Write an article based on this summary:

– Rosie O'Donnell had a life-threatening heart attack last week and didn't even know it, TMZ reports. The comedian describes the incident as a poem on her blog, saying she had chest pains, vomited, and gobbled an aspirin, but never called emergency services. A cardiologist told her the next day that she'd suffered a "widow maker" heart attack. A few lines from Rosie's poem: my LAD was 99% blocked they call this type of heart attack the Widow maker i am lucky to be here know the symptoms ladies listen to the voice inside the one we all so easily ignore CALL 911 save urself See more about Rosie's health scare.

Rosie O'Donnell I Had a Secret Heart Attack Last Week

 breaking news

 suffered a major heart attack last week but kept it a secret ... until now, when she revealed the whole scary ordeal on her blog ... as a poem.In a post on Rosie's official blog dated August 20 ... the comedian drops a bombshell with an entry titled "" ... in which she explains how she went into cardiac arrest and didn't even realize it.In the post she explains (in poem form) ... she experienced chest pains, clammy skin, and vomiting ... she then took an aspirin -- but never bothered to call 911.The next day she went to see a cardiologist and was informed by her doctor that her symptoms were a result of a "widow maker" heart attack.She says in the post, "50% of women having heart attacks never call 911 ... 200,000 women die of heart attacks every year in the US ... by some miracle I was not one of them."She ends with a warning to other women saying, "Know the symptoms ladies ... listen to the voice inside ... CALL 911... save urself." ||||| its a semi-sunny monday

 the light bouncing off the flat hudson

 mish is sitting next to me

 i am happy to be alive

 last week i had a heart attack

 here is what happened

 on tuesday morning

 while walking in a parking lot in nyack

 i heard a loud commanding voice

 “can u help me”

 more of a demand than request

 a challenge – a plea

 i turned and saw an enormous woman

 struggling to get out of her car

 she was stuck

 “can u help me? she asked again

 as i walked toward her

 “oh u r rosie odonnell”

 yes i am

 the ghost of christmas future

 me – if i did not wake

 there r no accidents i thought

 as i braced myself and lifted her

 it was not easy

 but together we did it

 she was up and on her way

 with gratitude

 a few hours later my body hurt

 i had an ache in my chest

 both my arms were sore

 everything felt bruised

 muscular – i thought

 strained or pulled tissue

 i went about my day

 the pain persisted

 i became nauseous

 my skin was clammy

 i was very very hot

 i threw up

 maybe this is a heart attack

 i googled womens heart attack symptoms

 i had many of them

 but really? – i thought – naaaa

 i took some bayer aspirin

 thank god

 saved by a tv commercial

 literally

 i did not call 911

 50% of women having heart attacks never call 911

 200,000 women die of heart attacks

 every year in the US

 by some miracle i was not one of them

 the next day i went to a cardiologist

 the dr did an EKG and sent me to the hospital

 where a stent was put in

 my LAD was 99% blocked

 they call this type of heart attack

 i am lucky to be here

 know the symptoms ladies

 listen to the voice inside

 the one we all so easily ignore

 CALL 911

 save urself

 xxx |||||


Here is a news article: Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. ||||| caption View from the church near Bellingshausen Station. source EuroNews/YouTube

 Russian Antarctic researcher Sergey Savitsky is charged with attempting to murder his colleague on October 9.

 The knife attack reportedly happened at the very remote Bellingshausen station on King George Island, run by Russia.

 Savitsky is now under house arrest until December 8, and is cooperating, Russian news agency Interfax reported on Tuesday.

 One source told Interfax he could have stabbed the unnamed man because he was sick of being cooped up there.

 A Russian polar researcher stationed at an extremely remote base in Antarctica was charged with the attempted murder of a colleague on October 9.

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 A report from Russian news agency Interfax said on Tuesday Sergey Savitsky was accused of stabbing an unnamed man in the chest with a knife at the Russian Antarctic station Bellingshausen, located on King George Island.

 caption Bellingshausen station. source Google Maps.

 A second Interfax report on Tuesday said Savitsky had now been placed under house arrest until 8 December.

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 Savitsky stabbed the man at least once in the dining room of the Russian Antarctic station, and aimed to kill him, Interfax quoted the Joint Press Service of the Courts of St. Petersburg as saying.

 A source with knowledge of the incident told Interfax, Savitsky "surrendered on his own and without resistance to the station manager," and also "did not object to house arrest."

 caption Bellingshausen is located on the northern edge of Antarctica, south of Peru. source Google Maps.

 The source said the incident likely happened because the pair spent such a long time in close proximity to each other, and Savitsky snapped. The victim has not yet been named.

 The injured person is currently in a hospital in Chile, Interfax reported, as Chile is the closest mainland.

 The Bellingshausen research station was set up by the Soviet Union in 1968 and is named after a 19th-century Russian Antarctic explorer, Interfax also reported.

 It is not known when Savitsky is due to attend court. ||||| An Antarctic researcher at a remote Russian science station has been charged with attempted murder after stabbing his colleague in a sudden outburst of violence.

 According to Russia’s Interfax news agency, Sergey Savitsky attacked his fellow scientist on October 9, possibly after experiencing an emotional breakdown, stabbing him at least once.

 The two men had been living and working together for six months at Russia’s Bellingshausen station on King George Island, more than 500 miles off the southern coast of Argentina.

 Interfax reported that the attack took place at the station’s canteen. The agency said Savitsky deliberately targeted his colleague, named only as B, and went after him with a knife. The attacker later surrendered to the station manager without resistance.

 The injured researcher was sent for medical treatment in Chile while Savitsky was placed under house arrest at the base until December 8. Russian authorities have not yet commented on the attack, The Guardian reported.

 The Bellingshausen station, built in 1968, was one of the first Antarctic research facilities established by the Soviet Union. It is named for the the 19th-century Russian Antarctic explorer Fabian von Bellingshausen.

 The base sits 650 feet from Chile’s primary Antarctic outpost, the Frei facility. Several other stations are nearby, including Chile’s Escudero center, Uruguay’s Artigas base and China’s Great Wall outpost. Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, South Korea and Poland also maintain permanent stations on King George Island.

 Early Antarctic research outposts were spartan affairs made of simple, cheap materials, designed for survival but not for comfort. But as more nations establish stations of their own, the sophistication of such missions has increased. The largest permanent mission remains the American McMurdo research station, which has a peak summer population of 1,200 people.

 Investigating crimes committed in Antarctica poses unusual challenges. The 1961 Antarctic Treaty states that the continent belongs to no one nation. Argentina, Australia, the U.K., Chile, France, New Zealand and Norway all have territorial claims on the icy land, though none are recognized by the treaty.

 Around 30 nations, including the U.S. and Russia, maintain research teams in Antarctica either seasonally or year-round. Each country’s jurisdiction is generally accepted at its own facilities.

 In this case, because the crime took place at a Russian base and involved Russian researchers, Savitsky's home country will take responsibility. Some observers have proposed a new Antarctic treaty to produce a unified criminal code that all residents of the continent could adhere to. ||||| This article is over 2 months old

 Suspect placed under house arrest after alleged attack at Bellingshausen station on King George Island

 A researcher at Russia’s Antarctic station has allegedly stabbed and injured a colleague, possibly after an emotional breakdown, the Interfax news agency has reported.

 The alleged attack occurred on 9 October in the canteen of Bellingshausen station on King George Island, the agency said on Tuesday. It said the suspect had voluntarily surrendered to the station manager without resistance.

 The news agency separately reported in court proceedings that a man named Sergey Savitsky had been placed under house arrest until 8 December, charged with attempted murder at the station.

 “According to the investigation, on October 9 in the dining room of the command of the Russian Antarctic station Bellingshausen, located on King George Island, to kill B using a knife as a weapon, Savitsky deliberately struck B at least one blow to the body,” it reported.

 The agency quoted a source saying the pair had been living together in the station for more than six months.

 The injured researcher has been sent to a hospital in Chile.

 The Bellingshausen station was founded by the Soviet Union in 1968 and is named after the 19th-century Russian explorer of the Antarctic.

 There has been no immediate comment from the Russian authorities. |||||
A summary of this is?

– A researcher at Russia's remote Bellingshausen station allegedly stabbed a colleague earlier this month, the Guardian reports, citing the Russian-language Interfax news agency. Investigators say that the researcher, identified as Sergey Savitsky, wielded a knife on Oct. 9 and "deliberately struck [his colleague] at least one blow to the body" in the station's dining room. The injured man has been hospitalized in Chile, while Savitsky is on house arrest facing an attempted murder charge, per Business Insider Nordic. Bellingshausen station is located in the Antarctic on King George Island, some 500 miles from Argentina, according to Newsweek. A source tells Interfax that Savitsky may have snapped after living in such close quarters for such a long time (reportedly more than six months), per Business Insider. Some 30 countries have research teams in Antarctica, per Newsweek, which notes that investigating crimes there can be tricky since, based on a 1961 treaty, no country has a claim on the continent. (NASA captured an image of an unusual iceberg.)


In any given year, more than 1 in 4 Americans who are old enough to drive have some kind of encounter with a police officer, usually as a result of a traffic stop. If these interactions go smoothly, the police build respect within their community. If they don't, the public's trust in law enforcement erodes, and citizens may become less willing "to support or cooperate with the police," the study authors said. ||||| Police officers speak significantly less respectfully to black than to white community members in everyday traffic stops, even after controlling for officer race, infraction severity, stop location, and stop outcome. This paper presents a systematic analysis of officer body-worn camera footage, using computational linguistic techniques to automatically measure the respect level that officers display to community members. This work demonstrates that body camera footage can be used as a rich source of data rather than merely archival evidence, and paves the way for developing powerful language-based tools for studying and potentially improving police–community relations.

 Using footage from body-worn cameras, we analyze the respectfulness of police officer language toward white and black community members during routine traffic stops. We develop computational linguistic methods that extract levels of respect automatically from transcripts, informed by a thin-slicing study of participant ratings of officer utterances. We find that officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop. Such disparities in common, everyday interactions between police and the communities they serve have important implications for procedural justice and the building of police–community trust.

 Over the last several years, our nation has been rocked by an onslaught of incidents captured on video involving police officers’ use of force with black suspects. The images from these cases are disturbing, both exposing and igniting police–community conflict all over the country: in New York, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and North Carolina. These images have renewed conversations about modern-day race relations and have led many to question how far we have come (1). In an effort to increase accountability and transparency, law enforcement agencies are adopting body-worn cameras at an extremely rapid pace (2, 3).

 Despite the rapid proliferation of body-worn cameras, no law enforcement agency has systematically analyzed the massive amounts of footage these cameras produce. Instead, the public and agencies alike tend to focus on the fraction of videos involving high-profile incidents, using footage as evidence of innocence or guilt in individual encounters.

 Left unexamined are the common, everyday interactions between the police and the communities they serve. By best estimates, more than one quarter of the public (ages 16 y and over) comes into contact with the police during the course of a year, most frequently as the result of a police-initiated traffic stop (4, 5). Here, we examine body-worn camera footage of routine traffic stops in the large, racially diverse city of Oakland, CA.

 Routine traffic stops are not only common, they are consequential, each an opportunity to build or erode public trust in the police. Being treated with respect builds trust in the fairness of an officer’s behavior, whereas rude or disrespectful treatment can erode trust (6, 7). Moreover, a person’s experiences of respect or disrespect in personal interactions with police officers play a central role in their judgments of how procedurally fair the police are as an institution, as well as their willingness to support or cooperate with the police (8, 9).

 Blacks report more negative experiences in their interactions with the police than other groups (10). Across numerous studies, for example, blacks report being treated less fairly and respectfully in their contacts with the police than whites (6, 11). Indeed, some have argued that racial disparities in perceived treatment during routine encounters help fuel the mistrust of police in the controversial officer-involved shootings that have received such great attention. However, do officers treat white community members with a greater degree of respect than they afford to blacks?

 We address this question by analyzing officers’ language during vehicle stops of white and black community members. Although many factors may shape these interactions, an officer’s words are undoubtedly critical: Through them, the officer can communicate respect and understanding of a citizen’s perspective, or contempt and disregard for their voice. Furthermore, the language of those in positions of institutional power (police officers, judges, work superiors) has greater influence over the course of the interaction than the language used by those with less power (12⇓⇓⇓–16). Measuring officer language thus provides a quantitative lens on one key aspect of the quality or tone of police–community interactions, and offers new opportunities for advancing police training.

 Previous research on police–community interactions has relied on citizens’ recollection of past interactions (10) or researcher observation of officer behavior (17⇓⇓–20) to assess procedural fairness. Although these methods are invaluable, they offer an indirect view of officer behavior and are limited to a small number of interactions. Furthermore, the very presence of researchers may influence the police behavior those researchers seek to measure (21).

 In study 1, human participants rated officer utterances on several overlapping dimensions of respect. With a high degree of agreement, participants inferred these dimensions from officer language. Even though they were not told the race of the stopped driver, participants judged officer language directed toward black motorists to be less respectful than language directed toward whites. In study 2, we build statistical models capable of predicting aspects of respect based on linguistic features derived from theories of politeness, power, and social distance. We discuss the linguistic features that contribute to each model, finding that particular forms of politeness are implicated in perceptions of respect. In study 3, we apply these models to all vehicle stop interactions between officers of the Oakland Police Department and black/white community members during the month of April 2014. We find strong evidence that utterances spoken to white community members are consistently more respectful, even after controlling for contextual factors such as the severity of the offense or the outcome of the stop.

 Data

 Our dataset consists of transcribed body camera footage from vehicle stops of white and black community members conducted by the Oakland Police Department during the month of April 2014. We examined 981 stops of black (N = 682) and white (N = 299) drivers from this period, 68.1% of the 1,440 stops of white and black drivers in this period. These 981 stops were conducted by 245 different officers (see SI Appendix, Data Sampling Process for inclusion criteria). Per Oakland Police Department policy, officers turn on their cameras before making contact with the driver and record for the duration of the stop. From the 183 h of footage in these interactions, we obtain 36,738 usable officer utterances for our analysis.

 Study 1: Perceptions of Officer Treatment from Language. We first test whether human raters can reliably judge respect from officers’ language, and whether these judgments reveal differences in officer respect toward black versus white community members. Respect is a complex and gradient perception, incorporating elements of a number of correlated constructs like friendliness and formality. Therefore, in this study, we ask participants to rate transcribed utterances spoken by officers along five conceptually overlapping folk notions related to respect and officer treatment. We randomly sampled 414 unique officer utterances (1.1% of all usable utterances in the dataset) directed toward black (N = 312) or white (N = 102) community members. On each trial, participants viewed the text of an officer utterance, along with the driver’s utterance that immediately preceded it. All proper names and places were anonymized, and participants were not told the race or gender of the driver. Participants indicated on four-point Likert scales how respectful, polite, friendly, formal, and impartial the officer was in each exchange. Each utterance was rated by at least 10 participants. Could participants reliably glean these qualities from such brief exchanges? Previous work has demonstrated that different perceivers can arrive at similar judgments from “thin slices” of behavior (22). In a similar vein, participants showed consistency in their perceptions of officer language, with reliability for each item ranging from moderate (Cronbach’s α = 0.73) to high ( α = 0.91) agreement (see SI Appendix, Annotator Agreement). These results demonstrate that transcribed language provides a sufficient and consensual signal of officer communication, enough to gain a picture of the dynamics of an interaction at a given point in time. To test whether participant ratings uncovered racial group differences, we averaged scores across raters to calculate a single rating on each dimension for each utterance, then built a linear mixed-effects regression model to estimate the fixed effect of community member race across interactions, controlling for variance of a random effect at the interaction level. Officer utterances directed toward black drivers were perceived as less respectful [b = −0.23, 95% confidence interval (−0.34, −0.11)], polite [b = −0.23 (−0.35, −0.12)], friendly [b = −0.24 (−0.36, −0.12)], formal [b = −0.16 (−0.30, −0.03)], and impartial [b = −0.26 (−0.39, −0.12)] than language directed toward white drivers (Fig. 1). These differences persisted even when controlling for the age and sex of the driver (see SI Appendix, Model Outputs for Each Rated Dimension). Fig. 1. (Left) Differences in raw participant ratings between interactions with black and white community members. (Right) When collapsed to two uncorrelated components, Respect and Formality, we find a significant difference for Respect but none for Formality. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. PC, principal component. Given the expected conceptual overlap in the five perceptual categories we presented to the participants, we used principal component analysis to decompose the ratings into their underlying components. Two principal components explained 93.2% of the variance in the data (see SI Appendix, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) Loadings for loadings). The first component, explaining 71.3% of the variance and composed of positive loadings on the impartial, respectful, friendly, and polite dimensions with some loading on the formal dimension, we characterize as Respect, broadly construed. The second, explaining 21.9% of the variance and composed primarily of a very high positive loading on the formal dimension and a weak negative loading on the friendly dimension, we characterize as Formality. This component captures formality as distinct from respect more generally, and is likely related to social distance. Standardizing these factor scores as outcome variables in mixed-effects models, we find that officers were equal in Formality with white and black drivers [ β = −0.01 (−0.19, 0.16)], but higher in Respect with white drivers [ β = 0.17 (0.00, 0.33)] (Fig. 1). Study 1 demonstrates that key features of police treatment can be reliably gleaned from officer speech. Participant ratings from thin slices of police–community interactions reveal racial disparities in how respectful, impartial, polite, friendly, and formal officers’ language to community members was perceived. Such differences were driven by differences in the Respect officers communicated toward drivers rather than the Formality with which officers addressed them.

 Study 2: Linguistic Correlates of Respect. The methods of study 1 (human coding of 414 individual utterances), although effective at discovering racial disparities in officer respect toward community members in our dataset, cannot offer a general solution to the analysis of body camera data. One problem is scale: Each year, on the order of 26 million vehicle stops are made (5). Furthermore, using only a small sample of individual utterances makes it impossible to study how police treatment varies over officers, or how the interaction progresses across time in each stop. In this study, we therefore develop computational linguistic models of respect and formality and tune them on the 414 individual utterances; in study 3, we apply these models to our full dataset of 36,738 utterances. Our method is based on linguistic theories of respect that model how speakers use respectful language (apologizing, giving agency, softening of commands, etc.) to mitigate “face-threatening acts.” We use computational linguistic methods (e.g., refs. 23⇓⇓–26) to extract features of the language of each officer utterance. The log-transformed counts of these features are then used as independent variables in two linear regression models predicting the perceptual ratings of Respect and Formality from study 1. Our model-assigned ratings agree with the average human from study 1 about as well as humans agree with each other. Our model for Respect obtains an adjusted R2 of 0.258 on the perceptual ratings obtained in study 1, and a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.840, compared with an RMSE of 0.842 for the average rater relative to other raters. Our model for Formality obtains an adjusted R2 of 0.190, and an RMSE of 0.882 compared with 0.764 for the average rater (see SI Appendix, Model Comparison to Annotators for more details on how these values were calculated). These results indicate that, despite the sophisticated social and psychological cues participants are likely drawing upon in rating officers’ utterances, a constrained set of objectively measurable linguistic features can explain a meaningful portion of the variance in these ratings. Fig. 2 lists the linguistic features that received significant weights in our model of Respect (arranged by their model coefficients). For example, apologizing, gratitude, and expressions of concern for citizen safety are all associated with respect. The bars on the right show the log-odds of the relative proportion of interactions in our dataset taken up by each feature, where negative numbers mean that a feature comprised a larger proportion of officers’ speech in interactions with black community members and positive numbers mean the same for interactions with white community members. Example utterances containing instances of the highest-weighted features for the Respect model are shown in Fig. 3. See SI Appendix, Study 2 for full regression outputs and more detailed discussion of particular linguistic findings. Fig. 2. (Left) Respect weights assigned by final model to linguistic features and (Right) the corresponding log-odds of those features occurring in officer speech directed toward black versus white community members, calculated using Fisher’s exact test. †P < 0.1; ∗P < 0.05; ∗∗P < 0.01; ∗∗∗P < 0.001. Fig. 3. Sample sentences with automatically generated Respect scores. Features in blue have positive coefficients in the model and connote respect, such as offering reassurance (“no problem”) or mentioning community member well-being (“drive safe”). Features in red have negative coefficients in the model and connote disrespect, like informal titles (“my man”), or disfluencies (“that- that’s”).

 Study 3: Racial Disparities in Respect. Having demonstrated that people can reliably infer features of procedural justice from officer speech (study 1), and that these ratings can be reliably predicted from statistical models of linguistic features (study 2), we are now able to address our central question: Controlling for contextual factors of the interaction, is officers’ language more respectful when speaking to white as opposed to black community members? We apply our models from study 2 to the entire corpus of transcribed interactions to generate predicted scores for Respect and Formality for each of the 36,738 utterances in our dataset. We then build linear mixed-effects models for Respect and Formality over these utterances. We include, as covariates in our primary model, community member race, age, and gender; officer race; whether a search was conducted; and the result of the stop (warning, citation, or arrest). We include random intercepts for interactions nested within officers. Controlling for these contextual factors, utterances spoken by officers to white community members score higher in Respect [ β = 0.05 (0.03, 0.08)]. Officer utterances were also higher in Respect when spoken to older [ β = 0.07 (0.05, 0.09)] community members and when a citation was issued [ β = 0.04 (0.02, 0.06)]; Respect was lower in stops where a search was conducted [ β = −0.08 (−0.11, −0.05)]. Officer race did not contribute a significant effect. Furthermore, in an additional model on 965 stops for which geographic information was available, neither the crime rate nor density of businesses in the area of the stop were significant, although a higher crime rate was indicative of increased Formality [ β = 0.03 (0.01, 0.05)]. One might consider the hypothesis that officers were less respectful when pulling over community members for more severe offenses. We tested this by running another model on a subset of 869 interactions for which we obtained ratings of offense severity on a four-point Likert scale from Oakland Police Department officers, including these ratings as a covariate in addition to those mentioned above. We found that the offense severity was not predictive of officer respect levels, and did not substantially change the results described above. To consider whether this disparity persists in the most “everyday” interactions, we also reran our analyses on the subset of interactions that did not involve arrests or searches (N = 781), and found the results from our earlier models were fundamentally unchanged. Full regression tables for all models described above are given in SI Appendix, Study 3. Another hypothesis is that the racial disparities might have been caused by officers being more formal to white community members, and more informal or colloquial to black community members. However, we found that race was not associated with the formality of officers’ utterances. Instead, utterances were higher in Formality in interactions with older [ β = 0.05 (0.03, 0.07)] and female [ β = 0.02 (0.00, 0.04)] community members. Are the racial disparities in the respectfulness of officer speech we observe driven by a small number of officers? We calculated the officer-level difference between white and black stops for every officer (N = 90) in the dataset who had interactions with both blacks and whites (Fig. 4). We find a roughly normal distribution of these deltas for officers of all races. This contrasts with the case of stop-and-frisk, where individual outlier officers account for a substantial proportion of racial disparities (27); the disparities we observe here cannot be explained by a small number of extreme officers. Fig. 4. Kernel density estimate of individual officer-level differences in Respect when talking to white as opposed to black community members, for the 90 officers in our dataset who have interactions with both blacks and whites. More positive numbers on the x axis represent a greater positive shift in Respect toward white community members. Because our model is able to generate scores across all utterances in our dataset, we can also consider aspects of the trajectory of interactions beyond the mean level of respect (Fig. 5). Growth-curve analyses revealed that officers spoke with greater Respect [ b = 0.35 (0.29, 0.40)] and reduced Formality [ b = −0.57 (−0.62, −0.53)] as interactions progressed. However, these trajectories varied by community member race: Although stops of white and black drivers converged in the Formality expressed during the interaction [ b = −0.09 (−0.13, −0.05)], the gap in Respect increased over time [ b = 0.10 (0.05, 0.15)]. That is, officer Respect increased more quickly in interactions with white drivers [ b = 0.45 (0.38, 0.54)] than in interactions with black drivers [ b = 0.24 (0.19, 0.29)]. Fig. 5. Loess-smoothed estimates of the (Left) Respect and (Right) Formality of officers’ utterances relative to the point in an interaction at which they occur. Respect tends to start low and increase over an interaction, whereas the opposite is true for Formality. The race discrepancy in Respect is consistent throughout the interactions in our dataset. ||||| The first major US study of body-cam footage concluded that police, at least in Oakland, California, showed more respect to white people than to black people.

 The study from Stanford University researchers analyzed the transcribed text from 981 traffic stops caught on body cams by 245 Oakland Police Department officers in 2014. White people pulled over were more likely to be called "ma'am" or "sir," and they were more likely to hear the words "please" and "thank you" from police officers. Black people, however, didn't get as much respect, and they were more likely to be called by their first names and even "my man."

 "Indeed, we find that white community members are 57 percent more likely to hear an officer say one of the most respectful utterances in our dataset, whereas black community members are 61 percent more likely to hear an officer say one of the least respectful utterances in our dataset," according to the study. (PDF) The results held constant no matter the race of the officer, the study said.

 The researchers point out that their survey underscores that data collected from body cams can have more uses than for just police work. They say their research model can be duplicated with other police departments.

 "This work demonstrates the power of body-camera footage as an important source of data, not just as evidence," the researchers found.

 The researchers cautioned that the study was conducted with only the transcripts of 183 hours of body-cam footage, not the footage itself. And privacy concerns notwithstanding, the researchers said that more could be learned from body-cam studies if they listened to the audio and watched the footage. They wrote:

 However, studying body-camera footage presents numerous hurdles, including privacy concerns and the raw scale of the data. The computational linguistic models presented here offer a path toward addressing both these concerns, allowing for the analysis of transcribed datasets of any size, and generating reliable ratings of respect automatically.

 A review of the actual footage could also act as a teaching moment for police departments. "In addition, footage analysis could help us better understand what linguistic acts lead interactions to go well, which can inform police training and quantify its impacts over time," they said.

 The studies presented here open a path toward these future opportunities and represent an important area of research for the study of policing: computational, large-scale analyses of language give us a way to examine and improve police–community interaction that we have never had before.

 They said they are releasing all of the code of their "computational linguistic models" for others to use.

 The research was approved by the Stanford University Institutional Review Board with the cooperation of the Oakland Police Department. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The researchers used body cam footage in their research

 California police officers speak less respectfully to members of the public who are black than to those who are white, researchers studying body camera footage say.

 Scientists developed a way to measure levels of respect, based on the officers' language during routine traffic stops in Oakland City.

 The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 It aims to use bodycam footage to help improve police-community relations.

 While bodycam footage has been used as evidence in criminal cases - including some where complaints have been made against police - the aim of this study was to turn this continuously gathered footage into data and use that to track and improve everyday policing.

 "These routine interactions are important," said lead scientist Prof Jennifer Eberhardt, "they're the way most people encounter the police."

 "And people care as much about how they're treated as whether or not they got a [speeding] ticket.

 "It can affect how people view the police, how they think about the police - whether or not they want to co-operate with them."

 Evidence or data?

 The study was part of a unique, decade long research collaboration between Stanford University and the Oakland Police Department in California, which began when the department asked Prof Eberhardt to analyse their stop and search data.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Benjamin Read demonstrates how police body cameras work

 "We had location and details [of who was stopped], but we also had the camera's recording of every interaction," she said.

 "I figured we could could analyse exactly what's happening here."

 The Stanford team transcribed 1,000 interactions between police and members of the public, then picked out a random selection of 400 "utterances" made by officers during these dialogues.

 They then had a group of volunteers read and rate these utterances, with each one being rated by at least 10 people.

 "[Our volunteers] looked at the text without knowing the race of the officer or of the community member," said Prof Eberhardt.

 "The task was to come up with a score that quantified respectfulness, so each utterance was rated for politeness, friendliness and how formal or informal it was.

 "Then we looked for what we call the linguistic correlates of that rating- so what words are present when something is scored as more or less respectful."

 Co-author of the study PhD student Rob Voigt explained how the team had used these volunteers' ratings to develop a computer model that could automatically analyse the utterances - searching and scoring subtle linguistic markers that made an officer's language more or less respectful.

 "Our computer model learns to measure each of these linguistic features," Mr Voigt said.

 "So we can ask, 'How polite is it when you apologise?' and it can give us a number.

 "So, apologies, calling someone 'sir', taking an interest in the person, maybe by saying, 'Drive safely,' they're all perceived as more respectful.

 "And then disrespectful features include questions, negatively charged words and using terms like 'bro' or 'man', or first names rather than titles," he said.

 Prof Eberhardt said they had found "real racial disparity in officers' language use".

 'Ground-breaking'

 The researchers' main collaborator in the police department, Deputy Chief Leronne Armstrong, told BBC News that Oakland PD wanted to examine interactions with the community in order to "better train our officers and improve the way we communicate".

 "We've heard many times the community's concern about racial profiling," he told BBC News. "We have to be willing to ask those really tough questions about what our officers are doing."

 Prof Eberhardt also stressed that these findings did not "equate to racial bias".

 "There could be many reasons why you have the differences we're finding," she said. "It could have to do with a particular law enforcement strategy, police policies, the community members' language, or if there's tension already in a community because of a recent high profile case.

 "We're trying to understand the root, but we're not taking for granted that it's bias."

 Deputy Chief Armstrong added: "This [collaboration] really is ground-breaking."

 "No other police force in the the country has opened up [and given scientists] access to this data.

 "[And] this report will be a way in which we can learn and be better - to be the best we can be for our community.

 "Any police department should do the same." |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– In a conclusion that some may not consider surprising, researchers have found that police officers are more respectful to white people than black people during traffic stops, according to a study published Monday in PNAS. Ars Technica reports the data for the first major study of US bodycam footage comes from 981 traffic stops conducted by 245 Oakland, Calif., police officers in 2014. Researchers had volunteers rate comments made by officers during the traffic stops in terms of respectfulness and more, per the Los Angeles Times. The BBC reports respectful behavior by officers included apologizing, showing an interest in the person, and saying "drive safely." Disrespectful behavior included asking questions, calling the person "bro" or "man," and using words that have a negative connotation. The study found officers were 57% more likely to use one of the most respectful phrases with white people and 61% more likely to use one of the most disrespectful phrases with black people. For example, white people were more likely to be called "sir" or "ma'am," while black people were more likely to be called by their first names. Officers were also found to be less polite, formal, friendly, and impartial with black people. The race of the officer didn't appear to change things. "These routine interactions are important," researcher Jennifer Eberhardt says, per the BBC. "They're the way most people encounter the police." And if those encounters go poorly, citizens may become less supportive or cooperative toward police. (Another study found expecting trouble from black men starts even before kindergarten.)


Here is a news article: The families would not discuss the precise terms of their settlements — most are subject to confidential terms — but some said the payments were not large and the process was sometimes unpleasant. “Those attorneys dragged my son through the mud, and he wasn’t even there to defend himself,” said Ms. Erickson, mother of the man killed here in Texas in 2004. In 2008, G.M. settled the suit she brought against the automaker.

 In fighting lawsuits and in its public statements, G.M. has pointed to other factors that could have been responsible for the deaths. “All of these crashes occurred off-road and at high speeds, where the probability of serious or fatal injuries was high regardless of air bag deployment,” the company said in February, when it had acknowledged only six deaths tied to the defect. “In addition, failure to wear seatbelts and alcohol use were factors in some of these cases.”

 In fact, The Times found, alcohol was listed as a factor in just four of the 10 accidents that the newspaper identified — including one in which the drunken driver was actually driving another vehicle that crashed into the defective G.M. car. The driver of the G.M. vehicle, a Chevrolet Cobalt, was Esther Matthews, 73, who was killed along with her granddaughter, Grace Elliott, 13. Her 1-year-old great-grandson survived but was paralyzed from the accident.

 G.M. has not indicated how it will compensate the families of the 13 dead, or the relatives of other victims who might be added to the list. Federal safety regulators said last week that it was “likely that more than 13 lives were lost,” and G.M. has not ruled out that the tally would increase. In the next few weeks, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the victim-compensation expert hired by G.M., is expected to unveil a plan for addressing the thousands of claims filed against the automaker.

 Blaming the Driver

 The day of the accident, Ms. Anderson was driving Mr. Erickson to retrieve his car from a friend’s house before he went to welding school. It was just before noon.

 On a peaceful Texas country road flanked by tall grass and fenced-off pastures of cows, she lost control of her beige Saturn Ion with zebra-print seat covers. At a slight curve, the pair rode straight off the road and into a tree. Neither was wearing a seatbelt.

 At least an hour went by before a passing driver heard Ms. Anderson’s cries and bushwhacked through briers to reach the couple. The blood on Ms. Anderson’s face and hands had dried and the car had settled on top of her legs. ||||| DETROIT -- On Thursday, General Motors will make public the results of its own investigation of how it responded to a deadly defect -- specifically, why it waited more than a decade to recall 2.6 million small cars with faulty ignition switches linked to at least 13 deaths.

 Mikale Erickson, the father of two young children, died in November 2004 while riding in a Saturn Ion in Canton, Texas, when the car went off the road in the middle of the day. His fiancee, Candice Anderson, was driving.

 There were no skid marks and no obvious cause. The airbags did not deploy.

 Anderson was thrown through the windshield and barely survived.

 Anderson had a trace amount of anti-anxiety medication in her system, but no other drugs or alcohol. She was charged with manslaughter, and pleaded guilty to criminal negligent homicide.

 She told CBS News, "...it's been a question if I was at fault for his death, and I've carried it for so long." As a convicted felon living in a small town, she said, "every part of my life's been affected from it."

 CBS News

 In late May, Anderson learned Mikale's death was one of the 13 GM has linked to a faulty ignition switch. Mikale's mother, Rhonda Erickson, contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and they confirmed it in a letter.

 Erickson said GM has not been in contact with her. She told CBS News, "I think they owe me an apology. They can't give me my son back. But, I mean, they could at least give me an apology."

 Erickson believes since the car was defective, Anderson's record should be cleared. They are both hoping to get more answers from GM's internal investigation. |||||
A summary of this is?

– On a November 2004 morning in Texas, Candice Anderson was driving her fiance, Mikale Erickson, to pick up his car from a friend's house when her Saturn Ion failed to negotiate a slight curve, went off the road, and hit a tree. The airbags did not deploy and there were no skid marks; Erickson was killed, and Anderson barely survived. She had a trace amount of Xanax in her system at the time, and though there were no other drugs nor alcohol present, authorities charged her with intoxication manslaughter. She ultimately pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and served five years' probation, though she always wondered what caused the accident—she has no memory of the day. Late last month, she found out: Erickson's death is one of the 13 GM has linked to its faulty ignition switches; the car had lost power, which would have also disabled the airbags. "It's been a question if I was at fault for his death, and I've carried it for so long," Anderson tells CBS News. "Every part of my life's been affected from it." Last month, Erickson's mother, Rhonda, explained to the New York Times that she had initially been angry with her son, who was 25 at the time, and Anderson, who was 21, assuming their recklessness (they had both experimented with recreational drugs, possibly as recently as the night prior to the accident) was the cause of the accident. But now she knows the truth—she wrote to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to have it confirmed—and she believes Anderson's record should be cleared. Both women also want an apology from GM, which never contacted the Erickson family to assume responsibility for the crash.


The top issue for Ohio Democratic primary voters was the economy, and most of them favored Mrs. Clinton. A majority of voters also said that trade with other nations takes away American jobs, and more than half of them supported Mrs. Clinton. In Michigan, Mr. Sanders captured this group by double digits.

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 Mrs. Clinton was bullish and beaming at her victory party in West Palm Beach, Fla., after the first three states were called in her favor. “We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November,” she said to cheers from a rowdy crowd of 1,300 people.

 More than in any other primary night speech, Mrs. Clinton aimed her remarks in South Florida at the leading Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, who boasted of his own victory just miles away.

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 “When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong — it makes him wrong,” Mrs. Clinton said, as she called on all Americans to fight against “bluster and bigotry.”

 Mr. Sanders, speaking at a campaign event in Arizona, which holds its contest next week, stuck to his scathing assessment of the American economic system and promised to overhaul campaign finance rules. He criticized Walmart as not paying living wages, but also repeated his creed against global trade that has particularly hit the Midwestern industrial belt.

 “I say to corporate America, you want us to buy your products, start manufacturing those products here in America, not in China,” Mr. Sanders said.

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 Mr. Sanders also used the evening to criticize Mrs. Clinton for having a “super PAC” and relying on large donations. “She has received money from the drug companies and the fossil fuel industry,” he said to loud hisses and boos from the crowd of 7,200 people. “She has given speeches on Wall Street for $225,000 a pop.”

 Ohio was the prize that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders coveted the most, a bellwether state in American politics that would bestow not only delegates but also a new political story line for the winner: a Clinton comeback or a Sanders surge, given that he was a long-shot there until recently.

 After her loss in Michigan — and Mr. Sanders’s persistent criticism of her record on global trade — Mrs. Clinton’s aides seemed exasperated that her detailed policy positions to bring jobs back to the hard-hit Midwestern states were a harder sell than what they said were the unrealistic promises offered by her opponent. They huddled to retool her economic pitch so that it resonated better in Midwestern states in hopes of competing more strongly with Mr. Sanders.

 “After having lost Michigan, we came into, particularly, Ohio with a renovated plan,” said her spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri.

 At a rally in Youngstown, Mrs. Clinton addressed union members packed onto a factory floor at M7 Technologies, reminding them of the work she had done as a senator from New York to bring jobs back to the depressed upstate areas.

 “I stood up for our companies in New York,” she said. “I will stand up for our companies in Ohio and across America,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It’s exciting for me. I am really totally committed to bringing back manufacturing.”

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 The Clinton campaign dispatched former President Bill Clinton to Akron and Toledo, two predominantly white working-class cities that Mr. Sanders also campaigned in. Mrs. Clinton also racked up delegates in heavily black areas of Ohio, including courting voters in Cleveland.

 Mrs. Clinton’s victories in Florida and North Carolina were due in large part to minorities: black voters in both states, and Hispanics in Florida as well. The Sanders campaign had been expecting to lose Florida, given that only Democrats could participate in the primary and he tends to perform better when independents are in the mix. But Mrs. Clinton was also broadly popular in the state, which was reflected in exit polls by Edison Research.

 Mrs. Clinton drew support from about seven in 10 Hispanic voters and nearly eight in 10 black voters. She was backed by a slim majority of white voters, who accounted for about half of the electorate — down from two-thirds in 2008. She was favored by voters who put a high priority on experience or electability, and she was the solid choice when voters were asked who had the better chance of defeating Mr. Trump in November.

 In Ohio exit polls, Mrs. Clinton was far ahead among black voters, but she and Mr. Sanders ran closely among white voters. As in Michigan, Mr. Sanders was drawing huge support from independents and voters under age 30, while Mrs. Clinton was popular with Democrats and voters over 45.

 Video

 As Ohioans streamed to the polls on Tuesday, several voters described intense feelings for their favored candidates. At the Alliance Church in Reynoldsburg, a middle-class Columbus suburb, Sediena Barry, who installs office equipment, said she decided to vote for Bernie Sanders moments before facing the horseshoe of electronic voting machines.

 “Young people were told, get an education and work hard and you’ll get ahead, and none of us are,” said Ms. Barry, 34, who complained that she is taxed at a rate higher rate than bosses who make a half-million dollars a year.

 James Moore, a restaurant manager, said he voted for Mrs. Clinton “for my personal future and my family’s future.” He added: “All her ideals line up with what we want to happen.”

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 For both candidates, Tuesday’s primary results represented a major turning point in the race: Roughly half of the 4,765 Democratic pledged delegates have now been awarded. But their campaigns offered sharply different takes.

 Clinton advisers noted that Mr. Sanders had reached the halfway mark without showing any progress at narrowing her sizable lead in delegates, leaving him only one way forward — to win a series of landslides through the June primaries and pick up significantly more delegates than Mrs. Clinton.

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 That situation is highly unlikely, and Clinton advisers made it clear on Tuesday that they were confident about holding the delegate lead and ready to focus toward the general election.

 “We think she will be the nominee, we’d like for this process to obviously be resolved as quickly as it can, but that’s ultimately not up to us and we’re prepared for it to go on,” Ms. Palmieri said as the voting was underway.

 Sanders advisers, while acknowledging they were far behind in the delegate count, said that the race was now shifting to their advantage and that they expected to win more delegates than Mrs. Clinton in the coming primaries and caucuses. They argued that Mrs. Clinton’s best states were behind her — the primaries across the South and in Texas where her popularity among blacks and Hispanics resulted in troves of delegates.

 Looking ahead, Sanders advisers predicted success in states with large liberal populations, like Wisconsin and California, and those with caucuses, a format that rewards voter enthusiasm and turnout and has favored Mr. Sanders recently. Mr. Sanders has even talked about prevailing in New York, Mrs. Clinton’s home state, given the high numbers of progressive voters and working-class Democrats who share his disgust with Wall Street.

 “We’re now entering a period where we think we’ll win most if not all of the contests before the April 19 primary in New York,” said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders. “Regardless of how much momentum we have after Tuesday, the calendar is shifting in our favor. Now we just have to win some major showdowns, like in New York and New Jersey, to raise questions about whether she can really win the presidency.”

 Mrs. Clinton prevailed in Ohio in 2008 against Mr. Obama and referred to that victory frequently during their campaign, arguing that the Democrats’ best hope in any general election was the winner of that state’s primary.

 ”It’s a state that knows how to pick a president,” Mrs. Clinton said at her victory rally in Columbus in 2008. “And no candidate in recent history, Democrat or Republican, has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary.”

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 Mr. Obama, of course, did go on to win the general election — and Ohio — that November. But after Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton is optimistic once again that her adage will prove true. ||||| Hillary Clinton has been her own worst enemy at times (think homebrew servers and Goldman Sachs speeches) but her big win in Ohio Tuesday night likely catapulted her into history as the first female nominee of a major party.

 Bernie Sanders’ presidential dreams aren’t quite dead. Yet his remarkable insurgency is a teetering Jenga pile of youth support, momentum and access to online millions — and Clinton just plucked out the buttressing block. She won Ohio resoundingly (her massive wins in Florida and North Carolina were a much, much bigger deal in terms of delegates) and she proved that she could capture a diverse and populous industrial Midwestern battleground a week after her shocking loss in Michigan.

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 This is a big haul. The delegate math for Sanders has been pretty dim since Super Tuesday, but now his core rationale (that he owned the hearts and votes of liberal and working-class northerners) suffered a serious, probably fatal, blow. He started off the night about 215 pledged delegates in the hole and will end the evening more than 300 behind Clinton, a margin bordering on the insurmountable.

 Clinton’s wins coupled with Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s not-so-fast-fellas victory in his home state serve as a dual rebuke to Donald Trump, who has now become the singular focus of fire for every candidate left in the race. In fact, every podium utterance (save for Trump’s) sounded as if it had come off of the same speechwriting assembly line: America needs a uniter, not a divider; feel free to shout at my rally, I won’t beat you up; why can’t we all just get along, yadda, yadda, yadda.

 The results cast the parties on divergent political paths: The Democrats seem destined to unite after a few more contests, while Kasich’s Ohio win, coupled with a possible victory by Ted Cruz in Missouri, makes it more likely than ever that the GOP is headed for a contested convention. Here are five takeaways:

 1. The Gospel according to St. Marco. In many ways, Marco Rubio was at his best on the worst day of his political career, delivering an emotional — and prophetic — farewell speech that succinctly defined his divided party’s dilemma as the bitterest of primary campaigns grinds on.

 The 44-year-old Florida senator, a slick, eloquent and aspirational conservative in a party that didn’t much value those attributes, was a man without a geographical or ideological foothold in the GOP, and his 20-point home state loss made soldiering on impossible. Moreover, his Miami bow-out underscored what made him fail in the first place: He touted the rebellious energy of the tea party movement while trying to put a lid on its runaway rage.

 But embedded in his contradictions as a candidate was a message well worth heeding for Republicans: Anger is a niche product with an early expiration date; optimism has a wider consumer base and an unlimited shelf life.

 “While we’re aware … this may not have been the year for a hopeful and optimistic vision of our future,” he said, “we want to unite this country … America needs a conservative movement, one that is based on ideas, principles. Not on fear. Not on anger. Not on preying on people’s frustrations.”

 2. Democrats want to fight Trump, not each other. The exit polls were fuzzy on the topic, but the voters seemed to be sending their party a clear, collective message: Ditch the character-building internecine slap fight and unite to fight the common enemy.

 In a year where establishment candidates have tumbled like protesters at a Trump rally, Clinton — the most entrenched political veteran to seek the presidency since Nixon — triumphed precisely because she is so committed to mastering of the details of a job Trump would delegate to super smart and thus-far-unidentified really terrific people.

 Despite Sanders’ repeated calls for a revolution — and his seven-to-one success with voters under 30 — Democratic voters have overwhelmingly prioritized experience over a candidate’s “outsider” bona fides. That trend held in Ohio and Florida, the two biggest Tuesday prizes, where Democratic voters expressed revulsion at the spate of violent events at Trump rallies.

 Clinton wasn’t subtle about pivoting to The Donald. “Tonight it’s clearer than ever that this might be one of the most consequential campaigns of our lifetimes,” the hoarse but ecstatic former secretary of state told a cheering audience in Miami. “Our commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it.”

 Sanders?

 Oh, he’d run a “vigorous” campaign, she said in passing.

 3. The Battle of Cleveland. The impact of Rubio’s exit — and Kasich’s sudden rise — creates a mess of unpredictable scenarios that could end in Trump’s coronation, a contested convention or some kind of split decision that sends the GOP’s mid-July convention into fractious anarchy. For starters, it’s unclear where the Florida senator’s voters (15 to 20 percent of the GOP electorate) will go; the conventional wisdom is that Kasich will benefit more than Cruz, but that’s no lock.

 The next batch of state contests — New Jersey, Arizona, Delaware, South Dakota and Montana — seem to favor Trump, but the race has entered a new volatile stage. And, increasingly, the stage seems set for some kind of showdown on the convention floor (and the streets outside) when the Republicans return to Cleveland.

 4. Angry white people love Donald Trump. Does anyone else? Time to stop judging Trump by the hothouse standards of the ultra-conservative GOP primary. He’s likely (though not a lock) to win his party’s nomination, and maybe — just maybe — his rhinestone-studded gloom-and-glare won’t sell to a general electorate that is agitated, but not nearly as pitchfork-pissed as he is.

 Exit polls in Tuesday’s five voting states reinforced pretty much every single prevailing assumption about Trump’s core electorate — with a vengeance. White? Totally. Older? You betcha. Angry? Man, you have no idea. When pollsters asked respondents in Florida and Ohio who were ticked off with the federal government, they picked Marco Rubio and John Kasich, who touted the standard-issue D.C.-sucks mantra of the ‘90s and ‘00s GOP.

 But when pollsters amped the question to 11 — to voters who described themselves as “angry” — Trump (an orange Hulk in a pack of better-behaved Bruce Banners) destroyed the competition. If you’ve been to one of his rallies, or seen him call for anti-Trump protesters to be cuffed, bopped, arrested or chucked into the gutter, this comes as no surprise.

 But here’s the rub: Even in Florida, where he dominated by 20 points over Rubio, Trump couldn’t quite get over the 50 percent mark. True, GOP rage is at a fever pitch, but it’s not universal: In fact, six in 10 Republican exit-poll respondents in all five states said they aren’t angry — and an even smaller percentage of the general electorate identifies as irate, and a lot of those voters aren’t white and aren’t conservative. Again, Rubio played prophet: “The politics of resentment of other people will not only leave us a fractured party but will leave us a fractured nation.”

 5. Bernie is being kept alive by independents. Clinton’s convincing victory in Ohio was all the more impressive because it took place in an open primary state that permitted same-day registration by independents. But exit polls, and reports from both campaigns, indicate that Clinton cleaned up by intensifying her turnout operations in black communities (she had a net 15-point lead in Ohio among registered Democrats) not by crossing over to working-class whites and young people who are more prone to avoid party affiliations.

 In Illinois, Clinton lost indies by a roughly 75-to-25 percent margin — similar to the ratio that doomed her in Michigan a week ago. Trump, like Sanders, feasts on independents and thrives in open primaries, and Clinton’s staff acknowledges she has to cut into those margins to succeed in the fall. “It’s a serious problem,” a senior Clinton staffer told me. “It’s something we are going to be focused on once — I mean if — we get past Bernie.” ||||| Republican front-runner Donald Trump spoke in Palm Beach, Fla., after primary voters took to the polls in five states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. (Reuters)

 Republican front-runner Donald Trump spoke in Palm Beach, Fla., after primary voters took to the polls in five states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. (Reuters)

 It was a good night for Donald Trump and an even better night for Hillary Clinton. On one of the most important days of the primary season, the two front-runners continued what has become an inexorable march to their party’s presidential nominations and a general election matchup that was unimagined when this campaign began.

 For Clinton, it was a night to bounce back after her surprising defeat in Michigan at the hands of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont last week. She did so in stunning fashion. With questions swirling about her candidacy, Clinton answered her critics with a series of victories that padded a lead in delegates that now has become almost insurmountable.

 For Trump, it was a night in which he won at least three states and sent one rival, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, to the sidelines. But Trump was unable to put away a second, Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Like Clinton, the New York billionaire added to his delegate lead over Kasich and his nearest competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. But the overall results still left open the prospect that the GOP nomination will not be decided until the party assembles in July in Cleveland for its national convention.

 The night broke early in Clinton’s direction as she rolled to an overwhelming victory in Florida and followed that quickly with wins in North Carolina and Ohio. Early Wednesday, she added Illinois to her column. The first two were expected, given the makeup of the electorates in those states. Ohio’s demographics were close enough to those in Michigan to give Sanders hope of a repeat victory, but Clinton’s success dashed those hopes and blunted whatever momentum he had enjoyed.

 The Ohio results represented a back-breaking blow to Sanders. His populist, anti-establishment insurgency has fired the energies of the party’s grass-roots progressives, and there is little doubt that he has both the determination and the resources to keep fighting. His campaign has accomplished far more than almost anyone anticipated and he has shaped the issue agenda and the dialogue in the Democratic nomination contest.

 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton spoke to supporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., after primary voters took to the polls in five states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. (Reuters)

 For all those assets, Sanders has fallen behind in the unforgiving arithmetic of the way Democrats choose their nominees. Clinton’s lead has been built by taking advantage of states where the demographics tilt heavily in her favor, particularly those with substantial populations of African Americans, while holding Sanders close in the states he has won.

 Clinton holds a lead of nearly 300 pledged delegates, those determined by the results of the primaries and caucuses. That is a bigger lead in pledged delegates than then-Sen. Barack Obama had in his epic battle against Clinton eight years ago. Her lead among so-called super delegates — party leaders and elected officials — is even more overwhelming.

 Because Democrats award pledged delegates proportionally, Sanders needs not only a string of victories but also popular vote margins large enough to pick up delegates in bushel baskets, contest by contest. For those who have questioned the quality of Clinton’s campaign, there’s no doubting the effectiveness of her delegate-focused strategy.

 Clinton’s victory speech in Florida gave the clearest sense so far that she now feels confident about how the nomination will end. Her message was aimed at a general-election contest against Trump. She excoriated the Republican front-runner repeatedly, drawing attention to what she called his negative and divisive campaign.

 Trump’s victories were another reminder of his ability to overcome adversity. For the past five days he has been on the defensive, criticized for encouraging violence against protesters at his rallies. He also was the target of millions of dollars in negative ads in Florida. In the face of that, he swamped Rubio in Rubio’s home state and won North Carolina and Illinois, as well.

 Trump was very much on the mind of Kasich, when he appeared before supporters and promised he would not take a low road to the highest office in the land. Kasich was winless until Tuesday night, and Ohio was a make-or-break test. His ebullience was emblematic of his personality but also underscored Kasich’s relief — and perhaps surprise — that he is now one of three remaining candidates for the GOP nomination.

 Kasich’s path ahead is still perilous. His belief is that the victory in Ohio will fundamentally change the dynamic of the GOP race and that the anti-Trump forces will begin to coalesce around him now that Rubio is out. But there are few states that offer obvious victories.

 1 of 40 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × What primary day looked like in Fla., Ill., Mo., N.C. and Ohio View Photos Voters in five states cast their ballets during primaries today. Caption Voters in five states cast their ballets during primaries today. March 15, 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign news conference at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

 There is no way he can win a majority before Cleveland, and it’s almost certain that he will not even be the delegate leader by the time the primaries and caucuses end. His real hope for winning the nomination is to seize the prize at the convention in Cleveland. He needs time, and enough victories, to prove his worth and then rely on a deadlocked convention to choose him to prevent Trump from becoming the nominee.

 Kasich has yet to prove he is a long-distance runner. That is not the case with Cruz, who like Trump is emblematic of the strength of the outsiders in the Republican race. The Texas senator was at risk of ending the night without a victory, with his last hope coming in Missouri, where he and Trump were in a tight race. The results left him even further behind Trump in delegates.

 Cruz could yet become the true challenger to Trump. His campaign has even sketched out a scenario under which he would end up with more delegates than Trump heading into the convention. But that depends on his ability to corner Trump in a one-on-one battle in the remaining states.

 Some national polls have shown that when matched head-to-head against Trump, Cruz enjoys more support. That is the foundation on which the Cruz camp is building its strategy for winning the nomination. His advisers see plenty of opportunities ahead and anticipate a big day on June 7, the final day of the primaries, when the biggest prize is California and its 172 delegates.

 But that strategy suffered a setback on Tuesday when Kasich won Ohio. Cruz’s advisers no doubt were privately pulling for Trump to do to Kasich what he did to Rubio. The Texas senator can ill afford a revived Kasich candidacy.

 Cruz’s team also is confident that they can outperform Trump’s campaign in the combat that will take place at state party conventions over the coming weeks. It will be at those conventions that the delegates will be named. Cruz’s team will work every angle possible to fill slots with friendly delegates, even if many are pledged to Trump on the first ballot in Cleveland.

 The establishment so far has failed to stop Trump and is now dependent on Kasich to do so. Cruz and his advisers are still trying to isolate Trump to give their strategy the ultimate test. They hope that even establishment Republicans rally behind the Texas senator now that the race is down to three.

 Meanwhile, Trump is winning. He wins states, and he wins delegates. He has won in every region of the country, and his appeal to Republicans continues to be cross-cutting. It becomes ever harder to deny him the nomination. ||||| Hillary Clinton won primaries in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, the night's most contested prize, as her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, struggled to get the boost he needed to try to close the gap in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

 Clinton also won a close contest in Illinois and was holding an extremely small margin in Missouri, with nearly all of the votes counted. With those contests so close, neither candidate will gain a significant edge from them in the race for delegates to the Democratic nominating convention this summer. Clinton's three big victories, by contrast, will give her a major gain.

 “We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November,” Clinton told supporters here, and she quickly moved to an attack on the Republican she expects to face in that election, Donald Trump, whom she accused of offering “bluster and bigotry.”

 “Our next commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it; engage our allies, not alienate them,” she said.

 “When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, barring all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn't make him strong — it makes him wrong.”

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 Clinton barely mentioned Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, except to briefly congratulate him for running a “vigorous campaign.”

 If Sanders was chastened by the results, he didn't let it show while speaking to rapturous supporters in Phoenix.

 “Do not settle for the status quo when the status quo is broken,” he said in a speech in which he showed no sign of easing up on Clinton. He once again attacked her vote in favor of the war in Iraq and demanded she release the transcripts of lucrative speeches to Wall Street firms.

 Sanders had worked aggressively over the last week to expand a beachhead in the nation's industrial states after his upset victory in Michigan last week exposed new vulnerabilities for Clinton.

 That set up Ohio as a key contest, where both candidates campaigned extensively and spent large amounts on television advertising. Clinton's victory there will go a long way toward solidifying her margin in the delegate race and reassuring her supporters.

 Clinton's victory in North Carolina continued her sweep through the South, where black voters make up a big share of the Democratic electorate. And her decisive win in Florida, where she took nearly two-thirds of the vote, will net her a large majority of the state's 246 delegates to the Democratic convention — the third-largest delegation after California and New York.

 The wins mean Clinton will significantly expand her already large lead among delegates to this summer's convention, building a margin of roughly 300 delegates over Sanders, without counting the roughly 400 so-called superdelegates who back her — party leaders and elected officials who automatically get convention votes.

 After Tuesday, the math looks increasingly daunting for her rival, who now would need a series of very big victories in big states to catch up with Clinton's growing lead in the delegate race.

 That does not, however, mean she has clinched the nomination. Under the Democrats' rules, which allocate delegates proportionately to each candidate's vote, Clinton probably won't be able to do that until the primary season ends in California in June.

 In the Michigan upset last week, frustration among Midwestern Democrats with some of the free-trade policies Clinton has backed over the years, as well as with the Wall Street institutions whose recklessness helped push the nation into recession in 2007, emerged as a significant liability for the former secretary of State.

 That anger shaped the campaigns in the three Midwestern states. Polls had indicated that all three could have close contests, and after the big miss by pollsters in Michigan, all of whom predicted a Clinton victory, both campaigns were wary of predictions.

 Sanders' attacks on corporate America, particularly on trade, clearly connected with many voters.

 “I believe in his change,” said Sanders supporter Mark Russell, 59, who stopped to vote in the Clintonville neighborhood of Columbus, near Ohio State University, on his way to work at Goodwill Industries.

 “I believe that right now we're run by corporations,” he said. “It's not an even playing field, and it counts against us. I believe that he can do something about that. He's the only one that's really talking in that direction.”

 Yet Sanders' effort to translate that sort of sentiment into votes came up short this time.

 Clinton continues to do well with voters like Tampa resident Zachary Hines, 26, who value her years of preparation.

 “She's the most prepared and experienced candidate to run for president in modern history,” said Hines, who works as a marketing director for a theater company. “I'm very excited to vote for the first woman president.”

 Exit polls suggested voters were more confident in Clinton's agenda, with 77% in Ohio saying her policies were realistic, as opposed to 58% saying the same about Sanders' proposals. The divide was even bigger in Florida, where only 46% of voters expressed confidence that the Sanders agenda was realistic, according to exit polling conducted for the major television networks and the Associated Press.

 Female voters came out in force for Clinton on Tuesday. She won 67% of them in Florida and 58% of them in Ohio, according to the exit poll. She also dominated with nonwhite voters in both states, winning 73% of them in Florida and 63% in Ohio. Seniors supported her by a margin of nearly 4 to 1 in both states.

 Clinton had been eager to avenge a Michigan loss that some operatives attributed to poor strategic decisions and resource deployment by a campaign that had grown complacent after public polls that proved wildly misleading.

 To ensure she did not repeat that defeat, Clinton redoubled her focus on the Midwest.

 The former secretary of State, who has locked up almost every major national union endorsement, mobilized her labor supporters and stepped up her opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership, the trade deal negotiated by President Obama that is reviled by unions. ||||| Photo

 Yes, it’s inevitable. Try to shrug off that Clinton fatigue. Hold your nose, if you have to. The only thing standing between a thuggish narcissist and the White House is the almost-certain Democratic nominee — Hillary Clinton.

 Not-quite-as-Super Tuesday was an unqualified triumph for Clinton, who outperformed polls and expectations across much of the map. Whatever momentum Bernie Sanders had after the upset in Michigan dissipated Tuesday night. Madame secretary cleaned his clock where she had to.

 It was the last chance for Sanders to show that he had a path to the nomination. The math now makes it nearly impossible for him to get the bid, even with a favorable string of states ahead.

 Particularly in Florida — with a Democratic Party of New America demographics — Clinton showed once again that her appeal is far broader than Sanders’s. To catch Clinton, Sanders needed to get beyond his core of young, college-educated whites. If he’d won Ohio and Illinois, where he was competitive, he’d have some wind at his back. He’s a statement candidate now — a strong one, full of integrity.

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 But that doesn’t mean the 74-year-old socialist-lite should get out. He’s done a real service, for the party he only recently joined, and for the country. Clinton is a far better candidate because of him. More than that, the Democratic Party is paying attention to the angry millions in the margins, those who may be tempted by the demagogue who wants to make America white again. Thank Sanders for that. ||||| Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders poised to announce presidential campaign: report Transparency advocate group releases trove of hacked Russian documents Arson suspected at DC restaurant associated with 'Pizzagate' conspiracy MORE took a huge step toward clinching the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday with big victories in the swing states of Florida and Ohio.

 Tuesday’s results also made a November showdown between Clinton and Republican front-runner Donald Trump Donald John TrumpStone: 'I’ve never had any discussion' with Trump about a pardon White House: Trump will move forward on wall 'with or without' Dems Pelosi after Stone indictment: 'What does Putin have on the president'? MORE more likely after the businessman won Florida’s winner-take-all GOP primary.

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 The blemish for Trump was a loss in Ohio, where the state’s governor, John Kasich, won his first victory of the 2016 campaign — a win he desperately needed.

 Still, Trump took home all 99 of Florida’s GOP delegates and in the process ended rival Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioThe Hill's 12:30 Report — Stone indicted in Mueller probe | Says he's not guilty | Day 35 of shutdown | FAA briefly halts flights into LaGuardia A crowded 2020 presidential primary field calls for ranked choice voting Omar, Tlaib come under fire from GOP MORE’s presidential campaign in his home state. The senator suspended his campaign shortly after 8 p.m., telling his supporters that it “is not God’s plan that I be president in 2016 or maybe ever.”

 But the biggest victories went to Clinton. The former secretary of State’s defeat of Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSanders poised to announce presidential campaign: report On The Money: Trump agrees to end shutdown without wall funding | Senate quickly clears short-term funding measure | House to vote tonight | Federal workers could get back pay within days | Dems take victory lap Shutdown ends without funding for Trump’s border wall MORE in Florida was widely expected, but her prize in Ohio was far from a sure thing.

 “This was another super Tuesday for our campaign,” Clinton told cheering supporters in Florida. “Thank you, Florida, thank you, North Carolina and thank you, Ohio.”

 Clinton then pivoted to Trump, criticizing his call for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country and his call for the use of torture against suspected terrorists.

 “When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong,” Clinton said.

 “We should be bringing down barriers, not building walls,” she added. “You know, to be great, we can’t be small. We can’t lose what made America great in the first place.”

 In Florida, Clinton won 65 percent of the vote compared to 33 percent for Sanders, with 99 percent of precincts counted.

 The Sunshine State was the biggest prize of the night for Democrats, awarding 214 pledged delegates, and Clinton’s win means she will pad her already substantial delegate lead.

 The Sanders campaign upset Clinton last week in Michigan and had hoped to steal another state away in Ohio with its anti-trade, anti-Wall Street message.

 The results in the two swing states will do much to calm Democrats who have been unnerved by Sanders’s successes against Clinton, which had given ammunition to critics calling her a flawed candidate.

 Clinton on Tuesday also added a victory in North Carolina, continuing a sweep of the South built on her popularity among African-American voters. She won in Illinois as well.

 The wins move Clinton closer to winning the 2,383 delegates she needs to win the Democratic race, and could put her all but out of reach for the Vermont senator.

 By late Tuesday evening, Clinton had 1,410 delegates, according to The Associated Press, which includes unbound superdelegates, and she was likely to add to that tally by the end of the night by winning delegates in the Missouri primary, which remained too close to call.

 Things weren’t quite as clear-cut on the Republican side, though Trump underlined his status as the party’s front-runner with a significant win in Florida and victories in North Carolina and Illinois.

 Trump won about 46 percent of the Florida vote, compared to 27 percent for Rubio. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzA crowded 2020 presidential primary field calls for ranked choice voting Bennet: Washington politics have been 'tyrannized' by Freedom Caucus, Cruz NASA space center asking employees to volunteer to clean bathrooms during shutdown MORE had 17 percent.

 "We have something happening that actually makes the Republican Party the biggest political story anywhere in the world," the celebrity billionaire said in Palm Beach, Fla.

 "Millions of people are coming out to vote. ... I think we're going to have a great victory."

 The Florida result was a stunning defeat for Rubio that will raise questions about his political future. The senator decided against running for reelection to pursue his White House bid and will now return to the upper chamber as a lame duck.

 In his speech to supporters but without naming Trump, Rubio decried the nasty rhetoric and personal insults that have dominated Republicans’ 2016 campaign.

 “While this may not have been the year for a hopeful or optimistic message about our future, I still remain hopeful and optimistic about America,” he said. “I ask the American people, do not give in to fear. Do not give into frustration.”

 Missouri also hosted a GOP contest Tuesday but remained too close to call definitively with nearly 100 percent of the vote in on both sides. Both Clinton and Trump were ahead by less than 1 percentage point. Sanders and Cruz, who was right behind Trump, could both call for recounts.

 Kasich’s win in Ohio was good news for those who want to prevent Trump from clinching the nomination before the party’s national convention this July in Cleveland.

 Trump would need to win about 60 percent of the remaining delegates to get to the 1,237 he needs.

 Cruz has been calling for the other candidates to drop out of the race to give him an opportunity to go after Trump one-on-one.

 On Tuesday, it appeared he would have to wait longer for such a scenario after Kasich’s win in Ohio.

 Updated at 1:44 a.m. |||||

Write a summary.

– Bernie Sanders didn't lose the Democratic race on Tuesday night, but with big wins for Hillary Clinton in Ohio and at least three other states, he lost the momentum from his surprise win in Michigan and fell further behind in the delegate count. Analysts say that although the senator plans to keep his campaign going, Clinton could now be impossible to catch. A roundup of coverage: Sanders is now more than 300 pledged delegates behind Clinton, which may be an insurmountable margin, reports Politico, which describes his candidacy as a "teetering Jenga pile of youth support, momentum, and access to online millions"—now minus the "buttressing block" of Ohio. Tuesday night's results were a huge setback for Sanders, who had been counting on wins in the Midwest to keep his candidacy viable, reports the New York Times, which notes that Clinton's delegate lead over Sanders is about triple the size of the lead Obama had over her at this stage in 2008. The Washington Post also declares the race all but over for Sanders, calling Ohio a "back-breaking blow" that makes it nearly impossible for him to catch Clinton—though he clearly "has both the determination and the resources to keep fighting," and his campaign has already "accomplished far more than almost anyone anticipated." Sanders would need a "series of very big victories in big states" to catch up at this point, the Los Angeles Times reports, but because of how delegates are allocated, Clinton is still unlikely to clinch the nomination before California votes in June. In her primary night speech, Clinton praised Sanders' "vigorous campaign," but her focus was Donald Trump. "When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn't make him strong, it makes him wrong," she said, per the Hill. "We should be bringing down barriers, not building walls," she continued. "You know, to be great, we can't be small. We can't lose what made America great in the first place." Sanders probably can't win, but he should definitely stay in the race, writes Timothy Egan in a New York Times op-ed, praising the Vermont senator for energizing young voters, forcing the Democratic party to pay attention to the "angry millions in the margins," and pulling Clinton to the left on issues like trade deals and Wall Street. By staying in the race, Sanders' ideas "will shape every part of the party platform, which will give Clinton what she lacks: a clear message," Egan writes. "Eventually, he'll endorse the woman he influenced, and Democrats will be the better for it."