Article:

Provided by FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force Authorities are looking for this man, accused of taking a cab to rob a bank in Centennial.

 Provided by FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force Authorities are looking for this man, accused of taking a cab to rob a bank in Centennial.

 Provided by FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force Authorities are looking for this man, accused of taking a cab to rob a bank in Centennial.

 Provided by FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force Authorities are looking for this man, accused of taking a cab to rob a bank in Centennial.

 The FBI wants the public’s help to find a man who took a cab to rob a bank in the Denver Tech Center, robbed the bank, then had the cabbie drive him to Denver International Airport.

 “The FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force does not know if he actually boarded a plane,” according to a news release.

 Video taken in the cab clearly shows the man’s face, and pictures taken in the Public Service Credit Union shows him wearing what looks like a white dust mask over his lower face.

 He got into the cab near the Bellco Theater in downtown Denver and took it to the credit union at 6850 S. Yosemite St., where he showed a small pistol and ordered a teller to give him an undisclosed amount of money before fleeing the bank.

 The suspect is a white man in his late 20s to early 30s, approximately 6 feet tall, with a thin to medium build. He wore a black beanie cap, dark gray jacket, black shirt with white letters, dark jeans and dark sunglasses.

 Anyone with information can call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867, or text 274637 with the title DMCS, and a message. ||||| DENVER (AP) — Authorities say a man who held up a Denver bank got a cab ride to and from the robbery.

 The Denver Post reports (http://dpo.st/1XoG8qd ) the FBI is asking for the public's help to find the suspect. Authorities say the man took a cab to the bank, asked the driver to idle while he went inside, and then had the cabbie drive him to Denver International Airport.

 Officials say it's unknown if the suspect actually boarded a plane after going to the airport.

 Video from inside the cab clearly shows the man's face, and pictures taken in the Public Service Credit Union show the man wearing what appears to be a white dust mask while inside the bank, where he threatened a teller with a small handgun.

 ___

 Information from: The Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com |||||
What is a summary?

– Authorities say a man who held up a Denver bank got a cab ride to and from the robbery. The Denver Post reports the FBI is asking for the public's help to find the suspect. Authorities say the man took a cab to the bank, asked the driver to idle while he went inside, and then had the cabbie drive him to Denver International Airport. Officials say it's unknown if the suspect actually boarded a plane after going to the airport, the AP reports. Video from inside the cab clearly shows the man's face, and pictures taken in the Public Service Credit Union show the man wearing what appears to be a white dust mask while inside the bank, where he threatened a teller with a small handgun.


Here is a news article: As far as wartime sacrifices go, it’s hard to beat the plight of the wood ants of Templewo, Poland.

 There, near the border of Germany, a large colony has established over a Soviet nuclear arms base that was operational from the 1960s until 1992. Except, no one thought to tell the ants that the Cold War is over. And every year hundreds of thousands of ants soldier off and fall down a ventilation pipe into the weapons storage bunker below ground, never to see the light of day again.

 In the bunker, the ants find themselves in total darkness, with very little food to eat. Temperatures rarely hit 50 degrees, even in the summer. But do these ants give up in despair? No, they do not. They simply keep working, building, and maintaining their mound. They’ll do it until they die, of starvation or old age, but it won’t matter. A younger generation is on its way, ready to cart off the fallen to a two-million-strong ant cemetery beyond the mound and continue their endless, pointless labor.

 Researchers stumbled upon this strange colony in 2013, after crawling into the bunker through “some illegally dug cracks” to count a small population of bats that had made a home inside the nuclear storage facility. The scientists, led by Wojciech Czechowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences, published their descriptions of the ants Monday in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research.

 Monitoring since then has found no evidence that the colony is able to produce offspring. In July 2015 the researchers dismantled a section of the 10-inch-high mound looking specifically for larvae, pupae, empty cocoons, and queens, but found none. When they returned in January 2016, the damage had been repaired. The scientists suspect that the cold temperatures and paucity of nutritious food sources make reproduction impossible.

 story continues below

 Nevertheless, the colony appears to be maintaining its size, and perhaps even growing. The researchers estimate that at least several hundred thousand ants, possibly a million, call the bizarre barren mound home.

 In the summer, the ants climb the walls of the bunker, perhaps in an effort to touch the warmer air coming from above. But the researcher saw no ants on the ceiling, and no evidence that any of them had ever returned to the mother colony above.

 If the ants closer to the surface had self-awareness of their plight, surely by now they would have developed some complicated mythology about those lost down the pipe, destined to toil away below and never to return. They are the chosen ones, off to serve some higher purpose, they tell one another. Their work must mean something, though they are blinded to it in the darkness.

 story continues below

 But here we are, like the omniscient narrator of some perfect dystopian fiction, and we know the truth: The war is over, and your cold, sexless mound serves no purpose except to bring some small comfort to the latest batch of arrivals that there is still some work to be done.

 Photos via Wojciech Stephan / Journal of Hymenoptera Research ||||| Wojciech Stephan

 Wojciech Stephan

 Wojciech Stephan

 Wojciech Stephan

 Wojciech Stephan

 Wojciech Stephan

 Wojciech Stephan

 Wojciech Stephan

 For the past several years, a group of researchers has been observing a seemingly impossible wood ant colony living in an abandoned nuclear weapons bunker in Templewo, Poland, near the German border. Completely isolated from the outside world, these members of the species Formica polyctena have created an ant society unlike anything we've seen before.

 The Soviets built the bunker during the Cold War to store nuclear weapons, sinking it below ground and planting trees on top as camouflage. Eventually a massive colony of wood ants took up residence in the soil over the bunker. There was just one problem: the ants built their nest directly over a vertical ventilation pipe. When the metal covering on the pipe finally rusted away, it left a dangerous, open hole. Every year when the nest expands, thousands of worker ants fall down the pipe and cannot climb back out. The survivors have nevertheless carried on for years underground, building a nest from soil and maintaining it in typical wood ant fashion. Except, of course, that this situation is far from normal.

 Polish Academy of Sciences zoologist Wojciech Czechowski and his colleagues discovered the nest after a group of other zoologists found that bats were living in the bunker. Though it was technically not legal to go inside, the bat researchers figured out a way to squeeze into the small, confined space and observe the animals inside. Czechowski's team followed suit when they heard that the place was swarming with ants. What they found, over two seasons of observation, was a group of almost a million worker ants whose lives are so strange that they hesitate to call them a "colony" in the observations they just published in The Journal of Hymenoptera. Because conditions in the bunker are so harsh, constantly cold, and mostly barren, the ants seem to live in a state of near-starvation. They produce no queens, no males, and no offspring. The massive group tending the nest is entirely composed of non-reproductive female workers, supplemented every year by a new rain of unfortunate ants falling down the ventilation shaft.

 Like most ant species, wood ants are tidy animals who remove waste from their colony. In the case of the bunker ants, most of this waste is composed of dead bodies. The researchers speculate that mortality in the "colony" is likely much higher than under normal circumstances. "Flat parts of the earthen mound [of the nest] and the floor of the adjacent spaces ... were carpeted with bodies of dead ants," write Czechowski and colleagues. This "ant cemetery" was a few centimeters thick in places, and "one cubic decimeter sample contained [roughly] 8,000 corpses," which led the researchers to suggest that there were likely 2 million dead ants piled around the nest mound. The sheer numbers of dead bodies suggest that this orphaned wood ant nest has been active for many years.

 The ant graveyard is also host to a tiny ecosystem, where mites and a few other invertebrates feed on the bodies of the dead wood ants. The question is, what are the wood ants eating? It's possible they have figured out how to eat the creatures who feast in their cemeteries, essentially making them cannibals at one remove. But Czechowski and his team dismiss this as unlikely. It's also possible that there are nutrients growing in the bat guano from the ants' only living neighbors in the bunker. But in their years of observation, the scientists still haven't figured out for certain what the ants' source of food is.

 Wood ants are known for surviving in harsh conditions, and they have been found on remote islands as well as living in small, closed boxes. And it's not impossible that this underworld colony could bloom into something more. In a previous experiment, Czechowski showed that orphaned wood ant colonies will adopt queens from related species. So if a queen ant fell down the pipe, she might join this colony and start reproducing. Unfortunately, however, without a steady food supply the ants probably wouldn't have enough energy to raise a new generation and keep the nest warm for them. So the only way this nest carries on is by waiting for a new rain of ants from the free colony above ground.

 The paper's conclusion reads like a dystopian science fiction scene from the 1970s:

 The wood-ant ‘colony’ described here – although superficially looking like a functioning colony with workers teeming on the surface of the mound – is rather an example of survival of a large amount of workers trapped within a hostile environment in total darkness, with constantly low temperatures and no ample supply of food. The continued survival of the ‘colony’ through the years is dependent on new workers falling in through the ventilation pipe. The supplement of workers more than compensates for the mortality rate of workers such that through the years the bunker workforce has grown to the level of big, mature natural colonies.

 Life in an abandoned nuclear weapons bunker is nightmarish, even for the humble ant. It appears that the legacy of the Soviet occupation of Poland doesn't just haunt the country's human population. It has affected the social structures of insects too.

 Journal of Hymenoptera Research, 2016. DOI: 10.3897/jhr.51.9096

 Listing image by Wojciech Stephan |||||
A summary of this is?

– Call it the road to nowhere. Scores of wood ants living near an old nuclear weapons bunker in western Poland plunge seemingly to death each year—and their descendants follow them—in a bizarre ritual that has amazed scientists. The story begins with hard-working ants that built a colony atop a defunct Soviet-era bunker, reports ArsTechnica. When metal covering a ventilation pipe rusted way, the ants began tumbling down. What sounds like a death sentence (they can’t climb out, there is no food, and it is very cold) has turned into a survival story because these worker ants keep doing what they always do: building until they die. And when they do? "A younger generation is on its way, ready to cart off the fallen to a two-million-strong ant cemetery beyond the mound and continue their endless, pointless labor," reports Inverse. Researchers write in the Journal of Hymenoptera that a million or so trapped ants have managed to carry on in a virtual Cold War nightmare, living in a near-starvation state and total darkness. The colony rests atop a thick cemetery of ant ancestors, indicating this has been going on for quite some time. Zoologists who stumbled upon the odd discovery in Templewo while counting bats doubted cannibalism was keeping the insects alive, suggesting bat excrement could be doing the trick. The ants produce no offspring, and so the colony's survival depends on surface ants making the same mistake they did. Wood ants are known to be resilient, though, with one colony surviving on a barren islet for nearly 30 years with only pine trees to munch, the researchers write. (A historian thinks a $500 million treasure hides in an old Nazi bunker.)


– Kim Jong Un's New Year's Day speech is being widely described as an "olive branch"—despite the fact that he warned the nuclear button is "always on his table" and bragged that the entire US is now within the range of his country's nuclear weapons. "This is reality, not a threat," the North Korean leader said, though he also said he was "open to dialogue" with South Korea and suggested his country might send a delegation to the Winter Olympics being held in the South next month, the BBC reports. He said North Korea will focus on mass-producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in 2018, but these "weapons will be used only if our security is threatened." "We should melt the frozen North-South relations," Kim said, adding that the "Winter Games will be a good opportunity to show unity of the people, and we wish the Games will be a success." John Delury at Seoul's Yonsei University tells the Washington Post that Kim's words "should give hope to those in the South who are trying to get something going and open a channel at least." He says Kim may be trying to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, though the fact that the North Korean leader refrained from insulting President Trump may be a good sign. Asked about Kim's "nuclear button" remarks by reporters at the Mar-a-Lago New Year's Eve party, Trump said "We'll see."

Expand this summary.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Residents of South Korea watched the speech from the North's leader

 North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un has said a nuclear launch button is "always on my table" and warned the US it will never be able to start a war.

 In a televised new year speech, he said the entire US was within range of North Korean nuclear weapons, adding: "This is reality, not a threat."

 But he also offered a potential olive branch to South Korea, suggesting he was "open to dialogue".

 He said the North may send a team to the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

 What is President Trump's reaction?

 When asked by reporters to respond to Mr Kim's latest threats, US President Donald Trump said, "We'll see, we'll see".

 He was speaking at the sidelines of New Year's Eve celebrations at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

 North Korea has come under increased criticism and sanctions over the past year because of its nuclear weapons programme and repeated testing of conventional missiles.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption North Korea said in November its latest missile was capable of reaching Washington DC

 It claims to have a fully deployable nuclear weapon, though there is still some international scepticism about its true capacity to carry out such an attack.

 In his speech, Mr Kim re-emphasised his focus on the weapons programme, but implied the country still has a few stages left to go before achieving its ambitions. North Korea must "mass-produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles and speed up their deployment", he said.

 He also said they would not use their weapons unless they felt that peace was threatened.

 Thawing relations with the South?

 While his language against the US remained tough, Mr Kim did not employ his typically antagonistic tone when speaking about his neighbours in South Korea.

 "The year 2018 is a significant year for both the North and the South, with the North marking the 70th anniversary of its birth and the South hosting the Winter Olympics.

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Pyongyang's seasonal ice festival includes an ice sculpture of an intercontinental ballistic missile

 "We should melt the frozen North-South relations, thus adorning this meaningful year as a year to be specially recorded in the history of the nation," he said.

 A spokesperson for the South Korean president said their office had "always stated our willingness to talk with North Korea at anytime and anywhere".

 "We hope the two Koreas will sit down and find a solution to lower tensions and establish peace on the Korean peninsula."

 Youngshik Daniel Bong, a research fellow at Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies, told the BBC that addressing the South was a marked change from the norm for Mr Kim.

 "North Korea usually ignores South Korea, maintaining the position that as a 'nuclear power' it will deal with the US on its own," said Mr Bong. "It appears that by engaging the South, he hopes to create an estrangement between South Korea and the US."

 The analyst also said that Mr Kim could be seeking to improve ties to offer some respite from the growing economic pressures from the recent UN sanctions.

 Will North Korea now go to the Olympics?

 Mr Kim also said he would also consider sending a delegation to the Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February - a gesture which South Korea has previously suggested would be welcome.

 "North Korea's participation in the Winter Games will be a good opportunity to show unity of the people and we wish the Games will be a success," he said.

 "Officials from the two Koreas may urgently meet to discuss the possibility."

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Can sports and diplomacy mix on the ice with the presence of North Korea's figure skaters Ryom Tae-Ok and Kim Ju-Sik?

 The president of the PyeongChang Games' organising committee, Lee Hee-beom, told South Korea's news agency Yonhap he was delighted to hear of the potential participation.

 "[The committee] enthusiastically welcomes it. It's like a New Year's gift," he said.

 The only two North Korean athletes who qualified for the Games are figure skaters Ryom Tae-Ok and Kim Ju-Sik.

 Although the North has missed the official deadline to confirm their participation, the skaters could still compete with an invitation by the International Olympic Committee.

 South Korea's President Moon Jae-in last month suggested delaying an annual joint military drill with US troops until after the Games. The North usually denounces any such exercises as a rehearsal for war.

 Robert Kelly, a political science professor at South Korea's Pusan National University, told the BBC that the Winter Olympics statement was "a smart move from North Korea" as it positioned Mr Kim's regime as moving towards its neighbours while the US was seeking to isolate it. ||||| North Korean leader Kim Jong Un boasted in an annual New Year's Day speech Monday that he had a nuclear button on his desk and that the entire United States was within range of his weapons — but he also vowed not to attack unless threatened.

 Kim promised to focus this year on producing nuclear warheads and missiles for operational deployment. But he also struck a conciliatory note, opening the door to dialogue with South Korea and saying he would consider sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics to be held in his southern neighbor in February.

 "The United States can never fight a war against me and our state," he said in the nationally televised speech. "It should properly know that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike and a nuclear button is always on the desk of my office, and this is just a reality, not a threat."

 But Kim also said that North Korea was a peace-loving and responsible nuclear power, and would not use its nuclear weapons unless "hostile aggression forces" encroach on its sovereignty or interests.

 "This year, we should focus on mass-producing nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles for operational deployment," Kim said. "These weapons will be used only if our security is threatened."

 North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September and launched its most high-tech intercontinental ballistic missile in November, ignoring international condemnation and steadily tightening sanctions.

 [Documents shed light on North Korea’s startling gains in sea-based missile technology]

 In typically bellicose language, it declared the latest round of United Nations sanctions imposed last month an "act of war," and Kim said his country had achieved the historic feat of "completing" its nuclear forces.

 North Korea's nuclear capabilities do not yet match Kim's boasts, experts say, since it is far from clear it could successfully deliver a nuclear weapon on one of its missiles. Yet there is little doubt its capabilities have advanced significantly in the past year.

 But Kim, dressed in a Western-style gray suit and tie, also offered a potential olive branch to Seoul, saying it is imperative to lower military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and improve ties with the South.

 He said that the path to dialogue was open and that he would consider sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

 "North Korea's participation in the Winter Games will be a good opportunity to show unity of the people, and we wish the Games will be a success," he said. "Officials from the two Koreas may urgently meet to discuss the possibility."

 South Korea has been trying to reassure the rest of the world that the Olympics will be safe despite the nuclear tensions, and President Moon Jae-in has said North Korea's participation would ensure their safety. He also proposed last month that Seoul and Washington postpone annual joint military drills until after the Olympics, and he generally takes a less-confrontational approach to relations with the North than his predecessor, Park Geun-hye.

 John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, said Kim's message to Seoul was "more promising" than he had anticipated, addressing in a specific and actionable way South Korea's desire to make the Games a success.

 "That should give hope to those in the South who are trying to get something going and open a channel at least," he said.

 [U.N. imposes new sanctions on North Korea over missile tests]

 The idea of improving relations between the two Koreas is one that is frequently spoken about but seldom achieved, and Kim's warmer words could also be seen as an attempt to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.

 While Kim's words were more combative toward the United States, he also refrained from a personal attack on President Trump, after the two men engaged in several rounds of mutual name-calling in 2017, Delury noted.

 When asked about North Korea's nuclear claims Sunday night, Trump said only, "We'll see, we'll see."

 Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Kim's claims about his country's nuclear capability underscored that there was no viable "military solution" to denuclearizing North Korea and that sanctions alone would not persuade Pyongyang to halt or reverse its nuclear buildup.

 "To avoid a nuclear conflict and the full-scale deployment of an operational North Korean strategic deterrent force, U.S. leaders, in concert with South Korea, should redouble efforts to engage North Korea in direct talks and cease any further explicit or implicit threats of military action against the North," he said in an email.

 "The upcoming Olympics provide an important opportunity to break the ice and to begin discussions with the North Koreans on mutual steps that reduce the chances of miscalculation and war," he added.

 Read more:

 Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

 Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news |||||


Write a summary based on this article:

It focuses on a notorious act of white police brutality against mostly Black citizens, in a July 1967, siege at the Motor City’s Algiers Motel, where racism met frustration and blood was wantonly shed. Three young Black men were left dead and many questions were left unanswered. The mostly white Detroit Police Department emerged officially exonerated but not blameless.

 The incident is set against the larger story of the Detroit riots of the same year, which left 43 people dead, nearly 1,200 injured and 7,200 arrested, as the National Guard along with city and state police combined to enforce law and order in a city literally burning from racial tensions.

 No one would accuse the cops in Detroit of being “too nice,” although Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal — who previously teamed for Zero Dark Thirty and Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker — are careful not to demonize every authority figure. Many of the police and soldiers in the film are appalled by the acts of racism and violence they’re witnessing, among them the commanding officer of trigger-happy young patrol officer Philip Krauss, who is played by cherry-cheeked Will Poulter (The Revenant).

 Despite civil-rights advances and eight years of an African-American U.S. president, the colour of a person’s skin can still determine everything from employment opportunities to treatment by police — who were recently encouraged by President Donald Trump to “please don’t be too nice” when dealing with crime suspects, wink, wink.

 The injustice and anger behind it all feels like current reality, even a half-century on, making Detroit urgent viewing regardless of its character-development flaws.

 Being appalled, however, isn’t the same as taking full ownership. The commander severely reprimands Krauss for fatally shooting a fleeing looter. He then allows the unrepentant patrolman to return to the streets.

 Krauss later becomes the central antagonist of the Algiers Motel siege, which is sparked by a teen’s reckless firing of a starter’s pistol at a passing group of National Guardsmen. As cops and soldiers converge on the seedy establishment, seeking the sniper they believe hides inside, fate has also drawn in multiple unlucky bystanders, who thought they’d escaped the riots.

 Among them are rising R&B singer Larry Reed (Algee Smith) and his friend Fred Simple (Jacob Latimore); private security guard Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega); a Vietnam vet named Greene (Anthony Mackie); and two white visitors from Ohio (Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever), who picked a bad time and place to party.

 That’s a lot of characters, and there are more, and here you have the central deficiency of Boal’s script: it tries to tell us everything about the circumstances without telling us much about the people. The film is less a character study and more of a situational one; a post-script notes that the Algiers Motel incident has never been fully explained.

 Detroit opens with a roughly animated history lesson about how poor southern Blacks moved to white-dominated northern cities while affluent whites fled to the suburbs, taking the best jobs with them. The resulting powder keg of inequities exploded not just in Detroit, but across America.

 And it led to situations like the motel standoff, which Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd powerfully depict cinéma vérité style as a cascading series of bad choices, evil intentions and escalating violence.

 Krauss and his fellow racist cops torture the rounded-up motel guests by beating them and threatening to shoot them one by one until the identity of the alleged sniper is disclosed.

 Watching it unfold over the bulk of the film’s 143-minute running time makes for a grim sit, made all the more so by James Newton Howard’s minimalist score, which at times disappears altogether. Bigelow deserves credit for not trivializing the drama with a soundtrack packed with driving Motown tunes, although a version of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Nowhere To Run” is briefly heard in the film at one point.

 You don’t need a big backbeat to drive images like these home; Detroit’s deep fury and essential message sears the eye and brain. ||||| There is no nice or pretty way to tell a story about the systemic oppression and mistreatment of black people in the United States. It's fitting then that Kathryn Bigelow's " Detroit ," an account of the murders of three unarmed black men that took place in the Algiers Motel in late July 1967, is neither — it is an all-out assault on your senses and soul.

 It's hard to overstate just how visceral and harrowing an experience it is. "Detroit" is a well-made and evocative film that is also numbingly brutal with little to no reprieve. And while it might be the only true way to tell this story, it's also one that is not going to be for everyone. The stomach-churning horror begins immediately and does not let up for 2 hours and 23 minutes.

 To set the stage for the Algiers Motel, Bigelow begins by speeding through the history of black people in United States with animated acrylics and pounding music — emancipation, the great migration, white flight and the racist zoning practices that led to the overcrowding of black residents in urban pockets. Tensions have already reached a tipping point, and then in the summer of 1967, Detroit police bust an after-hours club in what would become the inciting incident for the riots.

 Three days after the riots begin, a local singing group called The Dramatics are about to go on stage at a big, crowded theater hoping to get their big break, but are interrupted and sent home due to the events outside. The men exit the theater in their sparkly suits into what looks like a war zone. As they run through the streets they assure every cop who isn't already beating someone with a night stick that they're just on their way home. Bigelow shows all of this with handheld, ground level docudrama realism. There is no orienting yourself to the bigger picture, only what is right in front of you.

 The charismatic lead singer Larry (Algee Smith) and his buddy Fred (Jacob Latimore) decide to peel off and get an $11 room at the Algiers and wait out the night. There they meet two white party girls, a veteran, Greene (a terrific Anthony Mackie), and a provocateur, Carl (Jason Mitchell), who plays around with a starter pistol that eventually catches the attention of the police in the area. The officers, who we've already learned are rotten, storm the motel on the hunt for the sniper they presume is there.

 The local police, led by a maniacal, hotheaded racist, Krauss (played by the English actor Will Poulter), kills Carl immediately and then continue to terrorize the guests relentlessly with inhuman torture tactics in what seems like an endless sequence of horror upon horror until two more end up dead and they call it a night.

 Bigelow collaborated again with screenwriter Mark Boal on "Detroit," which is perfectly evocative of this specific time and place, but lacking the perspective and illumination that one might hope a 50-year-old event would warrant. Perhaps they wanted to leave conclusions and interpreting to the audience, and as the film notes at the end, no one knows for certain what happened in the Algiers Motel and some of the scenes were pieced together and imagined by the filmmakers.

 There is some nuance — in the National Guard officer who is horrified by the situation and the local security officer (John Boyega) who only wanted to ease tensions — but not nearly as much as Bigelow and Boal have previously achieved in "Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Hurt Locker."

 Also very little insight is given to the victims' lives outside of this event. Maybe that's not the point, though. Maybe anger is all you're supposed to feel when you step outside the theater. Maybe not feeling satisfied with "Detroit" is the point.

 This was America, you think. This is still America. And the movies can't offer a resolution that history hasn't.

 "Detroit," an Annapurna Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "strong violence and pervasive language." Running time: 143 minutes. Three stars out of four.

 ———

 MPAA Definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

 ———

 Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr ||||| In Harrowing 'Detroit,' Kathryn Bigelow Mixes Brutal Facts With Fiction

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Francois Duhamel/Annapurna Francois Duhamel/Annapurna

 Twenty-two years ago, Kathryn Bigelow made Strange Days — a paranoid thriller written and produced by her former spouse James Cameron, set in the then-future of 1999. Inspired in part by the 1992 Los Angeles riots — which were sparked by the acquittal of the LAPD officers who'd beaten Rodney King near to death — the movie's plot involved the murder of black hip-hop artist "Jeriko One" by a pair of white Los Angeles cops.

 As ambitious as it was unwieldy, Strange Days flopped so hard that Bigelow's career took years to recover. But she landed on her feet, becoming the first and so far only woman to win the Academy Award for best director, for the Iraq war movie The Hurt Locker, which also won best picture. Her follow-up, Zero Dark Thirty, got a Best Picture nod, too. And that's how a sexagenarian woman in Hollywood earns the juice to make a movie like the incendiary new Detroit — Bigelow's vivid, inevitably divisive reenactment of a real 1967 incident wherein three Motor City police officers were charged in the killings of three adolescent black men while the city was under martial law following riots.

 Seemingly in a position to make any movie she wanted, she chose a lightly fictionalized historical drama that bares a striking resemblance to her little-seen Angela Bassett-starring sci-fi flick from 1995. (Strange Days even climaxes in a riot touched off by white police using excessive force on a black suspect, which is where Detroit begins.)

 Until now, the highest-profile accounting of what happened that night was John Hersey's 1968 book The Algiers Motel Incident. (Hersey's estate declined to sell Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal the rights, The New York Times reported.) Detroit isn't as dispassionate as that. Just as the movie Hidden Figures buffed and polished the story told in the eponymous nonfiction book for maximum uplift, Detroit heats and sharpens the facts that formed it for maximum outrage.

 Not that those facts weren't outrageous already: In the case Detroit revisits, the cops were acquitted after the confessions they gave and then recanted were ruled inadmissible in court. That's a cruel irony, because it was in their attempt to coerce confessions from the young men they'd confined in Detroit's Algiers Motel — a $6-a-night flophouse that the law considered a den of sin —that those out-of-control cops resorted to intimidation, torture, and finally murder. (The presence of two white girls from Ohio among all those black men appeared to inflame the cops' further — they accused the women of prostitution, stripping and beating them.) The police claimed a sniper had fired upon them from inside the motel, but they never recovered a rifle from the scene. Detroit subscribes to accounts from several witnesses that the shots that summoned the police came from a starter pistol fired first as a stupid prank, then as an impotent and costly gesture of defiance. Carl Cooper, the 17-year-old who'd allegedly fired it, was the first to die that night.

 One of the witnesses who testified for the prosecution, and who said he was assaulted by the accused policemen himself at the Algiers, was a musician. Singer Larry Reed quit his vocal group The Dramatics after that hellish night in 1967; the group broke out a few years later and had a long career without him. (They're still touring.) Reed was one of the incident's key figures that frequent Bigelow collaborator Boal interviewed while working on the movie. And though Boal's research team included Pulitzer Prize-winning Detroit Free Press reporter David Zeman, he has used his artistic license to plug some gaps in the legal record. (Other limits on the film's authenticity were merely budgetary, like the fact that tax incentives resulted in most of Detroit being filmed on location in... Boston.)

 Boal's script commingles real and fictional people: Real-life witnesses Melvin Dismukes, Julie Hysell, and Larry Reed (played onscreen by John Boyega, Hannah Murray, and Algee Smith, respectively), are represented, but the brutal cops in the movie have different names than the officers who were eventually acquitted of the Algiers Motel killings. Their ringleader is played by Will Poulter, a redheaded, freckled 24-year-old English actor whose permanently right-angled eyebrows make him look like the satanic cousin of MAD magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman. "We've failed these people," he says early in the film, sounding like a peace-loving Hubert Humphrey voter moments before he fatally shoots one of "these people" in the back on suspicion of stealing groceries. A detective tells him he's recommending that the District Attorney file murder charges against him, but Poulter's character is sent right back out to active duty in the meantime. Did this really happen? Well, there was a riot on.

 Other credulity-straining aspects of Detroit appear to be factual: For one thing, Dismukes, a private security guard called in to protect a store near the Algiers from looters, was allowed to enter the Algiers with a weird coalition of Detroit cops and National Guardsmen and remain at a crime scene for hours while trying, ineffectually, to prevent the cops from brutalizing their suspects. (Boyega radiates Denzel-like calm in the face of the storm, proving that the way he livened the The Force Awakens was no fluke — he's a bonafide movie star. And to see him in a role where he's essentially helpless is unusual, and compelling.) In real life, Dismukes was charged with the felonious assault of two of the suspects and tried before any of the three cops accused of more serious offenses were; an all-white jury acquitted him. To the extent Detroit addresses this, it implies an unsuccessful attempt by the police to frame Dismukes for their own wrongdoing.

 I'm also curious to know whether another one of its plot points is historical or invented: When Michigan State Police arrive at the Algiers, the ranking officer among them decides he wants no part of the "civil rights mix-up" the Detroit P.D. has already created, so the state troopers just drive away. What's the expression? Huge if true.

 Bigelow and Boal's recreation of a 50-year-old police brutality case seems bound to be as controversial as their last project, 2012's Zero Dark Thirty. Accused in some quarters of defending the C.I.A.'s use of torture in its decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty was really more of a high-tone Rorshach blot for each viewer's opinion of the endless War on Terror. Bigelow has always gone for immersion before reflection or judgment.

 "I don't think it's up to the filmmaker to judge," the director told Washington Post chief film critic Ann Hornaday in a profile published last week. And it's not as though she's only just become interested in identity politics or policing: Long before her metamorphosis into an Oscar-winning maker of Important Films, she made 1990's Blue Steel, a sordid thriller that starred Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie patrol officer who comes under suspicion after she kills a robbery suspect whose weapon can't be found. It's not a particularly good movie, nor one that would remotely satisfy any 2017 test of its wokeness, but it is at least more evidence that Bigelow was thinking about the problems of policing even when she was just making pulp films.

 Bigelow's quasi-journalistic style has long alienated some viewers; now it's infuriating them, too. Chicago critic Angelica Jade Bastien slammed Detroit as "soulless," claiming it isn't harsh enough in its condemnation of the misconduct it depicts so mercilessly. Some of her specific complaints about Boal's screenplay — that it makes Melvin Dismukes "too passive a character," or that "there are also brief, disconcerting moments that present some white cops in a great light" — come from the moments where Boal hews closest to the firsthand accounts Dismukes and Reed shared with him. Dismukes says he did all he could to prevent the bloodshed, which wasn't much, and Reed says that after he fled the Algiers he was picked up and taken to the hospital by a cop—one who wasn't involved in the nightmare at the hotel. Molding facts into the emotional construct we refer to when use the word story is messy work, even when it's done in good faith.

 I've seen Detroit only once, but I'm of the option that Bigelow and Boal have done that good but messy work, resulting in a movie that is maddeningly imperfect but still honorable. The movie opens with a semi-animated sequence that fashions Jacob Lawrence's "Migration Series" of paintings into a primer on the mass movement of African-Americans from the rural south to the urban north and west after World War I, and the subsequent white flight to the suburbs. That meant that by the 1960s, Detroit was a majority-black city with a majority-white police force.

 It's to Bigelow's credit that she doesn't survey the worlds in which she sets her movies in schematic screenwriting terms: Detroit's early scenes, wherein a police raid on an unlicensed nightclub that's hosting a party for returning veterans sparks a riot, includes a few left turns — one of the black party guests who mouths off to the "pigs" turns out to be a narc, for example. This detail serves no narrative purpose; it only serves to underscore the absence of trust between the police and the citizens they're sworn to protect and serve. Editor Billy Goldenberg splices in documentary footage with the newly-shot material in this section of the movie, creating a panorama of the climate of mortal fear and volcanic anger between the citizens and the police.

 We begin to get our bearings when Reed (Algee Smith) and The Dramatics prepare to perform on a revue at the Fox Theatre where they know a Motown A&R; scout will be in the audience. When the police order the performance stopped and the Fox evacuated, and then their bus home is set upon by rioters, Reed and his friend Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore) make the ill-fated decision to wait out the curfew poolside at the Algiers.

 The police occupation of the Algiers forms the film's harrowing, quite long centerpiece. Bigelow uses all her gifts as a communicator of visceral sensation to summon the horror of spending a night under these vicious cops' bootheels. It's nauseating. By the time Anthony Mackie — playing an out-of-work Vietnam vet who gets thanked for his service by being beaten and spat on by cops — agrees never to speak of what he's witnessed, Bigelow and Boal have said all they have to say.

 But Detroit continues on to depict the trial of the three officers, leaking tension as it does. If the intent of this section of the film is to illustrate that these cops are not bad apples but rather the functioning-as-designed armature of an inherently racist justice system, it's only partially successful. The tactics their lawyer (John Krasinski, weirdly) uses to discredit the prosecution's witnesses are as familiar as the Algiers scenes are revolting, and our rage circuits have already blown.

 Maybe it's just impossible for even a scene-setter as skilled as Bigelow to do anything new in a courtroom. The coda she chooses, showing Larry Reed's resolution to continue his musical career in a far more modest fashion than before, has nothing to do with consoling the audience after 135 minutes of trauma. It's about Reed becoming a militant for peace. It's about him making a choice to survive. If nothing else, Detroit gets you thinking about how those might be the same thing. ||||| × Close What is the Tomatometer®?

 The Tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. It represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show.

 From the Critics From RT Users Like You! |||||

– Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit tells the story of a black singer who takes refuge in a dingy motel to escape the 1967 Motor City riots. Based on real events, the film reunites Bigelow with screenwriter Mark Boal, both of the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker. It's got a strong 89% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what critics are saying: "Bigelow drills down into one of American history's most egregious cases of abuse of police power, bringing it to life with visceral detail and slowed-down meticulousness" in what "feels like her timeliest movie yet," writes Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post. It's "daring, sophisticated and unforgettably disturbing." And "in scale, scope and the space it offers for a long-awaited moral reckoning, it's nothing less than monumental." "It's hard to overstate just how visceral and harrowing an experience it is," writes Lindsey Bahr at the AP, calling Detroit "a well-made and evocative film" jam-packed with "stomach-churning horror." She argues there could be more nuance and perspective. But "maybe anger is all you're supposed to feel when you step outside the theater. Maybe not feeling satisfied with Detroit is the point." Chris Klimek says Detroit is "maddeningly imperfect but still honorable," citing "lightly fictionalized" aspects of the otherwise true story that set it up "for maximum outrage." This is "messy work, even when it’s done in good faith," he writes at NPR. He applauds John Boyega, previously of The Force Awakens. Radiating a "Denzel-like calm," he shows "he's a bonafide movie star," Klimek writes. Peter Howell's main gripe is that the film "tries to tell us everything about the circumstances without telling us much about the people." But Detroit still makes for "urgent viewing," he writes at the Toronto Star. Why? "The injustice and anger behind it all feels like current reality, even a half-century on," when "a person's skin can still determine everything from employment opportunities to treatment by police."


Article:

They came in a flurry of orange, descending on this quake-ravaged neighborhood with brooms, shovels and dozens of hands.

 Then they formed a human chain in Lori Lemieux' frontyard, passing the crumbled bricks of her home's fallen chimney into a waiting truck bed.

 The retired clerical supervisor watched in awe Monday morning. She and her husband had lost every wineglass in Sunday's 6.0 magnitude shaker, the largest to strike the Bay Area in a quarter-century. Furniture splintered. Worse still, mementos of their daughter, who died a decade ago when she was 17, were destroyed.

 And now, strangers were helping.

 "When you have something so devastating happen, to see this teamwork is just awesome," she said of the dozens of Home Depot workers from a number of Northern California communities who offered their help. "Blessings do happen."

 Caption Raw: Aerial Look at Napa Quake Damage Two days after a strong and damaging earthquake hit the Napa Valley area, California's wine capital is working to recover. Two days after a strong and damaging earthquake hit the Napa Valley area, California's wine capital is working to recover. Caption Some Priceless Napa Vintages Lost In Napa Quake Some Priceless Napa Vintages Lost In Napa Quake Some Priceless Napa Vintages Lost In Napa Quake Caption As Aftershocks Continue to Hit, Cleanup Efforts Underway Following Napa 6.0 Earthquake Cleanup efforts were underway in the Bay Area on Monday, one day after a magnitude-6.0 earthquake along the West Napa Fault prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency., Cleanup efforts were underway in the Bay Area on Monday, one day after a magnitude-6.0 earthquake along the West Napa Fault prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency., Caption Brown Declares State Of Emergency Following 6.0 Magnitude Quake In Napa Valley Brown Declares State Of Emergency Following 6.0 Magnitude Quake In Napa Valley Brown Declares State Of Emergency Following 6.0 Magnitude Quake In Napa Valley Caption Surveillance Cameras Captures Earthquake Damage Surveillance Cameras Captures Earthquake Damage Surveillance Cameras Captures Earthquake Damage

 The volunteers had company. A day after the temblor, inspectors had deemed 70 buildings here uninhabitable. The number of people treated for injuries had risen to 208, and schools remained closed. But residents and outsiders alike had found a common calling.

 "When you meet people who are helping each other, there's no difference between religions or between colors," said Premysl Balaz, a 33-year-old engineer from the Czech Republic who was a week into a San Francisco vacation when the earthquake hit.

 He drove up, found the temporary volunteer center, and was dispatched Monday to help build a database of red-tagged homes.

 "Everyone is connected through the idea that they want to help," Balaz said. "I love the energy about it."

 It didn't take long for the helpers to amass.

 At Grace Church of Napa Valley on Sunday morning, congregants prayed and then made a list. Up top was a couple whose home sits directly on the fault.

 After the earth split, Tim and Ann Whitlock's two-story house ended up six inches in front of its foundation. Big cracks zigzagged up the interior walls, and the sidewalk buckled into the shape of a tepee.

 Throughout the day, fellow congregants — about 100 of them — helped pack everything into boxes and big plastic containers.

 "Who says you can't move in six hours?" said Ann Whitlock.

 Across town, Patricia Trimble was wading through a mess of broken pottery and glass at the Roost, her downtown vintage store, when a stranger walked in.

 "He said he was drawn to me. He quoted Yeats," Trimble said of Marc Liotta, a Walnut Creek contractor with a near-addiction to reaching out to strangers. Liotta picked up the bags of debris and tossed them in the bed of his silver Toyota Tundra for a courtesy run to the dump.

 "And you know what he did then?" Trimble said Monday as she listened to the melancholy sounds of Rickie Lee Jones in her quickly shaping-up boutique. "He went to my house and offered his help there."

 Liotta, whose card reads "The Closet Magician," is semi-retired. In addition to building closet organizing systems, he has volunteered for Habitat for Humanity (as has Trimble) and flown to Haiti to offer his assistance after the earthquake.

 "I was sort of languishing around here watching television and said, 'I'm gonna just go up there,'" said Liotta, 69, who was tipped off to Trimble's plight by the plywood on her window.

 By Monday morning, more help arrived. At the volunteer center in the Grace church gym, Gregg DesElms welcomed a woman who said she'd taken the day off work.

 He started to explain that he didn't have anywhere to send her or Balaz, the visiting engineer. Then DesElms' cellphone rang.

 "Yes," he said. "I have two people here right now, and they're ready to go."

 He hung up and turned to Balaz.

 "How's your English and your typing?" he asked.

 "So-so," Balaz said.

 The police chief needed help entering numbers and addresses of red-tagged structures.

 "Oh, I'm good with numbers," Balaz said, smiling. "I'm in, I'm in."

 By afternoon, "Cartoon" Danny Roszell was offering his services to merchants. He tends to travel with a broom, though he insists he is no witch, but "a leprechaun incarnate." A window painter by trade, the Berkeley resident had come to Napa 10 days ago to help a friend with her house and look for gigs adorning glass with images of the grape harvest.

 After the quake, he decided to put his broom to use. He showed up downtown in a white wool top hat adorned with a live flower bouquet.

 "It's what I do," he said, of his sweeping habit. "It's a kind of meditation."

 A few blocks away, Rod Wieldraayer was hauling free materials from the Napa Home Depot store to about 60 volunteers as they hopscotched through town.

 Wieldraayer, the store manager, also happens to live here. The company often organizes its workers in small volunteer armies, so Monday's massive mobilization came naturally.

 The bed of his truck was already loaded with a stack of plywood, crates of water and garbage bags when his cellphone rang. It was his district manager.

 "Boxes? Medium boxes?" Wieldraayer said. "I'm on it."

 A family with a red-tagged home needed them, so Wieldraayer returned to the store to fetch them and renew his supply of angle brackets, for residents now scrambling to secure their heavy furniture to the wall.

 Meanwhile, in the Browns Valley neighborhood, where Lemieux lives, the crew was moving street to street.

 Within no time, they had re-stacked a tumbled-down wood pile, hauled off debris from two other fallen chimneys, and disassembled a hulking planter once built onto Darcie Blair's front porch.

 Blair, 45, a single mother with a 4-year-old daughter, lived in Northridge when the big quake struck there in 1994, but said she never felt anywhere close to the support she is getting in Napa. Within minutes of their departure, she had posted pictures of the Home Depot helpers on Facebook.

 "The kindness of strangers just keeps on amazing me," she wrote. "As my daughter and I continue to clean up here in Napa, the folks from Home Depot just completely dismantled and hauled away for free a large part of our front porch.

 "Thank you, good neighbors. You rock."

 lee.romney@latimes.com

 Twitter: @leeromney

 marisa.gerber@latimes.com

 Twitter: @marisagerber ||||| A strong, 6.0-magnitude earthquake jolted Northern California yesterday (Aug. 24) at 3:20 a.m. local time. The earthquake's epicenter was a few miles south of Napa Valley's renowned wineries, and the quake busted barrels and bottles of precious vintages. More than 170 people were injured, and 100 homes are now uninhabitable, the state Office of Emergency Services said Sunday.

 In the first uncertain minutes, a seismologist at the U.S Geological Survey's Bay Area headquarters pinned the blame on the Franklin Fault, which has been inactive for thousands of years.

 By morning, the sun lay bare what darkness hid: Buckled pavement and cracked curbs lined up along the West Napa Fault for up to 10 miles (16 kilometers). After inspecting the damage, California state geologist John Parrish declared that Sunday's earthquake occurred on the West Napa Fault, not the Franklin Fault. The USGS concurred, tweeting Sunday that the Browns Valley section of the West Napa Fault was the likely culprit. [See photos of damage from the Napa earthquake]

 The results are still preliminary, and geologists will make a definitive call in the next few days. However, the early false start highlights how both high-tech instruments and old-fashioned groundwork remain important in the aftermath of an earthquake.

 Which fault?

 Yesterday's earthquake struck near the Napa Airport, in the San Pablo Bay marshes. The USGS precisely located the epicenter in just a few minutes, thanks to the region's dense seismic monitoring network, said Tom Brocher, director of the USGS Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, California. But which fault was at fault?

 Many suspects appear on state earthquake maps. One is the West Napa Fault, which stretches 35 miles (57 km) from the city of St. Helena south to San Pablo Bay, according to a USGS report published in 2008. Among a handful of other possibilities, the Franklin Fault also stands out. This fault begins near the epicenter of the recent quake, and then cuts south across San Pablo Bay.

 West Napa or Franklin? That 4 a.m. guess blaming the Franklin Fault soon seemed wrong. As damage reports poured in, scientists zeroed in on the West Napa Fault's Browns Valley branch.

 This fault traces the western margin of the Napa Valley and cuts through the Browns Valley neighborhood of Napa. Along with the damaged streets, many of the city's water main breaks were in the Browns Valley area, according to Napa Valley officials. The Browns Valley branch pierces the Napa River at Cuttings Wharf. Another strand of the West Napa Fault lies east of the river and runs through the Napa Airport.

 Map of Napa Valley region faults. Credit: USGS

 Why it happened

 The West Napa Fault is part of the huge fault zone extending outward from the San Andreas Fault, which lies about 31 miles (50 km) west of Napa Valley. The San Andreas marks the boundary where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates grind past one another. The West Napa Fault is sandwiched between two larger faults: the Hayward-Rodgers Creek Fault and the Concord-Green Valley Fault. [Photo Journal: The Gorgeous San Andreas Fault]

 "The plate boundary is really quite wide and quite complicated, and the plate motion is accommodated by a wide network of faults," Brocher told Live Science.

 The tectonic tension between the plates trickles inland to the West Napa Fault. An earthquake occurs when this built-up strain is unleashed. The fault parallels the San Andreas, and like the San Andreas, it is a series of slashes in the earth, not a single crack. (Each fault has more than one segment running in parallel.) Each fault is also of a type called right-lateral strike-slip, which means one side of the fault leaps horizontally to the right during an earthquake.

 Within the last 11,000 years, the West Napa Fault has created cliffs and ridges called scarps, a sign of past seismic activity. But this fault has never jolted valley residents in historic times.

 The last earthquake to rattle the Napa Valley struck on Sept. 3, 2000. This magnitude-5.1 earthquake occurred 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Napa, near Yountville, on a previously unknown fault.

 No one knows how often earthquakes rumble through Napa Valley. The West Napa Fault and others nearby have never received the detailed detective work that geologists lavish on faults in the densely settled Bay Area. A 2008 estimate of Bay Area earthquake probabilities conducted by scientists and engineers for the state of California did not include the West Napa Fault.

 "It is known to be an active fault, but it certainly has not been viewed as one of the major players in the Bay Area," Brocher said.

 Napa's 6.0-magnitude earthquake is the biggest quake in California since the magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994, and the biggest in Northern California since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a magnitude 6.9.

 Collecting clues

 But the South Napa earthquake could have been worse. Only part of the West Napa Fault broke open. If the entire fault had ripped, the earthquake would have been more powerful.

 "I have to say, as much as the earthquake was large and had a widespread impact, it's not as bad as it could have been," Mark Ghilarducci, director of California's Office of Emergency Services, said during a press conference Sunday.

 Though the actual earthquake rupture only lasted four seconds, there was strong shaking in Napa because the valley floor is lined with soft river soils that amplify earthquake waves. Also, the fault zipped open from south to north, directing the earthquake energy toward the city. "It looks like it went northwest and up from the dot on the map that shows where the earthquake nucleated," Brocher said. [13 Crazy Earthquake Facts]

 Early Sunday morning, geologists from the USGS, the California Geological Survey and local universities were recording the surface damage before road crews started their repairs. This information will help researchers understand the earthquake's progress during the brief seconds the fault opened and closed.

 On the high-tech side, it will take a few more days to measure how much the valley moved during and after the earthquake, using GPS and satellite measurements. An initial GPS report indicated 4 inches (10 centimeters) of shift near the earthquake's epicenter, Brocher said.

 Small earthquakes called aftershocks continue to strike along the West Napa Fault. These small quakes cluster along the fault zone and illuminate the hidden underground parts of the fault, and will help scientists nail down which fault caused the quake.

 "The locations of the aftershocks indicate that it ruptured the West Napa Fault, but it is not clear yet which strand of that fault broke," said Felix Waldhauser, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. "Over the next couple of days we should have a better picture."

 The earthquake is likely to bring new focus to Napa Valley's earthquake hazard. The California Geological Survey had already begun new studies on the Browns Valley branch earlier this year, and more researchers will likely begin studies analyzing the earthquake and its causes.

 The quake also highlighted the most forward-reaching technology in California's quake arsenal.

 The first jolt triggered the prototype earthquake early warning system at the University of California, Berkeley's Seismological Laboratory. The lab received a 10-second warning before the shaking started, said Lab Director Richard Allen. The warning could have been improved with an upgrade to the ShakeAlert system, which would have boosted the response time of the slowest seismometer by 2.5 seconds, Allen said. The state legislature approved a bill to expand the system statewide in 2013, but the Office of Emergency Services must find $80 million to pay for it.

 "While the system clearly worked, the warning could have been twice as fast," Allen said.

 Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Day after Napa earthquake, region takes stock, cleans up Recovery will require time and money, but residents are grateful damage wasn't worse

 Sweeping up glass and brick, cleaning up school classrooms and tending to wounds, thousands of people grasped for a sense of normalcy Monday after a violent earthquake shook the heart of Wine Country. But they faced challenges that will stretch into the days and weeks ahead.

 Dozens of houses and businesses in Napa and Vallejo were red-tagged as uninhabitable, their walls or roofs deemed too fragile.

 Hundreds of homes had no water, with some people dipping into pools to flush toilets.

 Public schools were shut down and were to remain closed Tuesday - a summer break extended for the wrong reasons.

 And more than 250 people were recovering from injuries that included broken bones and concussions.

 But there was also reason to rejoice, or at least feel some relief, for many who call the area home. The two people who officials said were most seriously injured in the earthquake - including a 13-year-old Napa boy struck by a crumbling chimney - were said to be improving and were expected to survive.

 In some ways, it seemed like business as usual Monday for one of the nation's top tourist destinations - including in hard-hit downtown Napa. Even as trucks hauled off trash and rubble, nearby wineries served up tastes of their world-famous Cabernet Sauvignons, tourists streamed into the city center to eat and see the sights, and many locals went to work.

 "Compared to what it could have been, it doesn't feel like a pain at all," said Joanne Strickland, 47, owner of Legends and Lore Gift Shop, whose worst damage came when emergency sprinklers drenched her carpets. "I feel blessed. I am so fortunate."

 Still, it wasn't the same - and it may be a while until it is - for many people reeling from the worst earthquake to hit the Bay Area since Loma Prieta in 1989.

 That much was clear from the damage totals, which prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency for Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties, paving the way for engineers and architects to arrive to help in the recovery. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated the damage from the 3:20 a.m. magnitude 6.0 quake could cost $1 billion or more.

 As of Monday evening, inspectors had red-tagged 70 buildings in Napa, including the historic county courthouse downtown and a senior center, as too dangerous to enter. A few streets remained closed to keep people away from precarious structures, while a damaged pedestrian bridge was roped off for repairs.

 Some displaced residents had nowhere to go, taking shelter at a Red Cross evacuation center at the Crosswalk Community Church.

 In Vallejo, 10 buildings had been red-tagged, including a post office on Santa Clara Street. Vallejo officials said they had recorded 49 injuries, with two people admitted to the hospital.

 Among those cleaning up was Napa resident Richard Webb, 67. Webb, who was awaiting a visit from city inspectors Monday, hoped he would be given the green light to rebuild.

 "This one felt like someone picked up my house 15 feet and dropped it," said Webb as he surveyed damage to his chimney, which toppled and spilled bricks across his front yard.

 Water remained a big issue Monday. Some 600 properties remained without it in Napa, as workers scrambled to repair about 90 pipeline breaks. Officials said it could take three or four days to fully restore service.

 Some residents resorted to using water from swimming pools to flush toilets. Among those were the 280 residents of the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park, where a water main break had made it hard for firefighters to control a blaze that destroyed six units.

 Residents used a jury-rigged pump to suck water out of the pool, filling buckets that they hauled home and poured into the toilet.

 Napa officials said those who maintained pressure after the earthquake could safely drink their tap water. But they recommended that anyone who lost service for any period of time buy bottled water for cooking or drinking, boil tap water for a full minute before consumption, or stop by one of two water stations with containers.

 Resident Carol Caie, 66, was one of those who filled up at a community center.

 "I got some dishes on the counter," Caie said. "Nothing is washed."

 Schools were another area of recovery. In Napa, all public schools were closed Monday and were scheduled to remain closed Tuesday to give administrators more time to survey damage. About two-thirds of school facilities had cleared inspections, officials said.

 Desiree Buckley, 32, said she will take her daughter to the park or the library Tuesday. The city also set up a youth drop-in program, which will open Tuesday at a community center. "It's pretty hard," Buckley said as her 9-year-old, Haylee Mock, fidgeted on a bench. "The kids have nothing to do and nowhere to go."

 Haylee, though, said she was happy to be out of school - her class is studying division.

 There was hopeful news Monday from the family of Nicholas Dillon, the 13-year-old Napa boy injured by a falling chimney at his home. His family said he was stabilized at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento after a nine-hour surgery to treat pelvic fractures.

 Dillon had invited a friend to spend the night Saturday and was sleeping on a mattress on his living room floor - his friend was on the couch - when the temblor struck.

 Family members said Nicholas felt the jolt of the quake, heard the fireplace crumbling above him and lunged to get away - just enough to avoid being fatally crushed. His friend was not injured.

 "It's a blessing that he was able to spring out of the way," said his aunt, Carmen Rosales.

 On Monday, Nicholas was following his own story in the media and was, like any teenager, getting a kick out of it. He agreed to a bedside interview but then ran a fever and didn't feel well enough.

 He won't fully recover for several months, said Rosales, and he'll be in a wheelchair for a while.

 Another badly injured patient remained in critical condition Monday at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, but hospital officials said the person was expected to survive.

 The waiting area for the emergency room, though, was empty after the hospital treated 208 patients on Sunday. Seventeen people had been admitted with serious injuries, including broken bones.

 A Napa woman died at the hospital Sunday, but hospital officials said they do not believe the death was related to the earthquake.

 All over Napa on Monday, people took stock of the damage. Brad Alexander, a spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Services, said he expected that help would remain in the community for some time.

 "With a major earthquake, you're talking about a process that is months long," Alexander said, noting the long recoveries that followed the Loma Prieta earthquake and Southern California's Northridge shaker five years later. "Those earthquakes impacted us for decades."

 For most homes and businesses, though, there was little to no damage - other than fallen knickknacks and furniture moved out of place.

 If it weren't for the sheet of plywood across the window of the Alexis Baking Co. downtown, evidence of the earthquake would be tough to find.

 Tourists and locals lined up for coffee and potato buns. This being Napa, customers asked the typical questions, such as: Is the food local?

 "That's California," said cashier Terry Washburn after describing the lemon ricotta to a group from New York. "Food and earthquakes. I could do without the earthquakes, though."

 Chronicle staff writers Kurtis Alexander and Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report. ||||| Video

 NAPA, Calif. — The gardens at the Hess Collection, one of this region’s better-known wineries, reeked of spilled cabernet on Monday. The wine barrel storage warehouses by the airport were a jumble of tumbled oak barrels. The wine library at Saintsbury — a room filled with old vintages — had the smell of a day-old party, a result of 500 bottles shattering on the floor.

 The magnitude-6 earthquake that jolted this picturesque valley of wineries and vineyards early Sunday morning wreaked at least some havoc with the industry that has come to define this part of Northern California. “About 15,000 cases of lovely cabernet came pouring out those doors and down the steps, into the garden,” said Jim Caudill, director of hospitality at the Hess Collection winery in Napa.

 But as winemakers and tourism officials began cleaning up and assessing the damage, there was evidence that the impact may not have been as widespread as suggested by the images that flooded Twitter and television screens.

 As is often the case with earthquakes, the amount of shaking — and thus damage — can vary significantly within a few square miles. This was certainly true here in wine country, where there were drastically different, and sometimes conflicting, reports of damage from vineyard to vineyard on Monday. In many cases, wine had just been moved from oak or metal barrels, where the earthquake could cause the most spillage, to bottles stacked in cases protected by shrink-wrap.

 Bruce Cohn, an owner of B. R. Cohn Winery, said he was at first disheartened when employees reported that his warehouse — which holds 5,000 barrels, some stacked six high — was in chaos, with wine spilled all over the floors. “I’ve been in this for 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mr. Cohn said, describing the tumbled bottles and spilled wine.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 But as he reviewed the actual damage, he said, his worries began to diminish.

 “My feeling is that it’s not that bad,” he said. “A lot of the barrels fell over, but I’m not sure they broke. I’m hoping — and I think — it looks a lot worse than it is, but we don’t know until we sift through it.”

 At Saintsbury, a winery that makes about 30,000 cases a year, most of the damage was in and around a tin-roofed barn. Barrels stacked 16 feet high were knocked from a tight lattice into uneven piles that workers spent Sunday and Monday examining. Stainless steel tanks shifted a foot or more during the earthquake, but fortunately for the company, the tanks and barrels were empty: About a week ago, the company bottled and moved most of its inventory to Napa-area warehouses that were unaffected by the earthquake. |||||
What is a summary?

– People in Napa Valley, Calif., are picking up the pieces after Sunday's 6.0 earthquake wrecked scores of homes and businesses, and they're getting plenty of help from outside. Volunteers have flocked from across Northern California to assist in any way they can, reports the Los Angeles Times. The helpers include scores of Home Depot workers and an engineer from the Czech Republic who was on vacation in San Francisco when the quake struck and drove out to offer his services. "When you meet people who are helping each other, there's no difference between religions or between colors," he says. More: The damage is estimated at up to $1 billion, but wineries say they will pull through and they hope tourists won't stay away, the New York Times reports. "In the end, people who are growing grapes are farmers," says an official of an organization that represents 500 local vintners. "This is a particularly strong expression of Mother Nature, but they deal with Mother Nature every day, and they are very resilient." Dozens of homes have been declared uninhabitable and more than 250 people are recovering from injuries, but there have been no fatalities from the area's worst earthquake since 1989, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The two most seriously injured victims, one of them a 13-year-old boy hurt by a falling chimney, are both expected to survive. Seismologists are still working to determine the exact cause of the quake, LiveScience reports. It was initially believed to be connected to the Franklin Fault—which has been dormant for thousands of years—but researchers now believe it was the West Napa Fault, part of a wide network of faults around the San Andreas Fault, which lies 31 miles away.


Final goodbyes • He wrote love notes to his family in his last days.

 This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

 David Welch spent the last days of his life trapped down a dusty ravine in the Utah desert, scrawling love notes to the family he mysteriously left hundreds of miles away.

 Welch's story begins the evening of Sept. 2, when without a word to anyone he climbed into his maroon Pontiac van and drove away from his home in Manhattan, Kan. Within hours, his family contacted the Riley County Police Department, but spokesman Matthew Droge said searches and a subsequent missing-person report never turned up anything.

 For the next month and a half, there were no clues to Welch's whereabouts.

 Then, on the morning of Oct. 18, a hitchhiker in Utah rounded a bend along a barren stretch of Interstate 70  about 47 miles outside of Green River and nearly 900 miles from Welch's home. It's a desolate area, parched beneath relentless summer sun.

 "It's a pretty lonely stretch out there," Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Scott Robertson said of the region. ||||| Story highlights A man goes missing after he leaves his house on September 2

 Nearly seven weeks later, he is found hundreds of miles away

 He's found injured and trapped in a ravine; he used the time to write love letters to his family

 His death leaves behind many questions

 David Welch hopped into his maroon Pontiac Montana van last month and drove for hours. Without saying where he was going, he kept on driving, police say.

 Nearly seven weeks later, a hitchhiker found him in a deep, isolated desert patch in Utah, hundreds of miles from his Kansas home.

 Injured and trapped in his car, he'd spent his final days penning love letters to his wife of 32 years and four sons.

 Authorities say his car plummeted into the ravine in early September after it veered off the road.

 Welch, 54, sat in his mangled car for days, maybe weeks, police say. Nights became days, then weeks, then over a month.

 And as his family searched for him, he was trapped in his car, scribbling his last words.

 What's in the notes is private, authorities say, and they have been handed over to Welch's family.

 His family's ordeal started September 2 when he left his home in Manhattan, Kansas.

 A day later, relatives contacted the police to report that he had not returned home.

 "At this time officers confirmed that there was no reason to believe Welch was currently in danger of harm or had known medical issues that may cause him to be in danger," the Riley County Police Department said.

 It said it notified law enforcement agencies in areas where Welch may have gone.

 Four days after he left home, a missing persons report was filed. Long stretches of time passed with no news of his whereabouts.

 The retired Pepsi Co. representative was an avid outdoorsman who loved landscaping, scuba diving and snowskiing, according to his obituary posted on a funeral home's website

 Forty-six days after he left home -- on October 18 -- a pedestrian walking along the edge of the desolate road saw an overturned car in a deep ravine.

 It was about 850 miles from his home on a deserted section off Interstate 70.

 Tire marks led straight off the road down to where his vehicle crashed, authorities said.

 It didn't appear that he was braking or attempting a turn, just that he went straight off the road, said Cpl. Todd Johnson, a spokesman for the Utah Highway Patrol.

 Authorities believe Welch fell asleep while driving, sending the car crossing into the ravine and rolling onto its passenger side, CNN affiliate KSNT reported.

 Welch was trapped alive in the ravine for an unknown number of days.

 He was found dead. What police don't know is how long he lived.

 And with his passing, a lot of questions remain, like why was he so far away from home? |||||

Write a summary.

– A sad, strange tale out of Utah: A 54-year-old man who set off from Kansas on an unexplained road trip crashed his vehicle in remote Utah, and it wasn't until seven weeks later that a hiker spotted the wreck with David Welch's body inside, reports CNN. But there's also this detail: Welch survived for days and perhaps weeks while trapped in his van and used the time to write love letters to his wife and four sons, reports the Salt Lake City Tribune. It remains unclear why Welch took off without explanation on Sept. 2. His family notified authorities that very day that he was missing, but subsequent searches turned up nothing. His final notes aren't being made public. Police speculate that Welch fell asleep at the wheel, causing his vehicle to go off a curve and into a ravine below. He was about 900 miles away from home. "It’s a pretty lonely stretch out there," says a Utah Highway Patrolman.


This article is over 1 year old

 Child was stopped in Broken Hill, New South Wales, having seemingly driven across the entire state from Kendall near Port Macquarie

 A 12-year-old boy was stopped by police after attempting to drive solo across Australia, having already covered 1,300 kilometres of his journey.

 The boy was stopped in Broken Hill, an isolated mining city in the far west of outback New South Wales, on Saturday morning. He had already driven across the entire state of NSW from Kendall, on the east coast, and was heading for Perth. Police believe he intended to complete the 4,000km journey alone.

 Broken Hill highway patrol officers stopped the 12-year-old’s vehicle around 11am on Saturday when they noticed its bumper dragging on the ground.

 Girl, 12, arrested for driving at 122km/h in Tasmania Read more

 “Officers from Broken Hill Highway Patrol stopped a motor vehicle on the Barrier Highway due to defects which made the vehicle hazardous,” the spokesperson said.

 “Checks revealed the driver to be a 12-year-old boy travelling from Kendall NSW on his way to Perth.”

 The gruelling journey between Kendall and Perth takes around 40 hours by car and involves driving through the arid desert of Nullarbor plain.

 Australia’s official tourism site advises visitors to take a full six days just to cross Nullarbor, on a motorway famous for its unbending trajectory through the barren scrubland.

 Questions remain over how the boy travelled thousands of miles, and refuelled the car, without being noticed. Drivers taking the route are advised by the tourism board to take caution and “carry extra petrol and plenty of water and food”.

 Police confirmed the boy was arrested and taken to Broken Hill police station. Inquiries were continuing. ||||| The distance between there and Perth, on the far western end of the country, is around 4,300 kilometers, or 2,700 miles.

 AUSTRALIA Kendall Broken Hill Perth NEW SOUTH WALES Great Australian Bight Canberra Melbourne Indian Ocean 500 Miles AUSTRALIA Kendall Broken Hill NEW SOUTH WALES Canberra Melbourne Indian Ocean 500 Miles

 How far is that? It’s similar to the drive from New York to Los Angeles, which is a little more than 2,800 miles, or from Ottawa to Edmonton.

 A quick reminder: The boy is 12. And while it’s common for young people in Australia and all over the world to drive tractors or other vehicles at young ages, this boy managed to drive on major roads for an entire day without being found out or being harmed. The police said he was stopped at 11 a.m. Saturday, which means he spent a night alone on the road.

 So how far did he really go?

 The distance traveled doesn’t look like much on a map, particularly given Australia’s size, but the 800 miles that he drove — again, alone, as a 12-year-old — is about the equivalent of making the long and annoying drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, back and forth, with a few dozen more miles thrown in for rest stops and food.

 Or, for our non-American readers, it’s like driving from Paris to Prague, deciding that’s not far enough, then deciding to head for Vienna.

 Averting Danger

 Road trips in Australia are a little different than road trips in many other places. The police said the boy had clear and specific plans, but to complete his intended journey, he would have had to drive through the Nullarbor Plain, a flat, desolate, hot and largely empty stretch in the south that is about four times the size of Belgium.

 Those who have made the drive warn people to pack extra gasoline and car parts — in addition to ample food and water — because gas stations are so far apart from each other.

 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Subscribe to the Australia Letter Newsletter Damien Cave, our new Australia bureau chief, shares insights on global news, local recommendations and feedback from readers in this weekly newsletter. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

 The tourism board advises that people take six days just to get across the Nullarbor. Driving at night is not advised because of the risk of hitting stray emus, kangaroos, wombats or camels. Yes, camels: About 100,000 wild ones are there, the descendants of animals imported to help build inland railroads.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Online, just a mere mention of the drive across Australia often elicits references to something even more frightening: “Wolf Creek,” a well-known Australian horror film about murders in the outback.

 Lingering Questions

 It should be noted that the boy is safe. He was released into the care of his parents on Sunday, and the police said they hoped to speak with the boy and his parents on Monday. An investigation into the incident is continuing, and the police have not said much beyond that.

 “It’s pretty unusual,” a spokeswoman for the police said in an interview Monday. “It’s not something that occurs every day.”

 Online, Australians reacted with awe and inquiries. Several people seemed impressed that the boy managed to avoid getting a speeding ticket and that he would even take on such an expedition. Others raised a series of questions, some of which various reporters are also sharing, including:

 • How did he pay for gas?

 • Who taught him how to drive?

 • What compels a 12-year-old to do something that drastic?

 • Did his parents report him missing, and if so, when?

 • What kind of punishment does the boy face from the police or his parents?

 • Is anything deeper or darker going on with this story that we’re unaware of? ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– The journey from Australia's eastern New South Wales coast to Perth on its west measures about 2,500 miles. A 12-year-old boy set off to drive it alone, and got ridiculously far. The Australian Associated Press reports the boy was stopped about 800 miles into the drive around 11am Saturday, having essentially traversed the entirety of New South Wales from his starting point in Kendall, near Port Macquarie, over the course of 24 hours. The New York Times gives some American perspective, saying the distance covered "is about the equivalent of making the long and annoying" round-trip drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, "with a few dozen more miles thrown in for rest stops and food." The child was stopped in Broken Hill due to a dislodged bumper, which was dragging on the ground. Police tell the AAP the damage suggests he was involved in some sort of accident along the way. "He'd taken the family car," police said Monday. "His parents reported him missing immediately after he left home" shortly after 11am Friday. The child is in the custody of his parents, but will likely face charges including driving without a license and not paying for gas; Sky News reports he fueled up around 6am in Cobar. As for how he managed to not raise suspicions for such a long period, Sky News reports the 6-foot-tall boy looks much older than 12. Indeed, the manager of the gas station the child stopped at thought he looked "19 or 20."