AKRON, Ohio -- After police officers killed people in Missouri, New York and Cleveland, Akron is distributing cards to middle and high school students to advise citizens on how to behave when stopped by police.

 The palm card, which reads "You and the Law", is the product of the Akron PeaceMakers, Mayor Don Plusquellic's anti-crime and violence group of Akron-area high school students. The card has 15 bullet points, some of which tell the reader to engage politely with officers, i.e. "Don't bad mouth police." Others which provide more direct advice, such as "Answer all questions pertaining to your identity," and "Stay in the driver's seat with both hands in sight on the steering wheel."

 A quote at the top of the flier says "The easiest way to avoid conflict with law enforcement officials is simply to stay out of trouble."

 PeaceMakers President and STEM High School Junior Myia Culbreath helped present the cards to the media at Akron City Council chambers Wednesday. She said the group was sparked to create the cards after the death of Tamir Rice. Protestors in Cleveland and Akron took to the streets in November when a Cleveland police officer shot and killed 13-year-old Tamir while he was playing with an airsoft-type gun in a park.

 "After the unfortunate incidents in Ferguson (Missouri), New York and Cleveland, we the Akron PeaceMakers were waiting for something positive to come out of it," said Akron STEM High School Junior Myia Culbreath, the group's president. "Our thought was, we all have an obligation to educate one another in these matters."

 Plusquellic stood in front of a group of PeaceMakers Wednesday to unveil the card, which will first be distributed to Akron Public School students.

 "A lot of this is so common sensical, but some people don't think about 'Oh what happens when I reach in for my license,'" Plusquellic said.

 The Peacemakers conceived the cards two weeks ago, Plusquellic said, and were advised by Akron Assistant Police Chief Charles Brown and retired police Sergeant Willa Keith.

 The pamphlets have personal significance for Billy Soule, who directs the PeaceMakers assistant to the mayor for community relations. Soule's son was carrying a toy gun years ago when he was stopped by police at Rolling Acres Mall.

 "I thought my message (to him) went through, but it didn't," Soule said. "Officers surrounded the boys with guns drawn and told them to go down to the ground. My son is alive today because he listened."

 The cards will first be distributed to schools, Soule said, but will also be distributed to churches, community houses, block watch groups and board meetings.

 "We want to get these cards into the hands of as many people as possible," Soule said. ||||| For Students In Ohio, A Crib Sheet For Interacting With Police

 Enlarge this image toggle caption M.L. Schultze /WKSU M.L. Schultze /WKSU

 This week, every middle and high school student in Akron, Ohio, is getting a glossy, two-sided card giving them suggestions for dealing with police.

 It's a collaboration between an anti-violence youth group and the city's police department.

 The "You and the Law" cards begin with the big picture: Stay out of trouble. And then a rapid succession of 15 points — control your emotions, answer questions about your identity, put your hands on the steering wheel in plain sight.

 The back of the card advises students to report police misconduct and includes phone numbers to call.

 The youth group is known as Akron PeaceMakers. Member Devin Clark says it raised $1,500 to print 50,000 of the cards.

 "When they get put in the situation, they're going to look back at that card and be like, 'Wow. You know, that helped when I actually read that.' It'll put them in a better position," Clark says.

 The cards are getting lots of praise from adults, but they're now heading out to a tougher audience.

 At Firestone High School on the city's northwest side, the reaction is largely one of interest, with some debate over the responsibility of officers in encounters.

 Student Rachel Cooke says it's important that the cards recognize that police can be the transgressors.

 "I'm not saying that all cops are bad, but there are cops that are drunk on their power, I would say. So I think that it holds them responsible so they can stay in line," Cooke says. "They have to obey the law just like we do."

 In a quieter spot across from the cafeteria, Ryan Hall says he expects and welcomes the debate — better in a high school cafeteria than on the street.

 "This is almost a preventative measure," Hall says. "In many cases it was a small situation that has escalated to end up being a much larger situation."

 The idea for the cards came from a meeting in December, soon after police in nearby Cleveland shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice on a playground.

 Billy Soule is Akron's liaison with the PeaceMakers. He says the kids wanted to see more than protests.

 "We were hoping that someone within the community would say, 'We need a mechanism to tell our kids what to do,' " Soule says.

 So the kids did it themselves.

 Though some argue the cards go too far in supporting the police point of view, these kids disagree. They say it was crucial that the cards also include advice to document and report police misconduct.

 Ryan Hall says it's a matter of letting people know they have options. "People can feel as if they're powerless against police because they are the police — they're put in a position of authority," Hall says. "Instead of cussing him out, I can just say, 'OK. Let me calm down,' and then at a later time, call the police station."

 Willa Keith, a retired Akron police sergeant who works with the group, says it's about building trust.

 "We are all working for the same goal. We want peace in the city, we want harmony, we want to live the best lives that we can," Keith says.

 The Akron group plans to eventually distribute the cards to adults and to possibly extend the program internationally.

 Gary, Ind., Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Mayors Working Group of Mayors and Police Chiefs, says mayors across the country are desperate to find ways to bridge police-citizen divides in their communities — and she and others are looking at this approach as one way to do that. |||||

Write a summary.

– Not long after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by police in Cleveland in November, a group of students in nearby Akron decided protests weren't enough. So the Akron PeaceMakers, an anti-violence youth group, brainstormed with the local PD to come up with a double-sided crib sheet of tips for kids to follow when interacting with cops, NPR reports. The "You and the Law" cards, set to be doled out to all Akron middle school and high school students—and possibly to adults, and internationally, in the future—feature 15 bullet points outlining "basic rights and responsibilities," as well as suggestions to ensure safety during an encounter. "Do not 'bad-mouth' or walk away from the law-enforcement officials," "control your emotions," and "do not resist arrest for any reason" are some of the tips. The top of each card mentions the "easiest way to avoid conflict with law enforcement officials is simply to stay out of trouble." The cards have sparked a debate over whether the police are escaping their own responsibility in confrontations, NPR notes. But the kids involved say the point is to de-escalate the situation, not let cops off the hook—and there are phone numbers on the back to report police misconduct. "Instead of cussing [a police officer] out, I can just say, 'OK. Let me calm down,' and then at a later time, call the police station," one student tells NPR. Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic says the cards serve as a common-sense refresher. "Some people don't think about 'Oh, what happens when I reach in for my license,'" he said at a presentation of the cards, per Cleveland.com. Billy Soule, whose son was stopped by cops years ago with a toy gun, works with the youth group as a city rep. "Officers surrounded the boys with guns drawn and told them to go down to the ground," he says, per the site. "My son is alive today because he listened."


Article:
Also featured in an upcoming 'Dateline' special are Kris Jenner, Denise Brown, Fred Goldman, Alan Dershowitz and Kato Kaelin, among numerous others connected to the case.

 Marcia Clark, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor who was the lead attorney on the O.J. Simpson murder case, says she blames herself for the controversial outcome of the case.

 Sitting down for a Dateline NBC interview set to air Sunday, Clark shed some more light on the inner workings of the case which captivated the world more than two decades ago.

 A preview of the pre-taped interview was released Tuesday; Clark sitting down with Josh Mankiewicz talks about not wanting Simpson to try on the gloves during the trial and how she felt when the jury foreman read "Not guilty."

 "It was physically painful," Clark says of the verdict. "And I thought of Ron [Goldman] and Nicole [Brown], and I thought, 'This is wrong.'"

 The double homicide has once again become a main topic of conversation following the recently launched FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

 So far, four episodes of the nine part series have aired.

 The two-hour Dateline special will also feature interviews with Kris Jenner, Denise Brown, Fred Goldman, Alan Dershowitz and Kato Kaelin, among numerous others connected to the case.

 In the preview for the special, Clark — played by Sarah Paulson in the FX series — says she blames herself for Simpson going free.

 "But at the end of the day, we really ... there was no way to reach that jury," she tells Mankiewicz. "There was no way to make them believe. There really wasn't."

 Clark also says she was against Simpson trying on the gloves, which police said the killer left behind, during the trial. That iconic moment, when the glove appeared to not fit, was a massive blow to the prosecution.

 "That was not my call. That was not my call," she tells Mankiewicz. "I did not want him to try on the evidence gloves. I never did."

 That idea came from co-counsel Christopher Darden, played by Sterling K. Brown in the FX series. Darden apologized to Clark for the massive blunder, she says.

 "And I said, 'It’s okay," says Clark. "If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway'.” ||||| Dateline is NBC’s signature newsmagazine, bringing viewers storytelling at its best. Our stories range from compelling mysteries to powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. When major news breaks, we go to the scene, putting the pieces together to bring you the full picture. And in every story we tell, we help the real people who lived the events share their journeys with you. On the air since 1992, Dateline is the longest-running prime-time program on NBC. Our work has been honored time and again with broadcast journalism’s highest awards. Lester Holt is the principal anchor, joined by correspondents Andrea Canning, Josh Mankiewicz, Keith Morrison and Dennis Murphy.

 For more, visit the main Dateline site. |||||Summary:

– The former Los Angeles County prosecutor who failed to convict OJ Simpson of murder in 1995 says she would probably fail to convict now, for the same reason: Jurors who didn't care whether he was guilty or not. In an interview for an NBC Dateline special, Marcia Clark says some of the nine black jurors "came in for the purpose of payback" amid a similar climate of "racial mistrust" of the police as exists today. "They didn't care whether he was guilty or innocent," Clark says. "They were going to use this case for payback." There was plenty of evidence pointing to Simpson's guilt, but it "didn't wind up mattering because there was a fundamental large issue standing in the way of seeing the evidence," she says. "You had this enormous mistrust of everything LAPD, everything officer related." "There was no way to reach that jury. There was no way to make them believe. There really wasn't," Clark says, per the Hollywood Reporter, which notes that interest in the case has surged during the airing of the FX series The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story. Clark says the infamous decision to have Simpson try on a glove found near the murder scene wasn't hers. She says co-counsel Christopher Darden came up with the idea and apologized after it backfired. She says she told him it was OK. "If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway," she says. (A knife allegedly found nearly two decades ago on Simpson's former estate is now being tested by the LAPD.)


Write an article based on this summary:

– With floodwaters starting to recede, the toll in Australia is at 25 and expected to climb given the dozens of people still missing, reports the AP. As the state's premier put it: "Queensland is reeling this morning from the worst natural disaster in our history and possibly in the history of our nation. We face a reconstruction task of postwar proportions." As the nation assesses the damage, tales of daring rescues and heroism are emerging: In Toowoomba, 13-year-old Jordan Rice is being hailed as a hero for asking rescuers to get his brother to safety first. By the time they returned to the family's submerged car, it was too late to save Jordan and his mother, reports AOL News, which rounds up local coverage. Click for more on Jordan. When a helicopter owned by mining magnate Clive Palmer set out to rescue three employees near Brisbane, it noticed scores of other people trapped on roofs. It went back, again and again, and ended up saving 60 people, reports the Telegraph. A reddit.com photo popular on BuzzFeed shows a man carrying a small kangaroo to safety. Click for image.

Residents began a long wait Thursday for floodwaters to subside and reveal the extent of devastation to Australia's third-largest city, while upstream soldiers picked their way through the debris of washed-away towns looking for more victims from one of the country's worst natural disasters.

 An unidentified woman uses a hose to pump water out of an office in the city center of Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's third-largest city crested... (Associated Press)

 Local residents walk through floodwater after getting ice and food to take to their flooded residence in the suburb of New Farm in Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through... (Associated Press)

 The statue of Queensland's famous former Rugby League star Wally Lewis fitted out with water wings, scuba mask and snorkel is seen outside the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane Australia, Wednesday Jan. 12,... (Associated Press)

 The remains of a floating restaurant called Drift Cafe is swept down the Brisbane River Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011, as floodwaters surge through Brisbane, Australia. At least 22 people have died and more... (Associated Press)

 An entire suburb is submerged outside Ipswich, west of Brisbane, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. Emergency sirens blared across Australia's third-largest city Wednesday as floodwaters that have torn... (Associated Press)

 A rescue helicopter flies over a flooded area in South East Queensland, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. Deadly floodwaters flowed onto the streets in Australia's northeastern state of Queensland since drenching... (Associated Press)

 A farm house destroyed by floodwaters stands in South East Queensland, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. Deadly floodwaters flowed onto the streets in Australia's northeastern state of Queensland since drenching... (Associated Press)

 A street is flooded in the city center of Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's third-largest city crested Thursday just shy of record levels but high... (Associated Press)

 An unidentified woman climbs onto a wall to see the damage in her property after flood water reached the area in New Farm, Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's... (Associated Press)

 A rescue worker, left, talks to an unidentified home owner as he starts cleaning after flood waters reached his home in New Farm, Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through... (Associated Press)

 A shoe floats out of the front door of a flooded residence in the suburb of New Farm in Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's third-largest city crested... (Associated Press)

 A resident walks through floodwater to take food to stranded residents in the suburb of New Farm in Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's third-largest... (Associated Press)

 The remains of a floating restaurant called Drift Cafe is swept down the Brisbane River Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011, as floodwaters surge through Brisbane, Australia. At least 22 people have died and more... (Associated Press)

 A car is wrecked in floodwaters outside the town of Grantham in South East Queensland, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. Deadly floodwaters flowed onto the streets in Australia's northeastern state of Queensland... (Associated Press)

 A police boat looks for survivors on the Brisbane River, Brisbane, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. Deadly floodwaters that have cut a swath across northeastern Australia flowed onto the streets of... (Associated Press)

 Debris float in front of a car park entrance in the center of Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's third-largest city crested Thursday just shy of record... (Associated Press)

 A local resident talks on the phone inside his flooded home in Hawthorne in Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's third-largest city crested Thursday just... (Associated Press)

 A car wrecks outside the town of Grantham in South East Queensland, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. The small town was hit by flash flooding causing mass destruction. Deadly floodwaters that have... (Associated Press)

 A vehicle is swept away in floodwaters in South East Queensland, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. Deadly floodwaters flowed onto the streets in Australia's northeastern state of Queensland since drenching rains... (Associated Press)

 A cyclist pedals past the Port Office Hotel in the city center of Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. Floodwaters washing through Australia's third-largest city crested Thursday just shy of... (Associated Press)

 The waters left behind tractor-trailers snapped in half, concrete slabs where houses used to be and a car hanging from a tree.

 The slow-motion inundation of Brisbane overnight _ played out live on television before a nation transfixed _ was a critical moment in flooding that has built for weeks as rain fell incessantly across Australia's tropical northeast.

 The emergency is not over, but Brisbane's escape from what forecasters had predicted would be a flood worse than one that laid waste to much of the city 37 years ago triggered relief nationwide.

 The death toll stood at 25, including a 24-year-old man who drowned Thursday when he was sucked into a storm drain as he tried to check on his father's home in a swamped Brisbane neighborhood. Officials said they expect to find more bodies farther upstream as they finally got access to hamlets struck by flash flooding on Monday.

 The deadly floodwaters began to recede Thursday after cresting about three feet (one meter) below the depth of 1974 floods that swept through Brisbane and set a benchmark for disaster. Still, 30,000 homes and business were swamped _ many all the way up to their terra-cotta roof tiles. Skyscrapers stood empty as downtown closed for a for a second day, and thousands remained huddled in evacuation centers or with friends and family on higher ground.

 "Queensland is reeling this morning from the worst natural disaster in our history and possibly in the history of our nation," a visibly shaken state Premier Anna Bligh told reporters. "We've seen three-quarters of our state having experienced the devastation of raging floodwaters and we now face a reconstruction task of postwar proportions."

 The flooding across Queensland has submerged dozens of towns _ some three times _ and left an area the size of Germany and France combined under water. Highways and rail lines have been washed away in the disaster, which is shaping up to be Australia's costliest. Damage estimates were already at $5 billion before the floodwaters swamped Brisbane.

 At least 61 people are still missing, most of them from around Toowoomba, a city west of Brisbane that saw massive flash floods on Monday. Fourteen died in that flood alone, including two whose bodies were found on Thursday. Deputy Police Commissioner Ian Stewart warned that number was likely to rise as search and rescue teams are able to move into more devastated areas.

 "We've got to brace ourselves for more bad news," Stewart said.

 With decent access to the region between Brisbane and Toowoomba for the first time, more than 200 police and soldiers fanned out across the stricken Lockyer Valley in buses, helicopters and amphibious military vehicles on Thursday.

 At Postmans Ridge, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) west of Brisbane, about two dozen soldiers wearing jungle camouflage uniforms and police in dark coveralls picked their way methodically through large trees flattened along a creek banks and a floodplain strewn with debris. Tractor-trailers lay broken in two, boats were crushed and the body of a horse was wedged between a downed tree and the sodden ground.

 Nearby, Barry and Catherine Bull boiled potatoes and cooked rump steak given to them by a neighbor over a gas-fired camp stove set up outside their house, built of brick and one of few left standing around them. All that remains of the neighbor's wood-framed house is the concrete slab. A car was suspended in the sagging branches of a tree.

 They fear the elderly woman across the street is one of the people for whom the soldiers are searching.

 "One of the neighbors went to get her, got her out of the house, but she went back for the dog," Catherine Bull said. "That was the last anyone saw of her. If you'd seen the torrent and the way the water was moving, I think you know the rest."

 Officials told evacuated Brisbane residents it could be days before it was safe to return to inundated neighborhoods, though no bans were in place preventing people from surveying the damage. Some homes would never be habitable again.

 Mayor Campbell Newman said 11,900 homes and 2,500 businesses had been completely inundated, with another 14,700 houses and 2,500 businesses at least partially covered in water.

 Roads were flooded, railway lines were cut and sewage spilled into the floodwaters. People moved about in kayaks, rowboats and even on surfboards.

 Police officers were patrolling Brisbane's flooded streets around the clock. Three men were charged with looting after police said they tried to steal dinghies from the swollen river.

 Despite the devastation, many in Brisbane were thankful the river running through the city had spared them the worst of its fury.

 Lisa Sully, who lives in the nearby suburb of Sherwood, did have some water in her home _ but she still felt lucky on Thursday.

 "I can handle this," she said. "Mentally, I was prepared for worse."

 The death toll has shocked Australians, no strangers to deadly natural disasters such as the wildfires that killed 173 in a single day two years ago.

 Though the full extent of the damage won't be known until the water is gone, even before Brisbane was threatened, Bligh estimated a cleanup and rebuilding to total about $5 billion.

 Add to that, the damage to economy: Queensland's coal industry has virtually shut down, costing millions in deferred exports and sending global prices higher. Vegetables, fruit and sugarcane crops in the rich agricultural region have been wiped out, and prices are due to skyrocket as a result. ||||| Clive Palmer, the billionaire owner of mining company Mineralogy, initially ordered the helicopter to go to the aid of three staff members who were stuck on the roof of his horse stud farm in Kilcoy, 70 miles northwest of Brisbane.

 The remote property was inundated by flash floods and the emergency services had not yet responded to calls for help.

 The group had been unable to escape when a wall of water hit the property and were in danger of being swept away, he said.

 "An extra metre and it would have got them. They were very lucky - they should have got a quicker response," he told the Courier Mail newspaper. "The important lesson is we need fast reaction times and not slow ones."

 Mr Palmer said the group had called the emergency services, but 12 hours later when they had still not arrived, he decided to act.

 "I made the call at four in the morning to get our guys in because we were worried they'd drown," he said.

 On the way back from picking up the employees, the helicopter passed over another 16 people, including several children, stranded on the roof of a local school.

 "They'd been waiting for a day for an evacuation too, so our chopper went back and shuttled them all off," Mr Palmer said.

 By the end of the crisis, the helicopter had saved 60 people, employees said.

 Murray Sullivan, who was plucked from the roof of the horse stud, said he owed his life to Mr Palmer.

 "I will never, ever forget what Clive did for me," he told racing website harnesslink.com.

 "I will definitely be returning to work for him but for now I can't face what is there. The water has subsided but the thought of cleaning up the carcasses of horses I loved so much would be too much for me to take right now."

 Mr Palmer said he had lost around $1.8 million of farm equipment and about 20 horses had drowned in the flash flood. ||||| Web wide crawl with initial seedlist and crawler configuration from March 2011. This uses the new HQ software for distributed crawling by Kenji Nagahashi.

 What’s in the data set:

 Crawl start date: 09 March, 2011

 Crawl end date: 23 December, 2011

 Number of captures: 2,713,676,341

 Number of unique URLs: 2,273,840,159

 Number of hosts: 29,032,069

 The seed list for this crawl was a list of Alexa’s top 1 million web sites, retrieved close to the crawl start date. We used Heritrix (3.1.1-SNAPSHOT) crawler software and respected robots.txt directives. The scope of the crawl was not limited except for a few manually excluded sites.

 However this was a somewhat experimental crawl for us, as we were using newly minted software to feed URLs to the crawlers, and we know there were some operational issues with it. For example, in many cases we may not have crawled all of the embedded and linked objects in a page since the URLs for these resources were added into queues that quickly grew bigger than the intended size of the crawl (and therefore we never got to them). We also included repeated crawls of some Argentinian government sites, so looking at results by country will be somewhat skewed.

 We have made many changes to how we do these wide crawls since this particular example, but we wanted to make the data available “warts and all” for people to experiment with. We have also done some further analysis of the content.

 If you would like access to this set of crawl data, please contact us at info at archive dot org and let us know who you are and what you’re hoping to do with it. We may not be able to say “yes” to all requests, since we’re just figuring out whether this is a good idea, but everyone will be considered. ||||| McErlean,

 Tyson said he was heartbroken but proud of his son. "I can only imagine what was going on inside to give up his life to save his brother, even though he was petrified of water. He is our little hero."Rice is being hailed as a hero today after he gave up his life for his younger brother Blake, 10, when his family's car got caught in the floodwaters that have so far killed at least 15 people and left 70 others missing.Warrena passerby who tried desperately to save the family when their white Mercedes began to flood Monday, said he was in awe of Jordan's courage but devastated that he could not rescue the boy or his mother. In an emotional interview, McErlean said he and two others who stopped to help the family were using rope to pull 43-year-old Donna Rice and her two sons to safety when Jordan told them to save his brother and mother first.McErlean said the youngster helped rescuers lift Blake out of the flood waters, then begged them to take his mother next as the rushing waters became stronger."Jordan grabbed [Blake] and helped him onto the car. ... Jordan was getting up but he wouldn't go. He couldn't swim. But he helped his mom onto this guy's back ... the current was so strong," McErlean told Australia's 2UE954 Radio , his voice breaking. |||||


Article:

Lindsay Lohan had a constant stream of regular visitors while in rehab at Cliffside Malibu, but RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned one unexpected visitor was actor and producer, Ben Affleck.

 As reports circulated — and were denied — that Lindsay has a role in Affleck’s upcoming film Live by Night, it turns out the idea wasn’t as far fetched as it sounds.

 “Ben came to visit Lindsay while she was at Cliffside to talk about the possibility of a role in his movie,” a former patient who attended rehab with Lindsay, 27, told Radar.

 “Lindsay was excited about the opportunity, telling me that she was going to have dark hair in the movie and would have an Irish accent.”

 According to the insider, Affleck arrived with an assistant at the Malibu treatment center late at night just a few days before Lindsay’s birthday on July 2 and stayed for about an hour.

 PHOTOS: Celebs Who Have Been In Rehab

 “A former substance abuser himself, Lindsay said he was there to check on her and see how she was doing,” the source said.

 “She tried to tell me he was being flirty with her, but that’s just Lindsay’s way of embellishing because she constantly needs attention.”

 And while a source close to the movie maintains that Lindsay “isn’t being considered and won’t be in the movie,” they also didn’t deny the actor’s visit to Lilo in rehab.

 PHOTOS: Lindsay Lohan Leaves Rehab

 Would Affleck be making a mistake by casting Lindsay in one of his movies? Sound off below… ||||| OWN

 As we get closer to the highly anticipated sit-down between Lindsay Lohan and Oprah Winfrey, another sneak peek of the interview has just been released.

 Sure, at 15 seconds, this new promo goes by pretty fast, but it definitely has us wanting more.

 "Do you think you can turn it around?" Winfrey is seen asking Lohan, who recently left rehab, followed by: "What is it that you are addicted to?"

 PHOTOS: Lindsay Lohan looks happy and healthy on post-rehab shopping trip with sister Ali

 Toward the end, the actress states, "I'm my own worst enemy and I know it."

 In an extended promo that was unveiled over the weekend, Winfrey grilled Lohan with such questions as, "What's going to be different this time?" and "When you get the first DUI, is that a wake-up call?"

 While appearing on CBS This Morning last week, Winfrey said she felt Lohan was "honest" and "authentic" during their interview, adding, "She looked good. She looked strong. She looked healthy."

 The full interview airs on OWN, Sunday, Aug. 18 at 9 p.m.

 PHOTOS: Lindsay Lohan through the years

 RELATED VIDEOS: |||||
What is a summary?

– Ben Affleck knows a little something about rehab, so he decided to show his support to Lindsay Lohan during her most recent stay. While she was at Cliffside Malibu, Affleck met with her secretly to give her some tips on staying sober in Hollywood—and making a successful comeback. Sources tell TMZ that Affleck also told LiLo she's talented and has the support of others in the entertainment industry, and that LiLo was moved by his words. (Some outlets reported Affleck was offering Lindsay a role in his new movie, but TMZ says that's not the case.) Meanwhile, Lohan's much-anticipated sit-down with Oprah Winfrey airs on OWN Sunday at 9pm, and previews have been trickling out. In the latest, E! reports, Lindsay tells Oprah, "I'm my own worst enemy, and I know that." This and previous promos have shown Winfrey interrogating Lohan with questions including, "Do you think you can turn it around?", "What is it that you are addicted to?", "What's going to be different this time?", and "When you get the first DUI, is that a wake-up call?" Winfrey said last week that Lohan's responses seemed "honest" and "authentic."


Here is a news article: Not very long after God told some at St. Joseph Abbey that the way out of financial hardship might be selling the monks’ handcrafted caskets, the state of Louisiana arrived with a different message.

 It was a cease-and-desist order and came with threats of thousands of dollars in fines and possible criminal prosecution.

 “Before we even sold a casket,” St. Joseph Abbot Justin Brown said in a recent interview in the picturesque abbey, which is located about an hour’s drive from New Orleans, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. Now a band of libertarian lawyers is hoping that the honey-colored Louisiana cypress coffins provide the vehicle for a Supreme Court review of government economic regulations.

 Brown, a soft-spoken man who is only the fifth leader of a monastery that dates to 1889, said he had not known that in Louisiana only licensed funeral directors are allowed to sell “funeral merchandise.”

 That means that St. Joseph Abbey must either give up the casket-selling business or become a licensed funeral establishment, which would require a layout parlor for 30 people, a display area for the coffins, the employment of a licensed funeral director and an embalming room.

 “Really,” Brown said. “It’s just a big box.”

 And so, after much prayer and two failed attempts to get the Louisiana legislature to change the law, the monks went to federal court.

 The monks won round one in July, when U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. ruled Louisiana’s restrictions unconstitutional, saying “the sole reason for these laws is the economic protection of the funeral industry.”

 The Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, which has argued that the law protects consumers, has appealed, and the circuit court in New Orleans will hear the case in early June.

 The monks are represented by the Arlington County-based Institute for Justice, which has a knack for picking empathetic, working-class parties — hair braiders, flower arrangers, city tour guides — to personify what it says is its battle against government regulation that strangles free enterprise.

 The group is on a constant watch to find the perfect case to challenge a series of economic regulation decisions nearly unbroken since the New Deal. Courts must find only that there is a “rational basis” for an act, the most accommodating standard for government action.

 William H. “Chip” Mellor, president of the group, said there are three essential components to a successful suit: “outrageous facts,” “evil villains” and “sympathetic clients.”

 By that measure, the institute might find it hard to top St. Joseph Abbey. Jeff Rowes, one of the lawyers in the case, said he recently gave this advice to a seminar of law students:

 “The number one thing you should do as a public interest litigator is to get monks as your clients in every single case.”

 ‘It’s God’s idea’

 Brown, 54, never really thought of going into the casket-building business, although the abbey has built caskets for years for the monks and others in southeast Louisiana.

 But the monks of St. Joseph, part of the Order of Saint Benedict, must support themselves. “Ora et labora” — “prayer and work” — is the order’s motto. Money comes from contributions, the seminary that trains priests, a retreat center and small enterprises such as a gift shop that features abbey-made Monk Soap in fragrances such as Mayan Gold.

 But the abbey lost a large portion of its income in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed part of the pine timberlands whose harvest had been profitable.

 It was Deacon Mark Coudrain, a woodworking enthusiast asked by his father to build a casket for him, who approached Brown with the prospect of turning the abbey’s occasional coffin construction into a business.

 “I really like to say it’s God’s idea that I didn’t want to do,” Coudrain said. Eventually, he decided, “there’s a need, the abbey’s the perfect place and God was saying, ‘You know, I taught you something, why don’t you use it?’ ”

 So the monks prayed, voted and bought $200,000 in equipment to establish St. Joseph Woodworks.

 And so for some of the 36 monks at St. Joseph — they range in age from 26 to 89 — casket-building has become part of the daily routine. Prayers and readings start at 6; breakfast is taken in silence at 7. Mass is at 11:15 and lunch at noon.

 At a recent meal, the monks scattered along long wooden tables anchored by the requisite Louisiana condiments of Tabasco and Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, listening to a fellow monk read from Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln.”

 There are more chores in the afternoon — some monks teach at the seminary next door — and the singing of psalms at 5:30. Dinner is at 6, the O’Reilly book replaced by a more religious text.

 At the woodshop, several of the monks work with Coudrain and volunteers. Brother Elias Eichorn, the “iron monk” who recently completed the Boston Marathon and is training for a triathalon, works on lids. Brother Emmanuel Labrise, a fairly recent arrival from Pennsylvania, lines them with white cloth.

 There are two versions, a monastic style with metal handles that sells for $1,500 and a traditional version with wooden rail handles for $2,000. In a nod to modernity, they can be modified for the oversized. Each is blessed and, an in attempt to create the abbey’s signature, marked with a medal of Saint Benedict.

 “Noble simplicity,” Brown said. “It’s simple, but it’s not cheap.”

 ‘The last word in life’

 The workshop was dedicated Nov. 1, 2007, and a local Catholic newspaper reported the event. The cease-and-desist letter came immediately, Brown said.

 The abbot said it was difficult to know what to do. The abbey had made a huge investment, but he was reluctant to sue for the right to sell the caskets.

 “Was that something monasteries should do, or should we just lay low and be quiet about it?” Brown wondered. “A lot of these funeral directors are good Catholic men.”

 He decided to continue to sell caskets to those who asked for them but not to advertise. His state House representative, Scott Simon (R), looked for a compromise. “It was my first bill,” Simon said in an interview. The funeral directors association, he said, had it killed in committee.

 “I learned that funeral directors have the last word in life, and in the legislature,” Simon said.

 After the funeral directors board in 2010 subpoenaed Brown and Coudrain to testify about the casket sales, the men agreed to let the Institute of Justice file a federal lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s law as a violation of due process and equal protection. The abbey’s attorneys said Louisiana is the only state to enforce a ban on in-state sales.

 Although robes are usually worn just around the monastery, Brown said, he donned his habit for the news conference on the courthouse steps, which featured a casket.

 Representatives of the funeral directors board, the association that lobbies the legislature and several funeral directors who serve on both did not return phone calls or e-mails asking for comment on the case.

 But in court pleadings, the board said the legislature had good reason for limiting in-state sales of caskets. The act protects Louisianans from “improper and overreaching sales tactics in the area of ‘at need’ casket sales,” the brief says. In some parts of the state, many burials are aboveground, and that requires “knowledgable decisions” in casket sales “mindful of Louisiana’s unique situation.”

 The institute’s attorneys say that makes no sense. The state has no legal requirement that anyone be buried in a casket, and, under federal rules, funeral directors must accept a casket that a family has purchased elsewhere.

 Thus, Louisianans are free to purchase a casket online from Wal-Mart or Costco, Judge Duval noted, but not from an in-state casket-maker.

 Still, the Louisiana board argues, courts are simply not free to overturn economic regulation laws that have some rational basis.

 And, the board said, if it has the “incidental consequence of economic protectionism, such a consequence does not render Louisiana’s statutory scheme constitutionally infirm.” To second-guess the legislature is to return to the days before the New Deal, when courts imposed their own economic judgment, the board said

 The Institute for Justice’s Mellor replies that protectionism is different.

 “The standard of review is so favorably tilted to the government that legitimate occupations are foreclosed — or entry into the occupations is so heavily conditioned — that they basically become cartels or monopolies protected by government edict,” he said.

 Federal appeals courts have split in evaluating similar laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said there was nothing unconstitutional about an Oklahoma law that protected the intrastate funeral home industry.

 “While baseball may be the national pastime of the citizenry, dishing out special economic benefits to certain in-state industries remains the favored pastime of state and local governments,” it ruled.

 But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit struck down a Tennessee law protecting funeral directors, saying an attempt to “privilege certain businessmen over others at the expense of consumers is not animated by a legitimate governmental purpose.”

 The institute’s attorneys hope the eventual decision from the New Orleans appeals court will make the issue attractive to the Supreme Court.

 If that happens, Brown said, so be it.

 “I was concerned that it would disturb the peace of the monastery by getting involved in something somewhat controversial, adversarial, but it hasn’t,” he said. “If you study monastic history, there were often conflicts between monks and civil authorities.” ||||| Not very long after God told some at St. Joseph Abbey that the way out of financial hardship might be selling the monks’ handcrafted caskets, the state of Louisiana arrived with a different message.

 It was a cease-and-desist order and came with threats of thousands of dollars in fines and possible criminal prosecution.

 “Before we even sold a casket,” St. Joseph Abbot Justin Brown said in a recent interview in the picturesque abbey, which is located about an hour’s drive from New Orleans, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. Now a band of libertarian lawyers is hoping that the honey-colored Louisiana cypress coffins provide the vehicle for a Supreme Court review of government economic regulations.

 Brown, a soft-spoken man who is only the fifth leader of a monastery that dates to 1889, said he had not known that in Louisiana only licensed funeral directors are allowed to sell “funeral merchandise.”

 That means that St. Joseph Abbey must either give up the casket-selling business or become a licensed funeral establishment, which would require a layout parlor for 30 people, a display area for the coffins, the employment of a licensed funeral director and an embalming room.

 “Really,” Brown said. “It’s just a big box.”

 And so, after much prayer and two failed attempts to get the Louisiana legislature to change the law, the monks went to federal court.

 The monks won round one in July, when U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. ruled Louisiana’s restrictions unconstitutional, saying “the sole reason for these laws is the economic protection of the funeral industry.”

 The Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, which has argued that the law protects consumers, has appealed, and the circuit court in New Orleans will hear the case in early June.

 The monks are represented by the Arlington County-based Institute for Justice, which has a knack for picking empathetic, working-class parties — hair braiders, flower arrangers, city tour guides — to personify what it says is its battle against government regulation that strangles free enterprise.

 The group is on a constant watch to find the perfect case to challenge a series of economic regulation decisions nearly unbroken since the New Deal. Courts must find only that there is a “rational basis” for an act, the most accommodating standard for government action.

 William H. “Chip” Mellor, president of the group, said there are three essential components to a successful suit: “outrageous facts,” “evil villains” and “sympathetic clients.”

 By that measure, the institute might find it hard to top St. Joseph Abbey. Jeff Rowes, one of the lawyers in the case, said he recently gave this advice to a seminar of law students:

 “The number one thing you should do as a public interest litigator is to get monks as your clients in every single case.”

 ‘It’s God’s idea’

 Brown, 54, never really thought of going into the casket-building business, although the abbey has built caskets for years for the monks and others in southeast Louisiana.

 But the monks of St. Joseph, part of the Order of Saint Benedict, must support themselves. “Ora et labora” — “prayer and work” — is the order’s motto. Money comes from contributions, the seminary that trains priests, a retreat center and small enterprises such as a gift shop that features abbey-made Monk Soap in fragrances such as Mayan Gold.

 But the abbey lost a large portion of its income in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed part of the pine timberlands whose harvest had been profitable.

 It was Deacon Mark Coudrain, a woodworking enthusiast asked by his father to build a casket for him, who approached Brown with the prospect of turning the abbey’s occasional coffin construction into a business.

 “I really like to say it’s God’s idea that I didn’t want to do,” Coudrain said. Eventually, he decided, “there’s a need, the abbey’s the perfect place and God was saying, ‘You know, I taught you something, why don’t you use it?’ ”

 So the monks prayed, voted and bought $200,000 in equipment to establish St. Joseph Woodworks.

 And so for some of the 36 monks at St. Joseph — they range in age from 26 to 89 — casket-building has become part of the daily routine. Prayers and readings start at 6; breakfast is taken in silence at 7. Mass is at 11:15 and lunch at noon.

 At a recent meal, the monks scattered along long wooden tables anchored by the requisite Louisiana condiments of Tabasco and Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, listening to a fellow monk read from Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln.”

 There are more chores in the afternoon — some monks teach at the seminary next door — and the singing of psalms at 5:30. Dinner is at 6, the O’Reilly book replaced by a more religious text.

 At the woodshop, several of the monks work with Coudrain and volunteers. Brother Elias Eichorn, the “iron monk” who recently completed the Boston Marathon and is training for a triathalon, works on lids. Brother Emmanuel Labrise, a fairly recent arrival from Pennsylvania, lines them with white cloth.

 There are two versions, a monastic style with metal handles that sells for $1,500 and a traditional version with wooden rail handles for $2,000. In a nod to modernity, they can be modified for the oversized. Each is blessed and, an in attempt to create the abbey’s signature, marked with a medal of Saint Benedict.

 “Noble simplicity,” Brown said. “It’s simple, but it’s not cheap.”

 ‘The last word in life’

 The workshop was dedicated Nov. 1, 2007, and a local Catholic newspaper reported the event. The cease-and-desist letter came immediately, Brown said.

 The abbot said it was difficult to know what to do. The abbey had made a huge investment, but he was reluctant to sue for the right to sell the caskets.

 “Was that something monasteries should do, or should we just lay low and be quiet about it?” Brown wondered. “A lot of these funeral directors are good Catholic men.”

 He decided to continue to sell caskets to those who asked for them but not to advertise. His state House representative, Scott Simon (R), looked for a compromise. “It was my first bill,” Simon said in an interview. The funeral directors association, he said, had it killed in committee.

 “I learned that funeral directors have the last word in life, and in the legislature,” Simon said.

 After the funeral directors board in 2010 subpoenaed Brown and Coudrain to testify about the casket sales, the men agreed to let the Institute of Justice file a federal lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s law as a violation of due process and equal protection. The abbey’s attorneys said Louisiana is the only state to enforce a ban on in-state sales.

 Although robes are usually worn just around the monastery, Brown said, he donned his habit for the news conference on the courthouse steps, which featured a casket.

 Representatives of the funeral directors board, the association that lobbies the legislature and several funeral directors who serve on both did not return phone calls or e-mails asking for comment on the case.

 But in court pleadings, the board said the legislature had good reason for limiting in-state sales of caskets. The act protects Louisianans from “improper and overreaching sales tactics in the area of ‘at need’ casket sales,” the brief says. In some parts of the state, many burials are aboveground, and that requires “knowledgable decisions” in casket sales “mindful of Louisiana’s unique situation.”

 The institute’s attorneys say that makes no sense. The state has no legal requirement that anyone be buried in a casket, and, under federal rules, funeral directors must accept a casket that a family has purchased elsewhere.

 Thus, Louisianans are free to purchase a casket online from Wal-Mart or Costco, Judge Duval noted, but not from an in-state casket-maker.

 Still, the Louisiana board argues, courts are simply not free to overturn economic regulation laws that have some rational basis.

 And, the board said, if it has the “incidental consequence of economic protectionism, such a consequence does not render Louisiana’s statutory scheme constitutionally infirm.” To second-guess the legislature is to return to the days before the New Deal, when courts imposed their own economic judgment, the board said

 The Institute for Justice’s Mellor replies that protectionism is different.

 “The standard of review is so favorably tilted to the government that legitimate occupations are foreclosed — or entry into the occupations is so heavily conditioned — that they basically become cartels or monopolies protected by government edict,” he said.

 Federal appeals courts have split in evaluating similar laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said there was nothing unconstitutional about an Oklahoma law that protected the intrastate funeral home industry.

 “While baseball may be the national pastime of the citizenry, dishing out special economic benefits to certain in-state industries remains the favored pastime of state and local governments,” it ruled.

 But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit struck down a Tennessee law protecting funeral directors, saying an attempt to “privilege certain businessmen over others at the expense of consumers is not animated by a legitimate governmental purpose.”

 The institute’s attorneys hope the eventual decision from the New Orleans appeals court will make the issue attractive to the Supreme Court.

 If that happens, Brown said, so be it.

 “I was concerned that it would disturb the peace of the monastery by getting involved in something somewhat controversial, adversarial, but it hasn’t,” he said. “If you study monastic history, there were often conflicts between monks and civil authorities.” |||||
A summary of this is?

– A group of monks in Louisiana is heading to federal appeals court in a battle against the state. The monks want the right to sell their handcrafted caskets, but the state has demanded they cease and desist because of regulations regarding "funeral merchandise"—which the monks say were enacted to unfairly protect the state's funeral industry, reports the Washington Post. "Really, it's just a big box," says the abbot. The monks were victorious their first time in federal court, but the State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors appealed, and the next round will be heard early next month. St. Joseph Abbey, located an hour's drive outside of New Orleans, entered the casket business in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina destroyed an income-generating section of forest owned by the monastery. Before they even sold their first coffin, the state ordered they either stop or take the obstacle-filled path of becoming a licensed funeral establishment. A group of what the Post calls "libertarian lawyers" took up the monks' case and are hoping it makes it all the way to the Supreme Court as an example of government interference in free enterprise. Read the full story here.


Write a summary based on this article:

In disaster areas, Operation Blue Roof is a program for homeowners who have damage to their roofs. The program sends licensed contractors out to homes to cover the damage with fiber-reinforced plastic sheeting (tarp) until homeowners can arrange repairs.

 Operation Blue Roof allows residents to stay in their homes, instead of paying for temporary housing or hotels. The program also protects property while homeowners recover from the storm.

 This is a free service to homeowners with homes that are primary residences or permanently occupied rental properties that have less than 50 percent structural damage. Vacation rental properties are not eligible for the program. Not all roof types qualify for the program (see eligibility below). ||||| In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is offering help to Florida residents with a program called “Operation Blue Roof,” which provides fiber-reinforced tarps to homeowners to cover damaged roofs until they can arrange repairs. The only problem is, one federal agency appears to have accidentally directed folks to a phone sex line instead.

 A Consumerist reader pointed us to a two-day-old Tweet from FEMA Region 4’s account, suggesting people who need help can call 1-800-ROOF-BLU or visit the program’s website. Although the Tweet was visible this afternoon, it has since been taken down. Here’s what it looked like:

 Callers who dial that number, however, are greeted by an automated message welcoming callers to “America’s hottest talk line,” where “hot ladies” are purportedly waiting to talk to guys, and women can talk to “interesting and exciting guys” for free (apparently, women do not get hot guys).

 The correct number, as listed on Operation Blue Roof’s website, is 1-888-ROOF-BLU, not 1-800-ROOF-BLU.

 At least some people were paying attention to the original Tweet, however, as one Twitter user pointed out that the number was wrong before the Tweet was pulled:

 We’ve reached out to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as well as FEMA, and will update this post if we hear back. Though we haven’t yet gotten a response, the Tweet in question was removed after we contacted those agencies, and FEMA Region 4 posted a new Tweet with the correct number:

 #FL: If your roof was damaged due to Hurricane #Irma, Operation Blue Roof may be able to help: 1-888-ROOF-BLU or https://t.co/Y51kOUx1l3 pic.twitter.com/MQw60p96ym — FEMA Region 4 (@femaregion4) September 20, 2017 |||||

– The Army Corps of Engineers has a helpful program in place called Operation Blue Roof in which Florida residents hit by Hurricane Irma can get sturdy tarps to protect their belongings until their roofs get fixed. Those interested can go to the website or call 1-888-ROOF-BLU. They should not, however, call the 1-800 version of that number inadvertently tweeted by FEMA—unless they'd prefer to talk to "hot ladies" on "America's hottest talk line" who presumably know little about roof tarps, reports Consumerist. The tweet is now down and a corrected version is up.


Write an article based on this summary:

– The details of Denise Huskins' kidnapping are sketchy, but scary: At some point between midnight and 5am Monday, boyfriend Aaron Quinn says he saw her being "forcibly taken against her will" from a Vallejo, Calif., home. He was given a ransom demand; it's not clear when or how it was delivered. About 12 hours after her abduction, at around 2pm Monday, he reported her missing to police. But police say the 30-year-old Quinn has not been identified as a suspect in the disappearance of Huskins, a 29-year-old physical therapist from Vallejo, the Los Angeles Times reports. Many details are fuzzy, but CBS Sacramento reports that the home from which Huskins was taken is Quinn's, though some outlets reported it was hers. The station also notes that a 2000 Toyota Camry believed to have been used in the kidnapping belongs to Quinn, though some outlets reported it as belonging to Huskins. The Camry was found elsewhere in the city; police believe it was taken from the block where Huskins was abducted, ABC7 reports. The Times says Huskins has lived at her own place in Vallejo since June, while NBC Bay Area speaks to others who also clarify that she didn't live with Quinn, but happened to be there when she was abducted. Both she and Quinn work at Kaiser Permanente. Police are releasing few other details other than noting that they do consider this a "kidnapping for ransom" case, but they say a mysterious "object" was spotted in a nearby waterway; a dive team will investigate, KCRA reports. All police will say regarding Quinn is that he's cooperating and "hopefully we can extract information from him in a way that we can resolve this in a positive manner." The FBI is assisting with the search.

The search for a woman reportedly abducted for ransom is focusing on the Mare Island waterfront after search teams spotted a possible object in the water, Vallejo police said Tuesday evening.

 Who is Vallejo kidnapping victim Denise Huskins? Investigators are trying to piece together what happened to 30-year-old Denise Huskins, who authorities say was taken against her will from a home on Mare Island in Vallejo. More

 In a Tuesday night news conference, Vallejo police Lt. Kenny Park said a dive team will focus on an area of Mare Island after spotting an object in the water. The search will continue tonight because of ideal low-tide conditions.

 Search dogs keyed in on a certain area of water, which is where the teams are focusing their efforts, police said. Sonar equipment is also being used in the search.

 More than 100 search and rescue team members are combing the Vallejo waterfront for Denise Huskins, 29, who was reportedly kidnapped from a Mare Island home Monday morning. Authorities initially reported that she was 30 years old.

 Watch report: Vallejo woman's disappearance raises questions

 "I know the kind of person she is," said the woman's father, Mike Huskins. "She's fighting. She's fighting."

 Photos: Police search for clues in kidnapping for ransom

 The woman's boyfriend, who's been identified as Aaron Quinn by neighbors and family, reported Huskins missing at about 1:55 p.m. Monday, hours after her disappearance. Police have not confirmed Quinn's relationship with Huskins, however.

 Quinn told officers Huskins was taken from his home in the 500 block of Kirkland Avenue against her will and there was a ransom demand. It is unclear how the ransom demand was communicated.

 Kirkland Avenue remains closed off as authorities continue their investigation.

 Neighbors describe Quinn as a pleasant young man. "He's a nice guy, (I) helped him with a few things," said neighbor Patrick Vandeweg. "I've never had any problems with him as a neighbor. He's very conscientious."

 The victim's father told KCRA he does not know Quinn, but trusts his daughter's judgment of character.

 Quinn is not a suspect or person of interest in the case, according to police.

 "We are treating this matter as a kidnap ransom," said Park during a news conference Tuesday. "We're doing everything we can, but at this point I'm not at liberty to divulge too much information."

 Vallejo police did not give a suspect description during the news conference but said up to 75 people have been dedicated to finding Huskins.

 Late Monday night, investigators found Huskins' boyfriend's vehicle, a 2000 Toyota Camry with license plate number 4GQA436, at an undisclosed location in Vallejo.

 Mike Huskins added that his daughter recently lived in Boston before moving back to California. She is a native of Southern California.

 Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Vallejo confirmed that Denise Huskins is a physical therapist at the hospital. Quinn also works at the hospital.

 Anyone with information about Huskins' whereabouts is urged to call the Vallejo Police Department at 707-648-4524.

 Bay City News contributed to this report. ||||| Police, search crews and the FBI have expanded a search for a 29-year-old physical therapist who was reportedly abducted Monday morning from a Vallejo, California, home and is being held for ransom. Cheryl Hurd reports. (Published Wednesday, March 25, 2015)

 Police, search crews and the FBI have expanded a search for a 29-year-old physical therapist who was reportedly abducted Monday morning from a Vallejo, California, home and is being held for ransom.

 Denise Huskins' boyfriend claims an intruder broke into his Mare Island home early Monday morning and took her by force while demanding a ransom. But for some reason, her boyfriend waited 11 hours to report it to police. Police originally said Huskins was 30.

 On Tuesday evening, over 100 trained search and resue personnel, including a dive team, were searching the waterfront and other areas near the 500 block of Kirkland Avenue on Mare Island, from where Huskins' was reportedly kidnapped.

 Denise Huskins

 Photo credit: Photos courtesy of the Huskins family.

 Police on Tuesday did not elaborate on what the ransom demand might be. “All I can tell you is that there was a ransom demand,” said Lt. Kenny Park of the Vallejo Police Department.

 Huskins who is a physical therapist at Kaiser Vallejo Hospital, was reported missing on Monday about 2 p.m. by her boyfriend. The event, however, took place earlier in the morning and it’s unclear why he waited to alert authorities. Park said police are interviewing him but don’t consider him a “person of interest.”

 Vallejo Police, FBI Investigating Report of Woman Kidnapped for Ransom

 Police, search crews and the FBI are searching for a 30-year-old physical therapist who was reportedly abducted Monday morning from a Vallejo home and is being held for ransom. Bob Redell reports. (Published Tuesday, March 24, 2015)

 Huskins' car was also reportedly taken from the residence, however the 2000 Toyota Camry was later found at an unnamed location in Vallejo, officers said.

 Huskins also lists on her Facebook page indicates that she's a physical therapist at Southern California Orthopedic Institute. Her Facebook page states she is from Huntington Beach and that she moved to Vallejo in June 2014.

 KNBC reporters went to Huskins' Huntington Beach family home and spoke with her brother Devin Huskins, who said the family is waiting to get more details about what's going on before saying anything to the media. Huskins' dad flew up to Vallejo to talk with investigators, despite their suggestion not to, her brother said. Her father told NBC Bay Area he is praying for his daughter's safe return.

 "She's my little girl — when she was young she would say 'daddy I'll be your best friend,'" Huskins' father said. "I know she didn't just let somebody take her. She would've put up a fight. She ran marathons, she was physically fit."

 Huskins father says the story just doesn't add up. While he's never met his daugter's boyfriend, he says his daughter seemed happy with him. He added that they worked together as physical therapists at Kaiser.

 Devin Huskins said his sister lives right across the street from the Kaiser Permanante Hospital where she is finishing up a physical therapy clinical course. He said her sister and her boyfriend don't live together, Huskins was just hanging out there when the incident took place.

 Neighbors in Vallejo were surprised.

 “We’ve seen her, she's beautiful,” Matea Rolovic said, adding that Huskins lives with two male roommates.

 “It’s bizarre,” added Patrick Van Deweg. “It’s a really bizarre story.”

 "What year are we in, do people still take ransom?" Rolovic asked.

 Anyone with information on this case is asked to contact the Vallejo Police Department at 707-648-4524.

 NBC Bay Area's Bob Redell and Gonzo Rojas contributed to this report.

 Denise Huskins with her mother.

 Photo credit: Photos courtesy of the Huskins family. ||||| At some point during 29-year-old Denise Huskins’ kidnapping Monday in Vallejo, her boyfriend was given a ransom demand, police said a day later.

 The woman, a physical therapist at Kaiser Permanente, was reported missing about 12 hours after her boyfriend told police that he saw her being “forcibly taken against her will” and spirited away, Vallejo police officials said Tuesday.

 The boyfriend told police “a ransom demand was communicated” during her abduction, said Lt. Sid DeJesus.

 On Tuesday, investigators could be seen examining the two-story yellow clapboard residence where Huskins was abducted, combing the shrubbery near the front door. Detectives dusted the door’s white trim for fingerprints.

 At the same time, police said 75 people were combing the rustic area around the neighborhood for Huskins.

 During a news conference Tuesday, officials provided few details to the public on the case, stressing the need to not jeopardize the investigation.

 Denise Huskins Vallejo Police Department Denise Huskins, 29, was allegedly abducted for ransom in Vallejo. Denise Huskins, 29, was allegedly abducted for ransom in Vallejo. (Vallejo Police Department)

 Huskins was reportedly abducted sometime between midnight and 5 a.m. on Monday but her boyfriend didn't tell police until almost 2 p.m.

 Public records list the home where the kidnapping took place as being registered to Aaron Quinn, 30. A car taken from the home and found elsewhere in the city is also under Quinn’s name. Police confirmed the homeowner was Huskins’ boyfriend and that the person who reported the abduction lived there.

 The boyfriend was interviewed by detectives Tuesday morning. He has not been identified as a suspect by police.

 “Hopefully we can extract information from him in a way that we can resolve this in a positive manner,” DeJesus said.

 Quinn and Huskins are physical therapists at Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center, police said. Huskins hails from Huntington Beach but has been living in her own place in Vallejo for about the last year, police said.

 The 500 block of Kirkland Avenue, where Huskins was abducted, was blocked off by police tape and a command vehicle idled nearby Tuesday morning.

 The quiet development is situated on Mare Island, home of a sprawling decommissioned naval shipyard. Searchers in tan uniforms, some with dogs, could be seen combing nearby streets that abut extensive fenced off open space, some of it marshland.

 Neighbors had little information but said Huskins’ disappearance was unsettling. Yards Eslami, 25, a student at nearby Touro University, said she hoped police would "do more patrols on the island.... Hopefully they'll find her. Our prayers are with the family."

 The FBI and the Solano County Office of Emergency Services are helping in the search, Vallejo police said. Anyone with information on Huskins’ whereabouts are asked to call Vallejo police at (800) 488-9383 or Crime Stoppers at (707) 644-STOP.

 Twitter: @leeromney

 For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna. ||||| VALLEJO (CBS13) — A Vallejo woman may the victim of a kidnapping and may be behind held for ransom.

 Vallejo Police continued its search for Denise Huskins, 30, and is releasing little information about her disappearance. Police searched her boyfriend’s home on Mare Island where the alleged kidnapping took place.

 UPDATE: Vallejo Police Spokesman On Denise Huskins Investigation: ‘I Can’t Comment On That’

 She’s described as being 5 feet 7 inches tall, and weighs 150 pounds. She has blonde hair and blue eyes.

 Her father, Mike Huskins, made the trip from the Los Angeles area to Vallejo to be close to the investigation and the search for his daughter.

 “Here I am; it’s like a bad dream and I can’t wake up,” he said.

 RAW: 8:30 p.m. Press conference video

 He’s praying for her safe return.

 “I’m terrified of what’s going on with my daughter,” he said. “I’m in fear as we’re standing here about what could be happening to her.”

 Huskins says his daughter has no enemies.

 Police and search crews from all over the area spread out over Mare Island searching for her, and have called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice to help.

 At the same time, officers converged on the home where Denise was reportedly kidnapped. Sources say her boyfriend was the one who reported the kidnapping about 12 hours after it allegedly happened on Monday morning.

 Neighbors say the couple met at Vallejo’s Kaiser Permanente where they both work and had no obvious issues. Investigators are not calling her boyfriend a suspect.

 Investigators believe his Toyota Camry was used in the kidnapping, and was eventually found in an undisclosed area of Vallejo. Officers won’t say how the ransom demand was made, or who made it.

 For now, Mike Huskins is waiting for more information and waiting for his daughter to come home.

 “I can’t imagine anyone would do this. Why would they do this? I don’t know,” he said. ||||| Vallejo police are asking for the public's help in locating 29-year-old Denise Huskins who was reportedly kidnapped for ransom.Huskins' boyfriend reported her abduction around 1:55 p.m. Monday. He told police that Huskins was forcibly taken against her will from her Mare Island home early Monday morning and that a ransom demand had been made.He called police several hours after she disappeared, but police have not explained why it took him so long to report the crime. Police are interviewing her boyfriend, 30-year-old Aaron Quinn, but they don't consider him a suspect or a person of interest.Police say they found Huskins' car, a white 2000 Toyota Camry with California license plate No. 4GQA436, at an undisclosed location in Vallejo. Investigators believe her car was taken from the block where she was abducted.Huskins was employed as a physical therapist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Vallejo and had previously worked at Southern California Orthopedic Institute in Valencia, according to her Facebook page. The Southern California native moved to Vallejo from Toluca Lake in June 2014.Her parents live in Huntington Beach, where Huskins grew up, but were not home when Eyewitness News tried to get in touch with them. Her father spoke at a press conference up north earlier on Monday, and he is helping in the search for his daughter."My biggest fear is the horrors that might be going through. That's my biggest fear, is that she's going through such horror. She doesn't deserve that," Mike Huskins said.At a news conference in Vallejo Monday night, police said they are focusing their search for her on the straits surrounding Mare Island because an object was found."The intention is for the dive team to go into the water and discover, or I should say to look at what this object that they've discovered to be. And at this point we have no idea what that is," said Vallejo Police Department Lt. Kenny Park.Authorities did not give a reason as to why her boyfriend waited so long to report her disappearance, but did say he is cooperating with investigators. No suspects have been named.More than 100 people are participating in the search effort, including FBI agents.Anyone with information on this investigation was urged to contact the Vallejo Police Department at (707) 648-4524. |||||


Article:
Men who found missing Riverbank woman tell their story

 Searchers who found missing Riverbank woman, Jamie Tull, 33, tell their story near a ranch on the outskirts of Planada, Calif., on Friday, Aug. 4, 2017. According to authorities, Jamie Tull had been missing for almost three weeks after crashing he ||||| Sheriff: Missing Calif. woman survived on bugs, dirty cattle trough She told authorities that she did not want to be found

 Photo: Andrew Kuhn, MBO FILE - Merced Co. Sheriff Vern Warnke speaks during a news...

 FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A missing California woman who was found alive Friday in a cattle ranching area after vanishing more than two weeks ago survived by eating a few bugs and drinking from a dirty cattle trough, authorities said. She told rescuers that she did not want to be found.

 The former public elementary school teacher, Jamie Tull, was struggling with emotional issues and was last heard from on July 17 when she called her husband while she was driving and crashed into a ditch, authorities said.

 Searchers found her emaciated, badly sunburned and lying in tall grass less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the crash site near the tiny central California farming community of Le Grand, said Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke. Tull was weak but able to speak.

 Warnke said she told searchers after they found her: "Give me food and water and let me go."

 Warnke described the surrounding landscape as desolate grazing land with homes visible in the distance.

 SEARCH SUSPENDED: Search of a missing man at SF's Ocean Beach suspended

 Authorities were piecing together Tull's movements while she was missing, but said it appeared she remained in the area with no shelter except for a water tank that provided her with shade.

 "She hunkered down. She didn't want to be found," Warnke said.

 LIFE-OR-DEATH: Ore. day hike turns into 'life-or-death' ordeal for Albany woman

 Tull, 33, endured a scorching heatwave and told rescuers that she ate two grasshoppers and a fly and drank water from the cattle trough, Warnke said. He said she had stopped taking prescription medicine to help her with emotional issues.

 She was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital for medical treatment and will be returned to relatives for care, Warnke said.

 Telephone messages left with Tull's husband and mother seeking comment were not immediately returned. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video

 MODESTO -- A kindergarten teacher missing from Modesto has been found alive, her father confirmed to FOX40.

 Jamie Tull was found Friday morning by family and friends who went looking for her near where her car was found crashed in Merced County. She had been missing for nearly three weeks.

 Tull was about half a mile east of the crash site in Le Grand. Her phone was found near a water trough where cattle drink.

 "We saw her moving," Tull's step cousin Lynn Garber said. "And we said, 'It looks like she’s alive,' and she says, 'I’m alive.'"

 Merced Sheriff Vern Warnke points to the spot where Jamie Tull was found this morning. pic.twitter.com/pB3jqYc6Pe — Kay Recede FOX40 (@KayRecede) August 4, 2017

 Tull's father said she was sunburned and dehydrated, but alert enough to speak. She was flown to a hospital in Fresno.

 The three people who found Tull said she could barely move because of her severe sunburns. She is said to have survived by drinking from that trough and eating insects.

 Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said that when he arrived, Tull only wanted food and water. She said she was trying to get to Yosemite.

 "I don’t think she had any insight or desire to be found. She was just trying to get to Yosemite," Warnke said.

 Le Grand is more than 60 miles from Yosemite.

 According to Tull's father, she has bipolar disorder. He says she has not taken her medication for about six months because a pastor and his wife told her that pills lead to demons.

 A volunteer search crew said if Jamie hadn't been found Friday, search efforts would have been scaled back. |||||Summary:

– A former kindergarten teacher last heard from more than two weeks ago has been found in Central California, and she told authorities she survived by eating two grasshoppers and a fly and drinking water from a dirty cattle trough, the AP reports. Rescuers who found Jamie Tull emaciated, dehydrated, and severely sunburned on Friday morning called it a "miracle" they spotted the 33-year-old lying in a field, too weak to walk. "That girl has a will to live," Robert Carpenter tells the Modesto Bee. "Anyone who can survive out here for 17 days is an amazing gal, to me." Friends and family had been searching for the Modesto woman in a desolate cattle ranching area near Le Grand since her car was found in a ditch; she called her husband while driving on July 17 and then reportedly crashed. Her car was found shortly after. Searchers were set to scale back the effort when they spotted her less than a mile from the crash site in tall grass. Lynn Garber was one of the searchers who found Tull, and says Tull told them she had been praying throughout her ordeal and was glad to be found. Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke tells things differently, saying Tull asked for food and water but then told searchers to leave her. "She hunkered down. She didn't want to be found," says Warnke. Tull's family tells Fox40 she suffers from bipolar disorder but stopped taking her medication at the urging of a pastor and his wife, who associated the pills with demons. Tull is recovering at a burn unit at a Fresno hospital. (Dramatic rescue saves stranded cable car passengers.)


Article:

PARIS (Reuters) - A cloud of radioactive pollution over Europe in recent weeks indicates that an accident has happened in a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan in the last week of September, French nuclear safety institute IRSN said on Thursday.

 FILE PHOTO: An employee looks at equipment in a new facility at a nuclear waste disposal plant in the town of Fokino in Russia's far-eastern Primorsky region June 24, 2014. REUTERS/Yuri Maltsev

 The IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, saying it was likely to be in a nuclear fuel treatment site or center for radioactive medicine. There has been no impact on human health or the environment in Europe, the IRSN said.

 IRSN, the technical arm of French nuclear regulator ASN, said in a statement it could not pinpoint the location of the release of radioactive material but that based on weather patterns, the most plausible zone lay south of the Ural mountains, between the Urals and the Volga river.

 This could indicate Russia or possibly Kazakhstan, an IRSN official said.

 “Russian authorities have said they are not aware of an accident on their territory,” IRSN director Jean-Marc Peres told Reuters. He added that the institute had not yet been in contact with Kazakh authorities.

 A spokeswoman for the Russian Emergencies Ministry said she could not immediately comment. It was not immediately possible to reach authorities in Kazakhstan or the Kazakh embassy in Moscow.

 Peres said that in recent weeks IRSN and several other nuclear safety institutes in Europe had measured high levels of levels of ruthenium 106, a radioactive nuclide that is the product of splitting atoms in a nuclear reactor and which does not occur naturally.

 IRSN estimates that the quantity of ruthenium 106 released was major, between 100 and 300 teraBecquerels, and that if an accident of this magnitude had happened in France it would have required the evacuation or sheltering of people in a radius of a few kilometers around the accident site.

 The ruthenium 106 was probably released in a nuclear fuel treatment site or center for radioactive medicine, Peres said. Because of its short half-life of about a year, ruthenium 106 is used in nuclear medicine.

 The IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, as that would have led to contamination with other radionuclides too. It also ruled out the crash of a ruthenium-powered satellite as an IAEA investigation has concluded that no ruthenium-containing satellite has fallen back on earth during this period.

 Measurement from European stations showed high levels of ruthenium 106 in the atmosphere of the majority of European countries, at the beginning of October, with a steady decrease from Oct. 6 onwards.

 The IRSN said that the concentrations of ruthenium 106 in the air that have been recorded in Europe were of no consequence for human health and the environment.

 The institute also said that the probability of importation into France of foodstuffs, notably mushrooms, contaminated by ruthenium 106 near the site of the accident is extremely low. ||||| TexteZone1

 Read our Update from February 6, 2018

 Ruthenium 106 has been detected in late September by several European networks involved in the monitoring of atmospheric radioactive contamination, at levels of a few milliBecquerels per cubic meter of air. IRSN's investigations make it possible to provide information on the possible location of the source of the release as well as the order of magnitude of the quantities released.

 As soon as it became aware of the first detections of Ruthenium 106 in the atmosphere in Europe, IRSN mobilized all its means of radiological monitoring of the atmosphere and conducted regular analysis of the filters from its monitoring stations. For the period from September 27 to October 13, 2017, only the stations of Seyne-sur-Mer, Nice and Ajaccio revealed the presence of Ruthenium 106 in trace amounts. Since October 13, 2017, Ruthenium 106 is no longer detected in France.

 Measurement results from European stations communicated to the Institute since October 3, 2017, have confirmed the presence of Ruthenium 106 in the atmosphere of the majority of European countries. The results obtained for sampling periods later than October 6, 2017, showed a steady decrease in Ruthenium 106 levels, which is currently no longer detected in Europe.

 The concentration levels of Ruthenium 106 in the air that have been recorded in Europe and especially in France are of no consequence for human health and for the environment.

 Based on the meteorological conditions provided by Météo France and the measurement results available in European countries, IRSN carried out simulations to locate the release zone, to assess the quantity of ruthenium released, as well as the period and the duration of the release.

 The map below summarizes the results obtained and confirms that the most plausible zone of release lies between the Volga and the Urals without it being possible, with the available data, to specify the exact location of the point of release. Indeed, it is in this geographical area that the simulation of a ruthenium release makes it possible to better reproduce the measurements obtained in Europe.

 Map showing the plausibility of the origin of the release:

 For the most plausible zone of release, the quantity of Ruthenium 106 released estimated by IRSN simulations is very important, between 100 and 300 teraBecquerels. The release, accidental with regard to the quantity released, would have occurred during the last week of September 2017.

 Because of the quantities released, the consequences of an accident of this magnitude in France would have required to implement locally measures of protection of the populations on a radius of the order of a few kilometres around the location of the release.

 For foodstuffs, the exceeding of maximum permitted levels (1250 Bq/kg for Ruthenium 106 for non-milk products) would be observed over distances of the order of a few tens of kilometres around the location of the release.

 The possibility of exceeding maximum permitted levels near the accident site led IRSN to study the scenario of importing foodstuffs from this area. From this analysis, IRSN considers, on the one hand, that the probability of a scenario that would see the importation into France of foodstuffs (especially mushrooms) contaminated by Ruthenium 106 near the source of the release is extremely low and, on the other hand, the potential health risk associated with this scenario is also very low. It does not therefore appear necessary to introduce systematic controls on the contamination of imported foods.

 Download IRSN information report from Novembre 9, 2017 « Detection of Ruthenium 106 in France and in Europe: Results of IRSN’s investigations » (PDF) |||||
What is a summary?

– A nuclear accident happened somewhere in Russia or Kazakhstan during the last week of September and was kept very quiet, the French nuclear safety institute IRSN has concluded after analyzing a mysterious radioactive cloud that appeared over Europe last month. IRSN researchers say they detected high levels of ruthenium 106, a type of atom that does not occur in nature and is only found when atoms are split in reactors, Reuters reports. The cloud was at its peak during the first week in October and dissipated until it could not be detected in France by Oct. 13, according to IRSN, which says its analysis of weather patterns points to a source between the Ural mountains and the Volga river. The institute, which says other European nuclear regulators have made similar findings, has ruled out the crash of a radioactive satellite or an accident at a nuclear reactor as the source of the cloud. It says the most likely source was either a facility dealing with spent nuclear fuel or a facility for radioactive medicine. Russian authorities say they're not aware of any accident in the area, while Kazakh authorities haven't been reached for comment yet, IRSN says. The institute says the cloud itself is harmless and is unlikely to contaminate food, though it says there must have been a very large amount of ruthenium 106 released at the accident site, enough that would have theoretically warranted an evacuation of a radius of several miles.


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– If you're a commoner who wants to get Queen Elizabeth II's attention, apparently it is possible, but it will take decades of work. In a touching Facebook post pointed out by Mashable, Andrew Simes writes that his grandfather had always made it a point to send a Christmas card to his king or queen. Elizabeth had been getting the cards since 1952, and happened to meet Simes' grandpa at a reception in Turkey in 1972—whereupon she told him, "so it's you who keeps sending me those lovely Christmas cards," Simes says. The queen later sent a note on Simes' grandpa's 100th birthday. The older man died at age 102 in 2011, and Simes took over sending the Christmas cards that year—which is where the story gets really poignant. In January 2012, Simes got a letter from Buckingham Palace. "In it was written: 'When I received a letter from a different Simes this Christmas, I instructed my office to research your grandfather's whereabouts. Therefore it is with much sadness, I have learned of his passing and extend my condolences to you and your family,'" Simes writes. "I couldn't fight back the tears then, nor can I fight them back every time I remember this story of two people who left a lifelong impression on each other." He's still sending Her Majesty the annual holiday greeting; see an image here.

Sometimes even the smallest acts of kindness can certainly make an impression on others — even if they happen to be royalty.

 According to Andrew Simes, his grandfather sent a Christmas card to Queen Elizabeth II every holiday season, from 1952 until his death in 2011. When Andrew took up the mantle of card-writing from his late grandfather that winter, he says he received an amazing response from the royal highness herself.

 See also: College kid recruits fake family for Christmas card prank

 Ever since Grandpa could remember, he made sure to send a Christmas card to his king/queen. So naturally, since 1952,... Posted by Andrew Simes on Wednesday, December 9, 2015

 Simes posted on Facebook about the exchange, describing his grandfather's tradition and the Queen's response:

 Ever since Grandpa could remember, he made sure to send a Christmas card to his king/queen. So naturally, since 1952, Elizabeth II kept receiving his mail. As chance would have it, their paths crossed at a reception in Izmir, Turkey in 1972. When it was his turn to be introduced to the Queen, instead of a formal handshake, she paused, smiled, and quipped: "so its you who keeps sending me those lovely Christmas cards." Of all her subjects, Grandpa stood out (perhaps because he mailed his letters from Turkey), but what a memory and level of kindness on the Queen's part. She even wrote him to congratulate him on his 100th birthday. Sadly, Grandpa passed away in the summer of 2011 at the age of 102. As a loyal grandson, admirer and student of his, I took it upon myself to continue writing our Queen every year to show our appreciation. And I started that very first Christmas after Grandpa's passing. In January 2012, about a month after Christmas, I received a letter. The envelope suggested that it was sent from Buckingham Palace. In it was written: "When I received a letter from a different Simes this Christmas, I instructed my office to research your grandfather's whereabouts. Therefore it is with much sadness, I have learned of his passing and extend my condolences to you and your family." I couldn't fight back the tears then, nor can I fight them back every time I remember this story of two people who left a lifelong impression on each other. And today, just as every year, I sent my Christmas cards... but top of the list was reserved for Her Majesty. Wishing you all a Christmas as magical as this story.

 Receiving a letter from the Queen may be even more of a Christmas miracle than a letter from St. Nicholas himself! And it's proof that we should all endeavor to send more Christmas cards — because you never know when they could brighten someone's day. ||||| Notice

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Four others set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side — in addition to the Big Bend area of Texas along the border of Mexico, the Asturias region of Spain and Indonesia — will be completed by the directors who filmed them for the show’s production company Zero Point Zero, Entelis said. They will use audio of Bourdain gathered while shooting on location. Follow-up interviews are also being shot to help tie elements of the programs together. ||||| Nearly two months after the tragic loss of Anthony Bourdain, CNN announces that it will run the final season of Parts Unknown that the author/TV host was filming when he died. The LA Times reports that the cable network plans to release new episodes that Bourdain filmed in Kenya, Texas, Spain, Indonesia, and Manhattan before his death, as well as a special episode with reflections from the cast and crew of the show, and a series finale about “how Tony affected the world,” with fan reactions and remembrances from people who appeared on screen with Tony.

 The Kenya episode, which chronicles a trip Bourdain took with fellow CNN star W. Kamau Bell, is the only one that was completed before the Kitchen Confidential author took his life in France earlier this summer. Bourdain’s original narration will appear in that episode, but the rest of Season 12 will include audio stitched together from pre-recorded interviews. The Parts Unknown crew is also shooting “follow up interviews” to help fill in the gaps.

 “Each one will feel slightly different depending on what’s gathered in the field,” says CNN’s executive VP of talent and content Amy Entelis. “They will have the full presence of Tony because you’ll see him, you’ll hear him, you’ll watch him. That layer of his narration will be missing, but it will be replaced by other voices of people who are in the episodes.”

 Bourdain was one of the network’s biggest stars. During the first half of 2018, first-run episodes of Parts Unknown commanded the highest ad rate on average for any CNN series. “He was our stake in the ground for CNN’s original programming,” Entelis says. “You’ll find his influence in a lot of what we’ve done.”

 CNN has no plans to reboot Parts Unknown with a different host, but Entelis and her team are working on developing new unscripted series to fill in the gap that Bourdain and his award-winning show left behind. “What Tony did was inimitable,” Entelis remarks. “What we want to do is find a show that captures what Tony is all about. It might be a very different show and look nothing like Parts Unknown.”

 CNN has not yet announced the exact premiere date for the final season of Parts Unknown, but in pervious years, the fall season typically launched in late September or early October. Stay tuned for more updates on the grand finale of Parts Unknown as they become available.

 • CNN will say goodbye to Anthony Bourdain with a final season this fall [LA Times]

 • All Anthony Bourdain Coverage [E] |||||

– A final season of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown is set to air this fall. CNN says it will air seven episodes in the 12th season of the series, reports the Los Angeles Times. A single episode completed before Bourdain's June 8 suicide in France finds him exploring Kenya alongside comedian W. Kamau Bell. Four other episodes will show footage of Bourdain's trips to Manhattan, Texas, Spain, and Indonesia, with his usual narration "replaced by other voices of people who are in the episodes," a CNN rep explains. They're to be followed by an episode offering a behind-the-scenes look at filming, and another paying tribute to Bourdain. Per Eater, the exact premiere date is not yet known.