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Four Key Races Could Determine Fate of U.S. Senate Control

 A lot more is happening on Election Day than just the race for president most notably, whether the Democrats will be able regain control of the Senate. ||||| The fight for control of the United States Senate is really close. It’s basically a coin-flip. Democrats have a 53 percent chance of winning a Senate majority according to FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus model, or a 52 percent chance according to our polls-only forecast. There is about a 16 percent chance, in fact, that we’ll end up with a 50-50 Senate and the presidential race will decide control. (The vice-president breaks ties in the Senate.)

 There are structural factors working in both parties’ favor. Republicans hold 24 of the 34 seats that are up for reelection in 2016. Democrats, therefore, have more opportunities to pick up seats than Republicans. The political geography also favors Democrats. Of the 10 seats Democrats are defending, none are in states that were won by either John McCain or Mitt Romney in 2008 or 2012. Republicans, by contrast, are defending a lot of turf that’s either blue or purple. That’s because the last time these seats were up for reelection was in 2010, a GOP-wave year when Republicans won a lot of seats in Democratic-leaning territory. In total, nine of the GOP-held seats up for grabs on Tuesday are in states that President Obama won in either 2008 or 2012.

 On the other hand, Republicans are defending those seats — that is, they have more incumbents on the ballot. Incumbent candidates generally outperform non-incumbent candidates, all else being equal. And indeed, Republican incumbents are generally polling better than Donald Trump.

 Speaking of the presidential race, one of the clearest trends this cycle has been that Democratic chances of taking back the Senate have generally run hand-in-hand with Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency.

 The past few weeks have been no different. Democrats, who in the middle of October held a clear advantage in their fight for a Senate majority, have seen their fortunes fall as the presidential race has tightened. This matches a pattern seen over the previous few election cycles: More voters casting their ballot for the same party in both Senate and presidential races. There is some good news for Senate Democrats in this tightening, though: If voters think Clinton is less of a sure bet to win the presidency, they may be less likely to vote for Republicans in down-ballot races in order to act as a check on her power. That seemed like a possibility after Clinton opened up a large lead over Trump after the first debate in late September.

 OK, so that’s the broad view of where things stand. Republicans currently hold 54 Senate seats. Democrats have 46 (including independents Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucus with them). So Democrats need to pick up a net gain of four seats for a tie, or five seats to get an outright majority.

 The FiveThirtyEight Senate forecast has 11 seats to watch. Let’s go through those 11 seats, from most likely to go Democratic to least likely, according to the polls-plus model. I’ve also added two extra wild-card races to keep an eye on as the returns come in Tuesday.

 Likely Democratic pickup

 Illinois (97 percent chance of a Democratic win in polls-plus forecast)

 Republican Sen. Mark Kirk was always facing an uphill battle in solidly blue Illinois. Clinton is favored to win the state by more than 10 percentage points, and no Republican has won a Senate race in Illinois in a presidential election cycle since 1972. Kirk wasn’t helped when Democrats were able to recruit Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq-war veteran, to challenge him. Kirk has the voting profile (moderate) and geographic base (suburbs of Chicago) that a Republican needs to win a statewide race in Illinois, but even so he would have had to run an almost perfect campaign to have a chance. He hasn’t. He also had to fight off the belief among some voters that a stroke he suffered while in office has limited his effectiveness. If Kirk is to upset Duckworth, he’ll have to hold her margin in Cook County (Chicago) under 35 percentage points and lose pretty much no place else.

 Probable Democratic pickup

 Wisconsin (86 percent)

 Wisconsin may be closer than our forecast suggests: Our model may not have fully picked up a late shift in the polls toward incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. Democrats were able to recruit former Sen. Russ Feingold to take on Johnson, and polls showed Feingold as the favorite for most of the year. Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican for Senate in a presidential year since the Republican wave of 1980, and Johnson has a very conservative record. Johnson, though, appears to be mounting a comeback. Both Democratic and Republican groups have invested heavily in the race in the past few weeks. And Marquette University, perhaps the most reliable pollster in Wisconsin, put Johnson down just 1 percentage point in its final survey of the race. Other recent polls also point to a close contest. Feingold is still a favorite, and he will probably be helped by Clinton’s coattails — she holds a healthy lead over Trump in the state. But keep an eye on eye on the traditionally Republican-leaning counties outside of Milwaukee to see by how much Johnson is outperforming Trump. If it’s by a lot, as some polls suggest, Johnson has a shot.

 Leaning Democratic

 Pennsylvania (67 percent)

 Yet another seat won by a Republican in a midterm election that will be harder to hold in presidential year. (Are you noticing a trend?) Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is one of the most conservative senators in Congress, despite representing a state that tends to vote Democratic in presidential elections. Beltway Democrats were able to get their preferred candidate, Katie McGinty, through a competitive primary, but the race between McGinty and Toomey was neck-and-neck through early October. Since then, however, McGinty has opened a small lead in almost every poll. Toomey has had his hands full with Trump, trying to keep his distance without outright disavowing the GOP nominee. McGinty, on the other hand, is probably going to be helped by Clinton, who is a favorite to win the state. Watch Chester County in the southeast part of the state. Chester County traditionally votes Republican, but Clinton is expected to overperform there. Toomey may need some ticket-splitting in that county to win the state.

 Tossups

 Missouri (44 percent), Nevada (56 percent), New Hampshire (52 percent)

 These are the three seats where the Senate is most likely going to be decided. If Democrats win two of these three, it’s difficult to see how they don’t end up with at least 50 Senate seats. If they don’t, they’ll have to pick up at least one seat that appears to be trending away from them.

 Missouri is perhaps the most interesting of the three because it’s the state where we have the best chance of seeing one party win the Senate race and the other win the presidential race. Although Trump should win easily in Missouri, Democrat Jason Kander has made the Senate race there quite competitive. Running on his biography as an Army veteran and outsider, Kander has fought his way to a near tie against Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. Blunt seems to have been caught flat footed, tagged as a Washington insider while his party’s presidential nominee runs against Washington. Still, Kander seems to have hit a wall in recent polls. Blunt has the slightest of edges in our forecast, but the race is really too close to call. One county to pay extra attention to is Jefferson County, near St. Louis, which has a history of matching the statewide vote. In 2012, the final margins in the gubernatorial, presidential and Senate races in Jefferson looked a lot like the state as a whole.

 If turnout for Trump might help Blunt in Missouri, he’s likely to hurt Republican Joe Heck in Nevada. Heck is running against Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Harry Reid. Heck, like Toomey in Pennsylvania, has struggled to figure out how exactly to deal with the Republican presidential nominee. While the polls point to a close race, the early vote in Nevada has been decidedly negative for Republicans. That doesn’t mean Heck is toast. Four years ago, Republican Sen. Dean Heller was able to win by 1 percentage point even as President Obama carried Nevada by 7 points. Heller, though, benefitted from a Democratic opponent who had ethics problems. Heck doesn’t have that luxury. Heck’s best chance is to win a larger share of Latinos than Trump in Clark County, where they are turning out in large numbers.

 Unlike in Nevada, the recent trends have been good for Republicans in New Hampshire. Trump has closed the gap with Clinton there, and Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte has made her race with Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan a tossup again. There’s a touch of irony in Ayotte’s fate being tied to Trump’s; she has said she won’t vote him after facing backlash for calling him a good role model during a debate. The tight race shouldn’t come as a surprise: New Hampshire is the ultimate swing state. On the presidential level, it has been within a few percentage points of the national vote in every election since 1996. This year looks to be no different. With two well-known candidates running, the race looks like it will come down to the wire. The candidate who carries the independent vote in the state (which has one of the largest independent votes in the nation) will probably win the race.

 Plausible Democratic pickups

 Indiana (40 percent), North Carolina (30 percent)

 Democrats thought they hit the jackpot when they were able to recruit former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh into the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Dan Coats. Bayh had been a two-term governor and senator. He also had a giant fundraising war-chest and opened the race with a large lead over Republican Todd Young. But that advantage has evaporated in the past few months. That’s not totally surprising given Trump is expected to easily carry the state. Bayh, though, hasn’t helped his cause. He’s been tied to Washington lobbyists and has been questioned on how much time he really spends in Indiana. Young, for his part, has improved his name recognition. The result is that Young took his first lead in a public poll in the last two weeks. Still, the race is close and could be won by either candidate. To win, Bayh will need strong turnout in heavily black Lake County (Gary) and Marion County (Indianapolis).

 Democrats have a different problem in North Carolina. Republican Sen. Richard Burr had probably hoped the slight Republican tilt of the Tar Heel State would ensure his re-election, especially after the Democrats’ strongest potential candidate, Attorney General Roy Cooper, decided to run for governor instead. That left Democrats with Deborah Ross, a lawyer and former member of the North Carolina House of Representatives. Ross has kept it close with Burr the entire campaign, but she’s never been able to overtake him. That makes this race the only one examined so far in which the Democrat has never led in the FiveThirtyEight polls-plus forecast. There are very few swing voters in North Carolina, so the race is all about turnout: If Clinton outperforms expectations in the presidential race by just a few points, she might carry Ross across the finish line.

 Longshot Democratic pickup

 Florida (13 percent)

 Democrats were a favorite to win the Senate seat in Florida until Republican Sen. Marco Rubio changed his mind and decided to run for reelection after all. Rubio has held a consistent lead over Democrat Patrick Murphy. Rubio has strong ties to Cuban communities in Florida, and he’s expected to vastly exceed Trump’s poll numbers among Hispanics in the Sunshine State. Keep an eye on heavily Cuban Miami-Dade County to see how much Rubio is outperforming Trump’s margins with Cubans. Murphy, for his part, has been called out for exaggerations about his record and has attacked Rubio for supporting Trump, even after Rubio called Trump a con artist in the presidential primary. For whatever reason, the attacks don’t seem to be sticking. Rubio’s advantage is so large at this point that it’s difficult to imagine Murphy winning even if Clinton wins the state.

 Really long shot Democratic pickups

 Arizona (3 percent), Ohio (2 percent)

 Early polls indicated that incumbent Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Rob Portman of Ohio might be in trouble. And Democrats recruited strong candidates: Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona and former Gov. Ted Strickland in Ohio. But McCain and Portman have been perhaps more successful than any other Republican Senate candidates in distancing themselves from Trump. Portman was also helped by a massive fundraising advantage over Strickland.

 Wild cards

 Colorado (95 percent), Louisiana (14 percent)

 No one has talked about Colorado as a potential Republican pickup. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet has only trailed in one poll all year against Republican Darryl Glenn. Colorado, though, is still a swing state in presidential elections, even if Clinton is favored to win it this year. It also elected a Republican to the Senate in 2014. And Bennet’s lead in the polls has shrunk to within single digits over the past month. Bennet will almost certainly still win, but don’t be surprised if the race ends up closer than many once thought it would be.

 Louisiana is something entirely different. The state will hold on a primary on Tuesday in which all the Democratic candidates and Republican candidates run against each other. As long as no candidate gets 50 percent (and there’s basically no chance of that happening), the two top vote getters regardless of party affiliation will advance to a runoff. It’s expected that one of those candidates will be Republican John Kennedy who leads in the polls. But Democrats Foster Campbell and Caroline Fayard are not too far behind Kennedy in second and third respectively. With five Republicans projected to get at least 4 percent of the vote, it’s possible that Republicans will split their vote enough that Kennedy drops to third and both Democrats end up advancing. Keep in mind that polls are much more likely to be wrong in primaries than in general elections.

 It is possible that one party will win most of the battleground races. The polls are sometimes off in the same direction in multiple races. That happened in 2014 when Republicans beat their polls across the board. If that happens again, then some of the long-shot candidates may end up as surprise winners.

 Still, the polls show a close overall race — about as close as you can get. In nearly half of our simulations, the Senate ends up as either tied or 51-49 in one direction or the other. So as you watch the presidential race unfold, remember that it’s not just determining control of one branch of government but potentially half of another branch as well. |||||

 McCain debates Kirkpatrick on Oct. 10 in Phoenix. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

 Arizona

 Sen. John McCain (R) is poised to win a sixth term after a tough two-front battle with his state’s far-right wing and Democrats accusing him of flipping his positions to fit the moment.

 McCain, 80, first had to get through a primary against Kelli Ward, who ran as a tea party insurgent proudly backing Donald Trump and aped Trump’s criticism of McCain over veterans’ legislation. McCain won comfortably, but received a tad more than 50 percent of the GOP vote.

 That set up a quick and potentially difficult general-election battle against Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D), who represents the state’s largest district. But McCain quickly galvanized most of the Republican vote, running as a check against a possible Hillary Clinton presidency and trying to steer clear of discussing Trump.

 Kirkpatrick has aired tough ads showing McCain’s changing positions, including in 2010 calling for a “danged fence” along the Mexican border. But Washington Democrats took a pass on engaging the race. Both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and its super PAC ally, Majority PAC, have not devoted resources to the race.

 McCain formally dumped Trump in early October. A CNN poll showed him with a 13-point edge in the past week.

 — Paul Kane

 Harris gives a thumbs up to supporters during her visit to the campaign office of Rep. Ami Bera in Elk Grove, Calif., on Nov. 3. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

 California

 When Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) announced her retirement, California Attorney General Kamala Harris became the instant front-runner. Other Democrats stepped back, and no strong Republicans came forward in the deep-blue state.

 Enter Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D). Sanchez made it through the June primary, defeating several GOP candidates to finish a distant second to Harris. State election rules allow the top two finishers, regardless of party, to advance to the general election. But the Orange County congresswoman has struggled to catch up to Harris, who in recent polls was leading by more than 20 points.

 Sanchez has campaigned as a moderate and she’d hoped to mobilize Latinos, California’s largest ethnic group. She has modest leads with Latino voters in polls, but Harris boasts double-digit margins with nearly every other demographic group.

 Harris has the backing of the California Democratic Party, labor unions and progressive groups, and President Obama, who appeared in a campaign ad for her.

 Sanchez, 56, would be the first Latina elected to the Senate. Harris, 52, whose parents emigrated from Jamaica and India, would become the second black woman elected to the Senate since 1992.

 — Vanessa Williams

 Rubio, right, and Murphy debate on Oct. 26 at Broward College in Davie, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)

 Florida

 The most important day in Florida’s Senate race was June 22, when GOP Sen. Marco Rubio announced that he would seek reelection — reversing a pledge he made when he began his ill-fated presidential campaign. Without Rubio, Republicans faced a messy primary featuring several unknown, untested candidates. Democrats, meanwhile, thought they had a winner in Rep. Patrick Murphy, a young up-and-comer who had triumphed in the nastiest and most expensive House race of 2012. Rubio’s reversal instantly gave the GOP an advantage, and they have not given it up.

 Rubio and GOP allies have spent tens of millions of dollars attacking Murphy, trying to paint him as a spoiled rich kid with a questionable professional record. Murphy has fought back with ads capitalizing on Rubio’s presidential ambitions and his poor Senate attendance record while pursuing them. But Democrats pulled millions of dollars of ad reservations over the course of the fall as other races proved to be more competitive, leaving Murphy unable to match Rubio dollar for dollar.

 Murphy hasn’t caught up in polling, but he’s not far behind. A late influx of Democratic spending and a stronger-than-expected Clinton win could spell an upset — and a devastating loss for Rubio.

 — Mike DeBonis

 Kirk, right, and Duckworth debate on Oct. 27 at the University of Illinois in Springfield. (Seth Perlman/AP)

 Illinois

 Sen. Mark Kirk (R) has used a wheelchair since he had a stroke in 2012, and against virtually any other opponent, his return to the Senate would be a powerful narrative on which to run.

 But his Democratic opponent, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has a story just as powerful, having lost her legs in 2004 when her helicopter in Iraq was struck by an enemy rocket. It was during her recuperation that her home state’s two Democratic senators — Richard J. Durbin and Barack Obama — drafted her into politics. She has run a cautious but competent campaign withstanding attacks on her tenure as head of the state Department of Veterans Affairs and on her thin legislative record.

 For Kirk, meanwhile, reelection was a tough bet, as Illinois last elected a Republican senator in a presidential year in 1972. And Kirk is his own worst enemy, talking his way into controversies that culminated in the most stunning congressional debate gaffe of 2016.

 After Duckworth described her family’s military heritage, Kirk said he had “forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.” Although Duckworth’s mother is a Thai immigrant, her late father’s lineage can be traced to the Revolution.

 — Mike DeBonis

 Bayh participates in debate for Indiana's open U.S. Senate seat in Indianapolis on Oct. 18. (Michael Conroy/AP)

 Young participates in debate for Indiana's open U.S. Senate seat in Indianapolis on Oct. 18. (Michael Conroy/AP)

 Indiana

 Everything changed in Indiana’s Senate race when former senator Evan Bayh (D) announced on July 11 that he would be running to retake his seat. Until that day, Republicans were convinced that Rep. Todd C. Young (R) had an easy path to victory. Bayh entered the race with strong support from Democrats, who have fond memories of his time as governor and senator.

 But Bayh proved ill-prepared for a punishing Senate contest and has been pummeled by accusations that he is a Washington insider who is out of touch with Hoosiers. First, he incorrectly listed the address of his Indianapolis condominium, then he battled reports that he spent the final days of his last Senate term interviewing for high-paying jobs.

 A poll conducted Oct. 22 to Nov. 3 by WTHR-TV and Howey Politics shows Bayh trailing by five points.

 Young, who served as a Marine, has made a name in the state as fresh-faced alternative to Bayh’s storied career. His campaign has benefited from a flood of outside support from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Senate Leadership Fund, the Karl Rove-backed super PAC run by former aides to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

 — Kelsey Snell

 Kander speaks to supporters at a St. Louis union hall on Nov. 1. (Jim Salter/AP)

 Blunt, left, and his wife, Abigail, campaigns in Missouri on Oct. 8. (David Weigel/The Washington Post)

 Missouri

 Many Republican and Democratic operatives agree: No Senate challenger has run a better race than Jason Kander (D), Missouri’s secretary of state. It was a viral TV ad that had Kander assembling a military-style rifle with a blindfold that caught Washington’s eye, but it’s months of disciplined, pitch-perfect campaigning that puts him within a hair of unseating Roy Blunt (R) in a state likely to favor Donald Trump by double digits.

 Kander, who was an Army intelligence officer, has leaned heavily on his military background and has found a receptive audience for his attacks on Blunt as a Washington insider.

 Republican groups have been forced to come to Blunt’s rescue, financing ads linking Kander to Hillary Clinton and President Obama — some of them showing Kander’s face morphing into theirs.

 Kander, meanwhile, has not passed up an opportunity to remind voters that Blunt lives in a D.C. mansion and that his wife and three of his children are lobbyists. And although Blunt has not distanced himself from Trump, he fits the profile of the D.C. denizen Trump is running against. Virtually every independent poll since September has shown a tied race or Blunt leading within the margin of error.

 — Mike DeBonis

 Cortez Masto shakes hands with Heck after an Oct. 14 debate in North Las Vegas. (Erik Verduzco/AP)

 Nevada

 Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid’s retirement announcement rocked Nevada’s political scene, creating the GOP’s only chance to capture a Democratic seat on the Senate battleground.

 The race pits Rep. Joe Heck (R), who represents the Las Vegas suburbs, against former state attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto (D), who would be the first Latina senator. The state is difficult to poll, both because of its new Hispanic population and because employees working in the Las Vegas gambling and nightlife industry are hard to reach.

 Divergent polls show Heck leading by about seven points, or Cortez Masto ahead by the same margin. Neither candidate has broken through policy-wise, nor has either’s personality crashed through the din of commercials here.

 Much of Heck’s campaign isn’t focused on his rival but instead on Reid — casting him as a villain who chose his puppet to succeed him. And Cortez Masto’s is focused on Donald Trump, trying to energize Hispanics and mocking Heck’s wavering support for the GOP nominee.

 The race may be decided in “the rurals,” counties far away from the Las Vegas Strip where Trump is expected to do well. Heck has withdrawn his support for Trump and called for him to quit the race, which may be why he is underperforming there.

 — Paul Kane

 Ayotte, left, and Hassan during a Nov. 2 debate. (Jim Cole/AP)

 New Hampshire

 For months, polls in New Hampshire have shown Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) in a near dead heat with Gov. Maggie Hassan (D). The latest Boston Globe poll, conducted at the end of October, showed Ayotte leading by 2.5 points, well within the margin of error.

 The outcome of the closely watched race is expected to play a critical role in determining which party will hold the Senate majority next year.

 Ayotte, a former state attorney general, has struggled to overcome a powerful downdraft created by the unpopularity of Donald Trump. She sank in the polls when struggling to respond to a leaked 2005 recording of Trump talking about kissing women and grabbing them without their consent — at first standing by Trump and eventually rescinding her support.

 Hassan has benefited from running as a well-liked sitting governor but she has struggled to eke out a consistent lead. Hassan had to overcome her own gaffe when she struggled to answer whether she thinks Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy.

 The race has attracted more than $89 million in spending from outside groups, making it the second most expensive Senate contest this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

 — Kelsey Snell

 Strickland greets a poll worker before voting at the Franklin County Board of Elections on Oct. 27. (Jay Laprete/AP)

 Portman tours Pioneer Pipe while campaigning in Marietta, Ohio, on Oct. 25. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 Ohio

 Sen. Rob Portman (R) was originally expected to be fighting for his political life in the campaign’s final days.

 A consummate insider, having worked in both Bush administrations and as part of the House GOP leadership, he seemed ill-suited for the anti-Washington environment epitomizing this cycle.

 But Portman seems to have prevailed after running what was probably the best race of any Republican candidate this year. He raised more money than all but one Senate Republican (Patrick J. Toomey, who is in a close contest), and spent it early and often, a smart tactic in hindsight.

 His ads reintroducing voters to their first-term senator were effective, portraying his work to fight an opioid crisis with Senate legislation and to combat sex trafficking. Meanwhile, Portman’s negative ads battered Ted Strickland, who began the race as a well-liked former governor. But after being reminded of the job losses during Strickland’s term, voters had turned against the ex-governor by late August. National Democrats abandoned the race.

 Of the 10 most recent public polls, all in October, Portman had a lead of at least 11 points. GOP strategists are already studying this campaign as a blueprint for future Republican Senate races.

 — Paul Kane

 Burr and Ross in a debate on Oct. 13. (Gerry Broome/AP)

 North Carolina

 Sen. Richard Burr (R) cuts an increasingly rare figure on Capitol Hill, a low-octane throwback to a time when the soul of the GOP was country-club conservatism, not sharp-edged populism. He has the old-school campaign ethos to match.

 National Republicans fumed as he stuck with the winning formula from his previous two runs: Keep your powder dry until October, then hold on for dear life at the end. His opponent is Deborah Ross, a lawyer and former state lawmaker whose record as a civil-rights advocate many assumed would be too liberal for the state.

 But Ross has proven a masterful fundraiser and fierce campaigner, and an avalanche of ads highlighting her past objections to the state’s sex-offender registry seem not to have deeply affected voters. Polls have shown a tight race for months, and although Burr has had a small lead in most recent polls, he has not been able to run far ahead of Donald Trump in a state where Democrats are making an extra-hard turnout push.

 The final week was roiled when Burr was recorded in a private meeting cracking a joke about gun owners putting a “bullseye” on Hillary Clinton. Ross, meanwhile, has benefited from a pair of presidential visits.

 — Mike DeBonis

 McGinty and Toomey at a debate at Temple University in Philadelphia on Oct. 24. (Matt Rourke/AP)

 Pennsylvania

 The most expensive Senate race in history is in Pennsylvania, topping $140 million by late October, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

 The money reflects the stakes of this contest. Democrats always believed their path to the majority probably required knocking off Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R). Toomey tells supporters everywhere that their votes will keep the Senate in Republican hands.

 Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), the incoming Democratic leader, recruited neophyte Katie McGinty, persuading Vice President Biden to coax President Obama to endorse her in the primary.

 Toomey and McGinty are basically deadlocked. McGinty has held a small lead in the past few polls — but over the past month, four showed the race tied and four gave Toomey a slight lead.

 Toomey is performing well in the vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs. But he is doing less so in the rural stretch between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in part, strategists say, because he hasn’t said whom he supports for president. That may work near Philadelphia, where Hillary Clinton is crushing Donald Trump, but Trump is well-liked elsewhere.

 Whichever party wins this race will have the edge to win the majority.

 — Paul Kane

 Johnson, left, and Feingold, right, meet in their second and final debate Oct. 18 in Milwaukee. (Mark Hoffman/AP)

 Wisconsin

 For months, Democrats considered Wisconsin a near-certain pickup. It has been a reliably blue state in presidential years, one-term incumbent Ron Johnson (R) had not done much to raise his profile and well-known former senator Russell Feingold (D) had signed up for a rematch.

 Summer polls showed Feingold with a double-digit lead, but the well-respected Marquette Law School Poll found last week that that margin had shrunk to a single point amid a late GOP ad blitz.

 In the final week of the campaign, about $6 million was spent by campaigns, party committees, super PACs and outside groups — many of which had canceled earlier reservations.

 Johnson, an Oshkosh plastics manufacturer, has sought to refresh his image as a no-nonsense outsider businessman, while casting Feingold as a career politician and a throwback. Feingold, meanwhile, has relentlessly driven a middle-class economic message focused on opposition to trade deals and tax loopholes, while tarring Johnson as an advocate for corporate interests.

 Although the race has tightened, Democrats and some Republicans think Feingold has an edge: Early voting has outpaced expectations in Democratic strongholds, and Johnson is only now showing signs of outpacing Donald Trump.

 — Mike DeBonis |||||
What is a summary?

– So which party will control the Senate next year? Flip a coin. That's the current assessment at FiveThirtyEight.com, which gives Democrats a 52% or 53% chance of regaining control and a 16% chance of a 50-50 tie. In the latter case, the new VP would cast tie-breaking votes. Not too long ago, most forecasts comfortably predicted that Democrats would wrest control, but things have tightened considerably. The GOP currently has a 54-46 advantage (two independents caucus with Democrats), but Democrats have an opportunity to pick up ground up because 24 of the 34 seats up for grabs are held by Republicans. Some key races, per FiveThirtyEight, the Washington Post, and NBC News: New Hampshire: GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte has been in a virtual dead heat with Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. This race in particular "is expected to play a critical role in determining which party will hold the Senate majority next year," notes the Post. Wisconsin: Republican Ron Johnson is defending his seat in a tight race against a familiar Democratic name, former Sen. Russ Feingold. Pennsylvania: Incumbent Republican Pat Toomey, a staunch conservative, is in a close one with challenger Katie McGinty, who could get a boost if Hillary Clinton wins the state. Illinois: GOP incumbent Mark Kirk is in real danger of losing to Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth. (Moments like this haven't helped him.) Missouri: Democratic challenger Jason Kander has a chance of ousting Republican incumbent Roy Blunt. Nevada: Harry Reid is retiring, and Republicans hope to get a flip of their own. The GOP's Joe Heck is keeping it close with Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.


Originally published March 23, 2014 at 2:32 PM | Page modified March 24, 2014 at 9:53 AM

 With many people still missing and hundreds waiting to hear about the fate of loved ones in a mile-wide mudslide, officials said rescuers have not heard any voices from the slide area since Saturday night.

 Use an interactive tool to see the landslide’s deadly path.

 Interactive map: A detailed view of the neighborhood hit by the landslide

 Read about the lives of the victims.

 Use an interactive to see how, even as warnings mounted, homes kept being built in slide-prone Steelhead Haven.

 A collection of stories and visuals about the disaster, why it may have happened and the people it affected.

 ARLINGTON — Hopes dimmed Sunday for finding survivors in the nearly one square mile of muck and debris left by a mudslide that killed at least eight people and demolished dozens of houses.

 Officials confirmed eight dead during a community meeting Sunday night in Darrington. Just a few hours earlier, the death toll had stood at four.

 Tod Gates, an incident commander, said that as he and other rescuers flew in a helicopter to the Darrington meeting, they spotted the four additional bodies. The dead were not identified Sunday night.

 In a news conference Monday morning, emergency officials said they were working off a “soft list” of 108 people who are unaccounted for, though they said the number of actual victims will likely be much lower.

 Darkness and shifting debris forced rescuers Saturday night to abandon efforts to reach voices coming from a buried structure.

 By Sunday, they heard no more voices.

 “We didn’t see or hear any signs of life out there today,” said Travis Hots, chief of Snohomish County Fire Districts 21 and 22, during a Sunday afternoon news conference.

 Casualties are likely to rise as the search continues through the wreckage that is all that remains of neighborhoods along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. In addition to destroying 30 or more homes, the slide buried a milelong stretch of Highway 530 under 20 feet or more of mud.

 Gov. Jay Inslee warned of grim days ahead during a news conference at Arlington City Hall. “I have a sense we are going to have some hard news here,” he said.

 The rain-soaked hillside that slid away Saturday morning was the same one that had partially collapsed in 2006. The area is about 16 miles east of Arlington.

 With no positive news forthcoming, relatives of the missing crowded into the Darrington Community Center looking for answers.

 Relatives handed photos of missing loved ones to rescue personnel in hopes they might turn up unconscious at a hospital.

 Those reportedly missing ranged from Oso-area homeowners to repairmen on work assignments and a group of girls at a slumber party.

 Ron Thompson, whose home was destroyed, stopped by the evacuation shelter at Post Middle School in Arlington to find out if his friends turned up alive. “We lost a lot of good kids. I don’t know what else to tell you. It hurts,” he said before driving away.

 A 4-month-old baby and her grandmother were also among the missing.

 The baby, Sanoah Huestis, lived with her grandparents, Christina and Seth Jefferds. Seth Jefferds, a volunteer firefighter, was not home at the time of the slide and arrived to find his house flattened and his wife and granddaughter missing, said his brother-in-law, Dale Petersen.

 “He said it was just like a bulldozer ran over the house,’’ Petersen said.

 Although the names of the people killed in the slide were not officially released, one is former Darrington librarian and School Board member Linda McPherson, 69, according to Pete Selvig, a member of the Darrington emergency-response team and a retired U.S. Forest Service employee.

 McPherson’s husband, Gary “Mac” McPherson, was also injured. His condition was not immediately known.

 The couple’s house and that of their niece and nephew next door were both destroyed, Selvig said. The younger couple were not at home, but their dog was trapped in the debris, he said.

 Rescuers tried to get to the dog after hearing whimpering Saturday night, but had to give up because the mud and debris were moving, Selvig said.

 McPherson was branch manager of the Darrington library and served for about 15 years on the School Board, said Selvig, who served with her.

 He said her approach to the business and challenges of the small rural school district was professional and methodical. She was part of a Darrington contingent that lobbied the state Legislature for funding to rebuild the district’s three aging schools. “Her name is on the plaque on the new elementary,” Selvig said.

 Seven people injured in the slide were being treated at area hospitals Sunday.

 At Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, a 6-month-old baby boy and an 81-year-old man were in critical condition in the intensive-care unit. A 37-year-old man and a 58-year-old man were in serious condition. A 25-year-old woman was in satisfactory condition.

 At Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington, one woman was in satisfactory condition. Skagit Valley Hospital in Mount Vernon reported that a 68-year-old man was in stable condition.

 Witnesses described a frantic scene when the slide hit Saturday morning.

 Neighbors rushed to retrieve a mud-covered baby within moments, said an Arlington woman who was driving by when the catastrophe occurred.

 “We thought it was a car accident,” said Sierra Sansaver, of Arlington, who said she was driving to Darrington to find the road was blocked by mud. “Then you realize there’s a house in the middle of the road.”

 “We heard screaming from a house 100 yards from us. A whole bunch of men went in there and pulled out a 6-month-old baby,” Sansaver said. Firefighters also were arriving, she said.

 “There was mud, household items everywhere, people screaming, crying, running into the rubbish.”

 “Everybody was covered in mud. A lady next door who saw what happened, she was giving them blankets to hold the baby in. They got in a car, and left,” said Sansaver.

 The infant at Harborview matched that scenario.

 In Darrington, a search-and-rescue team of about 20 people was advised Sunday morning to mark dead bodies if they saw any and keep looking for survivors.

 Some workers emerged from the meeting bleary-eyed and dispirited.

 One volunteer firefighter who had stopped working around 11:30 p.m. Saturday night said many tragic stories have yet to be told. He watched one rescuer find his own front door, but nothing else — not his home, his wife or his child.

 They’re in the “missing” category along with many it is feared will eventually be listed as dead.

 “It’s much worse than everyone’s been saying,” said the firefighter, who did not want to be named. “The slide is about a mile wide. Entire neighborhoods are just gone. When the slide hit the river, it was like a tsunami.”

 By noon on Sunday, the dammed-up Stillaguamish River was starting to break through a hole in the mile-wide mud wall near Oso, releasing some flow downstream. But officials said that was not a cause for alarm.

 “It’s not flowing at a rate that causes concern. There is water coming through. They don’t feel it is going to be a catastrophic burst,” said Shari Ireton, spokeswoman for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

 Even if the water breaches the blockage, it is unlikely to cause major flooding downstream, said Brent Bower, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service.

 The forecast for the area near Oso looks dry for most of Monday, said Johnny Burg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. Rain could return Monday night and into Tuesday, but Burg said “we’re not forecasting anything heavy” — maybe a tenth of an inch.

 Through March 19, Arlington had recorded 7.14 inches of rain for the month — just a couple inches short of the wettest March on record. A flash flood warning remained in effect.

 Inslee, who cut short a political trip to Montana to fly back to Washington state, thanked rescuers Sunday, and said he was awed by the destruction he witnessed after flying over the scene.

 “The devastation is just unrelenting and awesome. There is no stick standing in the path of the slide,” Inslee said. “But there is another powerful force of nature, and that is empathy and compassion.”

 Staff reporters Jim Brunner, Lynn Thompson and Nancy Bartley reported from Seattle. Staff reporters Mike Carter, Mike Lindblom, Mike Baker and Christine Clarridge reported from Arlington. Alexa Vaughn reported from Darrington. News researcher Miyoko Wolf also contributed.

 Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @Jim_Brunner

 Want unlimited access to seattletimes.com? Subscribe now! ||||| ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) — Hopes of finding any more survivors from a massive mudslide that killed at least eight people waned as searchers pulled more bodies from the tangled debris field and crews worked through the night into Monday in rural Washington state.

 A house is seen destroyed in the mud on Highway 530 next to mile marker 37 on Sunday, March 23, 2014, the day after a giant landslide occurred near mile marker 37 near Oso, Washington. At least six homes... (Associated Press)

 Washington Governor Jay Inslee talks privately with two residents personally affected by the mudslide after a media presser at Arlington City Hall on Sunday, March 23, 2014, the day after a giant landslide... (Associated Press)

 A house is seen destroyed in the mud on Highway 530 next to mile marker 37 on Sunday, March 23, 2014, the day after a giant landslide occurred near mile marker 37 near Oso, Washington. At least six homes... (Associated Press)

 Tom Moff with Snohomish County looks down at the Stillaguamish River as it maintains a low but steady flow off of Whitman Road on Highway 530 on Sunday, March 23, 2014, the day after a giant landslide... (Associated Press)

 A demolished house sits in the mud on Highway 530, Sunday, March 23, 2014 the day after a giant landslide occurred near Oso, Wash. The slide of mud, trees and rocks happened about 11 a.m. Saturday morning.... (Associated Press)

 Washington State Patrol Trooper Hyatt, left, takes down the name of Ben Reneau, an Arlington resident on his way to visit his aunt and uncle who live in Grant Creek, at Highway 530 near Jim Creek Rd.,... (Associated Press)

 Gov. Jay Inslee speaks during a news conference at Arlington City Hall, Sunday, March 23, 2014 the day after a mudslide occurred near Oso, Wash. on Highway 530. Rescue crews searched into the night for... (Associated Press)

 David King, left, on his way to visit a friend who lives a few miles down the road, pulls out his identification to show Washington State Patrol's Trooper Hyatt at Highway 530 next to Jim Creek Road on... (Associated Press)

 After spending the night at a Red Cross shelter, Reed Miller, 75, recounts the loss of his home in Oso, Wash., Sunday, March 23, 2014, at Post Middle School in Arlington, Wash. Miller was grocery shopping... (Associated Press)

 Barbara Welsh, center, a mudslide victim whose husband is still missing, is comforted by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, right, following a news conference outside of the Arlington Police Department, Sunday,... (Associated Press)

 Barbara Welsh, center, a mudslide victim whose husband is still missing, is comforted by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, right, following a news conference outside of the Arlington Police Department, Sunday,... (Associated Press)

 Snohomish County residents listen to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee during a news conference outside of the Arlington Police Department, Sunday, March 23, 2014, in Arlington, Wash. Over a dozen people are... (Associated Press)

 The orange X on a house, destroyed in the mud, indicates it has been searched for people on Highway 530, Sunday, March 23, 2014 the day after a giant landslide occurred near Oso, Wash. Rescue crews searched... (Associated Press)

 Snohomish County residents and media study a map of the mudslide area outside of the Arlington Police Department, Sunday, March 23, 2014, in Arlington, Wash. Over a dozen people are unaccounted for after... (Associated Press)

 The Oso Community Church displays a sign reading "pray with us for our community" in Oso off of Highway 530 on Sunday, March 23, 2014, the day after a giant landslide occurred near mile marker 37. At... (Associated Press)

 Washington State Patrol Trooper Hyatt takes down the name of a driver as he monitors Highway 530 near Jim Creek Rd., which is closed to everyone but residents and family members, Sunday, March 23, 2014... (Associated Press)

 In this aerial photo taken Saturday, March 23, 2014, a massive mudslide is shown in between the towns of Darrington, Wash., and Arlington, Wash. The slide killed at least three people and many people... (Associated Press)

 Jessica Nemnich, left, and Eric Finzimer, both volunteer firefighters, clean and re-check their equipment as they await instructions in the aftermath of the Highway 530 landslide at the Darrington Distrct... (Associated Press)

 A house is seen destroyed in the mud on Highway 530 next to mile marker 37 on Sunday, March 23, 2014, the day after a giant landslide occurred near mile marker 37 near Oso, Washington. At least six homes... (Associated Press)

 An aerial view shows a huge volume of earth missing from the side of a hill facing Stillaguamish River, in a landslide along State Route 530, between the cities of Arlington and Darrington, on Saturday,... (Associated Press)

 Search and rescue teams took to the air in helicopters and the ground on foot on Sunday looking for anyone who might still be alive. Their spirits had been raised late Saturday night when they heard voices calling for help from the flotsam of trees, dirt and wreckage. Dangerous conditions forced them to turn back in the darkness, but they resumed their work at first light Sunday.

 "We didn't see or hear any signs of life out there today," Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said. "It's very disappointing to all emergency responders on scene."

 Snohomish County sheriff's Lt. Rob Palmer said four more bodies were discovered late Sunday. Earlier in the day, authorities said one body had been found on the debris field. Three people were already confirmed dead on Saturday.

 More people remained missing, and authorities said the number was "fluid." Earlier Sunday, they said it was at least 18, but that count came before additional bodies were discovered.

 The 1-square-mile slide also critically injured several people - including an infant - and destroyed about 30 homes.

 Crews were able to get to the soupy, tree-strewn area that was 15-feet deep in places Sunday after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Hots said

 He added that they did not search the entire debris field, only drier areas safe to traverse. Hots said crews were still in a "search and rescue mode. It has not gone to a recovery mode at this time."

 Searchers planned to continue looking through the night.

 Before crews could get onto the debris field late Sunday morning, they looked for people by helicopter. They had late Saturday heard people yelling for help, but they were unable to reach anyone. The soupy mud was so thick and deep that searchers had to turn back.

 "We have this huge square-mile mudflow that's basically like quicksand," Hots said Sunday.

 The slide wiped through what neighbors described as a former fishing village of small homes — some nearly 100 years old.

 As the search for the missing continued, authorities said some may have been able to get out on their own. The number unaccounted for could change because some people may have been in cars and on roads when the slide hit just before 11 a.m. Saturday.

 Officials described the mudslide as "a big wall of mud and debris." It blocked about a mile of State Route 530 near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle. It was reported to be about 15 feet deep in some areas.

 Authorities believe the slide was caused by ground made unstable by recent heavy rainfall.

 Washington Gov. Jay Inslee described the scene as "a square mile of total devastation" after flying over the disaster area midday Sunday. He assured families that everything was being done to find their missing loved ones.

 The slide blocked the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. With the water pooling behind the debris, authorities worried about downstream flooding and issued an evacuation notice Saturday. The water had begun to seep through the blockage Sunday afternoon, alleviating some concerns.

 Snohomish County officials said Sunday that residents could return home during daylight hours. Even though the evacuation had been lifted, Inslee urged residents to remain alert.

 The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for Snohomish County through Monday afternoon.

 Shari Ireton, a spokeswoman for the Snohomish County sheriff's office, said Sunday that a total of eight people were injured in the slide.

 A 6-month-old boy and an 81-year-old man remained in critical condition Sunday morning at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said two men, ages 37 and 58, were in serious condition, while a 25-year-old woman was upgraded to satisfactory condition.

 Bruce Blacker, who lives just west of the slide, doesn't know the whereabouts of six neighbors.

 "It's a very close knit community," Blacker said as he waited at an Arlington roadblock before troopers let him through.

 Search-and-rescue help came from around the region, including the Washington State Patrol and the Army Corps of Engineers. More than 100 were at the scene.

 Dane Williams, 30, who lives a few miles from the mudslide, spent Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter at the Arlington school.

 He said he saw a few "pretty distraught" people at the shelter who didn't know the fate of loved ones who live in the stricken area.

 "It makes me want to cry," Williams said.

 Hots said searchers would continue their efforts through the difficult debris field.

 "There may be people in their cars, there may be people in houses," he said.

 ___

 Associated Press writers Phuong Le and Chris Grygiel in Seattle contributed to this report. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Hopes are fading for people still believed to be trapped under mud and debris after a massive landslide in Washington state. At least eight people have now been confirmed dead from the mudslide that destroyed dozens of houses in a neighborhood along the Stillaguamish River, the Seattle Times reports. At least a dozen people are still missing, but rescue workers say they didn't see or hear any signs of life after working throughout the day. But despite the lack of signs of life in the debris field, the operation is still in "search and rescue mode," a local fire chief says. "It has not gone to a recovery mode at this time." Rescuers had to pull back early yesterday until geologists told them it was safe to return, the AP reports. "We have this huge square-mile mudflow that's basically like quicksand," the fire chief says. At least eight people were injured in the slide Saturday morning, which officials describe as a "a big wall of mud and debris" caused by ground made unstable by recent rainfall.


Article:

The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine

 This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds)

 The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| Katie Holmes Going Back to Work on Film About Single Mom

 From art-museum outings with 6-year-old daughter Suri to a guest appearance on Project Runway – and a little ice cream in between Katie Holmes has maintained a busy schedule since filing for divorce from Tom Cruise last week.And she's not slowing down as she shifts her career into a higher gear.Next week, Holmes, 33, is due to begin production on a new film, Molly, which she co-wrote and is co-producing. In a case of life imitating art, the plot follows the life of a single mother and her daughter, according to a source. (Holmes is seeking sole legal custody of Suri.)Filming is scheduled to last until about August in New York City, where Holmes recently moved into a new three-bedroom apartment with Suri.The actress, who wrapped a modern film retelling of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in May, is then due on set in the fall to shoot Responsible Adults, a romantic comedy about a guy ( Chace Crawford ) who discovers that his crush was his babysitter 15 years earlier.She's also planning her first-ever show at New York's Fashion Week in the fall for her clothing line, Holmes & Yang.Amid her jam-packed schedule, Holmes and Cruise's lawyers are currently working on a divorce settlement between the two stars."Neither of them wants this to be hashed out in public," a source told PEOPLE ||||| Long before he embraced Scientology, Cruise studied for the priesthood. Michael Daly talks to the priests who instructed the future star about his surprising religious leap.

 Before Tom Cruise was a Scientologist, he was as devout a Roman Catholic as was his now estranged wife, Katie Holmes.

 And just in time for Cruise’s 50th birthday and just as his third marriage was unraveling, the priest who recruited him for the seminary more than three decades ago mailed him a photo.

 “I found an address online in Los Angeles,” says Father Ric Schneider of the Order of Friars Minor. “Probably an agent, I guess.”

 Father Ric took the photo of Cruise at the age of 14, when the man who is now the most famous of Scientologists was still among the best of Catholics and known by his family name, Mapother.

 Not that Father Ric was sending Cruise a message. The priest just thought the star might enjoy this captured memory of him in earth shoes and an unbuttoned shirt, standing beside another boy by a pond. A smiling Cruise is holding a radio-controlled boat the boys built in the hobby shop at St. Francis Seminary just outside Cincinnati in Mt. Healthy, Ohio.

 “A cute little kid,” Father Ric says.

 Cruise, like most of his classmates at St. Francis, attended the seminary more for the education than out of any serious thought of becoming a priest. But they had all shared the devout routine of those headed for ordination.

 “You went to daily Mass, you went to morning prayer, you went to evening prayer, you prayed before meals, you prayed after meals,” Cruise’s classmate Don Weller recalls. “He was well indoctrinated ... For him to totally shut himself off was just amazing.”

 Cruise went to the seminary after hearing Father Ric give a talk at St. Raphael the Archangel school in Louisville, Ky. Cruise’s mother had moved there with her son and three daughters after leaving his father. The departure had been preplanned, with the mother instructing her children to have their bags packed and hidden but ready. The father is said to have followed his family to Louisville and sought a reconciliation that was not forthcoming. The couple divorced shortly after Cruise’s 13th birthday.

 Courtesy of Father Ric Schneider

 The next step for Cruise was to have been his father’s alma mater, St. Xavier High School, in Louisville. He saw an alternative when Father Ric ended his talk at St. Raphael’s by asking if anybody was interested in attending the seminary.

 Cruise—then still Mapother—expressed interest. Father Ric visited the boy’s home and spoke to the mother.

 “Nice home, nothing fancy,” the priest recalls.

 The priest administered the usual IQ test to determine if a candidate was likely capable of college-prep-level studies.

 “He just made it,” Father Ric says.

 As with all recruits, Father Ric drove Cruise up to the seminary on a Friday to get a firsthand look. Cruise attended class on Saturday and stayed there through Sunday, when Father Ric drove him back home. Cruise liked it well enough that he decided he wanted to enroll.

 He did not strike Father Ric as somebody likely to become a priest.

 “It was pretty obvious,” Father Ric says. “I think he went there to get an education. I didn’t get a sense he was serious about the priesthood or the religious life.”

 The priest adds, “He might just have wanted to get away from it all.”

 In the fall of 1976, Cruise joined 67 other freshmen at the seminary.

 The Superior, the friar in charge, was Father John Boehman. He remembers Cruise as “basically a good kid” who was always smiling, but also “one of the ones more likely to get into trouble.”

 “If he could trip somebody or do something like that, it would be right down his alley,” Father John says.

 Cruise hardly seemed the stuff of a future movie star, with modest stature and in sore need of an orthodontist. One of his snaggled front teeth was chipped.

 “His teeth were different than they are today,” Father John notes.

 Cruise was not among the top students in academics. The instructor who appeared to make the biggest impression on him was Father Aubert Grieser, former chaplain to the New Mexico School for the Deaf and a passionate musician who prized three small stones he took from Beethoven’s grave and whose own compositions included a four-movement Mass, “Wa Ma Wa Ta,” that blended Gregorian chants with pop sounds.

 Father Aubert, the speech and drama teacher, would get students up on the stage and push them to overcome whatever was inhibiting them from letting go.

 “I think he did more for Tom Cruise than maybe anybody else did at that time to help him,” Father Hilarion Kistner says of Father Aubert. “He could just bring somebody out of themselves, get over their inhibitions and act and sing.”

 At St. Francis, Cruise played soccer and basketball for the Saints, where his teammate Weller remembers the future star could sometimes be “a little bit of a jerk. He was overcompensating for his height and his musculature. The upperclassmen kept him in his place.”

 Paul White / AP

 Cruise shared with the others the bonds of working, playing, eating, and praying together, as well as sharing a dormitory and living under a code that was strict, though not harsh. But he did not seem to form any deep friendships.

 “I don’t think he was particularly close to really anybody,” Weller says. “Basically more of a loner, I guess.”

 But even then, Cruise showed the cockiness that would animate many of his starring roles.

 “That’s what he was as a freshman in high school,” Weller says. “He had that kind of persona. But he wasn’t big enough to make it stick, and he kind of became a little bit of a whipping boy.”

 Weller goes on to say, “He was always trying to prove something.”

 Cruise did not return after his freshman year, enrolling instead at St. Xavier’s in Louisville. The friars and his seminary classmates were not surprised, as whatever calling he had seemed decidedly secular. The only reason for leaving he has ever voiced was, “I started to realize I love women too much to give all that up.”

 Weller stayed and in a sign of changing times his was the last class to graduate before the seminary closed. Weller says that the boy they knew as Mapother left his former classmates with no sense of where life might take him.

 They were astonished when he began to appear on screen, with a new name and new teeth but that same cockiness, now big enough via the magic of film to make it stick.

 “We were stunned: ‘Oh my God, that’s Mapother!’?” Weller recalls. “None of us had any idea that’s what he’d grow up to be.”

 When the speech and drama teacher Father Aubert saw Risky Business, he suggested to a TV interviewer that Cruise had lost a little too much inhibition.

 “Tommy was such a fine young man,” Father Frank Jasper recalls Father Aubert saying. “And now it’s disgusting. He’s making these dirty movies and jumping all over the furniture in his underwear. It’s totally disgusting!”

 The classmates might have understood if such attitudes had combined with general changes in society to nudge Cruise into lapsing from his faith. Total rejection was something else.

 “With only 68 people in the whole class, you got to know everybody pretty well,” Weller says. “To see him go over to Scientology was really kind of a shocker.”

 Just before the Cruise-Holmes break-up, Weller attended a St. Francis Seminary reunion, the shuttered institution being among those that have escaped any public manifestations of the sex-abuse scandals that have rocked the church. Father Ric put on a slide show during a pizza party. The long-ago photo of the two boys holding the radio-controlled boat flashed on the screen.

 “Somebody said, ‘Oh, there’s Tom!’” Father Ric recalls.

 Afterward, he decided to mail a copy to Cruise. And, by the kind of fortuitous chance for which Franciscans have a knack, it should have arrived just as the star was arriving at a bleak 50th birthday.

 His wife had slipped away from him with their daughter just as his mother had slipped away from his father with him. Holmes fled after taking full measure of what it might mean for a child to be raised in Scientology rather than in the faith that she and the seminarian turned star shared before they met. Her escape was managed by her father, who, along with the rest of her family, remains a prominent fixture at Christ the King parish in her native Toledo, Ohio. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Katie Holmes Suri in Aisle 5

 While some women hit the clubs after filing for divorce,continued to enjoy the single life by going food shopping at Whole Foods in NYC for the second time this weekend ... this time bringingalong for the ride.She really enjoys tasting her freedom. ||||| Posing in his G-string and with a temper like fury... Tommy Cruise before I won him fame

 Different man: Eileen Berlin, Tom Cruise's manager from 1980-1983 reveals how the star has turned his life around

 She became his surrogate mother and mentor when he was on the cusp of fame. And, as one of the few outsiders to whom Tom Cruise has ever been close, his former personal manager, Eileen Berlin, says that she knew from the start that his relationship with Katie Holmes was doomed.

 Breaking her silence for the first time since she signed the actor as her client soon after his 18th birthday, Mrs Berlin said last week that she blamed his pent-up anger created by an abusive childhood for his three broken marriages.

 As a child, the star, born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, suffered from dyslexia, was bullied by his peers, and beaten and then abandoned by his father.

 At 15, he entered a seminary, intending to become a priest.

 Mrs Berlin, now 77, ran a New York film and theatrical management agency with her late husband and met Cruise some three years later, after he dropped his surname and made acting his calling instead.

 ‘His mom had asked him to leave her house, I think because he had had a teenage drinking problem,’ Mrs Berlin said.

 ‘She had remarried and he harboured a lot of anger and resentment at his natural father, who had deserted him and his three sisters.

 ‘Every time I saw him, he would be with a girl, but I never saw him with the same girl twice. It was almost like he had to prove he was wanted – or maybe he wanted to feel loved.

 ‘I wasn’t surprised Katie broke up with him. I was just surprised it lasted as long as it did. I was surprised when he married his first wife, Mimi Rogers, and I was surprised it lasted ten years a second time, with Nicole Kidman.

 ‘Tom was moody and would get angry in a snap of your fingers. It was like something was smouldering and it would boil up and explode.’

 Carrying a guitar and a duffle bag stuffed with a few possessions, Cruise moved into the manager’s Manhattan apartment for three months after he signed up with her company. In 1981, he signed the contract for his breakthrough action film, Taps.

 Mrs Berlin arranged for him to pose for publicity portraits. In one of them, dressed in tight jeans and a tank top, he strikes a belligerent pose and flexes his muscles but in others, he smiles with innocent charm.

 Close: Proof sheets of a photo shoot of Tom Cruise taken in 1981 when Eileen Berlin was his manager; on top is birthday note he wrote to Eileen

 ‘By the time I met him, he had decided he could be a star,’ she said. ‘He wanted to be treated like a star and he acted like a star. He would walk around my house in a little G-string strap and nothing else. I had a mirrored wall and he would stand in front of it, flexing his biceps and admiring himself.

 ‘I was a bit embarrassed but he liked to show off his body. He had a great pride in it.’

 Cheeky: Some posed shots Tom Cruise sent of himself to former manager Eileen Berlin

 Though he could be moody, the young lodger also had a charming side. Mrs Berlin said: ‘He was sweet, respectful and mannerly to a fault. He always addressed me as “ma’am” and my husband as “sir”. But he was so private, he couldn’t show his true feelings. You would get so far and he would close down. I am sure his wives would have come up against that barrier.’

 ‘He would channel his rage into his roles,’ Mrs Berlin said.

 ‘For Taps, he locked himself in the closet. He said he thought about someone raping his sister before he filmed a scene where he blasted a machine gun. Once, my husband and I took him out for lunch while they were on location and a waitress said, “Are you one of the actors?’’ Tom said to us, “Please tell her not to ask me any questions. I’m still in character.” ’

 Another time, a row broke out when Mrs Berlin gave him a surprise birthday present – an album in which she had pasted photos of him from fan magazines. Mrs Berlin said: ‘He screamed, “I didn’t want to be in the teen mags.” He threw the album hard at me and it hit me on the cheek.’

 THEIR professional relationship ended in 1983 but they stayed in touch and during a subsequent dinner, he mentioned the Church of Scientology, crediting it with helping him overcome his childhood learning disorder. Mrs Berlin says she started to receive invitations to church events.

 ‘I think Tom was the perfect candidate for Scientology,’ she said.

 ‘He didn’t believe in therapy but he obviously needed help. He just couldn’t have a relationship and I think that was because you have to open yourself up and he’d been too hurt by his father to do that.

  |||||
What is a summary?

– Apparently we've reached the point in the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes divorce where people start coming out of the woodwork with bizarre dirt from the past. In today's edition, a former manager and mentor says Cruise used to strut around the house they shared wearing nothing but a G-string, proud as he was of his muscular body. "I had a mirrored wall and he would stand in front of it, flexing his biceps and admiring himself," she tells the Mail. Another weird revelation: Cruise was a devout Catholic before he became a Scientologist, and as a teen he had a vague interest in becoming a priest, Father Ric Schneider tells the Daily Beast. As for Katie Holmes, she's not letting this divorce get in the way of her career—and her upcoming project seems quite telling. She'll start production on Molly next week, a film she co-wrote and is co-producing about a single mother and her daughter, People reports. As for Holmes' actual daughter, it seems Suri could be a sticking point when it comes to the settlement talks Tom and Katie are starting. Cruise won't make a deal unless it includes "meaningful, significant contact with his daughter," sources tell TMZ. For more, click to see pictures of Katie Holmes in Whole Foods or … Katie Holmes in Whole Foods yet again.


– A suspect in the death of a pregnant woman initially claimed the woman gave up her newborn daughter but later admitted taking advantage of her to get the child, according to court documents filed Monday that shed no light on how the woman died. Brooke Crews, 38, and boyfriend William Hoehn, 32, were each charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of 22-year-old Savanna Greywind, the AP reports. Greywind, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared Aug. 19, died as a result of homicidal violence, per police; no further details were given. Her body was found Sunday night in the Red River near Fargo, wrapped in plastic and duct tape. The complaint offers conflicting stories from the two suspects. Crews told police she arranged to have Greywind come to her apartment on Aug. 19 and told her how to induce labor; she said Greywind came back two days later to give her the newborn. "Crews admitted she had taken advantage of Savanna Greywind in an attempt to obtain her child and possibly keep the child as her own," the complaint said. But Hoehn told police a different story: He said he came home Aug. 19 to find Crews cleaning up blood in their bathroom, and that Crews presented him with an infant baby girl and said, "This is our baby. This is our family." Hoehn told police he took garbage bags containing bloody shoes and his bloody towels and disposed of them away from the apartment complex, where Greywind also lived. The baby girl, who was in good health, was with Crews when she was arrested.

Expand this summary.

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Authorities say a missing North Dakota woman whose body was found in the Red River had been violently killed.

 Fargo police announced Tuesday that 22-year-old Savanna Greywind's cause of death was homicidal violence. Investigators didn't release further details of a preliminary autopsy on Greywind, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared earlier this month. She was the subject of intensive searches before her body was found Sunday.

 Police found a newborn daughter believed to be Greywind's in an apartment in the same building where she had lived. Prosecutors have charged the man and woman who lived there with conspiracy to commit murder in what they say was a scheme to take Greywind's baby.

 The child is under the care of social services.

 Police spokesman Joseph Anderson declined comment. ||||| Fargo, N.D. Police Chief David Todd, right, pauses during a press conference at Fargo City Hall to update members of the media on the case of Savanna Greywind, whose body was found Sunday evening in the... (Associated Press)

 FARGO, N.D. (AP) — A suspect in the death of a pregnant woman initially claimed the woman gave up her newborn daughter but later admitted taking advantage of her to get the child, according to court documents filed Monday that shed no light on how the woman died.

 Brooke Crews, 38, and her boyfriend William Hoehn (HAYN), 32, were each charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of 22-year-old Savanna Greywind. But the brief charging summary does not reveal how police and prosecutors believe Greywind died.

 Greywind, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared Aug. 19, was the subject of several large searches before her body was spotted by kayakers Sunday night in the Red River near Fargo, wrapped in plastic and duct tape.

 "Savanna was a victim of a cruel and vicious act of depravity," Fargo police Chief David Todd said.

 The complaint offers conflicting stories from the two suspects. Crews told police she arranged to have Greywind come to her apartment on Aug. 19 and told her how to induce labor. Greywind came back two days later to give her the newborn baby, Crews said.

 "Crews admitted she had taken advantage of Savanna Greywind in an attempt to obtain her child and possibly keep the child as her own," the complaint said.

 But Hoehn told police a different story, according to the documents. He said he came home Aug. 19 to find Crews cleaning up blood in their bathroom. Hoehn says Crews presented him with an infant baby girl and said: "This is our baby. This is our family."

 Hoehn told police he took garbage bags containing bloody shoes and his bloody towels and disposed of them away from the apartment complex, according to the documents.

 Crews and Hoehn are also charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping and giving false information to police. They didn't enter pleas during a court hearing Monday. Bond was set at $2 million for each of the suspects.

 Neither showed much emotion, although Hoehn objected to the bail amount as "unattainable for any regular person."

 Their court-appointed attorneys, Stormy Vickers for Hoehn and Monty Mertz for Crews, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 Family members declined to comment outside the courtroom. Amanda Vivier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, said she struggled with her emotions during the hearing. Greywind was also a member of the tribe.

 "I have a lot of anger," said Vivier, spiritual director for the Native American Christian Ministry, a church frequented by the Greywind family. "I've got a lot of questions that I don't know how to process."

 The two suspects were neighbors of Greywind. Authorities recovered her body from the Red River on Sunday night, three days after finding the newborn. The girl, who was in good health, was with Crews when she was arrested.

 Police say Crews and Hoehn acknowledged it is Greywind's child, but say they are doing DNA testing to be sure.

 At the same time Greywind's body was found, Todd said, a farmstead on the Minnesota side of the river that is the border between that state and North Dakota was being searched and suspicious items were found that led authorities to believe it might be a crime scene.

 Todd did not say whether there were signs of trauma to Greywind's body, which was undergoing an autopsy in Minnesota's Ramsey County.

 A memorial was started on Monday on the steps of the apartment building where Greywind lived with her parents and where she was last seen alive.

 It included flowers, candles, stuffed animals and a portrait of a young Native American woman with the inscription: "May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears, and above all, may silence make you strong!"

 ___

 Follow Dave Kolpack on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/DaveKolpackAP |||||


News article:

A pill that helps people cut down on alcohol will be available to people who drink at least half a bottle of wine or three pints a night from today. Experts say the drug reduces the urge to drink and can be prescribed alongside counselling support.

 The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has published formal guidance recommending nalmefene, following draft guidance released in October, which means that patients have the right to request the drug if they meet certain requirements.

 Nalmefene, also called Selincro, is suitable for anyone who regularly drinks high amounts of alcohol, which is defined by the World Health Organisation as 7.5 units a day for men and five units a day for women. It helps patients gradually cut back on their alcohol intake and is therefore not suitable for anyone with a severe alcohol problem who needs to stop immediately. The pill costs £3, can be taken up to once a day, and is designed to be used whenever the patient wants to stave off the desire to drink.

 Lyndsey Dudley, a spokeswoman for Nice, said the drug would be suitable for people who “probably don’t even recognise themselves as an alcoholic”.

 She said: “It is much like a patch that you might wear to give up smoking, to support you to cut down on your alcohol intake. Some days you might feel stronger than others.”

 More than two million Britons are believed to be mildly dependent on alcohol. Thirty-five thousand people are expected to be given nalmefene as part of treatment for alcohol dependency in the first year. However, the actual figure might prove to be lower. Data released yesterday for Scotland, where nalmefene was approved for use in October last year, show that only 53 people were prescribed the drug in 2013/14. The 35,000 figure is based on the prediction that 58,000 people are expected to receive psychosocial intervention for mild alcohol dependency, of whom 60% will be given nalmefene.

 Dudley said the figure may change as “people might not want to go down the medication route straight away”.

 Information given by the drug’s manufacturer Lundbeck identifies fictional examples of the sort of people eligible for nalmefene, including Sue, 39, who “looks forward to a glass of wine after work when the kids go to bed but always finishes the bottle while cooking and eating with her husband, and opens a second bottle a few days each week”.

 Professor Carole Longson, Nice’s health technology evaluation centre director, said: “Many people have a difficult relationship with alcohol even though they have a very stable lifestyle, maintain jobs and a social life and would not automatically assume they have a problem. But regularly drinking over the recommended daily amount of alcohol can seriously damage your health.

 “Those who could be prescribed nalmefene have already taken the first big steps by visiting their doctor, engaging with support services and taking part in therapy programmes. We are pleased to be able to recommend the use of namelfene to support people further in their efforts to fight alcohol dependence.

 “When used alongside psychosocial support nalmefene is clinically and cost effective for the NHS compared with psychosocial support alone.”

 Professor Jonathan Chick, a medical adviser for Drinkaware, said: “Two glasses of wine per day is not by any definition ‘mild alcoholism’. Nalmefene is for people who are concerned about their drinking, have tried to cut down, have been given brief advice/counselling by their doctor and are still regularly drinking more than low-risk levels.

 “The risks start at 14 units per week for women and 21 for men, but patients who will be prescribed nalmefene will be drinking higher amounts than that, and will have provoked changes in their brain patterns which have led to difficulty controlling their drinking.” ||||| Middle-class drinkers in Britain who enjoy having more than three glasses of wine a night, will be given a pill to reduce their dependency on alcohol.

 The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has approved the use of Nalmefene, also called Selincro, to curb men and women drinking more than the required 7.5 units and 5 units a day limit.

 The institute said the drug has been approved for use alongside counselling support for people, who want to reduce their alcohol intake by up to 1.8 units a day.

 Nalmefene is available from today and costs £42.42 for a 14-tablet pack, or about £3 a day. Around 35,000 people are expected to be given Nalmefene in the first year.

 Professor Carole Longson, director from NICE Health Technology Evaluation Centre, said: "Many people have a difficult relationship with alcohol even though they have a very stable lifestyle, maintain jobs and a social life and would not automatically assume they have a problem. But regularly drinking over the recommend daily amount of alcohol can seriously damage your health.

 "Those who could be prescribed nalmefene have already taken the first big steps by visiting their doctor, engaging with support services and taking part in therapy programmes. We are pleased to be able to recommend the use of namelfene to support people further in their efforts to fight alcohol dependence," she said. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Those Brits who want to cut down on their alcohol intake—and can spare about $5 a day—now have access to a pill to reduce their craving. UK officials have approved the drug nalmefene for use along with counseling to help reduce alcohol dependency, the International Business Times reports. The official approval means people who fit the right profile can request the prescription drug. "Those who could be prescribed nalmefene have already taken the first big steps by visiting their doctor, engaging with support services, and taking part in therapy programs," says a researcher. Nalmefene, which can be taken once a day, helps people feel less of an urge to drink, experts say. It's considered appropriate for many people drinking the equivalent of at least half a bottle of wine daily, the Guardian reports. Plenty of potential candidates to take the drug "probably don’t even recognize themselves as an alcoholic," says a health official, who compares it to a nicotine patch. But since nalmefene is intended to be used to gradually reduce alcohol intake, it's not a good solution for people who need to quit right away, the Guardian notes.


Write an article based on this summary:

– Less than a fortnight remains before Election Day, and Donald Trump is attempting an 11th-hour outreach to an entirely new demographic: Indian-Americans, reports the Washington Post. And so he's released a TV ad in which he attempts to speak Hindi (with a New York accent, the Post notes), swapping his name into a slogan used by Indian PM Narendra Modi during his own 2014 campaign. The 30-second ad kicks off with a Diwali greeting, followed by an abruptly edited score and clips from a Trump speech he gave to Indian-Americans in New Jersey on Oct. 15. In that speech, he promises the US will be a "true friend" to the "Indian and Hindu community" and help it defeat "radical Islamic terrorism." "We love the Hindus! We love India!" he proclaims. Then, his new catchphrase as he speaks directly to viewers: "Ab ki baar, Trump sarkaar" ("this time, a Trump government"). As for reaction from Delhi residents, the BBC found that Trump "still has some work to do" in wooing Indians. One commenter on the street said he was "disgusted" by Trump's appeal to only the Hindu community when "Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians also live in this country" and noted he hoped "Americans will be smart enough to not vote this guy into power." A female respondent said, "He is not a friend of India," adding his speech seems "rehearsed" and that he appears to be a "man of contradictions." "He first berates immigrants and then tries to woo Indian-Americans," she said. (A Hindu nationalist party had a special surprise for Donald on his 70th birthday.)

Look at the screenshot above. Can you imagine if, instead of Hindi's Devanagari script, it were written in Chinese? Or in Arabic? Or even in Spanish, a language that tens of millions of Americans speak?

 The United States' political slugfest is now crossing new frontiers. Less than two weeks before the presidential election, Donald Trump's campaign has released an ad airing on TV channels aimed at Indian Americans in which he not only speaks Hindi (albeit roughly), but adopts the main campaign slogan of India's prime minister, Narendra Modi.

 “Ab ki baar Modi sarkaar.” Those were the words Modi used to fuel his landslide victory in May 2014. They mean: “This time, a Modi government.” In the ad, which you can watch below, Trump switches Modi's name out for his own.

 Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign has released an ad aimed at Indian Americans in which he speaks Hindi and adopts the main campaign slogan of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Shalabh Kumar)

 The ad comes on the heels of Trump's address to the Indian American community at a convention center in Edison, N.J., on Oct. 15. Featured in the ad are clips from his speech, which he used to assure Indian Americans that the United States and India would be “best friends.”

 [At Hindu-American rally, Trump pitches India and U.S. as ‘best friends’]

 In the speech, as in the ad, he expressed a deep admiration for Modi, who was denied a U.S. visa in 2005 over his alleged support for Hindu extremists during Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002. Modi has since rebuilt his reputation among U.S. officials and hosted President Obama in New Delhi in 2015 and visited the Oval Office in June for talks.

 “I will look forward to working with Prime Minister Modi, who has been very energetic in reforming India's bureaucracy,” said Trump at the rally in Edison. “Great man! I applaud him for doing so. And I look forward to doing some serious bureaucratic trimming right here in the United States. Believe me, we need it also.”

 Campaign outreach in various languages is not groundbreaking. Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, began running a Spanish-language TV ad last week, and has run radio ads in Florida in Creole for Haitian American voters. In 1988, Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis often sprinkled his speeches with Greek.

 This may be the first time Hindi has made the list for a targeted ad. It also seems like a long shot.

 Trump severely lags behind his Clinton in support from Indian Americans. Only 7 percent of likely Indian American voters indicated in a recent survey that they intended to vote for him, as opposed to 70 percent who said they would vote for Clinton.

 Nevertheless, a group called the Republican Hindu Coalition, led by Indian American electronics magnate Shalli Kumar, is hoping to persuade some in the community to vote Trump. Kumar and his immediate family have donated about $2 million to the Trump campaign, and he spent upward of $3 million of his own money on organizing the event in Edison, a city with a large Indian American population.

 [Indian Americans vote solidly Democratic, but some hope Trump can change that]

 Trump's perceived tough stance on “radical Islamic terrorism” is one issue Kumar thinks can swing the traditionally Democratic voting bloc Republican. In the new ad, Trump uses those three words while a picture of Mumbai's iconic Taj Mahal hotel burns in the background. The hotel was attacked in 2008 by terrorists operating out of Pakistan who arrived in the port city by boat.

 Yet, with polls shaping up decidedly in Clinton's favor in the lead-up to November's election, a Modi-esque landslide for Trump is unlikely. And given that Indian American voters make up a minuscule percentage of the American voting public, the community was never going to tip that balance anyhow.

 Read More:

 Indian security forces went on a village-burning rampage, investigation finds

 From a Nat Geo cover to a mug shot: The sad story of the green-eyed ‘Afghan Girl’

 India expels Pakistan’s embassy employee on espionage charges ||||| Image copyright Shalabh Kumar

 US presidential candidate Donald Trump has spoken a few words of Hindi in a video aimed at wooing Indian-American voters.

 He is appropriating Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popular campaign slogan "Abki bar Modi sarkar" ("This time Modi government").

 The video was made to air on Indian TV channels in the US, Buzzfeed quoted Shalabh Kumar, a member of Trump's Indian-American Advisory Committee, as saying. Mr Kumar supports Mr Trump and says he made the video with him to appeal to Hindi speakers.

 However, if the reaction of Indians in Delhi is anything to go by, Mr Trump still has some work to do.

 As the BBC's Vikas Pandey found out in a quick survey on the streets of the Indian capital, no one was very impressed by the video.

 'India is not just Hindus, Mr Trump'

 Image caption Shailesh Yadav believes that Mr Trump will not be a friend of India

 Shailesh Yadav said he felt disgusted after watching the video because "Mr Trump seemed to be addressing only Hindus through the video".

 "How could he just assume that Hindus means India? We are a plural country, Mr Trump. Muslims, Sikhs and Christians also live in this country." he said.

 Mr Yadav added that he was hoping that "Americans will be smart enough to not vote this guy into power".

 'Not a friend of India'

 Law student Aparimita Pratap's reaction after watching the video was that Mr Trump "has already lost the election and no video is going to save him".

 "He can't win in a million years. If he thinks that just speaking a few words in Hindi will get him the votes of Indian-Americans or win him fans here [in India], he is so horribly wrong," she said.

 "He just has the support of some Indian-American business families and he thinks whole of India loves him. But then I can't blame him: he is the living embodiment of ignorance."

 Image caption Raymon Singh, left, and Aparimita Pratap, right, are law students

 Her friend Raymon Singh agrees and just laughs after I show her the video.

 "This is so funny. He seems to have rehearsed the slogan many times, but he still didn't sound convincing," she said.

 "Are you sure this is not some spoof video?" she asked.

 "If this is a real video, then it just proves that he is a man of contradictions. He first berates immigrants and then tries to woo Indian-Americans," she said.

 "He is not a friend of India - he is nobody's friend. Just look at his regressive views about women. I feel disgusted as a woman listening to his comments."

 'He can't be trusted'

 Image caption Kriti Kakkar believes Mr Trump will not win

 Student Kriti Kakkar was so amused she watched the video a few times over.

 "I thought the US was a developed country, but after seeing this man come this far, I am having serious doubts," she said.

 "How could they not know him? I have followed him since he used to host The Apprentice on television. He was so rude even then."

 She added that India "cannot trust him".

 "He is saying nice things about India because he wants votes. But he can't be trusted to honour his promises," she said.

 'Not the right person'

 Image caption Hitesh Yadav earlier thought that Mr Trump was going to win

 Hitesh Yadav, a management professional, said he wasn't surprised by the video.

 "He will say and do anything to win votes at the moment. I honestly thought he was going to win two months ago, but now his comments about women and minorities have shown his true face to the world," he said.

 "If he wins, the world will become more unsafe, including India. He will try to shut down call centres in India," he said.

 "He is not the right person for the job."

 'Not a good sign for the US'

 Image caption Designer Anand Bhushan believes that Mr Trump won't protect the minorities if he wins

 Designer Anand Bhushan said Mr Trump "appears to be trying to cash in on the victory of the Hindu nationalist BJP party in 2014 in India".

 "And he may end up getting some votes of the Hindu Indian-American community. But that's not a good sign for the US," he said.

 "Just look what's happening in India. We have seen so many cases of intolerance against minorities in India since 2014. Mr Trump is heading in the same direction," he said. |||||