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 This article appeared in the March 29 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

 Dark moods are bad for your health. Scientists have known for decades that a wide variety of unpleasant emotions, like shame, depression and anxiety, are linked to greater rates of ills like heart disease, inflammation, cancer and premature death. Conversely, positive feelings have been shown to be good for you.

 Far less is known, however, about the health benefits of specific upbeat moods — whether contentment, say, might promote good health more robustly than joy or pride does. A new study singles out one surprising emotion as a potent medicine: awe. And happily, awe seems to be much easier to come by than many might expect, even for the busy and stressed-out.

 For the study, published in January in the journal Emotion, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions focused on some particularly moody subjects: college freshmen. Ninety-four Berkeley students were recruited to fill out questionnaires about how frequently during the past month they felt various positive and negative emotions, like hostility, enthusiasm and inspiration. The students then supplied saliva samples, which were analyzed for interleukin-6, a molecule known to promote inflammation throughout the body. Because inflammation is tied to poor health, researchers figured that low levels of IL-6 might signal good health. As anticipated, when students’ moods were checked against their IL-6 levels, those who had experienced more positive emotions generally had lower levels of IL-6 than classmates whose moods were more frequently sour.

 Researchers next enlisted 119 students to complete more elaborate questionnaires about their normal dispositions and the extent to which they had recently felt seven specific emotions: awe, amusement, compassion, contentment, joy, love and pride. The students also provided a saliva sample. While happy moods were collectively still associated with low IL-6 levels, the strongest correlation was with awe. The more frequently someone reported having felt awe-struck, the lower the IL-6.

 “There seems to be something about awe,” says Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology and the senior author of the study, who is also the faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley. (He has studied laughter, empathy and blushing, too.) “It seems to have a pronounced impact on markers related to inflammation.”

 Somewhat surprisingly, awe isn’t necessarily a rare occurrence, he adds. On average, the students in the study reported feeling the emotion three or more times a week. “How great is that?” Dr. Keltner says.

 While acknowledging that awe is conceptually squishy and subjective, Dr. Keltner says that in general, a primary attribute of an awe-inspiring event is that it “will pass the goose-bumps test.” And he advises that people “seek it often.” He is just not certain what that means for everyone. “Some people feel awe listening to music,” Dr. Keltner says, “others watching a sunset or attending a political rally or seeing kids play.”

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 Being in Awe Can Expand Time and Enhance Well-Being

 It doesn’t matter what we’ve experienced – whether it’s the breathtaking scope of the Grand Canyon, the ethereal beauty of the Aurora Borealis, or the exhilarating view from the top of the Eiffel Tower – at some point in our lives we’ve all had the feeling of being in a complete and overwhelming sense of awe.

 Awe seems to be a universal emotion, but it has been largely neglected by scientists—until now.

 Psychological scientists Melanie Rudd and Jennifer Aaker of Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management devised a way to study this feeling of awe in the laboratory. Across three different experiments, they found that jaw-dropping moments made participants feel like they had more time available and made them more patient, less materialistic, and more willing to volunteer time to help others.

 The researchers found that the effects that awe has on decision-making and well-being can be explained by awe’s ability to actually change our subjective experience of time by slowing it down. Experiences of awe help to brings us into the present moment which, in turn, adjusts our perception of time, influences our decisions, and makes life feel more satisfying than it would otherwise.

 Now that’s awesome.

 The study, “Awe Expands People’s Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being,” will be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. ||||| Opinions

 Dacher Keltner Professor of psychology at the University of California. By now you’re probably mulling over some of your New Year’s resolutions – do five planks a day, eat more quinoa, keep better track of expenses. Let me add one more to your list: seek more daily awe. Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world. Early in human history, awe was reserved for feelings toward divine beings – e.g., gods humans invoked in the village ritual houses that sprang up some 10,000 years ago, the spirits Greek families felt guarded over their fates, and encounters with the divine at the center of the world’s great spiritual traditions. Read More

 Shaun Gallagher Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence at the University of Memphis. Gazing at the heavens has long been known to elicit feelings of awe and wonder. The first forays into philosophy and science put the night sky at the center of inquiry. Thales, often considered the first philosopher, was an accomplished astronomer who predicted the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BC. An old tradition, derived from Plato, holds that after dusk he would walk about, eyes fixed on the stars, until the night he tumbled into an open well. Of course, one need not be a philosopher to be awestruck by natural beauty. Sunrises and sunsets, views from a mountaintop or from the edges of the sea, desert vistas or the silence of deep forests—all of these can inspire a sense of awe and wonder. What precisely are such feelings, and from where do such experiences arise? Read More

 Kathryn A. Johnson Assistant research professor of psychology at Arizona State University. People often experience awe when they encounter things like the vastness of the Grand Canyon, great feats of architectural engineering, or a perfectly pitched symphonic orchestra. These “peak experiences” typically involve moments of self-forgetfulness and a sense of great wonder. We simply cannot grasp the immensity of the Canyon or the colossal challenge of building the Great Pyramid. Any amazing or information-rich encounter that challenges one’s ability to comprehend can elicit awe. For instance, people can also experience awe when they are exposed to new scientific theories, scientific discoveries, or novel religious and philosophical perspectives outside their perceived norm. Consequently, many psychologists study awe in terms of learning theory and cognitive development. In that sense, awe is an emotion that arises when we try to comprehend or accommodate new information that challenges, disorients, or overwhelms our existing knowledge structures. Read More

 Michelle Lani Shiota Professor of psychology at Arizona State University. More than 4.5 million people visited the Grand Canyon National Park in 2013; more than 3.5 million visited Yosemite. That same year, worldwide revenues for Cirque du Soleil, the Quebecois theatrical venture emphasizing extreme feats of acrobatics and agility, were close to $850 million. Fireworks displays, first developed in seventh-century China, are now featured in celebrations throughout the world at tremendous public expense. The Hubble telescope, which provides our most vivid images of outer space, initially cost $1.5 billion to launch—and accumulated costs of the project have been estimated at over $10 billion. A behavioral scientist looks at these numbers and asks, Why? Why do people spend huge amounts of time, effort, and money on these apparently pointless activities? An economist might conclude that they are all an appalling waste of resources. Why are fireworks, circuses, and images of distant space experienced as so moving and meaningful, when they offer neither material nor social reward? Read More ||||| 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. ||||| By now you’re probably mulling over some of your New Year’s resolutions – do five planks a day, eat more quinoa, keep better track of expenses. Let me add one more to your list: seek more daily awe.

 Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world. Early in human history, awe was reserved for feelings toward divine beings – e.g., gods humans invoked in the village ritual houses that sprang up some 10,000 years ago, the spirits Greek families felt guarded over their fates, and encounters with the divine at the center of the world’s great spiritual traditions.

 In 1757, a revolution in our understanding of awe began thanks to Irish philosopher Edmund Burke. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke detailed how we feel the sublime (awe) not just during religious ritual or in communion with God, but in everyday perceptual experiences: in hearing thunder, in being moved by music, in seeing repetitive patterns of light and dark. Awe was to be found in daily life.

 Today in our Berkeley lab when we study people’s narratives of awe, we find evidence of awe in the quotidian. Yes, awe arises during the extraordinary: when viewing the Grand Canyon, touching the hand of Iggy Pop, or experiencing the sacred during meditation or prayer. More frequently, though, people report feeling awe in response to more mundane things: after the perfect burrito, when seeing the leaves of a Gingko tree change from green to yellow, in beholding the night sky when camping near a river, in seeing a stranger give their food to a homeless person, in seeing their child laugh just like their brother.

 A new science is now asking “Why awe?” This is a question we can approach in two ways. First is the distal sense of why awe became part of our species’ emotional repertoire during seven million years of hominid evolution. A preliminary answer is that awe binds us to social collectives and enables us to act in more collaborative ways that enable strong groups.

 For example, in one study from our Berkeley lab, Michelle Shiota had participants fill in the blank of the following phrase: “ I AM ____.” They did so 20 times, either while standing next to an awe-inspiring replica of a T. rex skeleton in UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology or in the exact same place but oriented to look down a hallway. Those next to the T. rex were more likely to define their individual selves in collectivist terms – as a member of a culture, a species, a university, a moral cause. Awe embeds the individual self into social collectives.

 Near to Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology is a stand of eucalyptus trees, the tallest in North America. When you look up into these trees, and their peeling bark and surrounding nimbus of greyish green light, goosebumps may ripple down your neck, a sure sign of awe. So in the spirit of Emerson and Muir – who found awe in nature and changed our understanding of the sublime – Paul Piff staged a minor accident near that grove to see if awe would prompt greater kindness. Participants first either looked up into the tall trees for one minute or oriented 90 degrees away to look up at the facade of a large science building. Participants then encountered a person who stumbled, dropping a handful of pens into the soft dirt. Our participants filled with awe picked up more pens. In subsequent studies, we have found that awe – more so than emotions like pride or amusement – leads people to cooperate, share resources, and sacrifice for others, all of which are requirements for our collective life. And still other studies have explained the awe-altruism link; being in the presence of vast things calls forth a more modest, less narcissistic self, which enables greater kindness toward others.

 A first answer, then, to the question of “Why awe?” is coming into focus. In the course of our evolution, we became a most social species. We defended ourselves, hunted, reproduced, raised vulnerable offspring, slept, fought, and played in social collectives. This shift to more collective living required a new balancing act, that between the gratification of self-interest and an orientation toward enhancing the welfare of others. Awe emerged as one solution to this problem. Brief experiences of awe redefine the self in terms of the collective and orient our actions toward the interests of others.

 A second answer to the question of “Why awe?” is of the proximal kind: what does awe do for you in the present moment? And here, the science is proving to be clear. Momentary experiences of awe stimulate wonder and curiosity. Parents have long known this. Sleep deprived, they watch, on occasion awe-struck, as their four-year-old marvels at every object in the world, in a perpetual state of awe, peppering them with endless questions of why. Biographers routinely discover this in their studies of innovators. Awe drives people to paradigm-shifting discoveries and new technologies. Such was the case of Darwin, Muir, and Einstein. Our studies at Berkeley are finding that simply watching short videos of expansive images of the Earth leads people to generate more unusual exemplars of a category (e.g., “furniture”), to find greater interest in abstract paintings, and to persist longer at working at difficult puzzles when compared to appropriate control conditions.

 Awe also may be important for good health. The focus in our lab is on one branch of the immune system known as the cytokine system. Cytokines are chemical messengers that are often produced by cells in damaged tissue. Many cytokines elicit an inflammatory response, which is important for killing pathogens and healing wounds. Psychology is discovering that a hyperactive cytokine response renders the individual chronically sick and vulnerable to disease, a process that may be involved in how poverty shortens lives. Jennifer Stellar from our lab recently documented that of all the positive emotions humans experience, only awe predicted reduced levels of cytokines. Though this is still quite speculative, it raises the possibility that some of the pernicious effects of poverty are due to awe deprivation.

 One last study from our Berkeley lab speaks to the promise of daily awe. Amie Gordon gathered people’s daily reports of awe for two weeks and found that it is surprisingly common in everyday living. Every third day, people feel that they are in the presence of something vast that they do not immediately comprehend. For example, seeing gold and red autumn leaves pirouette to the ground in a light wind; being moved by someone who stands up to injustice; and hearing music on a street corner at 2 AM all elicited such an experience. Intriguingly, each burst of daily awe predicted greater well-being and curiosity weeks later.

 Thus, I suggest that you add “seek more daily awe” to this year’s resolutions. Take the time to pause and open your mind to those things which you do not fully understand, and you will be the better for it.

 Dacher Keltner is professor of psychology at the University of California. |||||
What is a summary?

– News that's kind of, well, awesome: Research suggests that the feeling of awe offers a health boost, and it actually happens quite frequently. "Some people feel awe listening to music," University of California, Berkeley, researcher Dacher Keltner tells the New York Times, "others watching a sunset or attending a political rally or seeing kids play." When a moment has "passed the goosebumps test," his team finds, it has a physical effect that can be detected in your saliva. Based on two sets of surveys of and saliva samples from freshmen at the school, Keltner's team found an apparent link between low levels of the molecule interleukin-6—associated with inflammation, and thus unhealthiness—and positive feelings. In the study, published in January in the journal Emotion, researchers note that "awe was the strongest predictor of lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines." And students actually experienced it fairly frequently: at least three times weekly on average, the Times reports. Awe itself is the subject of increasing scientific interest, Slate notes; indeed a 2012 study found that after experiencing awe, participants felt "like they had more time available" and were in turn more patient and willing to help others. Writing for Slate, Keltner himself recommends that we "seek more daily awe," noting that researchers have linked it to a sense of community and even more kindness. And he drives home the idea that awe can be found in moments as simple as "after the perfect burrito." (Optimism, meanwhile, may have other benefits.)


News article:

North Korean soldiers keep a watch toward the south as it rains during a ceremony marking the 63rd anniversary of the signing of the Korean War cease-fire armistice agreement at the truce village of Panmunjom,... (Associated Press)

 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean police found about 200 lapel pins bearing the image of late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il strewn near the country's main international airport on Thursday, police officers said.

 Police were analyzing security cameras to find how the 196 lapel pins ended up in a flowerbed of a hotel close to Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul, according to a local police officer who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media on the matter.

 He gave no further details, but South Korean media said police were looking at a possibility that the lapel pins may have been carried by propaganda balloons that North Korea floated across the border.

 The possession of such lapel pins would be illegal in South Korea, where praising North Korea is punishable by up to seven years in prison. North Korea, for its part, enforces strict, state-organized public reverence of the Kim family, which has ruled the impoverished yet authoritarian country since its foundation in 1948.

 All North Koreans must wear lapel pins carrying the images of both Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung or the images of either of them. Portraits of the two Kims hang in public buildings and homes, and their birthdays are the two most important holidays in North Korea.

 South Korean officials said they haven't received any reports that North Korea has produced a lapel pin for current leader Kim Jong Un, who took power after his father Kim Jong Il's death in late 2011.

 A lapel pin with images of both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il is considered more valuable than other pins because it's the one given to government and military officials and diplomats. Some ordinary citizens buy that pin at unauthorized street markets, according to defectors and activists in Seoul. A Kim Il Sung pin is more used by citizens than a Kim Jong Il pin, they said.

 The rival Koreas restarted Cold War-era psychological warfare after the North's fourth nuclear test in January. Seoul began blaring anti-Pyongyang broadcasts and K-Pop songs via border loudspeakers, and Pyongyang responded by its own border broadcasts and launches of balloons carrying anti-South leaflets.

 The rivals are divided along the world's most heavily fortified border since their war in the early 1950s ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. ||||| SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is stepping up its propaganda campaign ahead of annual U.S.-South Korea war games next month, saying the peninsula is “on the verge of war.”

 Such rhetoric is common from Pyongyang at times of crisis; the current standoff began with the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and shows no signs of easing. Pyongyang has carried out a series of missile tests in recent months and made repeated threats that it is ready to attack South Korea and U.S. bases in the Pacific while pursuing the capability to hit the American mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile.

 South Korea accused Pyongyang of floating propaganda leaflets down the Han River earlier this week. The military discovered dozens of plastic bags, each carrying about 20 leaflets, near the river’s estuary, close to the tense Korean border last Friday, the South’s Defense Ministry said.

 Police also have launched an investigation after nearly 200 lapel pins bearing the image of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il turned up in a flowerbed near Incheon International Airport. Police recovered the coin-sized pins Thursday morning after a hotel employee reported there were North Korean propaganda leaflets in the flowerbed, said an officer who asked to remain anonymous.

 Mere possession of the pins, which are mandatory accessories for all adults in North Korea, wouldn’t be considered a crime in the South; however, distribution of propaganda items would violate South Korea’s National Security Law, the officer said.

 Kim Jong Il, who ruled North Korea from 1994 until his death in 2011, was the son of the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, and the father of current leader Kim Jong Un.

 The lapel-pin find comes a day after the 63rd anniversary of the signing of an armistice that ended fighting during the Korean War. Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said during a Wednesday ceremony at the Demilitarized Zone that, without the armistice, many incidents that have happened over the years — such as the August maiming of two South Korean soldiers by a mine reportedly planted by the North just before the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises — could have reignited war on the peninsula.

 “Without the agreement and its buffers, we would almost have certainly seen several of the provocations, the provocative border skirmishes of the past six decades, spread like wildfire into larger battles,” he said.

 On Thursday, North Korea’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs, Han Song Ryol, told The Associated Press that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by adding Kim to a sanctions list.

 Ryol said recent U.S. actions — likely including a decision to station a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, in the southeastern region of Seongju — have put the peninsula on the verge of war, and that a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea go ahead with annual war games planned for next month.

 The leaflets contained threats to launch missile attacks and a repeat of the North’s long-running propaganda, such as claims that it won the 1950-53 Korean War, according to a ministry official quoted by the AP.

 The propaganda incidents may be retaliation for South Korean propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers at the border that resumed after North Korea’s fourth underground nuclear test in January. The North has been broadcasting its own propaganda across the DMZ and launching anti-South leaflets over the border via balloons, the AP reported.

 chang.kyong@stripes.com |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– North Korea has apparently kicked off a new propaganda war ahead of planned war games between the US and South Korea next month. South Korea says its military found hundreds of propaganda leaflets floating down a river near the border last week, boasting that the North won the Korean War and threatening missile attacks, reports the AP. Some 200 flag-shaped lapel pins featuring a photo of Kim Jong Il were also discovered in a hotel flowerbed near Incheon International Airport on Thursday, reports Stars and Stripes. These are no ordinary pins: As Atlas Obscura explains, they're a patriotic symbol distributed by North Korea's Workers' Party to be worn by all adults on the left side of the chest. Some say Kim Jong Un's wife disappeared after failing to wear one in public. Other versions feature Kim Il Sung, and a rare few show both former leaders. These are only given to high-ranking government officials and military leaders, though ordinary citizens can get a knock-off version from China on the black market. North Koreans were even using the pins in place of cash before the Workers' Party made it illegal. Police are investigating how the pins got into the flowerbed as possession of such items is illegal in South Korea, but say they may have arrived via a propaganda balloon. Meanwhile, Pyongyang accuses the South of releasing snakes across the border "as part of a 'cunning scheme' to challenge our unity," reports the Guardian. A diplomat also promises action if the war games go ahead as planned, noting the US "crossed the red line" when putting Kim on a sanctions list.


Article:

(Reuters) - U.S. judges in at least five states blocked federal authorities from enforcing President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

 However, lawyers representing people covered by the order said some authorities were unwilling on Sunday to follow the judges’ rulings.

 Judges in California, Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington state, each home to international airports, issued their rulings after a similar order was issued on Saturday night by U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly in New York’s Brooklyn borough.

 Donnelly had ruled in a lawsuit by two men from Iraq being held at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

 While none of the rulings struck down Friday’s executive order by the new Republican president, the growing number of them could complicate the administration’s effort to enforce it.

 The rulings add to questions about the constitutionality of the order, said Andrew Pincus, a Mayer Brown partner representing two Yemeni men who were denied U.S. entry from an overseas flight despite being legal permanent residents.

 “People have gone through processes to obtain legal permanent resident status, or visas,” Pincus said. “There are serious questions about whether those rights, which were created by statute, can be unilaterally taken away without process.”

 Trump’s order halted travel by people with passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, and stopped the resettlement of refugees for 120 days.

 He said these actions were needed “to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States.”

 The order sparked a global backlash, including from U.S. allies that view the actions as discriminatory and divisive.

 Attorneys general from California, New York, 13 other states and Washington, D.C., meanwhile, in a statement condemned and pledged to fight what they called Trump’s “dangerous” and “unconstitutional” order.

 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Sunday said it “will comply with judicial orders,” while enforcing Trump’s order in a manner that ensures those entering the United States “do not pose a threat to our country or the American people.”

 SAFE, NOT SORRY

 Striking that balance has caused confusion, according to lawyers who worked overnight and on Sunday to help travelers at JFK Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, and elsewhere.

 Activists gather at the US Capitol to protest President Donald Trump's executive actions on immigration in Washington January 29, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

 Immigration lawyer Sharifa Abbasi said some Border Patrol agents at Dulles refused to let lawyers talk with detainees, even after being shown an order from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema requiring such access.

 Abbasi said the agents instead told the lawyers to call their agency’s office, where no one was answering.

 “There is really no method to this madness,” Becca Heller, director of the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project organization, told reporters on a conference call.

 Supporters of Trump’s order said authorities acted properly in swiftly taking steps to enforce it.

 “It is better (to) be safe than sorry,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

 Lawsuits on behalf of more than 100 individual travelers have been filed nationwide, activists and lawyers estimated.

 Some have come from large corporate firms including Mayer Brown, Kirkland & Ellis, and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

 CURBS ON TRUMP’S ORDER

 In Boston, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs on Sunday temporarily blocked the removal of two Iranians who have taught at the University of Massachusetts, and had been detained at the city’s Logan International Airport.

 Burroughs’ ruling appeared to go further than Donnelly’s by barring the detention, as well as the removal, of approved refugees, visa holders and permanent U.S. residents entering from the seven countries. Donnelly’s order forbade only removal.

 Matthew Segal, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, in a statement called Burroughs’ ruling “a huge victory for justice” in the face of what he called Trump’s “unconstitutional ban on Muslims.”

 The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion. Trump’s order sought to prioritize refugees fleeing religious persecution, which the president said was aimed at helping Christians in Syria.

 Burroughs’ ruling also prompted some Trump critics to urge holders of green cards, which allow foreign nationals to live and work permanently in the United States, to fly into Boston, to lessen the risk of detainment.

 White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said several times on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump’s order does not affect green card holders “moving forward” or “going forward.”

 Slideshow (7 Images)

 In a ruling on Sunday, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles directed the return to the United States of Ali Khoshbakhti Vayeghan, who authorities had sent back to his native Iran following Trump’s order.

 The ruling from Brinkema, in Alexandria, Virginia, barred the Homeland Security agency from removing an estimated 50 to 60 legal permanent residents who had been detained at Dulles.

 In Seattle, U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly barred the government from removing two people, who were not named in court papers. He scheduled a Feb. 3 hearing on whether to lift that stay. ||||| Protesters rally against President Trump's refugee ban at Miami International Airport on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017.b President Donald Trump’s immigration order sowed more confusion and outrage across the... (Associated Press)

 Protesters rally against President Trump's refugee ban at Miami International Airport on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017.b President Donald Trump’s immigration order sowed more confusion and outrage across the country Sunday, with travelers detained at airports, panicked families searching for relatives and protesters... (Associated Press)

 LONDON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump, his travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries and other immigration actions (all times local):

 8:35 p.m.

 New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says six people barred from entering the U.S. because of President Donald Trump's travel ban remained in detention at Kennedy Airport on Sunday afternoon.

 Immigration lawyers worked through the day to try and gain the release of several people being held at the airport, with some success.

 ACLU attorney Andre Segura said at least seven detainees were released Saturday morning, with more people expected to be freed in the afternoon.

 Some people who were initially told they would be deported were allowed to enter the U.S.

 They included a 21-year-old woman with dual Iraqi and Jordanian citizenship who had come to the U.S. to be with her fiance and a 67-year-old woman with Yemeni citizenship who had come to live with her son because she was very ill.

 ___

 8:20 p.m.

 Protesters shouting "Ban Trump" have descended on Miami International Airport to show their opposition to President Donald Trump's travel ban.

 Protester Rowan Vaquez said the ban "hit me really deeply" because her family emigrated from Venezuela to avoid political persecution.

 Juan Gonzalez attended the demonstration to show Trump that "we're not going to accept the terrible things he's doing." Gonzalez is from Puerto Rico and works in Miami.

 Trump's order placed a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. by citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen and a 120-day suspension of the U.S. refugee program. Syrians are indefinitely blocked from entry.

 Other protests were scheduled for Orlando, Tallahassee, Tampa and West Palm Beach.

 ___

 8:15 p.m.

 Hundreds of demonstrators have gathered outside the White House to protest President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

 Holding signs with slogans such as "No Ban, No Wall," and "We are all immigrants in America," the diverse crowd chanted and cheered in support of Muslims and other refugees.

 Vocal and expressive, the crowd was alternately solemn and warm in expressing peaceful solidarity with refugees affected by Trump's order.

 Maryam Kanna is a 24-year-old Iraqi-American who lives in Arlington, Virginia. She calls the executive order "totally alienating." Kanna says she worries about her uncle, a British citizen, and her cousins in Canada, who may no longer be able to enter the U.S.

 Protests were also reported in St. Louis, Minneapolis; Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; and Portland, Maine.

 ___

 8:10 p.m.

 Protesters are streaming into New York City's Battery Park to demand an end to President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from seven Muslim nations.

 The big crowd gathered Sunday near the ferries that carry tourists to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the place where 12 million people entered the United States in the 20th century.

 U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer addressed the crowd, saying, "We are gonna win this fight everybody!"

 People held signs with slogans including "America was built by refugees," and "Muslim ban is un-American."

 The rally followed a night of big demonstrations at New York's Kennedy Airport, where thousands of people spontaneously gathered to demand the release of detained travelers.

 ___

 8:05 p.m.

 A Republican congressman from Utah says he doesn't understand why the Trump administration is targeting legal permanent residents with his new policy to block immigration from several Muslim-majority countries.

 Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah said Sunday it would be "wrong" if Trump is targeting people based on their religion.

 He said that enhanced vetting is needed for people traveling to the United States from "certain countries," but that legal permanent residents are in "a different category."

 Chaffetz said, "I don't understand what they're trying to do in those categories. People that have a green card supposedly already have been vetted. So there needs to be some further clarification."

 The congressman addressed reporters in Palm Springs, California during a meeting of the Koch political network.

 ___

 7:55 p.m.

 More than 100 protesters and dozens of immigration attorneys have gathered at the international arrivals terminal at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, cheering people arriving from Muslim countries. The crowd chanted "No ban, no wall" and other slogans, and at one point sang "The Star-Spangled Banner."

 Syed Moktadir is a 45-year-old management consultant from Sterling, Virginia. He says Trump's order banning entry to the United States from seven Muslim countries has sparked fear in Muslims in the United States and abroad.

 Moktadir, a Muslim who immigrated from Bangladesh, said his 84-year-old father, is currently in Bangladesh. Though his father is a U.S. citizen, he says he's concerned about whether his father will be able to return.

 Moktadir says Trump's order is "internationally giving us a very bad name."

 ___

 7:45 p.m.

 Authorities say six people were arrested at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, where people gathered to protest President Donald Trump's executive order regarding citizens of seven Muslim nations.

 Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said in a news release that the six were arrested Saturday night. They say about 50 protesters formed two groups with the first group protesting Trump's immigration order, followed by a second group that protested community-related issues.

 Police said the protesters were asked to leave because of public safety concerns, and six people refused. They were arrested and now face charges that include trespassing and resist, obstruct and delay.

 Trump's executive order barred citizens of seven Muslim nations from entering the United States.

 ___

 7:40 p.m.

 The attorneys general of 15 states and the District of Columbia are issuing a joint statement condemning as unconstitutional President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

 The attorneys general say that religious liberty has been a bedrock principle of the country and no president can change that truth.

 The states taking part in the joint statement issued Sunday are Washington, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Virginia, Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine and Maryland.

 The attorneys general say they expect Trump's executive order to be struck down, but in the meantime they'll work to make sure as few as possible suffer as a result of the order.

 ___

 7:30 p.m.

 The conservative Koch political network is condemning President Donald Trump's plan to crack down on immigration from Muslim-majority countries.

 Network co-chairman Brian Hooks said in a statement released Sunday, "The travel ban is the wrong approach and will likely be counterproductive." He added, "We believe it is possible to keep Americans safe without excluding people who wish to come here to contribute and pursue a better life for their families."

 Hooks made the comments as billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and hundreds of his network's major donors gather for a semi-annual conference in Palm Springs, California.

 The Koch network is among the most influential players in the conservative movement and has strong ties in the Trump administration, particularly with Vice President Mike Pence.

 ___

 7:20 p.m.

 Demonstrators have gathered again at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to protest President Donald Trump's executive order barring citizens of seven predominantly Muslim nations from entry into the U.S.

 An estimated 200 people held signs and chanted "Let them go!" as they awaited word Sunday on what state representatives for the Council on American-Islamic Relations say are nine people detained at the airport. The council says the majority are Iranian.

 Other protests are planned for other parts of Texas over Trump's executive order, including in Houston and at the airport in Austin.

 Protesters also are rallying Sunday at Miami International Airport and elsewhere around the country.

 ___

 7:00 p.m.

 Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union say they are still trying to determine how many people are detained in the U.S. as a result of President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

 ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project deputy director Lee Gelernt told reporters in a conference call Sunday that there is still a state of confusion over the status of detainees and the rules for entering the country.

 He said lawyers are waiting for the government to give them a list of names of people who have been detained.

 Until then, he said, "we just simply don't know how many people there are and where they are."

 Other advocates say that immigration lawyers have had trouble getting to see people who have been detained, with officials refusing to grant access despite court orders in some jurisdictions that they do so.

 ___

 6: 45 p.m.

 An Oscar-nominated Iranian director says he will not attend this year's Academy Awards because of a travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump.

 Asghar Farhadi is an acclaimed director whose film "The Salesman" was nominated for best foreign film. He said Sunday that the uncertainty surrounding his ability to travel to the United States was "in no way acceptable," and that he would not attend the ceremony even if an exception to the ban were possible.

 An executive order issued last week temporarily bans the entry of citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen. The Trump administration says it is necessary to keep out potential terrorists.

 Farhadi became the first Iranian to win an Oscar when his film "A Separation" was awarded best foreign film in 2012.

 ___

 6:30 p.m.

 The head of the University of Notre Dame is calling on President Donald Trump to rescind his restrictions on refugees entering the United States.

 The Rev. John Jenkins on Sunday called Trump's action indiscriminate and abrupt and predicted it would diminish the country.

 Trump signed an executive order Friday suspending the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and barring the entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely. The order also temporarily stops entry for citizens of six other majority Muslim nations.

 Notre Dame is considered one of the flagship institutions of American Catholicism. The university invites U.S. presidents to speak at commencement, including President Barack Obama, who spoke in 2009. A Notre Dame spokesman says the school has not yet decided whether to invite Trump.

 ___

 6:20 p.m.

 A Syrian musician who recently toured with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma says he is waiting to see whether he will be allowed to return to his New York home after President Donald Trump imposed a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority nations.

 Kinan Azmeh, a clarinet player who lives in Brooklyn, said Sunday he does not have a "plan B" if he is not allowed back into the United States later this week.

 Azmeh is in Lebanon to perform with a local orchestra after rehearsing and performing with Yo-Yo Ma in China and Denmark earlier this month.

 The 40-year-old musician is one of thousands of green card holders who found their immigration status in limbo after Trump's order Friday.

 Azmeh was born in Damascus and moved to the U.S. 16 years ago.

 ___

 6:15 p.m.

 Iranian-born Swedish actress Bahar Pars, who hopes to share an Oscar for best foreign film, fears the ban will affect any possible plans to fly to the United States.

 The 37-year-old Pars, who came to Sweden as a child, plays the female lead in the Swedish Oscar-nominated film "A Man Called Ove."

 She told Swedish national news agency TT that "it's not at all certain that I'm going to get in."

 Describing Trump's executive order as racist, she told TT it took her two months to get her visa to the U.S. approved after applying using her Iranian passport.

 She said she was "very upset" by this, but added that it would also be good to go there and say to the whole world this is wrong.

 ___

 5:10 p.m.

 The European Union's foreign policy chief has lashed out at U.S. President Donald Trump, insisting that instead of building walls, the continent will "celebrate" every wall which is torn down and "every new bridge that is built up."

 Building on criticism from several national EU capitals on Trump's decision to impose a travel ban on refugees, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini said that "all men are first and foremost human beings, with their inalienable rights."

 She said in Sunday's blog post that "everyone deserves respect, beyond their faith, gender, and nationality."

 And she added between brackets "it feels so strange that we need to restate this, just days after Holocaust Remembrance Day."

 ___

 4:35 p.m.

 Four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah says U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policy "seems to have made me an alien" and fears he may not be able to return to his U.S. home.

 Farah is a British citizen who was born in Somalia, one of seven predominantly Muslim nations subject to the executive order signed by Trump that temporarily bans entry to the United States.

 Farah currently is training in Ethiopia. His family is based in Portland, Oregon.

 The 33-year-old says on his Facebook page that "it's deeply troubling" he will have to tell his children that he might not be able to come home.

 Farah's agent told The Associated Press that they were trying to clarify the situation with U.S. authorities.

 ___

 3:50 p.m.

 The White House chief of staff says President Donald Trump acted early on in his term to impose a travel ban on refugees to block "people who want to do bad things to America."

 Reince Priebus (ryns PREE'-bus) says there's nothing to apologize for after Friday's executive order drew widespread protests. A court order has temporarily barred the U.S. from deporting certain people.

 Trump is temporarily barring refugees and citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S.

 Priebus tells NBC's "Meet the Press" that the action "doesn't affect green card holders moving forward" — the subject of legal challenges.

 Scores were detained Saturday upon arrival at U.S. airports, spurring the judge's order.

 Priebus says officials were using "discretionary authority" to ask "a few more questions" at U.S. airports.

 ___

 3:35 p.m.

 A petition set up on a British government website calling for U.S. President Donald Trump to be barred from visiting the country has attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures, qualifying it for a parliamentary debate.

 Trump has drawn widespread condemnation in Britain for his ban on refugees and people from selected Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

 Prime Minister Theresa May invited him to make a state visit to Britain this year during her trip to Washington last week.

 The petition on the British parliament's website is titled: "Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom." It says his "well documented misogyny and vulgarity disqualifies him from being received" by either Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles.

 The website says parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for debate.

 ___

 3:05 p.m.

 A top adviser to President Donald Trump says a federal judge's emergency order "really doesn't affect" his efforts to temporarily bar refugees and citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S.

 Kellyanne Conway says on "Fox News Sunday" that a federal judge's late Saturday emergency order temporarily barring the U.S. from deporting people from nations subject to Trump's travel ban "really doesn't affect the executive order at all."

 Conway says Trump's order is about "preventing, not detaining" and says that only a very small percentage of travers have been impacted.

 Conway says that it's a "small price to pay" to keep the American public safe.

 ___

 2:45 p.m.

 Etihad Airways, the United Arab Emirates' national airline, says a number of its passengers have been affected by the new U.S. immigration policies and it is working closely with American officials on the matter.

 The Abu Dhabi-based carrier said Sunday it is offering affected passengers refunds or flight changes where possible. It did not say how many passengers were affected.

 Etihad passengers flying to the U.S. are screened and have their passports stamped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stationed in the Emirati capital rather than on arrival. Etihad says it is working with officials there and in the U.S. to address the new immigration policies.

 The airline says: "Our joint interest is on ensuring that compliance and the well-being of all passengers is maintained across our global network."

 ___

 2:25 p.m.

 President Donald Trump's immigration order is getting pushback in Congress.

 Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio says "I think we should slow down" and that lawmakers "ought to be part" of the discussions about how best to tighten screening for foreigners who enter the United States.

 Portman tells CNN's "State of the Union" that he doesn't think Trump executive action was properly reviewed before he signed it Friday.

 Portman is urging everyone "to take a deep breath and come up with something that makes sense for our national security" and reflects the fact that "America's always been a welcoming home for refugees and immigrants."

 He says America is "this beacon of hope and opportunity for the rest of the world" and should remain that way.

 ___

 2:15 p.m.

 Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says the Netherlands is convinced that refugees "deserve a safe shelter regardless of their origin or religion."

 In a statement Sunday, Rutte added that he and Foreign Minister Bert Koenders regret the U.S. travel restrictions and reject them.

 The condemnation from the Dutch government drew a swift rebuke from anti-Islam populist lawmaker Geert Wilders. Wilders tweeted in Dutch: "What a weakling."

 Wilders advocates closing Dutch borders to immigrants from Islamic nations. He is polling strongly ahead of March 15 elections for the lower house of Dutch Parliament.

 ___

 1:55 p.m.

 Switzerland's foreign minister says U.S. President Donald Trump's order to freeze immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries goes "in the wrong direction."

 Didier Burkhalter said in a statement Sunday that it was "up to the American authorities to decide the immigration conditions in their country."

 But he said measures taken to prevent terrorism must "respect fundamental rights as well as international law" and suggested Trump's order fails to do so.

 Burkhalter said that as far as the rules apply to refugees it would be a breach of the Geneva Conventions for the United States, a signatory, to impose a general ban on people coming from Syria.

 He said Switzerland would monitor the situation closely and provide its citizens with support, if necessary. |||||
What is a summary?

– US District Court Judge Ann Donnelly issued an injunction barring the government from deporting anyone during an emergency hearing Saturday night in Brooklyn, and her court was not the only one to do so. Reuters reports that judges in three additional states—Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington state—have since followed suit. Reuters points out that these legal moves are curbs that do not eradicate President Trump's executive order that severely limits immigration, but observes "the growing number ... could complicate the administration's effort to enforce it." The former is exactly what an unnamed senior White House official pointed out, reportedly telling NBC's Kelly O'Donnell such rulings do "not undercut the President's executive order." The official continues, "All stopped visas will remain stopped. All halted admissions will remain halted. All restricted travel will remain prohibited. ... The order remains in place." But the pressure shows no sign of easing: The AP reports that the attorneys general of 15 states and the District of Columbia will issue a joint statement branding Trump's ban as unconstitutional and at odds with "a bedrock principle" of the US: religious liberty. The states: Washington, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Virginia, Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine, and Maryland. What Trump had to say Sunday morning on Twitter: "Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world - a horrible mess!"


Here is a news article: 20-second video of N1TV’s Petra László tripping over man carrying child in his arms – and kicking young girl and boy – goes viral and horrifies country

 A camera operator for a Hungarian nationalist television channel closely linked to the country’s far-right Jobbik party has been filmed kicking two refugee children and tripping up a man at the border hotspot of Rőszke on Tuesday.

 Petra László of N1TV was filming a group of refugees running away from police officers, when a man carrying a child in his arms ran in front of her. László stuck her leg out in front of the man, causing him to fall on the child he was carrying. He turned back and remonstrated with László, who continued filming.

 A 20-second video of the scene was posted on Twitter by Stephan Richter, a reporter for the German television channel RTL and soon went viral, leading to the creation of a Facebook group “The Petra László Wall of Shame”.

 Hungary’s leading news website Index had also caught László kicking a young girl and boy.

 N1TV said László had been dismissed due to “unacceptable behaviour”. The channel’s editor in chief Szabolcs Kisberk said in a statement posted on the station’s website: “The camerawoman’s employment has today been terminated with immediate effect, the case is now closed for us.”

 As well as speeches made by the Jobbik leader Gábor Vona, the channel’s website also contains articles with such headlines as “migrants have swarmed all over the shops” and “Guantanamo = Hungary?”

 Hundreds of angry comments appeared on the Facebook group set up to condemn László’s actions on Tuesday evening.

 Opposition parties Együtt-PM and the Democratic Coalition have said that they will initiate charges of violence against a member of the community, which is punishable by up to five years in prison, against László.

  ||||| A Hungarian camerawoman with the country's N1 TV station is seen tripping a man holding a child. The scene was captured at the Roeszke camp as refugees tried to escape from the police. The woman has since been fired. (Stephan Richter/Twitter)

 When dozens of refugees tried to escape police officers at a Hungarian camp on Tuesday, one camerawoman decided to get involved. While she was filming a father, holding a child in his arms, she tripped both of them.

 The scene at the camp, which you can watch in the video embedded on top of this post, was captured by a German correspondent. According to Hungarian news site 444.hu, the camerawoman worked for Hungarian broadcaster N1 and has since been fired.

 On its Web site, the TV station posted a statement that read: "Today, a N1TV colleague behaved unacceptably at the Roeszke reception center. The cameraman's employment was terminated with immediate effect." The statement was signed by N1TV editor Szabolcs Kisber. On its Web site, the channel describes itself as being "fact-based" and "free of opinion."

 According to an NBC News crew that was at the scene, hundreds of refugees were able to escape the camp, which is near the Hungarian-Serbian border, on Tuesday because of overcrowding. Tensions had risen for days, with many refugees trying to continue their journey to Germany and Austria but being stopped by local police.

 Meanwhile, Twitter users condemned the camerawoman's behavior and demanded an apology from the TV station. Some said the incident was evidence that most Hungarian journalists and media outlets are in line with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has taken a tough stance toward the influx of refugees.

 15 seconds in: N1TV photog trips a refugee running w/ child in arms. Guess Hungary knows where their media stand. https://t.co/qjyajvKL12 — Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) September 8, 2015

 Reactions ranged from outrage to unbelief: British Iranian journalist Sanam Shantyaei called the scene "horrific," for instance, and others demanded that N1 should lay her off. Some users quickly pointed out that the camerawoman had been recorded tripping another fleeing refugee child.

 What a shame! Camerawoman for #Hungary N1TV trips refugees as they run from police. She was later fired. @akhbar pic.twitter.com/v7fBDz3PKV — Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) September 8, 2015

 Hungarian news site 444.hu also featured the scene, as recorded from the perspective of the camerawoman itself. The video ends shortly before the two fleeing refugees fall to the ground.

 A Reuters photographer captured the scene in a chilling sequence, below:

 A man runs with a child before being tripped by a TV camerawoman and falling as he tries to escape from a collection point in Roszke village, Hungary, on Sept. 8. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

 A man carrying a child falls after being tripped by a TV camerawoman while trying to escape from a collection point in Roszke village, Hungary, on Sept. 8. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

 A man carrying a child falls after being tripped by a TV camerawoman while trying to escape from a collection point in Roszke village, Hungary, on Sept. 8. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

 A man falls over a child after being tripped by a TV camerawoman as he tries to escape from a collection point in Roszke village, Hungary, on Sept. 8. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

 Read more:

 As tragedies shock Europe, a bigger refugee crisis looms in the Middle East

 The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees

 Read The Post’s coverage on the global surge in migration |||||
A summary of this is?

– A journalist working for a far-right TV station is out of a job after she was unable to resist her urge to become part of the story she was covering. The Hungarian camerawoman was filmed kicking and tripping refugees as they tried to get past police at an overcrowded camp in southern Hungary near the border with Serbia yesterday, the New York Times reports. A German journalist filmed Petra Laszlo of N1TV as she tripped a man carrying a young child, causing him to fall on the boy, the Guardian reports. Laszlo was also filmed kicking two children as they made their way past the police line. N1TV, which has close links to the far-right Jobbik party, says she has been let go for "unacceptable behavior." The Washington Post reports that many commentators describe her shocking behavior as more evidence that the Hungarian media is strongly biased in favor of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has stepped up the construction of a border fence and says the influx of people needs to be blocked to "keep Europe Christian."


News article:

Flight attendants had just begun to take drink orders when the explosion rocked the cabin.

 National Transportation Safety Board Aerospace Engineer Chris Babcock carries the flight recorders from Southwest flight 812 that experienced a rapid decompression and made an emergency landing in Yuma,... (Associated Press)

 In this photo provided by passenger Christine Ziegler, unidentified passengers take photos with cell phones of an apparent hole in the cabin on a Southwest Airlines aircraft Friday, April 1, 2011 in Yuma,... (Associated Press)

 In this photo provided by passenger Joshua Hardwicke, shows a cell phone image of an apparent hole in the cabin on a Southwest Airlines aircraft Friday, April 1, 2011 as it makes an emergency decent into... (Associated Press)

 In this photo provided by passenger Christine Ziegler, shows an apparent hole in the cabin on a Southwest Airlines aircraft Friday, April 1, 2011 in Yuma, Ariz. Authorities say the flight from Phoenix... (Associated Press)

 Southwest Airlines flight 812 passenger Carrie Hobbs, right, is hugged by her children Gavin, left,and Kylie, center, after arriving at Sacramento International Airport Friday, April 1, 2011. A fuselage... (Associated Press)

 The flight recorders from Southwest flight 812 that experienced a rapid decompression and made an emergency landing in Yuma, Ariz., Friday, April 1, 2011, is carried by National Transportation Safety... (Associated Press)

 This photo provided by passenger Don Nelson, shows fuselage rupture that happened in-flight on a Southwest Airlines aircraft Friday, April 1, 2011. The plane made an emergency landing at Yuma Marine Corps... (Associated Press)

 National Transportation Safety Board Aerospace Engineer Chris Babcock carries the flight recorders from Southwest flight 812 that experienced a rapid decompression and made an emergency landing in Yuma,... (Associated Press)

 FILE - Copilot Mimi Tompkins helps a man slide down a chute of a severely damaged Aloha Airlines 737 jet shortly after arrival in Kahului, Hawaii in this April 28, 1988 file photo. Pilot Robert Schornstheimer,... (Associated Press)

 Southwest Airlines flight 812 passenger Mary Flores, left, is hugged by her granddaughter, Dylan Dean, 9, center and daughter Desiree, right, after arriving at Sacramento International Airport Friday,... (Associated Press)

 An unidentified Southwest Airlines flight 812 passenger, left, is hugged by a loved one after arriving at Sacramento International Airport Friday, April 1, 2011. A fuselage rupture and a sudden drop... (Associated Press)

 An unidentified Southwest Airlines flight 812 passenger, right, is hugged by a loved one after arriving at Sacramento International Airport Friday, April 1, 2011. A fuselage rupture and a sudden drop... (Associated Press)

 An unidentified Southwest Airlines flight 812 passenger, right, is hugged by a loved one after arriving at Sacramento International Airport Friday, April 1, 2011. A fuselage rupture and a sudden drop... (Associated Press)

 Aboard Southwest Flight 812, Shawna Malvini Redden covered her ears, then felt a brisk wind rush by. Oxygen masks fell, the cabin lost pressure, and Redden, now suddenly lightheaded, fumbled to maneuver the mask in place.

 Then she prayed. And, instinctively, reached out to the stranger seated next to her in Row 8 as the pilot of the damaged aircraft began a rapid descent from about 34,400 feet in the sky.

 "I don't know this dude, but I was like, 'I'm going to just hold your hand,'" Redden, a 28-year-old doctoral student at Arizona State University, recalled Saturday, a day after her Phoenix-to-Sacramento flight was forced into an emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, Ariz., with a hole a few feet long in the roof of the passenger cabin.

 No serious injuries were reported among the 118 people aboard, according to Southwest officials.

 What caused part of the fuselage to rupture on the 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 was a mystery, and investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived Saturday in Yuma to begin an inquiry.

 NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said investigators were going to cut a piece out of the fuselage, which would be studied for fracture patterns. He said they would also examine the plane's black box and flight recorders, which arrived Saturday at NTSB headquarters in Washington, D.C.

 Southwest, meanwhile, grounded about 80 similar planes so that they could be inspected, and said that as a result some 300 flights were being canceled Saturday. Airline spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said it was too soon to estimate the cost of grounding a portion of its fleet.

 Southwest operates about 170 of the 737-300s in its fleet of about 540 planes, but it replaced the aluminum skin on many of the 300s in recent years, Rutherford said. The planes that were grounded Saturday have not had their skin replaced, she said.

 "Obviously we're dealing with a skin issue, and we believe that these 80 airplanes are covered by a set of (federal safety rules) that make them candidates to do this additional inspection that Boeing is devising for us," Rutherford said.

 Julie O'Donnell, an aviation safety spokeswoman for Seattle-based Boeing Commercial Airplanes, confirmed "a hole in the fuselage and a depressurization event" in the latest incident but declined to speculate on what caused it.

 A total of 288 Boeing 737-300s currently operate in the U.S. fleet, and 931 operate worldwide, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. "The FAA is working closely with the NTSB, Southwest Airlines and Boeing to determine what actions may be necessary," the FAA said Saturday.

 Southwest officials said the Arizona plane had undergone all inspections required by the FAA. They said the plane was given a routine inspection Tuesday and underwent its last so-called heavy check, a more costly and extensive overhaul, in March 2010.

 An Associated Press review of FAA records of maintenance problems for the plane show that in March 2010 at least eight instances were found of cracking in the aircraft frame, which is part of the fuselage. Those cracks were repaired, the records indicated.

 It's not uncommon for fuselage cracks to be found during inspections of planes that age, especially during scheduled heavy maintenance checks in which they are taken apart so that inspectors can see into areas not normally visible.

 The 737-300 is the oldest plane in Southwest's fleet, and the Dallas-based company is retiring 300s as it takes deliveries of new models. But the process of replacing all the 300s could take years.

 Seated one row from the mid-cabin rupture, Don Nelson said it took about four noisy minutes for the plane to dip to less than 10,000 feet. "You could tell there was an oxygen deficiency," he said.

 "People were dropping," said Christine Ziegler, a 44-year-old project manager from Sacramento who watched as a flight attendant and a passenger nearby fainted. Nelson and Ziegler spoke Friday after a substitute flight took them on to Sacramento.

 Brenda Reese described the hole as "at the top of the plane, right up above where you store your luggage."

 At an altitude above 34,000 feet, the Southwest pilots would have had only 10 to 20 seconds of "useful consciousness" to get their oxygen masks on or pass out, said John Gadzinski, an airline pilot and aviation safety consultant.

 "The higher you are the less useful consciousness time you have," said Gadzinski, president of Four Winds Consulting in Virginia Beach, Va. "It's a credit to the pilots that they responded so quickly."

 A loss of cabin pressure just after takeoff knocked out the pilots of a Helios Airways Boeing 737 in August 2005. The plane flew into a hillside north of Athens in Greece, killing all 121 people aboard. In that case, an investigation found the pilots had failed to heed a warning that the pressurization system wasn't working correctly.

 In this case, the hole and subsequent depressurization wouldn't have affected the pilots' ability to control the plane as long as they had their oxygen masks on, Gadzinski said.

 "The fact that you have a breach hole doesn't affect the aerodynamics of the plane. The plane still flies exactly the same," he said.

 A similar incident happened in July 2009 when a football-sized hole opened up in-flight in the fuselage of another of Southwest's Boeing 737s, depressurizing the cabin. The plane made an emergency landing in Charleston, W.Va. It was later determined that the hole was caused by metal fatigue.

 In response to that incident, Southwest changed its maintenance plan to include additional inspections, which FAA reviewed and accepted, said John Goglia, a former NTSB member and an expert on airline maintenance. The details of the plan are considered proprietary and aren't made public, he said.

 The latest incident "certainly makes me think there is something wrong with the maintenance system at Southwest, and it makes me think there is something wrong with the (FAA) principal maintenance inspector down there that after that big event they weren't watching this more closely," Goglia said.

 There was "never any danger that the plane would fall out of the sky," Goglia said. "However, anybody on that airplane with any sort of respiratory problems certainly was at risk."

 Four months before that emergency landing, Southwest had agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle charges that it operated planes that had missed required safety inspections for cracks in the fuselage. The airline inspected nearly 200 of its planes back then, found no cracks and put them back in the sky.

 In 1988, cracks caused part of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 to peel open while the jet flew from Hilo to Honolulu. A flight attendant was sucked out of the plane and plunged to her death, and dozens of passengers were injured.

 After that incident, Boeing made changes to its designs "to prevent the airplane from ever coming apart in that way again, by using different materials and manufacturing methods," Goglia said.

 Three years ago, an exploding oxygen cylinder ripped a hole the fuselage of a Qantas Boeing 747-438 carrying 365 people. The plane descended thousands of feet with the loss of cabin pressure and made a successful emergency landing.

 As for Friday's flight, there was obvious relief when it touched down safely. When the pilot emerged after the landing, passengers "clapped and cheered," Redden said.

 "If overhead bins weren't in the way, I'm pretty sure we would've given him a standing ovation," she said.

 ___

 Associated Press writers Lien Hoang, Don Thompson and Adam Weintraub contributed to this report from Sacramento, Calif.; David Koenig contributed from Dallas; Joan Lowy from Washington, D.C.; and Mark Evans and Robert Seavey from Phoenix. ||||| (Updates with possible impact on Sunday, other details)

 By Alex Dobuzinskis

 LOS ANGELES, April 2 (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) canceled hundreds of flights over the weekend as it inspected 79 aircraft from its Boeing 737 fleet after one of its planes with a gaping hole in the fuselage made an emergency landing, the airline said on Saturday.

 The airline said was canceling some 300 flights on Saturday, a day after the emergency landing, and could cancel around that number again on Sunday.

 "We don't at this time know what the impact will be, but it's possible that it could be in the 300-flight range again tomorrow," Southwest spokesman Brandy King told Reuters.

 Passengers aboard Southwest Flight 812 from Phoenix to Sacramento on Friday heard a loud noise and the hole appeared suddenly at about mid cabin, forcing the pilot landed at a military base in Yuma, Arizona.

 The emergency aboard the Boeing (BA.N) 737-300 prompted the airline to examine similar aircraft within its fleet, with a total of 79 inspections planned at five locations over the next several days, Southwest said in a statement.

 Southwest normally has about 3,400 flights on Saturday, King said, so the cancellations accounted for nearly 9 percent of that total.

 "We did our best to accommodate those passengers on other Southwest flights," King said.

 A total of 931 Boeing 737-300s are operated by all airlines worldwide, with 288 of them in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

 The Southwest flight that was forced to make an emergency landing had 118 passengers and five crew members on board.

 Southwest and Boeing engineers will inspect the grounded aircraft, and the airline is working with federal authorities to determine the cause of the incident, Southwest said.

 The pilot made a rapid descent from about 34,400 feet (10.3 km) to 11,000 feet (3.4 km), following standard practice to reach an altitude where supplemental oxygen is no longer required, the FAA said.

 One flight attendant and at least one passenger were treated at the scene for minor injuries, Southwest said.

 The Boeing 737 landed at 4:07 p.m. local time after declaring an emergency, said Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman.

 The airline said it arranged for another aircraft to take the passengers from the Yuma Marine Corps Air Station to Sacramento.

 Passengers described the harrowing scene to the CBS television affiliate in Sacramento, detailing the damage to the plane.

 "They had just taken drink orders when I heard a huge sound and oxygen masks came down and we started making a rapid descent. They said we'd be making an emergency landing," a woman identified as Cindy told the station.

 "There was a hole in the fuselage about three feet (91 cm) long. You could see the insulation and the wiring. You could see a tear the length of one of the ceiling panels." (Additional reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix and Lauren Keiper in Boston; Editing by Greg McCune and Vicki Allen) |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Fatigue cracking has been found along the entire 5-foot section of a Southwest Airlines jet that ripped open on Friday, forcing an emergency landing in Arizona. The NTSB says that mechanics will cut a 9-foot by 3-foot section of the plane and send it to Washington, DC, for testing. Southwest has responded by grounding at least 79 planes, reports the AP; at least 300 flights were canceled yesterday. And more cancellations were on the horizon today: "We don't at this time know what the impact will be, but it's possible that it could be in the 300-flight range again," a Southwest spokesman told Reuters.


Article:
(Corrects name of U.S. organization in paragraph 9))

 By Kizito Makoye

 DAR ES SALAAM, March 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - S cientists in East Africa plan to exploit trained rats’ highly developed sense of smell to carry out mass screening for tuberculosis among inmates of crowded prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique.

 African Giant Pouched Rats trained by the Belgian non governmental organisation APOPO are widely known for their work sniffing out landmines, and are now developing a reputation in East Africa for their skill and speed at detecting TB too.

 Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death, after HIV, from an infectious disease. Around the world, there are about 9 million new cases a year and around 2 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

 In Tanzania, people in communities where TB is most common, including prisons, often fail to show up for screening because of lack of money or awareness, creating a huge burden for health authorities trying to tackle the disease, health officials said.

 Because existing systems lack the accuracy, speed and cost-efficiency required to scale up screening of the highly contagious disease, many TB cases go undiagnosed, they said.

 APOPO, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID,) plans to recruit and train more rats to carry out prison screening that it expects to be faster and more reliable than existing methods.

 “We believe our unique TB Detection Rat technology will prove itself as an effective mass-screening tool,” said APOPO’s U.S. director, Charlie Richter.

 “We then aim to expand the programme to all prisons, shantytowns, factories and other settings in Tanzania, Mozambique and other high TB-burden countries, as well as in high-risk groups such as those individuals living with HIV/AIDS. This will improve and save lives all over the globe at a low cost,” Richter said.

 Though data from African jails is hard to come by, studies from Tanzania, Malawi and Ivory Coast show that TB rates are 10 times higher in prisons than in the general population, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 TRAINING STARTS AT FOUR WEEKS OLD

 APOPO says the rats undergo a rigorous training process that begins when they are four weeks old. As soon as the rats open their eyes, they are introduced to various stimuli and learn how to socialize and interact with people.

 The rats learn to recognise the presence of TB in samples of sputum, mucus that is coughed up from the patient’s lower airways, and rewarded when they succeed.

 The testing process starts when a rat is presented with a row of 10 sputum samples, and when it detects TB the rat hovers over the sample for 3 seconds, Richter said.

 The rats’ accuracy at detecting TB is almost 100 percent, but they cannot distinguish between normal and drug-resistant strains, APOPO scientists say.

 The APOPO system is fast, cheap and has the potential to greatly lower screening costs in poor countries, Richter said.

 While a laboratory technician may take four days to detect tuberculosis, a trained rat can screen 100 samples in 20 minutes, and a rat screening can cost as little as 20 US cents when APOPO operations are running near capacity, he said.

 APOPO’s current programmes have screened more than 340,000 TB samples, halting over 36,000 further infections, and increased detection rates by over 40 percent in several partnered clinics, officials said.

 Khadija Abraham, an expert at Tanzania’s National Leprosy and Tuberculosis Programme, said trained rats had a great ability to detect a wide range of strong-smelling molecules that could help tracking down undiagnosed TB cases, especially in rural areas.

 “Training an animal with a strong and reliable sense of smell to help detect disease in a vast country like Tanzania could potentially offer a valuable solution to help detecting the disease,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

 Training pouched rats requires little human skill since they only have to be exposed to the smell they need to recognize, Abraham said.

 “Experiments show that these rats can detect a sample with TB parasites in a second and evidence has shown that they are able to sniff out even those with very minimal parasites,”she said.

 TB cases are normally detected by sputum smear microscopy, a slow and costly process that has not changed for years and is not very accurate. The WHO insists that one lab technician should not test more than 20 patients a day, and says the chances of misdiagnosis are high if this exceeded. (Editing by Tim Pearce; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, corruption, climate change. Visit news.trust.org) ||||| Chewa The Lab Rat Has A Great Job, Good Retirement Benefits

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Maarten Boersema/APOPO Maarten Boersema/APOPO

 In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, every morning, a medical specialist known as Chewa (a name that means brave in Swahili — but his bosses call him Mchapakazi, the hard worker) gets excited about his job. For two 40 minute sessions, punctuated by a nap and some recreational time with co-workers, he will test smears of human mucus for the presence of tuberculosis by sniffing deeply at each of 10 samples, then letting his supervisors know when he senses the disease in one. He has been taught by staff at the NGO called APOPO to know tuberculosis by its smell . Chewa is a 3-pound African giant-pouched rat.

 An untreated tuberculosis patient can infect up to a dozen people a year. Almost 10 million people worldwide contracted TB in 2014, and some 1.5 million died from it. The disease is largely curable, but first it must be diagnosed. That's where the rats come in.

 Conventional detection techniques in a lab are expensive and time-consuming. Since 2002, APOPO has pioneered the use of what it calls HeroRATS to get the job done in less time for less money. In a long cage with samples of sputum placed in recesses along its floor, the rats are trained to stop and indicate to their handlers when they recognize the scent of tuberculosis. They're rewarded with a treat — usually a bit of banana.

 According to Robin Toal, community manager at APOPO, "Our rats can screen nearly 100 samples in 20 minutes compared to a laboratory technician, who takes around four days to do that many." So far APOPO's rats have screened more than 340,000 TB samples.

 APOPO, which also trains rats to sniff out land mines, this past fall received a USAID Development Innovations Ventures Grant to expand its work with rats and disease detection. APOPO will concentrate on high TB prevalence prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique. It also plans to move beyond prisons to other places where people live and work in close quarters.

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Maarten Boersema/APOPO Maarten Boersema/APOPO

 Hard worker Chewa has a pretty sweet life . Born at a rat breeding center at APOPO's headquarters in Morogoro, Tanzania, he began his training at just a month old. S taffer Albert Carol ("Uncle Albert"), who is charged with socializing all the facility's baby rats, exposes them to people, tastes, smells — and a variety of situations.

 "He pets and strokes them all day. He takes them for rides in his car, or on the back of his motorbike, to different buildings," Toal explains. "All of this is just get them used to a human environment so that they're comfortable with us, because only animals that are relaxed, comfortable and happy are able to do this kind of detection work." Currently 29 HeroRATS are at work detecting TB in Morogoro, with 26 more in the breeding program.

 The rats, which can grow to 3 feet long (including tail), are trained and ready for disease-sniffing at the age of 9 months. Though they have a lifespan of about 8 years, the animals are allowed to retire whenever they want.

 Says Toal: "They're enthusiastic when we come and open the doors in the morning. They jump on our shoulders. As soon as the animals stop showing that same level of enthusiasm, we start to evaluate them a bit closer. They all have daily health inspections and biweekly checks from a vet. A s soon as we think they don't want to do it, then we'll happily let them retire. And they can live out their days lounging with their friends, snacking on watermelon, running on wheels, chasing their tails, whatever they want to do. We still take them out and play with them, they just don't get woken up in the morning. The life of a retired rat is especially blissful." ||||| 1/25 Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty

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– Which are you more afraid of: giant rats or dying of tuberculosis? Hopefully you chose dying of tuberculosis, because Reuters reports a Belgian organization called APOPO is training dozens of African giant pouched rats to sniff out TB, starting with at-risk populations in the crowded prisons of Tanzania and Mozambique. "This program is very important as the rats will enable … early detection of TB in risk populations such as prisoners and prison staff," an APOPO doctor tells the Independent. According to NPR, the 3-feet-long rats are quicker, better, and cheaper than lab technicians when it comes to screening for TB. It takes one lab technician four days to screen 100 samples; a rat can screen that many in 20 minutes. And all it wants in compensation is a bit of banana. Baby rats start their training as soon as their eyes open. They're socialized to humans (trainer "Uncle Albert" takes them on motorbike rides in between copious petting) and taught to sniff out the presence of TB in mucus samples. Once fully trained at nine months, they have a nearly 100% accuracy rate in detecting TB. Then it's off to work. One rat named Chewa does two 40-minute screening sessions per day with a break for napping and playing in between. And the usually enthusiastic rats are allowed to retire when they no longer appear to enjoy smelling mucus samples. "They can live out their days lounging with their friends, snacking on watermelon, running on wheels, chasing their tails, whatever they want to do," an APOPO community manager tells NPR. "The life of a retired rat is especially blissful."