News article:

What would Donald Trump do to fix the Middle East? Listening to his prescriptions, it’s not an easy question to answer.

 Trump sought to clarify his worldview with a prepared speech in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday after a week of battles over his claim that President Obama “founded ISIS” and was the “MVP” of the Islamist terror group.

 But setting aside the debate over that rhetoric, which he did not repeat in his speech, the national security framework he described was so contradictory and filled with so many obvious falsehoods that it’s virtually impossible to tell what he would do as president.

 Trump’s “Obama founded ISIS” catchphrase is inflammatory, but it’s not a literal argument (even though Trump initially insisted it was). Instead he's used the term to stitch together a patchwork of more mainstream criticisms that blame Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former President George W. Bush for creating the current Middle East crisis. “Our current strategy of nation building and regime change is a proven, absolute failure,” Trump said on Monday.

 Play Facebook

 Twitter

 Embed Trump Proposes 'Extreme Vetting' Screening Process 1:59 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog

 Under Trump’s telling, Bush committed the initial sin by destabilizing the Middle East with his 2003 invasion of Iraq. This is a version of events more common on the left, but one that exists on the right as well.

 Obama then made things worse with a "reckless" withdrawal of troops that created a "vacuum" for groups like ISIS to assert control. This is a frequent complaint from more neoconservative Republicans.

 In addition, Trump said, Clinton exacerbated the problem by supporting airstrikes against Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi's "stable" regime, which provided Islamic radicals another weak state to serve as a base. He also argued Clinton and Obama should have supported Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, rather than encouraged him to step down in the face of street protests. These too are relatively ordinary criticisms.

 But these arguments, while unremarkable enough on their own, say nothing about Trump's instincts or how he would govern.

 That’s because Trump previously supported every single foreign policy decision he now decries.

 Despite claiming daily that he opposed the Iraq War from the start, Trump endorsed deposing Saddam Hussein in a 2002 interview and there’s no record of him opposing the war until after it had began. As for exiting the Iraq War, he said repeatedly in 2007 and 2008 that America should withdraw immediately and later recommended the same course for Afghanistan.

 Turning to Libya, Trump recorded a video in 2011 demanding the Obama administration remove Gadhafi from power on humanitarian grounds. He went on to lie about his support for the Libya intervention in a Republican debate only to admit to it when confronted with footage of his old statements in a CBS interview. Finally, Trump called Mubarak’s departure “a good thing” at the time before turning against the idea years later.

 The result is that the only thing we know about Trump is that he’s good at criticizing decisions by other presidents in hindsight. Unfortunately, this is not a very useful skill for the person tasked with making the decisions in the first place.

 “He’s best when he’s making forceful retrospective critiques,” Colin Dueck, a professor at George Mason University who’s researched the history of Republican foreign policy, said when asked to describe Trump’s worldview. “But when you ask him what specifically are you proposing going forward, he doesn’t have a coherent proposal.”

 As Colin Powell famously cautioned George W. Bush ahead of the Iraq War, “you break it, you own it.” The consequences of military action — or inaction, in some of these cases — are irreversible.

 A 'Blathering Jumble of Nonsense'

 Trump’s chameleon-like prescription for Middle East is not consistent with any one school of thought – or with itself. Sometimes he resembles a non-interventionist in the vein of Ron Paul, like when he decried nation building and regime change in his speech on Monday. At other times, he sounds like Genghis Khan, like when he demanded in the very same speech that American troops conquer oil fields in Iraq by force and claim the profits for America. He previously suggested in 2011 that the US claim Libya's oil as well.

 Play Facebook

 Twitter

 Embed Donald Trump: 'We Should Have Kept The Oil' 1:18 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog

 “In the old days when we won a war, to the victor go the spoils,” Trump said on Monday, describing a doctrine that runs directly counter to the international regime America led the world in establishing and currently enforces.

 The result of this confusing mix is that Trump has alienated Republican national security minds across a range of policy schools.

 John Noonan, who advised Jeb Bush’s campaign on national security, said Obama’s “premature withdrawal from Iraq" was an avoidable mistake that contributed to the rise of ISIS and that Trump was accurate to point it out. But that doesn’t mean Noonan is on board with the GOP nominee — far from it.

 “The rest of his foreign policy is an absolutely blathering jumble of nonsense,” he told NBC News. “I can’t in good conscience sign my name to it."

 In March, Noonan signed onto a letter with dozens of Republican foreign policy hands disavowing Trump in part because his policies are “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle."

 Daniel Larison, a writer at the American Conservative, has spent years criticizing the Republican Party’s foreign policy for leaning too hard on military operations to advance American interests. But despite Trump’s stated opposition to “nation building” and toppling dictators by force, Larison opposes the nominee as well.

 “Trump has relatively few antiwar conservative friends because he is not really reliably antiwar in any meaningful sense,” Larison said. “He favors a much larger military budget, he usually has no strong objections to foreign wars when they begin, and he has little or no interest in diplomatic engagement that might avert conflict.”

 Trump’s views on intervention weren’t the only place where things ran off the rails. Adopting a standard GOP talking point, he decried Obama for a mythic “apology tour” on Monday and chided him for not championing feminism and gay rights abroad.

 But this is at odds with his stated views as well, which have long been characterized by a deep contempt for any notion of human rights that might impede raw material gains. In addition to celebrating torture and regaling audiences with apocryphal tales of Americans committing war crimes, Trump has regularly argued America’s own leaders should refrain from criticizing dictatorial regimes because America lacks the moral authority to do so.

 Play Facebook

 Twitter

 Embed Trump: 'I Think We Can Find Common Ground With Russia' 0:59 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog

 “When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger,” Trump said last month when asked about concerns over a crackdown on opposition by Turkish leader Reccep Erdogan.

 Pressed on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last year over his praise for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin despite allegations he’s murdered journalists and rivals, Trump responded: “I think our country does plenty of killing also.”

 In 2013, Trump also lavished praise on Putin in multiple interviews for writing an op-ed that criticized the very concept of American exceptionalism.

 “You use a term like ‘American exceptionalism,’ and frankly, the way our country is being treated right now by Russia and Syria and lots of other places and with all the mistakes we've made over the years, like Iraq and so many others, it's sort of a hard term to use,” Trump said on Fox News, adding that Putin was “extremely diplomatic” for pointing this out.

 'America First' a Departure From GOP Philosophy

 Outside of the Middle East, Trump’s “America First” foreign policy views are at least somewhat more consistent. He’s long described international relations as a zero-sum gain between strong winners and weak losers in ways that apply to both national security and trade. Trump has consistently called for new tariffs to protect workers from foreign competition and he’s cast a skeptical eye towards alliances like NATO, which he’s threatened to abandon in recent months if member states don’t pay enough for protection.

 Dueck compared Trump’s perspective to the original “America First” movement, which resisted foreign entanglements and sought American neutrality in World War II.

 “Trump’s actually been saying for decades that he thinks U.S. alliances are more of a burden than an asset, he’s been saying for decades he against free trade deals like NAFTA,” Dueck said. “He’s very volatile and contradictory day to day but he has been actually saying this for years.”

 All of this would be a major break from the last seven-plus decades of Republican and Democratic presidents. But at least American voters could fairly say they were warned if he implemented this approach. No one, probably not even Trump himself, knows how what he’d do about the Middle East.

 Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect that Donald Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. claim Libya’s oil fields was made in 2011, not during his speech Monday as first reported. ||||| Donald Trump’s speech on Monday about the war on “radical Islamic terrorism” was indifferently delivered and in many ways familiar. But there were some new elements — including an alarming suggestion that the Cold War offers a useful lesson in how to combat Islamic State.

 Again Trump said that he had opposed the war in Iraq; again he attacked President Obama for opening the way for (if not “founding”) Islamic State by precipitously withdrawing U.S. forces from that country; again he disdained “nation-building and regime change”; and again he disparaged Hillary Clinton’s work as the country’s chief diplomat, this time adding the grace note that she lacked the “mental and physical stamina” necessary to deal with Islamic State.

 Trump also promised to “temporarily suspend immigration from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism” — the latest variation on his notorious proposal last year for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” There are too many immigrants coming in from the Middle East to perform adequate screening, he argued. But even if that’s true, many of the terrorist attacks he cited in Europe and the United States were conducted by people who wouldn’t have been subject to such scrutiny because they held European or American passports.

 Requiring assent to a checklist of values would punish thoughts rather than deeds and might encourage newcomers to dissemble about their beliefs.

 Trump said he would call for an international conference on halting the spread of radical Islam and described an alliance comprising NATO (which he claimed had decided to focus on terrorism at his suggestion), Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Russia. Never mind that something similar already exists under the imprimatur of the United Nations Security Council, although Russia seems more interested in propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad than in defeating Islamic State.

 More interesting — and alarming — was Trump’s description of how he would combat “radical Islamic extremism” at home. Essentially, he would seek to promote liberal values, such as autonomy for women and tolerance for gays and lesbians, by adopting the conservative tactics of the 1950s.

 “In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test,” Trump said. “The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today.” Instead of excluding immigrants with communist views, he suggested, a Trump administration would bar immigrants “who have hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles — or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law.” (How he would test for such attitudes — and why those who harbored them wouldn’t conceal them — went unexplained.)

 And where the House Un-American Activities Committee delved into the alleged disloyalty of Americans during the Cold War, Trump would establish a Commission on Radical Islam that would “expose the networks in our society that support radicalization.” Trump said that “reformist voices in the Muslim community” would be invited to take part — an invitation unlikely to be accepted.

 The goal of these initiatives, Trump suggested, would be to promote assimilation of Muslims and spare the United States the sort of alienation that has produced violence in Europe. What he apparently doesn’t recognize is that Muslims are far better assimilated in America than they are in the European countries that have been victimized by Islamist terrorists.

 Obviously Americans aren’t immune to the siren call of Islamist extremism; witness the attacks in Boston, San Bernardino and Orlando, all of which Trump mentioned. Screening of potential immigrants and asylum-seekers for possible connections to terrorism is a matter of common sense as well as national security.

 But ideological litmus tests for immigrants and a national commission to study “radical Islam” could be catastrophically counterproductive. Requiring assent to a checklist of values would punish thoughts rather than deeds and might encourage newcomers to dissemble about their beliefs. A commission designed to expose radicals could bring back the days of blacklists and guilt by association. These are frightening ideas. It’s no surprise that they have been proposed by Donald Trump.

 Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook ||||| People familiar with the immigration system say that many of Donald Trump's ideas will be nearly impossible to implement. | AP Photo Why Trump's immigration ideas won't work The Republican nominee's proposals appear nearly impossible to implement — and critics say they could actually fuel the terrorist threat.

 Donald Trump on Monday laid out some big plans to change the U.S. immigration system, calling for the suspension of immigration from regions that have "a history of exporting terrorism" and the roll-out of an ideological test to weed out foreigners who may support "radical Islamic terrorism."

 The problem, people familiar with the immigration system say, is that many of Trump's ideas will be nearly impossible to implement. And some may wind up actually increasing the terrorist threat.

 Story Continued Below

 The Republican presidential nominee unveiled the proposals during a speech in Ohio on national security. "We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people. I call it extreme vetting," the real estate mogul said, ad-libbing the "extreme vetting" line. "Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country."

 Critics argue that Trump's plans are just a way to bar Muslims from the U.S., an idea he suggested months ago but which even some Republicans called an "un-American" religious test. (Trump also wants a ban on Syrian refugees.) Regardless of his true intentions, the basics that Trump proposed Monday left observers struggling to envision how they could ever become a reality.

 For instance, some asked, what does Trump mean by "terrorism" and "regions" with "a history of exporting terrorism?" Who counts as an immigrant — people who want to move to the U.S. permanently or the many millions who come as tourists, often without a visa? What counts as "bigotry and hatred?" And how will the ideological test be administered?

 Trump's proposals now are "no more specific than saying you’re going to screen out Muslims — it’s less specific than that. In a way he’s made his proposal less narrow and even vaguer than it was before," said David Bier, an immigration analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. "Vague proposals rarely get implemented in any sort of specific, targeted way."

 Trump's team has promised more details in the coming weeks. As they figure them out, they'll face some tough realities.

 For one thing, there are few regions in the world not affected at some point by some form of terrorism. In Europe alone, Spain has suffered from attacks by Basque separatists the U.S. labels as terrorists, while Northern Ireland is still troubled by offshoots of the Irish Republican Army. Even if Trump were to focus purely on Islamist-inspired terror, that would still presumably include much of Europe, including France and Britain, most of whose citizens currently enjoy visa-free tourist travel to America.

 "Are we calling for restrictions on visas to countries that have some of the best criminal justice and international policing programs?" asked Greg Chen, a top official with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in reference to Western European states.

 Then there's the Middle East, which is deeply scarred by terrorism but includes countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Israel, whose governments are important partners in the fight against Islamist extremists. Trump actually singled out those three countries in his speech, calling them friends "who recognize this ideology of death that must be extinguished." But those countries — not to mention others — may resent seeing their citizens barred by the U.S. That could affect their cooperation on fighting extremists just as the U.S. is making headway in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.

 "Freedom of travel, whether regulated by visa or not, to the United States is a critical element of our relationship with these countries. It’s a matter of dignity," said Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

 Trump also kept using the word "region," but the U.S. immigration and visa policies are largely built around country-to-country relationships, and some countries don't clearly fall into one region or another: Turkey, for example, is a country that straddles Europe and the Middle East.

 U.S. immigration policy is incredibly complex and it is often affected by political decisions that seem questionable. For instance, earlier this year, the Obama administration imposed special visa restrictions on foreigners who have traveled in recent years to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. But the administration chose not to include on that list Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, two countries notorious for producing terrorists, because the governments in Riyadh and Islamabad are, technically, allies in the fight against extremism.

 The U.S. government has very broad authority when it comes to deciding which foreigners it allows on its soil, and it does occasionally bar people, such as foreign government officials believed to be human rights violators. Historically, the U.S. also has barred people based on their beliefs, including in communism, a Cold War approach Trump alluded to in his speech. Legislative changes have made such ideological bans less likely today, but the rules are not black and white. Some experts assert that even if a Trump administration were to try to bar people based on their religion it may not technically be unconstitutional, even if it would seem to violate the spirit of the First Amendment.

 Constitutionality aside, the ideological test proposed by Trump poses challenges on a sheer logistical level, and could cost huge amounts of money to implement. Would the test come in the form of a questionnaire? Interviews with consular officers? The deployment of people to scour immigration applicants' social media accounts?

 And what counts as an un-American value?

 In his speech, Trump castigated radical Islamists for their hatred of gays, but would he argue that evangelical Christians from South Korea who also denounce homosexuality should be barred from visiting the United States?

 "Immigration to the United States would grind to a near halt if millions of people are subject to background checks based on subjective criteria," said Cornell University law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, who added: "This proposal would also cost billions of dollars to implement. Business people and visitors could not be able to plan quick trips to the United States because they would not know how long an ideological background check would take."

 Trump on Monday also slammed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for saying in the past that she wanted to see more Syrian refugees be allowed in the United States, warning that terrorists and criminals are hiding among the refugees (though Clinton has said refugees must be carefully vetted). But refugee advocates warn that Trump's comments only worsen America's reputation in the Middle East, spurring more young people to turn to Islamist extremism.

 Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that, despite the change in language, Trump's overall goal appears to still be keeping out Muslims. She believes that would be unconstitutional. “It’s hard to see how these proposals do not pose significant legal, policy and practical hurdles, and rightly so,” she said. ||||| A HEAVILY trailed speech by Donald Trump on counter-terrorism, delivered in Ohio on August 15th, included little that made sense as a plan for keeping America safe, but offered some fresh insights into the self-obsessed, fact-scorning temperament of the businessman who wants to hold the world’s most powerful job.

 As his poll numbers slide and the murmuring from his allies grows in volume, Mr Trump increasingly sounds like someone with a political version of Tourette’s Syndrome. Much of the speech could have been given by any of the 16 Republicans that the businessman defeated for the party’s presidential nomination, amounting to a committee-drafted recital of conventional conservative talking points. A subdued Mr Trump, reading from a teleprompter, dutifully accused Barack Obama of staging a blame-America “global apology tour” after taking office in 2009, and—together with his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton—of destabilising the world by coddling tryants and snubbing allies, while refusing to take seriously the threat from Islamic terrorism.

 But every now and then Mr Trump sensed an opportunity to boast about how prescient he had been in his assessment of foreign affairs, even as a private businessman with no seat in the councils of state, and began shouting about some of his favourite ideas, and how clever they were. Rather often this required brutalising the historical record. In his Ohio speech Mr Trump claimed, falsely, to have opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the very start, then called Mr Obama “incompetent” for withdrawing troops too fast from Iraq. He scolded the “Obama-Clinton group” for toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya (though he actually praised that overthrow at the time). Mr Trump simultaneously grumbled that the Obama administration had both betrayed Reaganite ideas about freedom, and naively thought that democracy could ever be brought to such countries as Iraq.

 The foreign policy speech had been billed as a chance for Mr Trump to show that he has sober, workable ideas for fighting the Islamic State (IS) terror network. The property developer ploughed through some proposals that ranged from policies already in place, such as drone strikes on terrorist leaders, to ideas that seemed to bore him as he read them out, such as a presidential commission on radical Islam, including moderate Muslims, which would craft new protocols on tackling extremism for use by local police departments. Bowing to off-stage pressure from Republican bigwigs, he backed away from his earlier, unconstitutional talk of banning Muslims from entry to America. Instead, he offered a plan for what he called “extreme, extreme vetting” of immigrants, reviving ideological screening tests last seen during the Cold War, under which consular officials and immigration officers would somehow identify those with “hostile attitudes” towards America and its values; anyone who believes that Sharia law should “supplant American law”; or any arrivals who do not “believe in the constitution or who support bigotry and hatred”; and ensure that visas only go to those “who we expect to flourish in our country.” To that end, once elected president he would ask the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to draw up a list of regions where “adequate screening” is not possible, and he would suspend immigration from dangerous regions with a “history of exporting terrorism.”

 He sounded much more excited when his text gave him the chance to engage in personal abuse, accusing Mrs Clinton of wanting to be “America’s Angela Merkel”, claiming that the German chancellor has allowed “massive immigration” bringing “catastrophe” to her country. Mr Trump sounded even happier when peddling conspiracy theories, as when he flatly declared that Mrs Clinton “lacks the mental and physical stamina” to take on IS “and every other challenge we face.” He sounded happiest of all when he congratulated himself for his idea that America should have seized Iraqi oilfields (while shunning all other forms of nation-building in Iraq), leaving behind American troops to guard this war booty. “I said: ‘keep the oil, keep the oil, keep the oil, don’t let somebody else get it’,” Mr Trump said, adding: “In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils.”

 The audience in Ohio liked some bits of Mr Trump’s speech, as when he promised to dismantle terror networks in America “viciously if necessary”. His supporters were quiet through one of the few passages that amounted to a foreign-policy strategy that Mr Trump could realistically deliver as president, possibly because it was a fresh statement of his desire to forge closer links with the authoritarian government of Russia led by President Vladimir Putin, and “find common ground” in the fight against IS and in Syria policy.

 A short while before Mr Trump’s speech, Hillary Clinton, campaigning in the scrappy, blue-collar city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, preemptively mocked her rival for taking so long to reveal his counter-terror plans, saying that his secret is that “he has no plan”. Mrs Clinton was joined in Scranton by the vice-president, Joe Biden, who condemned Mr Trump’s praise for authoritarian leaders, saying that the businessman “would have loved Stalin”, and joked that Mrs Clinton had forgotten more than Mr Trump and his entire foreign policy staff ever knew about geopolitics.

 Real Cold War veterans may be forgiven for finding the 2016 election a little odd. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has nominated a man who calls looting of foreign assets the highest priority for America in war, and who sucks up to Russia. The Democrats are running on their candidate’s national-security credentials. Meanwhile Mr Trump—judged simply as a man standing on a stage—sounds angrier and unhappier every day. This election is not about to grow more inspiring. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump says that as president he would end "our current strategy of nation-building and regime change" because they don't work. His dislike for nation-building is shared by many, including none other than the target of his criticism, President Barack Obama.

 In fact it was Obama's predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, who committed the U.S. to large-scale nation-building projects in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama discarded that strategy while trying to keep enough U.S. influence there to prevent those two countries from crumbling. Obama's approach may not have worked, but it's not Bush-like "nation-building."

 And while the Republican presidential nominee argued against nation-building in a foreign policy speech Monday, he advocated for something even more grandiose: seizing Iraq's oil wealth in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

 "I have long said that we should have kept the oil in Iraq," he said in Youngstown, Ohio. "I said, 'Keep the oil. Keep the oil. Keep the oil. Don't let somebody else get it.'" It would have required U.S. troops to protect the oil, he said, but the benefit would have been clear today.

 "If we had controlled the oil like I said we should, we could have prevented the rise of ISIS in Iraq, both by cutting off a major source of funding and through the presence of U.S. forces necessary to safeguard the oil and vital infrastructure products necessary for us to have the oil."

 Rather than nation-building, this would have been nation-grabbing, making Iraq a de-facto American colony.

 In the final months of his administration, Bush negotiated an agreement with the Iraqi government that called for all U.S. troops to leave the country by December 2011. Obama stuck to that schedule, believing that the Iraqis needed to stand on their own while the U.S. turned its attention to other pressing needs at home and abroad, what he called "nation building at home." Obama, supported by his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, saw Bush's nation-building effort as a proven failure.

 Iraqi politics, however, never overcame sectarian divisions, undermining the Iraqi army and leaving an easy target for IS.

 Trump is right that the Islamic State capitalized on the political and security vacuum in Iraq in 2014, but it's not clear that a long-term U.S. military occupation to hold and exploit Iraqi's oil resources would have led to a more stable outcome.

 Trump says he would have used money from the sale of Iraqi oil to pay for the care of wounded soldiers and the families of those Americans killed in the war.

 "This proposal by its very nature would have left soldiers in place of our assets," he said. "We would have had soldiers there guarding this valuable supply of oil. In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils."

 After major military victories, the 240-year-old United States has tended to pour money and aid back into countries it has fought to help re-establish governments and services. It was, in fact, a kind of nation-building approach. The U.S. still has troops in Germany and Japan, with the permission of those nations, but it never confiscated their natural resources.

 In his speech, Trump said that as president he would discard "nation-building." In its place would be what he called a new approach, which he described simply as halting the spread of "radical Islam." He said that if elected he would convene an international conference on the topic and work closely with Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Russia, the NATO alliance and "all others who recognize this ideology of death that must be extinguished."

 Trump also called Monday for "extreme" ideological vetting of immigrants seeking admission to the United States, vowing to significantly overhaul the country's screening process and block those who sympathize with extremist groups or don't embrace American values.

 "Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into our country," Trump said. "Only those who we expect to flourish in our country — and to embrace a tolerant American society — should be issued visas."

 Trump's proposals were the latest version of a policy that began with his unprecedented call to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the country — a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American.

 ___

 Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Donald Trump delivered what one analyst calls a "surprisingly serious" speech on foreign policy and counterterrorism Monday—but serious may not equal coherent. Many analysts were taken aback by the mix of proposals in the speech, which included policies favored by the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, along with ideas dating back to the Cold War and some touches that were pure Trump. A roundup of reactions: Some elements of Trump's speech on the war on "radical Islamic terrorism" were familiar, but what was new was "alarming," according to the Los Angeles Times editorial board. His calls for a Cold War-style "ideological screening test" and a Commission on Radical Islam could be "catastrophically counterproductive," they write—and "would punish thoughts rather than deeds," as well as encourage newcomers to the US to conceal their beliefs. Former Bush administration official Peter Feaver tells the New York Times that he gives Trump credit for the "surprisingly serious" speech, but a striking amount of it "depends on counterterrorism ideas developed by the Bush administration." The "good parts are not new," and "the new parts are not good," he says. Robert Burns at the AP believes there was a lot more Obama than Bush in Trump's disdain for nation-building. Obama ditched Bush's large-scale projects in Iraq and Afghanistan while "trying to keep enough US influence there to prevent those two countries from crumbling," he writes, noting that Trump's argument that the US should have seized Iraq's oil isn't nation-building, it's "nation-grabbing." John Noonan, Jeb Bush's former national security adviser, tells NBC News that Trump is completely correct about Obama's contribution to the rise of ISIS, and not much else. "The rest of his foreign policy is an absolutely blathering jumble of nonsense," he says. "I can't in good conscience sign my name to it." At Politico, Nahal Toosi looks at the "extreme vetting" proposal that has replaced Trump's ban on Muslim immigration and finds numerous problems. She notes that focusing on regions with a "history of exporting terrorism" would include much of Europe, even if only Islamist-inspired terrorism is included. Trump seemed bored by much of his own speech and only seemed excited when congratulating himself on his prescience or accusing Hillary Clinton of "wanting to be 'America's Angela Merkel,'" per the Lexington column at the Economist. The article notes that real Cold War veterans will find this election very strange. "The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has nominated a man who calls looting of foreign assets the highest priority for America in war, and who sucks up to Russia," it says. Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post is equally scathing in his fact-checking of the speech. Kessler debunks claims, including the notion of an Obama "apology tour" in 2009, and notes that Trump was not an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War until well after it began—and that he has apparently forgotten that he "was a fervent advocate of intervening in Libya."


The United States is home to an estimated 70 to 80 million pet dogs, making up 37 to 47 percent of all American households. We affectionately call them man’s best friend, and they are, in fact, humankind’s oldest “friend” in the animal kingdom. Canis familiaris, the domestic dog, was the first species to be domesticated by humans from Eurasian gray wolves at least 15,000 years ago. What is largely unknown, however, is where. A new genomic study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers up strong evidence that domesticated dogs originated in Central Asia, around modern day Nepal and Mongolia.

 Previous genetic studies of dog lineages have concluded that domestication occurred in Southern China around 16,500 years ago, but the earliest archaeological evidence of domesticated canines is found in Europe and Siberia. All of this contrasting evidence has understandably created not a small amount of debate, but one thing that can be agreed upon is that all dogs came from Eurasian gray wolves at least 15,000 years ago. One key factor was largely neglected in previous studies, however.

 Canis familiaris can be broken down into essentially two main groups: One of pure breeds and mixed breeds—about 400 types—that make up most American pets and another, much larger group of free-roaming and breeding populations known simply as “village dogs.” Despite the wide variation in outward physical appearance, pure breeds are not genetically very diverse, because they come from such small, controlled gene pools. (Remember, as crazy as it seems, a Chihuahua and a St. Bernard are still the same species.) Most modern breeds, in fact, are only about 200 years old (though artificial selection by humans on dogs has been occurring for thousands of years). The majority of dogs, along with their genetic diversity, fall in the group of “village dogs,” and have much older lineages than the pure breeds. It makes them particularly important when studying dog evolution. Adam Boyko, of Cornell University, and his colleagues factored this group of dogs heavily into their study.

 Boyko’s team analyzed 185,800 genetic markers in 5,392 dogs, including 549 village dogs from 38 countries, making their study the largest ever of worldwide canine genetic diversity. They found that genetic diversity is highest in Central Asia, specifically Nepal and Mongolia. Genetic diversity then fans out like ripples in a pool, with areas like Afghanistan, Egypt, India, and Vietnam—all ringing around the possible center of origin in Central Asia—having the next highest levels and so on. “It mirrors what we see in humans and how they spread out of East Africa,” says Boyko.

 Dogs studied in geographic regions farther away, like the South Pacific and Americas were almost exclusively of European origin. This complicates things a bit, but the reason for that is likely the spread of modern Western culture and the appeal of pure breeds. “Everybody wants a golden retriever,” says Boyko. Perhaps one of the reasons village dogs with more indigenous traits have not been overcome by foreign gene flow in Central Asia is because they originated there and have large populations. They also might be better adapted to that environment, notes Boyko.

 “At Bichon Frise running wild in Mongolia is not going to do very well,” he says, “But if Ulaanbaatar (the capital) became the next biggest city in Asia, then perhaps some Bichons would do alright there," and mix with the indigenous village dogs. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Dogs became man’s best friends somewhere in central Asia close to Nepal and Mongolia, according to the largest genetic study yet. The work looked at DNA from thousands of living dogs to piece together their ancestry and geographical origins.

 “This is the first global study of genomic patterns of dog diversity,” says Adam Boyko of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who led the team. “We find a clear pattern of genetic diversity focused on central Asia, suggesting the first domesticated dogs came from this region.”

 That departs from earlier studies that pinpointed Europe as where dogs were domesticated, although more recent work puts the location in southern China, just 1000 kilometres from the area Boyko’s team proposes.

 Advertisement

 The team broke new ground by analysing DNA samples from so-called “village dogs”, which have lived alongside humans throughout the world since dogs first evolved from wolves and were domesticated around 15,000 years ago. “Although they associate with humans, village dogs are more or less expected to make it on their own,” says Boyko.

 Authentic signature

 “They are very different from pure-bred dogs genetically because they are free-breeding, so in a genetic sense, they are a natural population.” Village dogs therefore carry a more authentic genetic signature of original dog populations than the modern-day breeds created in the past 200 years, mainly in Europe.

 Boyko’s team took DNA samples from 549 village dogs in 38 countries all over the globe. They also took samples from 4676 pure-bred “modern” dogs of 161 breeds, many of European origin.

 To further improve the reliability of the analysis, the team broadened the amount of DNA examined to include chromosomes inherited from both parents. Previous studies had relied mainly on mitochondrial DNA transmitted through the female line, or DNA from male sex chromosomes.

 By analysing 185,805 genetic markers, Boyko’s team traced how all the animals were related, and from that how they had spread around the world. This essentially gave them a trail back to “founder” dogs in Nepal and Mongolia.

 The analysis also revealed that following domestication, village dogs rapidly fanned out to other areas of Asia, particularly India and south-west and east Asia.

 Scavenging

 Boyko’s team speculates that hunter-gatherers in central Asia domesticated dogs from grey wolves. A combination of increasing human population density, better hunting methods and climate change may have reduced the availability of prey and pushed some wolves towards scavenging, which favoured tameness and smaller size. This would in turn have reduced their hunting prowess further, setting them on the path to domestication.

 Other researchers have welcomed the tracing of domestication to the neighbourhood of central Asia, although some dispute the precise site.

 “They are actually putting the origin very close to where we put it, just 1000 kilometres away in parts of Asia south of the Yangtze river,” says Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Solna, Sweden. “So I would say the consensus pointing to south and east rather than central Asia is quite clear.”

 Savolainen compliments the thoroughness of the study, but says that what is lacking is DNA from southern China, where he thinks dogs originated. “Since they don’t have a single sample from south China, they haven’t falsified [my] theory,” he says.

 Olaf Thalmann at Uppsala University in Sweden praises the scale of the study, and says its conclusion is reasonable. “We know that this region was pivotal for ancient trade, and it seems plausible that animals followed the trading routes and thus increased the local diversity,” he says.

 But Thalmann doubts that the study is the final word on where dogs were tamed, because the DNA comes only from animals living today. “I’m convinced the only way to shed further light on the topic is by analysing ancient remains,” he says. A consortium led by Greger Larson of the University of Oxford is now looking to doing just that.

 Larson says Boyko’s result is important because it reaches a clear conclusion that can be tested further. “We are excited to be working with Boyko’s group and others,” he says.

 “Having collected more than 1500 ancient dogs and wolves over the past few years, our lab has begun our next-generation sequencing effort.” The genetic data will then be compared with morphological data from more than 4000 specimens going right back into the late Pleistocene, he says.

 Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1516215112

 (Image credit: FLPA/REX Shutterstock)

 Read more: “Man’s best friends: How animals made us human“ ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dogs may have become man's best friend in Central Asia, according to the study

 Today's dogs can trace their origins to Central Asia, according to one of the most comprehensive genetic surveys yet.

 Dogs are the most diverse animal on the planet - a legacy of thousands of years of selective breeding by humans.

 But they derive from wild wolves that were gradually tamed and inducted into human hunting groups - perhaps near Mongolia or Nepal.

 The findings come from an analysis of DNA from thousands of pooches, and are published in PNAS journal.

 Cornell University's Dr Adam Boyko and his colleagues studied 4,676 purebred dogs from recognised breeds, as well as 549 "village dogs" - free-ranging animals that live around human settlements.

 They hitched themselves to us, which was a pretty good gamble as it turned out Dr Adam Boyko, Cornell University

 This latter group are the least studied, yet represent a crucial piece in the picture of modern dog diversity.

 "The fact that we looked at so many village dogs from so many different regions, we were able to narrow in on the patterns of diversity in these indigenous dogs," Dr Boyko told BBC News.

 Dog domestication is the kind of event that could have taken place independently in different corners of the globe. But the DNA of modern pooches doesn't provide any support for this idea.

 "We looked exclusively to see if there was evidence of multiple domestication events. And like every other group that's looked for that, we found no evidence of it," said Dr Boyko.

 "It looks like there's a single origin, although there are clearly situations where there has been... a little bit of gene flow between wolves and dogs post-domestication."

 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dog ownership is growing in popularity across many parts of Asia

 Image copyright AFP Image caption A Tibetan mastiff dog is seen at a show in China's northern Hebei province

 Confusing picture

 The researchers studied genes that are located close to one another on dog chromosomes. The patterns of these closely linked genetic markers allowed the team to pinpoint the domestication event to Central Asia.

 But several other teams have tackled the same problem, and have come up with widely differing results.

 Previous studies have variously hinted at an origin for dogs in the Middle East - perhaps scavenging the food waste of early farmers - in East Asia, and in Europe.

 The latest results are unlikely to resolve the argument, but Dr Boyko said that localising the origin of dogs could stimulate further research. One of these further lines of inquiry could be the analysis of ancient DNA from dog remains found at archaeological sites.

 This tool could help support or refute hypotheses about the role of Central Asia and other regions in the domestication of "man's best friend".

 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption DNA studies have shown that modern dogs descended from their wolf ancestors

 Dr Peter Savolainen, associate professor at KTH - Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, said the study had shown it was possible to find remote dog populations that had been unaffected by mixing with European varieties - a legacy of the era of colonisation.

 But he suspects the origins of domestication lie in East Asia, perhaps in southern China.

 "Mongolia is technically in East Asia and Nepal is in South Asia... only a thousand kilometres from South China," he told BBC News.

 "So we have a consensus that the origin is somewhere in this general region. But one important thing is that they do not have a specimen from China, so if they had, what would that have shown?"

 Most researchers agree that dogs have been around for at least 15,000 years. But the reasons for their emergence remain opaque.

 "There's no doubt they were hanging around [hunting] camps and becoming gradually more attuned to human life. The question is what was the first step for why that was happening," said Dr Boyko.

 "It's tempting to ask whether it was something to do with hunting. I think it's clear that scavenging by wolves on human kills [of large mammals] could have been the driving force.

 He added that genetic changes in those wolves, that led to tameness, small body size and early age of first reproduction could have started the animals down an evolutionary course that was less compatible with a hunting lifestyle.

 "They hitched themselves to us, which was a pretty good gamble as it turned out, because there are about a billion dogs in the world today and probably not even 10 million wolves."

 Follow Paul on Twitter. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Your best pal may have come a long way to curl up at your feet: A new DNA study of more than 5,000 dogs from 38 countries finds they probably originated in Central Asia, or Mongolia and Nepal more specifically, at least 15,000 years ago, reports the BBC. Cornell researchers drew blood from 4,676 purebred dogs—making up 161 breeds typically created in the last 200 years—and 549 street dogs with older lineages to study chromosomes inherited from the male and female line, reports New Scientist. The data showed genetic diversity is highest in Central Asia, then in surrounding areas like Afghanistan, Egypt, India, and Vietnam, reports Popular Science. That suggests the most recent common ancestor of "all the dogs alive today" came from that region, says lead author Adam Boyko. "It mirrors what we see in humans and how they spread out of East Africa." It's possible some dogs were domesticated elsewhere but diversified in Central Asia. But "we found no evidence" of multiple domestication events, Boyko says. "It looks like there's a single origin," though there appears to have been "a little bit of gene flow between wolves and dogs post-domestication." Boyko's team suspects higher human population density, better hunting techniques, and climate change pushed gray wolves toward scavenging, which led to domestication. But as similar studies suggest dogs originated in the Middle East, East Asia, and Europe, some scientists are treating the results with caution. One tells the New York Times that only a study of ancient and modern DNA could provide definitive results. Among difficulties researchers faced: "We showed up in Puerto Rico at a fishing village and the dogs turned up their noses at roast beef sandwiches," says Boyko. "They were used to eating fish entrails." (Genetically, house cats are basically wild animals.)


Article:

Mr. Wolfe said he took responsibility for the anger and frustration on campus, asserting that conversations with community leaders, students, faculty, donors and others led him to his decision, more than just the football players’ threatened boycott.

 “What was starting to become clear was the frustration and anger was evident, and it was something that needed to be done that was immediate and substantial for us to heal,” Mr. Wolfe said at a news conference.

 As the two resignations were announced, the Board of Curators unveiled a slate of new initiatives to address racial tensions on campus, including hiring a diversity, inclusion and equity officer for the entire University of Missouri system. The university will also provide additional support to students, faculty and staff members who experience discrimination; create a task force to create plans for improving diversity and inclusion; and require diversity and inclusion training for all faculty, staff members and incoming students.

 Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, praised the protests as showing “that a few people speaking up and speaking out can have a profound impact.”

 Officials said Mr. Loftin would remain at the university in a research role.

 Opposition to the administration reached a peak in the last week. A graduate student, Jonathan Butler, who was a veteran of the Ferguson protests, held a highly publicized hunger strike, saying he would not eat again until Mr. Wolfe was gone. Protesters formed an encampment on campus. A coalition of Jewish groups told Mr. Loftin that they were “dismayed” by his lack of action after a swastika was drawn on a dormitory wall. Deans of nine of its schools called for Mr. Loftin’s removal.

 On Monday morning, the student government demanded Mr. Wolfe’s ouster, and much of the faculty sent word to students that classes were canceled for two days, in favor of a teach-in focused on race relations. ||||| On the campus of the University of Missouri, graduate student Jonathan Butler has been starving himself in an effort to remove the school’s president Tim Wolfe from his position. Today, on the seventh day of his protest, Butler won.

 Butler’s protest was never a solitary one—he is the face of a student group calling itself Concerned Student 1950—but the speed with which it metastasized and engulfed the university had to have surprised Wolfe.

 Butler and his allies were, broadly speaking, protesting the treatment of minority (primarily black) students on Missouri’s campus. Butler said that he would not eat until Wolfe—the president of the University of Missouri System, which encompasses both the flagship campus in Columbia as well as smaller colleges across the state—resigned his position. Wolfe, even in the face of growing attention and pressure, as the story became a national one, had refused to do so. On Sunday he stood his ground in a statement, but by then, his position had clearly become untenable.

 On Saturday night, the black members of the school’s football team announced that they would not practice nor play until Wolfe was no longer the school’s president, and Butler had resumed eating. On Sunday, the team’s coach, Gary Pinkel, released a statement saying that his coaching staff and team were united, and would not participate in any football activities until Wolfe resigned or was removed. That was going to include the team’s next game, on Saturday, against Brigham Young University, which is scheduled to air on an ESPN network.

 At Missouri, an SEC school, football is big business. Pinkel, the coach, makes $4 million per year; Wolfe, the president, made less than $500,000. The football program institutionally supporting its black players protesting along with Butler was probably this situation’s greatest possible escalator—it’s what made Butler’s protest into a topic of coverage for ESPN—but the players, too, weren’t acting alone. A group of teachers called the Concerned Faculty Group announced this morning that they would be conducting a two-day walkout in support of Butler and Concerned Student 1950. The school’s student government also released a statement this morning demanding Wolfe’s resignation. State legislators, including Columbia’s representative and the chairman of the state House’s Committee on Higher Education, both of whom are Republicans, also called on Wolfe to resign. Wolfe was under attack from just about every conceivable side, and despite his obstinacy, his resignation was not a question of “if,” but “when.”

 So, what brought us here? It’s perhaps easiest to work backwards. On October 10, during the school’s annual homecoming parade, Butler and other members of Concerned Student 1950 blockaded the vintage convertible that was carrying Wolfe. According to witnesses, the driver of the convertible revved the car’s engine while it was stopped before eventually bumping into Butler. The group was also heckled by parade attendees. Wolfe was reportedly silent during the protest.

 Butler began his hunger strike in response to Wolfe, over the subsequent month, refusing to acknowledge that demonstration or the reasons for which it was carried out. The aim of the homecoming parade protest was to draw attention to what Butler and Concerned Student 1950 say is an inhospitable campus climate for minorities. In a letter announcing his hunger strike, Butler referenced several incidents:

 On September 12, student body president Payton Head wrote on Facebook that he had been called a “nigger” while walking through campus. It was not the first instance, and the school’s Legion of Black Collegians say the slur was also used against them while they were rehearsing a play outdoors on October 5. In his Facebook post, Head also wrote about the on-campus oppression faced by LGBT, disabled, Muslim and female students.

 On October 24, a swastika was drawn in feces on the bathroom wall of a residence hall.

 In September, the university announced it was removing the hospital privileges of Colleen McNicholas, a doctor who performed abortions at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia. Per the Kansas City Star, state law dictates that “a doctor can only perform abortions if he or she has clinical privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the abortions are taking place.” The school’s decision effectively ended abortion in Columbia.

 Earlier in the fall semester, the school announced that it was revoking health insurance subsidies for graduate students. After an immediate backlash, the policy was reversed.

 Though these were the recent incidents that sparked the protest that led to Wolfe’s resignation, the oppression felt, and indignities suffered, by minority students and faculty did not, of course, begin just this semester. Cynthia Frisby, a professor at the school’s historic and loudly trumpeted journalism school, has lived in Columbia for 18 years. She wrote in a Facebook post that she had “been called the n word too many times to count.” She also wrote specifically of several disturbing incidents of racism:

 Some of you may recall my most recent experience while jogging on Route K in May of 2015 when I was approached by a white man in a white truck with a confederate flag very visible and proudly displayed. He leaned out his window (now keep in mind I run against traffic so his behavior was a blatant sign that something was about to happen). Not only did he spit at me, he called me the n-word and gave me the finger. Of course, I responded with “Oh yea, get out of your car you coward and say that to my face.” He then raced off. Typical. Others of you may recall that after the Zimmerman trial, I wrote about my experiences being called the n word twice while I was on my jog. And yes, I have had a few faculty call me the n word and treat me with incredible disrespect. Yes, faculty. I have had a student who said he couldn’t call me Dr. Frisby because that would mean that he thinks I am smart and he was told that blacks are not smart and do not earn degrees without affirmative action. Yes, true story. I have so many stories to share that it just doesn’t make sense to put them all here.

 In my final year as a student at Mizzou, cotton balls were thrown onto the lawn of the Black Culture Center, which is centrally located on campus, during Black History Month. In 2011, a racial slur was spray painted onto a statue outside a residence hall. In 2012, racist flyers were posted in another dorm.

 In the wake of the graffiti incident, the school launched a “diversity initiative” called One Mizzou, which then-chancellor Brady Deaton called his “proudest moment.” But One Mizzou, as a concept and a name, was discontinued this summer at the behest of the students who it was supposed to benefit. A campaign that was initially supposed to promote tolerance and inclusion on campus had morphed into a generic marketing slogan for the school itself. The baby steps had led nowhere.

 The co-opting and eventual euthanizing of One Mizzou were emblematic of a simple fact that is as true in Columbia as it is in America: The University of Missouri, and the community in and around it, were aware of, and attentive to, the experiences of its minority students only in the worst of moments. When asked to confront and address the commonplace indignities minority students experience at his university during the homecoming parade—a celebration, not a crisis—Wolfe, the ostensible leader of that community, had no response. He will be gone, though not forgotten—certainly not by his peers, who may now find themselves asked to acknowledge, and fix, problems they didn’t know existed.

 [image via AP] ||||| (Via Jonathan Butler, on Facebook)

 UPDATE: The president of the University of Missouri said Monday morning that he would resign amid escalating protests. In response, Jonathan Butler announced that his hunger strike was officially over.

 This is only the first step! More change is to come!! #TheStruggleContinues #ConcernedStudent1950 — JB. (@_JonathanButler) November 9, 2015

 Earlier:

 Jonathan Butler is in pain, but he has no intention of giving up.

 As of 9 a.m. Monday, it has been a week since the 25-year-old University of Missouri graduate student has eaten, a hunger strike he began in an effort to oust university president Tim Wolfe and bring about change to what he and other campus activists see as a school administration that has been unacceptably unresponsive to a series of racist incidents on campus. (Here’s an interactive timeline of incidents on campus prepared by the MU student newspaper, the Maneater.)

 In a letter to the Board of Curators, the governing body to which the university president reports, Butler vowed that he would not eat until Wolfe was removed from office.

 “I will not consume any food or nutritional sustenance at the expense of my health until either Tim Wolfe is removed from office or my internal organs fail and my life is lost,” Butler wrote in a letter announcing his protest.

 Butler’s act of protest, in concert with other activism coordinated by a group of students who called themselves Concerned Student 1950 — a nod to the year that black students were first admitted to the university — has seized the nation’s attention. And, on Saturday night, members of Missouri’s football team announced that they would join the protest, and would not practice or play until Butler’s demands were met.

 [Missouri football players threaten to boycott season amid racial tension]

 The Board of Curators has called an emergency meeting for Monday morning to discuss the unrest. Meanwhile, the news media has flocked to the Columbia, Mo., campus, where more acts of protest and civil disobedience, including walkouts by graduate students and black faculty members, are planned.

 We spoke with Butler on Sunday night about his protest, his motivations, and the larger Black Lives Matter protest movement. Here is a Q&A edited for length and clarity.

 Tell me more about you personally. Where are you from, and what are you studying?

 Butler: I’m 25 years old. I hail from Omaha, Nebraska, and I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Missouri, I got my bachelor’s in business administration with an emphasis in marketing, and now I’m pursuing my master’s degree in educational leadership and policy. I enjoy school, skateboarding. You know, I enjoy life.

 And how did you end up in activism? What happened that leads you to find yourself one week into a hunger strike?

 Butler: I really look to the example of my grandfather and my mother, who were both raised in the church. And they did a lot of community engagement. And they used their talents, my mother both in education and my father having a law background, really to do advocacy for the community, and I think as a young child that’s where it started.

 But when you talk about most recently on campus, in terms of protesting and mobilizing communities, that really came from my experience organizing during Ferguson, after the murder of Mike Brown. Because the University of Missouri is only two hours away from Ferguson, and being able to have that experience, I had never seen that many black people and I had never seen that many black people mobilized in that way. So, it really struck a chord with me, to really have a passion for inspiring and building up my black community.

 So what are you fighting for through this hunger strike?

 Butler: For me, I’m fighting for justice. It’s really plain and simple.

 When you localize it to the hunger strike it really is about the environment that is on campus. We have reactionary, negligent individuals on all levels at the university level on our campus and at the university system level, and so their job descriptions explicitly say that they’re supposed to provide a safe and inclusive environment for all students … but when we have issues of sexual assault, when we have issues of racism, when we have issues of homophobia, the campus climate continues to deteriorate because we don’t have strong leadership, willing to actually make change. So, for me, I’m fighting for a better tomorrow. As much as the experiences on campus have not been that great for me — I had people call me the n-word, I had someone write the n-word on the a door in my residence hall — for me it really is about a call for justice. I’m fighting for the black community on campus, because justice is worth fighting for. And justice is worth starving for.

 It’s been a week since you ate. How are you feeling? Are you planning on stopping?

 Butler: No one really understands what my body is going through. My body is literally shutting down. I definitely have pain all over, shortness of breath. I’m overheated one minute and then I’m shivering the next, so there is just a lot that my body is going through right now. But I don’t really try to focus on that, I’m trying to focus on the fact that I really am encouraged by the activism that’s going on. There are a lot of white allies that are coming on board, there is a lot of education, people are talking about this in classrooms.

 In a statement he issued on Sunday, President Wolfe made it clear that he doesn’t intended to resign. What is your response to that?

 Butler: I’m completely fine with that because my request last Monday was for the curators to step in. We’ve gotten to the point where we’ve addressed Tim Wolfe, and he’s shown time and time again that he’s not sincere about helping students. So, to me, that means it’s time for new leadership, it’s time for someone who can help the university be financially stable but also make sure that we are an amazing experience for students of all identities.

 This protest gained an increased level of attention over the weekend when members of the football team said they would boycott their games and practices until your hunger strike was over. Did you know they were going to join you in protest?

 Butler: I had no clue this was going to happen. One hundred percent of the support I’ve received has been unexpected, but it has been a 1,000 percent appreciated. I just received a call over the weekend that some of the football players had heard about what was going on and they really felt passionate about it because they felt that they are all too often separated and put into this athletic bubble away from the rest of our community, and they really wanted to reach out and bridge that gap. And so for me it was a blessing. It was really heartwarming and encouraging really because I didn’t think that I had people in my corner in the beginning.

 Do you see your activism as part of the Black Lives Matter movement?

 Butler: It is, but it’s not. The Black Lives Matter movement, in terms of what that means and the symbolism of reaffirming black existence, black humanity, and so in that realm with what we’re doing with our education sessions, what we’re doing with our rallies, what we’re doing on campus is definitely bringing about this awareness that we deserve to exist in these spaces on campus and we deserve to have our lives valued. And so in that sense, it’s a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. But in another sense, this is really unique to campus just because of the example that we got from some of those who were organizing in Ferguson. There are three queer black women, who used their knowledge from Ferguson organizing in creating an organization called MU for Mike Brown. And from that, that’s really where a lot of what has been going on on campus has been morphed from. So, it is part of the Black Lives Matter movement, but not necessarily in the cookie cutter way.

 A lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t pay attention to this type of protest now are because of the solidarity you received from the football team. For those who are just tuning into this story, what do you want them to know?

 Butler: The campus climate here at the University of Missouri is an ugly one, it’s one that often we don’t talk about and it’s one that, when issues come up, whether it’s sexual assault, whether it’s Planned Parenthood, whether it’s racism, it gets swept under the rug because we want to rest on our traditions and rest on all these values that we hold in high esteem. And I think the message is that underneath all of that there is a lot of dirt and there’s a lot of pain and there’s a lot of hurt. There’s things that need to be changed. And at the end of it all, even if you don’t really understand what I’m saying, even if you can’t really understand systemic oppression and systemic racism, is the fact we can’t be at a university where we have values like “Respect, Responsibility, Discovery and Excellence” and we don’t have any of those things being enacted on campus, especially in terms of respect. I’m on a campus where people feel free to call people the n-word, where people feel free as recently as last week, to used [their] own feces to smear a swastika in a residential hall. Everything that glitters is not gold. We really need to dig deep and be real with ourselves about the world we live in and understand that we’re not perfect but understand that just because we’re not perfect doesn’t mean we don’t start to understand and address the issues around us.

 Related:

 Black grad student on hunger strike in Mo. after swastika drawn with human feces

 Missouri football players threaten to boycott season amid racial tension

 With $1 million at stake, U. of Missouri’s president now taking protests seriously

 This post has been updated. |||||
What is a summary?

– Jonathan Butler can finally savor a good meal—and the taste of victory. The 25-year-old University of Missouri graduate student, who began a hunger strike on Nov. 2, posted a tweet Monday in the wake of school President Tim Wolfe's resignation: "The #MizzouHungerStrike is officially over!" Butler also addressed a buoyant crowd about their months of protests against racism and sexism on campus, the New York Times reports. "It should not have taken this much, and it is disgusting and vile that we find ourselves in the place that we do," Butler said. He became central to the campaign when he announced that he would consume no "food or nutritional sustenance" until Wolfe was out or Butler's "internal organs fail and my life is lost," the Missourian reported at the time. Butler found powerful allies when black players on the Missouri football team, and then the coaching staff, refused to play with Wolfe as president, Gawker reports. (Gawker notes that coach Gary Pinkel earns $4 million per year and Wolfe less than $500,000.) "It was really heartwarming and encouraging really because I didn’t think that I had people in my corner in the beginning," Butler told the Washington Post on Sunday. What drove Butler to take such drastic action, which he says gave him pain, shortness of breath, and wildly fluctuating body temperatures? "The campus climate here at the University of Missouri is an ugly one," says Butler. "I'm on a campus where people feel free to call people the n-word, where people feel free as recently as last week, to used [their] own feces to smear a swastika in a residential hall. Everything that glitters is not gold."


Here is a news article: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White unveiled the regulator’s most sweeping plan yet for reining in high-frequency trading and monitoring dark pools and other secretive trading practices in the world’s largest equity market.

 Proprietary traders who use computers to buy and sell stocks in milliseconds would have to register with the SEC under recommendations made public yesterday by White in New York.

 Operators of dark pools, broker-owned venues that compete with exchanges and don’t publish bids and offers, would have to provide the regulator with their rules for matching buyers and sellers, White said.

 The SEC is aiming to bring more transparency to markets and address claims of unfair advantages held by traders who account for about half of U.S. stock executions and have been blamed for everything from the flash crash of May 2010 to market volatility during the European debt crisis. The agenda outlined yesterday could affect stock exchanges, brokerages and a class of proprietary traders who have so far escaped oversight.

 “The SEC should not roll back the technology clock or prohibit algorithmic trading, but we are assessing the extent to which specific elements of the computer-driven trading environment may be working against investors rather than for them,” White told the Sandler O’Neill & Partners Global Exchange and Brokerage Conference.

 New Scrutiny

 The SEC joins the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has previously said it was considering registration for high-speed traders of futures.

 Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, asked regulators to provide information on risks posed by high-speed traders in advance of a hearing this month, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

 Levin, a Michigan Democrat, sought responses from the SEC and CFTC to 13 questions on the effects, trends, concerns and regulatory reaction related to high-frequency trading, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Bloomberg News and confirmed by one of the people.

 “We have remained concerned with those issues as public interest in high frequency trading in the U.S. capital markets, and apparent trading abuses in connection with high-frequency trading, have increased,” according to the April 11 letter signed by Levin and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the panel’s top Republican. They requested responses by May 1.

 Law Enforcement

 High-frequency trading has also drawn scrutiny from law enforcement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining whether traders abuse information to act ahead of orders by institutional investors. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether U.S. stock exchanges and alternative venues give high-frequency traders improper advantages and has called on regulators to tighten oversight.

 Schneiderman, in a posting on his Twitter account, said he was “pleased to see” White’s comments “calling for market reforms to curb unfair advantages for HFT.”

 Automated trading has achieved wider renown since the publication of Michael Lewis’s book “Flash Boys” and an announcement by one of the biggest firms, Virtu Financial Inc., to go public. Virtu’s offering has since been postponed.

 High-frequency trading accounts for about 48 percent of all U.S. share volume, according to research firm Tabb Group. Such firms include Chopper Trading LLC, Jump Trading LLC and Tower Research Capital LLC, all of whom have been subpoenaed as part of Schneiderman’s probe, a person familiar with the matter said in April.

 Registration Requirements

 The new registration requirements would apply to a subset of trading firms that aren’t registered as broker-dealers with the SEC. Rick Ketchum, chief executive officer of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, said last month that such unregulated firms are often responsible for manipulative or disruptive trading seen by regulators.

 “There still are a lot of smaller players and by forcing these firms to register there is going to be increased oversight on what she terms destabilizing HFT,” said Sal Arnuk, co-founder of brokerage Themis Trading.

 The SEC is preparing a new rule that would require more oversight by traders of their algorithms, formulas that automate the buying and selling of shares, White said. While White said she was wary of setting speed limits on traders, the SEC will consider options for minimizing the speed advantage that some proprietary traders have.

 Minimizing Advantages

 “These could include frequent batch auctions or other mechanisms designed to minimize speed advantages,” she said. “They could also include affirmative or negative trading obligations for high-frequency trading firms that employ the fastest, most sophisticated trading tools.”

 Under the plan White outlined yesterday, stock exchanges also will come in for more scrutiny. The SEC will review the exchanges’ dozens of order types, which have been criticized for adding complexity with little public benefit by Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Sprecher, whose Atlanta-based company owns the New York Stock Exchange.

 The majority of order types are designed to deal with the exchanges’ maker-taker pricing, a system of fees and rebates intended to attract orders from brokers. The maker-taker system can “create conflicts of interest and raise serious questions about whether such conflicts can be effectively managed,” White said.

 SEC ‘Engaged’

 Sprecher, who has said NYSE will reduce its order types by more than one dozen, said White’s speech shows the SEC is “engaged.”

 “Obviously, the Flash Boys book has galvanized more people into looking at the way these markets work,” Sprecher told the conference in a separate appearance. “The markets can be much simpler and much easier to understand and doing so will bring more confidence to the way they operate.”

 The SEC also will work with stock exchanges to address claims of unfairness in how order and price data reach the public. Traders buying direct feeds from exchanges get orders and prices faster than investors relying on the public ticker, a gap highlighted in Lewis’s book and criticized by New York-based trading-platform provider IEX Group Inc. CEO Brad Katsuyama.

 More Consensus

 “The commission has been aware of many of these issues for some time,” said Annette L. Nazareth, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and a former SEC commissioner. “Over the course of time, there comes to be more consensus around the fact that something needs to be done about these issues.”

 Operators of dark pools will also have to provide more information about their clients and how they process buy and sell orders, White said.

 KCG Holdings Inc. (KCG), based in Jersey City, New Jersey, and New York-based Liquidnet Holdings Inc., which both operate dark pools, have already said they will publicize their dark-pool rule filings. KCG Holdings was formed last year by the merger of two dominant high-frequency traders, Getco LLC and Knight Capital Group Inc.

 “Transparency has long been a hallmark of the U.S. securities markets, and I am concerned by the lack of it in these dark venues,” White said.

 The regulator also will wade into the debate over how brokers fill the orders of their institutional clients. The agency will develop a requirement that brokers tell investors where their stock trades go to be executed, White said. The initiative responds to complaints that routing decisions are sometimes made against a customer’s best interests.

 Preventing Failures

 The measures outlined yesterday include proposals that have been embraced by some large brokers and investors and can be advanced in the near term. White cited, for instance, a proposed rule known as Regulation SCI that will require exchanges and some dark pools to guard against technology outages and failures. The SEC staff is preparing a recommendation for a final version of the rule, White said.

 The SEC still envisions examining whether its own rules, including the package known as Regulation NMS, have driven excessive fragmentation and complexity, White said. The agency will create a new advisory committee of investors and others to help inform its initiatives and rule changes, she said.

 SEC Commissioners Luis A. Aguilar and Michael Piwowar both said yesterday that the agency must consider how much its prior rulemaking, including its National Market System rules, have driven unhealthy changes in market behavior.

 “We need to consider the extent to which the current regulatory regime, including Regulation NMS, has contributed to some of the problems we have seen and whether it should be revised and modified,” Aguilar said.

 To contact the reporter on this story: Dave Michaels in Washington at dmichaels5@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Maura Reynolds at mreynolds34@bloomberg.net Anthony Gnoffo, Gregory Mott ||||| The top U.S. stock-market regulator vowed to ratchet up oversight of computer-driven trading Thursday, setting a more aggressive tone for market regulation amid concerns that lightning-fast trading poses risks that could undermine market integrity and harm investors.

 Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Jo White, in a wide-ranging speech before exchange executives, bank officials and high-speed traders, called for... |||||
A summary of this is?

– The SEC is finally trying to rein in the robots. Chairman Mary Jo White today announced a massive initiative designed to tame high-frequency traders, the Wall Street Journal reports. These automated trades currently make up more than half of all trading volume, yet they've almost totally avoided direct regulatory oversight because the computers are trading on behalf of their owners, not clients. The rules White is proposing would change that, forcing high-frequency traders to register as broker dealers. White also said the SEC was working on rules to prevent the computers from engaging in strategies that put the market at risk of massive swings, like the infamous flash crash. The SEC also introduced plans to affect how human traders operate, Bloomberg adds—the agency is concerned that the stock exchanges have too many types of orders, adding complexity for no reason, and that some traders are using exchange-sold price feeds that are faster than the ones the general public relies on.


Article:
The film centers on park rangers and the gorillas they protect

 Netflix is teaming up with Leonardo DiCaprio to release the documentary Virunga.

 The film from director Orlando von Einsiedel centers on the conflict between park rangers striving to protect endangered gorillas from poachers and industry encroaching on their habitats in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 See more Highly Paid Film Stars

 The doc will be release simultaneously on Netflix and in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Nov. 7.

 “Leo intuitively understands that there is nothing like the power of film to reach people’s hearts and minds,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos in a statement. “With Virunga, we’ll work with Leo to introduce viewers around the world to an incredible, gripping story that will have audiences guessing right up until the final act.”

 DiCaprio serves as executive producer, with his production company Appian Way also on board.

 "Films like Virunga are powerful stories that are a window into the incredible cultural and natural diversity of our world, the forces that are threatening to destroy it, and the people who are fighting to protect it," DiCaprio said. "Partnering with Netflix on this film is an exciting opportunity to inform and inspire individuals to engage on this topic."

 See more 35 of 2014's Most Anticipated Movies

 The deal raises the stakes even more in the battle between theater owners and Netflix. Exhibitors have already expressed their displeasure over Netflix's plans to partner with The Weinstein Co. to release the sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the streaming service and in select Imax theaters on Aug. 28, 2015.

 Netflix also recently announced a deal to exclusively release four features from Adam Sandler. ||||| Story highlights "VIRUNGA" is a documentary about park rangers protecting mountain gorillas in Africa

 It has won numerous awards, and now will be distributed in select theaters and via Netflix

 The documentary is executive produced by acclaimed actor Leonardo DiCaprio

 What do you get when you combine gorillas, Leonard DiCaprio and Netflix?

 A hit, the media company hopes.

 Netflix announced Friday that it will team up with DiCaprio -- who it described as a "an actor, producer and philanthropist" -- to distribute a documentary film entitled "VIRUNGA," about the quest to save endangered mountain gorillas in the eastern Congo park by that name.

 "With VIRUNGA, we'll work with Leo to introduce viewers around the world to an incredible, gripping story that will have audiences guessing right up until the final act," said Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer.

 The fact Netflix is getting behind a high-profile production is nothing new. After all, it has produced the critically acclaimed series "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black," not to mention the reboot of "Arrested Development."

 Leonardo DiCaprio is a celebrated actor and philanthropist.

 But what makes this unique is that it's a film, not a series, and it will come out in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on November 7. That's the same day "VIRUNGA," which is directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, will roll out on Netflix as well.

 According to its website, the film chronicles how a "a small and embattled team of park rangers -- including an ex-child soldier turned ranger, a carer of orphan gorillas and a Belgian conservationist -- protect (Virunga National Park) from armed militia, poachers and the dark forces struggling to control Congo's rich natural resources."

 "VIRUNGA" hasn't been distributed widely, but it has racked up a number of awards from the likes of the Tribeca Film Festival, DOXA and American Film Institute.

 DiCaprio, its executive producer, called the partnership with Netflix "an exciting opportunity to inform and inspire individuals to engage on this topic."

 "Films like VIRUNGA are powerful stories that are a window into the incredible cultural and natural diversity of our world, the forces that are threatening to destroy it, and the people who are fighting to protect it," the actor added.

 Mountain gorillas are a subspecies of the eastern gorilla discovered in 1902 and imperiled in recent days by war, hunting, disease and other threats. There are a little less than 800 of them in the wild now, according to the World Wildlife Fund, about half of those in the Virunga Mountains bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

 A child actor who broke through on the sitcom "Growing Pains" and became an international sensation after the film "Titanic," DiCaprio is one of Hollywood's most respected and bankable actors. From the 1990s through today, he has starred in such films as "Gangs of New York," "The Aviator," "Catch Me If You Can" and more recently "The Wolf of Wall Street."

 He has also developed a reputation, and tried to break ground, outside the cinematic world. He is an activist on issues ranging from protecting elephants and tigers to safeguarding habitats in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans and climate change. He made remarks at a United Nations summit last month on that subject.

 In September, the Clinton Global Initiative, an effort led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, gave DiCaprio one of its "Global Citizen" awards.

 "Through grantmaking, public campaigns and media projects, DiCaprio has worked to bring much-needed attention and funding to three focus areas—protecting biodiversity, ocean and forest conservation, and climate change," that organization says on its website. "... DiCaprio uses digital media to inform and inspire the public, offering them ways to take action on an array of issues—from protecting sharks in California and elephants in Africa to supporting the transition of our society to clean, renewable energy." |||||Summary:

– Netflix's latest celebrity collaborator is Leonardo DiCaprio, reports CNN. But instead of starring in something a la Kevin Spacey in House of Cards, DiCaprio is serving as executive producer of a documentary on endangered mountain gorillas in Africa. The film, called Virunga after the park in eastern Congo where it is filmed, will be released Nov. 7 on Netflix, the same day it comes out in theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The film follows park rangers as they try to fend off poachers, says the Hollywood Reporter. "We’ll work with Leo to introduce viewers around the world to an incredible, gripping story," says a Netflix exec. The company also recently signed up Adam Sandler to star in four movies.


LISTEN TO ARTICLE 3:37 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email

 Source: Dominion Diamond Mines Source: Dominion Diamond Mines

 The biggest diamond ever found in North America has been unearthed by Dominion Diamond Mines and Rio Tinto Group at a mine in Canada’s frozen north.

 The 552-carat yellow gem was found at the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories, and is almost three times the size of the next largest stone ever found in Canada. While Diavik and the neighboring Ekati mine produce some very high quality diamonds, they’re not renowned for the sort of huge gems normally found in southern African mines.

 Dominion Chief Executive Officer Shane Durgin said the diamond is gem quality, meaning it’s suitable for jewelry, but gave few additional details that help determine its value. Yellow stones typically sell at a discount to Type IIa top whites often found in the best African mines. Still, the highest quality fancy vivid yellow or fancy intense yellow stones can sell for a premium.

 “We can label it fancy yellow, but beyond that, due to its rough nature and the abrasions received through the processing facility, that’s all we can comment on,” Durgin said in an interview. “It’s very hard to give a ballpark estimate. It all depends on, again, the cutting and the resulting stone it ends up.”

 The discovery is the seventh-biggest this century, according to Bloomberg calculations, and would be among the 30 largest stones ever unearthed. The biggest was the 3,106-carat Cullinan, found near Pretoria in South Africa in 1905. It was cut into several polished gems, the two largest of which -- the Great Star of Africa and the Lesser Star of Africa -- are set in the Crown Jewels of Britain.

 The 21st Century's Biggest Diamonds Source: Company filings/Bloomberg

 There have been a slew of big finds in recent years as better technology helped miners first detect, and then not break big stones that are susceptible to being smashed in the mining process. Among those are diamonds found by Lucara Diamond Corp. and Gem Diamonds Ltd. that fetched between $40 million and $63 million.

 While the Diavik mine is 60 percent owned and fully operated by Rio, Dominion bought the stone in an internal auction process from its partner. Dominion said it will select someone soon to cut and polish the stone.

 “It’s a beautiful gem-quality diamond,” Durgin said, adding that it was somewhat of a “miracle” that the stone survived the mining process. “It’s very unusual for a diamond of this size in this part of the world. So it’s a very unique discovery.”

 The discovery is the seventh-biggest this century Source: Dominion Diamond Mines

 In 2015, Rio unearthed a 187.7 carat gem-quality diamond from Diavik. ‘Foxfire’ narrowly escaped being pulverized because its elongated shape allowed it to slip sideways through a filtering screen. The diamond was exhibited at the Smithsonian before being turned into a pair of pale yellow earrings weighing a total of 77.7 carats. The earrings sold for over $1.5 million at Christie’s earlier this month.

 This year’s find comes at a good time for Dominion. Since billionaire Dennis Washington bought the company for $1.2 billion last year, there’s been a management merry-go-round with at least five senior personnel leaving. That includes CEO Patrick Evans, who left last week after just over a year at the helm. Dominion needs to decide if it will pull the trigger on expansion projects that would extend the life of the Ekati mine.

 Diamond mining in this area of Canada’s sub-arctic is incredibly difficult. There are no permanent roads, meaning the only access is by air or, for a few months a year, ice roads that have to be rebuilt each winter.

 Meanwhile, the global market has been under pressure, especially for smaller and lower quality stones. There’s currently an oversupply of such diamonds, and a weaker Indian rupee has put pressure on manufacturers in the country where about 90 percent of gems are cut and polished. Major cutting centers have also been squeezed by low margins and a drop in trade finance.

 — With assistance by Joseph Richter ||||| The 552 carat yellow diamond beats a previous record held by a diamond from the same mine

 Dominion Diamond Mines ULC (“Dominion”), a world leading producer of responsibly mined diamonds, announces the recovery of the largest known gem quality diamond ever found in North America. The 552 carat yellow Canadamark™ diamond was unearthed in October at the Diavik Diamond Mine (“Diavik”), approximately 135 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The find far surpasses the previous record held by the Diavik Foxfire at 187.7 carats, which was also recovered at the same mine in 2015. Dominion owns 40% of Diavik.

 “This incredible discovery showcases what is truly spectacular about Canadamark diamonds,” states Kyle Washington, Chairman of Dominion Diamond Mines. “The color and texture of the diamond are a unique example of the journey that natural diamonds take from their formation until we unearth them. Our Diavik Mine has produced some of the most beautiful diamonds in the world, and this one certainly tops the list.”

 The astonishing gemstone was uncovered while passing through the initial screening process at Diavik’s recovery plant. Abrasion markings on the stone’s surface attest to the difficult journey it underwent during recovery, and the fact that it remains intact is remarkable. Measuring 33.74mm x 54.56mm and weighing exactly 552.74 carats, a diamond of this size is completely unexpected for this part of the world and marks a true milestone for diamond mining in North America and Canadamark diamonds overall.

 Its color, texture and structure are also unique from a geological perspective and may be studied further. The diamond will not be sold in its rough form. Due to the significance of the discovery, Dominion will select a partner in the coming weeks who will cut and polish the stone. The size and highly technical nature of this stone means that only a handful of master cutters in the world are qualified to polish it, ensuring that the stone’s beauty, color and brilliance are maximized. Dominion expects to achieve a significant main stone once the diamond is polished, that will be Canadamark certified. As the diamond is still undergoing evaluation, it is too early to determine the ultimate value of the diamond. However, when polished, the Diavik Foxfire yielded a 37.87 brilliant-cut pear shape and a 36.80 brilliant-cut pear shape that were both recently auctioned as part of Christies Magnificent Jewels and were purchased for $1.3 million.

 About Dominion Diamond Mines ULC

 Dominion Diamond Mines ULC is a Canadian mining company and one of the world’s largest producers and suppliers of premium rough diamond assortments to the global market. The company owns a controlling interest in the Ekati Diamond Mine, which it operates, and owns 40% of the Diavik Diamond Mine. Both mines are located in the Northwest Territories of Canada, which has some of the most stringent environmental standards for diamond miners in the world. In addition to its mining operations, Dominion has offices in Canada, Belgium and India.

 About Canadamark

 Canadamark™ diamonds are mindfully sourced to celebrate life’s important milestones. Canadamark™ certified diamonds carry a hallmark that gives consumers confidence in the diamond’s Canadian origin and history. All Canadamark™ diamonds are responsibly mined, natural and untreated, and tracked through an independent, audited process at every stage of the diamond’s journey, from the mine of origin to the polished stone. The Canadamark™ brand is owned by Dominion Diamond Mines ULC. |||||

Write a summary.

– Gigantic gemstones don't typically emerge out of Canadian mines like they do in South Africa, but a big find in the Northwest Territories has just smashed that stereotype. Bloomberg reports a 552-carat yellow diamond the size of a chicken egg (picture here) was found there in October, and it's now said to be the largest diamond ever unearthed in North America. The "astonishing gemstone" was discovered at the Diavik mine, owned by the Rio Tinto Group and Dominion Diamond Mines, about 135 miles south of the Arctic Circle, per a press release. In addition to its North American honors, the diamond, which measures 33.74mm by 54.56mm, would rank among the 30 biggest stones ever discovered, per Bloomberg estimates, as well as the seventh largest this century. The scratches on the diamond indicate it had a "difficult journey," and that it remained intact during the recovery process is "remarkable," the release notes. Also noteworthy is the fact that it came out of a mine in Canada, which is known for having tough terrain to penetrate due to the sub-Arctic conditions and dearth of access. "It's very unusual for a diamond of this size in this part of the world," Dominion Chief Executive Officer Shane Durgin tells Bloomberg. He adds that it's hard to say yet how much the diamond will ultimately be worth; it needs to be seen how it ends up once it's cut. Dominion will select a partner to do that job, and polish the stone to finish it off, in the next few weeks. (A 163-carat white diamond went for $33.7M last year at auction.)