Here is a news article: Once upon a time, Chelsea Clinton was a little girl from Arkansas.

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 And deep down, she still is. Despite her White House–Stanford-Oxford-Columbia-McKinsey–hedge-fund grooming, she’s still got a thing for poultry. “Fried chicken is my husband’s favorite food,” she divulges in her new office at the Clinton Foundation, a midtown Manhattan space outfitted with thick mahogany desks and an inordinate amount of beige that’s brightened ever so slightly by Chelsea’s surprisingly casual look–gray suede ankle boots and jeans. The first time her then-boyfriend, now-husband, Marc Mezvinsky, visited Little Rock, she whisked him off to Bojangles, her favorite childhood fried-chicken hole. In New York, she explains, he’ll now indiscriminately “gorge himself on fried chicken” anywhere from Popeyes on 14th Street to the more refined Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken in the East Village. Chelsea insists she would get in on the grease too, were it not for an allergy to gluten. “I was a vegetarian for 10 years and a pescatarian for eight. Then I woke up one day when I was 29 and craved red meat,” says Chelsea, now 34, and a self-described omnivore. “I’m a big believer in listening to my body’s cravings.” Of course, there was another Clinton who believed in listening to his body’s cravings; and the sad fact that such a harmless statement could call to mind a national embarrassment perfectly illustrates the dilemma facing the scion of one former president and one potential contender. For years, the world has been wondering what Chelsea would do someday, wondering especially if she would do things like, and with, her family. “One of my earliest childhood memories is being three years old and on the campaign trail with my dad,” says Chelsea, who was born when her father was governor of Arkansas. That day, a woman approached her and asked, “‘Do you want to grow up and be governor one day too?’ And I looked at her and said, ‘No, I’m 3. I’m just waving the flag. That is my job right now.’ Flag-waving extraordinaire.” “It is frustrating,” says Chelsea, “because who wants to grow up and follow their parents? … It’s funny to realize I feel called to this work as a daughter–proudly as a daughter.” For a decade after graduating from Stanford in 2001, Chelsea experimented with the world beyond the Clinton machine. In peripatetic bursts, she tried out international relations, then management consulting, then Wall Street, then a PhD. She even signed on for (an embarrassingly lightweight) gig as an NBC News “special correspondent.” Chelsea rationalizes this career promiscuity as a hallmark of being just another millennial, experimenting liberally until she figures out her professional purpose. But, of course, she’s not just another millennial. She’s political royalty. And now, finally, she has decided to join the Clinton family business. As vice chair of the recently rebranded Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, she is helping one of the world’s most notable philanthropies grow up. At the Democratic National Convention in 1992 Globe Photos, Zuma Press As with all things Clinton, it is anything but a simple, straightforward task. Reflecting her father’s famously scattered genius, the foundation has grown chaotically. Recently, it has been criticized scathingly by the New York Times and the New Republic for past bureaucratic ineptitude, and worse. It’s clear that Chelsea’s power within the organization, and in relation to its many and various power players, is a matter of some debate. But by applying all that she’s learned from her decade of job-hopping, Chelsea just may bring order to the organization. She’s been there three years and has a solid record. And her plans for its future are deeply ambitious.

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 “It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents?” admits Chelsea. “I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t. That wasn’t the metric of success that I wanted in my life. I’ve talked about this to my friends who are doctors and whose parents are doctors, or who are lawyers and their parents are lawyers. It’s a funny thing to realize I feel called to this work both as a daughter–proudly as a daughter–and also as someone who believes that I have contributions to make.” Working in any family business is complicated. Working in this one is something else altogether. But opting in may turn out to be the best decision Chelsea Clinton has ever made. Enrolling in Stanford University back in 1997 was Chelsea’s first attempt to cut the umbilical cord connecting her to the family tradition of public life. Far from the Beltway, she found herself surrounded by people who used technology rather than politics to solve problems. It was the height of the first tech boom, and her new friends were dropping out of school to start or join startups (including Mezvinsky, who was also at Stanford, also the child of politicians, and then just a good friend; he now runs his own hedge fund). “This was all just beginning. That moment of being in Silicon Valley, it helped shape all of us,” says Anne Hubert, a close friend from Chelsea’s freshman year who now works as SVP of Viacom’s Scratch consultancy. Chelsea, who considered premed but majored in history, wasn’t drawn to the entrepreneurial life, but she did discover that she was “a person who wanted to fix, improve, expand things.” After graduating in 2001, Chelsea had no clear plan for how she could apply that inclination. She attended Oxford University in England, where she got her master’s in international relations. One day, she says, “I woke up and thought, Wow, I love this. Do I want to do a PhD? And then I realized, I’m going to be 27 and know a whole lot about one thing. So I did what everyone I knew was doing when they didn’t know what the right professional answer was for them and applied to different consulting firms. I thought that might help sort out if I wanted to have a professional track in health and public health, or an academic track, or something else altogether.” Chelsea spent three years at McKinsey, working in its public health practice before rising up the ranks to become a team manager in its financial services and technology practice. Then the doubts encroached again. “Was I going to continue to work a hundred hours a week and invest time there and energy to remain on the partner track?” she says. “Or was I going to go do something else?” “Something else” was working as a chemical-industry analyst at a hedge fund called Avenue Capital Group. As with every new job during these years, Chelsea had to make people forget her heritage. She explains that her method of debunking assumptions is pretty simple: She behaves as the overachiever that she has always been. “I will just always work harder [than anybody else] and hopefully perform better. And hopefully, over time, I preempt and erase whatever expectations people have of me not having a good work ethic, or not being smart, or not being motivated.” But ultimately, she was becoming more frayed than focused. She took a leave of absence from Avenue to work on Hillary’s 2008 campaign. After returning to her Wall Street job, she decided to also get her master’s in public health at Columbia, which entailed night and weekend classes. It was a grueling schedule. While she enjoyed being in the same industry as Mezvinsky–“We both built lots of Excel models and can talk about pivot tables together. We geek out a lot,” she says–the couple had little downtime. Chelsea left Avenue to finish her master’s and got a job as an assistant vice provost at NYU.

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 Surprisingly, it took Chelsea and Marc’s 2010 wedding to put an end to the meandering. According to Bari Lurie, Chelsea’s chief of staff, the heretofore private Chelsea was caught off guard by the level of attention paid to the event. “It was abundantly clear there was this pent-up interest in her, and she couldn’t understand why,” says Lurie. When she had campaigned for her mom in 2008–400 events in 40 states–Chelsea had first experienced the impact her voice could have in a public setting. As Lurie explains it, “It was, ‘Gosh, everywhere I go it seems like there’s this interest in me. How can I displace some of that; how can I use that interest to help push forward issues I care about?’ ” Over the years, Chelsea had turned to her grandmother many times for advice. Hillary’s mother had a favorite phrase–“to whom much is given, much is expected”–that continually tugged at Chelsea. The bottom line, says Lurie, is that there was a platform waiting for her, if she could only figure out how and when to use it: “She quickly realized, ‘There is nothing I’m doing now that’s satiating this interest. This doing-nothing thing: I’ve tried it, and it didn’t work.’ ” Chelsea’s To-Do List Part data geek, part dynasty daughter, part celebrity, Chelsea’s found a way to thrive both within and without the family business. Ramin Talaie,Getty Images (1); Justin Sullivan, Getty Images (2); Heng Sinith, AP Images (3); Yana Paskova, The New York Times, Redux (4) 1. Reshape the Clinton foundation Secure the Clinton legacy by ensuring that the foundation will be sustainable for decades.

 Modernize it using data to track results.

 Get younger people involved.

 Do the necessary photo ops at foundation projects in African and Asian villages.

 Help raise a $250 million endowment.

 Democratize the president’s annual Manhattan confab, so it becomes more than a feel-good event.

 Become a regular on the speaker circuit, and show up when Bill and Hillary can’t. 2. Help The Secretary (In Whatever Ways Necessary) Promote Hillary’s new project: a partnership to save the African elephant.

 Accelerate her data-driven No Ceilings initiative; the partnership with the Gates Foundation analyzes rights for women globally.

 Become a senior adviser for that 2016 Hillary presidential run? 3. Tackle big causes Drive delivery of affordable treatments against diarrhea, the second-largest killer of children in the world.

 Get more people involved in public service.

 Help get juvenile detention facilities to collectively bargain for healthy food.

 Push for equal LGBT rights globally. 4. Get even more of a life Finish PhD dissertation.

 Do more softball interviews for NBC.

 Find best coffee shop in every city around globe.

 Tweet more or less daily.

 Is 2014 really the “Year of the Baby?” (Update: Yes, it is!

 Contemplate running for Congress–someday.

 Find time for date night with Marc, despite all this. The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation is not a foundation. Unlike the Gates or Rockefeller foundations, which function as trusts managing the disposal of the families’ wealth, the Clinton’s organization is actually a charity that must raise money from others in order to do work on the ground. This is just the beginning of the confusing nature of this philanthropic bureaucracy. The group has eight CEOs. One, Eric Braverman, is CEO of the whole enterprise, which is in some ways an umbrella organization for nine separate “initiatives” and two “entities.” In fact, they are divisions, each with its own leader, that focus philanthropy on a range of causes, including global warming (the Clinton Climate Initiative), food and health care for poverty-stricken Africans (the Clinton Development Initiative), sustainable small businesses (the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership), infant and toddler health (Too Small to Fail), and rebuilding the Haitian economy and infrastructure (the Clinton Foundation in Haiti). The glue that has held this together is President Clinton, who created the charity in 1997 (its first task was to raise funds for his presidential library) and who now presides over the annual three-day gathering of his pet project, the Clinton Global Initiative, in midtown Manhattan. The conference, which shuts down traffic as thoroughly as the General Assembly of the United Nations because it features equally noteworthy speakers from around the globe, brings together CGI members, who pay a $20,000 yearly membership fee to get a seat at the table with other corporations, NGOs, not-for-profits, and governments that want to partner and commit to solving specific global problems. CGI is a creature that only a character like Bill Clinton could create. With conferences and events around the year, it is his perpetual cocktail party, his Rolodex brought to vivid, brilliant life. “CGI combines all the things that the press and all of us love: money, celebrity, and doing good,” says Brad Smith, president of the Foundation Center, a non-for-profit information source on philanthropy. Put another way, says one Democratic consultant, “He gets the CEO of Coca-Cola in the room and says, ‘You can help distribute medicine in Tanzania.’ Everybody does it because everyone does what Bill Clinton says. It’s like he has this magic wand.” It is a unique construction designed to generate real good: CGI has helped create $103 billion of pledges to 2,800 philanthropic projects around the globe. At CGI events, the locus of power is constantly shifting between Chelsea and her parents. Photograph by Melissa Golden Enter Chelsea. When she arrived in 2011, she knew her primary role was to apply the data-driven skills she had developed in her other jobs to an organization that had long outgrown its startuplike infrastructure. “My father has always been such a doer. He had never focused on ensuring that we had the functions that not only enabled [other] doers to focus on doing, but also to help us keep systematic track of all the work that was being done,” she says. The foundation had more than 2,000 employees in 36 countries, but its back-office support had fallen behind. There was little collaboration between initiatives. Employees were focused on the work, but there was no unified system to report, measure, or assess the impact. There wasn’t even a comprehensive database that housed the hundreds of projects the foundation was working on. Furthermore, according to lengthy articles in The New York Times and The New Republic, there was considerable internal strife. The stories paint a picture of an organization mismanaged by old Clinton insiders, including the president’s longtime adviser, Doug Band, who allegedly had been exploiting his access to the former president, causing conflict-of-interest issues within CGI. (Band is no longer at the foundation; after the article came out, President Clinton told CBS This Morning that he is “very grateful” for all the fundraising Band had done for the foundation.)

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 Understandably, this isn’t a past anyone at the foundation really wants to discuss. CGI CEO and former Goldman Sachs investment banker Bob Harrison denies outright that there were ever any issues. “I don’t think there’s ever been organizational chaos in my experience at CGI,” he snapped defensively when I asked him about the stories, telling me also that, “She [Chelsea] has not impacted the organization of CGI. And CGI has not, in my experience, been in any state of disarray.” And when I ask Chelsea herself to give me an assessment of the state of the foundation when she arrived, the former McKinsey consultant fails to mention any of these problems, and she doesn’t bring up the audit she and her father commissioned that year to analyze the foundation’s health until I explicitly ask her about it. She is her parents’ daughter, after all; during interviews, her crystal-clear thinking is accompanied by a healthy bit of deft stonewalling. But when you look closely, you find myriad ways Chelsea has been reorganizing this foundation that supposedly has never been in “disarray.” Of the three Clintons, she is the one who’s most hands-on. (She is also the only one whom staffers actually address by name; Bill and Hillary are “the President” and “the Secretary.”) Bill spends much of his time traveling around the globe, collecting checks from speeches at a rate as high as $11,000 per minute. Hillary, who has used the foundation as a refuge since her resignation as Secretary of State, will presumably be on the road again, working to get into the White House. So the onus is on Chelsea to help shift the foundation from a star-powered charity into a sophisticated, data-driven, sustainable organization that can thrive for decades to come. “You can’t measure everything,” says Chelsea, “but you can measure almost everything through quantitative or qualitative means, so that we know what we’re disproportionately good at. And, candidly, what we’re not so good at, so we can stop doing that and double down on what we’re particularly disproportionately good at.” Slowly, she is turning the Clinton Foundation into a more entrepreneurial enterprise. “Many of the initiatives of the foundation were in silos,” says CGI’s deputy director, Ed Hughes. “The president was happy to see each succeed on its own, but he did not necessarily appreciate them as a more comprehensive connection of opportunities.” When Chelsea arrived, some CGI employees worked out of the president’s office in Harlem, others operated out of midtown, and the rest were headquartered in downtown Manhattan. To incite collaboration, Chelsea insisted on a consolidation, which occurred last year, bringing all three offices into one midtown location. This January, Chelsea created a new position that sits across all nine initiatives. Julie Guariglia, the new-initiative liaison, compiles lengthy biweekly reports that alert workers at all the divisions of potential overlap, and suggests possible connections between initiatives. In the works is a database that will finally give employees access to data on all of the foundation’s activities. “Chelsea’s brought a willingness to invest in the product,” says Hughes. “I think she’s recognized–maybe it’s her background in management consulting–you need to spend money to make money.” Chelsea is also reshaping the way the foundation chooses the issues it wants to attack. “Sometimes President Clinton simply would come in and say, ‘You know, I had a great conversation with the King of Jordan. We should do something about Jordan.’ And it would be like, Well, now we’ll make Jordan a priority,” explains Hughes. Chelsea, on the other hand, “wants to see some evidence of why we’re making decisions, as opposed to the anecdotes,” adds Hughes. Chelsea especially wants the foundation to address concerns that have, in her words, “existed too long in the shadows, that historically have made people uncomfortable.” Two projects: ensuring that the juvenile justice system offers healthy food and combatting childhood diarrhea. Trying to give causes like these a new prominence is where Chelsea’s celebrity and political heritage are strategic weapons. Within the foundation, she has steered the Alliance for a Healthier Generation (a partnership with the American Heart Association) to train juvenile detention facilities to collectively bargain for healthier food. But the foundation can’t drive this alone, so she’s also pushing for national standards. According to Chelsea, the week before our second interview, “I did a foundation fundraiser in Connecticut and Senator Blumenthal came. I beelined for him, because he’s on the Judiciary Committee,” she admits. “He’s really interested in prison reform.” CGI’s Bob Harrison, right, is one of eight CEOs at the Clinton Foundation. “CGI has not been in any state of disarray,” he says. Photograph by Melissa Golden In 2011, Chelsea pushed the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which had historically focused on driving down the prices of HIV and AIDS vaccines, to do the same for Zinc/ORS, the leading treatment for diarrhea, which is the second-leading killer of children under 5 years old in the developing world. One of the first countries it targeted was Nigeria, but negotiating with the government, NGOs, public-sector organizations, pharma companies, and others threatened to endlessly delay the effort. According to Guariglia, the team asked Chelsea if she “could facilitate it–get the right players at the table, get them to commit to this program.” After a couple of weeks of intense preparation, Chelsea traveled to Nigeria and “went around to every partner, knew exactly what we needed from them, pledged her support and belief in this program, and got them to commit,” says Guariglia. Her academic work (she’s finishing her PhD in global health governance) armed her with the ability to talk about the issues, and she was able to get each player to understand how their role was important in the bigger picture. “Without her, it would have taken months of meetings,” says Guariglia. Prices of Zinc/ORS have been cut by 40% to 60% in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda.

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 “Celebrate those who have the courage to be second,” says Chelsea, “because I do think that often there is this claustrophobic pressure to innovate.” Chelsea’s most significant impact on the foundation’s long-term credibility is through the work she has done on her father’s signature initiative, CGI. She is trying to bring in younger members, hoping to “democratize” its commitments through a more sophisticated online platform, and doing everything she can to ensure that CGI can measure its actual impact. When the organization was created in 2005, it was highly forgiving of its members. Almost half are corporations, which regularly lap up tons of press with headline-grabbing declarations and are rarely held accountable on the other end. “The idea was that we were going to be a platform that allows a thousand flowers to bloom, without judgment,” says CGI’s Hughes. “We basically celebrated the effort, if not the achievement.” But when Chelsea arrived, she started asking questions about the actual results. So now the entire organization is undergoing an impact audit of its 2,800 commitments. The results so far, according to CGI CEO Harrison, suggest that in the organization’s first decade, 800 commitments have been completed. “But,” he adds, “then there are the 1,600 that are in the category of ongoing. Not every one of those we have a high level of confidence in where they stand.” Those deemed failures would be removed from the portfolio, albeit with no real consequence or public shaming (“We’re not a law-enforcement organization,” says Harrison). Nevertheless, says Hughes, “it is very clear that, at whatever point the book on CGI is written, it will need to reference whether what people got up and said they were going to do actually happened, and whether it made a difference.” This impact audit is part of a larger effort to transform CGI into a smart, accountable, and sustainable support system for philanthropic disrupters around the world. CGI now has 70 working sessions a year, where members and potential members can meet, brainstorm, and come up with ways to collaborate. The data-gathering exercise will help CGI learn what works best, so it can help members shape more effective commitments in the future. So far, CGI has learned that commitments are more successful when there’s a three- to five-year goal that is made by a group of organizations together, versus a single one. That’s the kind of learning that excites a data geek like Chelsea. She wants to see more groups make commitments that build on proven success, versus always feeling like they need to blaze a new trail. “Celebrate those who have the courage to be second,” says Chelsea, “because I do think that often there really is this claustrophobic pressure to innovate instead of to adapt.” On a blindingly snowy morning in February, Chelsea Clinton takes the stage of a packed NYU auditorium along with the women married to the world’s two most powerful Bills. Melinda Gates and Hillary Clinton–along with Chelsea–are there to announce No Ceilings, a new collaboration between the Clinton Foundation and the Gates Foundation that will use data to analyze the progress of women and girls globally. While the three chairs onstage are intended to appear egalitarian, it quickly becomes apparent that here, Chelsea will function as a glorified Vanna White. She politely tees up questions for the two and melts into the backdrop when her mother cuts her off. Chelsea Clinton, speaking at a Clinton Global Initiative event in February. She’s always been “a person who wanted to fix, improve, expand things.” Photograph by Melissa Golden It’s a sharp contrast to her appearance one week later at CGI’s annual winter meeting. In front of several hundred people, she displays all the earmarks of a natural leader: command of the subject matter, passion that feels authentic, and off-the-cuff comments spliced in with academic favorites such as gestalt and milieu. She even displays an edgy wit during a Q&A session she shares with Harrison, who mentions that in Bill’s Harlem office he drank purified water from one of CGI’s developing-world commitments and jokes, “I’m alive today.” Chelsea, as if compensating for an embarrassing uncle, chides: “You’re more than alive, thankfully.”

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 The more her handlers try to ensure a narrative that Chelsea is her own person, the more they remind you that she is also part of a machine. This day is clearly Chelsea’s operation. That is, it’s clear until an hour later, when, halfway through a discussion she’s leading on elephant poaching, the conference room doors open, two Secret Service men appear, and Chelsea’s father attempts to slip in quietly. By the time the former president sits down at the table, reaching for a cookie and a Diet Coke, the gravity in the room has shifted. The ebb and flow of power changes depending on which and how many Clintons are in a particular space at any given moment. There was a time when Hillary was defined by her husband. Chelsea’s challenge is to work within a Clinton enterprise without being solely defined by her parents. The Clinton machine makes this a particularly daunting task. Chelsea is as forward-thinking and open-minded as any Silicon Valley entrepreneur of her generation, but none of those folks is surrounded by the suffocating retinue that envelopes her public life. Chelsea’s handlers are likely auditioning for White House gigs, should Hillary become president, and they bring to their current jobs all the paranoia that may serve them well in Washington. One repeatedly urges Chelsea not to change her facial expression during the cover shoot for this issue, standing so close that it’s a miracle the staffer’s mug isn’t on the cover alongside Chelsea’s. Another sits in on her interviews holding an iPhone like a stopwatch (“you have two minutes”), whisks her away when she’s in the middle of answering one final question, and scolds this journalist for even mentioning Doug Band’s name in Chelsea’s presence. It’s all an odd, occasionally funny blend of control and confusion. Their four-page press release pointing to Chelsea’s impact at the foundation only obfuscates her true accomplishments by mentioning such ephemera as visiting rural Myanmar “where she delivered the six-billionth liter of clean water to a family” or “a Starkey Hearing Foundation event in Uganda, where Chelsea helped fit patients for hearing aids.” One handler explains that “CGI America is the project Chelsea’s least involved in,” while another insists that the division’s upcoming June conference is really Chelsea’s coming-out party. The more they try to ensure a narrative that Chelsea is her own person, the more they remind you that she is also part of a machine. Perhaps this is the way of Washington, but it’s not the way of the entrepreneurial culture she supposedly is embracing. “We see it as different things–the foundation, CGI, running for office, Hillary’s book, these trips,” says a Democratic consultant. “It’s all one thing. It’s all the family. Capital T, capital F.” The Family will almost surely call on Chelsea for a favor in 2016, assuming Hillary does again run for the presidency. In the 2008 campaign, Chelsea’s smart, lively, and engaged appearances helped younger voters feel connected to her then-60-year-old mother. Amie Parnes, coauthor of the recent New York Times best seller HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, is convinced Chelsea will take an even more formal role in her mother’s next run. “I can see her being a senior adviser,” she says. “You can see it already; she and her mom are working on these issues together–elephant poaching, women and girls. Something her mom learned last time was that there was arrogance at the top. She wasn’t hearing the truth from people, and Chelsea will give her the truth.”

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 The lines are blurring even now, as her profile grows bigger. In March, she visited Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, the web series Mondays With Marlo [Thomas], and South by Southwest (not exactly her typical academic or humanitarian backdrop), where she told an audience of 3,000 about how technology can be used for social change. Sure, the SXSW speech could further Chelsea’s goal of winning over developers who can create quick and cheap apps in service of the foundation’s efforts in the developing world. But it also doesn’t hurt that she is starting to connect to the young technology-friendly voters Hillary lost to Obama the last time around. Assuming Chelsea gets very active in Hillary 2016, her presence at the foundation will have to go to the back burner. In addition to the all-encompassing nature of a campaign, under tax and election-campaign laws, a charity like the Clinton Foundation is prohibited from being involved in campaigning. So, explains Leslie Lenkowsky, professor of practice in public affairs and philanthropy at Indiana University, if Chelsea were traveling on behalf of the foundation and made a pit stop to give a Hillary campaign speech, “not one drop of money from the foundation can make its way to her campaign, not even a Xerox or cup of coffee. It becomes very, very tricky.” Where this might lead after 2016 is already a matter of much anticipation. Burberry CEO Christopher Bailey, a close friend of Chelsea’s, says, “I’m sure the foundation will always be part of her life, but I don’t know if it will be the only part of her life. I certainly do not think she’s come to the conclusion that this is it.” HRC‘s Parnes predicts Chelsea will ultimately end up in politics. “I could see her running for Congress in New York in 10 years,” she says. “She has the Clinton name, she has the chops, and she’s really smart and savvy. Nothing will hold her back.” In that scenario, you could look at the Clinton Foundation in Manhattan (where Chelsea lives with Mezvinsky in a $10 million apartment) as the perfect perch for Chelsea to prove her command of a wide range of vital global issues. Politics is inextricably in the fabric of her being, in her bloodline and her breeding. “People [were] always asking me [since I was a kid], ‘Do you want to go into politics?’ ” she tells me, her long, bony fingers and rounded features reminiscent of her father’s. “And for so long the answer was just a visceral no. Not because I had made any conscientious, deliberate decision, but since people had been asking for as long as literally I could remember, it was no.” Photograph by Peter Hapak “People were always asking me, ‘Do you want to go into politics?’ ” says Chelsea. “For so long the answer was just a visceral no.” It’s less visceral now. As Chelsea told Fast Company at SXSW, she’s now willing to leave the door open a crack. “I live in a city and a state and a country where I support my elected representatives. If at some point that weren’t the case, and I didn’t support my mayor or my city councilwoman or my congresswoman or either of my senators–and I’m lucky to live in a state where I have lots of women representing me, you know–maybe then I’d have to ask and answer the question for myself, and come to a different answer.” This is a person who will have a significant impact on the society around us, whether she operates within or outside of politics. Chelsea characterizes her career before the foundation as something like an act of rebellion. She’s grown up, and in her mid-thirties seems to have grown comfortable with her dual role as Clinton scion and self-defining adult. It’s an accommodation almost all of us make at some point.

 advertisement ||||| Chelsea Clinton says in a new interview that she's open to a run for a multitude of offices, from mayor of New York to the U.S. Senate.

 "I live in a city and a state and a country where I support my elected representatives," Clinton told Fast Company. "If at some point that weren't the case, and I didn't support my mayor or my city councilwoman or my congresswoman or either of my senators -- and I'm lucky to live in a state where I have lots of women representing me, you know -- maybe then I'd have to ask and answer the question for myself, and come to a different answer."

 The answer is pretty similar to a response Clinton, 34, has given before, except in her prior response, she didn't spell out the different offices that are on her radar.

 New York's two U.S. senators, for what it's worth, are Charles Schumer (D), 63, and Kirsten Gillibrand (D), 47.

 Here's a rundown of all the offices Clinton could run for, courtesy of The Fix. ||||| ADVERTISEMENT MarloThomas.com

 When asked about the prospect of ever running for office like both of her parents, Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, had a great response.

 One of Chelsea’s earliest childhood memories was when she was on the campaign trail with her father in Arkansas at the age of three. A woman asked her if she was going to run for governor one day, and Chelsea retorted, “No way! I’m three!” Up until 2008, when her mother ran for office, Chelsea had maintained that same answer, but now, she’s simply not so sure.

 During her mother’s 2008 Presidential campaign, Chelsea realized the fundamental importance of running for office. “There are many ways to serve, and right now, my calling is with the Clinton Foundation,” she explained.

 “I am really lucky that I live in a city, state and country where I support my elected officials. If I was ever to not feel that way and felt I could make a difference, I’d have to think about it very seriously,” Chelsea told us.

 For more information about the Clinton Global Initiative University, visit www.cgiu.org

 For more of Chelsea's life and career, view the slideshow below:

 Close  Life And Career Of Chelsea Clinton of  

 At just 34 years of age, Chelsea Clinton (pictured here with husband Marc Mezvinsky) has already lived a rich and exciting life -- as an Arkansas schoolgirl, White House resident, collegiate scholar, financial market whiz-kid, network journalist, national political consultant, avid supporter of the arts and, today, as Vice Chair of the globally renowned Clinton Foundation.

 Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was inaugurated on January 20, 1993, becoming the 42nd President of the United States. That same day, Chelsea Clinton, not yet 13, moved into the White House with her parents and began her new life in the media spotlight as a First Daughter.

 Growing up, Chelsea was very close with her father, attending political events, speeches and rallies -- and always by his side. Here, President Clinton talks with Chelsea before a rally in his home state of Arkansas.

 President Clinton, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea greet the crowds before boarding a boat in Martha's Vineyard, during a family vacation in 1993.

 Despite growing up in the media glare, Chelsea -- thanks to her parents’ conscientious oversight -- led a relatively normal life, participating in many typical kids’ activities. She began taking dance classes at age four and continued to dance ballet throughout her teenage years. Here, she rehearses for an upcoming performance of Washington Ballet's holiday production of "The Nutcracker." She was 13.

 In 1996, President Bill Clinton was elected to a second term as U.S. President. Here, the family celebrates his successful re-nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

 Throughout President Clinton's two consecutive terms, Chelsea and her mother, Hillary Rodham Clinton, remained inseparable, attending political events together as First Lady and First Daughter. Here, mother and daughter bond while on a family retreat in Hilton Head, SC.

 In 2001, Chelsea graduated from Stanford University. She would go on to receive a Masters degree from Oxford University in 2003, and later, a Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree.

 During New York Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008, Chelsea publicly supported her mom all along the campaign trail. Here, the pair greets the cheering throng at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.

 On July 31, 2010, Chelsea married Marc Mezvinsky, an investment banker and the son of politicians. Their nuptials, dubbed “Chelsea’s Dream Wedding” on the cover of People magazine, took place in an estate overlooking the Hudson River in Rhinebeck, New York. In a 2013 interview with Glamour magazine, Chelsea revealed that she and Marc “decided we were going to make 2014 the Year of the Baby.” Stay tuned!

 Following in the footsteps of her parents' political and social activism, Chelsea has become a prominent media figure, serving as a special correspondent for broadcast networks, including NBC News. Here, she speaks on a panel at the 2013 Education Nation Summit.

 Chelsea now serves as Vice Chair of the Clinton Global Foundation, an initiative created by her family to help create social change in developing countries. Here, she and her dad speak with entrepreneurs in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2013, in an effort to shed light on international health issues, including HIV testing.

 No Ceilings is an initiative launched at the Clinton Foundation, led by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea. The initiative seeks to apply a data-driven approach to understanding the economic gains and gaps that women have experienced over the past 20 years.

 One of the most vital initiatives Chelsea spearheads through the Clinton Foundation is the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a partnership between the Clinton Foundation and American Heart Association that focuses on childhood obesity. This past month, Chelsea spoke at the 2014 New York City Go Red For Women Luncheon at the New York Hilton.

 Throughout her career, Chelsea has remained committed to empowering the next generation to help create change. She has passionately enlisted youth in foundation programming through the Clinton Global Initiative University, a program that targets college students and urges them to commit to bringing social change to the world.

 Another program Chelsea has helped implement through the Clinton Foundation is Day of Action, a community service-centric initiative founded in direct response to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  Share  Tweet  ✖ Share this ✖ close Current Slide

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A summary of this is?

– Chelsea Clinton is getting some attention for comments she made to Fast Company when asked about following her parents into politics. Her answer has always been a "visceral no," says the 34-year-old resident of New York City, but that's no longer the case: "I live in a city and a state and a country where I support my elected representatives. If at some point that weren't the case, and I didn't support my mayor or my city councilwoman or my congresswoman or either of my senators—and I'm lucky to live in a state where I have lots of women representing me, you know—maybe then I'd have to ask and answer the question for myself, and come to a different answer." At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake points out that Clinton has said something similar publicly on at least one other occasion, though she has never been so specific about possible offices. As for the two senatorial posts in New York, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is 47 and Chuck Schumer is 63. (Dad thinks Clinton ought to aim a little higher than a Senate seat, of course.)


Article:

A country house at a dacha compound used by U.S. diplomats for recreation, in Serebryany Bor residential area in the west of Moscow, Russia, July 31, 2017

 Russia blocked access on Tuesday to U.S. Embassy recreational property in a Moscow suburb and closed a 2,000 square meter warehouse in an industrial area in the capital's southern outskirts.

 The move is part of Russia’s response to a U.S. Congress vote last week to codify existing sanctions against Moscow. Russia has also ordered Washington to cut its diplomatic staff in Russia by more than 700.

 While Aug. 1 was the official start date of the U.S. property closure, U.S. Embassy spokesperson Maria Olson complained they had not been allowed access to the site for two days.

 An unidentified Russian Foreign Ministry official told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency that the Americans were to blame for not acquiring the requisite permits to access the property. The official added that blaming Russia for blocking access amounted to a “pre-meditated provocation.”

 At the end of 2016, the White House under former President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and closed two Russian diplomatic recreational facilities as a response to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. ||||| A stand-off has reportedly developed outside a building used by US embassy staff after Russia ordered the White House to reduce its diplomatic staff by 60 per cent.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin issued the ultimatum amid tensions with the US over a decision by Congress to approve a new set of sanctions on Moscow. He said they were ordering Washington to cut 755 diplomatic staff by September.

 Moscow also said it would seize two US diplomatic properties, a warehouse in southern Moscow and a complex on the outskirts of the city that embassy staff use for weekend recreation.

 On Monday, a Reuters journalist saw five vehicles with diplomatic licence plates, one of them a cargo truck, arrive at the recreation complex. The convoy was refused access, the journalist reported.

 An embassy spokeswoman said: "In line with the Russian government notification, the US Mission to Russia was supposed to have access to our dacha until noon on 1 August.

 "We have not had access all day today or yesterday. We refer you to the Russian government to explain why not."

 A Russian foreign ministry official, who was not identified, said the Americans were to blame for failing to obtain the necessary permits. To accuse Russia of blocking access amounts to a "pre-meditated provocation", RIA news agency cited the official as saying.

 All staff at the US embassy in Moscow were summoned to a meeting at which Ambassador John Tefft briefed employees on the Russian decision, the toughest diplomatic demarche between the two countries since the Cold War.

 "The atmosphere was like a funeral," said a person who was present and spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the media.

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 A spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, said that the 755 staff could include Russian citizens, a group who comprise the vast majority of the United States' roughly 1,200 embassy and consulate employees in Russia

 This clarification means there is unlikely to be a mass expulsion of US diplomatic staff from the country. Commenting on which diplomatic staff would have to go, Mr Peskov told reporters: "That's the choice of the United States."

 He added: "(It's) diplomats and technical employees. That is, we're not talking purely about diplomats - obviously, there isn't that number of diplomats - but about people with non-diplomatic status, and people hired locally, and Russian citizens who work there."

 A US State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called Russia's action "a regrettable and uncalled-for act ... We are assessing the impact of such a limitation and how we will respond to it".

 As of 2013, the US mission in Russia, including the Moscow embassy and consulates in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok, employed 1,279 staff, according to a State Department Inspector General's report that year. That included 934 "locally employed" staff and 301 U.S. "direct-hire" staff.

 The move is thought to be a way for Mr Putin to burnish his nationalist credentials before the presidential elections last year.

 Additional reporting by Reuters ||||| MOSCOW (Reuters) - The U.S. embassy in Moscow accused Russian authorities on Monday of barring diplomatic staff from a property on the outskirts of Moscow, after having earlier agreed to grant access until midday on Tuesday for them to retrieve belongings.

 A Russian foreign ministry official, quoted by state news agency RIA, said the U.S. embassy had sent in its trucks without first obtaining permits which, the official said, are required by law because the property is in a conservation area.

 The property, in a picturesque spot on a bend in the Moskva river northwest of the capital, is leased by the U.S. embassy for its staff to use for recreation.

 Moscow has said it is taking it back as part of retaliatory measures after Washington approved a fresh round of sanctions against Russia.

 A Reuters TV cameraman outside the country residence, known in Russian as a dacha, saw five vehicles with diplomatic license plates, including a truck, arrive at the site. He said they were denied entry.

 An embassy spokeswoman said: “In line with the Russian government notification, the U.S. Mission to Russia was supposed to have access to our dacha until noon on Aug. 1.

 “We have not had access all day today or yesterday,” she said. “We refer you to the Russian government to explain why not.”

 The Russian foreign ministry official, who was not identified, said the Americans were to blame for failing to obtain the necessary permits. To accuse Russia of blocking access amounts to a “pre-meditated provocation,” RIA news agency cited the official as saying. |||||
What is a summary?

– Vladimir Putin is paying back the US for what he says is its "insolence" in approving new sanctions against Russia, kicking American diplomats out of the country by September and shuttering the US Embassy's recreational compound (aka "dacha") just outside Moscow. That payback apparently includes not letting the diplomats get their stuff out first, per Reuters, which reports that a news agency cameraman spotted five vehicles sporting diplomatic license plates drive up to the retreat Monday, only to be turned away. "The US mission to Russia was supposed to have access to our dacha until noon on August 1," an Embassy spokeswoman says, citing an agreement with the Russian government. "We have not had access all day today or yesterday. We refer you to the Russian government to explain why not." The Russian government doesn't deny the deadline, but it's taking issue with the US' side of things. Per the RIA state news agency, a Russian foreign ministry rep says the property—which the Moscow Times describes as a "2,000-square-meter warehouse in an industrial area"—is in a conservation area, and so the trucks used by the Americans can't enter without proper permits (the official says three of those vehicles were industrial-sized cargo trucks, per RT.com). The official also scoffs at the suggestion Russia was flat-out barring the US from the dacha, noting that assertion was a "premeditated provocation." Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Russia John Tefft gathered all Moscow Embassy staff to inform them of Russia's decision, which includes slashing 755 roles at US diplomatic missions. "The atmosphere was like a funeral," one unnamed source said, per the Independent.


Article:

From strengthening abortion rights to legalizing same-sex marriage, women's movements have been responsible for some of the most extraordinary judicial victories around the world.

 In honor of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, the Global Fund for Women selected some 2010's most exciting and incredible legal breakthroughs around the world. Last year alone, women helped extend employee protection for domestic workers around the world (including nannies and maids) and comprised a critical segment of the astonishing revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt which ousted much-maligned leaders.

 Take a look at the Global Fund for Women's pics for the Top 10 wins for women's movements in 2010 below: ||||| Sponsored Links

 Over the years a number of organizations have attempted to list the " worst countries for women ," often to coincide with dates such as International Women's Day.One immediate challenge: What makes a country "worst for women"? Some researchers focus on humanitarian issues, others on educational attainment and literacy rates. Then, of course, there are health statistics to consider, as well as cultural biases and economic conditions.And no matter how accurate the underlying data are, numbers can only go so far in telling us what real women experience on a day-to-day basis.Those caveats aside, one interesting modern metric for understanding gender relations around the world is the U.N. Development Program's Gender Inequality Index . This index measures achievement differences between men and women in three categories: labor market participation, empowerment (including education and political representation at the national level) and reproductive health. Perfect equality is zero, perfect inequality is 1. According to the U.N., the world average rank is 0.56.Here are the five countries with the highest (that is, worst) scores on the 2008 Gender Inequality Index, the most recent ranking available.This small country in the southwest Arabian peninsula earned a Gender Inequality Index rank of 0.853, the highest of any studied by the U.N. A 2009 Amnesty International report highlighted the "violence and discrimination" faced by many Yemeni women.The Congo ranked 0.814 on the Gender Inequality Index. According to international aid group Women for Women , violence has not ended despite the official conclusion of a brutal civil war in 2003, and women continue to be devastated by rape, famine and disease.This western African country scored 0.807 on the U.N. index. A 2010 report showed that 1 in 7 Nigerian women will die in childbirth, compared with 1 in 4,800 in the United States.Mali was just behind Niger on the index, ranking 0.799. Recent efforts to improve women's legal standing in the country were met with protests and street demonstrations Some observers worry that women's rights are not a priority for Afghan leaders -- or the Western powers trying to develop a strategy for the region. Afghanistan ranked 0.797 on the U.N. Gender Inequality Index.Which nation is considered the best for a woman to live? The Netherlands got the lowest (best) score, 0.174.As for the United States, it scored 0.400, coming in behind Croatia (0.345) and Lithuania (0.359) but ahead of Estonia (0.409). |||||
What is a summary?

– To mark International Women's Day, AoL News takes note of countries that treat their women the worst. The findings are based on a UN index that factors in categories such as jobs, education, political representation, and reproductive health. The worst offenders: Yemen: Its female citizens routinely face "violence and discrimination," says Amnesty International. Democratic Republic of Congo: The civil war is officially over, but rape, famine, and disease remain common. Niger: One in 7 women will die in childbirth. Click for the full list. For better reading on the topic, click for some of the year's biggest breakthroughs for women around the world, including the creation of a UN superagency.


Summarize this article:

Image caption Mohammed Ghannouchi was seen as too closely linked to the old regime

 Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi has announced on state TV that he is resigning - a key demand of demonstrators.

 He was speaking at a news conference in Tunis, after making a lengthy speech defending his record in government.

 Mr Ghannouchi is seen as being too close to former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in an uprising last month.

 Mr Ghannouchi, 69, had served under Mr Ben Ali since 1989.

 "After having taken more than one week of thinking, I became convinced, and my family shared my conviction, and decided to resign. It is not fleeing my responsibilities; I have been shouldering my responsibilities since 14 January [when Mr Ben Ali fled]," he said.

 "I am not ready to be the person who takes decisions that would end up causing casualties," he added.

 "This resignation will serve Tunisia, and the revolution and the future of Tunisia," he added.

 At the scene It is exactly what the protesters had been demanding. Mohammed Ghannouchi, had served under the country's old dictatorship, and as far as they were concerned, until he went, their revolution was unfinished. The question now is whether this resignation will be enough to quell the violence. As the news has spread, people have been taking to the streets, chanting and singing of victory.

 Within hours a replacement was named for Mr Ghannouchi - Beji Caid-Essebsi, 84, who served as foreign minister in the government of the late President Habib Bourguiba.

 Earlier in the day, police in Tunis fired tear gas and warning shots to disperse the latest demonstration calling for a new government and a new constitution on a third day of violence.

 Huge protests

 On Friday and Saturday, anti-government protesters held huge rallies calling for Mr Ghannouchi's resignation.

 At least three people were killed in clashes between hundreds of demonstrators and security forces in Tunis on Saturday.

 Tunisia's government had insisted it was introducing reforms as fast as it could, and that it was planning to hold elections by July.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Paul Moss in Tunis: "Police are giving protesters merciless beatings"

 But those promises did not seem to satisfy the protesters, correspondents say.

 The fall of Mr Ben Ali after 23 years in power sparked similar uprisings in the Arab world, including one that led to the downfall of long-time Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February and another under way in Libya.

 The trigger for the protests in Tunisia was a desperate act by a young unemployed man on 17 December 2010.

 Mohammed Bouazizi set fire to himself when officials in his town prevented him from selling vegetables on the streets of Sidi Bouzid without permission. ||||| Tunisia's interim president chose a former government minister as a new prime minister on Sunday, appealing for a return to calm following new violent protests that have been hobbling this North African country since the ouster of its long-time autocratic leader.

 In this undated photo is the newly named Tunisian Prime Minister Beji Caid-Essebsi. Tunisia's interim president has named former government minister Beji Caid-Essebsi as the country's new prime minister... (Associated Press)

 A Tunisian riot police officer kicks a anti-government protester during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a... (Associated Press)

 Anti-government protesters lay on the ground after being apprehended by Tunisian soldier during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he... (Associated Press)

 Anti-government protesters are seen behind a barricade during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand... (Associated Press)

 A Tunisian riot police officer escorts away an anti-government protester during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing... (Associated Press)

 Tear gas smoke is seen during a anti government protest, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand of protesters after... (Associated Press)

 Tunisia'S former Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, center, is seen with Tunisia'S Interior Minister Farhat Rajhi, left, and Gen. Rachid Ammar, right, after his resignation's annouNcement in Tunis, Sunday... (Associated Press)

 Tunisian President Fouad Mebazaa announces the new Tunisian Prime Minister during a press conference, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Mebazaa named former government minister Beji Caid-Essebsi as prime... (Associated Press)

 Tunisian riot police officers arrest antigovernment protesters during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Freb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a... (Associated Press)

 Tunisian riot police officers are seen during a antigovernment protest, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand of protesters... (Associated Press)

 Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi gestures as he announces his resignation during a press conference in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will... (Associated Press)

 Tear gas smoke is seen during an anti-government protest, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand of protesters after... (Associated Press)

 Tunisian former Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, right, hugs the Tunisian Interior Minister Farhat Rajhi, left, after his resignation's annoucement in Tunis, Sunday Freb. 27, 2011. Ghannouchi's announcement... (Associated Press)

 Beji Caid-Essebsi will replace Mohammed Ghannouchi, who resigned earlier Sunday after becoming a major irritant to Tunisians behind the so-called "Jasmine Revolution" that toppled autocratic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last month and sparked a wave of upheaval in the Arab world.

 The caretaker president, Fouad Mebazaa, made the appointment later Sunday.

 As Ben Ali's prime minister for 11 years, Ghannouchi became the emblem of an entrenched old guard that many Tunisians feared were hijacking their revolution.

 It was not immediately clear how much the shake-up would mollify the protesters in Tunisia, at a time when its leaders are attempting to rebuild its tourism industry and cope with an influx of Tunisians and others fleeing from violence in neighboring Libya.

 The change in the government's leadership follows renewed street protests. Officials said that at least five people have died in violent street protests since Friday.

 Ghannouchi had previously vowed to stay on to guide Tunisia until elections could be organized this summer.

 As he stepped down, Ghannouchi sought to take the high ground.

 "This (resignation) is not a flight from my responsibilities, but to open the way for another prime minister who _ I hope _ will have more margin for action than I have had, to give hope to the Tunisian people," he said.

 "I am not ready to be the man of repression, and I will never be," Ghannouchi said, warning that unspecified forces appeared to be swelling to try to quash the move toward democracy.

 Caid-Essebsi is an elderly statesman and lawyer who served in government posts under the Tunisia's two longtime leaders since it gained independence from France in 1956: Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali.

 Ben Ali was driven from power on Jan. 14 and fled to Saudi Arabia following weeks of a deadly popular uprising that has fanned similar upheaval across the Arab world.

 Some Tunisians believe that Ben Ali loyalists in the country have sought to sow discord and discredit the movement that brought the former authoritarian leader down.

 "There needs to be reconciliation among all Tunisians to show the world that Tunisia is a civilized country," Ghannouchi said. "My resignation will help create this new atmosphere."

 The Interior Ministry, in a statement Saturday, blamed "provocateurs" for fomenting violence in otherwise peaceful rallies and for allegedly using young people as human shields in renewed demonstrations.

 On Saturday, police and troops backed by tanks used tear gas to disperse hundreds of youths protesting against the caretaker government. Officers were seen chasing some youths through town after the rally ended.

 Authorities then ordered a temporarily ban on vehicle and pedestrian traffic on the capital's central Bourguiba Avenue until midnight Sunday _ the first of its kind since Ben Ali's downfall.

 On Friday, police fired tear gas and warning shots as violence erupted alongside a sit-in that drew tens of thousands of protesters near the seat of the interim government.

 Officials said nearly 200 people were arrested over the last two days. |||||

– Interim Tunisian President Foued Mebazaa has appointed a new prime minister following the resignation of Mohammed Ghannouchi, who bowed to protesters' demands and stepped down yesterday, the BBC reports. Former foreign minister Beji Caid-Essebsi will take Ghannouchi's place, although it's not clear whether the appointment will be enough to mollify the protesters who have returned to the streets of Tunis in large numbers, AP notes. Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri has recorded a message urging Tunisians and Egyptians to rise up against their interim governments.


News article:

Although “Thor” hung on to the No. 1 spot at the box office this weekend, the big story was a stellar opening for “The Best Man Holiday,” which trounced all expectations to debut with a studio-estimated $30.6-million.

 Disney’s 3-D sequel “Thor: the Dark World” took in a solid $38.5-million, which represented an expected 55% drop from its opening weekend when it grossed $86 million.

 The film cost Marvel Entertainment $170 million to produce and after two weekends has already taken in a strong $147 million. It’s currently on track to eclipse the performance of its predecessor, which grossed $181 million domestically.

 PHOTOS: 75 images from 'Thor: The Dark World'

 “The Best Man Holiday” received a coveted average grade of A+ from moviegoers, according to market research firm CinemaScore. That means it joins an elite club of films that have enjoyed long and fruitful box office runs, including “Argo,” “42,” “The Help,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Blind Side” and “Titanic.”

 Going into the weekend, the distributor of "The Best Man Holiday," Universal Pictures, projected that the film would take in a modest $17 million, while prerelease audience surveys indicated the film would start off with around $23 million.

 “There’s no crystal ball in guessing this stuff," said Nikki Rocco, Universal's president of distribution. “It was fair to think this film— where 87% of the audience was African American—would open in the high teens.”

 That it nearly doubled that estimate is “a phenomenal result,” said Rocco. “I would never have thought in my most non-lucid moment to expect this -- the picture only cost $17-million.”

 Thanks to the A+ CinemaScore, Rocco says she believes the film will eventually reach a broader audience.

 PHOTOS: Holiday movie sneaks 2013

 “The Best Man Holiday,” which is about a group of friends gathering for Christmas, is a sequel to 1999's "The Best Man," which grossed $34 million. Both films were directed by Malcolm D. Lee and star a number of the same actors, including Taye Diggs, Terrence Howard and Nia Long.

 Meanwhile, Paramount Vantage's buzzy limited-release opening “Nebraska,” which was directed by Alexander Payne and stars Bruce Dern as a sour old man on a road trip with his son, is off to an auspicious start, taking in $140,000 in four locations.

 That’s $35,000 per location, making it the 10th best per-theater average for a film playing in limited release, behind art-house hits like "Blue Jasmine" and "12 Years a Slave."

 Next weekend will see a significant shake-up as the highly anticipated “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” blazes into theaters.

 The film opened on 962 screens in Brazil on Friday and pulled in an estimated $6.3 million, according to its distributor, Lionsgate. That’s double what the first “Hunger Games” grossed in it's opening weekend in Brazil and sounds a warning bell that next weekend could be huge for the franchise.

 ALSO:

 Is the soap opera 'All My Children' washed up?

 TV Academy to roll out online voting for Emmy Awards

 Movie Projector: 'Thor 2' to rule again, but 'Best Man Holiday' will still celebrate ||||| For the second weekend in a row, Marvel’s $170 million sequel Thor: The Dark World topped the domestic box office chart. The Chris Hemsworth vehicle fell 55 percent to $38.5 million, giving the comic book adaptation $147 million total so far. The Dark World is still on track to easily surpass the original Thor‘s $181 million domestic total in 2011, and it should finish above $200 million.

 Internationally, the sequel has already earned more than its predecessor. The Dark World has grossed $332.8 million internationally and $479.8 million worldwide, far more than Thor’s $268 million and $449 million respective finishes. At this point, The Dark World seems headed for a finish above $700 million worldwide.

 Thor wasn’t the only success story this weekend. The Best Man Holiday unwrapped an outstanding $30.5 million on opening weekend from 2,024 theaters, yielding an excellent $15,115 venue average — the best in the top-10. The film, which stars Terrence Howard, Taye Diggs, and Regina Hall (among others), opened with $10.7 million on Friday, and then ticked up 15 percent on Saturday to $12 million — a rare boost on a film’s opening weekend that signifies great word-of-mouth. Audiences, which Universal reports were 75 percent female and 87 percent African-American, issued the film a rare “A+” CinemaScore grade.

 Holiday‘s predecessor, the 1999 comedy The Best Man, which was also written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee, grossed $9 million on its opening weekend en route to a $34 million total. Given how handily The Best Man Holiday beat that film’s opening weekend, and given its slim $17 million budget, Universal likely won’t wait 14 years before releasing another sequel.

 Third place belonged to CBS Films’ Last Vegas, which continued to demonstrate great staying power and older-audience appeal in its third weekend. The Vegas adventure, which stars Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, and Robert DeNiro, didn’t hit the jackpot in its opening weekend, but teensy drops are turning it into a substantial hit. The film fell just 25 percent to $8.9 million this weekend, good for a $47 million running total against a $28 million budget. Last Vegas is set to become CBS Films’ highest-grossing film ever ahead of last year’s Daniel Radcliffe spookfest The Woman In Black, which earned $54.3 million.

 Thanksgiving-themed comedy Free Birds held up in fourth place with $8.3 million, marking a scant 25 percent drop from last weekend, a sensible dip as the holiday approaches. While the film’s week-to-week hold is encouraging, its numbers were unfortunately quite low to begin with. After three frames, Relativity’s $55 million animation has earned just $42.2 million — and that’s without any family competition.

 Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa rounded out the Top 5, falling by only 32 percent to $7.7 million. Paramount’s $15 million prank film has become one of the runaway smashes of the fall season, and — unlike the other Jackass films — proved an enduring success, rather than a fast burn at the box office. The film has earned $90.2 million so far, and it’s poised to pass the $100 million mark in the coming weeks.

 1. Thor: The Dark World – $38.5million

 2. The Best Man Holiday – $30.6 million

 3. Last Vegas – $8.9 million

 4. Free Birds – $8.3 million

 5. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa – $7.7 million

 In limited release, Oscar contender Dallas Buyers Club expanded nicely from 35 to 184 theaters, pulling in $1.8 million this weekend — about $9,701 per theater. Focus Features will continue expanding the film, which has earned $3 million so far, in the coming weeks. New opener Nebraska also fared well in its opening weekend. The Alexander Payne film, which stars Bruce Dern and Will Forte, pulled in $140,000 from only four theaters.

 Next week brings the arrival of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and guess what? It’s going to make a lot of money. How much? Stay tuned to EW to find out. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Thor: the Dark World ruled the weekend box office again, banking $38.5 million, but more exciting may be The Best Man Holiday—a black-American release that took second with a stunning $30.6 million debut, the LA Times reports. "There’s no crystal ball in guessing this stuff," said an exec at distributor Universal. "It was fair to think this film ... would open in the high teens." Also generating buzz is the Alexander Payne-directed Nebraska, which raked in a notable $140,000 at four locations. Wrapping up the top five are Last Vegas ($8.9 million), Free Birds ($8.3 million), and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa ($7.7 million), reports Entertainment Weekly.


Article:
3 Salinas kids found starving, abused, deputies say

 (03-21) 19:30 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Three Salinas children are in protective custody after authorities discovered that their mothers had starved and neglected them and chained up the oldest child to prevent her from getting food, Monterey County sheriff's officials said Friday.

 The women, who are domestic partners, were arrested Saturday. Eraca Dawn Craig, 31, and Christian Jessica Deanda, 44, remain in Monterey County Jail. They were arraigned this week on numerous child abuse charges.

 The 8-year-old girl and two boys, ages 5 and 3, were discovered March 14 when sheriff's deputies were conducting a welfare check at their Salinas home, said sheriff's Commander John Thornburg. The officers noticed signs of abuse, including there being little food at the home, which was "cluttered and dirty," authorities said. The three children were taken into protective custody that day.

 Police determined the 8-year-old girl had been chained to a wall at times. Thornburg said she was hospitalized for four days but has been released. The boys did not need hospitalization, he said, but all three children showed signs of neglect as well as physical and emotional abuse. ||||| SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Three starving children — including one who was chained to the floor to prevent her from getting food — were found last month in the squalid home of a Northern California couple, authorities said.

 All three — two boys and a girl — were taken into protective custody, and one was hospitalized, Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller said Friday.

 Authorities discovered them in the Salinas, Calif., home on March 14 after two of the young people missed appointments, according to several published reports.

 "It was a particularly heinous case," Miller told the Monterey Herald. The children had "hardly eaten for months."

 The boys are 3 and 5 years old, and the girl is 8, authorities said, and they all exhibited bruises and signs of other physical as well as emotional abuse.

 The girl, who appeared to have suffered the most extreme abuse, was chained to the floor to prevent her from getting any food, they said.

 "It seems that the little girl was the major target of this abuse," Miller continued, adding that she looked "like a concentration camp victim."

 The girl was in the hospital for about five days, he said, and seemed "traumatized."

 There was evidence that she was may have been put in the closet as well as that she was sometimes shackled at the ankle and at other times by a collar around her neck, Miller said.

 Eraca Dwan Craig, 31, and Christian Jessica Deana, 44, were both arrested at the scene on suspicion of felony child cruelty, false imprisonment and other charges.

 The women, who are domestic partners, do not appear to have criminal records in Monterey County. They were both arraigned in Monterey County Court on Tuesday and are scheduled for a preliminary hearing on March 28.

 Authorities said the women seemed to be making preparations to leave before they were arrested.

 Investigators found little food inside the home, which was cluttered and dirty, according to reports.

 The girl and the older boy were adopted children, and the younger boy is the biological son of one of the women, Miller said.

 ___

 Information from: The Monterey County Herald, http://www.montereyherald.com ||||| Salinas: One of two women arrested is former correctional officer

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 One of two women accused of starving, chaining and abusing three children in Monterey County is a former correctional officer, while the other was a businesswoman and counselor at clinics in California and New Mexico, according to their online professional profiles and court filings.

 Sheriff's deputies rescued three children from the couple's residence on Russell Road north of Salinas on March 14, citing horrific conditions and an "emaciated" 8-year-old girl who looked like "a concentration camp" victim, said Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller.

 Also taken from the home were two boys, ages 3 and 5.

 Miller said Eraca Dawn Craig, 31, and Christian Jessica Deanda, 44, are accused of felony child cruelty, false imprisonment and other charges.

 Deputies conducted a welfare check at the house after the children didn't show up for an unspecified appointment, detectives said.

 They found the children, who were home-schooled, living in squalid conditions and "fairly dire straits," Miller said.

 The girl was the most abused, deputies said, though all three had bruises and other marks and appeared to be malnourished.

 Officers said they found signs the girl had been chained to the wall and said she may have been held in a closet. Investigators believe she was shackled at times at the ankle and at other times by a collar around her neck.

 One deputy reported the girl was chained "to keep her from obtaining food."

 Miller said it appeared she had "hardly eaten for months."

 The girl and the 5-year-old boy were legally adopted children, he said, while the 3-year-old boy is the biological son of one of the women, who are domestic partners.

 The rescued 8-year-old was immediately hospitalized for about five days, Miller said, and appeared to be "very traumatized."

 The children were placed in foster homes.

 "It seems that the little girl was the major target of this abuse," he said. "It was a particularly heinous case."

 He said there were indications the women were preparing to leave the area soon.

 Detectives said moving boxes were packed and the women told them they were planning to move to the Fresno area.

 Miller said when children are rescued from terrifying conditions, they are not usually "jumping up and down in joy. They may have forgotten what joy is like."

 Law enforcement officers' description of the grim scenario stands in contrast to the women's online business profiles.

 Posting as Cristian Deanda-Craig on LinkedIn.Com, Deanda wrote about her cactus nursery in New Mexico: "I am currently in a place that makes me happy both personally and professionally. I left me (sic) job to be home with my kids. I loved gardening and soon found myself selling flowers to neighbors. So my partner and I started our business — the best decision ever! I enjoy watching my kids grow and my flowers!"

 Under previous jobs, she lists work as an HIV prevention case manager at John XXIII AIDS Ministry in Salinas from 2001-04, and later as a psychosocial therapy manager at Valencia Counseling Services in Estancia, N.M.

 Deanda was a program manager at a transitional housing facility for men in Gallup, N.M., according to the profile.

 Public records show she lived in Castroville and Salinas as well as New Mexico.

 Deanda and Craig were scheduled to be married March 29, according to an online gift registry.

 Craig, whose profile is listed under Eraca Craig-Deanda, earned a degree in auto mechanics management from Hartnell College in 2013, according to the site.

 Before that, she was a detention officer at the Navajo County, Ariz., sheriff's office in 2005-06 and a corrections officer at a New Mexico corrections facility from December 2006 to May 2010.

 More recently, her occupation was listed as auto mechanic.

 Records show she left New Mexico in May 2010, moving to the Russell Road address in Salinas.

 Soon after moving back to Salinas, Craig filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

 Almost immediately, she began defaulting on agreed-upon monthly payments, federal court records show. The case was ultimately thrown out for failure to pay two days before her arrest.

 Craig earned about $36,000 a year as a New Mexico correctional officer, according to her filing, but was receiving unemployment assistance and food stamps in Salinas at the time of her bankruptcy petition.

 The children were listed as her dependent sons and daughter in the filing, which was made when her youngest son was 6 months old.

 Neither woman appears to have a criminal record in Monterey County.

 Asked why his office delayed announcing the arrests, Miller said officials were investigating the case and wanted to wait until after the women were charged by the District Attorney's Office and arraigned in court.

 They were arraigned in Monterey County Court on Tuesday and are being held at Monterey County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail each, although Miller said late Friday officers were in court asking for the bail amounts to be raised.

 Deanda and Craig are scheduled for a preliminary hearing on March 28.

 Julia Reynolds can be reached at 648-1187 or jreynolds@montereyherald.com.

 Donations

 · Send donations to: Monterey County Association of Families Caring for Children, P.O. Box 2283, Salinas, CA 93902

 · Clothing, toys and other new items can be dropped at the association office, Hartnell College, Bldg D, Room 120. |||||Summary:

– It's "a particularly heinous case," says the sheriff in California's Monterey County. Police rescued three young children who showed signs of starvation and abuse from their home in Salinas, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Their mothers, who lived together as domestic partners, are in custody. The oldest child, an 8-year-old girl, had been chained at times to keep her from getting food, and she looked like a "concentration camp victim," says Sheriff Scott Miller. The girl was hospitalized for four days and is now recuperating in a foster home. The other two children are boys ages 3 and 5, and they, too, were malnourished, bruised, and showed signs of emotional abuse, reports AP. But the girl apparently bore the brunt of the abuse, with investigators saying she was shackled at the ankle or by a collar at times, and may have been held in a closet. Eraca Craig, 31, and Christian Deanda, 44, are accused of felony child cruelty, false imprisonment, and other charges, reports the Monterey Herald. They home-schooled the kids and were scheduled to be married next week.


Write an article based on this summary:

– A restaurant on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince is taking up the slack left by still-incomplete relief efforts and feeding 1,000 hungry and homeless Haitians a day—for free. Before the earthquake, Muncheez was a pizza joint too expensive for most people in the area. But after the quake, its owner realized all his supplies would soon spoil. “So instead of losing the food,” he tells NPR, “we said let's cook the food and give it away.” The story of neighborly generosity in the face of disaster continues. “Two days after, we were running out of diesel, running out of gas, running out of food,” the owner continues. But others “started to bring food to us. And we are doing that since.” To supplement the home-cooked meals of spaghetti and rice and beans, an aid group is using the restaurant as a distribution point for dry goods. Muncheez has also set up a Facebook page to keep donations rolling in.

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 You must log in to continue. ||||| Haitian Eatery Serves Up Taste Of Hope Amid Despair

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Tamara Keith/NPR Tamara Keith/NPR

 Two weeks after the earthquake in Haiti, the situation is still desperate for many. International aid groups are distributing food, yet many Haitians say they still are not getting the help they need.

 But some in Port-au-Prince aren't waiting for outside help. At one restaurant on the outskirts of town, neighbors are helping neighbors.

 Muncheez is open for business. But it's nothing like it was before the earthquake.

 The corner pizza place that was too expensive for most Haitians to enjoy is now serving rice and beans, chicken, spaghetti — anything the owners can get their hands on — and it's all free.

 How To Help DONATE: Ways To Help

 Co-owner Gilbert Bailly says it started the day after the earthquake when he realized his ingredients would spoil before anyone would have the wherewithal to buy a pizza.

 "So instead of losing the food, we said let's cook the food and give it away to people that need it. And then two days after, we were running out of diesel, running out of gas, running out of food. We had people that has businesses and started to bring food to us. And we are doing that since," Bailly says.

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Tamara Keith/NPR Tamara Keith/NPR

 When donations from other businesses in the neighborhood ran out, Bailly's nephew gathered money from friends and brought in a truckload of food from the Dominican Republic. Now, Bailly has a page on Facebook and is trying to get additional help through the online social network.

 "As long as I have stuff to give, I am going to keep doing it. It keeps myself busy. It gives me hope," he says.

 Around Port-au-Prince, in small ways, people are doing the same thing, sharing food with their neighbors and trying to stretch every morsel.

 Muncheez is feeding about 1,000 people a day. Lines are wrapped around the building when the restaurant opens its doors in the late afternoon. Some people wait for hours.

 Leonce Bell, 40, has been served a plate of spaghetti and a cup of water. When the earthquake hit, he lost his house and his job. Now his family is living in a public park with thousands of others where food is hard to come by.

 "It's been a long time since I have eaten. The water, we find it easily. When they are giving out food to the people, they are fighting for it and sometimes it's not even enough," Bell says.

 Bell says he hasn't eaten in three days. But he doesn't plan to touch the plate of food he is holding: He's saving it for his child.

 "It is amazing, because I can find food easily here — where in other places I cannot find any," he says.

 World Vision, an international aid group, recently found out about the improvised soup kitchen at Muncheez and is bringing trucks carrying sacks of dry food.

 Now, along with their meal, people get bags of bulgur and lentils to take back to their families. Bailly hopes it eases some of the pain. |||||


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 Thank you for reading 5 free articles. You can come back at the end of your 30-day period for another 5 free articles, or you can purchase a subscription and continue to enjoy valuable local news and information. If you are a current 7-day subscriber you are granted an all-access pass to the website and digital newspaper replica. Please click Sign Up to subscribe, or Login if you are already a member.

 Thank you for reading 5 free articles. You can come back at the end of your 30-day period for another 5 free articles, or you can purchase a subscription and continue to enjoy valuable local news and information. If you are a current 7-day subscriber you are granted an all-access pass to the website and digital newspaper replica. Please click below to Get Started. ||||| In this Nov. 14, 2014 file photo Jesse Matthew Jr., right, looks toward the gallery while appearing in court in Fairfax, Va. (Bill O'leary/The Washington Post)

 — The man accused of abducting and killing University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham last fall will now face a charge of capital murder in the case, meaning that if he is convicted he could face the death penalty.

 Jesse L. Matthew Jr., 33, had been charged with first-degree murder in Graham’s slaying, and the charges were upgraded at a court hearing in this college town on Tuesday. Homicides in Virginia can be charged as capital murders when there are allegations of aggravating factors, including abduction or sexual assault.

 Graham, 18, of Fairfax County, Va., went missing in September from an outdoor mall near the U-Va. campus, and Matthew was the last person seen with her. Her body was found in a wooded area about 10 miles from campus weeks later, and Matthew was charged with her killing.

 [For Hannah Graham’s family, ‘nightmare’ leaves enduring uncertainty and loss.]

 Authorities have alleged that Matthew abducted Graham “with intent to defile,” indicating that police believe he intended to sexually assault Graham.

 Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford initially did not seek a capital murder charge, saying she made that decision after consulting with Graham’s family and weighing the impact on the community.

 Matthew also is facing charges related to a sexual assault from nearly a decade ago. He is awaiting trial on charges that he attacked and attempted to kill a woman in Fairfax City in 2005; authorities have said that they found Matthew’s DNA under one of the victim’s fingernails.

 Graham, a U-Va. sophomore who graduated from West Potomac High School, disappeared after a night out in Charlottesville on Sept. 12. Police said she had been socializing with friends earlier in the night but left the group with plans to meet up with them later. She never showed up and apparently became disoriented while walking through Charlottesville.

 Police said witnesses saw Matthew with his arm around Graham at a downtown mall about 1 a.m. Sept. 13, and surveillance video recordings show the two walking together. Witnesses also saw the two together outside a restaurant, the last reported sighting of Graham. |||||

Write a summary.

– The man accused of abducting and murdering a University of Virginia sophomore will now face the death penalty. Prosecutors today announced a charge of capital murder against 33-year-old Jesse Matthew in the death of Hannah Graham last year, reports the Daily Progress. Prosecutors initially didn't seek the death penalty, but the state attorney for Albemarle County said today that there is "compelling evidence from the lab that capital charges are now appropriate." Denise Lunsford didn't offer specifics, but the Washington Post notes that capital charges can be brought when "aggravating factors" such as sexual assault are present. As a result of the capital murder charge, Matthew was appointed new attorneys because his previous defense team did not have experience with death-penalty cases. Matthew also is a suspect in a 2005 sexual assault, and his DNA has been linked to the body of a young woman found outside Charlottesville in 2009.