Mandatory evacuation orders came into effect in parts of Burbank Sept. 1, as fire crews battled a fast-growing brush fire. (Los Angeles Fire Department via Storyful)

 A fast-spreading brush fire north of Los Angeles forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes Friday and Saturday as firefighters struggled against triple-digit temperatures and erratic winds to contain the blaze, officials said.

 Within a day, the wildfire — named the La Tuna Fire for its origin in La Tuna Canyon to the north of Burbank — had grown to cover more than 5,000 acres, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. In all, about 300 homes in Burbank, 250 homes in Glendale and 180 homes in Los Angeles were under evacuation as of Saturday afternoon.

 As of Saturday, the fire was 10 percent contained. Although no injuries were reported, one home had been destroyed, the fire department said.

 “This continues to be a very dynamic fire,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph M. Terrazas said at a news conference Saturday. “The weather conditions are somewhat stable, but that could change at any moment.”

 [San Francisco smashes all-time high, hits 106 degrees]

 Terrazas added he was confident the fire had burned “well above” 5,000 acres as of Saturday afternoon, but he was not able to give a fixed acreage. Earlier in the day, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed that by acreage, the blaze was the largest in the city’s history.

 Fire officials said erratic wind and weather were posing the greatest challenges to extinguishing the fire. Authorities were particularly concerned about how quickly the blaze could spread in the area’s canyons.

 “This is a slow burning, ‘backing’ fire (meaning it burns down hill) and we have resources at the base of the hills to defend homes,” fire spokeswoman Margaret Stewart said in a statement. “When the fire encounters a canyon, it can accelerate and burn uphill.”

 Video taken Saturday morning near La Tuna Canyon Road, over the hills to the north of Burbank, showed flames and heavy smoke.

 The La Tuna Fire was first reported about 1:30 p.m. Friday as a small, one-acre vegetation fire south of Interstate 210 near Burbank. Although firefighters quickly extinguished the bulk of that fire, high winds caused embers to jump across the highway, sparking a spot fire north of I-210, Stewart said.

 Within a few hours, more than 250 firefighters from multiple agencies had been dispatched to the fire, which had grown to 500 acres and shut down a portion of I-210.

 By 9 p.m. Friday, the fire had tripled in size to 1,500 acres. Authorities soon ordered mandatory evacuations, street by street, for neighborhoods in Burbank closest to Verdugo Mountain Park. A surreal scene unfolded in Burbank as bright flames could be seen coming over the hilltops to the north of the city.

 @BurbankPD helicopter TFO took this photo a few minutes ago from high above #Burbank. #LaTunaFire pic.twitter.com/mQ42ZKfzd7 — Burbank Police (@BurbankPD) September 2, 2017

 Nearly 200 homes in Burbank were evacuated late Friday, with police officers going door to door throughout the night to ensure residents had left the area. Police continued to enforce new mandatory evacuation orders throughout Saturday.

 Just before midnight, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported that the La Tuna Fire was burning in four directions, including down over the hills toward Burbank and north through the La Tuna Canyon above I-210. The fire’s “erratic” spread was “driven by strong, gusting winds,” the agency said.

 #LaTunaFire General burn area of fire +5,000 acres 10% contained 1 house lost Detailed evac map pending List here https://t.co/YrRAiGk9Tv pic.twitter.com/KduKAoUzdJ — LAFD (@LAFD) September 2, 2017

 California has been experiencing a severe heat wave, expected to last through Labor Day.

 Carol Smith, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Los Angeles Times that a combination of conditions were working against firefighters: temperatures of up to 106 degrees, 50 mph gusts of wind and unstable air.

 “It just really stokes the fire,” Smith told the newspaper. “I mean, when it’s hot and the gusty winds, it’s been a bad mix of different things.”

 As of Saturday afternoon, more than 500 firefighters were on scene, and a large portion of I-210 remained closed. Officials cautioned residents in the area to stay indoors and avoid outdoor activities because of heavy smoke. Police expect mandatory evacuation orders to remain in place into Sunday afternoon.

 “Despite fire size, we remain confident in the plan in place and the work all firefighters at the incident are doing in defending property and lives,” the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

 1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Photos of a fast-spreading wildfire burning north of Los Angeles View Photos The Los Angeles Fire Department has issued a mandatory evacuation order for residents in Burbank, Calif., as a raging brush fire threatens their homes. The fire north of Los Angeles also has shut down both sides of key freeway for holiday weekend travel. Caption The Los Angeles Fire Department has issued a mandatory evacuation order for residents in Burbank, Calif., as a raging brush fire threatens their homes. The fire north of Los Angeles also has shut down both sides of key freeway for holiday weekend travel. Sept. 2, 2017 The La Tuna Canyon fire burns at night in the hills above Burbank, Calif. The brush fire, which quickly burned 3,000 acres, was being driven by heat-wave temperatures and high winds. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

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 Wildfires used to be rare in the Great Plains. They’ve more than tripled in 30 years. ||||| (CNN) California Gov. Jerry Brown issued a state of emergency for Los Angeles County on Sunday due to the ongoing La Tuna brush fire near Burbank.

 Since the fire started Friday, it has burned more than 5,895 acres , forced residents to evacuate from their homes, shut down an interstate and sent massive plumes of smoke into the air.

 Brown's declaration will allow state personnel and equipment to be used in fighting the fires, at the direction of the California Office of Emergency Services.

 But there were signs Sunday night that emergency personnel were beginning to drive back the blaze.

 More than 1,000 firefighters from the immediate region and throughout California are battling the fire, which has destroyed three homes and damaged one other, Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas said during a press conference Sunday. Burbank is in Los Angeles County.

 There are 206 fire engines and nine helicopters dedicated to fighting the fire, Terrazas said.

 Strong winds

 The fire started Friday and tore through the La Tuna Canyon Park area of the Verdugo Mountains, the Los Angeles Fire Department said

 Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a declaration of local emergency on Saturday that instructed all city agencies to "take all necessary steps to protect life and property in the area" affected by what is now the largest fire the city has ever seen.

 "The La Tuna Canyon Fire is an emergency that requires all available resources to protect our residents and keep our homes and other structures out of harm's way," Garcetti said in a statement.

 Garcetti said Saturday that 300 homes in Burbank and 180 homes in Los Angeles were under evacuation orders.

 There were four reports of injuries: two people suffered dehydration and two had minor burns.

 "We do not have this fire contained," Garcetti said, but officials have "identified ways we can bring this fire to rest" in coming days.

 Rain on Sunday was a mixed blessing, Terraza said, as it brought much needed moisture, but also strong winds that have blown the fire around.

 On the fire line of #LaTunaFire #LAFD continuing full ops through the night to include @LAFDAirOps 📷Peter Sanders pic.twitter.com/AcMOcOEvw0 — LAFD Talk (@LAFDtalk) September 2, 2017

 At least 100 firefighters who were sent to Houston to help in Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts were heading back to California to help with the fire, Terrazas said at the Saturday news conference.

 According to Terrazas, it is the largest fire, by acreage, that the Los Angeles city area has ever seen.

 Hot temperatures and high winds on Friday in the Los Angeles area contributed to the "large plume growth and extreme fire behavior," the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles said.

 Update: still very erratic Fire behavior on the #LaTunaFire as winds continue to change, Fire has entered #Burbank city limits. #Breaking pic.twitter.com/ztMKxelGAI — Bernie Deyo (@EPN473) September 1, 2017

 "These weather factors will result in the potential for rapid fire spread in the warned area through at least Saturday evening," the weather service said.

 There are currently more than 12,000 firefighters battling 19 wildfires across the state of California, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. |||||

Write a summary.

– Houston is underwater, but Los Angeles is on fire as the largest wildfire in its history burned at least 5,000 acres and forced hundreds of people to evacuate amid scorching temperatures and unpredictable winds of up to 50mph. "The La Tuna Canyon Fire is an emergency that requires all available resources to protect our residents and keep our homes and other structures out of harm's way," LA Mayor Eric Garcetti said Saturday, per CNN. The fire, which broke out Friday near Burbank, is about 10% contained, notes the Washington Post. At least 100 firefighters who had been sent to help Houston in the Harvey aftermath were being recalled home.


Article:

“Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my house—you must die!” shouted United States Congressman Daniel Sickles on February 27, 1859, as he shot Philip Barton Key, U.S. attorney and son of the author of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” with three different pistols in broad daylight in direct view of the White House.

 A few days earlier, Sickles had received an anonymous letter. He’d heard whispers of a yearlong affair between his friend, Key, and his considerably younger wife, Teresa, but the letter described it in detail. It pointed Sickles to an address on Fifteenth Street where neighbors had noticed a man who did not reside there frequently tying a string or ribbon on the door. Sickles sent a trusted friend to the address and he witnessed a woman fitting Teresa’s description entering through the rear door, and a man resembling Key entering through the front. They would stay about an hour. Key was a widower whose appetite for gambling, horses, and women was well-known. It was later revealed he would watch the house from a club across the street. With his opera glasses, he would wait for Teresa to appear in the second-floor window, ready for him to join her.

 As Key lay dying on the ground, Sickles snatched up those same opera glasses and delivered himself to the attorney general’s office, where he confessed. He stopped by his house on the way to jail and emerged with his wife’s wedding band, which she had accepted at just sixteen years old, and the diamond earrings he had given her on their wedding night. Daniel Sickles would hardly be the first person to commit a crime of passion, but for his very public act of murder he would become a unique legal case—the first American to successfully plead temporary insanity as his defense.

 The congressman quickly became the charismatic center of a sensational trial. President James Buchanan would send a letter of support to the prisoner, and the many members of the House and Senate who visited him found Sickles not behind bars but instead holding forth in the head jailer’s quarters, his dog by his side. The congressman spoke with abandon to journalists, who reprinted his courtroom testimony and personal commentary word-for-word. Teresa visited often, as did her clergyman, who implored Sickles to return her wedding ring. He eventually acquiesced—his twenty-two-year-old wife could have the ring, but not his forgiveness.

 The court of public opinion, however, was quick to forgive Sickles. “The public of the United States will justify him in killing the man who dishonored his bed,” mused an editorial in the March 12 issue of Harper’s. This wasn’t England, where the cuckolded husband might sue, but America, where murdering his wife’s lover was considered “the most natural revenge.” The New York Times agreed, and criticized its nemesis, the New-York Daily Tribune, for condemning the killing. No one believed a jury would, or should, find Sickles guilty of first-degree murder.

 The trial began on Monday, April 4, 1859. One of Sickles seven defense attorneys, John Graham, gave an opening statement that lasted for two days, rewarding the public’s support of his client with unprecedented courtroom drama. He meticulously laid out the evils of adultery, quoting Shakespeare’s Othello on the agony of discovering the (supposed) infidelity of one’s wife. Graham made a clear distinction between murder, which is committed with malice aforethought, and manslaughter, which is committed in “a state of heat…the heat of passion that ought to be, but is not, controlled.” Uncontrollable passion, therefore, failed to “place a man within the pale of accountability to the criminal law.” He pressed again and again on the mental condition of the defendant (“Is it no matter how a man becomes insane; is he insane, this is the question?) and the moral heinousness of the crime. The court had to adjourn and return the next day to hear his conclusion:

 It may be tragical to shed human blood; but I will always maintain that there is no tragedy about slaying the adulterer; his crime takes away the catcher of the occurrence….the fact is now proved in this case that Philip Barton Key seduced the wife of Daniel E. Sickles, and that for that, in a transport of frenzy, Daniel E. Sickles sent him to his long account.

 A version of the insanity plea had found contemporary success in the English court system—a 1724 case, in which a British lord was wounded in a murder attempt, established that in order to be exempted from justice, the defendant must be “totally deprived of his understanding and memory, and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, a brute, or a wild beast.”

 But in the United States, it had never succeeded as a defense for the charge of murder. If the plea meant Sickles would walk out of the courtroom a free man, spectators were ready to accept it. After all, Key’s death wasn’t really Sickles’ fault—immorality begets immorality. In his closing arguments, another defense attorney, James T. Brady, argued that Sickles was “the avenger of the invaded household,” driven to madness by a public scandal. He declared the congressman’s murderous act “justifiable homicide” committed during a “temporary state of insanity.” He cast the murder not as the work of a “wild beast” but as self-defense against dishonor:

 It is claimed that a man is not permitted by law to do anything for the protection and vindication of his honor…he can have the relations between him and his wife made valueless to him by the ruthless hand of the adulterer; he can have his name made a byword and a reproach; and he can have his wife reduced to a thing of shame—and cannot raise his hand to prevent all this. He can have what more?

 Brady claimed that the law as it stood had failed Sickles and he shouldn’t be punished for that failure. A higher power would surely agree, he continued. “We know that the Creator did not intend that homicide should be entirely excluded from the hand of man.” Brady repeatedly invoked the commandments of the Bible: “None of us have forgotten the great command of our maker ‘Thou shall not kill’ any more than we have forgotten that other command ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’”

 District Attorney Robert Ould told a different story: the defendant “had come to that carnival of blood fully prepared.” The prosecution relied on a far more traditional tack, arguing that premeditation stood in stark contrast to the defense’s claim of temporary insanity. Sickles didn’t display any erratic behavior when he received the anonymous letter. Indeed, he’d discussed his intent to seek retribution with a friend, who would also witness the murder from mere feet away. The district attorney also wondered why Sickles, upon spotting Key so very close to his own home on a warm day, thought to put on a heavy overcoat, and put multiple pistols in its many pockets. It seemed a little too convenient that “[Sickles] was a walking magazine [of firearms].”

 But the prosecutor’s words were no match for Sickles’ own courtroom theatrics. Taking the stand, Robert J. Walker, who had been President James K. Polk’s secretary of the treasury, described his old friend on the day of the murder as emitting “an agony of unnatural and unearthly sounds,” fearing “if it lasted much longer he must become insane.” Halfway through Walker’s testimony, Sickles burst into tears and it took three men, including his father, to help him leave the courtroom. Harper’s described the scene as deeply affecting, “awakening strong sympathy in the breasts of all who saw him.” That included members of the jury, who shed their own tears during the spectacle.

 The jurors sat through twenty days of arguments, but it took only a half hour for them to reach a verdict. (They would have come out earlier, but one man had asked for time to pray before voting.) The foreman read the words not guilty and the courtroom broke out into applause. As Sickles made his way to a hotel, the crowd formed a caravan, singing as they flanked his carriage.

 The support was short lived. Sickles later told the New York Herald that he had abandoned plans to divorce Teresa, and Harper’s reported that his powerful friends were disappointed. Public opinion soon followed suit, and Sickles, back at home with Teresa, was now as much of an outcast as his wife. In July, the Herald printed an open letter from Sickles explaining that the reconciliation was just another way to maintain an honorable American home. “I can now see plainly enough in the almost universal howl of denunciation with which she is followed to my threshold, the misery and perils from which I have rescued the mother of my child.”

 Sickles’ successful insanity plea lived on, both as a legal defense and in the public’s imagination, earning plenty of other names along the way, including the “Twinkie defense” and the “abuse excuse.” Perhaps no one defined it better than Mark Twain, who published three sketches in 1870 that served as a lengthy critique of the plea:

 And is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the prisoner? Of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane. If he appears nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weeps over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is “not right.” If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease, preoccupied and excited, he is unquestionably insane. Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. There is where the true evil lies.

 More than a hundred years later, Twain’s cry was answered. When John Hinckley, Jr., was found not guilty by reason of insanity after attempting to assassinate President Ronald Regan, Congress passed the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984. The burden of proof shifted from the prosecution to the defense, and remains that way in the majority of states that still accept the plea. (In 1994, the Supreme Court upheld Montana’s abolition of the defense, which is also inadmissible in Idaho, Kansas, and Utah.)

 Daniel Sickles finished his last term in Congress in 1860, and with the war looming, he took to the House of Representatives and declared he’d raised a full brigade and was ready to lead them to victory during the Civil War. He would quickly be promoted from brigadier general to major general, but his proclivity for controversy only continued. At Gettysburg, he defied General Meade’s orders, and he would again resist orders, this time from President Andrew Johnson, during the military command of the occupied Carolinas. (He would lose his leg to a cannonball at Gettysburg; the amputated limb is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, where Sickles once visited it.) When Ulysses S. Grant became president in 1869, Sickles was appointed to be the ambassador to Spain. By that time, Teresa had died from tuberculosis, and Sickles allegedly became the deposed Queen of Spain’s paramour—perhaps the Spanish king proved to be a more understanding husband than Sickles himself. ||||| Sickles's remarkably indulgent parents packed him off to the Manhattan household of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's old librettist, in the hopes that young Dan would get an education there. He certainly did. Before long, he was rumored to have seduced Da Ponte's adopted, married daughter, Maria Cooke Bagioli, and blackmailed her husband. Not so many years later, he would seduce Maria's 15-year-old daughter, Teresa, bringing her before the formidable Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, John J. Hughes, to be married only when she was visibly pregnant.

 These audacious beginnings would set the pattern of Sickles's life. Willful nearly to the point of madness, he was nonetheless able to win over an astonishing number of men and especially women, thanks to his good looks, dashing manner and penchant for grand gestures. Wisely, he decided to become a lawyer, since it was unlikely he would ever go very long without being hauled into court, and as a rogue it was natural that he should join the rogues' own political machine at Tammany Hall. Sickles rose quickly at Tammany, which was not surprising, since he was a good stump speaker and capable of anything. On one occasion, he led a bunch of gang boys in burning the circulars of a rival faction on the floor of a United States post office. Appointed first secretary to the American Legation in London, he distinguished himself by introducing a notorious New York prostitute and madam to Queen Victoria.

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 This was reckless in the extreme -- but Sickles's poor Irish constituents responded by electing him to Congress, where, by the eve of the Civil War, he was a rising young star in the proslavery wing of the Democratic Party. Sickles, a confidant of President James Buchanan, and his beautiful young Teresa cut a wide swath through Washington's social scene. It was here, though, that Sickles's hubris finally got the better of him. His compulsive womanizing drove Teresa into the arms of Philip Barton Key, a handsome young widower who was Washington's district attorney and the son of the author of ''The Star-Spangled Banner.'' The affair -- and its tragic denouement -- is the heart of ''American Scoundrel,'' and Keneally's reconstruction of it is riveting, and filled with foreboding: the naïve young lovers, their secret trysts increasingly obvious to everyone in Washington's small, close society; Sickles thundering around the capital with his usual demonic energy.

 There is an implication here that Sickles deliberately turned a blind eye on the affair at first, hoping to capitalize on Key's considerable political connections. Once this became impossible, Sickles wept and raged impressively -- but took care to obtain a signed, witnessed confession from his poor wife describing herself as ''a wicked woman.'' He then recruited a pair of cronies to help him ambush the unarmed Key on Lafayette Square, and shot his rival three times, deliberately firing the fatal shot as Key lay bleeding on the ground begging for his life. It was the O. J. Simpson case of the time -- and like Simpson, Sickles assembled a legal ''dream team'' that overwhelmed an incompetent public prosecutor. He was acquitted, and briefly became something of a hero. The grieving, penitent Teresa was packed off to a life of purdah with their daughter in a lonely country house where, until her death from tuberculosis at the age of 31, he visited her when he chose, returning in between to his usual dalliances.

 This was a little too coldblooded, and Sickles soon found himself a pariah along with his wife. The war saved him; almost overnight he became a staunch pro-Union man, raising a brigade of volunteers and even insinuating himself into Mary Lincoln's White House salons and séances. Before long, Sickles had his corps -- with predictable results. After the fiasco at Gettysburg, Sickles would be lauded for his bravery, but he would never have a battlefield command again. Instead, he stumped through the world more furiously than ever, as if trying, in Tennessee Williams's phrase, to make up in motion what was lost in space. There followed the ambassadorship; the romp with the former Queen Isabella II of Spain; a fortune snatched from the labyrinthine struggles for control of the Erie Railroad; another term in Congress at the age of 75; even a new, European family.

 Near the end, though, the prey had begun to turn on him. Sickles was bilked out of much of his money by a portrait-painting princess with the unlikely name of Lenott Parlaghy. He lobbied incessantly to rescue his military reputation, even getting himself appointed chairman of the New York State Monuments Commission. Unsurprisingly, some $28,000 of the commission's funds went missing, and for a time it looked as if the 93-year-old Sickles was going to end up in Ludlow Street jail.

 Eventually, Sickles's exploits all come to seem rather monstrous -- even as he was lavishing thousands of dollars upon the art of Princess Parlaghy, for instance, he allowed his own daughter to waste away in poverty and alcoholism -- and the monstrousness makes this a difficult story to tell. Keneally struggles at times. He tries too hard to be fair to his subject in places -- as with the Battle of Gettysburg, although no serious military historian doubts that Sickles's advance was a blunder. A more fruitful line of inquiry might have been to explore what part it played in convincing Lee that the Union defenses could be breached -- thereby tempting him into Pickett's disastrous charge on the third day of the battle.

 However, Keneally's descriptions of the events leading up to and culminating in the murder of Key are spellbinding. They give the story a nearly tragic sweep -- a perspective Keneally underscores by returning regularly to Teresa, wasting away with her daughter while she waits for her husband to visit. Indeed, one wonders at times why Keneally, the author of 21 works of fiction, including ''Schindler's List'' and ''The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,'' did not simply write ''American Scoundrel'' as a novel. The answer probably lies in Sickles himself, who was too lacking in any morally redemptive qualities to rise to the level of tragedy. Instead, Keneally catches him at a telling moment, at the age of 60, returning to set up house in New York after already having estranged himself from a second wife and family: ''No record appeared on those walls of what had been lost, unless it was the well-known photograph of his fibula and tibia, a favorite exhibit on display in the Army Medical Museum in Washington, which in the 19th century was one of the must-see attractions of the capital.'' |||||
What is a summary?

– New York Congressman Daniel Sickles put it simply before killing a friend: "Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my house—you must die!" But the trial that followed was hardly simple and set a vast historic precedent when Sickles became the first American to successfully plead temporary insanity, Lapham's Quarterly reports. On February 27, 1859, Sickles gunned down his friend Philip Barton Key (whose father wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner") in Washington, DC, for having an affair with Sickles' wife. Then came the court case, where one of Sickles' seven lawyers claimed it was manslaughter, not murder, perpetrated in "a state of heat" that put Sickles above "the pale of accountability to the criminal law." He added that it's "no matter how a man becomes insane; is he insane, this is the question?" The district attorney saw it differently, saying Sickles planned the attack and carried three pistols to the crime scene. But public opinion sided with Sickles, as did Harper's and the New York Times. And Sickles' theatricality won over jurors, moving some to tears when he cried during a friend's testimony and had to be escorted from the courtroom. The jury needed just 30 minutes to find him not guilty. In a twist, public opinion turned against Sickles when he made up with his wife, Teresa (who had only cheated on him over his "compulsive womanizing," according to an old Times review of a Sickles biography). And when Sickles became ambassador to Spain, after Teresa's death by tuberculosis, he supposedly hooked up with Spain's deposed queen, Isabella II—who was married at the time. (Read about the diary of a modern killer who's also using the insanity defense.)


The only thing more dramatic than the Lions' 16-13 fourth-quarter win over the Vikings on Thursday was Aretha Franklin's rendition of the national anthem.

 Actually, "dramatic" might not be the best word to use to describe Franklin's performance. "Never-ending" would probably work better after Franklin somehow managed to belt the anthem out for a full four minutes and 35 seconds.

 To put that into perspective, oddsmakers usually expect the national anthem at the Super Bowl to run for roughly two minutes. Franklin doubled that, plus some, and let's just say people on Twitter weren't amused.

 After Franklin was done singing, the jokes started flying.

 There were football jokes.

 Due to the length of Aretha Franklin's national anthem... Both teams have to warm up again. Kick off pushed back half hour #figureitout — D Durkin (@D_Durkin) November 24, 2016 The ref should throw a delay of game flag at Aretha Franklin for this National Anthem. #thanksgivingthursday — AJ Burman (@BurmanAJ) November 24, 2016 Due to Aretha Franklin's national anthem, kickoff for the Vikings Lions game has been pushed back to 4:25 — Jake Berger (@Jake_Berger) November 24, 2016

 There were Colin Kaepernick jokes.

 Kaepernick would've developed arthritis in his knee for kneeling so long if the 49ers were playing while Aretha Franklin sang the anthem — Brock (@BrockOgami) November 24, 2016 If Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the Aretha Franklin version of the National Anthem, he'd need an orthopedic surgeon to stand again. — Dubsism (@Dubsism) November 24, 2016

 There were Thanksgiving jokes.

 I cooked my whole turkey, ate and did the dishes during Aretha Franklin's National Anthem performance. — B. Miller (@BlaiseInKC) November 24, 2016 when aretha franklin started singing the national anthem, we were cutting the turkey. By the time she finished we were opening presents smh — psyche$nelic (@SnelbangTheGoat) November 24, 2016 Turkey's gettin' cold, Aretha. — mike freeman (@mikefreemanNFL) November 24, 2016

 There were presidential jokes.

 I call Aretha Franklin the Abe Lincoln of singing the National Anthem cuz she started four score and seven years ago. — Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) November 24, 2016 Before Aretha Franklin sang the National Anthem

 After Aretha Franklin sang the National Anthem pic.twitter.com/EaMF1CctzB — shauna (@goldengateblond) November 24, 2016

 There were even Johnny Manziel jokes.

 Aretha Franklin had a longer NFL career than Johnny Manziel. — The Fake ESPN (@TheFakeESPN) November 24, 2016 Aretha Franklin's national anthem lasted longer than Johnny Manziel's career — Andre Magaro (@andre_magaro) November 24, 2016

 There was also a time of possesion joke at the end of the first half.

 Time of possession battle is crucial. pic.twitter.com/EZVC53fVeD — NFLonCBS (@NFLonCBS) November 24, 2016

 And a joke about starting a family.

 Bro I got married and had a child and Aretha Franklin still isn't done — netflix & just chill (@JustChillin247) November 24, 2016

 On the other hand, maybe we should stop complaining. The Vikings-Lions halftime show of Andy Grammer sent Twitter on another firestorm.

 This nonsense lasted 30 seconds longer then Aretha. Happy now? pic.twitter.com/LyVYWyUkM4 — Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) November 24, 2016 I'm not thankful for whatever Andy Grammer is doing on my TV... — Ted (@tlschwerz) November 24, 2016 Hasn't Detroit been through enough without subjecting its holidays to Andy Grammer? — Mike Schaefer (@mikejschaefer) November 24, 2016

 After watching Grammer's performance, maybe we shouldn't complain about Aretha.

 Aretha Franklin is pretty far up at the top of the list of folks who can take however long they want with the national anthem. — Dan Graziano (@DanGrazianoESPN) November 24, 2016

 If you missed Franklin's performance, you can see it below. ||||| 😩😂Y'all better let Aretha Franklin sing this National Anthem. No interruptions. Happy Thanksgiving! #MINvsDET #NFL https://t.co/jyoUfv4nwn — Gerren Peterson (@GerrenPeterson) November 24, 2016

 Legendary singer Aretha Franklin has reached a status in her career where she can do no wrong.

 The Queen of Soul has a career spanning six decades. She’s won 20 Grammy Awards. Has a Kennedy Center Honor. And was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 So when Aretha Franklin wants to sing a 5-minute version of the National Anthem, Aretha Franklin sings a 5-minute version of the National Anthem.

 She did just that on Thanksgiving too — performing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Thursday’s Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings game at Ford Field.

 Gregory Shamus/Getty

 Wearing a grey fur coat and a knit Detroit Lions hat, Franklin sat behind a grand piano — which she played throughout the song. She took fans to church in the heartfelt performance — slowing down the song and hanging on nearly every word. (The “flag was still there” — for at least 12 seconds, for example.)

 Franklin is an icon to the city of Detroit — where the sound of Motown was born. So it was no surprise that the crowd at Ford Field were especially in love with Franklin’s National Anthem — breaking into thunderous applause throughout the performance.

 But the Internet had a field day of their own with her rendition.

 “Thankful Aretha Franklin doesn’t sing the Anthem when I pitch,” wrote Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher James Taillon. “Pretty sure I would have to go back to the pen and warm back up #pipesthough.”

 Thankful Aretha Franklin doesn't sing the Anthem when I pitch, pretty sure I would have to go back to the pen and warm back up #pipesthough — Jameson Taillon (@JTaillon19) November 24, 2016

 Watch What Happens Live! host Andy Cohen kept things superficial by complimenting Franklin on her outfit.

 Other fans on Twitter couldn’t get over how long Franklin took — many joking about what they could have done in the meantime.

 I cooked my whole turkey, ate and did the dishes during Aretha Franklin's National Anthem performance. — B. Miller (@BlaiseInKC) November 24, 2016

 Mom: Can u go to the store and buy some milk? Me: I can't the game is about to start Aretha Franklin: I got u fam — Victor Martinez (@fakevmart41) November 24, 2016

 Detroit vs Minnesota time of possession stats Lions: 3 minutes

 Vikings: 0 minutes

 Aretha Franklin: 8 minutes — Kevin Jost (@kjoster19) November 24, 2016

 Bro I got married and had a child and Aretha Franklin still isn't done — juan (@JustChillin247) November 24, 2016

 And it’s a good thing Colin Kaepernick wasn’t around…

 Kaepernick would've developed arthritis in his knee for kneeling so long if the 49ers were playing while Aretha Franklin sang the anthem — Brock (@BrockOgami) November 24, 2016

 Still, the praise for Franklin was pretty unanimous.

 aretha franklin is an absolute icon and the queen of soul, she can go on as long as she wants. #respect pic.twitter.com/tEbhORgS8p — jack (@JackBallou) November 24, 2016

 Aretha Franklin is pretty far up at the top of the list of folks who can take however long they want with the national anthem. — Dan Graziano (@DanGrazianoESPN) November 24, 2016

 Aretha Franklin's been in the biz long enough 2 know what's up. She's like "complain if u want but who's trending, who'll be on the news…" — HopeAndLove (@GoodLife49) November 24, 2016

 Y'all better put some R E S P E C T on Aretha Franklin's national anthem — Jammer 🗣 (@JaMir_Russell) November 24, 2016

 Never change, Aretha. Never change. ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Add a location to your Tweets

 When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| Things to be thankful for on Thanksgiving:

 Friends

 Family

 Health

 Aretha Franklin

 Especially Aretha Franklin.

 Aretha Franklin performs the National Anthem before the Detroit Lions' game Thursday against the Minnesota Vikings in Detroit. Rick Osentoski / AP

 The Queen of Soul — whose family moved to Detroit when she was a young girl almost 70 years ago — settled in at the piano Thursday before the Detroit Lions' game against the Minnesota Vikings and turned "The Star-Spangled Banner" into a 4-minute, 35-second-long church spiritual.

 NFL 2016 Live 1 (00) - Aretha Franklin sings the National Anthem https://t.co/9tjUuAvUNp — ??thinking diehard (@hanae_56_20) November 24, 2016

 And America went nuts.

 NFL 2016 Live 1 (00) - Aretha Franklin sings the National Anthem https://t.co/9tjUuAvUNp — ??thinking diehard (@hanae_56_20) November 24, 2016

 Lol they put Aretha Franklin on the time of possession graphic for her long national anthem. ?? pic.twitter.com/cwPUFmclFE — Markeece Young ?? (@YoungBLKRepub) November 24, 2016

 Before Aretha Franklin sang the National Anthem

 After Aretha Franklin sang the National Anthem pic.twitter.com/EaMF1CctzB — shauna (@goldengateblond) November 24, 2016

 Between Aretha's national anthem and the family member that prays for 45 minutes, we ain't eating until Saturday — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) November 24, 2016

 I'm glad #ArethaFranklin sang an extended version of the National Anthem.. took them to Church ..made them search their hearts????@Iam360WISE — MC HAMMER (@MCHammer) November 24, 2016

 Nobody rushes Aretha. Nobody. We've got all the time. — Michelle Beadle (@MichelleDBeadle) November 24, 2016

 Aretha Franklin had a longer NFL career than Johnny Manziel. — The Fake ESPN (@TheFakeESPN) November 24, 2016

 By no means was it the first time Lady Soul has astonished fans with an unexpected demonstration of her enormous talent and vocal range.

 In 1998, Franklin stepped in at the last minute for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti at the Grammy Awards, and instead of doing her normal thing, she delivered a note-perfect rendition of the aria "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's opera "Turandot" — Pavarotti's signature tune.

 "Nessun Dorma" has since become part of Franklin's own repertoire. She's recorded the aria on an album, and she even performed it again last year in Philadelphia for Pope Francis. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Americans were reminded of one more thing to be thankful for on Thursday: Aretha Franklin. In what caused a "Twitter meltdown," per CBS Sports, Franklin sang the national anthem ahead of the Detroit Lions' game against the Minnesota Vikings and stretched the song into an incredible "4-minute, 35-second-long church spiritual," per NBC News. The national anthem performance at the Super Bowl is typically expected to take about two minutes. One Twitter user joked that "I cooked my whole turkey, ate, and did the dishes" during the performance, while another said it was a wonder Franklin didn't get a delay of game penalty. At one point in the game, CBS even included Franklin in a graphic showing time of possession on the field. But fans at the stadium were thrilled, applauding several times throughout the performance, per People. The Lions went on to win the game 16-13.


Sharing his own wanted picture on a social networking site landed one man in jail.

 Anthony J. Lescowitch Jr., 35, of Drifton, was wanted by Freeland police for aggravated assault and other charges since Nov. 27, 2013. Police posted his picture on the department's Facebook account on Monday, hoping to track him down with community help.

 Multiple people shared the information on their own pages to assist police but, to the surprise of officers, so did Lescowitch.

 Officers said about three minutes after they posted the picture, Lescowitch shared the information on his own page to mock police.

 Posing as a female on Facebook, an officer began to converse with Lescowitch about his wanted picture. The two talked back and forth for about 30 minutes, with police gathering key information that eventually led to Lescowitch's arrest, police said.

 The officer then asked Lescowitch to meet at an undisclosed location and Lescowitch agreed, police said.

 However when Lescowitch arrived, police were waiting and took him into custody without incident, police said.

 Lescowitch was one of four people charged after a man was assaulted July 14, 2013 during an argument. Court papers filed Nov. 27 said Lescowitch was wanted for hitting the victim in the head. The victim fell to the street, was knocked out and robbed while incapacitated. His wallet, which contained $53 and an ATM card, were among the items taken, police wrote. The victim's ATM card was later used to withdraw $100, according to an affidavit filed by Officer Denna Krammes, who investigated the case.

 According to court papers, Lescowitch, who was also wanted by Luzerne County Adult Probation, was arraigned this morning by Magisterial District Judge Martin Kane, Wilkes-Barre, who set bail at $25,000. Lescowitch was unable to post bail and was taken to jail.

 Others charged in the incident are:

 > Heather Mumie, 29, White Haven, two counts of robbery and one count of recklessly endangering another person.

 > Clayton R. Spohr, 32, McAdoo, two counts of robbery and one count each access device fraud, receiving stolen property, theft and reckless endangerment, both in county court.

 > Janine K. Brotzman, 30, Freeland, reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct. Brotzman awaits a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Michael Dotzel on Wednesday in Wilkes-Barre. ||||| FREELAND — If you’re wanted, posting a police department’s mugshot of yourself on your Facebook profile could shorten life as a fugitive.

 That’s just what happened to Anthony James Lescowitch, who police alleged posted the photo to taunt authorities. His life as a fugitive ended 45 minutes later when undercover officers took him into custody, Freeland police announced, fittingly enough, on the department’s Facebook page.

 The Freeland Police Department posted a photo of Lescowitch at 9:19 p.m. Monday, noting that Lescowitch, 35, was wanted for aggravated assault and numerous other charges. The post asked that anyone knowing Lescowitch’s whereabouts to call police or 911.

 Less than two hours later, Freeland police posted another photo of Lescowitch, this time with the caption: “CAPTURED!!!!!! SHARES OUR STATUS ON FACEBOOK ABOUT HIMSELF, CAPTURED 45 MINUTES LATER.”

 Police said they noticed Lescowitch shared their post about him on his Facebook page minutes after they posted it on theirs, and he mocked police in his post as well.

 So, an undercover officer used a Facebook profile of a fictitious attractive woman to engage in online conversation with Lescowitch through Facebook for about a half hour, pretending to be interested in meeting him and gathering key information about him.

 Lescowitch, of Freeland, initially declined an offer to meet for a drink, but when the officer asked him where he was and said, “The least you can do is come out and have a cigarette with me,” Lescowitch agreed, police said.

 Sure enough, when undercover officers pulled up in a car at the location Lescowitch specified, he came out and was promptly arrested without incident.

 Freeland police said they wanted Lescowitch for an assault back in the summer, and he had been ducking them since charges were filed in November. He was also wanted by Luzerne County Probation. As of Tuesday, he was jailed at Luzerne County Correctional Facility in lieu of $25,000 bail, with a preliminary hearing set for 8 a.m. Jan. 29 before District Judge William Feissner in Freeland.

 Like and follow Freeland police on Facebook at www.facebook.com/freelandpolice.

 Like and follow The Times Leader on Facebook at www.facebook.com/timesleader. ||||| A Pennsylvania fugitive has been arrested following a social media overshare. The Freeland Police Department Monday night posted to their official Facebook page a photo of Anthony James Lescowitch, 35, along with a bulletin stating he was wanted for aggravated assault. Lescowitch several minutes later reposted the release to his own Facebook profile, commenting, “lol i f--n love it A----E,” in an apparent taunt to law enforcement.

 Freeland police got the last laugh, less than two hours later again posting Lescowitch's wanted photo, this time with the caption: "CAPTURED!!!!!! SHARES OUR STATUS ON FACEBOOK ABOUT HIMSELF, CAPTURED 45 MINUTES LATER"

 After seeing Lescowitch’s brazen boast, undercover officers used a fake Facebook profile purporting to belong to an attractive women and engaged Lescowitch in virtual conversation, according to The Times Leader. Though the foolish fugitive declined to meet the “woman” for a drink, he allegedly agreed to come out and have a cigarette.

 Lescowitch was arrested after cops swarmed the spot where he'd arranged a rendezvous with his fictitious friend.

 Lescowitch was arraigned Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct, aggravated assault, harassment, reckless endangerment, theft and criminal mischief. He was jailed at the Luzerne County Prison after being unable to post 10 percent of $25,000 bail. Lescowitch is next due in court Jan. 29 for a preliminary hearing.

 Contact Alex Wigglesworth at 215-854-2305 or awigglesworth@philly.com. Follow @phila_lex on Twitter.

 Contact the Breaking News Desk at 215-854-2443; BreakingNewsDesk@philly.com. Follow @phillynews on Twitter. |||||

Write a summary.

– Note to those wanted by police: If your goal is not to get caught, it's probably not a good idea to "share" your mugshot on Facebook after the police department posts it. That's what Anthony James Lescowitch did Monday, police say; not surprisingly, the move led to the Pennsylvania man's arrest. The Freeland Police Department initially posted Lescowitch's mugshot asking anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts to alert authorities. Lescowitch then shared the mugshot and mocked police on his Facebook page ... and was arrested 45 minutes later. Lescowitch was wanted on multiple charges, including aggravated assault, that date back to the summer, but he's been evading authorities since charges were filed in November. After seeing his Facebook post (which he shared within three minutes of the original post, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune, and which included the commentary "lol i f--n love it A----E," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer) an undercover officer posed as a "fictitious attractive woman," as the Times Leader puts it, who wanted to meet up with Lescowitch. After about 30 minutes, Lescowitch told "her" where he would be; cops arrived, and he was taken into custody. (Click for another tale of dumb criminals.)


Write an article based on this summary:

– The class of 2012 entered a tough jobs market buckling under an average debt load of $29,400, according to the annual report from the Institute for College Access and Success. That's up from an average $26,600 in 2011, and the rise can be blamed on rising tuition fees combined with stagnant family incomes. The struggling economy is a "double-edged sword in many ways because (students) and their parents have fewer resources to pay for college costs, which may lead them to take on more debt," the institute's research director tells USA Today. "And then they're entering a down economy where it's hard to find a good job that allows them to repay the debt." A recent study found that parents now cover an average 27% of college costs, down from 37% just three years ago. The institute's report, however, found huge variation in the debt loads from state to state and college to college, with graduates at some institutions carrying an average of $50,000 in debt while others had an average less than a tenth of that, the New York Times reports. Student debt tended to be highest in Eastern states, with Delaware grads the most indebted at an average of $34,000 each. New Mexico graduates had the lowest debt; an average of $18,000. But the class of 2012 isn't the most indebted graduating class in history: That dubious honor goes to the class of 2013.

The report came a day after the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it would regulate large loan servicers like Sallie Mae — companies that do not lend the money in the first place, but take over the management of the loans — in the $1.2 trillion student debt market. The federal bureau, created after the 2008 financial crisis, already oversees lenders, but it recently reported that people with student debts are often tripped up by the loan servicers, particularly when they seek to change repayment terms.

 The Institute for College Access and Success estimated that of the students who earned bachelor’s degrees in the United States in 2011-12, 71 percent had student loans, and the average borrower had $29,400 in debt, compared with 68 percent and $23,450 four years earlier. The group derived the figures from an annual survey of more than 1,000 colleges and a federal government survey of former students conducted every four years.

 The numbers are skewed somewhat by for-profit colleges, which award about 6 percent of bachelor’s degrees, and where students are much more likely to borrow money, and borrow far more on average. Excluding for-profit schools, the institute reported that 68 percent of graduates had student debt, averaging $27,850; a recent report by the College Board, using different methodology, put those figures at 60 percent and $26,500.

 The institute’s report lists some of the colleges where students borrow the most and the least, based on the college survey, but cautions that some colleges that did not take part in the survey might have made those rosters. Nearly all for-profit colleges did not take part. The high-debt private colleges listed are concentrated in the Northeast, while half of the high-debt public colleges are state schools in Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

 The institute also posted college-specific figures on Wednesday in a searchable online database. It shows two private colleges, Anna Maria College and Wheelock College, both in Massachusetts, with more than 80 percent of graduates having student loans, and the highest average debt per borrower, around $49,000, among colleges that provided figures. At two other private schools, Becker College in Massachusetts and Marylhurst University in Oregon, average debt was a few thousand dollars lower, but there were more borrowers — more than 90 percent of their graduates had debts. ||||| Antwan Williams, a senior at Roosevelt High School, fills out a college enrollment application at his school in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013. The schools was hosting a "sit-in" to get high school students who might not otherwise go to college to apply. (Photo: Susan Walsh, AP) Story Highlights That's up from the $26,600 debt held by 2011 graduates

 Rising tuition, stagnant family incomes contribute to need to borrow

 Students from Delaware graduated with the highest average debt

 The average student debt load continues to rise as new data show the Class of 2012 graduated college with an average debt of close to $30,000.

 The $29,400 last year's graduates hold in student loans is up from an average debt load of $26,600 held by 2011 graduates, according to an annual report from the Project on Student Debt at The Institute for College Access and Success.

 While colleges are raising tuition, families' incomes are still suffering from the effects of the recession and remain flat — both factors are increasing students' need to borrow to attend school, says Debbie Cochrane, research director at The Institute for College Access and Success.

 "Rising tuition and high tuition are certainly a contributor to increasing student debt, but it's far from the full picture," she says. "Family incomes and families' own ability to contribute to college costs has just been stagnant."

 Sallie Mae's "How America Pays for College" study out earlier this year found parents' income and savings are covering 27% of college costs, compared with 37% in 2010.

 "The post-recession reality is (parents) don't have the income and savings," Sarah Ducich, senior vice president of public policy at Sallie Mae, told USA TODAY in July. "It's not that they're not willing to stretch. It's that they don't think they have the money to do that."

 Plus, many graduates are still having difficulty finding jobs that pay enough to cover student loan payments, Cochrane says.

 "The down economy has really been a double-edged sword in many ways because (students) and their parents have fewer resources to pay for college costs, which may lead them to take on more debt," she says. "And then they're entering a down economy where it's hard to find a good job that allows them to repay the debt."

 This year's Project on Student Debt numbers include data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, which comes out every four years. It gives a more comprehensive picture of student debt, because it includes debt loads for students who went to for-profit colleges, where more students often graduate with debt and graduate with higher debt, Cochrane says.

 To provide individual state and college data, The Project on Student Debt also collects data from colleges that volunteer the information, and few for-profit colleges participate, Cochrane says.

 Students from Delaware graduated with the most debt — an average of $33,649 — while students in South Dakota were the most likely to graduate with debt, at 78% of graduates, the data show. South Dakota's average debt is $25,121.

 While most students take out federal loans, a fifth hold private loans, the data show. Private loans have been known to be more difficult for borrowers to manage and have less flexible repayment plans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's annual student loan ombudsman report out in October reported that students with private student loans in particular have difficulty enrolling in alternative repayment plans; private loan servicers also often allocate payments to maximize late fees and pay off low-interest loans first rather than costlier high-interest loans.

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1cXGady |||||


Write a summary based on this article:

Ben Affleck took to his Facebook page Tuesday afternoon to share that he had been in rehab.

 The actor said he'd completed treatment for alcohol addiction, which was the "first of many steps being taken towards a positive recovery."

 He mentioned his family and three kids several times in the short statement and talked about his estranged wife, Jennifer Garner, as his "co-parent." The 44-year-old said Garner has "supported me and cared for our kids as I've done the work I set out to do."

 The star and producer in the upcoming The Batman movie noted that he's dealt with addiction in the past and that it's an issue he "will continue to confront." He also went to rehab in 2001 for alcohol abuse. ||||| Ben Affleck Completes Rehab

 Ben Affleck Completes Rehab

 Breaking News

 Ben Affleck announced he's just completed a stint in rehab.

 Sources tell us he was at a facility almost immediately after the Oscars 2 weeks ago.

 Ben says he took it upon himself to get help because he had renewed problems with alcohol abuse. A source familiar with the situation says the problem has been going on "a long time."

 It's not Ben's first time in rehab. He went to Promises in Malibu back in 2001 for alcohol abuse.

 There have been reports he was reconciling with Jennifer Garner and she was dropping the divorce, but our sources say that is not true.

 Ben says, "I'm lucky to have the love of my family and friends, including my co-parent, Jen, who has supported me and cared for our kids as I've done the work I've set out to do." ||||| Ben Affleck revealed, in a Facebook post on Tuesday, that he recently completed a stint in rehab for alcohol addiction.

 “I have completed treatment for alcohol addiction; something I’ve dealt with in the past and will continue to confront,” he wrote on Facebook. Affleck checked himself into rehab in 2001 as well.

 “I want to live life to the fullest and be the best father I can be. I want my kids to know there is no shame in getting help when you need it, and to be a source of strength for anyone out there who needs help but is afraid to take the first step,” he continued. “I’m lucky to have the love of my family and friends, including my co-parent, Jen, who has supported me and cared for our kids as I’ve done the work I set out to do. This was the first of many steps being taken towards a positive recovery.”

 In the Facebook post, Affleck said he’s “lucky to have the love of … co-parent, Jen.” He and wife Jennifer Garner separated in 2015, but have not formally divorced yet. The two have three children together: two daughters and one son. Affleck recently exited as director of the Batman standalone film, but will still star in and produce the highly-anticipated superhero tentpole. Matt Reeves has since taken over directing duties.

 Affleck’s last directorial effort, the gangster pic “Live by Night,” flopped, leaving Warner Bros. — the studio behind the period film — with a $75 million loss.

 Syfy also recently canceled the sci-fi thriller “Incorporated,” which Affleck executive produced with longtime friend and business partner Matt Damon and Jennifer Todd.

 Before he dons the cape and cowl in “The Batman,” the actor will next play the Dark Knight in “Justice League,” which hits theaters on Nov. 17.

 POPULAR ON VARIETY: |||||

– "I want my kids to know there is no shame in getting help when you need it, and to be a source of strength for anyone out there who needs help but is afraid to take the first step," Ben Affleck writes in a Facebook post disclosing a recent stint in rehab for alcohol addiction. Affleck, who also went to rehab in 2001 for alcohol abuse, says the issue is one that he has "dealt with in the past and will continue to confront," Mashable reports. "I'm lucky to have the love of my family and friends, including my co-parent, Jen, who has supported me and cared for our kids as I've done the work I set out to do," Affleck writes. "This was the first of many steps being taken towards a positive recovery." Affleck has three children with Jennifer Garner, whom he separated from in 2015, Variety notes. Sources tell TMZ that rumors the couple plan to call off their divorce are not true.


At last, the field of genomics has something to offer Cheech and Chong. DNA sequencing hit a new high last night with the midnight release of the Cannabis sativa genome. The raw sequence was posted on Amazon’s EC2 public cloud computing service by a young company called Medicinal Genomics, which aims to explore the genomes of therapeutic plants.

 Thus far the company is only posting the raw sequence reads – meaning that the over 131 billion bases of shotgun sequence have not yet undergone the important and arduous process of being assembled into contiguous chunks. For now, the sequence is fragmented into hundreds of thousands of snippets. But Medicinal Genomics founder Kevin McKernan says he estimates the size of the C. sativa genome to be about 400 million bases – roughly three times the genome of that other weed, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.

 And in case you’re wondering: the DNA was extracted and prepped for sequencing in a laboratory in Amsterdam.

 McKernan says he was turned on to the idea of sequencing cannabis by a 2003 publication in Nature Reviews Cancer about the many potential uses – including fighting cancer – of cannabinoids. C. sativa makes about sixty of the compounds. Although THC has gotten the most attention, McKernan hopes his company’s data will help scientists explore a few of the others, and perhaps guide plant breeding programs to generate new Cannabis strains.

 No word yet on whether the information can also help researchers construct a van made out of marijuana, but chances are that some enthusiast out there will look into that possibility if the company follows through on its pledge to make genome annotations available as an iPad app next fall.

 Also appealing to McKernan: the growing medical marijuana market, which he says is swelling by over 50% a year. “It’s going to have to be a fairly regulated market,” he says, “and regulation is going to come through genetics and fingerprinting of which strains are approved.”

 McKernan’s name may ring a bell for sequencing buffs. In 2000, he cofounded Agencourt Biosciences, a spinoff of which eventually created the technology underlying the popular SOLiD sequencing platform now sold by Life Technologies.

 McKernan dipped into his own bank account to launch Medicinal Genomics, and says he also has funding from the network of angel investors – mostly friends and family – that helped him get Agencourt off the ground in 2000.

 Image: warrantedarrest, Flickr, creative commons. ||||| Kevin McKernan was leading Life Technologies Corp. (LIFE)’s Ion Torrent DNA-sequencing research when a new business opportunity caught his eye: marijuana.

 A year later, McKernan, 38, has quit his job, formed a startup run from his house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and announced today that the company had sequenced the entire genome of the cannabis plant.

 The project, which cost about $200,000, may lead to the development of treatments for cancer, pain and inflammatory diseases, he said. McKernan’s company, Medicinal Genomics, is making the data public using Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)’s EC2 cloud- computing system. McKernan called the work a “draft assembly,” and it hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal.

 “This is the beginning of a more scientific approach to the genetics of the species,” Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “This is not really about marijuana; it’s about pharmacology.”

 An important step to find a species’ potential utility is to map its DNA, the building block of life, according to Gibbs, who said he has known McKernan for more than 15 years.

 McKernan worked on the Human Genome Project from 1996 to 2000, and started a commercial laboratory with his two brothers called Agencourt Bioscience, which was sold to Beckman Coulter Inc. in 2005. A spin-out of Agencourt that made sequencing technology, called Agencourt Personal Genomics, was acquired by Applied Biosystems Inc., which combined with Invitrogen Corp. in 2008 to become Carlsbad, California-based Life Technologies. Life Technologies bought Ion Torrent last year for $375 million in cash and stock.

 Open Access

 McKernan said his company’s goal is to allow researchers to find ways to maximize the cannabis plant’s therapeutic benefits and minimize its psychoactive effects.

 “These pathways can be optimized in the plant or cloned into other hosts for more efficient biologic production,” Medicinal Genomics said in a statement. “It may be possible through genome directed breeding to attenuate the psychoactive effects of cannabis, while enhancing the medicinal aspects.”

 The plant makes chemical compounds called cannabinoids, a class that includes tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive substance in marijuana. Another such compound called cannabidiol, or CBD, has shown promise in shrinking tumors in rats without the psychoactive effects, McKernan said.

 Medical Uses

 “That one has been predominantly bred out of the plant as it’s been bred for recreational use,” he said. His company’s business model is to develop assays to enable regulators, government agencies or pharmaceutical companies to research cannabis’s gene pathways.

 Donald Abrams, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has done research into medical cannabis since 1997, said scientists have been able to study the plant without knowing the genome.

 “We know what the active ingredients of the plant are already,” Abrams, chief of oncology at San Francisco General Hospital, said in a telephone interview. “You don’t need the genome; you need the plant.”

 Companies such as GW Pharmaceuticals Plc (GWP), based in Salisbury, England, have developed cannabis-based medicines. GW sells Sativex for muscle spasms related to multiple sclerosis, using THC and CBD.

 McKernan said he was initially convinced to pursue the research after seeing papers published in academic journals including Nature on the plant’s tumor-shrinking effects in rats.

 “One in three people are going to get cancer, and one in four are going to die with it or from it,” he said. “So any compound, as preliminary as this may be, that’s nontoxic and shows hope there, we should be all over.

 “The only way I knew how to do that was to sequence the genome.”

 To contact the reporter on this story: Meg Tirrell in New York at mtirrell@bloomberg.net.

 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Marijuana is giving up its secrets: A Massachusetts company has sequenced the entire genome of the cannabis plant for the first time, reports the Nature news blog. The results from Medicinal Genomics have yet to be peer-reviewed and probably won't be published in full until next year. And the company has only the best of intentions, notes Bloomberg: “It may be possible through genome directed breeding to attenuate the psychoactive effects of cannabis, while enhancing the medicinal aspects.” In other words: Make medical marijuana more "medical" and less "marijuana." That's not to say others couldn't take the information and do the reverse. As the PopSci blog notes, the discovery eventually could have "significant implications for both the medical and recreational users of the drug" by allowing particular genes to be "isolated and concentrated." The company promises to make genome annotations available via iPhone app next fall.


Article:
Turkey and Japan expelled Syrian diplomats on Wednesday, joining the U.S. and several other nations in protesting a weekend massacre of more than 100 people in Syria, including women and children.

 French President Francois Hollande addresses reporters during a joint press conference with Benin and African Union President Thomas Boni Yayi, left, at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Tuesday May 29, 2012.... (Associated Press)

 A demonstrator carries a sign reading "Thank you Germany" in front of the Syrian embassy in Berlin Tuesday, May 29, 2012. Governments around the world expelled ambassadors and top Syrian diplomats Tuesday... (Associated Press)

 In this photo provided by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, meets with Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria, in Damascus, Syria. The... (Associated Press)

 French President Francois Hollande addresses reporters during a joint press conference with Benin and African Union President Thomas Boni Yayi, unseen, at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Tuesday May 29, 2012.... (Associated Press)

 The move came as Syrian forces bombarded rebel-held areas in the same province where the Houla killings occurred, although no casualties were immediately reported, activists said.

 Survivors blamed pro-regime gunmen for at least some of the carnage in Houla as the killings reverberated inside Syria and beyond, further isolating President Bashar Assad and embarrassing his few remaining allies. The Syrian government denied its troops were behind the killings and blamed "armed terrorists."

 The U.N.'s top human rights body planned to hold a special session Friday to address the massacre.

 Damascus had said it would conclude its own investigation into the Houla deaths by Wednesday but it was not clear if the findings would be made public.

 The Houla killings prompted Western nations to expel Syrian diplomats in a coordinated protest, with the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria ordering top Syrian diplomats to leave on Tuesday.

 Syria's state-run media on Wednesday denounced the diplomatic expulsions, which began Tuesday with announcements by the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria, as "unprecedented hysteria."

 Turkey, Syria's neighbor and a former close ally, joined the coordinated protest on Wednesday. Turkey has been among the most outspoken critics of the Assad regime. It closed its embassy in Damascus in March and withdrew the ambassador. Its consulate in Aleppo remains open.

 The Foreign Ministry said it ordered the Syrian charge d'affaires and other diplomats at the Syrian embassy in Ankara to leave the country within 72 hours. The consulate in Istanbul will remain open for consular duties only.

 "It is out of the question to remain silent and without any reaction in the face of this action, which amounts to a crime against humanity," the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. "This grave crime against humanity by those who have attempted a massacre of civilians cannot go unpunished."

 Japan also ordered the Syrian ambassador in Tokyo to leave the country because of concerns about violence against civilians. Japan's foreign minister, Koichiro Genba, said his country was not, however, breaking off diplomatic ties with Syria.

 The announcements came a day after the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria ordered top Syrian diplomats to leave.

 U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan met with Assad on Tuesday in Damascus to try to salvage what was left of his peace plan, which since being brokered six weeks ago has failed to stop any of the violence on the ground.

 The Al-Baath daily, the mouthpiece of Assad's Baath Party, said Syria won't be intimidated by such "violent rhythms" and would remain standing in front of such "ugly, bloody and dramatic shows." It added that "Syria will not tremble as they think."

 The government's Al-Thawra newspaper also blasted the Western decision, calling it an "escalation that aims to besiege Annan's plan and enflame a civil war."

 Tensions have escalated as more information emerges about the May 25 killings in Houla.

 The U.N.'s human rights office said most of the 108 victims were shot execution-style at close range, with fewer than 20 people cut down by regime shelling.

 U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said there are strong suspicions that pro-Assad fighters were responsible for some of the killings, casting doubt on allegations that "third elements" _ or outside forces _ were involved, although he did not rule it out.

 On Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said a committee comprising the ministries of justice, defense and interior was set up to investigate the massacre and would have the job done within three days.

 Meanwhile, activists said Syrian troops shelled restive suburbs of Damascus and rebel-held areas in the central city of Homs on Wednesday.

 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said at least five people were killed in the Damascus suburb of Douma. Both groups had no details about casualties in Homs, which is the provincial capital of the province that includes Houla.

 ___

 Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria. ||||| Image caption Syrian troops, tanks and artillery were all supposed to have been withdrawn to barracks in April

 Hopes of a new international initiative over Syria have suffered a setback after a Russian minister ruled out any action by the UN Security Council soon.

 Russia "categorically" opposed foreign intervention in Syria, he said, as outrage grew over the massacre of 108 people in Houla last week.

 Turkey is expelling all Syrian diplomatic staff from Ankara, following similar moves by Western states.

 UN observers have verified what appears to have been another multiple killing.

 Thirteen bodies were found in al-Sukar, east of the city of Deir al-Zour, with their hands tied behind their backs and signs that some had been shot in the head from close range.

 Maj Gen Robert Mood, head of the UN observer mission which recently deployed in Syria, said he was "deeply disturbed by this appalling and inexcusable act".

 Thousands of people, perhaps as many as 15,000, have been killed since the revolt against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad began in March of last year.

 Expulsions 'counterproductive'

 China and Russia, which both wield a veto at the UN Security Council, have blocked two previous resolutions calling for tougher action on Damascus.

 On Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said military intervention authorised by the Security Council had not yet been ruled out.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Kofi Annan: "Syrian people do not want their future to be one of bloodshed and division"

 The US state department expressed hope that the events in Houla might prove a "turning point in Russian thinking".

 Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said: "We have always said that we are categorically against any outside interference in the Syrian conflict because this will only exacerbate the situation for both Syria and the region as a whole."

 Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement that the expulsion of Syrian diplomats from leading Western states seemed to be "counterproductive". "After all, vital [diplomatic] channels... end up being closed," it added.

 A spokesman for China's foreign ministry reiterated Beijing's opposition to military intervention in Syria or forced "regime change".

 Syria's main opposition group, the Syrian National Council, said Russia had chosen "to join ranks with the Syrian regime and to provide it with political cover", AFP news agency reports.

 Turkey's move goes further than Tuesday's co-ordinated action by other states, which restricted their expulsions to the most senior staff. However, Syrian consular staff in Istanbul will remain.

 In apparent retaliation for the diplomatic expulsions, Syria gave the Dutch charge d'affaires - one of the few remaining top-level Western diplomatic representatives in Damascus - 72 hours to leave.

 In another development, Syria's honorary consul in California, Hazem Chehabi, resigned, saying he could not continue in his post after the "barbaric" massacre in Houla.

 One of the opposition organisations monitoring the violence, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported 39 new deaths in attacks across Syria on Wednesday. The figure, quoted by AFP news agency, included 15 government soldiers.

 Children and women

 Troops, tanks and artillery were all supposed to have been withdrawn to barracks in April as the first step on the ground under six-point peace plan of UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

 Taldou, Houla region The region of Houla, in the west of Syria, comprises several villages and small towns

 The village of Taldou lies around 2km south-west of the main town, also called Houla

 The area is in the province of Homs, which has seen heavy fighting in recent months

 Houla's villages are predominantly Sunni Muslim, but the region is ringed by a number of Alawite villages - the sect of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad Houla: How a massacre unfolded Press split on Syria mass killing Timeline: Syria's massacres

 But it simply has not happened, says the BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon.

 Amid the reports of continuing violence, it appears Mr Annan's talks with President Bashar al-Assad and opposition figures in Damascus on Tuesday have had no immediate impact on the ground.

 Mr Annan's deputy, Jean-Marie Guehenno, is due to report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday on the talks with Mr Assad.

 Forty-nine children and 34 women were among those killed in Houla last Friday and Saturday.

 Witnesses have told the UN the vast majority of killings were committed by pro-government shabiha militiamen.

 The UN Human Rights Council will hold a special session on Syria on Friday looking into the killings, officials said. ||||| U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan enters his car after his meeting with Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh in Amman, May 30, 2012. x U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan enters his car after his meeting with Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh in Amman, May 30, 2012.

 Handout photo released by Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network shows UN observers at hospital morgue before their burial in central Syrian town of Houla on May 26, 2012. x Handout photo released by Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network shows UN observers at hospital morgue before their burial in central Syrian town of Houla on May 26, 2012.

 x

 VOA Russian Service's Yuliya Appel and Middle East Voices' Mohammed Elshinnawi contributed to this report.

 The deputy to international envoy Kofi Annan, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, has briefed the U.N.'s 15-nation Security Council on the envoy's visit to Syria, prompting one diplomat to call the current situation a "low point in the conflict."After Wednesday's closed briefing, Germany's ambassador to the United Nations, Peter Wittig, told reporters that he hoped the "flagrant violations" like the recent massacre in Houla was an "eye opener for some members of the council." He added that Germany is "against the militarization of the conflict."Mr. Annan left Syria on Wednesday to attend talks with Jordanian officials. A U.N. official said the international envoy did not secure any major steps from the Syrian government to implement a faltering peace plan for the country."After 15 months of violence, only very strong signals will have an impact," Guéhenno told reporters. "Small diplomatic steps will not suffice."Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, whose country says it will veto any Security Council resolution that authorizes foreign military intervention in Syria, said after the briefing that Moscow is dissatisfied with the "current state of things."The U.N. observer mission in Syria confirmed the killings of 13 people in the northeastern province of Deir el-Zour. The mission said U.N. monitors found the bodies late Tuesday, with some of the dead appearing to have been shot in the head from short range and all having their hands tied behind their backs.U.N. observer chief, Norwegian General Robert Mood, said he is "deeply disturbed by this appalling and inexcusable act." He called on all parties "to exercise restraint and end the cycle of violence."International outrage has mounted since a massacre of more than 100 civilians took place in the central Syrian town of Houla last week.Diplomats in Geneva said the U.N. Human Rights Council plans to hold an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss the massacre. They said the United States, Turkey and Qatar led the push for the special session.Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak urged the international community to take tougher action against Bashar al-Assad's government."The events in Syria mean the world must take action -- not only by talking, but by acting," Barak said. "These are crimes against humanity, and it is impossible that the international community stand aloof."The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday announced it will freeze the assets of the Syrian International Islamic Bank to tighten economic pressure on the Syrian government.Several countries are expelling Syrian diplomats in protest of the Houla massacre. Japan and Turkey announced the step on Wednesday. They joined the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, which announced the expulsions of Syrian diplomats on TuesdayThe Syrian government retaliated on Wednesday by ordering the Dutch charge d’Affaires to leave Syria within 72 hours.Russia's U.N. ambassador on Wednesday called expulsions a "bilateral matter," but warned that they could be "misinterpreted by those who want to see foreign military intervention and fighting in Syria."In Beijing, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Weimin said he is not aware of any Chinese move to expel or disrupt the work of Syrian diplomats in the country. "China opposes military intervention in Syria and opposes regime change by force," Weimin said.Annan's plan called on the Syrian government to withdraw heavy weapons from civilian areas and abide by a truce with rebels. But attacks by both sides have continued.Syrian activists said fighting between government and rebel forces on Wednesday killed at least nine people, five of them in the Damascus suburb of Douma. They said government troops shelled Douma and the central city of Homs, which also is an opposition stronghold. The casualties could not be independently confirmed.Abu Orouba, a media liaison for the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria, told VOA the situation across the country is dire."Annan’s plan is a real failure. As a Syrian citizen, I see that it failed to produce any result - actually none of its articles were implemented. Even the cease-fire requirement was not met," Orouba said. "If Annan’s plan is still on the table and the U.N. observers are still on the ground, why did this massacre take place? Why is there no cease-fire?"Political scientist Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Center in Moscow says the situation in Syria is so dead-locked that a solely diplomatic solution is becoming impossible.“[President Assad] is a nervous man, and, it seems, is so confident in himself that he has gone over the top in his actions,” Malashenko said. “The massacre in Houla is only the beginning; it will continue to get worse.” ||||| UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - If the U.N. Security Council does not take swift action to pressure Syria to end its 14-month assault on the opposition, member nations may have no choice but to consider acting outside the United Nations, the U.S. envoy to the world body said on Wednesday.

 Speaking to reporters after international mediator Kofi Annan's deputy, Jean-Marie Guehenno, gave the 15-nation council a bleak assessment of the impact of Annan's efforts to halt the violence in Syria, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said there were three ways the Syrian conflict could end.

 The first would be if Syrian President Bashar-al Assad's government decided to comply with its obligations under Annan's six-point peace plan - stopping its military assaults on Syrian towns, withdrawing heavy weapons, returning troops to barracks and talking with the opposition on a "political transition."

 The second option would involve the council taking action to pressure Damascus to fully comply with the Annan plan, she said.

 Neither of those scenarios appear likely because Damascus has shown no interest in living up to its commitments and Russia has made clear that any Security Council moves to step up the pressure on Assad's government through sanctions are out of the question.

 "In the absence of either of those two scenarios there seems to be only one other alternative, and that is indeed the worst case," Rice said, adding that it was unfortunately looking like "the most probable."

 "That is that the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies," she said. "It involves countries in the region, it takes on increasingly sectarian forms, and we have a major crisis not only in Syria but in the region."

 In such a case, Rice said, the Annan plan would be dead and the Syrian violence would become "a proxy conflict with arms flowing in from all sides."

 "And members of this council and members of the international community are left with the option only of having to consider whether they're prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this council," she said.

 She did not specify what kind of "actions" she meant. The United States has led past military interventions that were not authorized by the Security Council, namely in Kosovo and Iraq. So far the United States and its Western allies have rejected military options and said they would not arm the rebels.

 RUSSIA DEFENDS ARMS SALES TO SYRIA

 German Ambassador Peter Wittig said council members expressed revulsion at the massacre at Houla last week, where more than 100 people, including many children were killed, probably by Syrian government forces and militia.

 Wittig urged the council to consider a resolution that would sanction "spoilers" of the Annan plan and suggested that it think about whether the mission of unarmed observers should be expanded.

 The British and French envoys also spoke of the need to intensify pressure on Assad's government.

 But Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow, which holds a veto on the Security Council, opposes the idea of ratcheting up pressure on Damascus in the form of U.N. sanctions.

 "Our attitude toward sanctions, frankly, continues to be negative," he said, adding that Moscow wants countries doing so to stop supplying weapons to Syrian rebels. He also voiced concern about the increasing presence of extremists in Syria.

 Asked about Russia's supply of weapons to Assad's government, Churkin said: "The weapons we may have provided to Syria under various contracts, which were concluded a long time ago, are fully in line with international law and do not contribute to the current armed violence in Syria."

 The expulsion of Syrian diplomats from several countries, including the United States, could be mistaken as a precursor to foreign military intervention in Syria, Churkin said.

 "I hope an effort is made not to allow this step to be misinterpreted as something which is basically a prerequisite of some kind of a foreign military intervention in the near future, which is not the case."

 Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari complained about unilateral U.S., European and other sanctions, calling them "irresponsible acts."

 Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Guehenno said that "in the council there is an understanding that any sliding toward a full-scale civil war in Syria would be catastrophic and the Security Council now needs to have that kind of strategic discussion on how that needs to be avoided."

 He did not say what kinds of steps the council should take. Earlier he told the council via video link that the violence is unlikely to stop without political negotiations between the government and opposition, U.N. diplomats said.

 (Additional reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Anthony Boadle and Christopher Wilson) |||||Summary:

– Turkey and Japan today joined a number of nations who have given Syrian diplomats within their borders the boot, as the head of the UN observers in Syria revealed that 13 bodies had been found with their hands tied in the country's east, reports Reuters. But the developments are unlikely to chip away at Russia and China's resistance to taking tougher steps against Syria. To wit, Russia's deputy foreign minister today announced that Russia is "categorically against" military intervention in Syria and noted that it would be "premature" for the UN Security Council to take any fresh steps. The BBC notes that, in light of Russia's veto power on the council, the latest remarks indicate there's little hope for new initiatives. And the overall lack of progress is only underscored by the fact that Kofi Annan this morning left Syria—without getting the government to agree to take any of the "bold steps" he was pushing, reports Voice of America. Writing for the Washington Post, David Ignatius thinks the answer is easy—Bashar al-Assad needs to go—and the reason why that's not happening is obvious: Vladimir Putin, who is "playing a cynical game of power politics." The focus shouldn't be on pressuring Assad, but on turning "up the heat on Putin," he writes.


Here is a news article: Nick Stoeberl showcases all 10.1cm of his amazing tongue to snap up his tongue-tastic record. Prepare to be amazed by the longest tongue in the world!

 Twenty-four-year-old Nick Stoeberl from California, USA has well and truly got the world record longest tongue licked.

 The artist and comedian’s super-sized lingua has been verified as measuring 10.1cm (3.97in) long from its tip to the middle of the closed top lip and is featured as one of the latest records set in the new Guinness World Records 2015 book.

 Nick’s father was “a huge fan of KISS” and as a child Nick would imitate Gene Simmons’ infamous tongue pose, realising for the first time that his tongue was longer than others.

 The artist and comedian loves the attention his tongue receives, announcing that “I’m not only able to lick my nose, but also my elbow!”

 He says that the only downside is “that I have to spend longer brushing my tongue in the morning.”

 The achievement breaks the record of Brit Stephen Taylor (9.8 cm) who has held the title since 2002.

 video

 Guinness World Records 2015 is the 60 th anniversary edition of the world’s best-selling copyright book and ison sale now at all major retailers.

 It’s packed full of incredible feats, facts and achievements and also features new Augmented Reality technology that enables the reader to bring record-breakers to life in stunning 3D.

 You can find out more about the book by heading to www.guinnessworldrecords.com/2015

 And for the latest on all things world record, including the 2015 book, visit Guinness World Records on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and our brand-new Instagram. Plus check out Guinness World Records on YouTube to subscribe for the latest record-breaking videos!

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 Is This The World's Longest Tongue?

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 Adrianne Lewis believes she has the world’s longest TONGUE measuring a whopping 4 inches. The 18-year-old is now globally recognised after a photo of her sticking her tongue out went viral online. Her serpent-like appendage can touch her nose, chin, elbow, and even her eye with a little help. And she is currently in talks with Guinness World Records and waiting to see if she’s the new record holder. The current record holder is Nick Stoeberl's 3.9-inch long tongue.

 Videographer / Director: Bridgette Pacholka

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 http://www.barcroft.tv/ ||||| Adrienne Lewis just might have the longest tongue in the world.

 The 18-year old from Michigan believes her tongue to be 4 inches long, beating the current Guinness World Record holder Nick Stoeberl whose tongue measures 3.97 inches.

 To this end, Lewis has spent the past few years promoting her massive tongue on Facebook and YouTube, where her videos have garnered thousands of views. Lewish can touch her tongue to her elbow, nose and even her eye (with a little help from her hand).

 After years of self promotion, Lewis is in talks with Guinness to see if she's officially broken the new world record. Until then, she's focused on building an ever-growing online presence, one elbow lick at at time. |||||
A summary of this is?

– What would you do if you had a tongue as long as a playing card? For 18-year-old Adrianne Lewis, making YouTube videos showing off the various tricks she can do with her estimated 4-inch-long tongue seemed like a great way to gain some Internet fame. The Michigan teen uploaded her first video two years ago. Since then, she's uploaded about a dozen videos showing off all she can do with her quirky mouth feature, including licking her nose, touching her tongue to her elbow, and, with a little help from her hand, even licking her own eyeball. Speaking to Barcroft TV, her mom says they realized Lewis' tongue was unusually long when she was about 10, and notes that her daughter comes from a long line of long-tongued people: Her great-grandfather, grandmother, and mother share the trait. While Lewis is psyched about the hundreds of thousands of views her YouTube videos have amassed, boyfriend Tim Hegedus notes, "It's the Internet, so there's a lot of weird people there. I've seen some comments that make me uncomfortable." More fame could come: The length of Lewis' tongue might just be enough to get her into Guinness World Records. While she hasn't had it officially measured by the Guinness folks, she estimates her tongue measures at least 4 inches, which Mashable reports could be enough to beat the 3.97-inch-long tongue (as measured "from its tip to the middle of the closed top lip") currently holding the record.