– Sochi's opening ceremony kicks off at 11am ET tomorrow, and if you just can't wait for the Olympic news to begin, well, here you go. Competition has already started: Some 32 hours before the opening ceremony, to be exact. The AP reports that early starts are required because Sochi's slate holds a dozen men's and women's medal events added since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Everything happening in advance of tomorrow are just qualifying rounds, though. Among them: men's snowboard slopestyle and women's moguls. Security: Everyone is worried about it, and Russia says everyone should chill. USA Today reports that Russian deputy PM Dmitry Kozak today said, "The level of threat in Sochi is no worse than in New York, Washington, or Boston. Based on information we received from our intelligence services, there's no reason to believe Sochi is under more threat than any city on the planet." He would not, however, comment specifically on... ...Toothpaste bombs: Homeland Security officials yesterday said airlines flying to Russia ahead of the Olympics ought to pay special attention to passengers' toothpaste tubes because they could contain explosives to make a bomb. DHS officials aren't aware of any specific plot in the works, though. Dangerous course? Shaun White made waves when he pulled out of aforementioned new Olympic event slopestyle yesterday, saying that "the potential risk of injury is a bit too much for me to gamble my other Olympics goals on." The Washington Post reports that it's only added to the questions of the extreme nature of the course, which killed the gold medal dreams of Norway's Torstein Horgmo on Monday when he broke his collarbone in a training session. After a number of athletes clamored for changes, the tops and bottoms of a few of the jumps were "smoothed out." A record: These Winter Olympics will see more heads of state and government and international organizations than any prior Winter Games, and three times the number of leaders who showed up in Vancouver, reports the AP. Of course, big names like Barack Obama, Francois Hollande, and David Cameron won't be there. And then there's the gripes about the accommodations and the food...

Expand this summary.

1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Athletes to watch for the 2014 Winter Olympics View Photos As the Sochi Games get underway, the U.S. team will feature fresh faces and seasoned veterans. Here are 14 worth keeping an eye on during the ’14 Olympics. Caption As the Sochi Games get underway, the U.S. team will feature fresh faces and seasoned veterans. Here are 14 worth keeping an eye on during the ’14 Olympics. Mikaela Shiffrin, Alpine Skiing Mikaela Shiffrin, 18, looks to be the heir apparent to Lindsey Vonn, who is will this Olympics with knee injuries. Last year, at her first world championships, she beat much more seasoned skiers to take the slalom gold. Doug Pensinger/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

 No athlete is more closely associated with extreme sports than Shaun White, who has parlayed his snowboarding daring and artistry into two Olympic gold medals, 13 Winter X Games titles and a multimillion dollar franchise.

 So when White abruptly withdrew from the inaugural Olympic slopestyle competition at the Sochi Games on Wednesday — citing the risk of injury and his preference, on balance, to focus on winning a third gold in the halfpipe — it had seismic effects.

 White’s decision to bow out of the slopestyle event on the eve of qualifying not only robbed Sochi of yet another big name in a much ballyhooed event. It also added to the mounting evidence that Olympic organizers, in their zeal to jazz up the Winter Games in order to connect with a younger audience, may be carrying the “no-limits” ethos of extreme sports one step too far.

 At issue is the safety of Sochi’s slopestyle course, which earlier this week ended the pursuit of gold medal favorite Torstein Horgmo of Norway. The first snowboarder to land a triple cork (three off-axis flips and four full rotations), Horgmo crashed while attempting a difficult trick on the rails near the top of the course in Monday’s opening training session and broke his collarbone.

 From figure skating teams to female ski jumpers - a dozen new events will debut at the Winter Olympics in Sochi. (Associated Press)

 On Tuesday, Finland’s Merike Enne injured her left ankle in a crash, and White, 27, jammed his left wrist in an accident.

 A slopestyle course is akin to an ice-covered, downhill obstacle course littered with jumps, rails and boxes. Riders are free to negotiate them any way they choose, rewarded for the daring and creativity of the jumps, flips and spins they pull off on their descent.

 Last weekend’s rain scuttled the customary pre-event tests of the Olympic slopestyle course at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. So the first time riders tried it was Monday. The height of the jumps came as a jolt to many riders who boast of knowing no boundaries.

 “Yikes!” U.S. hopeful Keri Herman said, asked her initial impression. “But that’s the same as X Games every year. You show up; it’s scary. You hit it a couple of times and you are like, ‘All right, I can deal with this.’ ”

 White called it “intimidating.”

 And Sebastien Toutant of Canada told the Olympic News Service, “It’s like jumping out of a building.”

 After several snowboarders appealed for changes Monday night, the course was modified, with the tops and bottoms of some of the jumps smoothed out.

 Switzerland’s Jan Scherrer told reporters Tuesday the modifications had helped.

 “It makes it more safe, but you can still go as big as before,” Scherrer said. “The rails are much better so that you can see more tricks, rather than just trying to survive.”

 After market research in the mid-1990s showed that the Winter Games were losing younger audiences, the International Olympic Committee turned to extreme sports to stem the decline, adding two snowboarding events (halfpipe and giant slalom) for the 1998 Nagano Games.

 In Sochi, a record 10 snowboarding events will be contested. Combined with a record 10 freestyle events, that means extreme sports will account for 20 of Sochi’s 98 events.

 As the first medal event contested, slopestyle snowboarding, in which riders flip down the course like high-flying pinballs in a pinball machine, is expected to set an eye-popping tone for the Games.

 Venue map of 2014 Olympic games in Sochi Russia

 Although both snowboarders and freestyle skiers wear helmets, the risk of injury remains high.

 White gave no indication of his plans to withdraw during a news conference Wednesday afternoon, fielding questions from reporters in Sochi about the challenge of juggling both the Olympic halfpipe and slopestyle competitions and saying that his wrist injury had been “blown out of proportion.” But within an hour, he told NBC he was pulling out, saying that “the potential risk of injury is a bit too much for me to gamble my other Olympic goals on.”

 Moments later, he issued the following statement through the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association: “After much deliberation with my team, I have made the decision to focus solely on trying to bring home the third straight gold medal in halfpipe for Team USA. The difficult decision to forego slopestyle is not one I take lightly as I know how much effort everyone has put into holding the slopestyle event for the first time in Olympic history, a history I had planned on being part of.”

 Roberto Moresi, assistant snowboard race director for the International Ski Federation, defended the course, telling the Olympic News Service: “It’s only him that’s pulled out, but people had already started to get into the course and like it a lot.”

 Freestyle skiing’s slopestylers will compete on the same course in Sochi.

 Charlottesville’s Sara Greenfield, a former freestyle instructor and competitor who started the National Ski and Board Safety Association after her son’s best friend was killed at a local resort, applauded White’s decision to withdraw.

 “Injury prevention is easier to provide when athletes stand up for their beliefs,” Greenfield wrote in an e-mail exchange. “I have seen many a jump redesigned to make it safer. Death and serious injury is simply put unacceptable, and it is occurring at alarming rates in these two sports. If there is a call for rail or jump safety, the builders of these obstacles should make them safer, or shut them down, take them out.” ||||| Ashley Wagner, of the United States, skates at the figure stating practice rink ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014, in Sochi, Russia. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev) (Associated Press)

 SOCHI, Russia (AP) — Competition at the Sochi Olympics has begun, 32 hours before the opening ceremony.

 Early starts are needed because of 12 men's and women's medal events added since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

 Men's snowboard slopestyle qualifying runs — without American star Shaun White, who withdrew Wednesday — got underway Thursday 10 a.m. (0600 GMT) at X-Treme Park in the mountains above Sochi.

 Women's qualifying runs were following in the afternoon, and women's moguls qualifying was scheduled to start freestyle skiing events at 6 p.m. (1400 GMT).

 Men's slopestyle and women's moguls are among the first medals to be awarded Saturday.

 Down in Sochi, the new team figure skating competition begins 7.30 p.m. (1530 GMT) at the Iceberg Skating Palace.

 The men's short program is to be followed by the pairs. ||||| CLOSE The Olympics is off and running, but we've been hearing more about the hotel issues than the sporting events so far. (USA TODAY, USA NOW)

 An armed Russian security guard stands at the ski resort Rosa Khutor, where the snow and sliding sports venues for the 2014 Winter Olympics are located, on Tuesday. (Photo: Dita Alangkara, AP) Story Highlights Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak said safety concerns in Sochi had been exaggerated

 Kozak said "the level of threat in Sochi is no worse than in New York, Washington or Boston"

 Kozak said there was no reason to believe there were new threats in Sochi

 SOCHI, Russia – Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak said Thursday the concern over a terrorist attack on the Winter Olympics has been overblown in media reports and characterized Russia's ability to secure the games equal to any country hosting a major international event.

 "The level of fear should be lower," Kozak said through an interpreter. "The level of threat in Sochi is no worse than in New York, Washington or Boston. Based on information we received from our intelligence services, there's no reason to believe Sochi is under more threat than any city on the planet."

 Kozak's comments came during a previously scheduled news conference several hours after reports that the Department of Homeland Security had issued a bulletin warning airlines that explosives might be concealed in tubes of toothpaste – perhaps to be smuggled into Sochi – on flights from the U.S. to Russia.

 BRENNAN: Housing drama detracts from Sochi issues

 OLYMPICS: What's new in 2014?

 Kozak would not comment specifically on the report but said there was no reason to believe there were new threats.

 After the press conference, Scott Blackmun, CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee, was asked how information about the threat was relayed to him: "I don't want talk about specific responses to specific threats because I think it actually impairs our security plan to do that. But I will say that we were made aware of it, and I can't really say anything beyond that."

 "The safety and security of our athletes and whole delegation is always the primary concern. As we always do we work closely with our state department and our state department is in very close contact with the local authorities. We react to situations as they arise but we also have a lot of planning exercises in advance and these games are no different than any other Games in that respect."

 That advisory is the latest in a series of security concerns leading up to Friday's opening ceremonies. Islamic extremist groups based in the nearby Caucasus mountains have vowed to disrupt the Olympics and claimed responsibility for twin December suicide bombing in Volvograd – roughly 500 miles away – that left more than 30 dead.

 Though Russia has promised a "ring of steel" around the Olympic area, with more than 40,000 security forces in the region, some members of the intelligence community have questioned whether the concentration of manpower will leave other outlying areas vulnerable to an attack.

 Kozak said the intensity of talk about the terrorism threat has been "a little too much."

 "In any place, in any sporting event on the planet, it has the same nature," he said.

 Kozak was also asked for his reaction to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who blasted any "arrests, imprisonments and discriminatory restrictions" carried out against homosexuals during a speech to the IOC on Thursday morning. The comments were pointed toward Russia's so-called "gay propaganda" law, which has inspired various forms of protest and political blowback leading up to the Games.

 Kozak essentially repeated Russian president Vladimir Putin, who said the law only bans propaganda aimed at minors and that gay athletes and visitors won't be arrested in Sochi.

 "We don't differentiate between people depending on nationality, religion or sexual relations," Kozak said. "We are all grown-ups and any adult has the right to understand their sexual acts. Please don't touch the kids, that's the only thing."

 PHOTOS: The scene in Sochi ||||| New Zealand's Rebecca Torr takes a jump during the women's snowboard slopestyle qualifying at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014, in Krasnaya Polyana,... (Associated Press)

 New Zealand's Rebecca Torr takes a jump during the women's snowboard slopestyle qualifying at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014, in Krasnaya Polyana,... (Associated Press)

 SOCHI, Russia (AP) — Fast five, Thursday edition: Things you'll want to know about the 2014 Winter Olympics.

 ___

 SECURITY: It's foremost on many minds as Olympic competition begins and thousands stream into the Black Sea resort city. The Russian government says it's doing all it can to ensure safety, and on Thursday a deputy prime minister went even further. "We can guarantee the safety of the people as well as any other government hosting a mass event," said Dmitry Kozak.

 ___

 TOOTHPASTE: It's the latest item to fall under scrutiny after the U.S. Homeland Security Department warned airlines flying to Russia that terrorists might try to smuggle explosives on board hidden in toothpaste tubes. The threat was passed onto airlines that have direct flights to Russia, including some that originate in the United States, a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press.

 ___

 SNOWBOARDING: It begins, but without marquee name Shaun White, the world's most famous snowboarder. He pulled out of slopestyle, a new Olympic event, to concentrate on the halfpipe, where he'll have a chance to win his third straight title next week. After practice slopestyle runs, White said: "The potential risk of injury is a bit too much for me to gamble my other Olympics goals on."

 ___

 WORLD LEADERS: It's a record, says the Sochi Olympics' chief organizer: Sixty-five heads of state and government and international organizations will be attending Russia's first Winter Games. Dmitry Chernyshenko says that's more than any other Winter Olympics and three times the number of leaders who attended the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Here's who you won't see, though: President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German President Joachim Gauck.

 ___

 OPENING APPROACHES: Friday night's opening ceremony will showcase Russia to the world on its own terms — a storyline intended to impress the many nations in attendance and allow President Vladimir Putin to put forth the message he's been trumpeting for months now: that his country has successfully combined its storied history with modern innovation and is ready for anything. The intended audience is as much Russians as it is the rest of the world.

 ___

 Follow AP journalists covering the Olympics on Twitter: http://apne.ws/1c3WMiu |||||


– Amanda Knox may yet be extradited, but for now, the 27-year-old has a new gig: writing for a small Seattle newspaper. Patrick Robinson, web editor for the West Seattle Herald, tells the Daily Beast that Knox has been freelancing for a "few months," covering human interest stories and high school plays—in her recent review, Knox philosophizes about how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead questions "everything one takes for granted: time, space, identity, reality, fate, freedom." "Amanda's a very bright, very capable, highly qualified writer," says Robinson, admitting that she used a pen name at first. "She's certainly been through [a] lot and been very easy to work with and very interested and eager in doing stories." As for Italy's ongoing attempt to get Knox back overseas, Robinson says it has "little to nothing" to do with her standing at the Herald: "Why not give her the opportunity to be an actual human being versus a celebrity?" (Knox's ex-boyfriend changed his story over the summer.)

Expand this summary.

Amanda Knox traveled to Italy to study writing. A few weeks later, the American college student became a murder suspect. Now nearly a year after she was convicted in a second trial by an Italian court, Knox has returned to writing, as a journalist in Seattle.

 Knox has been working as a freelance reporter for the small West Seattle Herald for a few months, according to Web Editor Patrick Robinson. The Herald asked her to be a freelance reporter, but not because of her notorious status.

 “We approached her originally to give her the opportunity of a normal life,” Robinson told The Daily Beast. “We simply asked her as we would ask anyone of that age and stage, if they would be interested in writing for us as a qualified writer of that scale and this level of journalism.”

 In November 2007, Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, was found dead in the house they shared with two other women. Authorities arrested Knox, boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and a bar owner and charged them in Kercher’s murder. In 2009, Knox and Sollecito were found guilty of murder. Both spent four years in prison before a court acquitted them in 2011 after evidence was thrown into doubt by independent experts. Knox returned to the U.S. following acquittal, but a court in January 2014 upheld the 2009 guilty verdict and sentenced Knox and Sollecito to more than 25 years. Knox has not been extradited to Italy while the case is appealed.

 In 2012, Knox signed a book deal reportedly worth $4 million. A movie based on a book by The Daily Beast’s Barbie Latza Nadeau has been made into a movie starring Kate Beckinsale.

 Knox wanted to write under a pen name at first, which the paper allowed her to do.

 “That was purposely to give her the protection of that and to give her the opportunity. She showed us writing samples and they were good,” Robinson said. After she “got her feet wet,” Knox began writing under her own name.

 Knox is covering everything from human-interest stories to local theater like a high-school production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

 “Amanda’s a very bright, very capable, highly qualified writer,” Robinson said, adding he was “flabbergasted” by how good her photography had become over a few months. “She’s certainly been through as lot and been very easy to work with and very interested and eager in doing stories.”

 The Herald was obviously aware that their newest freelancer—an international celebrity and convicted murderer—would eventually generate outside attention. There was “some note of caution” attached to hiring Knox, thanks to the negativity from the case, Robinson said. But that wasn’t why the paper hired her, he insisted.

 “It doesn’t matter what people say or think—the truth is that she’s a West Seattle resident, she grew up here,” Robinson added. “Why not give her the opportunity to be an actual human being versus a celebrity?”

 That celebrity may attract unwelcome visitors, like people with cameras, but Robinson said all meetings with Knox are conducted privately. Though “she’s not hiding,” he added.

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

 As for the murder charges against Knox and Italy’s request to extradite her, Robinson said that’s not the newspaper’s concern. The outcome of the case has “little to nothing” to do with Knox’s relationship with the newspaper, he said.

 “It’s really about giving a young, talented writer an opportunity at a normal life.” ||||| Amanda Knox

 Behind the scenes: Cast and crew busy building the set of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at West Seattle High School.

 Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to be performed by West Seattle High School’s Drama Club

 By Amanda Knox

 With just over a week left until opening night, Literature and Drama teacher Andrew Finley and his cast and crew are busy sawing, stacking, and securing old wooden pallets into what looks like a horseshoe formation. Is it a hill? A castle? A balcony? A ship? It will serve as all of the above and be just what it is—none of those things.

 Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is notorious for turning Hamlet on its head and questioning everything one takes for granted: time, space, identity, reality, fate, freedom. It’s a major theme that Finley is emphasizing in multiple ways. The set is clearly a construct, begging the audience to exercise their imagination and at the same time recognize the artifice. The characters from Hamlet—the King, Queen, Laertes, Ophelia, the players—will each be played by multiple members of an ensemble cast, so that the audience won’t be able to pin down characters by their most defining human aspect: their faces. As the script suggests, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will be confused one with the other, but Finley emphasizes that confusion by casting a boy and a girl for these principle roles. “It’s this male character who’s played by a female actor. We never try to make her look like a boy, but we don’t make it obvious that she’s a girl either. There are a couple of moments in the play when the head player of the drama troupe that they encounter makes a couple of references to, ‘Oh, I’m always in costume…SIR,’ as if to say, ‘I can see through your costume. You’re clearly a girl, but we’re going to pretend you’re a guy.’ It’s part of this question of what is your identity and how can you tell? What do you know and what do you not know?”

 Usually this kind of questioning seems to be a departure from practical, every-day existence. Any single person has a set name, job, friends and family. But Finley argues that high school is a particularly appropriate setting for exploring the questioning of reality and identity. “The other major theme is hopelessness, and I’d rather not hit that one so hard for the people who will largely populate my audience. I’d rather explore identity and how do you know who you are and how do you build an identity, because my target audience is in the process of doing that.”

 There are a few things you should remember before seeing the show. “R&G,” as Finley affectionately calls it, is a re-envisioning of the tragedy Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters. Finley recommends that you have a general understanding of the story and themes of the Shakespearean tragedy so you can get the most out of the references made to it. He’s even considering holding a viewing of the Mel Gibson film version of Hamlet for those underclassmen who haven’t read the play in school yet.

 The other thing Finley wants you to remember is that R&G, unlike Hamlet, is a comedy. “If it’s not funny, you’re doing it wrong. If people walk in thinking this is Hamlet, it’s going to take them much of the first act to realize that, ‘Oh, wait, not only was what they said funny, but it’s appropriate for me to laugh.’”

 Finley has high hopes for the production and every confidence in his cast and crew. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead has always been one of my really favorite plays. I’ve always wanted to do this show and I’ve been waiting for the right group of kids. This year we’ve got it.”

 Performances are scheduled for November 6, 7, 8 and 12, 13, 14 at 7:30 p.m. at West Seattle High School’s campus, 3000 California Ave SW. Tickets are $12 at the door, $7 with an online reservation. To reserve tickets, contact tickets@westsidedrama.com. |||||


Summarize this article:

Actress Sally Struthers has denied driving drunk in the U.S. state of Maine, where she's appearing in a musical.

 This booking photo released by the Ogunquit, Maine, Police Department shows actress Sally Struthers, arrested early Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012 for drunken driving after being pulled over on U.S. Route... (Associated Press)

 Police say Struthers was arrested early Wednesday after being pulled over on U.S. Route 1 in the southern resort town Ogunquit. She was charged with criminal operating under the influence and posted $160 bail.

 The 65-year-old Struthers is best known for her role as Gloria Stivic in the 1970s TV sitcom "All in the Family" and later for heart-tugging ads seeking money for children's charities. She has been performing at the Ogunquit Playhouse in the musical "9 to 5."

 A publicist says Struthers denies the charges against her.

 Publicist Pamela Sharp said Thursday that Struthers is working and is fine and loves the playhouse and her yearly time in the town. ||||| Sally Struthers Arrested for Drunk Driving

 Sally Struthers -- Arrested for Drunk Driving

 EXCLUSIVE

 was arrested for drunk driving in Maine yesterday ... TMZ has learned.We've learned ... 65-year-old Struthers was busted at 12:30 AM for OUI -- operating under the influence.Struthers -- who starred in "" before becoming a spokesperson for ChildFund International -- was released shortly after she was taken into custody after posting $160 bail ... which is just one dollar a day for the past 160 days.Sally was handcuffed at the scene and law enforcement tells TMZ ... she was cooperative.We're told drugs were NOT involved.Struthers has been in Maine starring in the play "9 to 5."The punishment for a first offender is a $500 fine and a 90-day license suspension. There is no risk of jail time.Struthers' arraignment is set for December 14.-- A rep for Struthers released a statement saying, "Sally is working and she is fine and she loves The Ogunquit Playhouse and her yearly time in Ogunquit. We deny these charges." |||||

– Sally Struthers—known to most as either Gloria Stivic from All in the Family or as a TV spokesperson for kids' charities—was arrested and charged with DUI yesterday while on Maine's US Route 1, reports TMZ. The 65-year-old actress is free on $160 bail and denies the charges through her publicist, reports AP. Struthers has been in the resort town of Ogunquit appearing in the musical 9 to 5.


Write a summary based on this article:

You can’t judge a movie by its source material: the much-maligned jukebox musical genre gave us “Rock of Ages,” yes, but it also made “Singin’ in the Rain” possible. And we were all worried about “The Lego Movie” before we saw it. So let us be clear that “The Emoji Movie” is not a soul-crushing disaster simply because its dramatis personae are the range of emotive faces and symbols that live inside your cell phone.

 It is a soul-crushing disaster because it lacks humor, wit, ideas, visual style, compelling performances, a point of view or any other distinguishing characteristic that would make it anything but a complete waste of your time, not to mention that of the diligent animators who brought this catastrophe into being.

 On a story level, it cobbles together pieces of everything from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Smurfs: The Lost Village” (coincidentally, Sony Pictures Animation’s prior release), and thematically it hits a tediously familiar litany of kid-movie messages: Be yourself. People can be more than one thing. Parents should support their children. Candy Crush is super awesome.

 Watch Video: 'The Emoji Movie': First Trailer Reveals Hidden World In Your Smartphone

 OK, that last one is a new feature, since the premise of a movie set entirely inside a smartphone has clearly opened up new potentials of product placement, whether its characters are riding boats down the musical streams of Spotify or walking through other people’s photographic memories in Instagram. As with Sony’s “The Angry Birds Movie,” this is a film that’s shameless about its origins as a pocket doodad; it also resembles that previous film by being completely shrill and stupid.

 Within the phone of a hapless high-school freshman named Alex (voiced by Jake T. Austin, “The Fosters”), an emoji named Gene (T.J. Miller) excitedly prepares for his first day on the job in Textopolis. The “excitedly” part is a problem, since Gene is supposed to be a jaded “Meh” emoji, but he can’t stop himself from expressing a variety of emotions on his round yellow tennis-ball face.

 READ MORE See The Emoji Movie's latest POWER MOVE. PowerRank: 1383

 His professionally underwhelmed parents, played by Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge, worry that his propensity for feelings will get him into trouble, and they’re right: when Alex clicks on him, the scanner registers Gene making a weird nonsense face, which infuriates the perpetually-cheery Smiler (Maya Rudolph), whose face bears a constant grinning rictus even when she’s calling for “malfunction” Gene to be deleted.

 Gene’s only hope is to team up with Hi-5 (James Corden) to find Jailbreak (Anna Faris), a hacker who can get them off the phone and into the cloud. Anti-virus bots are eluded and lessons are learned, but to piece together the film’s dreary plotting is to give it more thought than screenwriters Tony Leondis (who also directed), Eric Siegel and a presumably paycheck-collecting Mike White ever did. (And at least one of them will have to live with the fact that he wrote the dreadful pun, “Holy Delete-o!”)

 Also Read: Amazon, Annapurna Team Up for Ben Stiller Comedy 'Brad's Status'

 The unanswered questions are legion: Why do the emojis fear the phone reboot, when they’ll presumably return in its new iteration? Are they different from their counterparts in millions of other phones? Why does Gene have parents when most Americans are constantly switching to new and upgraded devices? And are we really to believe that teen boy Alex never uses his eggplant emoji?

 Emotionally, we’re supposed to care about Gene and Jailbreak getting together, even though they’re so muddily conceived that we know he’s pursuing something dumb and her desires are merely vague. On top of that, we’re also supposed to be rooting for Alex to win the affections of classmate Addie (Tati Gabrielle, “The 100”), but of course his courtship all boils down to picking the right emoji to text her. Sorry Cyrano de Bergerac and Abelard and Heloise and Cole Porter and anyone else who’s ever used dumb old words to declare love; you’re nothing without a poop symbol.

 The one non-dispiriting aspect of the “Emoji Movie” experience was getting to see “Puppy!”, a new animated short set in the world of “Hotel Transylvania.” When Adam Sandler outclasses your high-concept, high-tech functions, it’s time to switch to a flip phone. ||||| The Emoji Movie

 Looking back, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there was a small, flickering reason to believe that The Emoji Movie wouldn’t be a complete travesty. After all, the adorably ubiquitous pictograms that have become a second language for at least two generations are a public-domain entity; their relative recent rise makes us forget that, licensing-wise, this is no bigger a grab than Leaves: The Movie would be. It was pretty much free to do whatever it wanted within the ridiculous, cynical parameters it had set. The Emoji Movie had nothing to sell aside from itself.

 But this was naïve of me, because The Emoji Movie is selling something. In the mock tradition of countless superior Pixar films before it, it’s attempting to sell a sense of childlike wonder and fascination with an ordinary, everyday object: your smartphone. And in doing so, it is one of the darkest, most dismaying films I have ever seen, much less one ostensibly made for children.

 Let me get briefly more philosophical than this film deserves: Emoji remain a ripe source for humor in our everyday digital parlance, specifically because they are devoid of narrative, or even, ironically, emotion. There is a kind of poetry that has emerged from their use; an emoji is worth maybe not a thousand, but certainly a hundred words, and using one in place of words requires you to momentarily, subconsciously imagine that you are living in a language-free totalitarian state where a cry-laugh symbol is our linguistic Soylent. There’s a similar pathetic humor to the constricted movement and expression of Lego figurines, which The Lego Movie exploited to far greater effect. The Emoji Movie’s first aesthetic mistake is redesigning their titular figures to be the same kind of rubber-faced caricatures you can find in any other shrieking CGI kid-distracter on the market. Not once does this film rise above the level of humor of literally any real-world use of a simple upside-down-face emoji (whose meaning I tend to translate as “Wheeee, life is a horrible hall of mirrors and I am powerless to do anything but smile about it.”)

 If only my review of this film could be an upside-down-face emoji. The laboriously literal plot concerns the “Meh” emoji (T.J. Miller, who certainly doesn’t sound like a man who’s banking his career on this film as his game changer), who is “defective” due to his ability to express a kaleidoscope of emotions beyond his regimented role. I think this is the basic principle behind the Divergent films; it could just as easily be about a commercial actor in an existential rut. To fix his defect, he teams up with the lowly high-five emoji (James Corden), who has been replaced by the newer, hipper fist-bump emoji in the hall of favorites (racial subtext abounds). Together they escape the messaging app they call home on a dream-logic mission to find a “hacker” (Anna Faris) who can take them to the “cloud” and fix Meh’s defect. Along the way, they pass through a series of familiar apps while a battalion of anti-virus bots follows them in lukewarm pursuit. At one point, the film grinds to a halt for a game of Candy Crush.

 Yes, the actual IP of The Emoji Movie has nothing to do with the emoji themselves, and everything to do with the apps that have prime placement in the Google AdWords–grade narrative. Somewhat relevant to the plot is the fact that it all takes place on the phone of a 14-year-old boy, who is having text-based girl troubles somehow worsened by Meh’s poor performance as an emoji. Apparently this 14-year-old boy not only has the usual suspects on his phone (Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify all make appearances), but also, mystifyingly, the Crackle app, and extra-mystifyingly, a Just Dance mobile app that I wasn’t even aware existed before now and currently has a two-star rating on the Apple store.

 There is a mumbled, shorthand moral about staying true to yourself in all this, but it is drowned out by the wall-to-wall cynicism that is The Emoji Movie’s entire reason for existing in the first place. The film runs through its list of corporate and Zeitgeist awareness obligations in dead-eyed lockstep, making sure to get in uses of the words “slay” and “shade” and lifting an entire section of the lyrics to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” to telegraph a would-be important emotional beat (it’s not a joke, I don’t think). In the end, Meh’s embrace of his animated, multifaceted self just comes off as an ad for an Emoji Movie animated-sticker set that’s probably already out there.

 This is a film that seems beamed from a near future in which nothing goes right; “words,” as the kids in the film agree, “aren’t cool” anymore; and Patrick Stewart making jokes about soft shits is the new prestige TV. But what do I know? At my screening, which was for both press and a handful of unfortunate families, at the first sighting of her favorite rainbow-colored icon, a little girl behind me cried out, adoringly, “It’s Instagram!” A new age of heroes is born. ||||| Tony Leondis' kid-flick tries to turn text-message punctuation into a colorful adventure.

 Here's what you tell yourself when you accept an assignment to review a cartoon about emoji: "Remember what you thought when you heard about The Lego Movie? That it was the most shameless bit of advertising-as-entertainment you could imagine, the nadir of Hollywood's intellectual-property dependence, and couldn't possibly be worth seeing? Remember how incredibly wrong you were?"

 You were wrong then. Given the right combination of inspiration, intelligence and gifted artists, any dumb thing can be turned into an enjoyable film. But Tony Leondis' The Emoji Movie, a very, very dumb thing, comes nowhere near that magic combination. It is fast and colorful enough to attract young kids, but offers nearly nothing to their parents. If only this smartphone-centric dud, so happy to hawk real-world apps to its audience, could have done the same in its release strategy — coming out via Snapchat, where it would vanish shortly after arrival. But even that wouldn't be fast enough.

 The project's first hurdle is imagining how an emoji icon, which by definition represents only one emotional state (or object), can be a character capable of experiencing a story. Its solution is incoherent. We're told both that "the pressure's always on" for the face-emoji residents of Textopolis to keep their expressions convincing — smiley or smirking, angry or puzzled — and that they have no choice: That weeping guy keeps gushing tears even when he wins the lottery; he's just programmed that way.

 The exception is Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller), a youngster preparing to take over for his old man as the face of Meh. (Who could play the elder embodiment of Blah other than Steven Wright?) We learn that free-spirited Gene, thanks to some glitch, is capable of infinite facial expressions. He has a hard time being deadpan on cue.

 His first time on the job, in fact, he fails. In the film's weirdly unconvincing vision of how emojis make their way from a phone's inner universe to its screen when the user selects them, the whole process breaks down if one of the actors can't sit still for a face scan. Gene wrecks the app's game show-like stage, and eventually, the program's supervisor (Smiler, a ruthless but always-smiling woman voiced by Maya Rudolph) targets him for deletion, sending a team of mean-looking antivirus bots off to get him.

 With the help of a high-five icon (James Corden, taking his position as the story's fount of unrelenting enthusiasm very seriously), Gene sets out to find a hacker who can reprogram him and eliminate unwanted facial expressions. Jailbreak (Anna Faris) says they need to escape the phone entirely to do this, getting past a tricky firewall and out onto The Cloud.

 Getting there affords the filmmakers plenty of opportunities for product placement. The characters spend several minutes stuck in Candy Crush (gags about Hi-5's sweet tooth go on about five times longer than they should); they nearly die in a Dance Dance Revolution-style challenge game. At best, these episodes are limp set pieces; at worst, they sound like they were written by ad agencies. When our heroes need to ride streams of music from one place to another, one coos, "Whoa — this is Spotify?!"; when Jailbreak leads Gene into Dropbox, their pursuers can't follow them inside because "this app is secure."

 The dialogue is even lamer when the pic's three scribes depict the life of Alex, the high-school kid who owns the phone Gene inhabits. When Alex wonders what to text the girl he has a crush on, his pal scowls "words aren't cool" — in a Manhattan preview where critics were outnumbered by ordinary moviegoers, nearly all of the laughter was directed at this sort of line, where three grown men try and fail to convincingly imagine how kids talk. Hell, they can't even come up with fresh-smelling one-liners about the movie's resident poop icon. (Amusingly, the closing credits identify this slumming actor as "Sir Patrick Stewart.")

 Leondis and company don't get much mileage out of the vast variety of emojis they might use for sight gags, but they do well enough with the slapstick adventure of Gene's quest from home to the cloud. If not always imaginative or digestible, the look of the settings and characters should keep kids awake for 86 minutes; and if the trick that eventually saves the day makes very little sense to critical moviegoers, at least it's cutely frantic eye candy. Even so, few adults in the theater will have a hard time maintaining the flatline, unimpressed expression Gene has such difficulty with.

 Production company: Sony Pictures Animation

 Distributor: Columbia

 Cast: T.J. Miller, Anna Faris, James Corden, Patrick Stewart, Maya Rudolph, Steven Wright, Rob Riggle, Jennifer Coolidge, Jake T. Austin, Sofia Vergara, Christina Aguilera

 Director: Tony Leondis

 Screenwriters: Tony Leondis, Eric Siegel, Mike White

 Producer: Michelle Raimo Kouyate

 Executive producer: Ben Waisbren

 Production designer: Carlos Zaragoza

 Editor: William J. Caparella

 Composer: Patrick Doyle

 Casting director: Mary Hidalgo

 Rated PG, 86 minutes ||||| Children should not be allowed to watch The Emoji Movie. Their impressionable brains simply aren’t set up to sift through the thick haze of corporate subterfuge clouding every scene of this sponsored-content post masquerading as a feature film. Adults know enough to snort derisively when, say, an anthropomorphic high-five drops a reference to popular smartphone game Just Dance Now (available for purchase in the App Store, kids!), but young children especially are more innocent and more vulnerable.

 The Emoji Movie is a force of insidious evil, a film that feels as if it was dashed off by an uninspired advertising executive. The best commercials have a way of making you forget you’re being pitched at, but director Tony Leondis leaves all the notes received from his brand partners in full view. The core conceit apes Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, where a spirited misfit hops between self-contained worlds styled in a single recognisable way. Instead of holidays, however, our hero here jumps from app to app, and the ulterior motive of pumping up download numbers drains every last drop of joy from Leondis’s efforts to enchant.

 The director wants us to think of Textopolis, the bustling city inside our smartphones, as a world of pure imagination. When a meh-face emoji named Gene (TJ Miller) is banished from his home for daring to express an emotion other than unimpressed nonchalance, Leondis takes his odyssey of self-discovery as an opportunity to imagine fantastical scenery. As a smiley-face emoji (Maya Rudolph) ruling Textopolis with a cheery iron fist tirelessly hunts him down, Gene gapes in awe at such marvels as a supercharged rollercoaster ride through raw data and a pixelated humpback whale that majestically glides over him. But because these glossy images are so nakedly in service of plugs for Dropbox and Spotify, it’s all but impossible to appreciate any incidental beauty they might possess.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alex, voiced by Jake T Austin, in The Emoji Movie. Photograph: Sony Pictures/AP

 The pervasive falseness extends to the film’s thematic underpinnings, which make a clumsy lunge at vague, be-yourself positivity. The paramount importance of being true to one’s own spirit is made literal in Gene’s silly quandary; he’s forced to hide who he is for the sake of compulsory homogeneity, and only through tapping into his full range of emotions can he achieve his potential. While Leondis, who is gay, has stated he intends this as an allegory for the tribulations faced by the non-heterosexual community, any social commentary is stymied by the execution. The film’s insistent feel-goodery and occasional nods to feminism (delivered by a spunky blue-haired hacker emoji, voiced by Anna Faris) ring false. Product-placement mashups Toy Story and The Lego Movie had the purity of playtime to seal in the sentimentality; somehow it’s not as endearing in a film built around the apps we use to kill time while sat on the toilet.

 The ruthless mercenary details take the Emoji Movie beyond simply embarrassing and incompetent into something more manipulative and contemptible. One perplexing scene finds the emoji pals all doing a synchronised dance called “the emoji bop”. In a film so desperate to sell itself, this is clearly a craven bid to go viral, the cinematic equivalent of clickbait. The script practically begs for the approval of the tweens that elevated the lowly emoji to phenomenon status, but has only the slightest notion how they talk or act. Alex (Jake T Austin), the human in possession of the phone housing Gene and the rest of the cast, speaks like an dusty oldster. Alex’s awkward courtship of the cute girl in his class revolves around the deployment of emojis, but demonstrates no workable understanding of how the icons fit into adolescent life. Watching this fogeyish hero angle for edgy relevance is as uncomfortable as reading a fast-food chain’s Twitter account.

 However, the most disturbing part of this toxic film is the way it infects audiences with its ugly cynicism. A viewer leaves The Emoji Movie a colder person, not only angry at the film for being unconscionably bad, but resentful of it for making them feel angry. A critic can accept the truth that art and commerce will spend eternity locked in opposition. Nevertheless it’s still startling to see art that cheers commerce on while being stamped in the face by its boots. ||||| This animated comedy takes place in Textopolis, a world inside a smartphone that's inhabited by various emojis. There, an emoji named Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller) is ashamed that he has multiple facial expressions while his colleagues only have one each, and he embarks on a quest to be like everyone else. James Corden, Anna Faris, Jennifer Coolidge, Patrick Stewart, and Maya Rudolph also lend their voices to this film from Sony Pictures Animation. |||||

– With a 3% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, reviews of The Emoji Movie could have consisted of repeated strings of the vomiting emoji, thumbs-down emoji, and poop emoji. Fortunately for fans of brutal critical drubbings, film critics had to use words (despite the film's position that "words aren't cool"). Here are some of the best takedowns of the new animated film: "Children should not be allowed to watch The Emoji Movie," writes Charles Bramesco at the Guardian, calling it a "sponsored-content post masquerading as a feature film" and a "force of insidious evil." It somehow exists to get kids to buy apps without apparently understanding kids and how they actually use emojis. "A viewer leaves The Emoji Movie a colder person," the reviewer concludes. "Hear that? It's the end of the world," writes Johnny Oleksinsk at ithe New York Post after calling The Emoji Movie a "new exercise in soulless branding." At Vulture, Emily Yoshida calls it "one of the darkest, most dismaying films I have ever seen, much less one ostensibly made for children." The Emoji Movie is "a very, very dumb thing" full of moments that "sound like they were written by ad agencies," according to the Hollywood Reporter, which laments that the film wasn't released "via Snapchat, where it would vanish shortly after arrival. But even that wouldn't be fast enough." Finally, Alonso Duralde at the Wrap calls it a "soul-crushing disaster" and "completely shrill and stupid." This "complete waste of your time" is without "humor, wit, ideas, visual style, compelling performances, a point of view, or any other distinguishing characteristic."


Summarize this article:

With just six days before the deadline, Iran's nuclear talks seem to be faltering as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Vienna on Sunday.

 Kerry had his work cut out for him. As he worked to mend ties with Germany in its espionage dispute with the U.S. and handle the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza, Kerry also took on face-to-face meetings with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif with a ticking clock behind them. By the day's end, no breakthrough had been produced and representatives from the six countries negotiating with Iran said that big hurdles remained.

 The expiration of the interim deal

 After decades of tense relations and mistrust, Iran and the United States (as part of the P5+1 Group) surprised the world by managing to secure an interim deal last fall that would ease sanctions on the Islamic Republic in exchange for suspending work on its nuclear program. July 20 was the date set for the deal to expire. And here we are.

 While there have been some slight hints that discussions could extend beyond the deadline, the P5+1 group seems keen on getting a deal done by July 20.

 As the Associated Press noted:

 Lower-ranking officials represented both Russia and China, possibly reflecting their view even before Sunday that talks past July 20 are unavoidable. But Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested any extension would be relatively short, saying "there is not much willingness" by either side to go a full six months. He, too, earlier spoke of "huge and deep differences."

 "There is a huge gap"

 As reported, several gaps remain between the six countries and Iran, including major questions about the level to which Iran can enrich its uranium. Today, things got interesting.

 Word started to spread about a speech given several thousand miles east of Vienna, in which Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei emphasized the need for Iran to enrich its uranium capacity at the very moment that the Iranian nuclear delegation and the P5+1 Group were bargaining to reduce it.

 As the news broke, the words "scuttle" and "undermine" began floating:

 Basically looks like Khamenei cut Zarif and co at the knees: http://t.co/9CMVgKD6dX — Jordan Hirsch (@jordanchirsch) July 14, 2014

 Classic Khamenei: 1) Express support for negotiations 2) Undermine negotiators by setting impossible red lines. http://t.co/7dhb5BIzO9 — Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) July 14, 2014

 Does Iran want a deal?

 Are these negotiating tactics or reluctance? As Gerald Seib points out (paywall), while the U.S.-led sanctions imposed by the international community had a pretty devastating bite, all the jockeying in Vienna is for naught if Iran doesn't want a deal:

 But there is a difference between wanting a deal and considering one essential. Would economic relief be simply convenient, or does Iran consider failure to achieve it an existential threat to the regime? The negotiations won't succeed unless Iran wants a deal more than its international interlocutors do. And there's probably no way to know for sure exactly how much urgency Iran attaches to a deal until talks reach their 11th hour.

 We'll find out soon enough. ||||| VIENNA (AP) — The top U.S. and Iranian diplomats searched Monday for a breakthrough in nuclear talks, their efforts complicated by crises across the Middle East and beyond that have Washington and Tehran aligned in some places but often opposed.

 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waves as he arrives in front of a hotel where closed-door nuclear talks on Iran take place in Vienna, Austria, Monday, July 14, 2014. Kerry will hold in-depth discussions... (Associated Press)

 Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, foreground, holds a bilateral meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry background right, on the second straight day of talks, in Vienna, Austria, Monday July... (Associated Press)

 British Foreign Secretary William Hague, left, meets with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at talks between the foreign ministers of the six powers negotiating with Tehran on its nuclear program in... (Associated Press)

 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leaves the hotel where closed-door nuclear talks on Iran take place in Vienna, Austria, , Monday, July 14, 2014. Secretary of State John Kerry was deep in discussions... (Associated Press)

 The state of U.S.-Iranian relations was adding a new wrinkle to the long negotiation aimed at curbing the Islamic republic's uranium and plutonium programs.

 While the two sides are arguably fighting proxy wars in Israel, Gaza and Syria, they're talking cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, perhaps in a first, the nuclear matter is battling for full attention.

 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif spoke for about two hours around midday Monday, the second day of talks in Vienna. They gathered again in the afternoon, hoping to make progress before Sunday's initial deadline for a comprehensive nuclear agreement. An extension of the deadline is possible, though there are opponents of that idea on both sides.

 "We are in the middle of talks about nuclear proliferation and reining in Iran's program," Kerry told U.S. Embassy staff in Vienna during a break in the conversations. "It is a really tough negotiation."

 But other matters were being discussed, too, including Afghanistan, where Kerry visited before Vienna to broker a power-sharing agreement between rival presidential candidates and a full audit of their contested election.

 As the two diplomats sat down Sunday, Zarif called Kerry's Afghan mediation "extremely important" for the Afghan people and echoed the need "to ensure the national unity of Afghanistan and prevent its breakup."

 "We agree," Kerry said. "And it's good to begin with an agreement."

 But even as the U.S. and Iran have recently found increasing areas for cooperation, such as stemming a flow of Sunni extremists into Iraq, they remain diametrically opposed elsewhere.

 The U.S-Iranian regional divide was underscored Monday as the Israeli military downed a drone launched by Gaza militants — the first such unmanned aircraft encountered since the start of the Jewish state's offensive last week.

 Iran is Hamas' primary benefactor and the presumed source of its newfound drone capacity. Washington provides billions in aid each year to Israel.

 The State Department didn't say if Kerry and Zarif broached the escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence or the civil war in neighboring Syria, where the U.S. is providing political and military support to moderate rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's Iranian-backed government.

 But one change appeared clear in this week's talks. Unlike in years past, where U.S.-Iranian interaction appeared largely limited to nuclear matters, the two countries' interests now crisscross at multiple levels, and their discussions are broader.

 Nevertheless, American officials said Kerry was focused on tackling the many differences between the U.S. and Iran on nuclear matters. His goal is to gauge "Iran's willingness to make the critical choices it needs to make," according to a senior State Department official.

 The official wasn't authorized to be quoted by name and demanded anonymity.

 Monday's talks came a day after Kerry and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany failed to reach a breakthrough with Iran on uranium enrichment and other issues standing in the way of a deal that would curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the end of nuclear-related sanctions on Tehran. Each official cited significant gaps.

 Iran says it needs to expand enrichment to make reactor fuel and insists it does not want atomic arms. But the U.S. and others fear Tehran could steer the activity toward manufacturing the core of nuclear missiles. Washington is leading the insistence on deep enrichment cuts.

 Under a six-month interim agreement that went into effect in January, world powers and Iran have until July 20 to conclude a final deal. The goal for the West is a long-term agreement setting clear limits on Iranian activity and locking in place an international monitoring regime to ensure that the Islamic republic cannot develop nuclear weapons.

 The interim arrangement also offers the option of an additional six-month period for negotiations, an extension that appears increasingly likely. Officials have suggested they may agree on a shorter window, however.

 In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest wouldn't say whether President Barack Obama had authorized Kerry to extend the deadline if necessary.

 "To its credit, Iran has defied the expectations of some," Earnest said, by fulfilling some of the steps it agreed to take. But he said on other key issues Iran hasn't yet made the decisions needed to prove the world its intentions are peaceful. "That's ultimately where the gaps remain," he said.

 For the U.S. and Iran, an extension makes sense in multiple ways. With so much at stake, and the potential for U.S.-Iranian cooperation in other areas being explored, neither side wants to terminate the nuclear talks. Such a course could put Tehran back on a path toward isolation and even set the stage for U.S. military action if Iran proceeded again toward nuclear weapons capacity.

 Even if their interests in continuing nuclear talks align, both face difficult internal pressures against a deal — or an extension for that matter.

 Iranian hardliners oppose almost any concession by President Hassan Rouhani's government. In the U.S., some lawmakers have threatened to scuttle any emerging agreement if it would allow Iran to maintain some enrichment capacity.

 A letter being circulated in Congress by Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., emphasizes that a lessening of U.S. sanctions should be conditional on the nuclear agreement making tough demands on Iran.

 These would include international inspections lasting for a minimum of two decades and full disclosure by Iran of any military aspects of its nuclear program. |||||

– A Sunday deadline is looming for Iran to strike a nuclear deal with six world powers under a plan set in motion last year—but with just days to go, Iran's supreme leader has made the chances of a deal being forged in time look supremely unlikely. In a major speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country will need 190,000 centrifuge machines, 19 times as many as the 10,000 negotiators from the US, France, Britain, Russia, China, and Germany want to limit the country to in order to reduce its capacity to build nuclear weapons. After the leader's speech appeared to undermine negotiators, analysts began to wonder whether Iran really wants a deal that would limit its nuclear capacity in return for the lifting of sanctions, or if Khamenei is playing for time, the Atlantic notes. "In ostensibly expressing support for the Iranian negotiating team, close scrutiny of Khamenei's speech shows that in reality his remarks were aimed at severely curtailing his team's room for maneuver, making it effectively impossible to bridge gaps with the stance" of the six powers, an intelligence analysis seen by Reuters states. If all sides agree, the talks could be extended for another six months, though US officials say they will need to see some progress in the days to come before they will agree to an extension. John Kerry joined the talks in Vienna yesterday, but it's not clear whether he made any progress during hours of talks with Iran's foreign minister; issues including Afghanistan were also discussed, the AP reports.


A recent Colorado Tourism Office survey of summer travelers shows 48 percent were influenced by legal recreational pot

 Marijuana businesses have long proclaimed that cannabis is drawing visitors to Colorado. Now they have proof.

 A study commissioned by the Colorado Tourism Office and presented to the office's board of directors on Wednesday shows legal weed as a growing motivator for trips to Colorado — conflicting with the mantra of tourism officials statewide that savvy marketing alone is responsible for record visitation and spending in the past two years.

 While the state's "Come to Life" ad campaign is certainly successful, surveys in October and November of potential summertime visitors who were exposed to the state's tourism ads revealed that the marijuana laws influenced vacation decisions nearly 49 percent of the time.

 Budtender Kate Evans, behind counter, helps a customer at Native Roots Dispensary at 1550 Champa street in Denver on December 9. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

 "I think it is rearing its head as a significant travel and tourism amenity for visitors coming to Colorado," said Al White, who retired as boss of the Colorado Tourism Office in August and now serves on the board of a cannabis tourism company.

 But the survey's director said the questions may not have captured the opinion of people who opted out of Colorado travel because of legal pot. And only 8 percent of the Colorado tourists who responded to the survey said they visited a marijuana dispensary.

 "I think definitely the laws are having an influence when people are considering Colorado. We can see that it's still not a large percentage in terms of what people are doing, but it's become more of a motivator for those who want to do it," said Denise Miller, director of tourism surveys for Strategic Marketing and Research Insights, or SMARI, as she presented the midyear update to the tourism office's board of directors. "It's certainly having some influence — both, I think, positive and negative — on that decision process."

 SMARI conducted 33-question surveys of 3,254 tourists from target markets in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, San Diego, St. Louis and other cities. About 10 percent of those surveyed had vacationed in Colorado between April and September.

 The state tourism office has spent more than $5.3 million to run its "Come to Life" television, print, billboard and digital ads in these cities as well as nationally this summer. The campaign hit 11.1 million households, up from 9.4 million in 2014.

 SMARI estimated the 2015 summer ad campaign spurred 2.1 million leisure trips, generating an economic impact of $2.6 billion. That means for every dollar the state invested in its tourism promotion effort, it generated a $490 return, up from $344 in 2014.

 So the ad campaign is working very well. But those ads never mention marijuana. Yet, 22 percent of survey respondents said marijuana was "extremely influential" in their decision to visit Colorado. Twenty percent said it was "very much influential" and nearly 7 percent said it was "somewhat influential."

 But only 8 percent of tourists said they visited a marijuana dispensary during their trip to Colorado — the same percentage who said they visited a pot shop last year, according to SMARI's survey.

 Of the 8 percent who went pot shopping, 85 percent this year said marijuana was a primary motivator of their visit to Colorado, up from 29 percent last year.

 Retail sales of recreational marijuana became legal Jan. 1, 2014.

 Last year — the first year SMARI asked marijuana questions to potential Colorado vacationers — 65 percent of Colorado visitors did not consider legal weed in their vacation decision, with the remainder split between respondents saying they were "more likely to visit" and "less likely to visit" because of marijuana.

 This year, those results moved slightly, with 20 percent of potential Colorado vacationers saying the state's marijuana laws made them more likely to book a vacation and 15 percent saying they were less likely. The remainder said it wasn't an issue.

 The question in SMARI's summer survey asked: "How much did the legalization of marijuana usage influence your decision to visit Colorado?"

 SMARI's Miller said her team needs to follow up with better questions.

 New tourism office chief Cathy Ritter, who started her job last week, said last month that legal cannabis is "a great topic for discussion and a great topic for more research."

 Ritter did not speak during the board discussion of marijuana Wednesday. But in November, when she was named to the post, she said it "seems to be that the tourism program today is essentially silent on the whole issue."

 In Telluride, where 80 percent of voters approved recreational weed in 2012, the new tourism tagline is "The Most Colorado Place on Earth." It's one of the few Colorado towns that doesn't ignore pot as a guest amenity. One local dispensary delivers goods through its own app.

 "We dabble, but ... we don't want to fly the freak flag. I don't want to put it under the rug, but I don't want it to be the most important thing we do," said Michael Martelon, the president of the Telluride Tourism Board, noting that taxes from weed in the town rarely top 3 percent of the town's overall sales tax revenue.

 When White announced 2014's record visitation and spending in June this year, he was quick to not credit cannabis.

 "This is because we are doing a good job in Colorado. Is marijuana beneficial?" said White in June of this year. "Marginally, yes, I think it may be a decision influencer for some people coming."

 Marijuana is no longer in the margins of Colorado tourism. It's taking a starring role.

 "It's extremely influential," White said this week.

 Danny Schaefer let out a hoot when he heard the recent survey numbers. His My420Tours hosts 120 to 200 visitors a week and just inked a deal with a national hotel chain to host his clients, each getting a cannabis vaporizer to use in the room when they check-in. (He won't name the chain yet. White is a member of his board.)

 "This is absolutely validating," said Schaefer, who has urged tourism leaders to celebrate marijuana before other states where the recreational sales are legal, including Oregon and Washington, steal the tourism thunder. He's making plans to expand to Portland, Ore., where, he said, local tourism officials are welcoming him.

 "The state of Colorado has had an amazing opportunity to embrace this industry," he said. "It a complete advantage for Colorado to become the Napa Valley and Sonoma County of cannabis."

 Selling, possessing and using marijuana is illegal under federal law. State officials say they have never promoted marijuana because Amendment 64 regulations prevent pot businesses from advertising outside Colorado.

 Schaefer says that's fine. But visitors need information. Why doesn't the state help on that front, he wondered. Education doesn't have to be advertising, he said.

 "Shatter, wax, hash, dabs and transdermals. Our visitors, they have no idea what the modern industry has in the store for them and they are really lacking that education," Schaefer said. "Consumption education is absolutely necessary. We have so many people saying we were looking for information on marijuana on Colorado.com or at a Visit Denver welcome center and they couldn't find anything even mentioning marijuana. But they found hundreds of fliers and pamphlets on craft beer and liquor."

 Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or @jasonblevins ||||| Tourists stopping in at pot shops are not coming to Colorado specifically for marijuana, a recent survey by a Fort Lewis College professor found.

 Shortly after marijuana was legalized, the survey garnered answers from 325 people exiting five marijuana shops across three Southwest Colorado counties, said Lorraine Taylor, assistant professor of management at FLC.

 The survey is part of Taylor’s larger study on the effect of marijuana on the tourism industry that has not been completed.

 But the early findings are positive for those who feared marijuana would damage Colorado’s reputation as a family-friendly destination, she said.

 “I think a couple years ago, we were really worried – we as in the tourism community – that just hoards of people were going to come and get stoned and sit on Main Street. That’s not what’s happening,” she said.

 Instead, most tourists are coming to Colorado to partake in other recreational activities, she said. But being able to purchase legal marijuana in Colorado is “the icing on the cake.”

 The attraction of marijuana is likely to diminish as a tourism factor in the coming years because other states are working on legalization efforts, Taylor said. There are efforts in nine states to legalize marijuana in 2016, CNN reported in November.

 The study also found that while some people surveyed were purchasing marijuana legally for the first time, 200 of the 325 people used marijuana daily.

 “If you are a daily user, you probably have access to product that you wouldn’t have to pay such a high tax on, but yet these people are going to the legal shops as opposed to the black market,” she said.

 Many people said they preferred to buy products legally because legal weed is more likely to have been tested. Therefore, it’s safer to use.

 The views reflected in the survey came mostly from men younger than 30 because that demographic was the most open to sharing, Taylor said.

 Taylor plans to continue her survey work in the spring. At that time, she plans to hone in on the main reasons why tourists purchase marijuana using a methodology that could be replicated by other researchers. ||||| Partygoers listen to music and smoke marijuana on one of several days of the annual 4/20 marijuana festival, in Denver's downtown Civic Center Park, Saturday April 18, 2015. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) The Colorado Tourism Office has spent more than $5.3 million on its campaign enticing visitors to the state, all without mentioning marijuana.

 Yet a new survey by the office finds that potential summertime tourists were influenced by marijuana laws about 49 percent of the time, reports the Denver Post.

 Former Colorado Tourism Office head Al White has previously called marijuana's effect on tourism "mariginal." He now calls it "extremely influential" and serves on the board of a cannabis tourism company, the paper reports.

 Over in southwest Colorado, a survey of tourists leaving pot shops found that visitors weren't coming specifically for marijuana. Fort Lewis College professor Lorraine Taylor told the Durango Herald that her survey indicates pot is more like "icing on the cake." |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Legal marijuana is taking tourism in Colorado to new highs, if a new study is to be believed. The Denver Post reports a study commissioned by the Colorado Tourism Office found nearly 49% of Colorado visitors between April and September came at least in part because of pot. "I think it is rearing its head as a significant travel and tourism amenity for visitors coming to Colorado," a former tourism office head says. The survey also showed 20% of potential tourists were more likely to visit Colorado because of legal weed compared to 15% who were less likely. Somewhat surprisingly, only 8% of tourists surveyed admitted to actually visiting a marijuana dispensary while in the state. A smaller study out of Fort Lewis College found most tourists come to Colorado for other reasons, but legal marijuana is "the icing on the cake," the Durango Herald reports. According to the Post, Colorado has welcomed a record number of tourists in the past two years. Prior to the study, tourism officials had been crediting that increase solely to "savvy marketing." The Colorado Tourism Office spent more than $5.3 million on a new advertising campaign, which doesn't mention pot at all, Colorado Public Radio reports. But it shouldn't be that way, the owner of one pot tourism company tells the Post: "The state of Colorado has had an amazing opportunity to embrace this industry. It is a complete advantage for Colorado to become the Napa Valley and Sonoma County of cannabis."


News article:

General Motors Co. is recalling more than one million late-model pickup trucks and large sport-utility vehicles in the U.S. for a steering defect, the latest example of a problem generated by the industry’s growing use of software to control a car’s mechanical functions.

 The defect has been linked to 30 crashes and two injuries. The trucks can lose their electronically controlled power steering momentarily before it suddenly comes back on, causing the driver to have difficulty steering, GM said in a filing to federal safety... ||||| The GM logo is seen in Warren, Michigan, U.S. on October 26, 2015. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo

 (Reuters) - General Motors Co (GM.N) is recalling 1.205 million pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles worldwide due to issues with a temporary loss of power steering, the No.1 U.S. automaker said on Thursday.

 The recall covers certain 2015 Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac pickup trucks and SUVs, and includes about 1.02 million vehicles in the United States.

 GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said the automaker has received reports of 30 crashes and two injuries, but no deaths linked to the recall.

 The problem may cause difficulty steering the vehicle, especially at low speeds, increasing the risk of a crash, according to auto safety regulator National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (bit.ly/2x7IG2w)

 GM dealers will update the power steering module software, free of charge for owners of the affected vehicles.

 In 2017, GM had recalled here nearly 800,000 pickup trucks worldwide because of the same problem. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– In the second massive US vehicle recall in the space of a week, General Motors is recalling around 1 million pickups and SUVs because of a power-steering software defect that causes a crash risk. The recall affects the 2015 models of the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, GMC Sierra 1500, Chevy Suburban and Tahoe, GMC Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade, reports the Wall Street Journal. The company says the glitch, which can cause the vehicles to briefly lose electronic power steering, has been a factor in at least 30 accidents and two injuries, but no deaths that it is aware of. When the steering assist is lost and suddenly returns, "the driver may have difficulty steering the vehicle, especially at low speeds," according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration release. GM says dealers will update the power steering module software free of charge, reports Reuters. The Journal notes that software glitches, while generally easier to fix than mechanical ones, are rapidly rising as a source of recalls—increasing an average of 30% every year between 2013 and 2016, according to one study. (Ford recalled around 2 million pickups this week because of a seat belt problem.)


Summarize this article:

Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Democrats were gleeful this week when Donald Trump blurted out in Tuesday's debate that “wages [are] too high.” But as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley prepare to debate Saturday night, the Democrats have a wage problem of their own: American incomes have dropped during the Obama presidency.

 It's a vulnerability that Republicans haven't figured out how to exploit, and it's clearly one of the biggest weaknesses in the Obama economic recovery.

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 In 2014, the last year for which Census data are available, median household income was $1,656 lower than it was in January 2009, when President Barack Obama took office. A recent survey by the private firm Sentier Research showed household income finally rose this year above its level in June 2009, when the Great Recession ended — but only by 1.3 percent. That's a terrible record for any presidency. But that such stagnation occurred during a Democratic one is potentially a big problem for Democratic candidates, and especially for Clinton, who's running on her role in that administration.

 “I think that there are two phenomena here,” said Stuart Stevens, a senior strategist in Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. “Those who normally are the most articulate, passionate voices for those who are doing least well in the economy have been muted over the past seven years” because they don’t want to undercut Obama. That should create an opening for Republicans.

 But “Republicans have never been great at talking about this,” Stevens said.

 The Republican candidates’ wage conundrum isn’t about excoriating the Democrats. They’re all too happy to call out Obama for failing to lift incomes.

 “These last seven years,” Bobby Jindal said at this week’s GOP “undercard” debate, “inequality has gone up. Only the top 10 percent have seen their incomes go up.” Rick Santorum said not once, not twice, but three times that the middle class was “hollowing out.” In the primetime debate that followed, Jeb Bush said “the disposable income of the great middle is down 2,300 bucks … Jobs are being created, but they’re lower-income jobs than the jobs that were lost.”

 But while the GOP candidates are eager to state the wages problem, they struggle to explain how they would fix it.

 “It’s a bit awkward,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, “if Republicans are talking about the need for wage growth and opposed to a minimum wage increase.”

 Only one of the Republican presidential candidates has endorsed a specific minimum-wage hike: Rick Santorum, who would raise the hourly minimum to $8.75, up from the current $7.25, over a period of three years. The Democratic field, meanwhile, proposes raising the minimum to $12 (Clinton) or $15 (Sanders, O’Malley).

 Ben Carson expressed in the September CNN debate tentative support for an unspecified increase. He also said he favored a lower “starter” minimum wage for young people. And Carson said the wage minimum should rise automatically with inflation “so that we never have to have this conversation again.”

 Romney also favored indexing the minimum wage, figuring, like Carson, that it would remove the topic permanently from the partisan arena. (Because the minimum wage is popular, politicizing it mostly hurts Republicans.) “It was a position [Romney] had as governor and a position he kept,” Stevens said, “and he ended up with a higher percentage of the GOP vote than Bush in 2000.” (Actually, Romney muddied his support in 2012 by proposing the minimum be indexed not only to inflation but also to “the jobs level throughout the country, unemployment rate [and] competitive rates in other states, or, in this case, other nations.”)

 But earlier this week Carson appeared to back away from his pro-minimum wage stance. “I would not raise it,” Carson said at Tuesday’s debate, “because I'm interested in making sure that people are able to enter the job market and take advantage of opportunities.”

 The Carson campaign didn’t answer POLITICO’s request for clarification, but spokesman Doug Watts told the Daily Beast that Carson’s position was unchanged. “His answer focused on the lower tier, which he does not believe needs raising, as it is an entry-level wage. He believes in a second, higher tier that, once determined, is indexed,” Watts told the Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick in a post-debate email.

 The other Republican candidates all oppose raising the minimum wage, and two of them — Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush — have indicated a preference for leaving the matter to the states. Then there's Trump, who since Tuesday has clarified that when he said wages were too high he was referring to the minimum wage, not to wages in general. (He did not propose lowering it.)

 Perhaps no candidate has underscored the Republicans’ wage dilemma more than Marco Rubio. “You can’t live on $10 an hour,” Rubio said in October. “You can’t live on $11 an hour.” That would indicate, logically, that still less can one live on $7.25 an hour. But Rubio opposes raising the federal minimum.

 To Republicans, “raising the minimum wage is a Band Aid solution,” explains Matthew Dickinson, a political scientist at Middlebury College. Lara Brown, a political scientist at George Washington University, says Republicans aren’t necessarily wrong about that. “The Democratic solution is dealing with the minimum wage. But the vast majority of people in the country are not making the minimum wage.”

 Instead, the Republican candidates favor stimulating the economy mainly through tax cuts and deregulation. But such policies yielded only modest growth in median household income under President Ronald Reagan, and a decline under President George W. Bush. Awareness has grown that sluggish wage growth is a long-term problem that's prevailed for four decades (excepting a period of brisk wage growth during the tech boom of the late 1990s).

 “Wages for the bottom 90 percent of the economy have been stagnant for 40 years,” Mike Huckabee said at Tuesday’s debate. Huckabee blamed the Federal Reserve. He favors a return to the gold standard, along with Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. But this position, long favored by many in the party’s more conservative wing, has never stirred much excitement among voters.

 The most dramatic initiative that Obama has undertaken to intervene in the wage economy has earned almost no mention from the Republican field. That’s the Labor Department’s proposed rule to more than double (to $50,440) the threshold under which virtually all salaried employees would qualify for time-and-a-half pay if they worked more than 40 hours in a given week.

 The overtime rule, which is expected to increase by five million the number of workers eligible for overtime pay, was welcomed warmly by Clinton and especially by Sanders and O’Malley. Congressional Republicans have denounced it as burdensome, echoing strong opposition by the business lobby. But the GOP’s presidential candidates have been largely silent on the topic.

 “It will probably become an increasing topic of debate,” said Dickinson, “particularly as the Labor department prepares for a final rule.” But with a final rule now not expected until late in 2016, “this one’s not close enough to fruition to become a target of attack.” |||||

– Politico has an interesting article on what it's calling "the Democrats' wage problem," a major takeaway of which is that the average American income has actually gone down during Obama's years as president. The median household income in 2014 was more than $1,600 lower than it was in January 2009, according to Census data. And while a recent survey says median household income is finally above its 2009 level this year, it's barely 1% above it. Politico calls this "one of the biggest weaknesses in the Obama economic recovery" and says it could be a big problem for Hillary Clinton since she was part of the administration. However Politico reports none of that is to say Republicans know how to fix stagnant wages or have even shown themselves able to capably address the issue. “It’s a bit awkward if Republicans are talking about the need for wage growth and opposed to a minimum wage increase," one political scientist tells Politico. Only one GOP presidential candidate—Rick Santorum—has a proposal to raise the national minimum wage, and it's more modest than similar proposals from any of the Democratic candidates. The majority of the other Republican candidates favor fixing stagnant wages through tax cuts and deregulation, policies that only exacerbated the problem under George W. Bush. Read the full story here.


– There’s no need to panic about Japanese markets post-earthquake, says Warren Buffett: Such cataclysmic events often create a “buying opportunity,” he tells Reuters from South Korea. “It will take some time to rebuild,” but the market plunge “will not change the economic future of Japan.” Put it this way: “If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them.” A Hong Kong investor agrees: “I saw lots of buying last week by overseas investors,” notes the Asian equities boss. “I tend to agree with Mr. Buffett for the long term. I suppose the economy will be weaker over the short term but reconstruction spending will eventually help.” And there will be plenty of that: The World Bank today said it expected the 5-year reconstruction effort to cost as much as $235 billion. Shares of Japan’s top home construction firm have already skyrocketed, the New York Times reports.

Expand this summary.

Major Japanese stock indexes plunged last week in days of frantic trading, with the Nikkei 225 stock average ending the week down more than 10 percent. But at least one prominent investor says the market has gotten it wrong.

 Warren E. Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the world’s wealthiest investors, told Reuters on Monday that the fall in the market represented a buying opportunity because Japan would bounce back.

 “It will take some time to rebuild, but it will not change the economic future of Japan,” Mr. Buffett said during a visit to Daegu, South Korea, after which he was to meet with Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president.

 “If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them.”

 While Japanese markets and businesses were closed on Monday for the Spring Equinox Holiday, investors around the world were closely watching the efforts of the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power to end the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

 Mr. Buffett’s remarks were confirmed by a Daegu official, Bae Young-chul. Mr. Buffet also said he expected the Japanese disasters to affect the world economy for a while, but that the global impact would be limited.

 “Frequently, something out of the blue like this, an extraordinary event, really creates a buying opportunity,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “I have seen that happen in the United States, I have seen that happen around the world. I don’t think Japan will be an exception.”

 Mr. Buffett is not alone in his optimism.

 “I saw lots of buying last week by overseas investors,” said Yoji Takeda, director of Asian equities at RBC Investment (Asia) in Hong Kong.

 “I tend to agree with Mr. Buffett for the long term,” he said. “I suppose the economy will be weaker over the short term but reconstruction spending will eventually help.”

 Even without the damage and fear inflicted by the nuclear accident, which followed the earthquake and tsunami, Economy Minister Kaoru Yosano has said the cost of rebuilding the damaged northeastern coast of Honshu, the largest of Japan’s islands, could be more than 20 trillion yen ($247 billion).

 In a report Monday, the World Bank said it might take Japan as long as five years to rebuild at a cost of up to $235 billion.

 Already, reconstruction-related businesses are booming. Shares of Daiwa House Industry, Japan’s biggest home construction company, and other builders and contractors have soared since disaster struck on March 11.

 Mr. Takeda said shares might have been oversold in the market panic last week because of overblown fears about the nuclear plant.

 “I think the radiation scare is overplayed,” he said. “I’ve heard of people fleeing Tokyo, and that’s too much.”

 Su-hyun Lee contributed reporting from Seoul. ||||| DAEGU, South Korea Billionaire investor Warren Buffett believes Japan's devastating earthquake is the kind of extraordinary event that creates a buying opportunity for shares in Japanese companies.

 Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has been battling to bring an overheating nuclear plant under control after it was battered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that rattled global markets and prompted massive intervention in currency markets by the Group of Seven industrial nations.

 "It will take some time to rebuild, but it will not change the economic future of Japan," Buffett said on Monday on a visit to a South Korean factory run by a company owned by one of his funds. "If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them.

 "Frequently, something out of the blue like this, an extraordinary event, really creates a buying opportunity. I have seen that happen in the United States, I have seen that happen around the world. I don't think Japan will be an exception," said the 80-year-old investor, dubbed the "Sage of Omaha" for his successful long-term investment strategy.

 Buffett heads Berkshire Hathaway Inc, which has substantial insurance and utility investments globally.

 Japan's Nikkei share average rose 2.7 percent on Friday, buoyed by the G7 support, but still ended the week down around 10 percent, with some $350 billion wiped off share values -- the market's biggest weekly slide since the global financial crisis in 2008. Japanese markets were closed on Monday.

 Buffett said Berkshire Hathaway, which at the year-end was sitting on $38 billion of cash equivalent and last week bought U.S. specialty chemicals maker Lubrizol for $9 billion, was looking for more large-scale acquisitions anywhere in the world.

 In his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders last month, Buffett had said he was looking for more acquisitions.

 "The United States is most likely where we will do something," he said at a ground-breaking ceremony for a South Korean factory run by a unit of an Israeli firm owned by his investment vehicle.

 Buffett will have yet more money to invest after Goldman Sachs buys back $5 billion of its preferred stock from Berkshire Hathaway, which the fund bought at the height of the global financial crisis.

 EYE ON KOREA

 Buffett, ranked the world's third-richest man by Forbes this year, said he was also looking to buy entire businesses and large-cap shares in South Korea -- where Berkshire is already a leading shareholder in steelmaker POSCO.

 He said geopolitical risks associated with North Korea had not curbed his interest in South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy. Berkshire also owns a stake in Chinese car and battery maker BYD.

 Buffett did not disclose any holdings in Japan on Monday, and Berkshire Hathaway's annual report did not show any major investments there. He had been due to visit Japan later this week, but canceled due to the earthquake.

 Unlike many foreign fund managers, Buffett, who arrived in the southeastern city of Daegu on Sunday by private jet, won plaudits from ordinary South Koreans.

 Sporting gray sweat pants and running shoes, Buffett was greeted by signs reading "Mr Buffett: Daegu Loves You."

 Many in this country of nearly 50 million people have bad memories of the 1998 Asian financial crisis when a deal with the International Monetary Fund bailed out the country but at the cost of tens of thousands of jobs.

 Some U.S. hedge funds have been branded "vultures" for buying South Korean assets on the cheap in the wake of that crisis.

 "It's a once in a life-time opportunity. I'm honored to meet such a respected businessman," said Seo Hyun-joo, a housewife wearing Korean traditional dress.

 Buffett later meets South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul and heads to India on Tuesday to launch his firm's insurance selling portal.

 (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by David Chance and Ian Geoghegan) |||||


Article:
Getty Al Gore not planning to run against Hillary, advisers say

 Despite some hopeful speculation among Democrats that Al Gore might jump into the 2016 presidential race in the face of Hillary Clinton’s troubles, people close to the former vice president and Democratic nominee say he’s not considering it.

 “There’s no truth to it. He’s laser-focused on solving the climate crisis," Gore spokeswoman Betsy McManus told POLITICO Thursday evening.

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 Earlier Thursday, Buzzfeed News posted a story saying that “supporters” of Gore “have begun a round of conversations among themselves and with the former vice president about his running for president in 2016, the latest sign that top Democrats have serious doubts that Hillary Clinton is a sure thing.” The story quoted a “senior Democrat” as saying “they’re getting the old gang together” and “figuring out if there’s a path financially and politically,” and the article cited “a member of Gore’s inner circle” who “asked to be quoted ‘pouring lukewarm water’ — not, note, cold water — on the chatter.”

 But Mike Feldman, who was Gore’s traveling chief of staff during the 2000 presidential election campaign and speaks to him regularly, says the speculation is probably just “Democrats talking to other Democrats. … I’m not saying there’s nobody out there fantasizing about it, but I haven’t heard anything and I’d be pretty insulted if there were a group of Gore advisers meeting and I wasn’t invited. I just don’t think this is on his mind.”

 In recent days other close Gore advisers have also told POLITICO that they have not heard of any interest from the 2000 Democratic nominee in another run.

 One likely reason for the current speculation about Gore is that Clinton is facing new iterations of email-gate, flagging poll numbers and still-surging Bernie Sanders-mania, despite a conviction among many Democratic strategists that Sanders is not electable. And strategists know that if Clinton falters, there are probably only two tried-and-true Democratic candidates who can be considered experienced enough to step in: Vice President Joe Biden is one (and is said to be actively considering a run), and the other is Gore, Biden’s Democratic predecessor as veep. (A possible third might be 2004 loser John Kerry, with the current secretary of state now riding high over his diplomatic coup in Geneva to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.)

 Gore has stayed entirely out of presidential politics since he won the popular vote but lost the White House 15 years ago. In a phone interview, Democratic strategist James Carville said while he also “hasn’t heard” anything from the Gore camp, he wouldn’t be surprised if Gore weren’t at least considering the possibilities. “Running for president is like having sex. No one did it once and forgot about it. If you can do it, you want to do it again, it’s something you don’t get out of your system.” He also noted this was a “very fluid cycle, and it’s still early in the process.” ||||| China Stringer Network / Reuters ID: 6604407

 Supporters of Al Gore have begun a round of conversations among themselves and with the former vice president about his running for president in 2016, the latest sign that top Democrats have serious doubts that Hillary Clinton is a sure thing.

 Gore, 67, won the popular vote in the 2000 election and has been mentioned as a possible candidate in every contested Democratic primary since then. He instead spent much of the 2000s focused on environmental campaigning and business ventures. He has largely slipped out of public view in more recent years.

 But in recent days, “they’re getting the old gang together,” a senior Democrat told BuzzFeed News.

 “They’re figuring out if there’s a path financially and politically,” the Democrat said. “It feels more real than it has in the past months.”

 The senior Democrat and other sources cautioned not to overstate Gore’s interest. He has not made any formal or informal moves toward running, or even met with his political advisers about a potential run.

 A member of Gore’s inner circle asked to be quoted “pouring lukewarm water” — not, note, cold water — on the chatter.

 “This is people talking to people, some of whom may or may not have talked to him,” the Gore adviser said.

 Roy Neel, a former top adviser to Gore, said Thursday he hadn’t spoken to Gore about it and dismissed the idea of a bid. “It’s extremely unlikely,” he said.

 Gore himself didn’t immediately reply to an inquiry emailed to his personal account.

 Polling this week put Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders ahead of Clinton for the first time in New Hampshire. And she is contending with another round of stories about her use of personal email, and the security of the server on which it was hosted, during her time as secretary of state.

 In June, when asked who will be the next president, Gore joked that he would dodge the question, before saying that it was “actually too early” to say. Gore declined to endorse Clinton in 2008, choosing to stay out of the Democratic primary until after Obama secured the nomination.

 Gore has had other focuses in recent years. In particular, Gore and a business partner are suing Al Jazeera, which purchased Current TV from him, over $65 million dollars held in escrow during the deal; Gore and his associate contend the money belongs to him. The Qatar-based network acquired Current in early 2013 in a deal reportedly worth $500 million.

 The former vice president has taken a step back from the climate change advocacy groups he helped to found, focusing instead on his business ventures and being a public climate change expert, if not the active lobbyist he once was. Climate change is still a top issue for Gore, and he’s been happy to trash the Keystone XL pipeline, putting him to the left of both President Obama and Clinton on the issue. Both have publicly reserved judgment on the project until a State Department review is complete.

 In March, Vox editor Ezra Klein argued that Gore, with his ability to fund a campaign and to mount a serious challenge to Clinton, should run for president.

 Klein cited Gore’s support for single-payer health care, his advocacy on climate change, and his opposition to the Iraq War to make the case that “the rest of his positions are closer in line with Democratic Party activists than, say, Clinton’s.” |||||Summary:

– At 5pm yesterday, Buzzfeed published a report claiming supporters of Al Gore were "getting the old gang together" to discuss a possible run for the White House, chatter that Andrew Kaczynski wrote signaled some Democrats' doubts about their frontrunner. Kaczynski's report was certainly restrained. He writes, "A member of Gore's inner circle asked to be quoted 'pouring lukewarm water'—not, note, cold water—on the chatter." But that didn't stop the avalanche of follow-up reports. Politico's report throws that cold water: "There's no truth to it. He's laser-focused on solving the climate crisis," Gore's rep tells the site.