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The campus bookstore, a seeming anachronism in the digital age, will soon become history at the University of Massachusetts. Starting next fall, students at the flagship Amherst campus will buy almost all textbooks from Amazon.com. The online retail giant has struck a deal with UMass to replace an on-campus “textbook annex” run by Follett Corp. with a smaller Amazon distribution center. UMass officials hope the arrangement will save students money. “We really recognize that textbooks and course materials are a major expense for students, and those have continued to go up over time,” said Ed Blaguszewski, UMass spokesman. “This is about convenience and saving money for students.” Amazon told UMass that it could save students an average of 31 percent, or $380 annually, compared with prices at the old store. The Amazon system will offer students access to digital textbooks and, for old-fashioned ink-and-paper texts, free one-day delivery to addresses on campus and apartments in nearby towns. Students can also pick up texts, ordered online, at an Amazon-staffed storefront in the campus center that’s set to open in June. The Amazon system will also be integrated into the school’s course-selection software, letting students see exactly which books they need to buy for each class they are registered to take. Under terms of the five-year deal, the online retailer will pay UMass Amherst a 2.5 percent commission on most sales to students through the school’s dedicated Amazon storefront. The company has agreed to pay at least $375,000, $465,000, and $610,000 in the first three years, respectively. This isn’t Amazon’s first foray onto campus. In 2013, the company launched its first textbook partnership with the University of California Davis, followed by Purdue University in 2014. The company said it is negotiating similar contracts with a number of other universities and colleges. “Many schools are feeling pressure to control the cost of education, and textbooks contribute to that,” said Ripley MacDonald, Amazon’s director of student programs. “Many are also seeing revenues in their bookstores flat at best, or even going backward, so they’re looking at ways to stem that trend. We’re trying to reinvent the bookstore experience.” Blaguszewski said Amazon was chosen over five other companies bidding to replace the textbook annex because of its low prices and familiar interface. “Clearly, they’re renowned for their ability to manage technology and deliver prompt customer service,” he said. “We think it’s a great match.” Amazon said it bid for the UMass contract because of the school’s large student body, proximity to existing Amazon distribution centers, and the relative lack of nearby retailers. Follett will continue to operate the university store, which also sells mugs, hoodies, and other UMass-branded tchotchkes.

The ubiquitous online retailer has struck a deal with UMass to replace an on-campus “textbook annex” run by Illinois-based Follett Corp. with a smaller Amazon distribution center. UMass officials hope the arrangement will save students money.

07/07/2015 AT 11:55 AM EDT When his 18-month-old granddaughter's stroller rolled from the platform onto the train tracks at Wentworthville Station in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday morning, this grandfather knew he had to act fast. , the grandfather jumped after the baby girl onto the tracks to save her, very narrowly missing an incoming freight train that zipped by soon after he hoisted himself back up unto the platform, The girl, who fell onto the tracks as her family purchased train tickets, suffered swelling to the forehead and cuts to her knees, police confirmed, though the hero granddad avoided any injuries. "[It was] heroic. He's run down the tracks to the end of the platform," Inspector Paul Reynolds . "Baby [was] very lucky, grandfather just as lucky."

Soon after the man saved his 18-month-old granddaughter from the track, a freight train whizzed by

A Lebanese official says Beirut airport authorities have foiled one of the country’s largest drug smuggling attempts, seizing two tonnes of the amphetamine fenethylline before they were loaded on to the private plane of a Saudi prince. The official said the prince and four others had been detained on Monday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to give official statements. The manufacture of fenethylline pills thrives in Lebanon and war-torn Syria, which have become a gateway for the drug to the Middle East and particularly the Gulf. In a 2014 report, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime says the amphetamine market is on the rise in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria accounting for more than 55% of amphetamines seized worldwide.

Prince and four others detained after fenethylline pills were confiscated before they were loaded on to private jet in Beirut

MADRID—Support is collapsing for Europe’s mainstream leftist parties, long a pillar of the establishment in countries across the continent. A voter revolt against Italy’s leader marks the latest setback in a downward slide that began before recession hit Europe in 2008 and has accelerated since. Voters are chafing at austerity measures that center-left governments adopted to manage debt crises. Many who once supported Socialists and...

Support is collapsing across the continent for Europe’s mainstream leftist parties, with Italian voters’ rebuke of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Sunday just the latest instance.

Israeli police arrested a man Wednesday who they suspect hacked into Madonna’s computer late last year and leaked demo versions of songs from her upcoming Rebel Heart album. A month-long investigation from the cybercrime wing of Israel’s Lahav 433, an FBI-like organization, led authorities to arrest a 39-year-old, according to The Hollywood Reporter. A statement from Lahav 433 said it worked closely with the FBI and that the suspect allegedly “broke into the personal computers of several international artists over the past few months and stole” unreleased music that he then traded for money. Police put a gag order on the alleged hacker’s name, though local media in Israel have begun identifying the man as a former reality show contest from one of Israel’s singing competition programs. Madonna, who in December rushed to release six songs from the album on iTunes in the wake of the leak, called the theft “a form of terrorism.” Similarly, Björk announced Tuesday that she would suddenly release her new album, Vulnicura, on iTunes after the record leaked over the weekend, two months ahead of schedule.

The singer called the theft "a form of terrorism"

Paz de la Huerta is attempting a comeback after recovering from a near-death accident — but she’s still up to her old antics. The “Boardwalk Empire” star, no stranger to odd behavior, vented her frustrations with Hollywood to a crowd at club No. 8 on Wednesday, saying, “Some people f— Harvey Weinstein and they get a Golden Globe.” Paz spoke to Confidenti@l at the Meatpacking District hotspot about why she’s been off for the past year. She told us she was hit by a truck while shooting a film in Toronto and “shouldn’t be alive” now. “I’ve been off the radar because I’ve been fighting for my life,” she said at art group The Committee’s event to celebrate her new photo book, “The Birds Didn’t Die Over the Winter.” The kooky actress explained that a stunt gone horribly wrong landed her in the hospital. “The truck was being driven by a stunt driver and he was going 80 miles an hour when he hit me,” she said. “There is no reason why I should be alive today. My tail bone was broken. A lot of things were broken due to that accident.” Since the freak mishap, she says she has been back in the hospital for more than 20 surgeries. But Paz says fighting for her life has lifted her to a higher spiritual place. While recovering physically, she also was nursing a broken heart, having gone through a bad breakup with Stone Temple Pilots front man Scott Weiland. Her book, out this week, was shot by photographer Alexandra Carr and was inspired by the end of that relationship. “I was in a toxic relationship with a musician. We were together almost two years,” she said. She and Weiland dated from 2008 to 2009. “I had just come out of a destructive insane relationship. This toxic human being who came into my life said he was encouraging my work and then he would hide my scripts,” she said Paz said she was in a “really dark place” until she met Carr. “I was heartbroken. I was confused. And then I met Alexandra.” Paz has thrown herself back into her work. She has four films under way, including her directorial debut, and is keen to publish a book of “thousands” of paintings she did as a form of therapy while in the hospital. “I wouldn’t call myself an actress. I would call myself an emoter,” she said. Tell Harvey Weinstein that. “After Earth” co-writer Gary Whitta dishes about what it was like to visit Will Smith’s family compound in Los Angeles before filming with him and his son Jaden. “All the story development meetings were at Will’s house. He likes to work where he’s comfortable,” Whitta said at the Mercedes-Benz-hosted premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre. As for the food chez Smith, Whitta said it’s a “very different lifestyle.” “I sit in my pajamas at my desk all day writing, so being part of the Will Smith universe is almost like being on a different planet. “Will has his own chef,” Whitta said. “Our first meeting was a breakfast meeting. I didn’t want to ask for anything too ostentatious. I just asked for scrambled eggs, and man, those eggs ... I don’t know where they came from, but they were the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever had in my life. If I ever get rich, the first thing I’m going to do is hire a private chef.” “Jersey Shore” star Vinny Guadagnino talked to Confidenti@l about his former co-star Snooki’s recent confrontation with Gov. Chris Christie about the gov’s hatred of the show. “I was standing right there when it happened,” he said. “She said, ‘How come you don’t like me?’ He doesn’t like ‘Jersey Shore,’ but we’re not from Jersey. We’re from New York, so I don’t know why he would hate us so much.” PHOTOS: SNOOKI'S HOT POST-BABY BODY Jim Carrey is set to publish his first children’s book, “How Roland Rolls,” with Perseus Distribution. The book, out in September, will be sold in the U.S. and in Carrey’s native Canada. The funnyman will appear at Book Expo America and sign autographs for fans in the Perseus Distribution booth Friday afternoon at the Javits Center in New York. One person is upset Bill Hader has retired from “Saturday Night Live.” Without giving away his address, we’ll say the star’s Chelsea-area doorman has nothing but wonderful things to say about the genius impressionist. “He told some people in the building that Bill would give him ‘SNL’ tickets for him and his family once in a while,” says our source. “He’s known to be the sweetest, most down-to-Earth guy.” A HIGH DEGREE OF OPRAH Oprah Winfrey and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino received honorary degrees from Harvard University Thursday. Winfrey was there in person to receive an honorary doctor of laws degree, sparking tweets by students who recalled stories of studio audiences that got shopping trips. The grads joked that they might find something under their seats, too. PHOTOS: 25 YEARS OF OPRAH WINFREY'S STYLE At least one of the “Real Housewives of New York” has a sense of humor about the cast’s season-six salaries. At the NewYork.com launch party at midtown club Arena, Aviva Drescher told Confidenti@l, “Did I try to get more money? That’s like asking me if I went to India, went to go buy jewelry, and if I asked them to lower the price for the bracelets.” She sarcastically added, “No, I asked for the same price as last year.” Jeremy Piven tried to go incognito in a Panama hat, full beard and oversized black-and-white French sailor shirt on Formula One boss Flavio Briatore's 207-foot yacht Force Blue in the South of France recently. Briatore, who’s dated Heidi Klum, had over 100 sexy gals on the yacht and Piven tried chatting many of them up. He also talked to Sanctuary Hotel owner Hank Freid, who told Piven that everyone on his staff calls him “Ari.” PHOTOS: HEIDI KLUM HANGS UP HER 'ANGEL' WINGS Marc Jacobs’ new boyfriend may be using him for the fame. Porn star Michael Lucas is telling pals that porn star Harry Louis — who once worked for Lucas — left his partner of two years for Jacobs and is now working his time in the spotlight. “He is now running his own chocolate company, which is fully funded by Jacobs, and boasting pictures of his new-found ‘friendship’ with celebrities,” Lucas says. You know what they say ... bake it till you make it.

Paz de la Huerta is attempting a comeback after recovering from a near-death accident — but she’s still up to her old antics.

By Douglas Robson, Special for USA TODAY , who sat supine on a sofa for the final in 2009, picked up where he left off two years ago by collecting his second title Sunday. Top-ranked Nadal dominated big-hitting Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 in just 2 hours, 13 minutes to reinforce his current status as the No. 1 player in the game. It was Nadal's eighth major and second in a row after winning Roland Garros. After the final point was secured, Nadal collapsed on his back on the turf at the baseline and covered his face with his hands. After congratulating Berdych, Nadal leaped out of his chair and did a front somersault on the grass, rising to his feet with both fists clenched. Just 24, Nadal joins some elite company. He is now tied with Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Fred Perry and Ken Rosewall in Grand Slam titles. "It was probably one of the toughest moments in my career," Nadal said after accepting the winner's trophy Sunday from the Duke of Kent. "A win here was always my dream. I did it two years ago." Nadal has now won 14 consecutive matches at the All England Club and "defended" the title he won in his last appearance here two years ago. "It was amazing for me after a difficult year last year that I can be here," he said. A year ago, Nadal could not defend his All-England Club crown due to tendinitis in his knees. Instead, he watched the final between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick from his couch back in Mallorca. Since returning to clay in mid-April, the Spaniard has been on a tear, going 31-1 and regaining the top ranking from Federer. He is 8-2 in major finals overall and 5-0 in his last five. It's the second time Nadal has won the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back. Nadal posed with the trophy in the clubhouse next to the green board with his name already etched as the 2010 winner. He cradled the trophy under his left arm as he signed autographs outside the members' entrance, where hundreds of fans gathered to see him. Nadal is the first Spanish man to win Wimbledon twice. Manolo Santana took the title in 1966. "For the Spanish players for the last 40 years it was very difficult to play here," Nadal said. "We are doing better right now. We are very satisfied for that." Berdych was playing in his first Grand Slam final and was the first Czech to reach the Wimbledon final since Ivan Lendl in 1987. He had beaten top-seeded Federer and No. 3 Novak Djokovic en route to the final, but couldn't find a way to take out the second-seeded Nadal as well. Nadal won all the big points against the 24-year-old Czech, who failed to convert any of his four break points. "He was strong," Berdych said. "I think the biggest difference between us was that when he got a chance, he just took it. He gave me one (break point) in the second set, one in the third set, and none of them I can bring to my side and just make a break. That just shows how strong he is." Later Sunday, Berdych pulled out of the Czech Republic's Davis Cup quarterfinal against Chile, which starts July 9, citing an abdominal muscle injury. He did not mention any injury during his post-match Wimbledon news conference and showed no sign of injury during the match. It was typical grass-court Wimbledon tennis, with play dominated by serves and only a few break points here and there making the difference. Nadal lost only 24 points on serve. Nadal played his usual grinding baseline game featuring whippet forehands. Yet it wasn't a vintage performance from Nadal, who had 21 unforced errors compared to 17 for Berdych. Nadal had 29 winners, two more than the Czech. Nadal broke twice in the first set, dropping only four points in his own four service games. Nadal won five games in a row from 3-2 down in the first set to go up 1-0 in the second. Berdych's chances may have evaporated in the first game of the second set, when he failed to convert on three break points. In a game that lasted about 10 minutes, Nadal overcame two double faults and four forehand errors. Berdych will rue his chance on the second break point, when Nadal hit a relatively weak approach shot and the Czech had plenty of time to line up a forehand passing shot but slapped the ball into the net. Nadal broke Berdych at love in the 12th game to go up two sets to love. Nadal saved another break point at 1-1 in the third set, then broke Berdych again in the last game to close out the match. Serena Williams won her fourth women's title Saturday, beating Vera Zvonareva 6-3, 6-2 in a one-sided encounter. The men's final was also a disappointment following thrillers in the last three years — two classics between Federer and Nadal and last year's 16-14 fifth set victory by Federer over Andy Roddick. This year's tournament will be remembered particularly for a first-round match — the record-setting 11 hour, 5-minute marathon between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut that stretched over three days and ended with Isner winning 70-68 in the fifth set. Also notable: For the time since 1995, the tournament was completely rain-free. The Centre Court roof — unveiled last year — was used mainly as a sun shade. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference.

Rafael Nadal continued his climb up the Grand Slam ladder Sunday with another Wimbledon title, his second. The top-ranked Spaniard cruised past first-time finalist Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5, 6-4.

Two 1957 films by Peter Sellers, long thought to be lost, have been found by the building manager of the now-defunct Park Lane Films in London. The master prints of “Dearth of a Salesman” and “Insomnia is Good,” were in 21 film cans that the manager, Robert Farrow, salvaged from a trash can outside the building when the studios were cleared before to refurbishment in 1996. “I took them home, put them in a cupboard and pretty much forgot about them,” Mr. Farrow, said in a statement. When he cleared out his cupboards recently he looked inside the tins and discovered the two 30-minute films, co-written by Sellers, who died in 1980, and the Canadian author Mordecai Richler. It is unclear whether the films were intended for television or cinema. “They’re kind of a pastiche of the public information films at the time,” said Paul Cotgrove, from The White Bus, which runs the Southend Film Festival in Essex, told the BBC. “They’re not riotous comedy, they’re just good fun to look at.” The films will be shown at the Southend festival on May 1 next year.

Two 30-minute films by Peter Sellers, from 1957, are found in London.

A group of 19 immigrant children became American citizens Friday during a unique swearing in ceremony at the Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn. “America is lucky to have you. Not only are you becoming American, you are shaping what this country is,” said museum director Peter Kim. The children, who ranged in age from 5 to 17, took their naturalization oath in the main gallery space at the Williamsburg institution, where the current exhibit focuses on Chinese food. The freshly minted Americans hail from 14 different countries, including Algeria, Ivory Coast, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Greece, and Thailand. Immigration waiver could help reunite same-sex couple Nohemie Jean-Pierre, 13, from Haiti, said the museum provided a fitting atmosphere for the ceremony. She said the diversity of cultures, and food, is one of her favorite thing about living in Flatbush with her family. “I’d say the food, because there’s different cultures, and you get to try all different things.” Judge Denny Chin presided over the ceremony. 4 years of asylum good enough to naturalize as U.S. citizen “This is a very special day for me as well,” Chin said. The Princeton and Fordham Law grad became a citizen in 1965, at age 11, after emigrating Hong Kong.

A group of 19 immigrant children became American citizens during a unique swearing in ceremony at the Museum of Food and Drink.

CARNEGIE HALL is the principal New York home for visiting orchestras, and has heard most of the best. This season, there is a slightly smaller proportion of premier national and international ensembles, and a larger proportion of orchestras from more exotic spots. An example is the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, which ended its first American tour there Monday night. The Zagreb group dates back to 1919, and counts now as Yugoslavia's most important orchestra. Its music director in the 1970's was Lovro von Matacic, who turned over the position last year to Pavle Despalj. Mr. Despalj had spent a decade before his appointment as head of the Florida Symphony in Orlando. Monday's concert was a delightful one. The Zagreb Philharmonic is not about to challenge Berlin, Cleveland, Chicago or whatever your own criterion for excellence may be. But this is still an ensemble full of skill and personality. Perhaps its most striking attribute was a refusal to play loudly, and that was especially notable in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, the only real orchestral showpiece on the program. Unlike too many American orchestras, which for all their superior virtuosity blast through this music in a vulgar and heartless way, the Zagreb performance seemed almost Schubertian. This was a charming, folkish, intimately shaped performance. Some of the more rousing climaxes did lack impact. But the compensations were audible everywhere. The concert began with a Chorale for Strings (1967) by Stanko Horvat. This eight-minute piece might have seemed imitative of the coloristic experiments of the Poles in the 1960's. But Mr. Horvat brought a welcome delicacy and subtlety to his elaboration and commentary on Gregorian chant. The dissonant elements were introduced as hushed intimation rather than as an assault, and the result was gratifying. The rest of the program consisted of two concertos, Bach's in D minor for two violins (BWV 1043) and Haydn's in D for cello (Op. 101). The soloists for the Bach, Augustin Detic and Branko Kosir, share the orchestra's first-violin desk, and they played admirably: not, again, the absolute acme of virtuosity, but with a sweet authority and nicely contrasting, complementary tonal characteristics. The Haydn cellist was the conductor's brother, Valter Despalj, who studied at the Moscow Conservatory and with Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School. He had a few awkward moments in the upper positions, but otherwise comported himself with the same sensitivity and intelligence evidenced by the orchestra itself.

CARNEGIE HALL is the principal New York home for visiting orchestras, and has heard most of the best. This season, there is a slightly smaller proportion of premier national and international ensembles, and a larger proportion of orchestras from more exotic spots. An example is the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, which ended its first American tour there Monday night.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Regions Bank on Thursday announced that Kate Randall Danella has joined the company and will serve as Wealth Strategy and Effectiveness Executive for Regions Wealth Management. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150827005106/en/ Kate Randall Danella, Regions Wealth Management (Photo: Business Wire) In this role, Danella will oversee the development and implementation of business strategies across Regions’ Wealth Management Group. Regions Wealth Management provides banking, investment, trust and insurance services through four divisions: Regions Private Wealth Management, Regions Institutional Services, Regions Investment Services and Regions Insurance. “Kate brings a unique and impressive level of experience, including strategic planning, client services, business development and operational analysis, all of which will help us continue to build on our momentum,” said Bill Ritter, head of Regions Wealth Management. “She will work with the Regions Wealth Management business groups to make the most of partnerships across the bank to address the needs of our clients and communities. The depth of Kate’s expertise and her passion for excellence directly complement our vision for continued growth.” Prior to joining Regions, Danella served as vice president for Capital Group Companies in Los Angeles. During her career at Capital Group, she was a senior sales and service manager for Capital’s institutional business, senior marketing leader for the global marketing organization, and strategy and business leader for the American Funds mutual fund business. Most recently, Kate was responsible for developing and executing strategic business plans for Capital’s North American businesses. She joined Capital Group in 2002 and served in sales, service, marketing and management roles in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. “Regions Wealth Management is known within the industry for its consultative approach to helping clients identify and tailor solutions designed to meet their individual needs,” Danella said. “I look forward to working with all of our business groups to find areas where we can further our partnerships to reach more clients and deepen existing relationships. By strategically aligning our resources, we can help more clients successfully navigate the evolving landscape surrounding investments and insurance while meeting their individual, long-term goals.” A native of Tuscaloosa, Ala., Danella earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School. She also holds degrees from the University of Cambridge as well as Vanderbilt University. With $85.5 billion in assets under administration, Regions Wealth Management has experienced strong growth, increasing households, assets under supervision and revenues in 2014. Regions established the Wealth Management Group in June 2011, integrating its Trust, Private Banking, Asset Management and Insurance units within a single group. Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE:RF), with $122 billion in assets, is a member of the S&P 500 Index and is one of the nation’s largest full-service providers of consumer and commercial banking, wealth management, mortgage, and insurance products and services. Regions serves customers in 16 states across the South, Midwest and Texas, and through its subsidiary, Regions Bank, operates approximately 1,630 banking offices and 2,000 ATMs. Additional information about Regions and its full line of products and services can be found at www.regions.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150827005106/en/ Regions BankJeremy King, 205-264-4551www.regionsbanknews.comFollow Regions News on Twitter: @RegionsNews

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.---- Regions Bank on Thursday announced that Kate Randall Danella has joined the company and will serve as Wealth Strategy and Effectiveness Executive for Regions Wealth Management. In this role, Danella will oversee the development and implementation of business strategies across Regions’ Wealth Management Group. Regions Wealth Management...

Market confidence worldwide took a hit this week. And in Europe, while fears over sovereign debt were temporarily eased by the European Central Bank's decision to buy Italian and Spanish bonds, there is growing concern not only of more bailouts but also of possible bank failures. Who will pay for all of this? As the situation in Greece shows, a huge part of the cost of more bailouts will fall on the wealthier European countries, especially Germany. But paying for the mistakes of profligate countries -- and their early retirement policies -- can't possibly sit well with the hard-working Germans. And yet, the German taxpayers haven't risen in protest. How much will the Germans have to pay? What effect might the bailouts have on their lives?

Europe binged on debt. Now Germany is stuck with the tab.

We get CEASE & DESIST letters from studios every other week, and generally comply with 99% of them within 24 hours (except for Kat Dennings' lawyer, who was a total asshole!!!). I wonder if they even gave her the chance to remove them? Typical FOX "let's go Dennings stars in Daydream Nation, a film that will be playing at the Whistler Film Festival that runs Dec. 1 - 5. Thursday's WestCoast Life has the scoop on all the events. Please share your photographs of the latest B.C. snowfall Santa Claus parades across however the earning a higher salary part could be a point of contention between the couple." And his ideal girl? Kate Winslet or Kat Dennings. Men can handle a more successful counterpart Disagrees Sonali Sapra (23), MBA student, "I disagree with the survey Dennings stars in Daydream Nation, a film that will be playing at the Whistler Film Festival that runs Dec. 1 - 5. Thursday's WestCoast Life has the scoop on all the events. Please share your photographs of the latest B.C. snowfall Santa Claus parades across Dennings stars in Daydream Nation, a film that will be playing at the Whistler Film Festival that runs Dec. 1 - 5. Thursday's WestCoast Life has the scoop on all the events. Police were negotiating late Tuesday with a suspect... Sign up to receive e-mail 10/20/2009 10:34 AM By Kelley L. Carter, USA TODAY The dish: Katie Holmes chats about daughter Suri's favorite musical; Julie Andrews loves The Rock; Diane Kruger signs on to new film.

Collection of all USATODAY.com coverage of Kat Dennings., including articles, videos, photos, and quotes.

Dr. Carlo Rosen, a doctor originally from Manhattan, is an emergency room physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, which was inundated patients following the bombings at the Boston Marathon's finish line Monday. The hospital treated 24 patients in all, more than half of the number of beds in the ER. When the ambulances began arriving at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on the worst Patriot’s Day the city had ever known, Dr. Carlo Rosen was on the front lines, ready to receive. The emergency room was met with a deluge of wounded innocents Monday, their bodies bloodied and broken. Rosen and a dozen trauma surgeons and doctors specializing in emergency medicine were shocked at the conditions of the patients suddenly in their care. “These were combat injuries you see in a combat zone, not the typical injuries you see in an urban emergency department,” said Rosen, 47, who was raised on the Upper West Side and trained at Columbia University and at Bellevue Hospital. RELATED: POLICE NARROW IN ON TWO SUSPECTS IN BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS While the terror strike at the Boston Marathon made the surgeons feel like they were operating in a field aid station during a military battle, they were well prepared, their skills honed in treating countless patients with penetrating gunshot or stab wounds, or limbs mangled or split in car wrecks or falls, Rosen said. They set to work under tremendous duress, applying life-saving measures to remove shrapnel — mostly metal pellets and nail fragments — from patients’ lower extremities. Rosen, a doctor of emergency medicine, said he treated six patients himself from the time the wounded began arriving, during the 3 o’clock hour, until he went home at midnight. He credited the staff’s smooth handling of chaos to practice drills Boston emergency responders have continually undertaken following 9/11. RELATED: SYMBOL OF BOSTON TRAGEDY REVEALED “It’s something that we dread, but we have trained for,” Rosen said. “The toughest part was the large number of patients who came in all at once. It is probably the biggest onslaught of trauma patients to the emergency department at one time.” Doctors and nurses at Beth Israel Deaconess cleared the 46-bed emergency room, sending previously treated patients to hospital rooms to make ready for those who were wounded when twin bombs rocked the area near the marathon’s finish line. The ER received 24 patients in total. Seven of them, critically injured, went straight to the operating room, including two whose legs were severed by the blasts, leaving behind little more than burned skin attached to bloody stumps. RELATED: HUNDREDS GATHER FOR VIGIL ON BOSTON COMMON Others were treated for broken bones and pieces of shrapnel that, in some cases, punctured blood vessels in the legs. Still others needed oxygen and specific medicine to stabilize low blood pressure as doctors searched for internal injuries not visible to the eye. Most of the injured were in their 20s and 30s, athletic, healthy and in the prime of their lives, Rosen said. In all, authorities reported three dead and more than 170 injured and treated at a host of Boston-area hospitals. More than a dozen remained in critical condition Tuesday. RELATED: BOMB SQUAD AT 'INDEFINITELY CLOSED' JFK LIBRARY On a day of misery, patients at least benefitted from the fact Boston is home to several top hospitals, all near to the blast scene. Tufts Medical center treated 19 patients. Seeking forensic clues to the bombs' design and construction, law enforcement instructed doctors to save all foreign material removed from wounds, and place them in specimen jars marked with each patients’ name. One of the most bizarre objects removed was the metal “handle” or pull tab of a zipper, embedded in a woman’s ankle joint, said Dr. William Mackey, chief surgeon at Tufts. RELATED: FATHER OF MAN WHO LOST BOTH LEGS DISCOVERED SON’S FATE AFTER SEEING HORRIFIC PHOTO: REPORT Mackey said the worst injuries were “open fractures, significant nerve, muscle and vascular injuries,” mostly to the lower extremities, owing to the trajectory of the explosions. It was an eery scene at all of the area hospitals, with rifle-carrying National Guard soldiers in army fatigues patrolling the perimeters and hallways, all part of the post-strike lockdown. Nicholas Yanni, 32, who suffered a pierced eardrum, was wearing a hospital gown, an IV attached to his hand, as he spoke to reporters. RELATED: CANO CONNECTS FOR 'CAROLINE' & JACKIE IN 4-2 WIN He said he and his wife, Leann, were cheering on a friend as she crossed the race’s finish line, and were standing roughly 10 feet from where one of the two bombs, a deadly variety of improvised explosive device, was planted. Husband and wife both survived, and are now sharing a hospital room at Tufts. “I looked over at my wife, her lower leg was bleeding and I saw bone,” Yanni recalled of the first moments of shock that followed the twin concussions. “I started freaking out.” Rosen remembered how his mother, who lives in Manhattan, sent him a worried text Monday night. He said he was back at the hospital at 10 a.m. Tuesday, tired but eager to continue caring for the patients. “It was tough getting to sleep,” he recalled. “I think most of our patients will have a good prognosis.”

When the ambulances began arriving at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on the worst Patriot’s Day the city had ever known, Dr. Carlo Rosen was on the front lines, ready to receive. He tells the Daily News about the pressure-packed hours of urgent care that followed.

The uproar over President-elect Obama's controversial selections of religious leaders for his inaugural events is just one of the problems already besetting our next president. But I believe there is power in the problems and religious leaders have a role to play in unleashing that power. To some, the invitation to evangelical pastor Rick Warren plants a symbol of exclusivity and intolerance smack in the middle of an inauguration that millions have looked forward to as an historic moment of unprecedented inclusivity; to others, inviting the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, to give an invocation at the Lincoln Memorial affronts their sensibilities. To still others, the pick of pastors seems like small potatoes in the face of the nation's plummeting stock market and soaring unemployment. Passage of California's Proposition 8 is the problem that weighs heaviest on the hearts of others denied the right and dignity of sanctifying their loving, lifelong marital commitments as heterosexual couples can. Bloodshed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Gaza and Israel is the most pressing crisis to many. To others, it's the melting polar ice cap that threatens the globe. Though we have a trillion-dollar deficit in our nation, I know first-hand from a lifetime in the ministry that there is more than a trillion dollars worth of caring, commitment, and courage in American hearts today. How do I know? As the pastor of Riverside Church in New York on the morning of September 11, 2001, I witnessed how in the worst of times we discovered the best in ourselves and in each other. Our city and our entire nation were united in grief as dishwashers and stockbrokers and sons and daughters and mothers and fathers alike perished. And we were united in determination as we moved mountains of cement and steel, donated blood and blankets, searched for survivors and perpetrators, and bravely embarked on rebuilding broken lives, battered hopes, and blasted buildings. There was a new feeling of unity and community and power as we stood together, strong at the broken places. President-elect Obama clearly is wrestling with that challenge of how to bring out the best in our nation in these difficult times, and it is a question that likewise has the attention of our nation's religious leaders. What do we say to our nation to inspire us to find the power in the problems? Just yesterday, Pastor Rick Warren asked me for counsel after being invited to preach the Martin Luther King Day sermon in Dr. King's home church in Atlanta. As the first white pastor invited by the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church to deliver this sermon, Pastor Warren recognizes the need to build bridges and connections with Black pastors; as the first Black pastor of the famed Riverside Church, I understand the challenging dynamics of building authentic community. I'm sure that Bishop Gene Robinson is also praying and pondering: what words can I offer to our nation today that will heal, inspire, and live up to the need and potential of this moment? The Reverend Sharon Watkins, the first woman asked to preach at the inaugural prayer service at Washington National Cathedral, is surely mulling over the same question. As I have prepared to preach and pray at five different events over Martin Luther King Day weekend and the inauguration, I've asked myself as well: What can we say that will help unleash the resources within us to heal our nation? James Weldon Johnson's lyrics for the Black National Anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing" remind us that especially in times of trouble--every voice is needed. Not just the voices of the Black or the White, the rich or the poor, the gay or the straight, the conservative or the liberal, the Christian or the Jew, the elder or the youth, but every voice is needed. There is a song of harmony and liberty that we are called to sing in these times that recalls the problems of the dark past that we've come through by faith and God's grace and that keeps our gaze fixed on the rising sun of a new day begun. At this moment in history, on the eve of the inauguration of our nation's first African American president and just days from the Feb. 1 beginning of Black History Month, it is time to recognize that Black History is Our American History Together. Even as we look back at the history that has already been written, we stand on the brink of writing a powerful and positive next chapter together. Sure, we've got problems. But we've come through worse. Slavery didn't stop us. Segregation didn't stop us. And whatever has been thrown at us in these days won't stop us. There is power in the problems, if we know that God's people are in it and every voice is needed; that God's purpose is in it--to reflect the Beloved Community Dr. King described; and God's promise is in it--that our best days are to come. The Rev. Dr. James Alexander Forbes, Jr., is senior minister emeritus of The Riverside Church is founder and president of the Healing of the Nations Foundation.

A conversation on religion with Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn. Visit http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/

In an excellent show of gentle dog discipline, Twitter user Ben Taylor showed his roommates' dog that actions have consequences. In this case, the action was peeing all over Taylor's bed. The consequence was having to stay home while another dog enjoys a leisurely outdoor walk. But if this video causes you extreme emotional pain, don't lose hope just yet. don't worry, i felt bad and went back and walked both of them. still mad at him though — ben taylor (@coolknifeguy) December 21, 2016

Poor lil guy.

People don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study. Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes. Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model). The difference in death rates between genders was even more pronounced when comparing strongly masculine names versus strongly feminine ones. “[Our] model suggests that changing a severe hurricane’s name from Charley … to Eloise … could nearly triple its death toll,” the study says. Sharon Shavitt, study co-author and professor of marketing at the University of Illinois, says the results imply an “implicit sexism”; that is, we make decisions about storms based on the gender of their name without even knowing it. “When under the radar, that’s when it [the sexism] has the potential to influence our judgments,” Shavitt said. To test the hypothesis the gender of the storm names impacts people’s judgments about a storm, the researchers set up 6 experiments presenting a series of questions to between 100 to 346 people. The sexism showed up again. Respondents predicted male hurricanes to be more intense the female hurricanes in one exercise. In another exercise, the hurricane sex affected how respondents said they would prepare for a hurricane. “People imagining a ‘female’ hurricane were not as willing to seek shelter,” Shavitt said. “The stereotypes that underlie these judgments are subtle and not necessarily hostile toward women – they may involve viewing women as warmer and less aggressive than men.” Hurricanes have been named since 1950. Originally, only female names were used; male names were introduced into the mix in 1979. LINK: The reasoning for hurricane names and their history (keep suggestions to yourself). Given the implications of this work, the study authors’ suggest the meteorological community re-consider the merits of the storm naming practice. “Although using human names for hurricanes has been thought by meteorologists to enhance the clarity and recall of storm information, this practice also taps into well-developed and widely held gender stereotypes, with unanticipated and potentially deadly consequences,” the study says. “For policymakers, these findings suggest the value of considering a new system for hurricane naming to reduce the influence of biases on hurricane risk assessments and to motivate optimal preparedness.” The National Hurricane Center, while declining to specifically comment on the results of this study, emphasized the people should focus on storm hazards, irrespective of their names. “Whether the name is Sam or Samantha, the deadly impacts of the hurricane – wind, storm surge and inland flooding – must be taken seriously by everyone in the path of the storm in order to protect lives,” said Dennis Feltgen, National Hurricane Center spokesperson. ”This includes heeding evacuation orders.” Bill Read, a former director of the National Hurricane Center from 2008-2012, isn’t convinced the gender of the storm name is as big a factor in storm fatalities as the study purports. “While necessary to eke out the gender difference, it leaves me with the need to know is this factor significant, or is it very minor in the mix of all other societal and event driven responses,” Read said. Other voices within the meteorological community believe the study is important but stopped short of recommending an overhaul of the naming system. “I am not ready to change the naming system based on one study, but it may be one more indicator that thinking exclusively about physical science is not enough in 2014 and beyond to save lives,” said Marshall Shepherd, past president of the American Meteorological Society. Gina Eosco, a researcher at Cornell University’s risk communication group, emphasized the storm name is just one of many non-weather factors that behavioral scientists need to better understand in understanding how people make decisions when dangerous storms threaten. “The focus on the gendered names is one factor in the hurricane communication process, but social science research shows that evacuation rates are influenced by many non-weather factors such as positive versus negative prior evacuation experiences, having children, owning pets, whether a first responder knocked on your door to tell you to evacuate, perceived safety of the structure of your home,” Eosco said. “None of these very important variables were factored into this study.” Julie Demuth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who studies societal aspects of weather information, echoed Eosco’s call for more research into the social and behavioral aspects of decisions people make in the face of a storm. “My hope is that this paper helps continue the dialogue about and support for research on people’s hurricanes risk perceptions and responses and the implications for hurricane risk communication,” Demuth said. Update, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday: Please see my follow-up post: Disbelief, shock and skepticism: Hurricane gender study faces blowback

People don't take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker came to the nation’s capital Friday to attack Washington’s culture, dismiss its wisdom and call for removing its power, offering new clarity on his strategic approach for earning the chance to live downtown by winning the 2016 presidential election. “Washington is kind of this top-down, government knows best,” Walker said to an audience of about a half-dozen supporters and more than 50 members of the media who gathered just a block from the White House. “It’s a tired, old approach that hasn’t worked in the past and I don’t think will work in the future. What I see in the states and for the people outside of Washington is a craving for something new, something fresh.” Walker, who is deep into preparations for an all-but-certain bid for the Oval Office, called for a “transfer of power” from Washington, D.C. to the states. He called the city “68 square miles surrounded by reality,” with six of the 10 richest counties in America, according to the median income. “We need to transfer power, power from our nation’s capital here in Washington back to the cities and states in this country, where the people, where the hardworking people in this country can actually hold their government accountable,” he said. “That’s what Our American Revival is really about: Transferring that power from Washington back to the people,” he said, referencing the name of his new 527 organization that is laying the groundwork for his presidential bid. It was not the first time that Walker positioned himself as a Washington outsider, a strategy that he hopes will give him an advantage over other prospective candidates like Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who work weekdays in the city. But it was his most muscular expression to date of his role, ready to take on and slay the sacred cows of the beltway power networks. Walker’s tour comes on the heels of a well-received speech in Iowa before Republican activists last weekend, and just days after announcing his new 527 organization. He also took time to criticize President Obama’s State of the Union speech. “That sounded like a person who wants to grow the economy here in Washington,” he said. “I think the rest of America wants to grow the economy in cities and towns all across this great nation.” He also quoted Ronald Reagan’s admonition that The federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government,” His true guides, he continued, were the nation’s founding fathers, whom he said he always looked up to as a child. “I was a little geeky,” he said. “I actually thought of our founders almost as super heroes. Bigger than life. Walker was introduced by Republican financier Fred Malek, a former Green Beret and aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, who effusively praised the presidential contender. “I can’t think of anybody I’d rather be in that foxhole with our in that firefight than Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker,” he said, calling him a “terrific leader.” Asked by Malek about tackling the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), Walker remained vague. “To me it’s not a matter of if there’s another attempted threat,” he said. “I’d do everything in my power to make sure families in this country would sleep safe.” He added that he would “take the threat to them.”

A rising Republican star carves out a role as the beltway outsider

John A. Williams, a writer whose exploration of black identity, notably in the 1967 novel “The Man Who Cried I Am,” established him as one of the bright lights in what he liked to call “the second Harlem Renaissance,” and who caused a furor with an unflattering biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Friday in a veterans’ home in Paramus, N.J. He was 89. The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, his son Dennis said. Mr. Williams, whom the critic James L. de Jongh called “arguably the finest Afro-American novelist of his generation,” excelled in describing the inner lives of characters struggling to make sense of their experiences, their personal relationships and their place in a hostile society. His manifest gifts, however, earned him at best a twilight kind of fame — a reputation for being chronically underrated. “Night Song,” his second novel, published in 1961, caught the attention of critics with its compelling picture of the jazz world of Greenwich Village and the retrospective ruminations of its hero, a dying saxophonist. “He gets close enough to the good novel about jazz that has never yet been written to make one hope he may write a good novel about something,” the British magazine The Spectator said in its review. That novel was “The Man Who Cried I Am,” a look at 30 years of American history through the eyes of a dying black American writer living in Europe who reflects on his life and on his troubled marriage to a Dutch woman. Eliot Fremont-Smith, in his review for The New York Times, called it “a compelling novel, gracefully written, angry but acute, committed but controlled, obviously timely, but deserving of attention for far more than that.” In “The King God Didn’t Save: Reflections on the Life and Death of Martin Luther King Jr.” (1970), Mr. Williams argued that Dr. King, suffering from hubris, was essentially a dupe, bought off with small concessions by the white power structure and blocked from effecting meaningful change. “He did not understand that it had armed him with feather dusters,” Mr. Williams wrote. “He was a black man and therefore always was and always would be naked of power, for he was slow, indeed unable, to perceive the manipulation of white power, and in the end white power killed him.” The negative portrayal, so soon after his assassination, dismayed many of Dr. King’s supporters. By the late 1960s, Mr. Williams had earned a dual reputation, as a scathing critic of endemic racism in the United States and as a writer who, despite the constant comparisons to Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, had been denied the credit due his talent. “John Williams has so far been luckless,” John Leonard wrote in The Times in 1967. “That peculiar mechanism which transforms writers into celebrities, and their books into preferred stock, just hasn’t worked for him.” Over time, some of the fire abated — “I’m still angry, but you can’t just be angry all the time,” Mr. Williams told Publishers Weekly in 1976 — but his reputation as a supremely talented but undervalued writer remained unchanged. John Alfred Williams was born on Dec. 5, 1925, in Jackson, Miss., and grew up in Syracuse. He left high school to find work, and in 1943 joined the Navy, serving as a medical corpsman in the Pacific. After the war, he completed high school and enrolled at Syracuse University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1950. Unable to break into journalism, he spent time as a foundry worker, a supermarket vegetable clerk and a case worker for the Onondaga County welfare department. He moved to New York City in 1955, working sporadically as publicity director for a vanity press and as director of information for the American Committee on Africa, an organization founded to support African liberation movements. In 1958, he became the European correspondent for both Ebony and Jet magazines. In the mid-1960s, he reported for Newsweek from Africa and the Middle East and from Europe for Holiday magazine. “Night Song” plunged Mr. Williams into a literary tempest when the American Academy of Arts and Letters, impressed by the book, unanimously recommended him for a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. In an unprecedented decision, the Rome academy rejected the selection, offering no explanation. Mr. Williams said he believed himself to be the victim of a false rumor that he was about to marry a white woman. He was offered a $2,000 grant instead, which he rejected. A prolific writer, Mr. Williams published in a variety of genres. He wrote a travel book, “This Is My Country Too” (1965); a biography of Richard Wright and a picture history of Africa, both for young-adult readers; and, with his son Dennis, the biography “If I Stop I’ll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor” (1991). In the early 1970s, he was an editor of the periodic anthology Amistad, devoted to critical writing on black history and culture. His novels include “Sissie” (1963), which narrates the life of a Southern domestic worker as seen through the eyes of her two estranged children, and “Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light” (1969), a thriller about a civil rights activist who turns to murder after losing faith in nonviolence. Mr. Williams confounded critics with “The Junior Bachelor Society” (1976), an unexpectedly heartwarming story about a group of middle-aged black men who return to their hometown to honor their football coach and mentor. It was made into a mini-series, “The Sophisticated Gents,” which was broadcast on NBC in 1981. His own favorite was “!Click Song” (1982), a screed against the publishing industry and the travails that await black writers. Mr. Williams taught at several colleges and universities, most recently Rutgers in Newark from 1979 until his retirement in 1994. He lived in Teaneck, N.J. In addition to his son Dennis, Mr. Williams, whose first marriage ended in divorce, is survived by his wife, Lorrain; two other sons, Adam and Gregory; a sister, Helen Musick; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Mr. Williams never much cared for the comparisons to Ellison and Baldwin. The tendency to group black writers together, he theorized in an essay for Saturday Review in 1963, was a way to ensure that only one at a time could become successful. He regarded his peers as E. L. Doctorow, John Updike and Norman Mailer. “I do have faith in myself and my abilities to write,” he told The Washington Post in 1976. “I believe very much in what I have to say. I’m too old to start wavering now.” An earlier version of this obituary misstated the subject of a biography by Mr. Williams. He was Richard Wright, not James Wright.

Mr. Williams, who was often compared to Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, was the author of “The Man Who Cried I Am” and an unflattering biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

That's the story of graduates today. But $100,000? Or more. Any debt counselor will tell you that's insane. It's a choke-hold on young people starting their lives -- It means putting off getting married, having children, and buying that first home. The number is so staggering that it's hard to come to terms with it. Maybe that's why one graduate was a little cavalier about it when talking about it with CNNMoney. Here's how he views his debt and the story of two other young graduates, also with a lot of student loans. William Bowles (pictured above), 27 years old. Bowles is back in school getting a graduate degree despite having had $50,000 of debt after an undergraduate degree. That means he's taking on more debt even as he's putting other big life decisions on hold. His life goals are to start a family, have kids and buy a home. "That seems pretty far off right now with student loan debts staring me in the eyes," Bowles said. But he's optimistic that a graduate degree from Columbia University, where he is enrolled currently, will help him pay off $50,000 in the next three years. How? Bowles muses he could also work for a nonprofit or the government, where he has a chance of his loans being forgiven after 10 years. Related: Loan forgiveness? The student loan hack you don't know about Rhea Shannon (pictured above), 26 years old. During her senior year in college, Shannon's father passed away while on active duty in Afghanistan. "He was the one that cosigned on one of my loans, and he told me it would be okay, that we would pay if off," Shannon said. Now Shannon is not only heart broken, but has to constantly deal with calls from her creditors. Shannon works as a production assistant at a television channel. Her payment on her student loan is $350 a month, which is about half of her weekly paycheck. She said she regularly misses payments and dodges calls from creditors. If she could do it over again, Shannon said she wouldn't take out so much money. "I probably would have taken one or 2 loans, and then I would have hustled. I would have picked up groceries in college, I would have babysat everybody, because they guarantee you a degree, but they don't guarantee you a job, and they still want their money." Related: 5 biggest student loan mistakes Ashley Salvagin (pictured above), 25 years old. Salvagin dreamed about being an actress, and even studied to be one. But she has put aside her dreams, and has taken on two jobs -- as an executive assistant at an advertising agency and at a nonprofit doing events -- to pay off her debt load. She's managed to lighten it a little -- Salvagin graduated with $95,000 of debt. Each month, she tries to pay more than the $800 minimum, but sometimes that's all she can manage. "I've never missed a payment. But, it's a pretty heavy burden," Salvagin said. Besides her dream career, she has put on hold everything that she really wants to do. "I love to travel, so the second I'm done paying off all this debt, I have some big plans," she said. "But, in the meantime, I have to focus on it." Related: Rent vs. buy vs. live with mom and dad Millennials: What's your most pressing money question? Ask Christine Romans your question here, or on Twitter or Facebook using #askchristine and @cnnmoney. Christine Romans is CNN Chief Business Correspondent and author of Smart is the New Rich: Money Guide for Millennials. CNNMoney (New York) March 25, 2015: 1:53 PM ET

Student loans are a choke-hold on young people starting their lives

The absence of ground beef at lunch last week — at Brighton High and 43 other public schools here — could be explained by a peek into the freezer, where 21 boxes of ground beef products sat, cordoned off from the rest of the meat by a clinical-looking cover of white paper reading “Do not use.” This is the frozen mass at the center of growing public concern, stoked by news coverage and social media outrage, over so-called pink slime, the low-cost blend of ammonia-treated bits of cow. It turns out that it constitutes some of the ground beef distributed by the United States Department of Agriculture through its school lunch program, and that it can be found in at least some grocery store beef, though chains including Kroger, Safeway and Stop & Shop have said they will not sell beef that contains it. This year, McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants also said they would stop using the substance, a filler formally known as lean finely textured beef, in their meat products. And on March 15, as an outcry resulted in hundreds of thousands of people signing online petitions, the Agriculture Department announced that next year it would offer schools a ground beef option that does not contain pink slime. Many school districts said they were planning to sign on. The Miami-Dade school district, one of the nation’s largest, has already said it would opt for pink-slime-free beef, even though it expected it to cost more (exactly how much remained uncertain). State officials in South Carolina said they would procure only the pink-slime-free ground beef once it became available. But for some school districts — with administrators fielding phone calls from concerned parents and fretting about past food scares — next fall is not soon enough. The Boston school district, among others, has taken the step of purging all ground beef from its menus. Other districts, like the New York City schools, have begun phasing out ground beef containing the additive from their lunchrooms. Michael Peck, the director of food and nutrition services for the Boston schools, said the district had decided to hold and isolate its entire inventory of ground beef, leaving over 70,000 pounds of beef — worth about $500,000, Mr. Peck estimated — confined to a warehouse until the district knows more about what is in it. “It’s another example of the alteration of our food supply,” said Mr. Peck, who is concerned about the use of ammonia hydroxide gas to kill bacteria in the product. “Have we created another unknown safety risk?” The district will put the meat back into circulation if it finds that it is free of the filler, but like many districts, it is frustrated by the difficulty of determining what does and does not contain lean finely textured beef, which does not have to be listed as an ingredient. “It does speak to the U.S.D.A.’s ability to trace,” Mr. Peck said. He added that the ground beef would be donated or thrown out if the district found that it contained pink slime. Rick MacDonald, the assistant director for business affairs at the University of New Hampshire, was working last week to phase in ground beef without “pink slime” for the university’s dining halls, but he said that he and his vendors had trouble finding some filler-free products. His goal, he said, was to have all beef with pink slime gone this week. “The hamburger patties — we’re trying to find a brand that doesn’t have it,” Mr. MacDonald said. “But the problem is, this stuff is so prevalent.” In Portsmouth, N.H., it was the memory of an E. coli scare over spinach that led Deborah Riso, the district’s nutrition director, to decide she would take no chances. “You just pull it because you don’t know,” Ms. Riso said from her office, where she was expunging ground beef from the April school menu. “I had a hamburger bar, so I’m going to do a hot roast beef sandwich. I had a beef or chicken burrito — I’m going to go with the chicken and rice burrito,” Ms. Riso said. “You can still make a nice product without beef.” Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, said the city’s schools were already in the process of procuring meat without the pink slime, responding to calls from parents. “They saw the news media, and they were concerned that this was, kind of, throwaway portions,” Ms. Feinberg said. “We’re depleting our inventory, we’re phasing it out.” Still, lean finely textured beef remains approved by the Agriculture Department. The schools’ exodus is grounded less in science than in instinctive revulsion, said Donald W. Schaffner, director of the Center of Advanced Food Technology at Rutgers University. “I don’t see that there is a scientific or health benefit from the point of microbiology or even toxicology,” Dr. Schaffner said of the rush to pull the beef from school menus. “The reason why it’s resonated with people is not so much that it’s unsafe, but the idea that we’re putting ammonia in our food is unpalatable to people.” Even if removing pink slime quells the queasiness of some parents and school officials, it does not mean much to Fernando Castro, 14, who stood outside Brighton High School on Tuesday, waiting to leave school with some friends. “I don’t eat school lunch anyway,” he said. “It looks weird.”

News of the ammonia-treated additive, formally called lean finely textured beef, set off a reaction by schools and an announcement by the Agriculture Department.

Density Isn’t Destiny One of the most common answers in recent decades has been population density: There are simply too many people in places like India, or so goes the conventional wisdom. But Hong Kong is densely populated, too: nearly 6,000 people per square kilometer, compared with India’s 287 people per square kilometer. (Even New Jersey has a population density over three times that of India, and despite all the jokes about New Jersey, few would call it unlivable.) And yet despite some recent woes caused by the Asian currency crisis, Hong Kong is a fast-paced society with a per capita income almost as high as that of the United States. Nothing to Lose But Their Chains One factor that really does make a difference, according to experts at think tanks such as Freedom House, the Heritage Foundation and Canada’s Fraser Institute, is economic freedom — the absence of government regulations. Hong Kong and the United States, they point out, are among the freest nations in the world; countries like India, Syria and North Korea are among the most highly regulated. India does have a free press and a democratic government (elevating its ranking on the less economics-oriented Freedom House survey). But its thicket of business regulations and bureaucratic restrictions is so dense — and wealth so difficult to create there — that Indians endure a standard of living as low as that of communist countries. Hong Kong, on the other hand, has few regulations, low taxes and an entrepreneurial culture. Perched on a barren rock on the Chinese coast, Hong Kong’s citizens enjoy all of the perks of other advanced, affluent societies. In the ABCNEWS Special Report, Is America Number One? John Stossel examines Hong Kong’s freedoms and India’s bureaucracy — and asks how America compares to both. The Open Door Stossel also examines another key indicator of national success: openness to new ideas. “If you had landed on this planet in the year 1400, and you had to send back a report ‘What will be the society that dominates the world?’ it definitely would’ve been China,” says Tom Palmer of the free-market Cato Institute. By A.D. 1400, the Chinese had already invented gunpowder, the compass, the clock, real paper and printing. However, just as Europe was entering an age of exploration, China cut itself off from outside influences. “They burned all of the ships that had been traveling around the world,” Palmer says. “They wanted to make sure they weren’t contaminated by outsiders. They didn’t want all that change that an open, dynamic society brings about.” China closeted itself, while Europe explored. Eventually, Stossel argues, China stagnated as Europe grew wealthy and powerful. Free Thinkers Thrive Stossel also discovers one tangible result of a country’s greater openness: an influx of immigrants, often the bearers of the new ideas that enrich a culture. Italy invented pizza, for instance, but it was Italian-Americans who popularized it by adding diverse toppings. Rock ’n’ roll is derived from the music of Ireland and Africa. Scientists and entrepreneurs often come here to work on ideas that found a less receptive audience back in their countries of origin. As French expatriate businesswoman Martine Kempf tells Stossel: “I designed and built a voice-recognition system to help disabled people control electric functions in cars,” but French red tape made distribution of the product impossible. A move to Silicon Valley changed all that, and within in a year Kempf was distributing her voice-activated cars in nine countries. Her hometown back in France is so proud, “they named a street after me, Rue Martine Kempf,” she says. “But I still don’t want to go back.” France’s loss is America’s gain, a pattern repeated every time people flee a stifling environment for a more open one.

What accounts for some nations’ inventiveness and prosperity? Many believe freedom is the critical factor.

Tesla Motors Inc. ’s top-of-the-line electric car can be delivered in just 20 days, far shorter than the waiting time on the luxury auto maker’s less expensive designs, suggesting it has shifted production to the $105,000 and up sedan to boost revenue. The Palo Alto, Calif., auto maker launched the dual-motor P85D late last year at a price designed to increase its average transaction prices and potentially bring the money-losing company closer to steady profitability. The company missed its reduced fourth quarter delivery goal by about 300 units. Tesla’s online ordering tool this week shows the Model S P85D is available for delivery in late March, while the $71,000 and up single-electric motor Model S is first available in May. A spokeswoman said the company has prioritized deliveries of the P85D. The short wait time—in the past year deliveries have been as long as three months—raises concerns about the strength of demand for Tesla’s pricey cars. It is expected to offer its next model, a sport-utility vehicle called the Model X, in the third quarter. This week, Tesla confirmed it is trimming staff in China amid weaker-than-expected demand there. China is expected to account for up to a third of the company’s global volume, Chief Executive Elon Musk has said. The company’s fourth quarter securities filing shows strong continued interest in its cars despite low gasoline prices. Wall Street analysts believe there is pent-up demand for Model S sedans. Last month, it said the order backlog included 10,000 deposits for its Model S and 20,000 for the Model X. Shares are off 14% since the start of the year. The stock closed off 33 cents at $190.55 in Nasdaq trading on Thursday. Investors hungry for details about the company’s progress toward meeting its 2015 delivery goals aren’t likely to be sated soon. Unlike most auto makers, Tesla doesn’t release its unit sales on a monthly basis, doesn’t disclose inventory of unsold cars available for sale and doesn’t disclose unit sales by geographic region. Tesla has forecast it will sell 55,000 cars globally in 2015, rising to 500,000 in 2020 and more than 2 million by 2025. Hitting the accelerator on sales and revenue is critical this year because it has drastically increased spending and Mr. Musk sees demands on capital investment growing in coming years. One of the biggest question marks facing the company relates to inventory. Credit Suisse auto analyst Dan Galves on Monday estimated inventory of unsold vehicles was 1,000 vehicles at Dec. 31. CVC Research, a financial company, pegs the year-end inventory at 3,000 vehicles. Whatever the level of unsold inventory, the company traditionally has followed a build-to-order model. Last month, Tesla said in a regulatory filing it change how it refers to finished goods. Once only including cars in transit to customers, the term was broadened to include cars available for immediate sale. Barclays auto analyst Brian Johnson called that move “a departure from the past—indicating that Tesla production is not as much a build-to-order model as it has been historically.” The P85D represents a potential boost for the company. Lauded for handling that rivals Porsche or Ferrari sports cars, it has an “insane” button that engages two motors to achieve up to 691 horsepower. Production glitches and other factors slowed initial sales of the model, denting fourth quarter results. Tracking Tesla’s sales progress has been challenging, since the company reports deliveries globally and gives those numbers every three months. General Motors Co. , Volkswagen AG ., Toyota Motor Corp. and other auto makers break out sales for most geographic markets on a monthly basis. That paucity of sales data leads to wild variations in sales estimates for the electric car maker. WardsAuto.Com, for instance, estimates Tesla’s U.S. sales of 997 in February. That number is 17% lower than the 1,200 deliveries estimated by Autodata Corp. For the year, Wards estimates Tesla U.S. sales at 1,793, while Autodata is at 2,200. Write to Mike Ramsey at [email protected]

Tesla Motors can deliver its top-of-the-line Model S in just 20 days, far shorter than less expensive models, aiming to quickly boost revenue after falling below sales and revenue targets in its last quarter.

There's one particularly troubling tidbit to be found amid Canada's surprisingly strong third-quarter growth: residential investment hit the skids. The annualized 5.5 percent decline in this category was its worst quarterly showing since 2010, notes Macquarie Capital Markets Analyst David Doyle, who views the details of the report as "growing evidence that 2016 will be the year of 'peak housing' for Canada." The prime culprit for this downturn in residential investment, according to the economist, was a subcategory that serves as a proxy for real estate commissions, which had been more than three standard deviations above its long-term average as a share of GDP — right around where the similar U.S. category was sitting eleven years ago. The most important market news of the day. Get our markets daily newsletter. Business Your guide to the most important business stories of the day, every day. You will now receive the Business newsletter Politics The latest political news, analysis, charts, and dispatches from the campaign trail. You will now receive the Politics newsletter Technology Insights into what you'll be paying for, downloading and plugging in tomorrow and 10 years from now. You will now receive the Technology newsletter Pursuits What to eat, drink, wear and drive – in real life and your dreams. You will now receive the Pursuits newsletter Game Plan The school, work and life hacks you need to get ahead. You will now receive the Game Plan newsletter The run-up in residential investment as a whole in years past, and this segment in particular, bears eerie resemblance to what transpired south of the border in the 2000s, Doyle observes. If history repeats itself, moving past this peak in real estate commissions won't necessarily be a harbinger of imminent doom, but rather an early warning sign that a key driver of economic growth has been tapped out — which could foster more widespread weakness further down the road. Ahead of the U.S. housing bust, the downturn in brokers' commissions and other ownership transfer costs started in the fourth quarter of 2005, well before the beginning of the financial crisis. The most important market news of the day. Get our markets daily newsletter. Your guide to the most important business stories of the day, every day. You will now receive the Business newsletter The latest political news, analysis, charts, and dispatches from the campaign trail. You will now receive the Politics newsletter Insights into what you'll be paying for, downloading and plugging in tomorrow and 10 years from now. You will now receive the Technology newsletter What to eat, drink, wear and drive – in real life and your dreams. You will now receive the Pursuits newsletter The school, work and life hacks you need to get ahead. You will now receive the Game Plan newsletter Doyle attributes a portion of the drop-off in this segment to the foreign buyers' tax in British Columbia, but warns of further softness in the future tied to the federal government's macroprudential tightening and corresponding rise in mortgage rates. If Canadian housing is in the early stages of rolling over, the normalization process would see it shrink significantly more as a share of total output, as it currently stands more than one standard deviation above its historical norm. As such, the analyst sees real estate serving as "a significant headwind for 2017 and beyond" for Canada's economy. The implications of weakness in in the housing complex? A softer loonie, says Doyle. "Peak housing in Canada should manifest itself in financial markets via divergent monetary policy and diverging sovereign yields," the economist writes. He calls for the greenback to strengthen to 1.45 against the Canadian dollar by the end of 2017.

Real estate commissions tanked in the third quarter.

The emergence of digital native media outlets and continued growth in online video has not yet drastically changed the face of the U.S. news media. Nearly one third of U.S. adults, including nearly half of people aged 18-49, watch online news video, according to the 2014 State of the News Media study from the Pew Research Center. The rise in popularity of online video news coincides with the headcount growth around digital news ventures, which have added almost 5,000 full-time jobs in the last few years as newspapers have continued to cut back on employees. Though those changes portend a new era digital news, they shouldn't be overblown, said Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew. "You see build up. You see momentum. You see energy, but there's still these lingering challenges that exist," she told Mashable. The media broadly still relies on advertising, with audience-generated revenue, such as subscriptions. Outside investment is growing, but at a rate that does not appear to mark a significant change in the market. Digital ad revenue has yet to catch up to other areas like the TV market — a fact that online publishers may have to accept. "For the first several years of transition of news to the web in general, people were saying the revenue just has to catch up...if we go there the revenue model will emerge," Mitchell said. "It still hasn't been figured out, and it's challenging." The report from Pew, which is an exhaustive look at U.S. news media, also highlighted struggles from cable news outlets that have been trying to retain audiences. The big three cable news channels — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — suffered a combined media viewership drop of 11% to levels not seen since 2007. MSNBC was the hardest hit, losing almost a quarter of its prime-time audience. Image: Pew Research Center/Nielsen Media While cable news struggled, local television news experienced a resurgence, adding viewers for the first time in five years. The local TV industry has experienced a significant upheaval, according to the study, with almost 300 stations changing owners in 2013. Local television stations have become a popular target for media companies seeking to diversify holdings and gain exposure to a 2014 political election cycle that is expected to feature heavy spending on local ads. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

The emergence of digital native media outlets and continued growth in online video has not yet drastically changed the face of the U.S. news media.

As she rose from her chair at the Calvin Klein fashion show in Midtown Manhattan the other week, Jessica Chastain was all but engulfed by an onrush of journalists and celebrity groupies imploring the lanky, flame-haired actress for a word, a glance, a nanosecond of her time. Stefano Tonchi, the editor of W, embraced her showily as cameras clicked and whirred. Tim Blanks, the editor at large for Style.com, thrust a microphone in her face, pleading for an interview, before a pair of overzealous handlers leapt onto the catwalk to spirit her away. Yes, Ms. Chastain can Hoover that kind of attention. One of Hollywood’s most avidly courted actresses, she is bait these days for the style set as well, having shone in recent months as fashion’s favorite clothes hanger. Reporters’ in-boxes are cluttered with bulletins announcing that she wore Roland Mouret to the Bafta Awards, appeared in Alexander McQueen on the SAG red carpet, and in Dior at the Writers Guild Awards. Before long we’ll be reading she was turned out in Dolce & Gabbana for the opening of a Sicilian breadbox. Twice nominated for an Oscar (she is a front-runner on Sunday for best actress for her role in “Zero Dark Thirty”) and an increasingly high-profile presence on the red carpet, Ms. Chastain has become a paparazzi favorite, yet not one who projects the worldly glamour of a Cate Blanchett or Julianne Moore. But that may change as she takes the next step in her branding as an international star, flaunting her paper-pale skin and monumental cheekbones as the so-called global ambassador for Manifesto, the new fragrance from Yves Saint Laurent, in an advertising campaign that will make its debut in March. That collaboration “seemed like an incredible fit,” Ms. Chastain, in her mid 30s, said by telephone the other day from her suite at the fabled Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. Properly cued by her publicists, she professed an abiding reverence for the couture house and its founder. “I wish I could have met Monsieur Saint Laurent,” she said, promptly reeling off highlights of his career, applauding his daring in sending Catherine Deneuve onto the catwalk at his final couture show in 2002 dressed in a tuxedo. “So audacious,” Ms. Chastain said breathlessly. A multiyear fragrance or cosmetics contract, customarily reserved for megacelebrities like Beyoncé, can be worth millions, of course. But money is not the only draw. In recent years, such relationships have become a rite of passage for a young actress, an essential part of her star-making portfolio. They confer cachet, said Jenny B. Fine, the editor of WWD Beauty, a trade publication. Ms. Chastain, she pointed out, is treading a path well worn by Julia Roberts, the “face” of Lancôme; Charlize Theron, who has a similar role at Dior; and Keira Knightley, who vamps suggestively in an advertisement for Chanel Coco Mademoiselle. “When an up-and-coming actress signs with such an iconic name, it becomes part of her brand,” Ms. Fine said. “It’s a win-win for both parties.” The timing of the Saint Laurent campaign, which arrives in the wake of the Oscars, could not be more propitious. Ms. Chastain posed for the print advertisements early last year, and she completed the television commercial shot by Nicolas Winding Refn, who directed the movie “Drive,” in June. But all this was serendipity, claimed Stephan Bezy, the international general manager for Yves Saint Laurent Beauté. “When we met Jessica, we didn’t know that she would be nominated for an Academy Award,” he said. “We didn’t even know when the film would be released.” He took on faith that Ms. Chastain would perfectly embody the company’s new jasmine-laced fragrance. Her beauty, he said, is “seductive, glamorous and sometimes even a little bit dangerous.”

Jessica Chastain takes the next step in her branding as an international star, becoming the so-called global ambassador for Manifesto, the new fragrance from Yves Saint Laurent.

A member of the Iraqi military sits on a tank in Fallujah after forces retook the embattled city from Islamic State on Sunday. Haidar Mohammed Ali/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images … People sort ballots on Sunday in Saint-Herblain, France, after a referendum was held regarding the Nantes Atlantique airport. Logic Venance/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images … British singer Ellie Goulding performs during the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts at Worthy Farm in Pilton, England, on Sunday. Andrew Cowie/European Pressphoto Agency … Workers retrieved a re-entry module from the Long March-7 carrier rocket after the module landed in Badain Jaran Desert in northern China on Sunday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Ju Zhenhua/Xinhua/Associated Press … Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, greet people while marching in the 46th annual New York City gay pride parade on Sunday. Peter Foley/European Pressphoto Agency … Turkish police fire rubber bullets to disperse demonstrators who gathered in Istanbul on Sunday to mark gay pride week. The governor’s office had banned the annual gay pride parade earlier this month. Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images … Tyler Clary competes in a preliminary heat for the Men's 400-meter individual medley during the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb., on Sunday. Al Bello/Getty Images … Muddy boots hang to dry on day five of the Glastonbury Festival in England on Sunday. Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images … People wash before attending prayers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan at a mosque in the old section of Kabul on Sunday. Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images … A man recovers at a shelter in Pretoria West, South Africa, on Sunday after being attacked in the township of Atteridgeville during a flare-up of political unrest in which several foreign-owned shops were looted. Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images … The Kelso Creek subdivision in the mountainous Lake Isabella community, some 30 miles northeast of Bakersfield, Calif., is seen on Saturday in the aftermath of a wildfire. Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images … Riot police enter the Stadium Municipal during the UEFA Euro 2016 soccer match between Hungary and Belgium in Toulouse, France, on Sunday. Ariel Schalit/Associated Press … A man in Madrid prepares his ballot for voting in Spain’s national elections on Sunday. Daniel Ochoa de Olza/Associated Press … Photos of the Day: June 26

WSJ Photos of the Day: Gay pride parades are held around the world, revelers enjoy the Glastonbury Festival, Olympic trials continue, and more.

Most experts agree that it will take years, or even decades, to reform the criminal justice system in Indonesia, which is ranked as one of the world’s most corrupt countries by Transparency International, a Berlin-based anticorruption organization. The 32-year rule of President Suharto, which ended just a decade ago, left behind law enforcement agencies that perpetuate graft, the experts say. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the leader of a new presidential task force to reform the justice system, said Indonesia’s criminal justice system was fertile ground for middlemen representing moneyed clients. “We want to have a system that is fair for everybody, not dependent on whether he or she has power or money,” Mr. Mangkusubroto said in an interview, adding that cleaning up the current system would take years. Last month, wiretapped conversations revealed a plot by a prominent businessman, along with police officials and prosecutors, to fabricate a case against officials at the Corruption Eradication Commission, the nation’s chief anticorruption agency. The people heard in the wiretaps spoke of bribing key officials by handing out cash through a network of middlemen. What shocked most Indonesians was not the brazenness of the speakers but the fact that the practices mentioned in the wiretaps seemed routine. By contrast, Indonesians without money have seemed increasingly at the mercy of a legal system that metes out severe punishment for seemingly harmless offenses. “There is no normative standard of punishment in this country,” said Adnan Buyung Nasution, 75, one of Indonesia’s most prominent lawyers. “The punishment is very heavy in some cases, very light in others. That’s why people are disgusted at the justice system.” The investigation, prosecution and judgment of a particular case follow rules dictated less by the law than by the free market of the middlemen. “It depends on how much money you have,” said Mr. Nasution, who recently led a presidential advisory group that recommended far-reaching changes in the country’s law enforcement agencies. He added: “Each stage — the police, the attorney general’s office, the courts — has its markuses. But there are markuses that are so dominant, they can arrange everything in one package.” In dealing with the police, the markuses — who are typically relatives of police officials, lawyers, journalists or anyone with contacts in law enforcement agencies — bribe police officials on behalf of a client in trouble with the law. With money, they persuade the police to change evidence or drop a case, according to watchdog groups, police officials and lawyers. Because the money is usually distributed to the officer’s supervisors, police officers with a good nose for potentially lucrative cases tend to rise quickly in the force, said Neta Pane, executive director of Indonesia Police Watch, a private group. Mr. Pane said that police officers had a strong incentive to engage in corrupt practices from the very beginning of their careers. To get into the national police force, applicants must pay bribes, which here in the capital range from $6,000 to $9,000, he said. Typically, the applicants are in a hurry to repay the sum, which they have borrowed and cannot repay on a low-ranking officer’s monthly salary of $100. “The system requires corruption to survive,” Mr. Pane said. Aryanto Sutadi, 58, a retired official who ran the national police’s legal division until last month, estimated that 25 percent of police officers bent the law to earn extra income. But Mr. Sutadi estimated that 90 percent of police officers accepted some form of “gifts.” “If someone is satisfied with the service he has received and gives gifts to show his gratitude, that is not considered bad,” Mr. Sutadi said. Accepting gifts is an illegal, though commonly accepted, practice among police officers, prosecutors and judges. In fact, many people draw an ethical line between those who actively seek bribes and those who passively accept gifts. Markuses also hand out gifts on behalf of a client or a lawyer. “That’s our culture,” said Otto C. Kaligis, a prominent lawyer whose office walls are adorned with photographs of him standing next to Suharto and President Obama. “Then it’s O.K. No problem if the clients, as a sign of gratitude, are willing to give.” But Mr. Kaligis said a lawyer unwilling to give gifts to judges would not win many cases. “When, for instance, as a lawyer you open a law firm and then you lose 40 percent, then you are not marketable,” he said. So far, attempts to reform or monitor the police, prosecutors and judges have been largely cosmetic, experts say. Created in 2005 to oversee the nation’s judges, the Judicial Commission recently moved into a gleaming, six-story building with the capacity to house a staff far larger than the commission’s 200 employees. Inside, the commission’s posters display mafia-like judges wielding guns and holding stacks of money. The posters urge people to report corrupt judges, saying, “Don’t let them kill justice.” Since its founding, the commission has received 6,555 complaints about judges, said Busyro Muqoddas, the commission’s chairman, adding that Indonesia had 6,900 judges. But with limited powers of investigation and no authority to summon judges for interrogation, the commission has been able to recommend sanctions against only 39 judges suspected of corruption. Indonesia’s Supreme Court, which oversees the conduct of all the nation’s courts, has mostly ignored the commission’s recommendations, choosing instead to protect colleagues, Mr. Muqoddas said. Of the 39 judges suspected of corruption, only 2 have been fired, for accepting bribes. A bill to strengthen the commission’s powers sits in the Parliament, Mr. Muqoddas said, but he added that he held little hope for its passage. Parliament, ranked as the country’s most corrupt institution by Transparency International, recently announced a list of 55 priority bills it planned to take up next year. “We weren’t on the list,” Mr. Muqoddas said. A version of this article appears in print on December 20, 2009, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: In Indonesia, Middlemen Mold Outcome of Justice. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Indonesia’s network of corrupt law enforcement officials and middlemen has gained national attention, prompting calls for reform of the broken judicial system.

Tuesday, November 4th 2008, 4:00 AM Oprah is working O-vertime to get out the vote for her guy Barack. Sen. Obama and the talk queen hooked up on a morning conference call Monday to strategize with prominent African-Americans, including Sean (Diddy) Combs, Donna Brazile, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and the Rev. Joseph Lowery. Obama talked about being on the cusp of history and what it would say to the world to see his daughters play on the South Lawn of the White House, according to one participant. Oprah told everybody on the line they could make America "truly one nation indivisible," Politico.com reports. Oprah, who's due to be with Obama Tuesday night in Chicago, is said to be devoting her entire show Wednesday to the election and, assuming things go according to plan, hosting a party Wednesday night. Jay-Z and Beyoncé are also keeping their eyes on the prize. The star couple was stunned over the weekend to learn about the suicide of their friend Shakir Stewart, who signed Beyoncé early on and later replaced Jay as head of the Def Jam label. All the same, they joined Diddy, Mary J. Blige and Russell Simmons at Obama rallies in Florida on Sunday and yesterday in Pennsylvania and Ohio. "We have to do it for our children. We have to do it for the people that died for us to have the right to vote," said Diddy. Here in New York, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Edie Falco, Lisa Loeb and John McEnroe are among the Obama supporters who've been getting out the vote at phone banks at Touch, 583 Park and Guastavino's, among other venues. Writer Dominick Dunne, who's been battling bladder cancer at New York Hospital, asked his doctors to postpone his surgery so he could vote today for Obama. "This is a momentous time in American history," said Nick, 82. "And I'm not going to miss it." And pretty Amy Flynn at Disrespectacles optical shop on West Broadway turned down the morning shows that did stories on demand for Sarah Palin's Kawasaki eyeglasses. "Actually, women have been asking me not to give them anything rimless that looks like her style," Flynn says. "What they are asking for are Tina Fey glasses - the kind she wears in real life."

Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey hooked up on a morning conference call Monday to strategize with prominent African-Americans, including Sean (Diddy) Combs, Donna azile, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and the Rev. Joseph Lowery.

'Teen Mom' Star Pathetic Excuses For DUI just admitted to drinking and driving before she was busted for DUI last week ... but she's convinced she's done NOTHING wrong. The 21-year-old called in to TMZ Live moments ago with a litany of ridiculous excuses for getting behind the wheel under the influence last week ... you won't believe how delusional she is. TMZ broke the story ... Abraham was arrested in Nebraska on St. Patrick's Day night -- after blowing a .147 on a breathalyzer, nearly twice the legal limit. And don't forget those crazy back in January ... drinking from the bottle and kissing chicks ... she knows how to get down. Get TMZ Breaking News alerts to your inbox

"Teen Mom" star Farrah Abraham just admitted to drinking and driving before she was busted for  DUI last week ... but she's convinced she's done…

IF you want to see how quickly you can ruin a great credit score, just skip a mortgage payment. Lenders use credit scores to measure how you handle debt. The number you’ll see most often is your FICO score. It runs from 300 to 850. The major credit reporting bureaus developed a rival, VantageScore, with scores from 501 to 990. Missed mortgage payments, serious loan delinquencies, loan modifications, short sales, foreclosures and bankruptcies all drag down credit scores. Because a mortgage is such a big slice of anyone’s credit profile, it carries more weight than other loans. Both FICO and VantageScore have studied and quantified those impacts. They reached similar conclusions: for people with near-perfect records, a single mortgage payment that’s 30 days late reduces a credit score enough to hurt. For anyone, a short sale — selling a home for less than the amount owed — can be almost as destructive as a foreclosure. In contrast, a loan modification — when the lender approves new loan terms — can have a “very, very minimal” effect, said Sarah Davies, the senior vice president for analytics at VantageScore. In some cases, the borrower’s score might drop 10 or 15 points. With a loan modification, said Joanne Gaskin, the director of global scoring solutions at FICO, “the consumer does not have to go delinquent to get assistance.” Modification horror stories abound; some borrowers have been told they can’t be helped unless they’ve already missed payments. That doesn’t have to be the case, said Josh Zinner, the co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, a New York City nonprofit company active in foreclosure prevention. The government-backed Home Affordable Modification Program, known as HAMP, specifically permits modifications for borrowers who can document hardship like a job loss, Mr. Zinner said. “What we advise people in New York to do” he said, “is reach out to a nonprofit loan counselor or to Legal Services in order to get a modification with a servicer.” It’s not a perfect solution — HAMP has been criticized for not helping enough borrowers. There are plenty of paperwork hassles, and points in the process where credit scores are in peril. Still, because of “some really profound consequences” to bad credit, modification is worth pursuing, he said. Employers increasingly check credit. Housing options may be limited. “Virtually all landlords look at credit,” he said, adding that getting a mortgage can be difficult. Car loan and credit card costs jump. In a study last month, FICO looked at how choices would affect three hypothetical mortgage holders: One with a spotless 780 score; another with a good 720, who may have missed a couple of credit card payments three years ago; a third with a not-great, not-toxic 680, who has sometimes fallen seriously behind on credit cards or a car loan. (Most lenders consider poor credit about 650 and below, Ms. Gaskin said.) ¶30 days late: The gold-plated 780 drops to 670-690, the middling 720 becomes 630-650, and 680 is now 600-620. Effects are most significant for the strongest borrower. “A continued progression is going to have less and less impact on a score,” Ms. Gaskin said. ¶90 days late: This is seriously delinquent, and brings the onetime best borrower down to 650-670, the midlevel one to 610-630, and the weakest to 600-620. ¶Short sale, deed in lieu of foreclosure, or settlement, assuming the balance has been wiped out: The result is just a bit less serious. The 780 score deteriorates to 655-675; 720 to 605-625; 680 to 610-630. ¶Foreclosure, or short sale with a deficiency balance owed: For either, 780 is 620-640; 720 is 570-590; and 680 is 575-595. At a certain point it might seem as if there was not much difference between bad and worse, but remember that the lower the score, the longer it takes to climb back.

Missed mortgage payments, serious loan delinquencies, loan modifications, short sales, foreclosures and bankruptcies all drag down scores.

A decade ago, Canggu was just a black-sand beach with one food shack, rice paddies as far as the eye could see and a fantastic reef break for intermediate surfers wanting to take their skill to the next level. The wave is unchanged, though a little more crowded in peak season and there’s now a vibrant cafe scene and some hip places to stay, though it’s kept a laid-back, wellness-crowd vibe with none of the brashness of Kuta or swankiness of Seminyak. The Shady Shack is a great new spot for juices, low-alcohol coolers and tasty vegan food. Canteen Café, where vintage surf and skateboards adorn the walls, does excellent coffee and brunch. The Chillhouse (doubles from €110 B&B) also offers surf lessons from €49, including board hire and a ratio of one coach to two guests. Yoga classes cost €9. If Newquay is the loud, beating heart of the UK surf scene, Sennen Cove is its more peaceful and reflective soul. It takes another hour to get there, almost as far as Land’s End, but it’s worth every minute. The waves are some of the most consistent in the country, with a beach break that works left and right and will suit most abilities, but is far less crowded than many Cornish surf spots. The location feels wild and unspoiled with clear ocean, rolling grassy hills and craggy cliffs. The Sennen Surfing Centre offers lessons from £30, and board and wetsuit can be hired on the beach from £14. Yurt accommodation costs £19pp a night at Whitesands Lodge just inland from the beach. Ben Tunnicliffe’s Sennen Cove family-friendly restaurant is worth a visit for fresh, unfussy seasonal cooking, or a guest ale with a view of the waves at its wooden outdoor bar, the Surf Den. Thanks to recent advances in wetsuit technology, surfing in the icy waters off Norway is not just possible but wholly enjoyable. There are zero crowds and the beaches are wild and rugged – in natural amphitheatres with steep majestic mountains all around. The cliffs also protect the waves from the wind and the swell is remarkably consistent, with breaks to suit all levels. Lapoint Surf Camps runs packages in the fishing village of Hoddevik for beginner and intermediate surfers, including accommodation for seven nights, small-group lessons, board and wetsuit hire and use of the house kitchen from €577. California may be the obvious capital of surfing in the US, but Hawaii, where the sport originated, is its spiritual home. Waikiki, the beachfront neighbourhood of Honolulu, is a great place to learn to surf, as the water is warm, the waves roll in gently and the rides are long, so when you do stand up you really get to enjoy it. With its high-rise backdrop, Waikiki is often dismissed as a tourist trap but it’s now finding fresh favour among visitors wanting a tropical beach holiday with some urban benefits, such as good food and decent coffee. Affordable hotels aren’t easy to come by but Maile Sky Court has doubles from $105. Star Beachboys runs group surf lessons for $40pp. In the south-west corner of the Algarve, Lagos is well-placed to pick up swells from every direction; it has breaks for all levels of surfer within easy reach. The town beach, Meia Praia, is a good beginner’s wave, while Zavial, 20 minutes’ drive west, is a world-class point break for experienced surfers. The attractive old fishing town boasts great sea-themed restaurants such as Escondidinho (Rua do Cemitério 38) and The Blue Door (Rua dos Ferreiros 17), but a big part of the Lagos sell has always been that it is a good place to party. Mellow Loco, run by pro surfers Marlon and Melvin Lipke, is the wildest spot, and Stevie Ray’s has popular live funk and soul nights. Health-conscious surfers will love new juice and salad bar Bora, healthy breakfast gem Fresca and the health store and restaurant Mar D’Estorias.The oldest surf camp provider in town, Surf Experience, is introducing a Girl Fitness Surf Week () by sports coach and surfer Sophie Everard from 24 September-1 October. It costs £800 and includes meals, surfing, yoga, trail running, mountain biking, outdoor fitness classes, accommodation and transfers from Faro airport; flights are not included. Lagos Surf Rentals rents boards from €15 a day. A growing band of travellers are converging on the small fishing village of El Paredón, which offers Guatemala’s most consistent surf at a beach break that never gets crowded and can accommodate most levels of surfer, depending on the tide. Turtles nest on the black sand beach, and mangrove forests grow all around. At Paredón Surf House private surf lessons cost about £12, board hire starts at £10 a day, and dorm beds £8 a night. The surf house supports a social enterprise, La Choza Chula, which has built a secondary school and library in the village, and provides English lessons for children. When the swell is pumping, Hossegor’s pounding beach breaks are not for the faint-hearted, but experienced and strong intermediates revel in some of the best waves in the world, and some of the warmest sea temperatures in the Atlantic. La Sud, at the southern end, is a calmer, more sheltered spot for beginners and improvers. With world-class waves come world-class surfers, and as a result there’s no shortage of relaxed places to hang out and party. Lou Cabana on the naturist Plage des Culs Nus has a tasty daily menu and great music and vibes at sunset. Meg’s Café is the place for coffee and Tante Jeanne the ultimate ice-cream spot. Collective Soul is good for vintage furniture, art and clothes. Local surf shaper Chipiron makes custom boards, offers surf lessons from €38 a day and rents good quality boards from €10. The rental cost is taken off the price for anyone who later buys a board. Hostel h2O Holidays does B&B from €30pp. From a wave-riding point of view, Mozambique is relatively unexplored, yet much of its 2,500km coastline is surfable, with tropical blue waters washing on to palm-fronted white sandy beaches. Tofo, on the Ponta da Barra peninsula, is a pretty beach town with a central market that sells bright sarongs as well as fruit, veg and fish. Small, clean waves are protected by a headland and a reef, so it’s a good place for learners and improvers, though more advanced surfers won’t have to travel far to find challenging reef breaks, and the world-class, right-hand point breaks at nearby Tofinho beach. Errant Surf offers seven nights in a shared house from £78pp, surf lessons from £12 and board hire from £13 a day. On the coast of Cantabria, amid the meadows, dunes, forests, cliffs and beaches of the Oyambre natural park, sits the estuarine village of San Vicente de la Barquera. Merón is its main beach, with great conditions for learning and more difficult peaks for more advanced surfers. San Vicente has many excellent seafood restaurants, such as Boga-Boga, which has been running for 50 years and has a great nautical-themed interior, but the region is also famed for its ham, wine and cheeses. Nácar, an offshoot of the Michelin-starred Annua, does tasty and reasonably priced tapas. Dream Surf Camp offers a week’s accommodation plus full board and surf kit in both normal and glamping tents from €229pp. Ten hours’ lessons costs €95. Yoga, mountain biking and massages are available, and there’s an on site bar with musical instruments to borrow. Lush tropical jungle meets eminently ridable waves for all levels in this former fishing village turned artsy surf town just 40 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s central Pacific coast. Colourful cafes and bars, and galleries peddling local Huichol tribal art, are plentiful and street food vendors sell original takes on the taco. Lunazul is a family-run surf school, where lessons start at $40pp including equipment, and they’re so confident of their teaching that anyone who doesn’t stand up on their first lesson doesn’t pay. Lunazul also rents high- quality shortboards, longboards and softboards for beginners, and runs trips to nearby secret spots. Petit Hotel Hafa is a colourful boutique hotel two blocks back from the beach, with doubles available from $50.

From Mozambique to Mexico, via Cornwall, here are great places to ride waves, find a bed close to the beach and eat drink and party after a day on the water

IN its 2,700-year history, the port city of Palermo has undergone three golden ages: the Carthaginians, Arabs and Normans all found glory along its rugged shores. And now, after decades of post-War neglect and mafia corruption, the often overlooked Sicilian capital is poised for a fourth — or at least a well-deserved comeback. Crumbling roads are being repaved, landmarks scrubbed clean and a newfound pride can be felt. But the essential charms of this mysterious and intoxicating city thankfully remain intact. There are still seductive old neighborhoods, a delightful patchwork of architecture (what’s the word for Arab-Norman-Spanish-Baroque?), and a belching chaotic mess known as Palermo traffic. 4 p.m. 1) BREAD AND CIRCUS The ancient city is studded with vibrant and raucous outdoor markets. Mix with residents shopping for weekend essentials in the Ballarò, the city’s oldest Arab-style open market in the decrepit yet atmospheric Albergheria quarter. Join the crowds at either end (enter through Piazza Ballarò or Piazza del Carmine) and browse stalls with all types of fish still twitching on trays of ice, alongside crates of squash as long as didgeridoos and capers the size of grapes. If the vendors who perform like carnival barkers aren’t entertainment enough, grab a piping-hot panelle, a street-food fritter made of chickpeas (about 5 euros, or $8 at $1.62 to the euro). 5:30 p.m. 2) DIVINE ARCHITECTURE It wouldn’t be a trip to Italy without a dip into a magnificent church. Make a 10-or-so-minute walk north to Piazza Bellini in the old city’s center and ascend the steps to a pair of famed houses of worship. The Church of San Cataldo (Piazza Bellini 2), a rather nondescript diminutive chapel, is best appreciated from the outside, where one can take in its three Saracen cardinal-red domes. But a few steps away is the Church of Santa Maria Dell’Ammiraglio, a k a La Mortarana, which offers a quintessential blend of Arab-Norman architecture, including an impressive campanile that dates back to 1143. Gorgeous, well-maintained mosaics and frescoes abound; no wonder the space is booked solid for weddings. 8 p.m. 3) MODERN CLASSIC If you’re hankering for a sophisticated take on classic Sicilian fare, head over to Bellotero (Via Castriota 3; 39-091-582-158), a 10-table restaurant in Palermo’s new town that draws a nightly crowd of discerning and lively locals. Settle into a delectable meal of spaghetti with stone bass, sea urchin and lemon zest (12 euros) or lamb with oven-roasted pistachios and a vegetable caponata (12 euros). Top it all off with a glass of regional Marsala (try the Donna Franca from the Florio vineyards; 5 euros). 11 p.m. 4) BAR CRAWL For a city with such an audible heartbeat, Palermo is surprisingly lackluster when it comes to memorable night life. All of the young crowd seem to have received the same text message, as drones of them meet up regularly at the bars lining Via Ruggero Settimo, Via Principe Belmonte and Via Isidoro la Lumia. Wade through the revelry that spills out into the streets or make your way to the more grown-up Bar Malù (Via Enrico Albanese 21; 39-347-820-0870). This duplex lounge with outdoor seating attracts an upscale bunch that flirts to D.J.-spun tunes and sips special cocktails like the Robertino, a nightcap of gin, Angostura bitters and Aperol (5 euros). 9:30 a.m. 5) MORNING MARKETING Forget that espresso. Get a rush by diving into the city’s most frenzied market, the souk-like La Vucciria (between Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Piazza San Domenico). A dizzying maze of narrow streets is filled with food stalls and illuminated with thousands of tiny lights. Slink into Bread Forreria (Via Bonacorso, 29), an adorable old-fashioned bakery, for homemade fettine zuccherate, its signature bread with sesame, raisin or anis toasted to perfection (10 euros a kilogram). 11 a.m. 6) RICH IN BAROQUE Immerse yourself in Palermo’s spectacular Baroque architecture and art in the historic Loggia district. A single pass (5 euros, at any of the sites) gets you into the area’s five architectural treasures, including the Oratorio del Rosario del San Domenico (Via dei Bambiani), a 16th-century chapel with a Van Dyck altarpiece, a Novelli frescoed ceiling and many adorable cherubs. Grab a walking map (in front of any of the sites) and hit the other four, making sure to ponder the faces of the 15 statues representing the Virtues and the Mysteries in the resplendent rococo Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Citta (Via Valverde 3). They belonged to the socialites of the day. 1:30 p.m. 7) SWEET STOP In a city where gelato in a sliced brioche is a legitimate meal option, get the real deal at Pasticceria Alba (Piazza Don Bosco 7/c-d, off Via della Libertà; 39-091-309-016; www.baralba.it), a half-century-old institution with an endless takeout menu and ancient staff. Order a scoop of pistachio bronte (2 euros), take your ice-cream burger outside and watch residents of all ages swing by for their midday delight. 4 p.m. 8) DEAD MAN WALK File under “It Has to Be Seen to Be Believed.” Take the No. 327 bus to the city’s western outskirts for the exceedingly popular but no less creepy Catacombe dei Cappuccini (Piazza Cappuccini, 1; 39-091-212-117). The chilly passageways of this underground tomb are filled with more than 8,000 corpses — fully dressed men, women and children with frozen facial expressions — that were preserved through all sorts of science from the 16th century until 1920. More surreal than scary, this is a momento mori on a tremendous scale. 6:30 p.m. 9) SUNSET DRINKS Pull up a chair on the terrace bar at the Villa Igiea (Salita Balmonte 43; 39-091-631-2111; www.hotelvillaigieapalermo.com), a luxury hotel on the slopes of the charming Monte Pellegrino. This Art Nouveau grande dame is nestled among gardens and courtyards that offer indelible 180-degree views of the Bay of Palermo. Sip a glass of crisp and fruity Donnafugata white (10 euros) while sampling the wide range of tempting snacks at the Bar des Arcades. 8:30 p.m. 10) SEASIDE SUPPER For a nice break from all the seafood in the city, try Bye Bye Blues (Via del Garofalo 23; 39-091-684-1415; www.byebyeblues.it), an award-winning restaurant in the beachy Mondello neighborhood. Incredibly fresh ingredients conspire to create delicious plates like an appetizer of country cheeses served with walnuts and marmalade (13 euros). Follow it up with a delicious serving of pasta alla Norma, an island classic of rigatoni, tomato, ricotta and fried eggplant (12 euros). Pair it with a yummy 2004 Cerasuolo di Vittoria (22 euros), one of the 350 wines on hand. 10:30 p.m. 11) A DIGESTIVE STROLL For dessert, grab a pezzo duro — frozen candylike gelato cones (2.5 euros) — at the sleek Caflisch cafe (Viale di Regina Margherita di Savoia, 2/b; 39-091-684-0444). From there, head to the nearby waterfront and enjoy a leisurely stroll, or passeggiata, along the crystal-clear Tyrrhenian. Take in legions of cabanas on white sand before fleeing the honky-tonk mix of bars, arcades and souvenir stands at the other end. 11 a.m. 12) JESUS ON THE MOUNT There’s a saying in Palermo that goes something like: “He who visits Palermo without visiting Monreale arrives as a donkey and leaves an ass.” O.K., so it’s not going on a T-shirt anytime soon, but that cramped and bustling hill town a few miles west of the city center is well worth a bus ride (No. 389). Beat a path to the 12th-century Duomo (Piazza Gugliemo il Buono) for what might be the most jaw-dropping display of Greek and Byzantine mosaic work anywhere. There are 200 intricately carved columns in the adjoining cloisters, and the 65-foot-high mosaic of Jesus glows like the sun over the central apse. The golden age of Palermo, it seems, never really ended. From July through October, Eurofly (www.euroflyusa.com) flies direct to Palermo from J.F.K. in New York twice a week. A recent online search found very limited availability in August, with fares from $1,447. Other carriers offered connecting service through Milan or Rome, with fares for early August starting at $1,604 on Delta and Alitalia. The 30-minute taxi to downtown Palermo runs about 40 euros, about $65 at $1.62 to the euro. But for 5.30 euros, buses run every half hour (www.prestiaecomande.it). Palermo’s many majestic hotels include the Excelsior Palace (Via Marchese Ugo, 3; 39-091- 790-9001; www.excelsiorpalermo.it). Just renovated, the lovely 19th-century building has 122 elegant rooms, a new restaurant and a diligent concierge. Standard double rates begin at 216 euros, but look for specials online. For a more contemporary spin, check out the cosmopolitan Plaza Opera Hotel (Via Nicolò Gallo 2; 39-091-381-9026; www.hotelplazaopera.com/it) or the boutique Hotel Ucciardhome (Via Enrico Albanese 34/36; 39-348-426; www.hotelucciardhome.com). Their modern doubles start at 230 and 170 euros respectively. Prefer something older? Check into the Palazza Conte Federico (Via dei Biscottari 4; 39-091-651-1881; www.contefederico.com), a torch-lit, antiques-laden castle from the 1100s that is still owned, run and inhabited by aristocracy. In fact, the Count and Countess Federico will toast and assist you upon arrival. Rates range from 150 to 400 euros.

After decades of postwar neglect, the Sicilian capital is poised for a comeback. Crumbling roads are being repaved, landmarks scrubbed clean and a newfound pride can be felt.

Bobby Brown was in "great spirits" Friday as he prepared to make his first public appearance since the start of daughter Bobbi Kristina's coma crisis three months ago, his wife told the Daily News. The New Edition singer, who's been keeping a vigil at Bobbi Kristina's bedside in Georgia, flew to Los Angeles to sing on stage Saturday night after giving a cooking demonstration in a vendor booth at the Kinfolks Soul Food Festival, sources confirmed. "We'll be there. We're excited. He's good. He's in great spirits," wife Alicia Etheredge said when reached by phone Friday. Etheredge confirmed the situation with Bobbi Kristina was stable enough to allow for the travel. "Yes," she said when asked if Bobbi Kristina was hanging in there as she continues to fight for her life. Brown, 46, has been in relative seclusion since his only daughter with ex-wife Whitney Houston was found facedown and unresponsive in a bathtub on Jan. 31. Bobbi Kristina, 22, was treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta before her family moved her to an undisclosed rehabilitation center for continued monitoring of her medically induced coma. "She's the same," grandmother Cissy Houston told WBLS-FM in New York on March 25. "We've moved her now to a place for rehabilitation. But you know, there's still not a great deal of hope. We're praying." A source for the Kinfolks Soul Food Festival said Brown had a longstanding relationship with the event and was honoring his commitment. "He's a professional and he's coming through, and we should give him respect for that," event spokeswoman Kimi Rhochelle told The News. "He still has to make a living. It's like any of us going to work when he have difficulties in our lives. You still have to put on a brave face and do what you do. He'll be getting in front of people, but he'll still be feeling what he's feeling." She said Brown was expected to give a cooking demonstration with his personal line of Bobby Brown BBQ seasonings and sauces in the early evening Saturday. His musical performance was set for around 10 p.m., Rhochelle said, adding that the lineup also included Ed DeBarge, Salt 'N' Pepa and Stephanie Mills. A video promoting the event was posted on YouTube.com earlier this week and included a recorded message from Brown — though it was unclear when he taped it. "I'm real excited to be at the Soul Food Festival Saturday. Y'all know where it is," he says in the generic voiceover animated with photos of the festival and his products. "I will be performing, and I will be displaying some of my talented skills as far as on the grill and all my seasonings and BBQs. So come on out. I got a special gift for you." The R&B star asked for privacy shortly after his daughter's medical emergency, but his spokesman issued a statement that was critical of Bobbi Kristina's live-in boyfriend Nick Gordon. Gordon was at the couple's Georgia home when Bobbi Kristina lost consciousness, but it was another friend who found her and called 911. Local police have said they are investigating the matter for possible criminal behavior. Gordon was banished from the hospital and entered a downward spiral fueled by alcohol and Xanax that landed him in an intervention with his mom and TV's Dr. Phil. Gordon entered rehab in early March and now is about a third of the way through his intensive 90-day program, a source close to Gordon told The News on Friday. "Nick is great. He's doing absolutely fabulous. He was a little hesitant about his treatment at first, but now he's all about his wellbeing. He's in a really great place," the source said. The source previously told The News that Gordon was in a "life or death situation" when his worried mom called for the intervention. "It's my prayer that once he's pulled himself back together and gets out, there can be a conversation with Bobby Brown about seeing Bobbi Kristina. At that point, there should be nothing stopping that," the source said.

The New Edition singer flew to Los Angeles to sing on stage Saturday night at the Kinfolks Soul Food Festival.

Maybe Drew Faust ought to run for president. She’s the head of Harvard University and just delivered at West Point a speech praising the military that once would have been unthinkable from Ivy League leadership. And just when we need it most — facing a gathering war while locked in a presidential campaign in which our candidates are slinging insults at each other (and their wives) or hawking socialism and military retreat. The press didn’t give her speech much coverage. But if you’re seeking grounds for optimism that America will eventually find the leadership it needs, it isn’t to be missed. Faust offers a paean to the importance of history and literature and to the value of a liberal-arts education. And she makes a formal tribute to America’s military that is surprisingly personal and moving. Which is no small thing, given that Faust comes from a campus that not so long ago was seething with rage against the Vietnam War. It got so bad back then that Harvard ended its ROTC program, refusing to train our officers. What a blot on Harvard’s name — all the more so because the university has a long, patriotic history. More of its alumni have been awarded the Medal of Honor than any school save West Point and Annapolis. Not that Harvard was alone in banning ROTC. Several top universities shrank from the war against the Communist conquest that cast Indochina’s millions into a dark night of re-education camps, dictatorship and genocide. Instead they left the fighting to draftees without Ivy League pedigrees and college deferments. When America won the Cold War anyhow, our elite universities were shorn of a portion of glory. In 2011, Faust made Harvard the first Ivy League school to lift its ban on ROTC. Others quickly followed, citing the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which had kept many gays out of the military. It’s no coincidence that Faust seized the lead. It turns out that she’s the great-granddaughter of a West Point graduate, Lawrence Davis Tyson, who appeared in arms against Geronimo. Faust clearly nurses a profound admiration for her famous forebear, whose brigade in World War I, she reminded the cadets, took terrible casualties in breaching the Hindenburg Line. Tyson ended up in the US Senate. “A supreme honor” is the phrase Faust used last week to describe what it meant to her to stand on West Point’s hallowed ground. She talked about the “importance of language to leadership.” She didn’t attack candidates by name, nor even refer to the primary campaign that has shocked so many with its raucous tone. She did praise Ulysses S. Grant, who, she said, devoured novels at West Point. Faust also picked up on Sen. Marco Rubio’s suggestion that we need “more welders and fewer philosophers.” In recent years, Faust said, US students have been taking the hint, with the proportion of bachelor’s degrees in humanities plummeting. What caught her attention is that West Point has been moving in the opposite direction. It has, she said, “transformed its curriculum into a general liberal-arts education.” That means, she said, that West Point is “graduating leaders with broad-based knowledge.” History, literature, philosophy, she suggested, “enable leaders to compel and to connect with others.” Faust quoted General of the Army Omar Bradley on the importance of imagination and Gen. George Patton on the importance of history. She talked about Winston Churchill’s fantastic appetite for history, philosophy, economics and religion. Then Faust spoke of how, in 2008, she met with five Harvard seniors who had worked around the absence of ROTC and were about to be commissioned as officers. “I wish that there were more of you,” she told them. The Gallup poll, Faust said, discovered that “the military is the last institution in which Americans have high confidence. Not organized religion, not government, not newspapers, not banks — you. You and all you represent.” “We need you,” she said, “now more than ever.” What a courageous coda at a time of global jihad. And from a generation in which the so-called best and the brightest turned against a war they had tried to lead — a generation now passing from power. What a gracious bow by Harvard to the institution that stood with the fight.

Maybe Drew Faust ought to run for president. She’s the head of Harvard University and just delivered at West Point a speech praising the military that once would have been unthinkable from Ivy Leag…

It's two legal cases down and three to go before Australia's biggest coal mine, slated for Queensland's Galilee Basin, can start says the Queensland Resources Council. A Federal Court on Monday dismissed a challenge by conservationists to stop the project. The Federal Court threw out an Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) case against Adani's $21 billion Carmichael mine from going ahead on the grounds the approval of the mine was inconsistent with Australia's obligation to protect the Great Barrier Reef from the emissions of coal. Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said the judge's ruling was an "an inevitable result". He said the ACF was trying to make Australians responsible for the emissions of coal generated in other countries. "What the ACF wanted the federal court to agree to was the equivalent to saying Saudi Arabia needs to take responsibility for the emissions of Australian motorists using their oil - that was their case," Mr Roche told reporters after the decision was handed down. "We now have two court cases resolved in favour of the Adani Carmichael coal project in recent weeks, but there are three more to go. "So we have three more cases creating jobs for lawyers, but not creating jobs for regional Queenslanders." The ACF said it would not stop fighting to prevent the coal mine from ever operating. ACF CEO Kelly O'Shanassy said in a statement that Australians would be shocked that the biggest ever coal mine was approved despite the Great Barrier Reef this year suffering the worst coral bleaching on record as "a direct result of global warming". "If the Carmichael mine proceeds, its coal will create 4.7 billion tonnes of climate pollution over the proposed life of the mine, wiping out Australia's efforts to reduce pollution and contributing to more frequent and severe bleaching events on the reef," she said. "Australia's environment laws are broken if they cannot account for the impacts of global warming on the reef, one of our country's most loved national treasures." The Australian Marine Conservation Society's Great Barrier Reef campaign director Imogen Zethoven said the federal government will be to blame if the reef dies. "Regardless of any legal decision, we have a moral responsibility to do everything possible to protect the reef and the communities who rely on it."

Conservationists say a Federal Court decision on a challenge to Adani's Carmichael coal mine could strengthen environmental considerations in Australian law.

Just past noon on a Friday in June, a Union Pacific freight train carrying oil jumped the tracks in a small town in Oregon, not far from a school filled with children, and exploded in flames that burned for 14 hours. Bad tracks were cited as the cause, but federal regulators said a better braking system on the train — based on newer technology — would have contained the disaster. The railroad industry newsletter said the notion that the brake system would have made a difference was “horse manure.” It was another skirmish in a battle over safety standards that often pits federal regulators against an industry. And while such fights are not uncommon, federal officials say this is one that keeps them awake at nights because of the high stakes — what if the next oil train crash happens in a major metropolitan area? [Deadline for train safety technology undercut by industry lobbying] Regulators have mandated a new electronically controlled braking system that would prevent — or lessen the severity of — crashes like the one in Oregon. The railroad industry calls the requirement a classic example of regulatory overreach. Lawmakers responded to the industry complaints by requiring a pair of new studies that could delay the regulation set to take effect in 2021. One congressional requirement, for example, stipulates that a train be wrecked to see how many of its cars derail and leak their flammable contents. “It was deliberate and intentional by the railroad industry to try to make this study as expensive as possible,” said John Risch, who spent 30 years as a BNSF Railway engineer before becoming a rail union lobbyist in Washington. “It’s completely unreasonable. You wouldn’t see that in maritime, you wouldn’t see that in aviation; they do this stuff computer-simulated, without causing this chaotic crash that’s going to cost all kinds of money.” The railroad industry counters that the new regulation would force it to spend billions of dollars on a braking system that research has not conclusively proven to be more effective than what they are already using. With the Trump administration taking office in January amid promises to roll back regulations, the railroads hope Congress will hear their concerns. Included in a post-election message to the Senate from Edward R. Hamberger, president of the Association of American Railroads, was a plea for “stopping unfounded regulatory efforts.” There have been 19 derailments of trains loaded with flammable liquid — oil or ethanol — in the past six years. Those wrecks have caused 3,272 evacuations, spilled almost 2.8 million gallons and cost an estimated $45 million. A remarkable percentage of those derailments happened in small towns — Plevna, Mont. (population 162), Tiskilwa, Ill. (829), Arcadia, Ohio (590), and Alma, Wis. (781). Federal officials are increasingly concerned that one of the long trains rolling out of the Bakken oil fields, underlying parts of Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, will explode in a major city. Oil trains snake through cities such as Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia on their way to coastal refineries. Chicago officials deemed the risk serious enough that the city did a detailed evaluation of the impact should a train explode in various neighborhoods. Railroads say they have taken every prudent step possible to prevent disasters such as the Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, explosion in 2013 that killed 47 townspeople. They say it is expensive overkill to require electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) braking systems on trains carrying explosive cargo. The railroads estimate it would cost more than $3 billion to install electronic braking on the required number of engines and cars, and to educate workers to use them. The Federal Railroad Administration says it would cost a still-hefty fraction of that: $493 million. From that simple difference — albeit almost $2.6 billion — the divergence of opinion and calculations between FRA and the railroads spirals rapidly out of control. The FRA estimates 2,500 locomotives would need to be equipped at a cost of $49,000 each. The railroads say 20,000 locomotives — 83 percent of those they operate — would need ECP, at a cost of $88,000 each. The FRA says 60,000 tank cars need the electronic brakes; the railroads say it is 133,000. How many railroad workers would need training? The FRA says more than 51,000, the railroads, 78,000. Even more emphatic is the difference in opinions. “These are not grain trains, these are hazmat trains,” FRA Administrator Sarah E. Feinberg said. “We specifically require the better braking systems on these trains because in the event of an incident, fewer cars will derail and fewer cars will puncture, which means you’re less likely to have a fire that will endanger lives. “The science is there, the data is there,” Feinberg said. “Their argument is, despite that data, [they] don’t want to spend the money on it.” Risch, the former BNSF engineer who has operated trains with ECP brakes, calls them “the foundation of safety in the future of the railroad industry. When a train crew overlooks something, ECP brakes can save the day.” “ECP braking technology will not result in fewer accidents, does not provide significant safety benefits and, after 15 years of limited rail use, has yet to meet service reliability standards,” said Justin E. Jacobs, a spokesman for Union Pacific, the country’s largest railroad. At BNSF, the second-largest, spokesman Mike Trevino has a similar view. “The contention has been that electronic brakes are better, safer, more efficient,” he said. “The challenge is that railroads have been unable to prove that out, to demonstrate that there are those benefits.” Ed Greenberg, spokesman for the American Association of Railroads, a trade group, said, “The ECP brake signaling system has been found to break down more often, while not providing significant safety benefits.” Conventional brake systems on freight trains use air pressure that moves from one car to the next — from the engine to the last car — to engage the brakes and slow the train. On a train of 100 or more cars — and many oil trains are that length or longer — it takes 7 to 8 seconds until the last car’s brakes begin to engage. The cars farther back keep pushing against those in front of them as they await the signal to brake. If tank cars have less than a full load of liquid, the sloshing as the train slows adds to their momentum. With ECP braking, the brakes begin to engage on every car almost the instant the engineer presses a button. “Trains are like giant Slinkies,” said a railroad analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he works in the industry. “When you have that back of the train running into the front of the train, they can actually push cars out, cause a derailment and cause a hell of a mess.” When the brakes are applied electronically to each car at the same time, he said, that takes “the energy out of the train quicker, so when a train does derail there is less energy that has to be absorbed by crushing tank cars.” That push from the rear in the Mosier, Ore., wreck may explain why a coupler pierced through another tank car, causing the leak that sparked the fire, he said. Before the federal mandate last year to require electronically triggered brakes, some railroads were moving in that direction anyway. When Norfolk Southern put the first ECP-equipped train into service nine years ago, it said in a statement that “ECP brakes have the potential to reduce stopping distances by 60 percent.” When freight giant BNSF followed suit six months later, one of its customers applauded, saying, “The use of ECP brakes will provide potential for improved safety.” But once the rule — developed by the FRA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — was issued 18 months ago, the railroads were less agreeable to the expensive investment. They already were under pressure to fulfill another federal mandate that followed a California railroad disaster. In 2008, a head-on collision between a freight train and a commuter train in Chatsworth, a Los Angeles suburb, killed 25 people and injured 135. Congress ordered that trains be equipped with an automatic braking system that would have prevented the crash. Railroads said they had already pumped $6.5 billion into that automatic system last year, when they begged Congress to extend a looming deadline until 2018. The lawmakers came to the rescue, just as they did for the industry again last year on the issue of ECP brakes. Three key congressional leaders are among the top 10 recipients of campaign contributions from the railroad industry, which has spent upward of $60 million on campaign contributions since 1990. According to federal data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) has received $566,479, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has received $449,615, and John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has received $353,885 from the railroads. Congress appended the requirement for the pair of ECP tests to the mammoth five-year transportation bill. One version of the bill would have entrusted the testing to a committee made up primarily of the railroads, but others involved in the talks insisted that the work be done by contractors free of conflicts of interest. “The original study was going to be tainted by the industry, and the House [transportation] committee fixed up the bill to make it more fair,” Risch recalled. The first report requested by Congress came from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last month. The GAO questioned federal estimates of the cost benefits of ECP brakes. The report also said that limited data shared by railroads with the FRA “hampered its efforts to estimate . . . their potential benefits.” A second round of testing that Congress asked for — including full-scale experiments to see how tank cars derail and get punctured — is underway by the Transportation Research Board at the National Academy of Sciences. In the midst of all that testing, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded in two studies that ECP brakes allow trains to stop in significantly less distance and effectively relieve the energy caused when tank cars crash into one another. In Mosier, (population 433), they say the wind blows at 30 mph from March to October, but on Friday, June 3, the wind took a holiday. The train carrying Bakken crude from North Dakota to a refinery in Tacoma, Wash., derailed and exploded at lunchtime. No one was killed or injured, but schools and some residents were evacuated. Fire Chief Jim Appleton told KGW television that on a typical windy day, the school and the town would have been at risk. “I have a high degree of confidence that the school building would have been at a minimum affected, if not completely incinerated,” he said.

After 19 derailments, debate is roiling over controlling tank cars filled with oil and ethanol.

SANTIAGO, Chile — In broad terms, there are two strains of government in Latin America: the new populism, exemplified by Venezuela or Argentina, and the pro-market model long represented by Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. Will Chile pull back from this paradigm if the Socialist former president, Michelle Bachelet, wins the presidential election as expected on Sunday? Not necessarily. When Ms. Bachelet was president, from 2006 to 2010, she focused on health care and social welfare programs for the elderly and medical care for pensioners. But she was broadly popular and represented a center-left coalition that had held power for two decades and had not undermined free-market capitalism. (She could not run for re-election because Chile’s constitution forbids presidents from serving consecutive terms.) In 2010, Chileans elected Sebastián Piñera, a conservative businessman and economist and advocate of free markets. Now it is he who cannot run for re-election, and polls show Ms. Bachelet on the verge of a crushing victory over Mr. Piñera’s preferred successor, Evelyn Matthei. If Ms. Bachelet wins, the reasons will be likely to have more to do with character, trustworthiness and historical memory than with economic ideology. Let me relate a story from 30 years ago. I was lying on a sunny Pacific beach, having just swum in water so cold that it felt like an electric shock. The people in the water laughed or flailed. Some women stepped into the water gracefully; others dived right into the waves. That day, I saw someone running toward the sea on short, sturdy legs. When he hit the water he continued like a robot, as if there were no waves or cold. And when the water was deep enough, he simply went under. “Who is that guy?” I asked my friend. At the time, Mr. Piñera was an economics professor and banker, who had begun to amass a fortune introducing credit cards to Chile. The determination he showed that day revealed part of the secret behind his ascent to power: sheer strength of will. Sadly, determination and empathy are not the same. Mr. Piñera’s economic record — fiscal responsibility, private investment, stable growth, low inflation, new jobs, cheap imports — has been excellent. As promised, he has governed like a brilliant C.E.O. But his shareholders — the voters — are not satisfied. He has the instincts of a technocrat and makes decisions based on polls. He thinks fast, perhaps too fast. He is shrewd, perhaps too shrewd. He is not universally trusted. One example of Mr. Piñera’s seeming callousness: In 2011, students of mine at the University of Chile were leaving for a demonstration. They felt that the rich were running the government — “The foxes are in the henhouse,” one woman told me — with no counterbalance to protect regular people. The students were protesting the rapid expansion of private universities, which were promoted as a way to increase college access. But poor quality and financial abuses at these profit-making schools — including the bankruptcy of one of them, Universidad del Mar — soured students and parents on them. Another factor harming Mr. Piñera’s legacy is memory. This year was the 40th anniversary of the coup that toppled the democratically elected president Salvador Allende and ushered in the brutal military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. What’s striking is that the presidential contenders, Ms. Bachelet and Ms. Matthei, are both daughters of air force generals who were friends. Ms. Bachelet’s father, after the 1973 coup, was tortured and died of a heart attack. Ms. Bachelet and her mother were briefly imprisoned at Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret prison. Ms. Matthei’s father was part of the Pinochet junta, an association that has not helped her. An economist and a senator with a strong personality, she has it in her to be Chile’s “Iron Lady,” if only Chileans were in the mood. But when she criticized Ms. Bachelet for including Communists (who praise Cuba and Venezuela) in her coalition and predicted that Ms. Bachelet’s policies would hurt Chile’s chances of joining the club of developed nations, voters didn’t respond. Perhaps they cared more about the concentration of wealth. (The difference in the two women’s personalities was evident recently when Don Francisco, a popular television entertainer, invited Ms. Matthei to play the piano and Ms. Bachelet to dance with him. Ms. Matthei, a gifted musician, didn’t miss a note, but she played the Beatles’ “Let It Be” as if it were Bartok. Ms. Bachelet, meanwhile, danced effortlessly and charmingly.) If she wins on Sunday, Ms. Bachelet’s biggest problem will be high and divergent expectations. She ended her first term on a wave of popularity, having weathered the worst effects of the global financial crisis while providing additional support for Chile’s poor. But her coalition is deeply divided over education, tax policy and constitutional reform, and she risks alienating the middle class if she moves too far to the left. Her best course would be one of moderation: a few, but significant, steps to strengthen the welfare state, but without compromising economic growth. She has the charisma and the reputation for trustworthiness to allow her to muddle through. As for the political right, it must break more decisively with the Pinochet legacy and abandon its adherence to the notion that economics explains everything about human behavior. That is not what Chileans believe. As Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Arturo Fontaine is a novelist, poet and essayist and a professor of philosophy at the University of Chile. His most recent book is “La Vida Doble: A Novel.”

In the presidential election, Chileans look set to pick trustworthiness and character over economic ideology.

Toronto fans turned out for Jewish Heritage day featuring the Sacramento Kings' Israel-born Omri Casspi. LOS ANGELES—Salih Eroglu prepared carefully for the Los Angeles Clippers' big day-after-Christmas basketball game. The 33-year-old gathered Turkish baklava pastries, sparkling "evil eye" pendants and sunflower seed snack packs. He ordered 1,000 red "Turkiye" baseball caps and 1,000 T-shirts emblazoned with images of Hedo Turkoglu, Istanbul-born forward of the visiting team, the Phoenix Suns. On hand, too, were Turkish dancing girls, a Turkish pop star to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and raffle stubs for an airline ticket to Istanbul. In short, Mr. Eroglu had everything for a successful Turkish heritage event—an occasion meant to boost attendance for the Clippers, one of the National Basketball Association's worst-drawing teams. "We were really, really ready," says Mr. Eroglu, an engineer who organizes the annual Turkish event. Across the NBA, teams with losing records like the L.A. Clippers are turning to events like Turkish Heritage night to fill seats. WSJ's Joel Millman reports. Except for one thing. Just before the event, Phoenix sent the Turkish fans' favorite Sun—the 31-year-old Mr. Turkoglu—to the Orlando Magic. The move left hundreds of ticket holders without a countryman to root for. It's that time of year in the NBA: the deep winter slog when teams with losing records search far and wide for gimmicks to fill seats. That's why many teams are drumming up "Heritage" events, meant to court even the smallest émigré enclaves to NBA courts, and provide just a tad of buzz—and a souvenir trinket or two—to pump up attendance. The Toronto Raptors have Filipino Night set for early next month, arriving on the heels of Serbian, Jewish and Chinese nights in January. The Minnesota Timberwolves are hosting both an Israeli Heritage and a Jewish Heritage event, with a Canadian Heritage Night teed up for late January and a German Heritage night for March. The Golden State Warriors' Latino Night is on Jan. 28, after the team held events saluting fans from Iran and China. Heritage events became popular in the U.S. about a decade ago, when the NBA began signing more talent from overseas. Currently, there are 86 foreign-born players in the NBA. Pitching ethnicity is an easy win for clubs that don't typically draw big crowds. With 41 games on a team's home schedule, most won't sell out. Weak opposing teams can further dash hopes for a strong turnout. But by focusing on visiting ethnic players, heritage events can generate interest, raising the odds of higher ticket sales. With the right plans—such as special foods and autograph signings with the star player—some teams say they can fill as many as 2,000 additional seats. But heritage events can be tricky. Many NBA rosters aren't intact long enough to justify an ethnic night based on a particular athlete—thus, for example, creating Turkish events without a Turkish player. Still, many teams continue with their heritage proceedings even without the ethnic player slated to showcase the event. "1,300 tickets, and counting," exulted Toronto Raptors' media director Jim LaBumbard in anticipation of a Jan. 14 Serbian event arranged to show off Raptors player Peja Stojakovic. This, despite Mr. Stojakovic's absence from the roster since late November due to a knee injury. The biggest heritage star this season is 6-foot-9 Omri Casspi, Israel's lone NBA representative, who plays small forward for the Sacramento Kings. Despite having one of the NBA's worst records, the Kings are a touring sensation this year, packing arenas with Jewish fans eager to greet the lanky Israeli. "I meet a lot of kids who get tickets to a Kings game as a bar mitzvah present," says the 22-year-old Mr. Casspi, who adds he's also fielded several offers of marriage as he tours NBA arenas. This month, Mr. Casspi's Kings lured Jewish fans in Toronto, Washington, Boston and Atlanta. Fans at the Washington Wizards game got Wizards yarmulkes in conjunction with Mr. Casspi's appearance last week. Organizers at the Atlanta and Boston games provided kosher foods at concession stands. While a pre- or post-game opportunity to meet with players like Mr. Casspi drives ticket sales, there's no guarantee that players will oblige. "He's done more than his share," says Troy Hanson, the Kings' spokesman. "We just had to say no to some teams." Some NBA teams have found a safer bet is to showcase others, such as ethnic coaches and retired players—thus eliminating any risk of a celebrity no-show. Raymond Townsend, who last played in the NBA in 1981, has been making a comeback of sorts hosting Filipino Heritage events across the NBA. "When I played, people thought I was just one of the lighter-skinned NBA players with an Afro. No one knew I was Filipino," says the 55-year-old former Indiana Pacers guard, son of an African-American father and a mother born in Batangas, Philippines. Two seasons ago, Mr. Townsend returned to NBA courts as a packager of Filipino Heritage events, starting with the Golden State Warriors and the Clippers in California. "Who knew there were 300,000 Filipinos in Los Angeles? I sure didn't," says Carl Lahr, the Clippers' vice president for marketing. Mr. Eroglu began organizing the Clippers' Turkish events in 2003 while running the Turkish students association at the University of Southern California. "We've tried to do Turkish Night at Lakers games, but it's so hard to get seats together," he says of the city's more successful team and current NBA champion. Back then, Mr. Eroglu says, he might sell 50 tickets to a Clippers game. Nowadays, Turkish events routinely bring over a thousand fans, even when the star player can't be there. Indeed, December's Turkey Day was only the second sell-out the Clippers enjoyed all season. At that event, the Clippers didn't offer ticket refunds after learning Mr. Turkoglu wouldn't be attending. Instead, the team let every Turkish fan who bought a ticket to the Suns game return free on Dec. 29. The Clippers' opponent that night: The Utah Jazz, which also features a Turk, Mehmet Okur. Mr. Okur was injured during the game, but did manage to wave to Turkish fans before leaving the arena.

NBA teams are drumming up Heritage events, meant to court even the smallest émigré enclaves to the courts, and provide just a tad of buzz—and a souvenir trinket or two—to pump up attendance.

Ups and downs of Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' tour Ups and downs of Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' tour Ups and downs of Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' tour Ups and downs of Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' tour Ups and downs of Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' tour Ups and downs of Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' tour Ups and downs of Miley Cyrus' 'Bangerz' tour Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette is a CNN contributor, Daily Beast columnist and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Follow him on Twitter: @rubennavarrette. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. (CNN) -- What's Spanish for "twerk?" Mexican officials are in no hurry to find out. This is one U.S. import our southern neighbor wants nothing to do with. Ditto for Miley Cyrus, the controversial singer known less for her music than for her over-sexualized on-stage spectacles intended to get attention and shock the senses. Cyrus accomplished both on the Diez y Seis de Septiembre -- better known, on this side of the border, as September 16th. North of the Rio Grande, that day is like any other, as insignificant as the Fourth of July is in Canada. However, in Mexico, the day is awfully important. It's Independence Day. And since Mexicans are a proud people who put a high value on respect, it's probably not a good idea for Americans -- or anyone else for that matter -- to go to Mexico on Mexican Independence Day and show disrespect to, oh, the Mexican flag. That's what Cyrus and fellow performers did last week during a concert in the northern city of Monterrey in a stunt that gives new meaning to the phrase "ugly Americans." As Cyrus "twerked" onstage, while wearing -- yes, you read this right -- a giant prosthetic butt, her backup singers whipped her with rolled up pieces of cloth that turned out to be miniature Mexican flags. It was a trifecta of bad judgment -- the wrong thing to do, the wrong country to do it in, and all of it happening on the wrong day. Before you could say international incident, outraged Mexican state legislators asked the federal government to fine the pop star for desecrating the Mexican flag. Under a law that prohibits abuse of "national emblems, the flag and the national anthem," such a transgression can normally earn someone a $1,270 fine as well as, in some cases, a couple of days in jail. The legislators are asking that Cyrus get locked up for 36 hours. Mexican authorities are investigating. There are those in this country who will claim that the singer is being singled out because she is an American. But actually, in this case, equal treatment would call out for some sort of punishment. It's a good time to send a message. In 2008, Mexican pop star Paulina Rubio was fined $4,000 for appearing in a Spanish magazine, clutching a Mexican flag wrapped around her naked body. What the 21-year-old Cyrus and her crew did was tasteless and thoughtless. And whether or not Mexican officials decide to formally charge her with desecrating the Mexican flag, she ought to apologize -- in person, and on Mexican soil. Having said that, Mexican officials need to be careful not to overplay their hand and protest too much, lest they turn legitimate concerns about professional decorum in the entertainment industry into dinner theater. The initial response was not encouraging. Speaking to CNN, Mexican State Rep. Francisco Treviño said this: "I am truly offended and annoyed by the fact that a foreign artist feels like she can come here and make fun of and mock our national flag on Independence Day, September 16th." Seriously? Trevino can't really believe that the stunt was intended as a direct assault on the Mexican flag. An assault on decency and good manners, maybe. Does he think this was some sort of political statement? He is probably giving Cyrus and her backup dancers too much credit. Finally, is this really an attempt to mock the flag? The dancers used it as a prop, but the idea was clearly to draw attention to Cyrus -- not the flag. As a Mexican-American, I realize that, in Mexico, my grandfather's homeland, the second-most popular sport -- after soccer -- is American bashing. And Cyrus played right into the hands of our neighbors by giving them a weapon to wield against us. But Mexicans don't always have to play that game. Let's hope that they treat this for what it is -- an isolated incident by an immature and attention starved pop singer. Nothing more. The U.S.-Mexico relationship is strong. It has suffered through war, conquest, revolution, migration, xenophobia, gun running, drugs, protectionism, Manifest Destiny, income disparity and more. It can suffer fools. Read CNNOpinion's new Flipboard magazine. Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Ruben Navarrette says making rude use of Mexican flag on Mexican independence day in a concert in Mexico was tasteless, but not an international incident.

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture. His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance. It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel. The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

Vice President Cheney has become an open advocate of torture. Congress should reject his proposal and instead prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners.

An emotional and invigorating Hall of Fame weekend came to a grinding halt on Sunday night when the Packers-Colts game was canceled because of poor field conditions. One day after Brett Favre led the eight-member class of 2016 into the hall, its president, David Baker, announced the cancellation after discussing problems with the turf with both teams. He said it was a safety issue and that all fans would be fully refunded for ticket purchases, which will cost the hall several million dollars. Related: NFL-funded youth program cited incorrect data in safety claims “This is a hard decision, but we know it is the right decision,” Baker said. “In some respects a hard decision because of the impact it has. This is an important game to the people in Canton.” The NFL and NFL Players Association said in a statement: “We are very disappointed for our fans, but player safety is our primary concern, and as a result, we could not play an NFL game on this field tonight.” Baker noted that the field was new and had been approved when inspected after its first installation. But paint congealed at midfield and in the end zone, hardening those areas. Workers used a variety of equipment to smooth the artificial surface. Rubber pellets used in the turf came loose and were scattered in several spots and needed to be removed as well. “We know a lot of you came a long way,” Baker told the crowd, which booed when his name was announced. “Here at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, we have the greatest respect for players and for player safety. As a result of some painting on the field today, some questions arose.” Team physicians also were consulted. “We thought we would be able to remediate it by delaying the game for as much as an hour,” Baker added. “But in the end, if it’s remotely close to unsafe, we conferred with the league, we think the best thing to do is respect the safety of the players. It’s the only thing to do. “I can tell you, I had a son who played in this league. If it happened with him on the field, I would have wanted someone to make the same decision.” This was not the first cancellation of an NFL exhibition game. The Hall of Fame contest was not played in 2011 because of the lockout but it was the most high-profile pre-season match to be called off. In 2001, a new artificial surface at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium was deemed too dangerous for the Eagles to play the Ravens. Both teams walked on to the field at 8pm, moments before the game would have kicked off, and the players saluted the crowd. When the hall’s class of 2016 was introduced the stands remained relatively full. But then many fans departed the stadium even though the half-time show featuring Lee Greenwood was held. The Colts coach, Chuck Pagano, said he was disappointed but understood the cancellation. He was looking to “find out about a lot of these young players”. The Packers coach, Mike McCarthy, saluted the many Packers fans who came to Canton to see Favre inducted into the hall. “We really were looking forward to performing tonight,” McCarthy said. “You get tired of practicing against yourself and you get to play a real game.” Many of the thousands of Packers fans in Canton returned on Sunday to Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. They sat watching highlights of Favre’s speech and of Friday night’s concert featuring Tim McGraw before they were told about the game’s cancellation. Also inducted were Tony Dungy, Marvin Harrison, Orlando Pace, Kevin Greene, Ken Stabler, Dick Stanfel and Ed DeBartolo Jr.

Paint markings cause hardening of new field’s playing surface and NFL Hall of Fame promises full refunds to fans at cost of millions of dollars

Yahoo Screen is no more. The troubled tech giant has killed its highly-hyped and high-spending video division less than four years after its launch. The Yahoo division joins Xbox Entertainment Studios on the growing pile of ambitious video divisions trying to compete with television and failing. Yahoo’s video concern, which boasted more than 1,000 hours of programming and a partnership with MTV and Comedy Central parent company Viacom when it first went live in September 2013, had trouble attracting an audience and ultimately became more famous for its failures than its successes. The main company is undergoing a complex “reverse-spin” uncoupling from its richest asset, a stake in Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba – a move CEO Marissa Mayer announced the day before she gave birth to twin girls. Yahoo Screen was one of the company’s big swings during the push to create more outlets for digital video advertising a few years ago. “At Yahoo, we’re constantly reviewing and iterating on our products as we strive to create the best user experience,” a spokeswoman told the Guardian. “With that in mind, video content from Yahoo as well as our partners has been transitioned from Yahoo Screen to our Digital Magazine properties so users can discover complementary content in one place.” The news was first reported by Variety. The enterprise will probably be best remembered for picking up NBC’s critically beloved, commercially dicey sitcom Community for one more season after NBC dropped the show and just hours before the actors’ contracts were set to expire. The move may have been great for the show’s fans, but it didn’t budge Yahoo Screen’s bottom line. Part of that may be due to Yahoo’s laser focus on its own portal – the content aspired to compete with television but was almost entirely browser-bound, minus a few buggy apps (one on the Xbox, one on the Apple TV, and one on Chromecast). The company took a $42m impairment charge on the value of its video assets in the third quarter of 2015, and CFO Ken Goldman singled out Community and the other two series Yahoo had picked up when pressed by analysts to explain himself. “We’re not saying we’re not going to do these at all in the future, but what we are saying is in three cases at least, it didn’t work the way we had hoped it to work,” Goldman told investors. At its heart, Yahoo Screen was always driven by the need to create more places for video ads to live, and like abortive video divisions at competitors including Microsoft, the group was neither able to out-YouTube YouTube nor eat into traditional TV networks’ audiences. At the time, ad sales executives in the TV world characterized the shift to digital video as more annoying than threatening – big spenders now had a place they could threaten to take their money if they didn’t want to increase their investment in a traditional network that year, but few actually shifted their cash over to TV-ish projects online. When then CEO Ross Levinsohn, who spearheaded the project, unveiled Yahoo Screen in 2012, he was enthusiastic about its potential. “I enjoy watching cats on skateboards chasing laser pointers as much as anybody,” he scoffed. “We’re shooting a little higher than that here.”

Tech company’s video division fades to black after struggling to draw viewers away from the likes of YouTube and traditional TV networks

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For Lilly Ledbetter, it was a day of vindication over a decade in the making. President Obama stands with Lilly Ledbetter shortly before he signed the bill bearing her name Thursday. More than 10 years after first filing a gender discrimination claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the beaming retired grandmother from Alabama stood in the East Room of the White House, watching the president of the United States sign a landmark piece of pay-equity legislation bearing her name. "I cannot begin to describe how honored and humbled I feel today," Ledbetter said Thursday. "When I filed my claim ... never, never did I imagine the path that it would lead me down." Under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, victims of pay-based discrimination will now have the right to file a complaint to the government within 180 days of their most recent paycheck, as opposed to within 180 days of their first unfair paycheck. The law's supporters argue the change was necessary because, under the old standard, an employer merely needed to hide unfair pay practices for a few months before being able to continue them, without penalty, forever. Ledbetter's contribution to the long struggle for women's rights and equal pay did not come easily. It took three presidential campaigns, years of arguing and persuasion in the halls of Congress, and seemingly endless rounds of litigation. It also took the help of a stranger. "I did not learn of the pay discrimination until late in my career," Ledbetter, a former employee with Goodyear Tire and Rubber, said during an interview with CNN. "Someone left me an anonymous note in my mailbox at work showing my pay versus three males. And we four were doing the exact same job." Ledbetter retired after 19 years working for Goodyear in Gadsden, Alabama. She filed a complaint with the EEOC in March 1998, alleging that men in her plant doing similar work were paid 15 to 40 percent more. The records backed her up. Ledbetter proved that she was being paid $6,000 less than men doing the same work, including those who were the lowest paid in their job duties. Ultimately, both the EEOC and a jury ruled in her favor. Ledbetter was awarded $360,000 in back pay. Ledbetter's fight, however, was just beginning. A federal appeals court later threw out her claim, limiting her lawsuit to discrimination that may have happened in the six months prior to her initial complaint with the EEOC. A three-judge panel also dismissed the pay discrimination allegations during that 180-day window. Ledbetter's case increasingly gained the attention of politicians and the public as it climbed the legal ladder. By the time the Supreme Court weighed in with a ruling in 2007, the case was a political football. Most Democrats used it to rail against sexual discrimination; many Republicans warned the case could harm employers. In a narrowly divided 5-4 ruling, the high court sided with Goodyear, concluding that Ledbetter had only a federally mandated 180-day window in which to make her initial claim. Such a "filing deadline protects employers from the burden of defending claims arising from employment decisions long past," concluded Justice Samuel Alito. In strongly worded dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accused her conservative colleagues of being "indifferent" to victims of pay discrimination. If women sued only when the pay disparity became steady and large enough to enable them to mount a winnable case, they would be cut off at the court's threshold for suing too late, Ginsburg argued. Her legal options cut off, Ledbetter turned to Capitol Hill. Democrats pushed for legislation -- bearing Ledbetter's name -- to overturn the Supreme Court's ruling and change the 180-day window. They made little headway with the Bush White House. During the 2008 campaign, the Ledbetter Act proved to be a significant point of contention between then-Sen. Barack Obama and Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. Obama emphasized what he called the plan's benefits to working women, while McCain criticized it as a boon for trial lawyers. When Obama won the presidency, congressional Democrats put a reversal of the high court's ruling near the top of their agenda. On Thursday, that piece of the agenda was completed. The Ledbetter Act was the first bill signed into law by Obama. "It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign ... we are upholding one of this nation's first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness," Obama said at the bill's signing ceremony. "If we stay focused, as Lilly did -- and keep standing for what's right, as Lilly did -- we will close that pay gap and ensure that our daughters have the same rights, the same chances, and the same freedom to pursue their dreams as our sons." First lady Michelle Obama also made clear her support of the new law and Ledbetter personally. "Anyone who meets Lilly can't help but be impressed by her commitment," the first lady said at a reception shortly after her husband signed the bill into law. "She knew unfairness when she saw it and was willing to do something about it because it was the right thing to do, plain and simple." For Ledbetter, the signing was emotional. "To watch (the president) sign a bill that bears my name -- the bill that will help women and others fight pay discrimination in the workplace -- is truly overwhelming," Ledbetter said while standing next to the first lady. "Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of. In fact, I will never see a cent from my case. But with the president's signature today, I have an even richer reward. I know that my daughter and granddaughters ... will have a better deal. That's what makes this fight worth fighting." With this win, Ledbetter concluded to a rousing ovation, "we will make a big difference in the real world." All About Lilly Ledbetter • Barack Obama

For Lilly Ledbetter, it was a day of vindication over a decade in the making.

About two months ago, Sean covered here at Mashable the news that an organization named Merlin has become the fifth biggest record label, behind giants like EMI, Warner and Sony. Given that the age of giant labels is dying, it’s odd that 12,000 indie labels (those best poised to be nimble and adaptable to the ever-changing landscape of the modern music business) would sign on to create what is essentially a model of the Old Media record label concept. From Sean’s May coverage: You may remember that we first discussed Merlin all the way back in January 2007, so this success has been a long time in the making for the international rights holder. For those who may not remember what exactly it is the company aims to do, it’s a fairly easy idea: Merlin sees a strength in a centralized, concentrated voice for independent record labels when it comes to negotiating for rights. Merlin sends us a bit of news today that comes hot on the heels of an announcement from Last.FM to their member artists (a program I have participated in the past), announcing that they’ll now be awarding royalties to qualifying independent artists on Last.FM. Shortly after Paul posted on this news, Merlin alerted us that they “have for the last few months been negotiating with Last.fm regarding a non exclusive blanket licence and a settlement agreement on behalf of Merlin members” and that these negotiations “have stalled.” They also accuse Last.FM of having profited off the backs of independent artists illegally up until this point, and that they show no signs of willingness to make restitution for this past sin. We contacted a representative of Last.FM for comment, but the fact that they appeared to have been blindsided by this accusation as well as the fact that it was around 11 PM London time was probably the culprit behind the gruff declaration of “no comment” for this post (though the representative added that start of business tomorrow, they’ll examine the issue and likely have some sort of statement in response). Quite honestly, I’m baffled as to why any indie artist would sign on with a group like Merlin. They appear to have all the trappings of an Old Media label, replete with grubby pawed lawyers, executives and board members all more than willing to claim their chunk of the cash earned by hard working artists. Meanwhile, systems like Last.FM and the Apple store already have mechanisms in place to accept and sell music for and from independent artists. If I had to guess (and given the lack of independent comment at the moment, I may have to), I’d guess this is the reason talks broke down - Last.fm didn’t see a need to deal with Yet Another Intermediary Record Label, and openly invited all the artists to deal directly with them (and ultimately bring home more of their royalty monies in the process).

Merlin, the indie record label, is trying to get money out of Last.FM by extorting them via the press.

In response to graffiti artist Banksy's Gaza tourist video, the territory's parkour team show us what real life is like there and their dreams beyond the border. To the sounds of Palestine's biggest female hip-hop artist, Shadia Mansour, join Abdallah AlQassab and the rest of the free-running team as they flip, somersault and leap their way round the ruined city

In response to graffiti artist Banksy's Make this the Year YOU Discover a New Destination Gaza tourist video, the territory's parkour team show us what real life is like in the ruined city

Toronto’s mayor is believed to have a tumour in his abdomen, says the president of the Humber River Hospital, Rueben Devlin Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford, has been admitted to a hospital and is believed to have a tumour in his abdomen, health officials said Wednesday. Rueben Devlin from Humber regional hospital said Ford had been complaining of abdominal pains and that an examination has resulted in a working diagnosis of a tumour. He said Ford had been suffering from stomach pains for at least three months and they had worsened in the last 24 hours. “It became unbearable for him,” he said. Ford, 45, became an international celebrity last year after he acknowledged using crack in a “drunken stupor” following months of denials. The mayor returned to work in June after a rehab stint for drug and alcohol abuse and is running for re-election on 27 October. Devlin said they needed to determine what type of tumour it was by doing a biopsy. He said he could not say how long Ford would be in the hospital. Devlin said the CT scan was “very definitive for the tumour” but a “definitive diagnosis” is still to come. The Toronto Sun reported that Ford was hospitalised in 2009 for a tumour on his appendix, leading to its removal, along with part of his colon. The mayor’s father died of colon cancer in 2006. Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother and campaign manager, said Rob was in good spirits but sidestepped questions about the mayoral race, saying he would speak about the campaign on Thursday. Although campaigning has been underway for months, the official deadline for candidates to sign up is Friday. That leaves time for Doug Ford, a city councillor, to step in for his brother, a possibility some have long speculated about. Doug deflected a question about Rob’s previous health issues but said the mayor had complained of stomach pain while the pair had breakfast together. “He said his stomach was bothering him. He went to the doctor’s and the doctor sent him over to Humber,” Doug Ford said. Dennis Morris, Ford’s lawyer and a family friend, said he spoke to the mayor on Tuesday and he didn’t mention any abdominal pain. Ford appeared well during a debate on Tuesday night. The mayor has steadfastly refused to step down since reports emerged of a video of him smoking crack. Olivia Chow, who is running to replace Ford, tweeted that her thoughts and hopes were with Ford and his family for good news in the days ahead. John Tory, considered the frontrunner in the race, wished Ford a speedy recovery. “My thoughts are with Mayor Ford, Renata, their children and the entire Ford family this evening,” Tory said in a statement.

Controversial Canadian politician who admitted smoking crack is believed to have a tumour on his abdomen

Michael Bublé's son, who is currently undergoing treatment for liver cancer, will get to spend the holidays with his family in Los Angeles. The Mirror and local newspapers in Argentina (where Bublé's wife is from) report that Noah is well enough to go home for Christmas, but that the family will stay in California instead of Bublé's home in Vancouver, Canada. Bublé and wife Luisana Lopilato in November made public that 3-year-old Noah had been diagnosed with cancer. "Luisana and I have put our careers on hold in order to devote all our time and attention to helping Noah get well," Bublé said in an official statement on his Facebook page.

Though still undergoing treatment, Noah is well enough to spend some time at home.

What better way to celebrate #WorldAnimalDay than with an amazing animal rescue from the other side of the world. SPCA Singapore shared a video to their Facebook page of a kitten in desperate need of help. The tiny tabby cat managed to sneak out the window of his owner’s 12th story apartment and get stuck on the ledge below. Thankfully, the blanket wasn’t put to use. An SPCA rescuer equipped with an animal catcher’s pole, which featured a GoPro camera, was able to lower the loop out the window, snag the cat and carefully bring the pet inside. Thanks to the pole’s special accessory, we can watch the entire rescue. The above clip has the tension of a heist movie, the happy ending of a rom com and stars one very concerned kitten. Basically, it’s the blockbuster you’ve been waiting for — unless you’re afraid of heights. After this nail-biter of a rescue, the rattled but unharmed kitten was reunited with his owner, who was advised to add mesh to their windows to prevent further vertigo-inducing incidents. This article originally appeared on People.com

It has the tension of a heist movie