes and the economy — and they do. But they also care about temperament, empathy, strength, reason, trust and the human side of these strange and wily people who think they’re up to the task of running the country. And as Halperin and Heilemann understand, so do readers.

 Read more from Outlook, friend us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter. ||||| AP This will not go over well for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

 According to the new book "Double Down," in which journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann chronicle the 2012 presidential election, President Barack Obama told his aides that he's "really good at killing people" while discussing drone strikes.

 Peter Hamby of The Washington Post noted the moment in his review of the book.

 The reported claim by the commander-in-chief is as indisputable as it is grim.

 Obama oversaw the 2009 surge in Afghanistan, 145 Predator drone strikes in NATO's 2011 Libya operations, the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and drone strikes that killed the Pakistani Taliban leader and a senior member of the Somali-based militant group al-Shabab this week.

 His administration also expanded the drone war: There have been 326 drone strikes in Pakistan, 93 in Yemen, and several in Somalia — killing upwards of 4,000 people overall — under Obama, compared to a total of 52 strikes under George Bush.

 In 2011 two of those strikes killed American-born al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and his American-born, 16-year-old son within two weeks.

 Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing "signature strikes," a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behavior and the identities of those to be killed aren't necessarily known. (The administration counts all "military-age males" in a strike zone as combatants.)

 Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the "double tap" — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders— has become common practice under Obama's eye.

 Obama has also embraced the expansion of capture/kill missions by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) after it developed into the primary counterterrorism tool of the Bush administration.

 One JSOC operator told investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of "Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield," that global operations under Obama became "harder, faster, quicker — with the full support of the White House."

 Scahill, who also made a "Dirty Wars" documentary, told NBC News that Obama will "go down in history as the president who legitimized and systematized a process by which the United States asserts the right to conduct assassination operations around the world."

 Needless to say, a lot of innocent people have been killed along with combatants.

 So although President Obama has proven to be "really good at killing people," the demonstration has not necessarily been noble.

 (h/t @kgosztola) |||||Summary:

– A new book on the 2012 election has President Obama making a rather brutal claim, particularly, as Michael Kelley notes at Business Insider, for a Nobel Peace laureate: The president said to aides that he's "really good at killing people." The quote comes from Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, and it's mentioned briefly in Peter Hamby's Washington Post review. (Hamby gives it as an example of the book having "click-bait aplenty.") Kelley, for his part, observes that Obama's comment is quite accurate. While there were 52 total drone strikes while George W. Bush was president, Obama's administration has overseen 326 drone strikes in Pakistan, 93 in Yemen, and some in Somalia. That's on top of the surge in Afghanistan, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and drone strikes during NATO's Libya mission in 2011; Business Insider has even more examples. Click for more tidbits from the Game Change sequel.


Article:
In his address to the nation almost two weeks ago, President Obama promised to use force against the armies of Islamic State "wherever they are," and he specifically mentioned Syria. But Monday night's airstrikes in that country came sooner and with more force than expected, targeting not only Islamic State but also the Khorasan Group, an Al Qaeda offshoot thought to be plotting attacks on Americans.

 This major offensive raises questions about whether the United States (and a few Arab allies) are planning a prolonged air campaign in a country whose leadership did not invite intervention. Coupled with his successful lobbying of Congress to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to train supposedly moderate Syrian rebels, the airstrikes mark a major reversal for Obama.

 Until recently he has assiduously resisted American entanglement in Syria's civil war, and for good reason. The conflict pits President Bashar Assad, a secular dictator with innocent blood on his hands, against an assortment of opponents whose division into moderate and extremist factions isn't nearly so neat or stable as some advocates of U.S. intervention suppose.

 Obama changed his mind about intervention in Syria for the same reason he decided to launch airstrikes in Iraq and augment the U.S. military presence in that country: a sickeningly swift sequence of events in which Islamic State fighters routed Iraqi forces, terrorized Christians and other minorities and seemed poised to attack Baghdad. Obama also was influenced, understandably, by the horrific beheadings of two American journalists.

 The result was his promise of a long-term campaign to "degrade and ultimately destroy" Islamic State. Obama said that wouldn't require U.S. combat forces. But if the threat posed by Islamic State justifies a rethinking of Obama's aversion to intervention in Syria, might it not also incline him to change his view about "no boots on the ground"? Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that if necessary he would recommend that U.S. military "advisors" accompany Iraqi troops into battle.

 The airstrikes mark a major reversal for Obama.

 We find that prospect troubling. Islamic State is a heinous group, a threat to U.S. interests (though not, as far as we know, to the U.S. homeland) and a threat to the rights of those in the Middle East whom it despises as infidels. But is the threat serious enough to justify an ever-escalating role for the U.S. military in Syria and Iraq? Does the U.S. have a clear strategy and achievable aims? The case has yet to be made.

 Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion ||||| The initial bombing raids on Islamic State targets in Syria Monday night mark a welcome offensive that takes the war to the terrorists who beheaded two Americans and threaten U.S. interests in the Middle East and security at home. President Obama says this will be a long campaign, and it will need to be given the limitations he has put on the military.

 The immediate impetus for the first air strikes was to stop ISIS assaults on Kurdish civilians in the north of Syria while also hitting the Khorasan branch of al Qaeda that... |||||Summary:

– The New York Times editorial board thinks President Obama has the US blundering into a new war with the expanded airstrikes in Syria. Before the US gets any deeper into the operation, the president should open this up for a full debate in Congress, says the editorial. It's also "puzzling" that in preparing the nation on Sept. 10 for these airstrikes, Obama said nothing about the Khorasan group that is suddenly Public Enemy No. 1. "There isn’t a full picture—because Mr. Obama has not provided one—of how this bombing campaign will degrade the extremist groups without unleashing unforeseen consequences in a violent and volatile region," says the editorial. "In the absence of public understanding or discussion and a coherent plan, the strikes in Syria were a bad decision." Agree: The airstrikes are a "major reversal" for a president who opposed intervention in Syria for so long, writes the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. Can we trust that he won't reverse himself on ground troops, too? Yes, ISIS and the Khorasan group pose threats to US interests, "but is the threat serious enough to justify an ever-escalating role for the US military in Syria and Iraq?" asks the editorial. "Does the US have a clear strategy and achievable aims? The case has yet to be made." Disagree: The Wall Street Journal editorial board not only applauds the airstrikes but thinks US ground troops should be ready to move quickly. If the mission is to succeed, and it must, they'll be needed to direct airstrikes as militants hide in populated areas. "No US President should ever start a war he doesn't intend to win, and wars rarely go as smoothly as advertised in advance," concludes the editorial. "Now that he has attacked ISIS, Mr. Obama must show that America is the strong horse."


News article:

Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Posting on social media on 10 September, Emma Kelty joked about a warning she had been given about the stretch of the Amazon river she was about to enter. “So in or near Coari (60 miles) I will have my boat stolen and I will be killed too,” she wrote. “Nice.”

 Two days later, Kelty, who was canoeing the length of the Amazon, said she was “in the clear”. But hours later she posted again, describing an encounter with armed men. “Turned corner and found 50 guys in motor boats with arrows!!! My face must have been a picture!! (Town was uber quiet ... too quiet!!) all go ...

 “OK 30 guys ... but either way ... that’s a lot of folks in one area in boats with arrow[s] and rifles.”

 Three people held in Brazil on suspicion of British kayaker's murder Read more

 The following day, as she neared Coari, on the banks of the Solimões river, an Amazon tributary, Kelty triggered a distress signal. She has been missing ever since. On Tuesday, police said they had arrested three males on suspicion of her murder.

 Kelty, 43, from Finchley in north-west London, resigned as head of Knollmead primary school in Surbiton in 2014 to go travelling. No stranger to solo adventures, she had been only the sixth woman to ski solo to the south pole and hiked 2,600 miles alone across the US.

 She had begun kayaking in February after deciding that her next challenge would be to paddle the Amazon from its source in the Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic Ocean.

 There had already been unsettling moments in her trip, particularly since crossing the border into Brazil’s Amazonas state. On 22 August she told followers how she had paddled hard upstream to reach a beach to rest, “only to find a man waving a machete and ravens eating whatever he had killed. As I paddled hard away ... I could hear his shouts.”

 In the following days she complained of broken sleep, interrupted by strangers. “Getting more tired every day,” she wrote on 23 August. “Let’s hope I don’t get [four] more guys ‘returning to visit me after dark’ tonight.”

 Three days later, after a “great welcome” and day and night in São Paulo de Olivença, she reported that two men pitched up in a boat close to where she had stopped and just stayed there for two hours, stopping her from changing. “And yes, I did try to engage ... but they were the silent type.”

 On 28 August she said she was “officially beyond triedness [sic]”. “Every night there has been a torch bearer and walker who comes to my tent,” she wrote. When strangers left her alone, Kelty fought “tent-bending” storms and 85% humidity. Yet there were also moments of tranquility.

 “The last couple of days paddling was just what I imagined it to be,” she recounted on 5 September. “Now, I am sitting on my private beach in the sun. So quiet and just perfect.”

 Emma Tamsin Kelty (@Emt101s) Enjoying a moments peace ... all is calm and just enjoying just being. #peru #so2017 #sourcetosea #riverlife #amaz… https://t.co/QFu0QAZkoq pic.twitter.com/Ak6CMLAFmO

 Kelty is believed to have pitched her tent on Boieiro island, facing the town of Lauro Sodré, before she set off her locator flare last Wednesday. A 17-year-old suspect arrested on Monday in Codajás said that was where she was approached by two people. Five others arrived and the group stole her belongings. She was shot twice with a sawn-off shotgun and dumped in the river.

 According to the teenager, whom police did not name for legal reasons, the group tried to sell her two mobile phones, her tablet computer and her GoPro camera in local communities. Another 17-year-old from Lauro Sodré was also arrested, as well as a third man, named as Erinei Ferreira da Silva, whose age was not given. Police are looking for four further suspects.

 After Kelty’s distress call, authorities had launched a search operation involving 60 people, including divers scouring the riverbed. Residents of Lauro Sodré reported having seen Kelty alive, sailing past in her canoe. Fire officers and the Brazilian navy are continuing to look for her body and have searched the area where it was allegedly thrown.

 Rocky Contos, a guide Kelty employed in Peru for the first six weeks of her trip, said he tried to warn her of the dangers she faced, but that she was determined to continue alone. “I told her there are people there who have no regard for life,” he was quoted as saying by the Times. “There are many cases of people being robbed and shot.”

 River pirates are known to operate in the area where Kelty went missing. Local media reported two men were arrested in July after carrying out pirate attacks around Lauro Sodré and nearby communities.

 “This region is a problematic region for pirates,” Barradas Júnior said. “It is a region that has pirates, they do robberies, and it is a disputed region because there are a lot of drugs coming from Colombia.” He said pirates had been known to attack Colombian and Peruvian drug traffickers, steal their supplies and throw their bodies in the river.

 A struggle between rival Brazilian drug gangs to control the lucrative drug trade flowing down the Solimões river was blamed for a massacre in which 56 people were murdered in a prison in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, on New Year’s Day. Dozens more were killed in reprisal attacks.

 The remote stretch of the Solimões where Kelty is thought to have gone missing is the same section where the state’s previous civil police chief, Thyago Garcez, disappeared in December last year, after he and other police officers got into a firefight with drugs traffickers. His body has never been found.

 The Foreign Office confirmed it was supporting the family of a woman who had died in Brazil and said it was in contact with the Brazilian authorities.

 In a statement released by the Foreign Office, Kelty’s siblings, Piers, Giles and Natasha, said their “active and determined sister” had recently embarked on the Pacific Crest Trail in the US, and had also explored the south pole and finally the Amazon river.

 “In a world that is today a much smaller place, the explorer in our sister found herself seeking ways to prove that challenges were achievable,” the statement said. “We are extremely proud of our sister who was dearly loved by us all and her strength will be sorely missed.” |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– As she traveled through Brazil's northern region on a mission to kayak the 4,000-mile length of the Amazon River, Emma Kelty repeated a warning from a Peruvian guide in tongue-and-cheek fashion. "I will have my boat stolen and I will be killed too," she tweeted. "Nice." It appears the latter part of that warning has come true. On Sept. 13—a day after remarking that she'd come across dozens of men in motor boats armed with arrows and rifles near Coari, an area known to be frequented by river pirates and drug traffickers—Kelty sent out a distress signal and then went silent, reports the Guardian. Authorities now believe the 43-year-old British woman had pitched her tent on the banks of an Amazon tributary near Lauro Sodré when she was approached by men who shot her and threw her body in the river. A man and two 17-year-olds are in custody while police search for four other suspects who may have tried to sell Kelty's tech devices. A search for Kelty's body is also underway. A statement from Kelty's siblings note they're "extremely proud" of their sister, who sought "to prove that challenges were achievable." (She had quit her job as a school principal in 2014 to travel solo.) Back in February, Kelty—who became the sixth woman to ski solo to the South Pole in January—told the BBC that surviving encounters with "people who organ-harvest and rob and fire guns" was "half the challenge" of her Amazon adventure. "But it's about minimizing the risk," she said. "I'm going to a self-defense course which is going to be tailored to de-arming people, so if I do come across that situation at least I'm prepared for it."


Article:

Story highlights CNN's Piers Morgan interviews Justice Antonin Scalia

 Scalia says he was dismayed by recent criticism of Chief Justice John Roberts

 "I'm not 'pro' death penalty," he says, arguing that it should be a democratic choice

 The conservative jurist has argued for state sovereignty in several major cases

 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia downplayed reports of personal and ideological rifts stemming from the recent landmark health care reform ruling, telling CNN in an exclusive interview "it offends me" to hear criticism of his colleagues over how they ruled.

 The 76-year-old justice talked Wednesday with CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight," discussing a range of judicial topics -- from the death penalty to abortion rights and the Bush v. Gore decision.

 Scalia, along with Bryan Garner, is co-author of a new book, "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts." The men describe their legal philosophy, and how to make sense of the law and the U.S. Constitution. They call their approach "textualism."

 Even in dissent, Scalia stirs controversy

 Scalia would not specifically address the health care decision or other recent or current case issues, such as immigration enforcement, affirmative action or gay marriage.

 And he would not discuss how the court reached its health care ruling in internal deliberations. But the conservative justice downplayed media reports of personal fallout from opposing conservative and liberal members of the court over the 5-4 decision three weeks ago.

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 Scalia was on the losing side of the ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, the sweeping legislation championed by President Barack Obama.

 Chief Justice John Roberts was the deciding vote in that decision, agreeing with his liberal colleagues to uphold the individual mandate, which would financially punish people who do not purchase health insurance.

 Some media and blog reports -- citing sources with specific knowledge of the deliberation process -- suggested strong tensions among the court's conservatives over Roberts' vote, which some commentators perceived as political expediency.

 But Scalia said it was wrong to question Roberts or other court members personally for their legal conclusions.

 "We are not a political institution," Scalia said. "I don't think any of my colleagues on any cases vote the way they do for political reasons."

 Scalia added he was dismayed at the criticism of Roberts, suggesting those who may have leaked information were not entirely privy to the internal discussions over the health care decision.

 On abortion, Scalia said the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing the medical procedure should be overturned, believing it remains an issue best left for states to decide.

 No matter what it does, high court is seen as political

 The court doesn't do democracy any favors by getting involved in the abortion debate in such a way, according to Scalia.

 Likewise with capital punishment, Scalia said the issue is not whether the court should ultimately decide whether there should still be a death penalty -- he claimed not to have an opinion on that -- but rather whether individual states should decide such a question.

 "If you don't like the death penalty, fine, change the law," he said. "I'm not 'pro' death penalty, I'm 'anti' the idea that is not ultimately a democratic choice."

 But he emphasized capital punishment has been around since the nation's founding and was well-established in law and social tradition.

 And Scalia reiterated his firm views over what he agreed was the most talked-about recent court decision -- the 2000 ruling effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush after the Florida ballot recounts.

 "Get over it," he said about supporters of Al Gore, many of whom are still convinced the case was wrongly decided in favor of the Republican. "He (Gore) would have lost anyway if all the ballots were recounted."

 In his new book, Scalia argues interpreting laws and the Constitution properly requires a strict approach to look at the actual text of the law itself.

 He warns that squishy, unprincipled decision-making is bad for the country and for the reputation of judges themselves.

 "The descent into social rancor over judicial decisions is largely traceable to nontextual means of interpretation, which erodes society's confidence in a rule of law that evidently has no agreed-upon meaning," write Scalia and Garner.

 The jaunty jurist has long been able to light up, or ignite, a room with his often brash demeanor and wicked sense of humor, and he displayed that in the hourlong conversation with Morgan.

 Despite his reputation as an intellectual fighter, Scalia described himself as "a peaceful man."

 When asked if he had ever broken the law, the justice said, "I've had a few speeding tickets, though none recently."

 His outgoing personality and sharply written opinions have made him among the most recognizable of justices, and a particular favorite of conservative activists, scholars and lawmakers. President Ronald Reagan named Scalia to the high court in 1986 after previous jobs as an appeals court judge, a government and private lawyer, and a law professor.

 Justices finances show overseas travel, book royalties, gifts

 "At one extreme, he can alienate some of his colleagues," said Joan Biskupic, legal affairs editor at Reuters, who has written a biography of Scalia. "If he is trying to get anybody to sign an opinion, it was harder when he would use more combative language. But as much as they would say 'I'd like to strangle Nino,' he was still theirs in many ways."

 That harshness was evident in the closing days of the term ending in June. On two issues that left Scalia on the losing side -- health care and immigration enforcement -- he displayed the fierce rhetoric that has become his trademark.

 Scalia, writing for the minority, argued the court's ruling favoring federal authority over immigration matters encroaches on Arizona's sovereign powers.

 "If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State."

 "He can be belligerent; he is obviously very candid about how he feels," Biskupic said. "He loves to call it as he sees it, completely not politically correct. In fact, he prides himself on not being PC on the bench, in court."

 Many legal scholars say Scalia ultimately failed to sway his colleagues on the really big constitutional issues, and court sources say he has grown somewhat frustrated over the years being on the losing side of many cases, or not being able to write more majority opinions.

 Antonin Gregory Scalia was born in 1936 and admitted to being the center of attention as the only child, doted on by his father, a Sicilian-born professor of romance languages, and his mother, a schoolteacher. They instilled a love of learning and the confidence to exercise his intellectual muscles.

 He attended Georgetown University as an undergrad, and later Harvard Law School, where he met his future wife, Maureen McCarthy, who was attending nearby Radcliffe. They raised nine children, including a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, and a priest. The family is united by a strong Catholic faith.

 When asked about his greatest achievement as a judge, Scalia went back to the foundation of his book. He said he hoped he has moved his colleagues toward a more textured view of the law.

 "The court pays more attention now to the text" of the law and the Constitution, he said, and less to legislative history, congressional floor debates and the views of foreign governments. For a lover of language, the precise meaning of words contained in the law has been his goal.

 And he has no plans to step down anytime soon.

 "Of course, I'll retire when I start to realize I'm not doing as good a job as I should," he said, adding he still thinks he is fully engaged.

 Taking a look at Scalia's influence, defiance ||||| Coming up this evening at 9 p.m., "Piers Morgan Tonight" welcomes Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for a rare and candid sit-down interview.

 Joining the Court's longest-serving justice in Washington D.C., host Piers Morgan asks his guest to recount his most-contentious case:

 "Well, I guess the one that created the most waves of disagreement was Bush v. Gore," says Scalia, referring to the famed United States Supreme Court decision dealing with the dispute surrounding the 2000 presidential election. "That comes up all the time, and my usual response is 'get over it.'"

 Noting that it was the Democratic candidate who brought the case into the Courts, Scalia says he hasn't lost any sleep over the result:

 "No regrets at all, especially since it's clear that the thing would have ended up the same way anyway," recalls the 76-year-old. "The press did extensive research into what would have happened, if what Al Gore wanted done, had been done, county by county, and he would have lost anyway."

 Watch the clip, and listen to the interview, then tune in this evening as the man described as "the intellectual anchor of the Court's conservative wing" is joined by Professor Bryan A. Garner, Scalia's co-author of the new book, "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts."

 -–

 • Follow Piers Morgan Tonight on Twitter ||||| Justice Antonin Scalia is shedding little light on the Supreme Court’s deliberations over President Barack Obama’s health care law, but the court’s longest-serving justice did deny in an interview aired Wednesday night that he had a “falling out” with Chief Justice John Roberts over his decision to join with the court’s liberal members to uphold a central part of the law.

 “No, I haven’t had a falling out with Justice Roberts,” Scalia said, when asked about press accounts that some Republican-appointed justices were angry with Roberts after he reportedly switched sides to uphold the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

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 “Loud words exchanged, slamming of doors?” CNN host Piers Morgan asked Scalia.

 “No, no. … nothing like that,” the justice replied.

 “Best buddies?” Morgan asked.

 “My best buddy on the court is Ruth Bader Ginsburg — has always been,” Scalia said.

 While Scalia offered no warm words for Roberts, the Reagan-appointed justice and conservative legal mind denied in general terms that his colleagues are prone to personal infighting.

 “There are clashes on legal questions but not personally,” Scalia said. “The press likes to paint us as nine scorpions in a bottle. That’s just not the case.”

 Scalia also denounced anonymously sourced reports purporting to offer insight into the court’s internal discussions.

 “You should not believe what you read about the court in the newspapers because the information has either been made up or given to the newspapers by somebody who is violating a confidence, which means that person is not reliable,” Scalia said.

 Viewers hoping for the inside story of the court’s deliberations learned early in the broadcast that they were likely to be disappointed.

 “The justice is not going to comment on cases that were just ruled on or are pending,” Morgan said at the outset of the interview. Morgan was more specific later in the program, saying that Scalia had indicated he would not “discuss anything in the last session.”

 However, some of Scalia’s comments seemed to have relevance to the high-profile health care case in which the court, on a 5-4 vote, effectively saved Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

 Asked how he handles defeat in a major case, Scalia said: “I probably mutter something under my breath. …You play the hand you’re dealt. You can’t take it personally.”

 Most of the interview, kicking off a publicity tour related to Scalia’s new book, “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” was devoted to other major cases he has taken part in and to his overall judicial philosophy. |||||
What is a summary?

– Antonin Scalia may have disagreed with John Roberts in the court's health care ruling, but he says that disagreement never became personal—and that "it offends me" to hear criticism of Roberts, or any of his colleagues over how they ruled. "No, I haven't had a falling out with Justice Roberts," Scalia told Piers Morgan on CNN last night, according to Politico. "Best buddies?" Morgan asked. Scalia replied, "My best buddy on the court is Ruth Bader Ginsburg—has always been." "There are clashes on legal questions, but not personally," Scalia explained. "The press likes to paint us as nine scorpions in a bottle. That's just not the case." He also dismissed the notion that Roberts' decision was based on political expediency. "We are not a political institution." Scalia wouldn't talk about the court's most recent rulings, but did briefly defend the Citizens United ruling ("You can't separate speech from the money that facilitates the speech.") and Bush v. Gore ("Get over it.").