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Goal-line technology has been given the go-ahead... (Associated Press) FILE - In this June 19, 2012 filer, England's John Terry clears the ball away from his goal during the Euro 2012 soccer championship Group D match between England and Ukraine in Donetsk, Ukraine. The three decisions will be "long-lasting and resonate throughout the world," said Patrick Nelson, chief executive of the Northern Ireland association. Story highlights Goal-line technology approved for use in football on Thursday Global governing body FIFA and IFAB unanimously agree on decision FIFA intends for goal-line technology to be used at December's Club World Cup Two systems, Hawk-Eye and GoalRef, approved by soccer's lawmakers Football's lawmakers have taken the historic step of unanimously approving goal-line technology systems for use in the sport. With copious amounts of yoke and albumen still smearing their cheeks, the International Football Association Board has approved not one, but two systems for testing. Those who truly adore football (it's a habit calling it that, please forgive) will be delighted to hear that the English Premier League -- known for its fast pace, English passion, and largely non-English players -- is reportedly keen to quickly sign up for one or both of these technologies. As there was no medical risk to wearing headscarves when playing a game of football, it has decided to relent on a ban introduced in 2007. One approved system is Hawk-Eye, which has been in use for some time now in sports such as cricket and tennis -- though not always without controversy. FIFA previously blocked using technology to help referees make decisions. In the last World Cup, a shot from England's Frank Lampard against Germany was seen to be far over the goal line even by the most diehard of Teutons in Bavaria and yet not by the three officials (evidence embedded below). JUST WATCHED Goal-line technology approved by FIFA Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Goal-line technology approved by FIFA 02:27 JUST WATCHED Euro 2012: Goodbye, Adiós and Ciao Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Euro 2012: Goodbye, Adiós and Ciao 03:58 JUST WATCHED Platini: Bayern, Chelsea worthy of final Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Platini: Bayern, Chelsea worthy of final 04:58 Blatter was present when midfielder Frank Lampard's shot bounced well over the goal-line but was not awarded by the officials in a match England went on to lose 4-1. Blatter achieved his goal against the wishes of UEFA President Michel Platini, who opposes giving match officials any hi-tech aids. In the recently concluded Euro 2012, England was on the receiving end of myopic fortune when a shot from Ukraine's Marko Devic was over the line and yet an extra assistant official -- placed on the goal line for that very purpose -- still denied a clear goal. It is a body which decides on any proposed changes to the rules of soccer.

– A big move in the world of soccer: The sport's governing body said today it will test two goal-line technologies at a tournament in December, reports CNN. One system uses multiple cameras and the other relies on a microchip inside the ball. Assuming all goes well, one should be in place for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Helping prompt the move was a notorious blown call in the 2010 World Cup, when a shot by England's Frank Lampard crossed the line but did not get awarded. "I have changed my attitude toward technology because of Lampard's kick in South Africa," says FIFA chief Sepp Blatter. "That was the moment for me to say, 'You are the president of FIFA and you cannot afford that in the next World Cup something similar will happen.'" What's more, the English Premier League is on board and plans to use one of the systems, too. (For the take of one happy and knowledgeable "football" fan, see Chris Matyszczyk's post at CNET.) Another new rule: FIFA will allow female Muslim players to wear headscarves, notes AP.

The creature known as Slender Man has no face, no hair, is very, very thin and wears a dark suit (above). "Some people joked in the thread, 'Wouldn't it be funny if some of these ended up on those paranormal websites or someone said these pictures look real,' " Knudsen said in an interview this year with WNYC's "TLDR" podcast. According to Know Your Meme , a blog that chronicles Web culture, the goal of the contest was to create the images and then use them to fool, or "troll," other Web users by submitting them to paranormal websites. Because Slender Man was developed collaboratively, by a community of anonymous contributors, that mythos is spotty and varied — much like a more organic urban legend would be. Other times, Slender Man somehow compels his victims to kill each other — a particularly grim plot line, given the recent attack in Wisconsin. From there, it would inspire a popular horror Web series called Marble Hornets, several indie video games and an untold trove of submemes and fan art, as well as earn prominent pages on Wikipedia and Creepypasta, a site dedicated to Internet horror stories. This past May, the country woke up to the news that two 12-year-old girls allegedly stabbed their friend to conjure up a mythological creature named Slender Man — a plan inspired by a story they read on a site called Creepypasta.

– Two 12-year-old girls who allegedly stabbed their friend in the woods of Waukesha, Wis., offered a chilling explanation for their actions: They'd been driven by "Slender Man," a mythical figure who's made the rounds on the Internet since 2009. But there are no deep, mysterious roots to this legend: The Washington Post delves into "the complete, terrifying history ... of the Internet meme," finding that a little digging reveals exactly who made it up and when. It all started with a forum on humor site Something Awful asking users to "create paranormal images through Photoshop." That resulted in Slender Man, the creation of one Victor Surge, aka Eric Knudsen, who offered disturbing stories of a guy with tentacles. Knudsen is now seeking a copyright on the story, CNN reports. As Vox describes Slender Man, he's got "no face, no hair, is very, very thin and wears a dark suit." Other users began making up stories of their own as the legend migrated to other websites, including YouTube, Wikipedia, and "creepypasta" sites for scary online fiction, where the girls apparently read about it. Creepypasta Wiki has distanced itself from the attack, whose victim is reportedly in stable condition: "This wiki does not endorse or advocate for the killing, worship, and otherwise replication of rituals of fictional works. There is a line ... between fiction and reality, and it is up to you to realize where the line is. We are a literature site, not a crazy satanic cult."

Relatives of a man who was killed in a plane crash last weekend on the lakefront are calling him a hero for what he did moments before his death. NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Fire Department says two bodies have been found in the wreckage of a small plane that crashed into Lake Pontchartrain just north of the New Orleans Lakefront Airport Saturday night. The crash was reported just before 9 p.m. Saturday when New Orleans police said a Cessna aircraft went down in the lake with people still on board. Family members tell WDSU that the passenger in the plane is Reginald Hillard Jr. Hillard's girlfriend, Brianna Davis, was the surviving passenger. She was picked up by a private yacht and taken to a hospital. Spokesman Gregory Davis said the Cessna was pulled from the water Tuesday morning by a crane and the aircraft was placed on a barge. Family members identified the other passenger as Reginald Hillard Jr., who they said is a hero for pushing his girlfriend, Davis, out of the plane before it crashed. Davis was able to get out of the sinking plane and was rescued by a nearby boater. Relatives said Reginald was afraid of flying, but put aside his fears when his girlfriend, Brianna Davis, surprised him with an aerial tour of the city. Davis told Hillard's family that he pushed her out of the plane and that's what saved her. I still didn't believe it," said Reginald Hillard Sr., of Baton Rouge, who was at the lakefront. Hillard Sr. was told of the official identification minutes after the plane was pulled from the water three days after the crash. WDSU reporter Jennifer Crockett said when crews opened up the aircraft, the pilot was found buckled into his seat. "The couple had hired the aircraft to take them on a night time flight around the city of New Orleans," said Lakefront Airport Director Ben Morris. Keep up with local news, weather and current events with the WDSU app here. Sign up for our email newsletters to get breaking news right in your inbox. Click here to sign up!

– On Tuesday, a New Orleans family received the confirmation they were dreading: One of two bodies pulled from a plane that went down in Lake Pontchartrain was that of Reginald Hillard Jr., 25. "They said that he was in the plane. I still didn't believe it," his father tells WWLTV. The family is telling a second story, though: one of heroism. They say Hillard saved the life of his girlfriend—the only one of the three aboard to survive the Saturday night flight—by pushing her from the plane. The details are a bit fluid: A family member tells WWLTV Hillard unbuckled Brianna Davis' seatbelt and pushed her out after the Cessna entered the water; relatives tell WDSU he pushed her from the plane before it crashed. Either way, Davis did enter the lake and was retrieved by a passing yacht and taken to the hospital. The flight, an aerial evening tour of the city, was a birthday surprise Davis arranged for Hillard. WDSU reports the father of three was scared to fly and had never been on a plane, but "he took the challenge," says his cousin. "He's the hero." WDSU reports the plane went down about half a mile from the New Orleans Lakefront Airport, whose director, Ben Morris, says, "It's a very sad thing because she did tell us that she and her boyfriend were holding hands when she slipped out of the aircraft." Morris says the plane hit a rainstorm; the pilot, whose body was found still in his seat, did not request any help. (A plane's parachute helped save the life of a former Walmart CEO in 2015.)

In a rare admission, North Korea announced on state TV that the bid was a failure, with the satellite failing to reach orbit. The council imposed sanctions on North Korea after its first nuclear test in 2006 and stepped up sanctions after its second in 2009. Back-to-back meetings of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea and the Supreme People's Assembly (the rubber-stamp parliament) have seen the young Kim Jong-un festooned with titles: WPK first secretary, chairman of the Central Military Commission, chairman of the National Defence Commission and so on.

– If at first you don't succeed, bomb, bomb again. In the wake of its failed rocket launch, North Korea is doubling down on its "military-first" policy, promoting 20-something Kim Jong Un to first secretary of the powerful National Defense Commission—that officially makes him the country's leader, reports the AP. In a special session yesterday, North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly also promoted several younger leaders in the National Defense Commission and dedicated 15.8% of the national budget to the military—about the same as the last two years. As for what went wrong with the missile: Despite using similar designs as Iran, which successfully put a satellite into orbit in 2009, North Korea continues to struggle with its missiles, suggesting quality control problems, says the New York Times. “Their overall design seems to make sense,” said one scientist. “But mundane sorts of things might get in the way, such as welding.” In the meantime, the South Korean navy sent about 10 ships into the Yellow Sea to look for debris from the North's rocket, reports the AP. Korea expert Aidan Foster-Carter notes in the Telegraph that North Korea's last two missile tests were soon followed by nuclear tests. "This could well be third time unlucky."

– Chris Brown and Drake reportedly started fighting over Rihanna last night, and it ended up with their respective entourages in a nightclub brawl. Five people were injured in the New York City fight, TMZ reports. Brown tweeted a picture of his chin—apparently slashed after someone threw a bottle at him—along with the message, "How u party wit rich n**** that hate? Lol... Throwing bottles like girls? #shameonya!." Both have since been removed, but TMZ has the photo, and the Huffington Post has more charming tweets from Brown including, "N*ggas throwing bottles! Y'all n*ggaz weak!" In related news, Brown and Rihanna continued their practice of showing up at the same places Monday night, when both were at another New York City club. Rihanna had another guy with her, but Brown "looked over at her from his table across the way," a source tells People. The New York Post goes further, claiming Rihanna basically followed Brown around the city and adding that the two appeared to be texting each other at the club. The Daily News adds that Rihanna is "pissed" Brown insists on continuing to date Karrueche Tran, according to sources. And in yet another sign that Rihanna is falling apart, Perez Hilton reports that her friends—including Jay-Z—are encouraging her to go to rehab after "out of control" partying.

Prince William and Prince Harry tell how they are still haunted by regret over a “desperately rushed” last phone call with their mother, who died 20 years ago this year, in a new documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, to be broadcast on Monday evening. William and Harry, who were 15 and 12 when Princess Diana died, say in the new interview to mark 20 years since their mother's death that they were on holiday at the Queen’s house in Balmoral, Scotland, when they were called to the phone. Story highlights Prince William says he was in a hurry to get off the phone to go play "I do remember ... regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was," Harry says (CNN) Prince William and Prince Harry have spoken of their regret at the brevity of their final phone call with their mother, Princess Diana, just hours before her 1997 death in a car crash in Paris. "If I'd known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother, the things I would have said to her," he said. "Looking back at it now -- it's incredibly hard. I have to deal with that for the rest of my life, not knowing that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, and how differently that conversation would have panned out if I’d had even the slightest inkling that her life was going to be taken that night.” The Princes were taking part in the documentary, due to be broadcast on ITV in the UK and on HBO in the U.S. on Monday, which is full of warm and wonderful insights about Diana as a mother. By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You!

– Hours before her death in a Paris car crash, Princess Diana called her young sons to say hello, interrupting Princes William and Harry from horsing around with their cousins—a call they quickly ended with no inkling her life was about to be cut short. "Harry and I were just in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know, see you later and we’re going to go off," says William in a new documentary that marks the 20th anniversary of Diana's death. "If I’d known now obviously what was going to happen I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it and everything else. But that phone call sticks in my mind quite, quite heavily." Adds Harry: "I can't necessarily remember what I said, but all I do remember is regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was." Other highlights from "Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy," per CNN and the Daily Beast: Harry: "Our mother was a total kid through and through. All I can hear is her laugh in my head. One of her mottos to me was, 'You can be as naughty as you want, just don’t get caught.' She was one of the naughtiest parents. She would come and watch us play football and smuggle sweets into our socks." William: "There's not many days that go by that I don't think of her. Her 20th anniversary year feels like a good time to ... remember, you know, all the good things about her and hopefully provide maybe a different side to her that others haven't seen before." William on that time mom surprised him with a bunch of supermodels at the house: "Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell (were) waiting at the top of the stairs. I was probably 12 or 13-year-old boy who had posters of them on his wall. And I went bright red and didn't quite know what to say and sort of fumbled, and I think I pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up." The documentary is set to air on ITV on Monday.

WASHINGTON, May 24, 2017– Armour Eckrich Meats, LLC, a Junction City, Kan. establishment, is recalling approximately 90,978 pounds of ready-to-eat sausage products that may be contaminated with extraneous materials, specifically pieces of metal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today. The food service fully-cooked pork, turkey and beef breakfast sausage items were produced and packaged from April 26 through April 28, 2017. vacuumed packages containing “ECKRICH SMOK-Y CHEDDAR BREAKFAST SAUSAGE, NATURALLY HARDWOOD SMOKED” on the label, case code/ UPC number “27815 17984,” and a Use By date of “08/17/17.” The products subject to recall bear establishment number “EST. 3JC” inside the USDA mark of inspection. These items were shipped to distribution centers in Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. The problem was discovered on May 15, 2017 when Armour Eckrich Meats, Inc. was notified by another FSIS-regulated establishment that pieces of metal were embedded in a fully cooked sausage product produced by Armour Eckrich Meats, Inc.

– On the heels of a recall on hot dogs that contained metal shards, a Kansas food distributor has recalled nearly 100,000 pounds of precooked sausage products for the same reason, reports the AP. The recall was announced Wednesday by Armour-Eckrich Meats in Junction City. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service says the recall includes more than 8,000 cases of 16.6-ounce packages of "Eckrich Smok-Y Cheddar Breakfast Sausage, Naturally Hardwood Smoked." The labels have the case and UPC code "27815 17984," with a use-by date of Aug. 17. The products also have the number "EST. 3JC" inside the USDA mark of inspection. The products were distributed in Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The fully cooked pork, turkey, and beef breakfast sausages were produced and packaged from April 26 to April 28. No injuries have been reported.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - For the first time in more than 20 years, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., has a primary opponent who has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt. Local 10 News spoke with Tim Canova to talk about leaked emails and why he can't get Wasserman Schultz to debate him. Wasserman Schultz resigned as Democratic National Committee chairwoman Sunday, strengthening the hand of her primary opponent, Tim Canova — who saw a huge fundraising boost and national media attention following her decision. Wasserman Schultz recently told Local 10 News that Canova has done absolutely nothing for the district. Canova, as well as Sanders’ wife, Jane, were scheduled to speak via Skype to Alaska Democrats on the same evening that Wasserman Schultz was going to speak to an Alaska Democratic event. But the same question about Canova persists after Wasserman Schultz’s DNC resignation as it did before it: Can he parlay national attention into district votes on Election Day? So far, she has ignored Canova’s request for a debate. His campaign said Monday he has now raised more than $2.5 million.

– Debbie Wasserman Schultz may have been at the center of the Democratic Party's so-called civil war, but she now faces what the Miami Herald labels "the political battle of her lifetime." On Aug. 30, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, who will leave her post after the party convention, will go up against a strong primary opponent in South Florida, who's benefited from her recent struggles. Tim Canova has Bernie Sanders' strong endorsement, and he's not only raised a reported $100,000 since Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation, but he's also used the Democratic National Convention to taunt her. "I have not left the district in eight months," he said Sunday. "That's not going to change between now and Aug. 30. I don't think there's going to be a great need for me to go up to Philly and chase the spotlight. We're making friends on the ground every day." The primary isn't the only hurdle Wasserman Schultz may need to clear. Canova's camp is considering filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission based on leaked emails that suggest the DNC was tracking Canova's campaign. In one email, DNC communications director Luis Miranda wrote "we need the state party to do some digging" in reference to a speech Canova was to give to Democrats in Alaska. "She was using DNC resources to monitor what my campaign was doing [and] how it was doing," Canova tells ABC 10. "It's sad that this is what's become of Wasserman Schultz's career." No polls have focused on the Miami-Dade/Broward district, but one supporter says Wasserman Schultz is "loved" there. "I don't see a world where Debbie's longtime constituents don't stand with her again." (We know how Sanders would vote.)

GOP bills to further limit abortions make gains at Capitol PHOENIX – The state House on Monday approved and forwarded to the Senate two bills that would further limit abortion in Arizona. HB 2416, sponsored by Rep. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, would require doctors to perform an ultrasound at least one hour before an abortion and point out the fetus’ extremities and offer the woman an opportunity to listen to the heartbeat and take a photo home. It would also change the definition of abortion to include abortion by pill and would bar doctors from using telemedicine to administer abortion by pill remotely. HB 2384, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would ban public funding or tax credits from being used to provide, pay for, promote, provide coverage of or provide referrals for abortions. It also would ban state universities and community colleges from using state funding or tuition money to train students to perform abortions. Both bills passed with a 40-18 vote mostly along party lines, with all Republicans and Democrats Catherine Miranda of Phoenix and Anna Tovar of Tolleson voting in support. Tovar and Miranda didn’t explain their votes. Rep. Matt Heinz, D-Tucson, a hospital doctor, spoke out against both measures, at one point even suggesting that the Legislature place an outright ban on abortion and let the courts decide rather than waste time considering abortion bills instead of the state’s suffering budget. Lesko said she introduced her bill to close a loophole that is allowing taxpayer dollars to fund abortions through the Working Poor Tax Credit despite a state ban on using public money for the procedure. That tax credit is an individual income tax credit that Arizonans can contribute to groups that provide assistance to the working poor. Democrats argued that voluntary tax donations in Arizona aren’t considered by the courts to be taxpayer money. “If organizations want to continue to qualify for donations through the Working Poor Tax Credit, then they can’t refer, promote or provide abortions,” Lesko said. “They have the choice.” Rep. Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said Arizonans “do not want the abortion industry receiving any tax benefits for their life-ending work.” Heinz said the bill would cause the University of Arizona College of Medicine to lose accreditation for its obstetrics and gynecology program because the measure would no longer allow schools to use state funding or student tuition dollars to teach abortion procedures. “Two hundred residents who are currently actively training will actually have to leave,” Heinz said. “Their training will be forfeited and it will be like the program never existed.” Lesko said she met with the bill’s stakeholders after they expressed concern and it was amended in the Health and Human Services Committee, but Heinz said he was still hearing from concerned Arizonans during the Monday afternoon meeting. Lesko said that health centers would still be able to distribute literature about all options for a pregnant woman without being considered as promoting abortion. Officials from Planned Parenthood Arizona have said that its abortion services are self-funded, so it would be family planning and other medical services for the working poor that would be affected by the donation limits rather than abortions. Democrats introduced amendments on both bills but none passed. Yee said her bill aims to protect women’s health and safety. “It’s about making sure they have the information at hand to make an informed decision,” she said, and seeing an ultrasound or hearing a heartbeat “allows them to consider the real impact of abortion.” The bill would also change the definition of abortion to include abortion by pill, placing facilities offering that option under the same accreditation requirements as facilities that perform surgical abortions, and ban the use of telemedicine to perform abortion by pill. Democrat Katie Hobbs of Phoenix said offering ultrasounds before abortions is already standard practice. “The one-hour time frame is arbitrary, not necessary and attempts to micromanage patient care,” she said. Several Democrats also opposed the bill’s provision to change the definition of abortion to include abortion by pill, saying it would restrict access for women seeking that type of procedure. Hobbs said limiting access would make Arizona “return to the days of illegal, back-alley abortions where there are no standards of care and no concern for the safety of the women obtaining these procedures.” Planned Parenthood Arizona officials have said Yee’s bill would force it to limit services in some areas and that its abortions services are self funded, so family planning and medical services are what would be affected by the limits on tax credits. Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said abortion by pill shouldn’t be regarded as an easy or safe option. “This is not like taking an aspirin; this is a potentially dangerous procedure,” he said. “The women who receive this procedure have the same rights that the women who deserve full surgical procedures should have.”

– The Arizona State Senate is considering two bills that would further limit abortions, including one that could force the University of Arizona to shut down its obstetrics and gynecology program. HB 2384 includes a ban on using state funding or tuition money for abortion training at state universities and community colleges. One Democratic state representative, who is also a hospital doctor, explained that if the University of Arizona is no longer allowed to teach abortion procedures, the OB-GYN program would lose its accreditation. “Two hundred residents who are currently actively training will actually have to leave,” he tells Cronkite News Service. “Their training will be forfeited and it will be like the program never existed.” (Jezebel explains that abortion training is required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.) The state House also approved a bill that would require doctors to perform an ultrasound before an abortion, pointing out the fetus and offering the woman a chance to listen to its heartbeat. Both bills head to the state Senate.

The chain held a giant liquidation sale over the weekend "before we close the stores for good," it said in a statement. But RadioShack, which operated over 7,300 stores at the company’s peak, will now only have 570 stores in total after the Memorial Day weekend closures.

– As we all headed back to work after the Memorial Day weekend, little did we know that our options for purchasing germanium diodes, walkie-talkies, and electrolytic capacitors were starting to cruelly be yanked away. RadioShack has shuttered more than 1,000 of its storefronts since the holiday weekend and says it will have only 72 company-owned locations by Thursday, though USA Today was given a list that showed just 70, mostly in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. There will still be 500 or so dealer-owned stores that carry RadioShack-branded products. It's an anticlimactic fadeaway for a chain that used to be one of the most well-known and ubiquitous electronics retailers in the country—it once boasted more than 7,000 stores—and it was done in by online shopping, filing for bankruptcy twice within a two-year span, per USA Today. Fortune laments the online "carnage" that played out on Twitter as RadioShack offered a massive liquidation sale over the weekend, in which it opted for "unadulterated bleakness" as it tried to answer a question spurred by today's social media: "How do you toast a brand's final days when the world is watching?" Tweets included photos of empty store display equipment now up for purchase, as well as products with hugely slashed prices and "grab-bag" events. "This could be your last chance to shop at #radioshack. See if a location near you is closing forever!" read one of the store's posts. A press release offered a similarly poignant announcement: "Many … nostalgic items will be up for auction over the next 30 days." (So much for Nick Cannon helping transform the retailer into the "must visit electronics destination.")

If the film shortchanges us, it’s in terms of the all-star cast we would like to see longer. And Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), reduced to an automaton as a result of PTSD, has become generic. Traumatized by the torture-induced brainwashing that crippled Peeta, Katniss wants nothing more than to bring her high-tech bow and arrows within striking distance of the nation’s despicable President Snow (Donald Sutherland, as before in chillingly evil form). The President of the Resistance, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), is in favor of using Katniss for maximum political value, even if that means turning her into a martyr. There are even stronger jolts in a battle scene at the capitol that produces horrific civilian casualties. Director Francis Lawrence, who did a good job with the action scenes in Catching Fire (he helmed all of the Hunger Games films except the first one), is unable to replicate his success here. In “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2,” one character describes the popular young woman at the forefront of the citizens’ revolt as “mythic.” You said it.

– Katniss navigates a booby-trapped Capitol in the hope of assassinating evil President Snow in Mockingjay Part 2, the final installment of the Hunger Games series, based on Suzanne Collins' novels. Is it a fitting farewell? Here's what critics are saying: "The film is not just a good, exciting, emotionally involving story, but an allegory that fits inside our present cultural bubble. In an era of terror and waterboarding, this is a science fiction film about people under siege in their own War on Terror," writes Colin Covert at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "The plot is minimalist but … the final showdown delivers a hearseload of thrills" so that when the credits finally roll, it's "a regretful farewell." "The focus is overwhelmingly on Katniss … and it's to Jennifer Lawrence's immense credit," writes Tom Long at the Detroit News. "She can run about in super-hero mode then suddenly drop down five notches or strip herself bare emotionally. She has been the best possible Katniss," he raves. But Lawrence isn't all there is to enjoy. The film is "explosive, mostly true to the text, complex, and chock full of action." It "should more than satisfy the franchise's many fans." Sara Stewart is on an entirely different page. "It hurts to see the Girl on Fire go out on such a lukewarm note," she writes at the New York Post. Mockingjay Part 2 "manages to give us everything we've been waiting for and still underwhelm." Stewart is particularly perturbed that the final book was split into two films, as well as a major plot point that "is downplayed here to an extent that, I felt, betrayed or at least misread Collins' story." But at least "there's still the pleasure of watching Jennifer Lawrence." "I feel more exhausted than fulfilled," writes James Berardinelli at Reel Views. Mockingjay Part 2 is "more polished" than Part 1, but "the pace is uneven and there's a sense that the series has hung around too long." It "feels like every other dystopian motion picture" and though "an anticlimactic ending … makes a strong political point about the moral ambiguity of war," it's "not cinematically satisfying." Though "all the individual story lines are wrapped up and there's a nice little epilogue."

The March edition of "Women, Church, World" _ the monthly magazine of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano _ is denouncing how nuns are treated... (Associated Press) VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican magazine has denounced how nuns are often treated like indentured servants by cardinals and bishops, for whom they cook and clean for next to no pay. The March edition of "Women Church World," the monthly women's magazine of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, hit newsstands Thursday. The article, based on the comments of several unnamed nuns, described how some work in the residences of “men of the Church, waking at dawn to prepare breakfast and going to sleep once dinner is served, the house is in order and the laundry cleaned and ironed”. The author of the article wrote that what most saddened one of the nuns she talked to was that “they are rarely invited to sit at the table they serve” and made to eat in the kitchen by themselves. REUTERS/Max Rossi The article in the monthly “Women, Church, World”, remarkable for an official Vatican publication, described the drudgery of nuns who do work such as cooking, cleaning and waiting on tables for cardinals, bishops and priests. Pope Francis, who is said to read the magazine, has raised the matter of women’s roles in the church before, but his concerns have yet to be translated into concrete changes. The March edition of "Women Church World" drives that home, with a lead article "The (nearly) free work of sisters," by French journalist Marie-Lucile Kubacki, the Rome correspondent for the La Vie magazine of the Le Monde group. “Behind all this is still the unfortunate idea that women are worth less than men, and above all that the priest is everything while sisters are nothing in the church,” Sister Paule said in the article. Sister Marie noted that many nuns from Africa, Asia or Latin America who come to study in Rome hail from poor families, whose extended care is often paid for by their congregations.

– In a move that both the AP and Reuters call "remarkable," an official Vatican magazine run by women is directly criticizing the Catholic Church for its treatment of nuns in its March issue. "Until now, no one has had the courage to denounce these things," says Lucetta Scaraffia, editor of Women's Church World. "We try to give a voice to those who don't have the courage to say these words publicly." In an article written by French journalist Marie-Lucile Kubacki called "The (Nearly) Free Work of Sisters," nuns going by pseudonyms say their lives of service more often resemble indentured servitude, the New York Times reports. They describe days of cooking and cleaning—waking before, and going to bed after, the cardinals, bishops, and priests they serve—for pay that is "random and often modest," when they're paid at all. The nuns say that beyond the money, the problem is their work isn't valued. One nun says they "are seen as volunteers to have available at one's calling," and that leads to abuse. Another says they cook for and wait on the clergy but "are rarely invited to sit at the tables they serve," and that's what hurts her the most. One nun talks about sisters with PhDs in theology and other subjects who are nonetheless assigned to domestic work. One sister says the problem is that the church still operates on the idea "that the priest is everything while sisters are nothing." The AP states that Women's Church World "is increasingly becoming the imprint of the Catholic Church's #MeToo movement." The March issue, centered on "Women and Work," also looks at the gender pay gap, lack of women in leadership roles, and more.

| Getty Education Real estate deal brokered by Bernie Sanders' wife sinks Vermont college Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife made a big-ticket purchase during her tenure as head of a small, private college in Vermont — and, in the end, the institution got burned. The college’s board of trustees voted Friday to close after it was notified that a $1 million line of credit would not be renewed, Moore said.

– Monday was a very sad day for Burlington College in Vermont: The tiny liberal arts institution announced that it's closing this month under the "crushing weight of debt" of a land deal from Jane Sanders' time in charge, reports the Burlington Free Press. Bernie Sanders' wife, who ran the private college from 2004 to 2011, tried to boost enrollment in 2010 by buying 32 acres of land along Lake Champlain for a new campus. The land, including a 77,000-square-foot main building, was being sold by a Roman Catholic diocese that needed cash after being sued by abuse victims. But the college, which has around 70 students, was unable to attract enough new students to justify the $10 million purchase and ended up in deep financial trouble even after selling all but 8 acres of the land, Politico reports. "I believe the vision was enrollment would grow, which it did, but not at the level that would have allowed us to manage the financial debt we had incurred," Dean of Operations Coralee Holm told reporters on Monday. "So here we are." Neither Holm nor college President Carol Moore criticized Sanders, who reportedly received a $200,000 severance package, for her role in the college's financial problems. The Wall Street Journal notes that Burlington College, like many small colleges, had serious financial woes long before Sanders took charge. "I thought it was going to happen for some time," says the school's former chair of the film and media department. "It's a very, very, very small college without an endowment."

– The NSA's controversial trove of phone metadata "has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism," a new analysis of 225 terrorism cases from the nonprofit New America Foundation has concluded. Most of the cases it looked at were cracked using old-fashioned investigative tools, like tip-offs from family or community members, or the use of informants, the Washington Post reports. Bulk surveillance had "only the most marginal of impacts," helping to initiate at most 1.8% of cases. The government argues that the NSA database allows it to respond rapidly. But in the main case it cites to defend the program—in which a man was convicted of sending money to Somali terrorists—the FBI waited two months to act on the NSA's tip. The report largely backs up President Obama's advisory panel. Obama will announce proposed reforms for the program Friday. But while he could stop the program on his own, he's expected to instead suggest a public-private hybrid program to replace it—which will require always elusive Congressional approval, Politico reports.

Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina have been booted to the undercard in Thursday night’s Republican primary debate as the number of main-stage candidates was cut to seven by stricter polling criteria. The seven candidates who will appear on the main stage in North Charleston, S.C., are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. “I’m not going to be in South Carolina.” Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum were also left out of the prime time debate and were invited to the “under card” forum. On Monday, Fox Business Network, the host of the debate, announced on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” the qualifiers for the main stage, and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Carly Fiorina — who have both been slipping in recent polls — did not make the cut. The candidate lineup for the 9p ET @FoxBusiness #GOPDebate on Thursday, January 14th: pic.twitter.com/mKHykPBzdm — Fox News (@FoxNews) January 12, 2016 To qualify for the prime-time debate based on the network’s criteria, the candidates had to either have placed in the top six in national polls, based on an average of the five most recent national polls recognized by Fox News, or have placed within the top five based on the average of the five most recent state polls in Iowa or New Hampshire. Fox Business outlined specifically which polls were used in a subsequent statement to reporters, saying the outlet used "the most recent national and state polls from non-partisan, nationally-recognized organizations using standard methodological techniques." And for the second debate back in September, CNN added criteria to benefit Fiorina after it became clear that Fiorina’s surge in the polls after her performance in the first undercard debate wouldn’t be sufficient to land her on the main stage for the second gathering. Minutes before the announcement, Mr. Paul said in an interview with CNN that after being told he would not make the main debate, he informed the network that he would not participate in the undercard debate, reiterating a promise he had made last month.

– Fox Business Network says it analyzed no fewer than 17 polls before delivering some bad news to Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul: The candidates have been relegated to the undercard for Thursday night's GOP debate. To make the cut, candidates had to place either in the top six in national polls or in the top five in Iowa and New Hampshire, reports the New York Times. The main debate will feature Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump, with Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum taking part in the earlier debate at what has become known as the "kids' table." The demotion is a massive blow to both candidates, and Paul—who made the cut for the previous five GOP debates—is refusing to take part in the undercard debate, Politico reports. In a statement, his campaign said the polls were both wrong and flawed. "To exclude candidates on faulty analysis is to disenfranchise the voter," the statement said. "Creating 'tiers' based on electoral results of real votes might make sense but creating 'tiers' on bad science is irresponsible." There has been no comment yet from Fiorina, who was promoted to the main stage in September after a strong performance in the first undercard debate, Politico notes. (During the last undercard debate, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki had a lot to say about Donald Trump.)

"We are talking about the loss of the biggest living organisms on the planet, of the largest flowering plants on the planet, of organisms that play a key role in regulating and enriching our world."

– In what one researcher calls a "very, very disturbing trend," new research finds that the planet's oldest trees have started dying at 10 times the normal rate, a change that could greatly damage the planet's ecosystems and biodiversity. Researchers blame logging, development, drought, and climate change for the decline of 100- to 300-year-old trees, reports AFP, a new reality found at all latitudes on every continent that is home to them. "Just as large-bodied animals such as elephants, tigers, and cetaceans have declined drastically in many parts of the world, a growing body of evidence suggests that large old trees could be equally imperiled," said the study's lead author. Among the trees at risk: mountain ash in Australia, pine trees in America, California redwoods, and baobabs in Tanzania. And the decline endangers more than just the woods, as up to 30% of birds and animals in some areas find shelter in those large trees. "Their loss could mean extinction for such creatures," says the researcher.

Shanika S. Minor, who was on the FBI’s “most wanted” fugitives list after being accused of killing a nine-months-pregnant Milwaukee woman and then fleeing, has been captured in North Carolina, authorities said Friday. Minor was apprehended early this morning at a motel near the airport in Fayetteville after someone called the FBI Public Access Line giving her possible location, the FBI said. After the shooting, Minor fled the scene and had not been seen since, the FBI said. The FBI said the incident began as an argument over loud music and perceived disrespect between two former high school classmates, then escalated into violence. A woman on the FBI's Top 10 Fugitives list, wanted for allegedly shooting and killing a 9-month-pregnant woman, was captured early this morning at a motel in Fayetteville, North Carolina, according to the FBI in Milwaukee. She was taken into custody without incident and is is currently being held at the Cumberland County Detention center, according to the FBI. Minor’s mother lived in the same duplex as Perry and had told Minor about the neighbor playing loud music at unreasonable hours, according to the FBI. “Most people who witnessed the incident thought that was the end of it,” FBI special agent Chad Piontek said in a statement Then, in the early morning hours of March 6, Minor allegedly returned to the neighborhood and confronted Perry in the hallway near the back of the pregnant woman’s home. “Witnesses said Minor reached over her mother’s shoulder and fired her gun, striking the woman in the chest.” Perry, fatally wounded, quickly retreated back inside of her home, where she died in front of her two children, the FBI said. The woman was due to give birth within the week, the FBI said, noting that the woman and her unborn child both died before emergency medical personnel arrived. Police issued an arrest warrant for Minor, charging her with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide — one for Perry’s death and one for her unborn child’s death. Minor fled the scene and was believed to be receiving help from family or friends in another state. I just want you to come forward.” She added: “I just want her caught so I can rest.

– Shanika Minor became just the 10th woman ever to make the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list when she was added this week for allegedly killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child, the Washington Post reports. On Friday, she was captured. Back in March, Minor's mother complained about her neighbor, 23-year-old Tamecca Perry, playing loud music. According to NBC News, Perry and Minor had gone to high school together. Minor confronted Perry outside her Milwaukee duplex, allegedly while holding a gun and challenging Perry—nine-months pregnant and due in five days—to fight. Police say Minor shot Perry despite Minor's own mother trying to shield the victim. Perry died in front of her two children. Her unborn child died with her. Minor, 24, hadn't been seen since the shooting, ABC News reports. Authorities believe she had family or friends helping her avoid capture. The FBI was offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to Minor's capture, and someone called early Friday with a tip that she was staying at a motel near the airport in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Minor was arrested without incident. She has been charged with intentional homicide, intentional homicide of an unborn child, and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. “The brutal murder of a mother and her unborn child is reprehensible,” the Post quotes a statement from the FBI as saying.

They say without too much food up high, bears are coming down to lower elevations. Therefore, bears often become aware of groups of people at greater distances, and because of their cumulative size, groups are also intimidating to bears. Getting your food will only encourage the bear and make the problem worse for others. Bears can run as fast as a racehorse both uphill and down. Be especially cautious if you see a female with cubs; never place yourself between a mother and her cub, and never attempt to approach them. Black Bears: If you are attacked by a black bear, DO NOT PLAY DEAD.

– When it is impossible to escape from an attacking black bear, the National Park Service advises hitting the animal in the face—and it was a strategy that may have saved the life of North Carolina man Sonny Pumphrey. The 78-year-old says he was in his driveway when a mother bear and two cubs showed up, CTV reports. He says the cubs ran off, but the mother reared up and then charged him. "She made a charging dead run at me. That sucker was eyeball-to-eyeball to me," the Haywood County man tells WLOS. He says he "hit her right dead on the point of the nose the first shot," but when he did, the bear dropped down and started trying to bite him on the hip. Pumphrey says he kept hitting the bear and she kept trying to bite him. "She got a hold of me and then shook me a little bit, then she let go and she took a swat at me," he says. "And when she took a swat at me she knocked me about eight feet over on the concrete." The bear ran off when Pumphrey's wife, Betty, and their Yorkshire terrier heard the noise and came outside to investigate. Pumphrey survived without serious injury, though he received a bite to the hip and will need to have rabies shots. "We have a lot to be thankful for because we were both very, very lucky," Betty Pumphrey says. (This woman was attacked by a bear less than a week after starting her "dream job.")

on behalf of James Shaw Community NEW YORK, NY Yashar Ali James Shaw Jr. put his life on the line when he took on the gunman who killed four people at a Nashville area Waffle House.

– Survivors of Sunday's shooting at a Tennessee Waffle House have another reason to thank the man who disarmed suspected shooter Travis Reinking. A GoFundMe page launched by James Shaw Jr. has raised more than $155,000 for families of victims, including the four people killed before Shaw was able to toss the shooter's gun over a counter, reports CNN. A separate GoFundMe page launched by journalist Yashar Ali has raised even more—almost $169,000 as of this writing—for Shaw, despite him brushing off the hero label. The Waffle House in Antioch is helping out, too. It says all proceeds from sales over the next 30 days will go to victims' families, per CBS News.

The election will confirm Putin's argument that to improve life in Russia, the country needs continuity more than it needs drastic change, independent media, political opposition, environmental activism or rights for homosexuals and other minorities. Eighteen years later, Putin's friends run the economy and Russia's military is resurgent. The once-feisty Russian media has fallen silent. Crimea is framed as Russia's biggest victory in the Putin era, a restoration of might and righting of historical wrongs. Most are also not convinced that Trump is doing enough to address the problem.

– US leaders are hitting out at Vladimir Putin after statements he made appeared to some to be anti-Semitic. The Russian president was defending his government in an interview with NBC News' Megyn Kelly Saturday when he said Jews may have been behind 2016 election meddling. "Repulsive Putin remark deserves to be denounced, soundly and promptly, by world leaders," Sen. Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut wrote on Twitter following the interview, per the Washington Post. Blumenthal's sentiment was echoed widely by fellow Democrats in Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and others. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that some Democratic legislators have directly demanded that President Trump take a tougher stance on Russia following its leader's comments. Putin critics have also assailed the leader for his apparent implication that Russian Jews aren't true Russians. "Maybe they are not even Russians, but Ukrainians, Tatars or Jews, but with Russian citizenship, which should also be checked," Putin said, referring to whoever was behind the meddling. Putin went on to suggest a string of other possibilities behind the election disruption, including France or Germany or even America itself. "Maybe the US paid them for this," he said. "How can you know that? I do not know, either."

As nearly 100 customers sickened after eating at Chipotle last year have reached undisclosed financial settlements with the restaurant chain, one plaintiff's appetizing addendum has been made public: Coupons for free burritos. “In 25 years of doing foodborne illness cases, I’ve never had a client ask for coupons for the restaurant they had gotten sick at,” said William Marler, an attorney with Seattle-based Marler Clark who represented 97 Chipotle customers. “In fact, some (clients) had gone back to the restaurant and they would call me and say, ‘Do you think it’s bad that I went back and got a burrito?’ ” Marler said Chipotle financially settled 96 cases between March and last week.

– Chipotle customers are a surprisingly loyal bunch. NBC News reports a 19-year-old woman who racked up approximately $40,000 in medical bills after contracting E. coli from eating at the restaurant chain settled for an undisclosed sum—and dozens of free burritos. "In 25 years of doing food-borne illness cases, I’ve never had a client ask for coupons for the restaurant they had gotten sick at,” the woman's lawyer, Bill Marler, tells the Denver Post. He says his client maintained her love of Chipotle through her entire ordeal and requested free food as part of the settlement. She ended up with "a couple dozen" coupons for free burritos, Marler says. He says of the 96 Chipotle victims he's represented, many have already gone back to eat at the restaurant.

– Last night, President Obama delivered the Libya speech that some have long been calling for. How did the world take it? A sampling of reactions: Jim Geraghty wasn't impressed with the way Obama's "pretty-sounding phrases" were strung together "without really getting at the questions most skeptical Americans have: why intervene here and not in other places?" Ultimately, he writes in the National Review, "Obama’s speech amounted to, 'Look, I realize none of you understand my decision making, but at the end of the day, you can rest easy knowing I’m right.'" Yes, Obama used some "sleight of hand," like "citing the UN Resolution as an external reason for war—when the US lobbied hard for it," writes Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic. "But essentially Obama was challenging those of us who opposed this decision to ask ourselves: Well, what would you do?" Even so, Sullivan wasn't completely persuaded: "The major objection—what happens now?—was not answered affirmatively by the president." OK, so the address "didn't address every future contingency," Mark Halperin admits. But, writing in Time, he offers six reasons the speech was still "strong," including Obama "believed every word of it" and "George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence." The latter, of course, meaning that "Obama’s vision of how to engage the democracy moment in northern Africa and the Middle East is in the strong bipartisan tradition and current centrist positions of American foreign policy." William Kristol was reassured by the speech: "The president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn’t shrink from defending the use of force or from appealing to American values and interests," he writes in the Weekly Standard. "Furthermore, the president seems to understand we have to win in Libya. I think we will."

Trump nails Rubio: I have beautiful hands One of Marco Rubio’s latest barbs played right into Donald Trump’s “beautiful hands.” Trump has begun referring to the Florida senator as “Little Marco,” so Rubio went after the businessman’s “small hands.” “He’s like 6-2, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5-2,” Rubio said at a rally in Roanoke, Virginia, on Sunday. All of which means that joining Trump’s circus, as Rubio’s own adviser puts it above, really may be the only option for taking down Trump. Whatever one thinks of Hillary Clinton—and, goodness knows, everyone has an opinion—she knows a lot about government.

– The size of Donald Trump's hands has been a thing for decades, stretching back to the days when Graydon Carter dubbed him a "short-fingered vulgarian" in Spy magazine. In his November editor's letter for Vanity Fair, Carter wrote that over the years, and as recently as last year, Trump would send him the occasional photo, "generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers." Those photos did little to convince Carter, and now Marco Rubio has apparently taken up the mantle. Politico quotes Rubio as saying the following on Sunday: "[Trump is] like 6-2, which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5-2. Have you seen his hands? You know what they say about men with small hands—you can’t trust them." While in Ohio on Tuesday, Trump swung back, trotting out one of his favorite adjectives in the process: "Actually I’m 6-3, not 6-2—but he said I had small hands. ... I never heard—I never heard that one before. I've always had people say, 'Donald, you have the most beautiful hands.'" In noting Rubio's new tactic, the Washington Post writes he "may be on to something." It reports on recent polling that identified the type of attack that would be most likely to raise serious doubts about Trump among GOP voters. The winner: attacks framing Trump as an "egomaniac and entertainer that cares more about gaining power and fame than helping the country." More policy-minded attacks—think immigration, climate change, big oil—were far less effective. (See previous Trump-Rubio slams, including one about "wet pants," here. And John Oliver's tirade on Trump also addresses his hand size.)

Once the Model 3 is rolling, Mr. Musk sees Tesla moving on to produce electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes — pickups, semitrailer trucks, and a fast and roomy car for families called the Model Y. Mr. Musk, in contrast, has promised investors and customers that Tesla will be able to produce the Model 3 in high volumes, sell versions for as little as $35,000 and ring up hefty profits. The level of dedication and creativity was mind-blowing. On Sunday, Musk sent an effusively worded communication to all employees, thanking them for their hard work, adding that the company became "a real car company" in the process. Not only did we factory gate over 5000 Model 3’s, but we also achieved the S & X production target for a combined 7000 vehicle week! CNBC obtained a copy of the email Musk sent to Tesla staffers, which can be read in full below: From: Elon Musk To: Everybody Subj. I think we just became a real car company … Thank you for your hard work and dedication, Elon

– "I think we just became a real car company." So reads a celebratory email from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to employees after the company met a long-elusive production target of making 5,000 Model 3 sedans in a week, reports CNBC. In a regulatory filing, Tesla says it churned out 5,031 of the sedans—marketed as the company's entry to mass sales—in the last week of the second quarter, reports CNN. The milestone came after a series of well-publicized problems and Musk's own admission of a "production hell." Monday's news pleased investors, with the stock up 5%. In a lengthy story, meanwhile, the New York Times provides a look at the extremes Musk has gone to in order to ramp up production, including installing a third assembly line under a tent at its plant in Fremont, Calif. One nugget of the story getting attention is that Tesla's engineers did away with 300 of about 5,000 welds in the Model 3 underbody after concluding they were unnecessary. That involved reprogramming the robots assembling the underbodies to skip them. Musk also has hired hundreds of workers to replace robots who turned out to be inefficient at certain tasks, such as guiding bolts through holes as part of the rear brakes. "We believe in rapid evolution," Musk tells the Times in an interview—it took place at 3am Thursday, the only time the company said he'd be available. "It’s like, find a way or make a way. If conventional thinking makes your mission impossible, then unconventional thinking is necessary."

The electric car company’s shares soared 11% to $379 after Musk’s so-called “Tesla tweet” that he had “funding secured” to buy out investors at $420 share. Elon Musk's tweets investigated for possibly breaking law: reports Read more On Friday, after the New York Times published an interview with Musk that sparked concerns over his health, Tesla’s stock dropped 9%, bringing Tesla down 19% from their pre-tweet level. The big players on the short side have a conviction that the stock is going to tumble to bankruptcy.” During the markets’ initial acceptance that Musk would be able to raise around $70bn to take Tesla private, the rise in stock added $6.4bn to Tesla’s market cap. Musk tweeted on 7 August that he had ‘secured’ funding to take the company private, but so far no offer has been made Investors betting on a fall in Tesla’s share price have made $1.09bn since 7 August, when Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted he had “secured” funding to take the troubled company private. Needham analyst Rajvindra Gill said the real valuation of Tesla shares is “closer to $200”, or 30% lower than the $292 share price at the market’s opening on Monday, and 40% lower than on 6 August, the day before Musk’s now-infamous tweet. Financial and technology analytics firm S3 Analytics in a report on Friday estimated Tesla shorts are up $1.2 billion since Musk’s August 7 tweet, and $1 billion of that came on Friday alone, the day after Musk’s Times interview. “I don’t think you get to tell people you’re going to make 20,000 Model 3s a week when you know that’s not going to be the case,” Chanos added, referring to the problems hampering production of the mass-market Model 3. He has accused them of being saboteurs who “want the company to die”. According to S3, that would bring short sellers up $3bn for the year but still down historically. That’s part of what the shorts are focusing on — and what’s got them in Musk’s head.

– The SEC is investigating Elon Musk's now-famous tweet about taking Tesla private, and one reason is to see whether he set out to punish investors who were betting against his company, reports Vox. If so, he did not succeed. Though Tesla's share price rose from $350 to $387 the day of his Aug. 7 tweet, it has since fallen below the initial mark. (It was around $321 on Tuesday afternoon.) Both Vox and the Guardian estimate that short sellers have made more than $1 billion since the tweet. The latter newspaper also notes that Musk has a history of battling with short sellers, a battle that has become increasingly "vituperative and personal." For example, he approved of a taunting tweet, a pair of shorts, sent to one fund manager.

In this 2012 photo, Rear Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch, commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, speaks to the crew aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Spec. 3rd Class Heath Zeigler) For more than two years, the Navy’s intelligence chief has been stuck with a major handicap: He’s not allowed to know any secrets. Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch has been barred from reading, seeing or hearing classified information since November 2013, when the Navy learned from the Justice Department that his name had surfaced in a giant corruption investigation involving a foreign defense contractor and scores of Navy personnel. Worried that Branch was on the verge of being indicted, Navy leaders suspended his access to classified materials. They did the same to one of his deputies, Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, the Navy’s director of intelligence operations. More than 800 days later, neither Branch nor Loveless has been charged. But neither has been cleared, either. Their access to classified information remains blocked. Although the Navy transferred Loveless to a slightly less sensitive post, it kept Branch in charge of its intelligence division. That has resulted in an awkward arrangement, akin to sending a warship into battle with its skipper stuck onshore. [Epic Navy bribery scandal shows how easy it can be to steal military secrets] Branch can’t meet with other senior U.S. intelligence leaders to discuss sensitive operations, or hear updates from his staff about secret missions or projects. It can be a chore just to set foot in colleagues’ offices; in keeping with regulations, they must conduct a sweep beforehand to make sure any classified documents are locked up. Some critics have questioned how smart it is for the Navy to retain an intelligence chief with such limitations, for so long, especially at a time when the Pentagon is confronted by crises in the Middle East, the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula and other hotspots. “I have never heard of anything as asinine, bizarre or stupid in all my years,” Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and historian, said in an interview. In an op-ed in Navy Times last fall, Polmar urged Navy leaders to replace Branch and Loveless for the sake of national security. He cited complaints from several unnamed Navy officers that “intelligence management is being hampered at a moment of great turmoil.” Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, left, and Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch. (U.S. Navy via Associated Press) It’s a touchy subject for Navy brass, who have struggled to replace Branch. Twice in the past 14 months, they have taken steps to nominate a new intelligence chief — who must be confirmed by the Senate — but haven’t followed through. There’s no indication that a successor will be in place anytime soon. In a statement, Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler, the Navy’s chief spokeswoman, said the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation of Branch and Loveless “has not impacted the Navy’s ability to manage operations.” She said the two still perform managerial duties while their civilian and military deputies handle the classified aspects of their jobs. Branch and Loveless declined interview requests placed through the Navy. In addition to serving as chief of Navy intelligence, Branch holds the title of the Navy’s chief information officer, oversees the Navy’s 55,000-member Information Dominance Corps and is in charge of many cybersecurity programs. Privately, some Navy leaders acknowledged that dealing with the fallout from the Justice Department’s investigation has been a nightmare, and that they never anticipated the case would drag on so long. “We had the understanding that this was going to resolve itself pretty quickly,” said a senior Navy official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing federal prosecutors. “We have no actionable information on Admiral Branch, good, bad or otherwise. All we know is that he’s wrapped up in this somehow.” “Until these things resolve themselves, we’re kind of frozen,” the senior official added. “Is it optimum? No, it’s not optimum. But it’s where we are.” Cigars and suckling pigs Branch has long been a star in the Navy’s officer corps. A fighter pilot by training, he has flown combat missions over Grenada, Lebanon, the Balkans and Iraq. He’s perhaps best known for his leading role in a 10-part PBS documentary, “Carrier,” an inside account of life aboard the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, which he commanded in 2005. In July 2013, he was promoted to become a three-star admiral and director of naval intelligence. But he would soon become hamstrung in the job. About the same time, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Justice Department were intensifying an investigation of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, a Singapore-based firm that had resupplied U.S. Navy vessels at Asian ports for a quarter century. The company’s chief executive, Leonard Glenn Francis, was lured to the United States in a sting operation and was arrested at a San Diego hotel. A large and charismatic man known as “Fat Leonard,” he was charged with running a bribery scheme and defrauding the Navy of more than $20 million. An undated company handout photo shows Leonard Glenn Francis, aka “Fat Leonard,” defense contractor who supplied U.S. Navy vessels in Asia for a quarter century. (Glenn Defense Marine Asia) Several Navy officials were arrested, including a senior NCIS agent who confessed to feeding inside information to Francis for years. As the case unfolded in federal court, prosecutors described in astonishing detail how Francis had bribed Navy officers with prostitutes, cash-stuffed envelopes, lavish hotel stays, spa treatments, and epicurean dinners featuring champagne, Cuban cigars, Kobe beef and Spanish suckling pigs. In exchange, prosecutors said, some Navy officials provided Francis with classified information and steered Navy vessels to ports he controlled so he could overcharge the U.S. government for fuel, food, water and other supplies. The investigation escalated quickly as federal agents traced Francis’s interactions with hundreds of Navy personnel over the previous decade. On Nov. 8, 2013, late on a Friday night, the Navy announced that Branch and Loveless had been swept up in the case. The Navy gave no details about what they were alleged to have done. Although the Navy said there was no evidence that either admiral had compromised military secrets, it suspended their access to classified material, saying the move was “prudent given the sensitive nature of their current duties.” ‘Good time on Leonard’s dime’ Little information about their predicament has surfaced since then. One year later, Branch issued a statement to the Navy Times in which he said investigators were examining work performed by Glenn Defense Marine Asia while he served as the commander of the Nimitz. He didn’t elaborate, but said he looked forward to the end of the inquiry “so that I can resume in full my service to the Navy and the country.” Justice Department officials declined to answer questions about their scrutiny of Branch or to discuss why the inquiry has taken so long. “This remains an active, ongoing investigation that covers conduct that spans more than a decade and involves a massive amount of evidence, multiple countries, tens of millions of dollars in fraud, and millions of dollars in bribes and gifts to scores of U.S. Navy officials,” Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, said in a statement. [Three U.S. naval officers censured in ‘Fat Leonard’ corruption probe] A source close to the investigation said more than 100 Navy personnel and other people remain under investigation for potential criminal, financial or ethical violations. “The sheer number of people involved here is extraordinary,” the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing. A second source close to the investigation said that Branch met Francis 16 years ago, when Branch was the executive officer of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, and that the pair stayed in regular contact. The source said Francis has also known Loveless for many years, dating to his deployments in Asia as an intelligence officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and as intelligence chief for the Navy’s 7th Fleet, based in Japan. Although it is against federal ethics regulations to accept gifts from contractors, the Justice Department is focusing on Navy personnel who in turn did Francis’s bidding by sharing inside information or enabling him to overcharge the government. “Some guys were just having a good time on Leonard’s dime,” the second source close to the investigation said. “Other guys were passing on classified information.” Prosecutors have suggested that more arrests are likely. Seven defendants, including Francis, have pleaded guilty so far in federal court. Federal corruption charges also are pending against a Navy commander and a senior Pentagon civilian. In addition, a former Navy contracting official living in Singapore was arrested there last month. The extent of the scandal has been deeply humiliating for the Navy. Last week, at the sentencing of an enlisted sailor who forked over military secrets in exchange for cash and electronic gadgets, Rear Adm. Jonathan A. Yuen, the chief of the Navy Supply Corps, said he was mortified by the revelations in court. “I do not have the words to express the depth of the betrayal,” Yuen testified. “No amount of money is worth betraying our nation, our Navy or our shipmates.” In addition to those facing criminal prosecution by the Justice Department, the Navy has been investigating an unspecified number of people suspected of violating military regulations. In February, for instance, the Navy officially censured three admirals for dining at “extravagant” banquets and accepting other gifts from Francis when they were assigned to the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group a decade ago. [Powerful admiral punishes suspected whistleblowers, still gets promotion] Three stars or two stars With Loveless’s status in limbo, the Navy transferred him to another position in December 2014. As the corporate director for information dominance, he still works for Navy intelligence. But he deals primarily with issues that don’t require a security clearance, such as personnel and training, officials said. The Navy has twice taken steps to replace Branch as well, but for reasons that remain unclear, hasn’t gone through with it. In November 2014, the Navy prepared a nomination package for Rear Adm. Elizabeth Train to become the service’s intelligence head. But her promotion was put on hold after someone filed a complaint against her with the Navy inspector general. Rear Adm. Elizabeth L. Train. (U.S. Navy) Details of the complaint couldn’t be learned, but Pentagon officials said Train was cleared of wrongdoing by the inspector general. Her nomination was finally sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee in September. Nothing has happened since. Pentagon officials said that her nomination has been placed on the back burner and that she’s not scheduled for promotion until July, although they declined to explain why. Such a delay could work in Branch’s favor. If he remains in his current job until July, he will have enough service time to qualify to retire as a vice admiral. If forced to leave before then, it’s more likely that he would have to retire at a lower rank as a two-star admiral, with a smaller pension. The senior Navy official disputed that Branch’s rank and retirement eligibility was influencing the timetable to replace him. “That has not been a factor whatsoever,” the official said. Even if Branch were cleared of wrongdoing by the Justice Department and the Navy tomorrow, he would face a much longer wait to regain access to military secrets. Pentagon officials said his security clearance would have to be restored by a separate arm of the bureaucracy — the Defense Department’s Central Adjudication Facility — in a process that usually takes months.

– The intelligence chief for the US Navy is named Twig Branch, and he hasn't been allowed to see any major intelligence for more than two years. This isn't a lost chapter from the satirically bizarre Catch-22—it's the truth behind the scenes of a major military corruption investigation, the Washington Post reveals. Vice Adm. Ted Branch ("Twig" is his nickname) has been barred from accessing classified info since November 2013, which is when the Navy got wind from the Justice Department that Branch may be entwined with a case involving bribery of Navy officials by a Malaysian defense contractor. Deciding it was too risky to keep him abreast of the most top-secret info, the Navy stripped him—and one of his deputies, Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless—of that access in anticipation of his possible indictment. Meanwhile, the investigation drags on. While Loveless was moved to a lower-level position, Branch was kept in place—a move that has baffled military analysts. "I have never heard of anything as asinine, bizarre, or stupid in all my years," historian Norman Polmar tells the Post. (Polmar has begged the Navy to rethink this arrangement.) It does seem, at the very least, unwieldy: Not only is Branch barred from meeting with other top US intelligence officials about sensitive projects, he can't hear updates about them, either—and even strolling into a co-worker's office to say hi means that colleague has to "make sure any classified documents are locked up," per the Post. A Navy spokeswoman simply says that the bribery probe "has not impacted the Navy's ability to manage operations" and that Branch's sensitive tasks are managed by his deputies. (Read the entire odd story here.)

The iPad has been bolstered by its connection to Apple's App Store, which sells videogames and other software, and Apple's iTunes store, where people can easily download music, videos and books. That's one of the big problems with the Motorola Xoom, for example -- nice, big screen, but no legit source of movies to stream. Amazon.com Inc. has battled Apple Inc. over digital books, digital music and mobile applications. One issue is whether customers will want to buy both the tablet and Kindle, which is viewed as a dedicated-reading device for bookworms. Amazon has long said the Kindle is its best-selling device, though it has declined to disclose sales. And Amazon has sold more Kindles over the last several years than most companies have sold of any tablet-shaped devices. Amazon is ambitious and sees ahead of slower competitors. The tablet market is far from figured out long-term. Amazon's tablet will have a roughly nine-inch screen and will run on Google's Android platform, said people familiar with the device. In March, Apple sued Amazon alleging the online retailer had violated the trademark on the name "App Store."

– Amazon will have a tablet computer of its own out by October to compete with the iPad, reports the Wall Street Journal. Insiders say the Android device will have a 9-inch screen but no camera. Amazon also plans two Kindle updates: One version will have a touch-screen and the other will be an improved (and cheaper) version of the current model. Some quick reaction: Sam Biddle, Gizmodo: Not a huge surprise, but the 9-inch screen "says a lot," he writes. "It's not looking to simply be a better Nook Color, but a real tablet fighting the iPad and every other major slate thing out there." Click for the full column. Nicholas Carlson, Fast Company: "We're pretty sure Amazon will be a big player in the tablets market," he writes, referencing this earlier story.

A newborn baby will have to undergo a year of medical tests for HIV and hepatitis because he was accidentally put in the wrong bassinet by a Minneapolis hospital and then breastfed by the wrong mother. The mix-up happened Wednesday in Abbott Northwestern Hospital when Tammy Van Dyke's little boy Cody was accidentally switched to the wrong bassinet in the nursery. Jagow also said Van Dyke was not told of any changes to procedures to prevent this from happening to other families. Although the tests came back negative, Abbott Northwestern Hospital told Van Dyke her newborn son would have to undergo blood testing every three months for a year. Allina spokeswoman Gloria O'Connell said Tuesday she's unaware of any such mix-up occurring at Abbott since the electronic bands started being used. Van Dyke gave birth to son Cody Stepp on Dec. 3, 2012, and the boy was handed over to another mother in the center and breast-fed, the suit said. "This has always been her primary concern," he said.

– In early December 2012, Tammy Van Dyke of Apple Valley, Minn., gave birth to a healthy baby boy. But shortly before she was set to take baby Cody home from the hospital two days into his life, she learned that a nursery mix-up had resulted in another mother breastfeeding her child. This led to "unnecessary medical treatment, tests and expenses, and severe mental injury and emotional pain and suffering," according to a lawsuit she has just filed against Allina Health System's Abbott Northwestern Hospital, which has admitted to the mistake, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In the end, after a year of quarterly blood tests to ensure Cody had not been exposed to infectious diseases such as HIV, Cody came out in the clear. When the mixup was announced in 2012, hospital spokeswoman Gloria O'Connell told ABC News at the time the tests were "just a precaution." But it was still "horrible," said Van Dyke, who is seeking at least $50,000, plus whatever compensation a court might decide. "Two nurses had to go in through veins in his tiny little arms." Meanwhile, the other mother, who'd had twins, reportedly told hospital staff who brought her Cody that she didn't think the baby was hers, reports KARE 11, but they assured her he was. Then she saw his anklet and discovered the mixup. "She was just as distraught as I was," Van Dyke says. Two months after the mixup, "we began using electronic identification bands for the mother and infant that must be matched when returning the infant to the mother," says an Abbott rep. (A baby switched at birth in 1994 was awarded $2 million.)

The kidnapper, a man by the name of Brian David Mitchell, led Smart out of the house and marched her for hours through the forest to a camp where his wife, Wanda Barzee, was waiting. Smart, now 28, was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2002 and held captive for nine months before being rescued. "We don't know if she's been trafficked, or what the scenario is, but the family still holds out great hope that she is out there," Ed Smart said.

– From one Elizabeth to another, an appeal to be strong and hopeful emerged Monday as Utah marked the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of 26-year-old Elizabeth Laguna-Salgado, per NBC News. "We will find you. We are looking, and we won't give up," Elizabeth Smart Gilmour, who herself was kidnapped at age 14, said at a press conference with Laguna-Salgado's family and her own father, Ed Smart. "Survive. Do whatever you need to survive." Laguna-Salgado vanished one year ago Saturday after leaving a local language center in Provo during daylight hours to make the 18-block walk to her apartment; she never arrived. She had only been in Provo for a couple of weeks after returning from a mission in Mexico for the Mormon church. Her family believes she's being held against her will, and the Smarts are involved because they know how important continued exposure is in cases where leads are starting to fall off and memories are beginning to fade. "I have faith in humanity and this community and that we can bring her home," said Smart, now 28, per KUTV. "You brought me home. Why can't it happen again? Why can't another miracle happen?" Ed Smart concurs, with KUTV noting the news conferences he held on an almost daily basis while his own daughter was missing. "The family still holds out great hope she is out there," he says. "It is hard to conceive that somebody did not see something out there." Laguna-Salgado is described as 5 feet 4 inches tall, about 125 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. (Smart's baby girl recently celebrated her first birthday.)

"You need to experience the platform to understand what you're talking about if you do want to challenge the validity of what the company's doing."' For those of us who have been paying attention to Facebook and its litany of scandals over the past few months, Zuck’s testimony in front of committees from the Senate and a (distinctly more lucid) one from the House told us nothing new. Senators and representatives know that Facebook directly affects a huge proportion of their constituents who were shocked — SHOCKED — by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

– Now that Mark Zuckerberg has finished two days of testimony on Capitol Hill, one clear theme is emerging in coverage after the fact: Members of Congress, particularly senators in their 70s and 80s, seem to lack a fundamental understanding of how the company works. That should "give everyone serious pause if they think that federal legislation is going to solve the serious and growing issues of technology run amok," writes Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post. "Legislators don’t seem to understand it well enough to even ask the right questions, much less fix the problem." Sullivan and Shara Tibken of CNET both point to one question in particular by 84-year-old Sen. Orrin Hatch as a prime example. "If [a version of Facebook will always be free], how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?" asked Hatch. It took Zuckerberg only four words to explain this basic tenet of Facebook's business plan: "Senator, we run ads." Tibken notes that Zuckerberg and staffers behind him grinned at the response. Other lawmakers seemed similarly flummoxed by other aspects of not just Facebook but tech in general. At Futurism, Victor Tangermann writes that it's clear that "many Congressmen and Congresswomen have some studying to do," and he suggests that voters start keeping this mind. "We need to value digital literacy in the people we elect," he concludes. "That is, if we don’t want to have another Cambridge Analytica on our hands."

A massive leak of documents shines new light on the fabulous fortunes of the Russian president’s inner circle A network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth $2bn has laid a trail to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. On Sunday, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung released what it’s calling the Panama Papers, amounting to 2.6 terabytes of data, 11.5 million files The reveal concerns Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonesca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, which specializes in managing money in offshore jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands. The offshore trail starts in Panama, darts through Russia, Switzerland and Cyprus – and includes a private ski resort where Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina, got married in 2013. The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian and the BBC. Most notably, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been connected to accounts totaling $2 billion, taken out in the name of his closest friend and associate, musician Sergei Roldugin.

– A massive document leak apparently shows how friends of Vladimir Putin hid about $2 billion in secret, offshore accounts—money that likely ended up benefiting Putin's family, the Guardian reports. The documents from Mossack Fonseca, an offshore law firm in Panama, show wealthy Russians moving money through Russia, Switzerland, and Cyprus in ways that generated vague "consultancy" charges and other payments worth millions of dollars. "This is not business, this is creating the appearance of business in order to continually move and hide assets," says a money-laundering expert. The deals also involve Putin's best friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin—who seems to control at least $100 million in assets—and the Igora ski resort, where Putin is said to reside. The scheme revolves around a bank that's closely linked to Putin and his allies. The bank, Bank Rossiya, apparently received huge, unsecured loans from Russian state-owned banks and funneled billions into offshore transactions. About $1 billion went through a shell company created by Mossack Fonseca; among other things, the company bought a $6 million yacht and loaned $11.3 million to the owner of the Igora resort. But none of the alleged players have admitted to anything. "Guys, to be honest I am not ready to give comments now," says Roldugin, who mysteriously owns 3.2% of Bank Rossiya. "These are delicate issues." The so-called "Panama Papers" also link other world leaders to Mossack Fonseca shell companies, including Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and Icelandic PM Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, Gawker reports.

The University of Notre Dame disclosed Thursday that the student made a multimillion-dollar demand from the school after complaining about the academic coach, who was named in a lawsuit filed by the student last week. In the investigative summary, it claims the student stayed with the daughter at the "academic Coach's" house on multiple occasions. It also details a specific incident last summer when the mother allegedly ordered her daughter and the student to "go upstairs immediately and have sex." The investigator's report goes on to allege the daughter told the student - "You know, if you break up with me, I am going to kill you, right?" The report states the academic coach at one point asked the student about the last time he and her daughter, a student at a nearby school who also works at Notre Dame, had sex. Full statement Paul J. Browne, from Vice President, Public Affairs & Communications at Notre Dame: The student identified as John Doe in the lawsuit complained on August 26 to the university’s Office of Institutional Equity about an employee’s conduct. Although there was no professional relationship between Roe and Doe through the University, due to the nature of the allegations the University put Roe on leave pending resolution of the investigation. Full statement Caitlin Rourk, spokeswoman for Jane Roe family: There are two sides to every breakup and that this is being played out in the media is incredibly painful to us. "While we may not be a perfect family, we are a close-knit one and welcomed this young man into our lives at a time when he, himself said, he couldn't rely on anyone else." (AP) — An academic coach fired by the University of Notre Dame after a student accused her of coercing him into having unwelcome sexual encounters with her daughter issued a statement Thursday describing what happened as merely a breakup and saying her family is heartbroken he chose to harm them in such a public manner.

– New allegations have emerged against a former Notre Dame academic coach who is accused of coercing a student into having a sexual relationship with her daughter. The unnamed complainant's lawyers yesterday released a six-page report by an investigator hired by the university that USA Today reports contains "graphic details." The student, who is black, alleges the white coach told him she "always wanted to have sex with a black man," per WSBT, and at one point asked him when was the last time he and her daughter had had sex. When he responded that it had been a few days, he says the woman told them to ''go upstairs immediately and have sex," reports the AP, which notes she also allegedly provided condoms and paid for hotel rooms. (The report also says the daughter and student "engaged in sexual activities very often, to the point of being unnatural.") The student also alleges the woman's daughter said, ''You know if you break up with me, I am going to kill you, right?'' The student's lawyer says he released the report—which doesn't describe how the coach allegedly coerced the student—because a university rep called the initial accusations "gratuitous" and "unfounded." "We hope that they do correct the statement," he says. Notre Dame says the student asked for millions from the school after filing a complaint on Aug. 26. The school immediately put the academic coach on leave; she was fired on Oct. 5. "There are two sides to every breakup and that this is being played out in the media is incredibly painful to us," the unnamed academic coach says in a statement. We "welcomed this young man into our lives at a time when he, himself said, he couldn't rely on anyone else." Her lawyer adds the allegations in the report "do not support the allegations he made in the original suit."

(Photo: PR NEWSWIRE) Story Highlights The new premium section, Mint, will be on coast-to-coast flights beginning next year JetBlue, other airlines, vying for the high-paying frequent flier Airline was founded in 1999 and pledged to treat all its passengers equally JetBlue, the single-class carrier whose brand was built partly on the idea that it treats all its passengers equally, will launch a new premium class next summer. Available only on flights between New York and San Francisco and New York and Los Angeles, the new premium section, dubbed "Mint," will feature lie-flat seats, its own tapas-style menu, and customized amenity kits. American is planning to become the only U.S. airline that offers both first- and business-class cabins on transcontinental flights. Meanwhile, United is upgrading its premium service fleet that flies between New York and Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco, outfitting the premium cabins with lie-flat seats, faster in-flight Wi-Fi, and on-demand entertainment at each seat. A 'SUITE' WITH A DOOR The new premium class will have lie-flat beds that JetBlue says are the longest and widest being flown domestically, as well as the only "suites," with a door that can be shut for privacy. Unlike the premium cabins on many other airlines, JetBlue says that passengers won't be able to grab a perch in the Mint section through a frequent-flier upgrade. Eventually every flight between New York and Los Angeles or San Francisco will have a self-service snack bar where passengers can get soft drinks and bites to eat throughout their trip. Starting on its new Airbus A321 jets, which will feature the new premium section, there will be power outlets at every seat along with an increase from 36 to 100 channels of live TV. "We wanted to make sure our core customer didn't think we were walking away from them," JetBlue's SVP of marketing and commercial strategy Martin St. George told USA Today. Mint cabins will only be available on transcontinental flights from New York to San Francisco and New York to Los Angeles.

– JetBlue has famously eschewed the idea of first-class seating with the mantra that all its passengers get equal treatment. Until now. As USA Today reports, the airline is creating a first-class option in everything but name—instead, call it Mint. The swankier seating will be available next summer but only on cross-country flights between New York and Los Angeles, and New York and San Francisco. Think seats that flatten out for sleeping and better food. The strategy behind the move is that plenty of people who regularly need to make that long flight have deep enough pockets to pay for more comfort. By ignoring that, the airline was losing serious money. "JetBlue is competing with several major carriers who are all targeting the same lucrative demographic of transcontinental fliers," writes Christina Chaey at Fast Company. One analyst in the USA Today story refers to the competition on the two routes affected as a "nuclear arms race."

Since then, copycat Secret Santas have followed suit, giving thousands of dollars for layaways in other stores around the country. At Kmart stores across the country, Santa is getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by impoverished parents. The Detroit News reports that the same Kmart has had Secret Santa donations toward layaways of at least $150 every day since the original mysterious stranger arrived.

– A nice fad this holiday season: Secret Santas are going around to Kmarts and Walmarts and paying off the layaway accounts of random strangers. It's happening all over, including stores in Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, South Carolina, and Montana. The AP, NPR and Time round up examples of the anonymous holiday cheer. A typical one: A woman in her 30s went into a Kmart store in Michigan and asked if she could help pay off accounts. She picked three that had toys, shelled out $500, and left only $10 in each account. She also left a note with the receipts, saying "Happy Holidays from a friend."

They lost that contest, but their idea turned out to be a winner more than 15 years later: Taco Bell has netted more than $1 billion in sales from its eerily similar product, the Doritos Locos Taco, which it launched in 2012. “I would just like someone to recognize that it was a good idea." Taco Bell even ended up using Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch flavors for its Doritos Locos, the two flavors his team pitched, Rader said. “It’s not uncommon at all to come up with a new product idea that goes nowhere, but then years later pops up.” A letter to Watt (then Andrea Simkins) from a Taco Bell executive offering feedback on her team's idea. The former interns say they don't want any money for their idea. Rob Poetsch, Taco Bell's director of public affairs and engagement, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post that regardless of the team members' claims, the Doritos Locos Taco was created, developed and brought to market by teams at Frito Lay and Taco Bell. "Good ideas can come from anywhere, but an idea without execution does not make a successful product," he wrote. But a lawsuit filed by federal prison inmate Gary Cole in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on May 15 alleges that the story behind the taco is a lie. And Todd Mills, an Arkansas dad who launched a Facebook campaign in 2009 asking Taco Bell to make a Doritos taco, was invited to taste it in early testing, according to USA Today. "We are honored to have had his support through the Doritos for Taco Shells Movement on Facebook, and we admire his strength and optimism during his recent battle. “We actually came up with a really great idea that was marketable. Looney described Mills as "a guy with a good idea and a good heart."

– While interning for Taco Bell's ad agency in the summer of 1995, four college students took part in a competition. Their idea—which didn't win, yet might seem familiar: a taco shell made out of ... Doritos. Of course, Taco Bell ultimately came out with just that roughly 17 years later, and its insanely successful line of Doritos Locos Tacos has netted the firm more than $1 billion in sales. Andrea Watt, one of the former interns, tells the Huffington Post she doesn't want money ("I’m sure I signed away that anything I pitched to them was their property anyway"), but she wouldn't mind at least some credit—for an idea that she recalls being told wasn't "really that marketable." The Huffington Post has all sorts of proof of their idea, including promotional materials the team created. They suggested calling the product "Dorito Tacos," charging 79 cents, and having Matthew Perry shill for the item. Another team member, Mark Rader, adds that the two flavors the team pitched—Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch—ended up being the first two flavors offered by Taco Bell. A former account supervisor for the ad agency at the time says "the client certainly saw all the pitches." But others have claimed to be the brains behind the taco, including a man whose 2013 obit widely touted him as having pitched the idea to Frito Lay in 2009, and a former prison inmate who's actually suing over the matter; he claims a mystery person stole a letter containing the idea from the USPS and gave it to Taco Bell. In response to the new claims, a rep for Taco Bell pointed out that concept and execution are two different things. Indeed, it ultimately took years of unusual testing to bring the taco to life.

Please enable Javascript to watch this video A 23-year-old woman is mourning the loss of her unborn baby girl and husband after a driver, with two prior DUI convictions, allegedly ran a stop sign in Victorville and crashed into her family's car. Alexander Delapaz-Perez, 56, was under the influence Saturday about 1:45 a.m. when he ran a stop sign on Amethyst Road at Mojave Drive and broadsided a Honda Accord, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. In the Accord were driver Angel Barranco, 35; his wife, Barbara Velasco, 23, who was seven months’ pregnant; and her mother, Monica Alarcon, 42, all from Adelanto, authorities said. Barranco was taken to a local hospital where he later died from his injuries. Family members told KTLA Velasco's unborn baby girl, who was due in two months, did not survive. Velasco's mother, Monica Alarcon, 42, also suffered major injuries in the crash and was taken to a local hospital. My goal is to help raise funds for theBarranco/Velasco/Alarcon Family to help them cover expenses incurred during this difficult time.4. Perez was charged Tuesday with one count of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and two counts each of driving drunk and causing injuries and driving with a blood alcohol content above 0.08% and causing injuries. Drivers who have prior DUI convictions and are responsible for fatal crashes while intoxicated can be charged with murder in some circumstances and the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office is reviewing if Perez is eligible, officials said.

– A driver with two prior DUI convictions was involved in a crash in Victorville, Calif., early Saturday that caused a woman to lose both her husband and her unborn daughter. Angel Barranco, 35, was driving with his 7-months-pregnant wife and his mother-in-law around 1:45am when their Honda Accord was broadsided by a Hyundai sedan that allegedly ran a stop sign, KTLA reports. The Hyundai was being driven by 56-year-old Alexander Delapaz-Perez, who is suspected of once again driving while intoxicated, the Los Angeles Times reports. Barranco died at a nearby hospital; his 23-year-old wife, Barbara Velasco, lost the couple's unborn baby girl and suffered severe injuries of her own. Velasco's mother, 42-year-old Monica Alarcon, also suffered major injuries. Delapaz-Perez was treated for minor injuries and then booked on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving under the influence causing great bodily injury. The San Bernardino County district attorney's office is looking into whether Delapaz-Perez can be charged with murder, as is sometimes possible when a driver with prior DUI convictions causes a fatal crash while under the influence. A GoFundMe campaign has been set up for the family, which includes two other children. (An unborn baby survived a car crash that killed his mother.)

Story highlights A judge orders the police officers held for 30 days Two U.S. Embassy employees were wounded in the incident A Mexican Navy official was also in the vehicle that was fired upon Police officers are under investigation on attempted murder and other charges A Mexican judge has ordered the detention of 12 federal police officers accused of opening fire on a U.S. diplomatic vehicle south of the capital last week. The officers will be transferred from the attorney general's regional office in Cuernavaca, the capital of the state of Morelos, to a provisional detention center in Mexico City. Following the shooting incident Friday, two U.S. Embassy employees, described by a senior U.S. government official as U.S. citizens, were taken to a hospital with nonlife-threatening wounds. The US government employees and the Mexican navy captain were heading to a military facility when a carload of gunmen chased and fired at them on a dirt road, the navy and public security ministry said in a statement. When the US vehicle veered back onto a highway, three more cars joined the chase and shot at the SUV, which was riddled with bullets near Tres Marias, a town 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital. The officers are being treated as suspects over Friday's incident, when a sport-utility vehicle with diplomatic plates was chased by four cars south of Mexico City and hit by a hail of bullets. In addition to the attempted murder charge, the detained police officers are facing charges of abuse of authority, damage to property, bodily harm and abuse of public duty, according to Gonzalez. The Mexican Public Security Secretariat has acknowledged in a statement that the officers fired on the armored vehicle with diplomatic plates while they were looking for a group of suspected criminals.

– A dozen Mexican federal police officers who riddled a US Embassy car with bullets on Friday are being held while they are investigated on charges including attempted murder, CNN reports. Two American citizens employed by the embassy were injured in the shooting south of Mexico City, as was a member of the Mexican Navy who was with them in the vehicle. The embassy SUV had diplomatic plates, and US authorities have described the attack as an ambush, reports AFP. The diplomatic vehicle was headed for a naval installation when it was approached by a vehicle whose occupants brandished weapons, according to a statement from the Mexican Navy. "The driver of the diplomatic vehicle used evasive maneuvers, and when it returned on the highway, the passengers in the attacking vehicle opened fire on the diplomatic vehicle," and the attackers were joined by three other vehicles, the statement said. A lawyer for the detained officers says police were investigating a kidnapping when they encountered the embassy vehicle, which ignored orders to stop.

– Apparently tattooing pets is a thing. At least, it's popular enough that New York passed a bill on Wednesday banning owners from inking up companion animals. Piercings are off the table, too, according to the bill, which was introduced in 2011 by Linda Rosenthal, an assemblywoman who read an article about pierced "gothic kittens" for sale online, the New York Daily News reports. The kittens being hawked on eBay were pierced down their entire backs, Rosenthal's chief of staff explains to CNN. (The Pennsylvania groomer selling them ended up being convicted of animal cruelty.) Governor Andrew Cuomo is now expected to sign the bill into law. It grants an exception only for tattooing that serves as a form of identification—though animal rights advocates are pushing "microchipping" as an alternative—or indicates a medical procedure has been carried out. Such tattooing can only be performed by a licensed veterinarian. (Another win for animal lovers in New York: They can now be buried with their pets.)

Last Wednesday, Faull filed a formal complaint against McAfee with the mayor's office, asserting that McAfee had fired off guns and exhibited "roguish behavior." "I think it's the finest drug ever conceived, not just for the indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild comedown." Advertisement He opened the current issue of the Belize Times, holding the paper down with one arm to keep it from blowing away, and showed me a photo of two men. McAfee's purported interest in extracting medicine from jungle plants provided him a wholesome justification for building a well-equipped chemistry lab in a remote corner of Belize. In the comments section to my last Gizmodo piece, reader fiveseven15 writes: "mdpv is serious shit. "Stuffmonger's claims were discredited," a senior moderator later wrote, "and he vanished." i played with mdpv for about two weeks, then started seeing shadow people in the corner of my eye, and what amphetamine heads call 'tree-cops'... its essentially really, REALLY f-ed up meth." Advertisement McAfee's intensive use of psychosis-inducing hallucinogens would go a long way toward explaining his growing estrangement from his friends and from the community around him. It's a commitment to an idea that just doesn't interest me." According to Marco Vidal, head of the national police force's Gang Suppression Unit, McAfee is a prime suspect in the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, who was gunned down Saturday night at his home in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye. Writing under the name "stuffmonger," a handle he has used on other online message boards, McAfee posted more than 200 times over the next nine months about his ongoing quest to purify psychoactive drugs from compounds commercially available over the internet. UPDATE: John McAfee is now the primary suspect in a murder investigation involving his neighbor in Belize. Advertisement Jeff Wise is a science journalist, writer of the "I'll Try Anything" column for Popular Mechanics, and the author of Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger. For more, visit JeffWise.net.

– Police in Belize are on the hunt for John McAfee—the man who lent his name to the famous antivirus company—because they suspect him of murder. According to Gizmodo, which just last week ran a stunning piece about McAfee's weird transformation into a jungle gangster, McAfee is suspected of killing American expatriate Gregory Faull, a longtime rival who was found dead yesterday, apparently of a gunshot wound. Faull had recently complained to the mayor about McAfee's "roguish behavior," including firing off guns around him. McAfee has become estranged from the tech world. He told Gizmodo that he'd gotten mixed up with Belizean gangsters and that there had been "in the last year alone, eleven attempts to kidnap or kill me." One possible explanation for this slide: It appears that since 2010 he has been posting online about his attempts to purify the drug called "bath salts," which he describes as, "the finest drug ever conceived, not just for its indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild comedown."

On his radio show on Wednesday, Mr Bannon responded to the president's criticism by saying he was a "great man". "You know, I support him day in and day out," he said on the show produced by right-wing Breitbart News, which he heads. Story highlights "The President of the United States is a great man," Bannon said Wednesday Trump's attorney said that he has sent a cease and desist letter to Bannon (CNN) Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is reiterating his support for President Donald Trump after his former boss blasted him over explosive comments he made in a new book.

– President Trump slammed Steve Bannon as having "lost his mind" Wednesday—but instead of firing back at his former boss, Bannon described Trump as a "great man." The former chief White House strategist declined to comment at length on Trump's remarks during his Breitbart News Tonight radio show Wednesday night, CNN reports. In response to a caller, Bannon said: "The president of the United States is a great man. You know, I support him day in and day out." In his blistering statement Wednesday, Trump, outraged over comments attributed to Bannon in upcoming Michael Wolff book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, said his former campaign manager "has nothing to do" with him or his presidency. In other developments: Cease-and-desist. Trump's lawyers have sent Bannon a cease-and-desist letter, accusing him of violating a nondisclosure agreement by speaking to Wolff, the BBC reports. The letter warns that legal action is imminent because Bannon broke the agreement by "making disparaging statements and in some cases outright defamatory statements to Mr. Wolff about Mr. Trump, his family members, and the Company."

The piece referred to the complaint as the "Pigford Lawsuit" -- a nod to Breitbart's newest "obsession" and would-be vehicle for dragging Sherrod's name through the mud. The media devoured the Breitbart's version of story so voraciously that the NAACP denounced Sherrod and the Obama administration fired her. The Department of Agriculture had discriminated against black farmers for many years in deciding how loans and grants were distributed. Not surprisingly, the meme does not appear to have caught on.

– Shirley Sherrod has followed through on plans to sue Andrew Breitbart following an out-of-context video clip he released last year that ended up getting her fired from her USDA job. The suit holds that Breitbart’s video "damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work," Salon reports. The conservative media honcho "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech." Following the filing of the suit, one of Breitbart’s websites posted a piece labeling it “the Pigford Lawsuit,” referencing a government legal settlement with black farmers that Breitbart has attacked. “I can promise you this: neither I, nor my journalistic websites, will or can be silenced by the institutional Left, which is obviously funding this lawsuit,” he said. Last year, Breitbart’s video excerpt of an NAACP speech suggested Sherrod had discriminated against white farmers, prompting a media uproar—but the discrimination claims were false. (Click for more on Breitbart's obsession with the Pigford settlement.)

Story highlights Olympian Oscar Pistorius is due in court Tuesday Family: "The leaking of evidential material" does not advance the legal process Pistorius is charged in the killing of his girlfriend Photos released last week purportedly show the bloodied bathroom where she died The family of Olympian Oscar Pistorius said Monday they are "shaken" by the "graphic images" leaked to the media last week that purportedly show the blood-spattered bathroom where the double amputee track star fatally shot his girlfriend in February. Despite questions being raised over the professionalism of the South African police, Pistorius' family said it trusts the legal process and believes the evidence will acquit him. "The leaking of evidential material into the public domain, before the court case, does not advance this process." Pistorius, 26, is charged with killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of February 14. The graphic photos of the crime scene were published by Sky News on Friday and show a trail of blood leading from a bathroom; blood on the walls, stairs and a couch inside the house, and a Valentine's Day card with "Ozzy" -- Steenkamp's nickname for Pistorius -- written on it. They also show a bloody trail leading out of the toilet and into the main bathroom and a footprint in blood, as well as two marks on the door that Sky says indicates bullet holes. CNN has not been able to independently confirm the authenticity of the photos, and police spokesman Brigadiere Phuti Setati declined to comment on how Sky News obtained the pictures. File In this Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013 file photo Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius stands inside the court as a police officer looks on during his bail hearing at the magistrate court in Pretoria, South... (Associated Press) File In this Friday, Feb. 22 2013 file photo Olympic athlete, Oscar Pistorius , in court in Pretoria, South Africa, for his bail hearing charged with the shooting death of his girlfriend. Oscar Pistorius is "battling" with his grief for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, his uncle said Sunday, while the athlete's family criticized the broadcasting of graphic images that purport to show the bloodied site of the fatal shooting on Valentine's Day. Since then, there have only been two reported public sightings of him: a grainy cellphone photograph of the runner wearing carbon fiber blades at his practice track, plus a visit to a Johannesburg restaurant. He insists it was only when he went back into the bedroom and realised his girlfriend was not in bed that it dawned on him it was her in the toilet. Pistorius' uncle, Arnold Pistorius, later said that his nephew would be ready for trial, adding he had "no doubt in my mind that he's not a murderer." "As a family we fully stand behind Oscar as he prepares to appear in court this Tuesday," the family said. "We believe in him, love him and will support him every step of the way in what lies ahead," the statement said.

– Days ahead of Oscar Pistorius' first court date since February, his family says they are "shaken" by leaked pictures of the bathroom where girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead. The photos obtained by Sky News (which are here and graphic) appear to show the blood-stained cubicle where Steenkamp was shot three times and a bloody trail leading out of the cubicle into the main bathroom, the AP reports. "It has always been our plea that the legal process be allowed to run its course with integrity," the Pistorius family said in a statement. "The leaking of evidential material into the public domain ... does not advance this process." Family members say they are fully behind the double-amputee runner, who says he shot Steenkamp after mistaking her for an intruder. At the hearing this week, South African prosecutors are expected to ask for a postponement of the case pending further investigations, CNN reports.

– A grandmother in Queens and her two grandkids are alive today because of an off-duty firefighter's quick thinking. The New York Daily News reports Roben Duge, who's been with the FDNY for five years, had just emerged from the subway on his way home Thursday night, and as he approached his own place, he spotted sooty black smoke coming out of his neighbor's home. He had no gear and no time to get any—but that didn't stop Duge from rushing into the home and yanking out 54-year-old Linda Mitchell, a stroke victim who needs a cane to get around, and the two children, one of whom apparently started the fire by accident in the basement. Duge says he was "reacting off instinct," which doesn't surprise his wife, Crystal. "It's just who he is," she says. "He's Superman." Duge said all he could think about was his own three kids as he rushed to save the trapped residents. "The lady could stand up, but she needed assistance walking," he says, per Firehouse.com. "The kids were screaming, scared to death." After he got them to safety, firefighters doused the flames in about 30 minutes. Duge is trying to deflect the praise now coming his way. "We operate in organized chaos and we do put ourselves at risk," he says, but "I believe there's a higher power watching over me when I do put myself in these situations."

Miss Seattle insists it was the weather, not the city, that prompted her to make some suddenly controversial comments about the city. A controversy erupted over the weekend when it was learned Jean-Sun Hannah Ahn had tweeted "Ugh can't stand cold rainy Seattle and the annoying people" back in December. She is a Seattle native, and says she truly loves Seattle "with all of my heart and the support these past months in the Seattle community has just been indescribable."

– Jean-Sun Hannah Ahn was crowned Miss Seattle Saturday night, but unfortunately, she forgot to delete this tweet from back in December: "Take me back to az!!! Ugh can't stand cold rainy Seattle and the annoying people." Seattle-dwellers were up in arms after the tweet was discovered by KIRO-FM over the weekend, but Ahn explains to the station that it was the weather, not Seattle itself, she was complaining about. (Another tweet: "Ew I seriously an [sic] hating Seattle right now...") Ahn, a Seattle native, posted the tweets shortly after moving back to the city following four years in Arizona, she explained on the Dori Monson Show. "It was a transitional period for me," said the former Miss Phoenix, adding that it was difficult to get used to all the rain after Arizona's constant sunshine and she was experiencing "culture shock." But, she insists, she is happy to be back in her hometown, and she says in the future she will call or text friends if she wants "to complain about something."

Certainly, Trump scored on optics, standing next to an elected head of state and declaring that both nations “recognize and respect the right of either country to build a physical barrier or wall.” But when it came to the central promise of his campaign — that Mexico would pay for the wall — Trump and Peña Nieto disagreed. There will be no amnesty.” Trump launched his campaign last June pledging to build a “great, great wall on our southern border” that the Mexican government would pay for. They don’t know it yet, but they're gonna pay for the wall.” Trump hailed the “great people and great leaders” of Mexico following his visit to Mexico City but insisted, “they’re going to pay for the wall.” “On Day One, we will begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall,” Trump said during a major speech on immigration in Phoenix after weeks of waffling on the issue that has been core to his campaign. “To all the politicians, donors and special interests, hear these words from me and all of you today: There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people,” Trump said. I absolutely believe it.” Shedding any pretense of softening his posture, Trump promised to protect American citizens, reaffirming his America First policy as he blamed President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton directly for violence perpetrated by illegal immigrants. Just days ago, Trump was praising the number of people deported under the Obama administration. Later, on Twitter, Peña Nieto said he had made clear to Trump at the beginning of their conversation that “Mexico will not pay for the wall,” a comment that prompted ridicule from the Clinton campaign. What we saw today from a man who claims to be the ultimate ‘deal maker’ is that he doesn’t have the courage to advocate for his campaign promises when he’s not in front of a friendly crowd.” Trump’s campaign responded in kind, with senior communications adviser Jason Miller insisting Wednesday’s meeting was only the opening part of a discussion and relationship-builder between both men. Podesta says "Trump choked" in what was his first opportunity to make good on "his offensive campaign promises." The Republican presidential nominee said after meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto that the pair had a substantive, direct and constructive exchange of ideas at the president's official residence in Mexico City. The Democratic presidential nominee adds, "That is not how it works." Wednesday was Trump’s opportunity to clean up his muddied position on border security and immigration, and he opened the day by dashing south of the border to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto — a bid to present himself as a tough contender, ready to make demands of his negotiating partners and get a better deal for America.

– Hours after returning from his trip to Mexico and a visit with that nation's leader, Donald Trump expounded on his immigration plan during a speech in Arizona. First and foremost was a familiar sentiment: "We will build a great wall along the southern border," Trump said to rousing cheers. "And Mexico will pay for the wall. They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay for the wall." (Mexico's president disagrees.) Some other main points of the speech, in which he promised to "break the cycle of illegal immigration and amnesty," via AP, Politico, and the New York Times: He said those currently here illegally have just one path to citizenship or legal status: "To return home and apply for reentry like anybody else." "We are going to end catch and release," he said, vowing that anyone caught illegally crossing the border will be detained and then returned home. "Zero tolerance" for immigrants who commit crimes. He promised that his administration would round up criminal offenders and begin shipping them home on day one. “You can call it deported if you want. The press doesn’t like that term. You can call it whatever the hell you want. They’re gone.” He promised to triple the number of ICE deportation officers and to create a deportation task force with a focus on those "criminal aliens." He also vowed to hire 5,000 border control agents and to expand the number of border stations. He said he would immediately cancel "unconstitutional executive orders" issued by President Obama that amount to "illegal amnesty." He would suspend visas for any countries that can't provide adequate screening. He would demand that other countries take back any citizens deported by the US. He would block federal funding for "sanctuary cities," singling out San Francisco at one point for what he sees as lax enforcement. He said the US will put in place biometric systems to better track immigrants. He said the US will intensify its "e-verify" program, designed to ensure that immigrants are eligible to work. So who can come to the US? "It’s our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants who are the likeliest to thrive, and flourish and love us."

Gothamist spoke with a source at MoMA who told them that the "Museum staff doesn't know she's coming until the day of, but she's here today. She'll be there the whole day. All that's in the box is cushions and a water jug." On random days this month, Tilda Swinton (actress, Bowie-enthusiast, badass) will be performing her 1995 piece "The Maybe," which consists of Swinton sleeping in a glass box. "The Maybe" was first performed in London in 1995 at the Serpentine Gallery; Swinton conceived the performance piece, and asked artist Cornelia Parker to collaborate on the installation. Here's what the museum has to say about the piece: An integral part of The Maybe's incarnation at MoMA in 2013 is that there is no published schedule for its appearance, no artist's statement released, no no museum statement beyond this brief context, no public profile or image issued. Those who find it chance upon it for themselves, live and in real—shared—time: now we see it, now we don't.

– Tilda Swinton is in a box, she's resting, and people are watching her. That's the gist of "The Maybe," a piece the actor is performing today at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Gawker reports. Only problem for art (or Swinton) fans is that she may or may not be there on any given day. As MoMA puts it: "An integral part of The Maybe's incarnation at MoMA in 2013 is that there is no published schedule for its appearance. ... Those who find it chance upon it for themselves, live and in real-shared-time: now we see it, now we don't." In case you're wondering, Swinton has only cushions and a jug of water in the box. She first performed "The Maybe" in London in 1995 and later Rome before bringing it to Manhattan. See photos at Gothamist.

Warning comes after two men killed in brutal attacks, with body parts thought to have been used in witchcraft because of belief that bald people are rich Police in Mozambique has warned that bald people could be the targets of ritual attacks, after the brutal killing of two men whose body parts were thought to have been used in witchcraft. The two bald men, one of whom was found with his head cut off and organs removed, were killed in a part of the country already notorious for the persecution of albinos. "Last month, the murders of two bald people led to the arrest of two suspects," national police spokesman Inacio Dina told a news conference in the capital Maputo. Albino Africans live in fear after witch-doctor butchery Read more “Their motivations come from superstition and culture: the local community thinks bald individuals are rich,” he said. The killings took place in Milange, in the centre of the southern African country, a few kilometres from the border with Malawi. The local police told AFP that the two victims were aged over 40. “One of them was found with his head cut off and his organs removed,” said Miguel Caetano, a spokesman for the security forces in the central province of Zambezia. The suspects arrested are two Mozambicans around 20 years old. According to their statements, the organs were to be used by healers in rituals to promote the fortunes of clients in Tanzania and Malawi, Caetano said.

– Police have issued a warning to bald men in Mozambique: They could be targeted for ritual attacks. Five men were recently murdered for their body parts, the BBC reports. "The belief is that the head of a bald man contains gold," a police commander explains. "[Suspects'] motive comes from superstition and culture—the local community thinks bald individuals are rich." One of the men, for example, had his head cut off and his organs removed so medicine men could use them in rituals believed to bring clients their own riches. Two suspects have been arrested in two of the murders, AFP reports. Police say the attacks are similar to ones that target albino people, who have also been known to be murdered for reasons related to witchcraft and healer rituals. These are the first such attacks on bald men in the region, but the Telegraph reports albino people have been subjects of more than 100 attacks in Mozambique since 2014, per the UN. (We're one step closer to predicting baldness.)

– Lookin' for some of them Paula Deen pots and pans, y'all? Act now, as in now, because QVC has "concerns" about "the unfortunate Paula Deen situation," and has "no immediate plans to have her appear" on its vaunted airwaves—which she uses to hawk aforementioned cookware. But the channel isn't exactly dropping her like a deep-fried potato, notes TMZ, saying in its statement that it is "closely monitoring these events and we are reviewing our business relationship with Ms. Deen." Food Network has already cut her loose, Lady's Brunch Burger or no.

Washington Police then received an anonymous tip about a 1986 Chevrolet K-10 pickup truck with damage to its front headlight More It eventually led to the arrest of Jeremy Simon, a 37-year-old man from the nearby town of Roy, who admitted to striking Ms Rainwater.

– Susan Rainwater was riding her bicycle in Eatonville, Wash., last Thursday morning when a vehicle came up from behind, veered off the road, and fatally struck the 66-year-old. The driver then left her for dead, police say; a passerby later found her body in a ditch after spotting her crumpled bike. Authorities pleaded for the public's help, tweeting a photo of a black car part the vehicle left behind in the hopes someone could identify it. That's when Reddit stepped in: The photo was posted on the subreddit /r/whatisthisthing, leading to hundreds of comments, Yahoo News reports. Car enthusiasts, mechanics, and other experts weighed in; ultimately, someone identifying himself as a Maryland State Vehicle Inspector determined it was a headlight part from a 1980s Chevrolet truck, KOMO News reports. Then police received an anonymous tip with the license plate number of a 1980s Chevy pickup truck with front end damage to the right-side headlight assembly. Investigators ultimately found and arrested Jeremy Simon, who drives a 1986 Chevrolet K-10; police say he confessed to hitting Rainwater. Simon, 37, allegedly told police he fell asleep at the wheel, thought he hit a mailbox and pulled over, but drove off in a panic when he saw the mangled bicycle because he didn't want to see a dead body, the News Tribune reports. Troopers allegedly found a small bag of heroin and a plastic straw in his pocket when he was arrested. He has been charged with vehicular homicide, hit-and-run resulting in death, and unlawful possession of a controlled substance. Washington State Police credited the Reddit tipsters on Twitter.

| Jason Dearen/AP Photo Trump’s EPA attacks AP reporter in personal terms The agency accused the reporter of an ‘incredibly misleading story’ about its Harvey response ‘from the comfort of Washington.’ President Donald Trump’s habit of singling out reporters for attacks is being adopted by his federal agencies, with the Environmental Protection Agency excoriating an Associated Press reporter in unusually personal terms on Sunday after the reporter wrote a story that cast the agency in an unfavorable light. “Once again, in an attempt to mislead Americans, the Associated Press is cherry-picking facts, as EPA is monitoring Superfund sites around Houston and we have a team of experts on the ground working with our state and local counterparts responding to Hurricane Harvey,” Bowman’s statement said. On Saturday, hours after the AP published its first report, the EPA said it had reviewed aerial imagery confirming that 13 of the 41 Superfund sites in Texas were flooded by Harvey and were “experiencing possible damage” due to the storm. The statement confirmed the AP’s reporting that the EPA had not yet been able to physically visit the Houston-area sites, saying the sites had “not been accessible by response personnel.” EPA staff had checked on two Superfund sites in Corpus Christi on Thursday and found no significant damage. “Teams are in place to investigate possible damage to these sites as soon flood waters recede, and personnel are able to safely access the sites,” the EPA statement said. The environment is very concerning, and we’ll get right on top of it.” At the Highlands Acid Pit on Thursday, the Keep Out sign on the barbed-wire fence encircling the 3.3-acre site barely peeked above the churning water from the nearby San Jacinto River. The bulk of Sunday’s EPA statement was unsigned. "We object to the EPA's attempts to discredit that reporting by suggesting it was completed solely from 'the comforts of Washington' and stand by the work of both journalists who jointly reported and wrote the story." Not only is this inaccurate, but it creates panic and politicizes the hard work of first responders who are actually in the affected area.” Story Continued Below The article in question, which was written by Biesecker and his AP colleague, Jason Dearen, noted that seven toxic Superfund sites around Houston had been flooded during Hurricane Harvey.

– Taking a page from the Donald Trump playbook, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency attacked a reporter by name for writing what they called an "incredibly misleading story" about the agency's efforts in Hurricane-ravaged Houston, Politico reports. The article, written Saturday for the AP by Michael Biesecker and Jason Dearen, reports that at least seven of the city's 41 Superfund sites (the most contaminated toxic waste sites in the country) had been flooded by rain from Hurricane Harvey and that the EPA had been unable to visit them, saying the sites "had not been accessible by response personnel." The article stated that AP journalists had accessed at least one of the sites by boat and others by "a vehicle or on foot." The EPA took issue with the article's claims in a statement released Sunday, saying, “Despite reporting from the comfort of Washington, Biesecker had the audacity to imply that agencies aren’t being responsive to the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey. Not only is this inaccurate, but it creates panic and politicizes the hard work of first responders who are actually in the affected area.” Later that day, the AP refuted the EPA's claims in a statement of its own, writing, "We object to the EPA's attempts to discredit that reporting by suggesting it was completed solely from 'the comforts of Washington' and stand by the work of both journalists who jointly reported and wrote the story."

A Philadelphia police sergeant who said he was shot last month by an unidentified black man in the city's Overbrook section actually fabricated the entire story and shot himself, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said this morning. Sgt. Robert Ralston, 46, confessed to making up the story and will have to pay the costs of the massive manhunt that followed, Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. Ralston has been suspended with intent to dismiss, but will not face criminal charges because granting immunity was the only way to obtain his confession, Ramsey said at a news conference. "He did not give a reason for doing that ... he denied that he was trying to get attention," Ramsey said. Ralston, a 21-year veteran, told police he was on patrol in the city's Overbrook section early on April 5 when he stopped two black men for questioning along some railroad tracks. He told investigators that one of the men put a gun to his head, but that he knocked the weapon away and suffered a graze wound to the shoulder when it fired, investigators said. Police spent hours combing the West Philadelphia neighborhood for possible suspects, but no one was formally questioned or arrested. Ramsey said it was fortunate that officers never stopped or arrested anyone matching Ralston's description of the gunman. Forensic evidence didn't match Ralston's story, and gunpowder on Ralston's shirt matched the kind of powder used by the department, Ramsey said. The Fraternal Order of Police had put out a $10,000 reward for information leading to the alleged suspect. "It's troubling in a lot of ways," Ramsey said. "It inflames racial tensions in our community, and that's certainly something we don't need."

– A white police sergeant in Philadelphia has admitted that he made up a story about being shot by a black assailant and instead purposely shot himself in the shoulder, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. "There's some speculation he did it to get attention, or to get transferred," said the city's police chief, who called it a "terrible and embarrassing chapter in our history." Sgt. Robert Ralston originally said that after he stopped two men for questioning, one pulled a gun and aimed at his head. He said when he knocked the gun away, it went off and grazed him. That set off a huge manhunt before the details of Ralston's story fell apart, notes AP. Ralston has been suspended and is expected to be fired. The 21-year veteran won't face criminal charges, but he must reimburse the city for the cost of the manhunt.

“In talks with Netflix we all felt that stories about a narcissistic, erratically behaving family in the building business—and their desperate abuses of power—are really underrepresented on TV these days,” series creator Mitchell Hurwitz said in a statement, perhaps hinting at a topical direction for the new episodes. The rest of Hurwitz’s statement certainly seems like a step in the right direction: “I am so grateful to them and to 20th TV for making this dream of mine come true in bringing the Bluths, George Sr., Lucille and the kids; Michael, Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, George-Michael, and who am I forgetting, oh Tiffany. Did I say Tiffany?—back to the glorious stream of life.” Do you have what it takes?

– Arrested Development will be back for a fifth season. Netflix, which revived the beloved sitcom for a fourth season in 2013, confirmed Wednesday that the series' fifth season will air on the streaming service in 2018. The original cast and creator Mitch Hurwitz are once again returning, Rolling Stone reports. Reaction so far is mixed; for example, Vanity Fair wonders whether a fifth season "can erase the memory of season 4."

Prince Harry has told of his efforts to maintain an "ordinary life" despite being a member of the Royal family, insisting he would still do his own shopping even if he became king.

– "Is there any one of the royal family who wants to be king or queen? I don’t think so," comes the answer from a person you might not expect: Prince Harry. But in an interview with Newsweek, the 32-year-old assures that "we will carry out our duties at the right time." Prince William's younger brother says the Windsors are attempting to "modernize the British monarchy … not for ourselves but for the greater good of the people." To that end, the Telegraph trumpets Harry's line, "Even if I was king, I would do my own shopping." (He is fifth in line to the throne, after William's kids.) Harry says he attempts to have as ordinary life as possible and adds, "If I am lucky enough to have children, they can have one too.” But Harry, who has fought to protect his privacy and that of his American actress girlfriend, Meghan Markle, admits to worrying that "someone will snap me with their phone" as he steps away from his supermarket's meat counter. He calls it a "tricky balancing act" to avoid diluting "the magic" of Team Royal by seeming too ho-hum. Yet the ginger-haired blueblood credits Princess Diana with showing him how the other half lives. "Thank goodness," he says. Of the iconic image of Harry, then 12, and his brother following their mother's coffin through the London streets nearly 20 years ago, Harry says, "I don’t think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances." (Princess Di's death led to "total chaos" for Harry.)

How the journal came to be published is something of a mystery.It was written neatly on foolscap sheets and transcribed and edited by Basil Lubbock who boiught the mauscript from the Earl of Hardwicke.

– The elegant script and color illustrations of Edward Barlow's 225,000-word diary documenting the 17th-century sailor's life at sea have been admired for some 300 years. Hidden beneath was his darkest secret: a note providing what the Guardian calls an "excruciatingly frank account" of his rape of Mary Symons, a female servant in a house in which he was staying. He would eventually marry her. "She was asleep but being gotten into the bed I could not easily be persuaded out again, and I confess that I did more than what was lawful or civil, but not in that manner that I ... think that she should prove with child," he wrote. "I take God to witness I did not enter her body, all though I did attempt something in that nature." The note was uncovered by Paul Cook, a senior paper conservator at London's National Maritime Museum. He has worked to repair the diary over the last nine years and discovered a rewritten account had been carefully pasted over the first. It made no mention of the earlier rape. Barlow—who would go on to describe his wife as "obliging and ready to do any thing that should give me content"—instead wrote that "I had in part promised her at London that I would marry her … having had a little more than ordinary familiarity with her." As Barlow became a husband, father, and captain, per About Manchester, NMM curator Roberth Blyth suspects he grew to regret how forthcoming he had been and appreciate the risk of leaving that account behind for his family to read. Thanks to his handiwork, Barlow's secret was kept long after his ship went down off Mozambique in 1706.

Emily Schillinger, a spokeswoman for House Ways and Means Committee Republicans, said that “members are developing pro-growth tax reform policies that will encourage and support retirement savings for all Americans.” Lowering the cap on pretax contributions would raise revenue in the short-term, which would help lawmakers pay for lowering tax rates. Currently, employees under age 50 can save up to $18,000 a year in a 401(k) before taxes, while those 50 or older can set aside up to $24,000. Dave Gray, a senior vice president at Fidelity Investments, said a $2,400 limit would give the company a significant concern and would essentially require trade-offs between the certainty of the immediate deduction and the prospect of tax-free retirement income. But they must pay ordinary income taxes on the money when they withdraw it, typically in retirement when many people are in a lower tax bracket. With the second variety, called a Roth 401(k) or Roth IRA, there is no upfront tax deduction but the money increases tax-free. He also said that Congress should “enhance and expand” the current saver’s credit that low- and middle-income households can take for making contributions to retirement plans. A more detailed plan released by the White House and congressional leaders in September pledged to retain “tax benefits that encourage work, higher education and retirement security” but left open the possibility of changes to “simplify these benefits to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.” Sen. “Republicans are so determined to cut taxes on the wealthy that they're willing to tax the retirement accounts of millions of middle class Americans,” Schumer said in a statement. “The GOP’s total devotion to millionaires and billionaires comes at the expense of every family using a 401(k) to save for a decent retirement.” Last month, following reports that "Rothification" was under discussion, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee spoke out in letters to GOP congressional leaders and Trump administration officials. This year, AARP joined with groups representing employers and asset managers—including Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and TIAA—to form Save Our Savings Coalition to lobby for the existing tax treatment of retirement plans.

– Multiple sources say Republican lawmakers may be setting their sights on Americans' retirement accounts to pay for tax cuts, specifically to the business tax rate. The New York Times reports Republicans are expected to release a tax reform plan sometime in the next few weeks, and that plan could include a drastic reduction in the amount of money workers are allowed to put into 401(k) accounts. Workers are currently allowed to contribute $18,000 annually to 401(k) accounts ($24,000 if they're over 50 years old), but sources say Republicans are considering capping contributions at $2,400 annually. It's unclear if the cap would also apply to IRAs, which are currently limited to $5,500 annually ($6,500 for workers over 50), according to the Wall Street Journal. The idea is that because income put into a 401(k) or IRA isn't taxed until it's withdrawn years later, lowering contributions would generate immediate tax revenue for the government—an estimated $115 billion in 2018. But that represents less than 8% of the tax cut planned by Republicans, and industry groups worry it will reduce the amount of money Americans save for retirement. One person working to preserve retirement savings during the tax reform process tells the Hill capping contributions at $2,400 could be "devastating for long-term retirement security." It would also likely be massively unpopular with middle-class workers. “Republicans are so determined to cut taxes on the wealthy that they’re willing to tax the retirement accounts of millions of middle-class Americans,” Sen. Chuck Schumer says.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A car crash victim who became known as "Grateful Doe" because of two Grateful Dead ticket stubs in his pocket has been identified more than 20 years after he was killed, authorities said Thursday. A recently reconstructed image of the recently-identified victim of a fatal car crash in 1995, until now known only as 'Grateful Doe' - (Source: identifyus.org) MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) – A man who was killed in a car crash in 1995 in Virginia has been positively identified as Jason Callahan, a man who was reported missing from Myrtle Beach 20 years ago. DNA evidence confirmed that the man whose identity remained a mystery for two decades is Jason Callahan of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said Arkuie Williams, a spokesman for the Virginia Medical Examiner's Office. Myrtle Beach PD In addition, there was no missing person report, since Callahan's mother had not known with which jurisdiction the report should be filed. She told authorities that she hadn't heard from her son since June of 1995 when he left to follow the Grateful Dead, according to the report.

– For 20 years, he was known as "Grateful Doe." Now, police have confirmed a man killed in a car accident in Greensville County, Va., with two ticket stubs for a Grateful Dead concert in his pocket, was Jason Callahan, a 19-year-old from Myrtle Beach, SC, who'd set off to follow his favorite band around the country. Callahan was riding in a van driven by a 21-year-old in 1995 when it crashed, killing both of them, per CNET. The driver was quickly identified, but Callahan was carrying no identification and his face was left unrecognizable. Police had to rely on artist reconstructions in the hope that someone would identify the man who had a tattoo of a pentagram and was carrying a letter addressed to "Jason." Users on a cold-case site started checking for possible matches in missing persons' reports beginning in 2005, per the Washington Post, but the case was finally cracked open this past January. An Australian Reddit user started circulating Grateful Doe's reconstructions, which were seen by 500,000 people, including Callahan's former roommate. He "messaged me and stated that he believed he knew the young man in the photo" and had lived with him "in Illinois in late 1994 to early 1995," the user wrote in an Imgur post. The roommate shared photos of Callahan, which were posted to a Facebook group, and Callahan's mom soon confirmed they were of her son, per WMBF. She told authorities she never filed a missing persons report because she didn't know which state her son was last in. His parents figured he was living alone somewhere, says Callahan's half-sister, who submitted DNA to confirm Grateful Doe's identity, per the AP. "Had I not found the post and Reddit pages in January, I would have never known that my brother Jason was still missing, or what happened to him," she adds. (Check out another intriguing mystery that may have finally been solved decades later.)

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on Sunday entitlement reform, including changes to Medicare, should "be on the table" during discussions with the White House over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, although he once against declared that he won't back any tax increase to close the budget deficit. Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Boehner said he would stand by his public declaration that any increase in the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit has to be tied to changes in government spending, including popular entitlement programs like Medicare. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other Republicans have suggested that Medicare reform can't be tackled until after the 2012 elections.

– John Boehner does not want to use Osama bin Laden’s death as an excuse to end the war in Afghanistan or change the US relationship with Pakistan. “At this moment in time, we should reengage and strengthen our relationship with Pakistan, not walk away from it,” he said on Face the Nation today. “We have hundreds of billions of dollars that we’ve spent in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. We’ve lost thousands of lives. This is not the time to just walk away from the fight.” More from the Sunday dial, via Politico: Boehner also said he’s “ready to cut the deal today” on raising the debt ceiling, but President Obama is “really not serious” about tackling the country’s fiscal problems. Boehner wants everything, including changes to Medicare and Medicaid, “on the table” during discussions—“except raising taxes.” Newt Gingrich called Obama the “most successful food stamp president in history” Friday, but today on Meet the Press he rejected accusations of racism, pointing out that one out of every six Americans receives food stamps: “What I said is factually true.” Ron Paul insists the US should have informed Pakistan that it knew where bin Laden was hiding, and relied on the Pakistani government to arrest the terrorist leader, he maintained on Fox News Sunday. He also said, while discussing his views on limited government, that he would not support federal aid for Mississippi flood victims. Also on Fox News Sunday, Mike Huckabee said he “would have made a fine president,” but that he is “at peace” with his “very personal, very intimate, … spiritual decision" not to run.

The JFK Photo That Could Have Changed History The JFK Photo That Could Have Changed History TMZ has obtained a never-before publishedwhich appears to showon a boat filled with naked women -- it's a photo that could have altered world events.We believe the photo was taken in the mid-1950s. The experts all concluded the photo appears authentic.A forensic photo expert says the print appears to be authentic. That it is insanely juicy, oh-so-scandalous fact only sweetens the deal: There are numerous articles and books on President John F. Kennedy which mention a 2-week, Mediterranean boating trip that JFK—then a Senator—took in August, 1956, with his brother Ted Kennedy and Senator George Smathers. The trio reportedly entertained a number of women on the yacht.was pregnant at the time and was rushed to the hospital while JFK was an the boat. Doctors performed an emergency C-section, but the infant was stillborn.A forensic analyst superimposed an image of Kennedy taken at the Democratic National Convention in August 1956, just days before Kennedy went on the Mediterranean cruise. TMZ has also had two Kennedy biographers examine the photo -- they also believe JFK is in the picture.The photo was eventually given to a man who owned a car dealership on the East coast.

– John F. Kennedy was always rumored to be a playboy—now the world apparently has proof. TMZ has an exclusive photo from the mid-1950s that appears to show JFK sunning himself on a boat deck, surrounded by naked women. Don’t believe the gossip site? Well, numerous photo experts—as well as Kennedy biographers—say the photo looks like the real deal. Plus, as Azaria Jagger writes on Gawker, “say what you will about the propriety of their sources, TMZ's big breaks generally stand the test of time.” Kennedy, who was a senator at the time, took a two-week Mediterranean boating trip with brother Ted and Sen. George Smathers in August 1956—while wife Jackie was pregnant—which is where TMZ presumes this picture came from. For more details on how the picture was verified, as well as a high-resolution image, click here. (Update: Photo revealed as fake. More on the story here.)

According to Kent Police, Barming Primary school in Maidstone was also closed this morning after an “anonymous phone call”. “It’s only a matter of time before somebody gets seriously injured as a result of one of these incidents.” There have already been close calls. “That really scared me I literally thought a bomb was going to blow up in front of us.” Canterbury Academy head teacher Phil Karnavas said: “It's almost certainly a hoax but with what's happening across Europe I'm not prepared to take that gamble.” He added that secretarial staff received “repeated” calls from an adult male claiming an explosive device was hidden in the school. An unspecified threat prompted authorities to evacuate Cherokee Trail Elementary School in Parker, Colo. (Photo: KUSA-TV, Denver) Colorado Cherokee Trail Elementary (Parker): Students were evacuated Monday afternoon after “anonymous threats to schools around the state,” the Parker Police Department said in a tweet. Parents and caregivers were urged to check in at the baseball stop in the northwest corner of the field before picking up their children. Some officials described Monday's threats as automated or robotic and at least two — at Lakewood High School outside Denver and at Ben Franklin Elementary School in Rochester, Minnesota — came in just before noon local time. The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that a bomb threat was received at Liberty Point Elementary in Pueblo West just after 1 p.m. That school was evacuated as a precaution. One school in Colorado Springs received a bomb threat and CBS affiliate KKTV in Colorado Springs confirmed that other cities with bomb threats include Cheyenne, Wyo., Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Madison, Wis. Pictured are police outside Discovery Primary School Students cleared from the exam have been sent to a tennis hall while non-exam pupils have been sent home for the day Bomb threats have forced the closure of 26 schools across the UK on a day of GCSE exams. Massachusetts Willett Elementary School (Attleboro): The school was evacuated as a precaution after a bomb threat was called into the school. At Canterbury High School, police swarmed the after an anonymous caller said there was a bomb on site and that 'the shrapnel will take children's heads off' In Hampshire, Emsworth Primary School received a bomb threat and was evacuated, with pupils and staff were taken to the nearby Glenwood School. Out of an abundance of caution, students and staff will remain outside of the building until it is determined that we may go back inside.

– Schools across the nation were hit by a wave of robocall bomb threats Monday, closing buildings and forcing the evacuation of thousands of students, USA Today reports. Elementary, middle, and high schools in at least 18 states were targeted, and security expert Ken Trump says the automated calls seem to have all the signs of "swatting," hoax calls (often computer generated) meant to elicit a big response from law enforcement. Even schools in the UK were affected, with at least one receiving a warning that shrapnel from explosives would "take children's heads off," per the Independent. None of the threats were deemed credible, per NBC News. Swatters likely aren't kids partaking in a simple, spur-of-the-moment prank. "Suspects are often more sophisticated," Trump says, adding that incidents like these have "skyrocketed" over the last few years. "They can use Voice over IP (VoIP) systems or other technologies that can be virtually impossible to track down." The AP notes that schools nationwide responded in various ways to the calls, with some shutting down completely and others reopening once authorities gave the all clear. "Every one of these may be swatting, [but] all it takes is one of them to be real and then we have a tragedy here," a Denver Public Schools spokesman tells CBS Denver. The FBI issued a statement noting the agency is "aware" of the threats and communicating with law enforcement, and that the public should "remain vigilant" and report anything that seems suspicious. (USA Today has a list of schools affected in each state.)

A protest that started with about 100 people at the Minnesota State Capitol grew quickly Wednesday night as it moved first to John Ireland Boulevard then to downtown St. Paul. Marchers protesting Trump's election chanted and carried signs in front of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Media outlets broadcast video Wednesday night showing a peaceful crowd in front of the new downtown hotel. Their ranks grew as they marched west on University Avenue, blocking both sides of the street and shouting expletives about Donald Trump in English and Spanish.

– The raw divisions exposed by the presidential race were on full display across America on Wednesday, as protesters flooded city streets to condemn Donald Trump's election in demonstrations that police said were mostly peaceful. From New England to heartland cities like Kansas City and along the West Coast, many thousands of demonstrators carried flags and anti-Trump signs, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump's triumph, the AP reports. In Chicago, several thousand people marched through the Loop and gathered outside Trump Tower, chanting "Not my president!" A similar protest in Manhattan drew about 1,000 people. Outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in midtown, police installed barricades to keep the demonstrators at bay. Around the country: Hundreds of protesters gathered near Philadelphia's City Hall despite chilly, wet weather. Participants expressed anger at both Republicans and Democrats over the election's outcome. A protest that began at the Minnesota State Capitol Wednesday night with about 100 people swelled to around 300 as it moved into downtown St. Paul, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Protesters blocked downtown streets and traveled west on University Avenue where they shouted expletives about Trump in English and Spanish. There were other Midwest protest marches in Omaha, Neb., and Kansas City, Mo. In Des Moines, Iowa, hundreds of students walked out of area high schools at 10:30am to protest Trump's victory, the Des Moines Register reports. Students also walked out in cities including Portland, Phoenix, and Boulder. In Oregon, dozens of people blocked traffic in downtown Portland, burned American flags, and forced a delay for trains on two light-rail lines. Several thousand chanting, sign-waving people gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, Calif. A night earlier, in the hours after Trump won the election, Oakland demonstrators broke windows and did other damage. In Los Angeles, protesters on the steps of City Hall burned a giant papier mache Trump head in protest. Later, in the streets they whacked a Trump piñata. Hundreds massed in downtown Seattle streets. Many held anti-Trump and Black Lives Matter signs and chanted slogans, including "Misogyny has to go," and "The people united, will never be defeated." Five people were shot and injured in an area near the protest, but police said the shootings and the demonstration were unrelated.

Image copyright KCNA Image caption Kim Yo-jong in a 2015 picture of her brother touring a military unit The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is to attend the Winter Olympic Games which open in Pyeongchang in the South on Friday, ministers in Seoul say. South... (Associated Press) SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, an increasingly prominent figure in the country's leadership, will be part of the North's delegation to the South Korean Winter Olympics, officials said Wednesday. Kim Yo Jong, believed to be around 30, will be the first member of North Korea's ruling family to visit South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Kim Jong Un might also have seen that U.S. President Donald Trump was sending his daughter, Ivanka, to the Olympics ceremony and decided to match the move by sending his sister, said Hong Min, an analyst at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification. South Korea's Unification Ministry said North Korea informed it that Kim Yo Jong, first vice director of the Central Committee of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, would be part of the delegation led by the country's nominal head of state, Kim Yong Nam. The ministry said Kim Yo Jong's schedule in the South has yet to be determined, and it wasn't immediately clear whether she will meet with President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who has expressed a desire to reach out to the North. "We believe that the North's announcement of the delegation shows its willingness to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula along with a message of celebration for the PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games," it said in a statement. "First Vice Director Kim Yo Jong is Chairman Kim Jong Un's sister who has an important role in the Workers' Party, (so her visit) is that much more meaningful," presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said in a statement read on television. It's unclear whether any member of the North Korean government delegation will hold talks with U.S. officials during the Olympics. But Kim Yo Jong's presence would give North Korea a better opportunity to win South Korean help in reaching out to the United States, Hong said. Kim Yo-jong is one of Kim Jong-un's closest aides and some are speculating that she might be bringing a message from her brother. North Korea said the delegation will also include Choe Hwi, chairman of the country's National Sports Guidance Committee, and Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the North's agency that deals with inter-Korean affairs. Kim Yo Jong and Kim Jong Un were born to the same mother, Ko Yong Hui. They had a half brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was murdered last year at a Malaysian airport. Kim Yo Jong was promoted by her brother last year to be an alternate member of the decision-making political bureau of the ruling party's central committee, which analysts said showed that her activities are more substantive than previously thought. The war-separated Koreas are cooperating on a series of conciliatory measures during the Olympics, which the South sees as an opportunity to ease tensions with the North following an extended period of animosity over its nuclear weapon and missile programs. North Korea has 22 athletes competing in the Winter Olympics but also has sent performing artists and a large cheering group. Seoul has had to request special permission from the US and others in the international community to allow North Korean athletes and performers to travel south by bus and ferry.

– In a move seen as a sign that North Korea is serious about improving relations with the South—and about thumbing its nose at the US—Kim Jong Un's powerful younger sister will be visiting South Korea as part of the North's high-level Olympic delegation. Kim Yo Jong, who is a full sibling of the North Korean leader and is believed to be around 30 years old, will be the first "direct member" of the Kim dynasty to visit the South, the BBC reports. South Korean officials welcomed the surprise announcement, saying it is "significant that the delegation also includes Kim Yo Jong, who is Chairman Kim Jong Un's sister and holds an important position in the Workers' Party of Korea." Analysts say Kim Jong Un appears to be trying to present a warmer image of North Korea. By sending his sister when President Trump is sending daughter Ivanka, Kim "may be trying to present himself as an equal to Donald Trump," Hong Min at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification tells the AP. Mike Pence, meanwhile, is on a visit to Asia aimed at counteracting Pyongyang's "charm offensive," as CNN puts it. He told reporters Wednesday that the US is about to impose the "toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever." Kim Yo Jong was in January 2017 placed on the US Treasury Department's sanctions list over the country's human rights record, Reuters reported at the time; here's what else we know about her.

Unlike Gingrich, Ron Paul has the fundraising and organizational apparatus to take him beyond wins in early states, so a victory in Iowa could very well propel him to a brokered convention, or more. Gingrich still leads with 22% of the vote and Romney has held steady in high teens, but Paul has clawed his way up within the margin of error, claiming 21% support among likely Republican caucus goers. Gingrich is at 22% to 21% for Paul with Mitt Romney at 16%, Michele Bachmann at 11%, Rick Perry at 9%, Rick Santorum at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 5%, and Gary Johnson at 1%. …Gingrich has dropped 5 points in the last week and he’s also seen a significant decline in his favorability numbers. Last week he was at +31 (62/31) and he’s now dropped 19 points to +12 (52/40). The attacks on him appear to be taking a heavy toll- his support with Tea Party voters has declined from 35% to 24%. But if these numbers bear out in a few more polls, it’s also a godsend to Romney’s campaign, which badly needs Paul and others to split the votes aligned against the former Massachusetts governor and slow Gingrich’s late surge. PPP’s poll shouldn’t be entirely surprising–if August belonged to Bachmann, September to Perry, October to Cain and November to Newt, there’s no reason to think another candidate wouldn’t find themselves enjoying a December boomlet. And what remains of Gingrich’s lead appears to be soft. A little over a week ago, Paul passed Mitt Romney for second place in the state, 7 points behind frontrunner Newt Gingrich.

– The first chink in Newt Gingrich's surge? A new Public Policy Polling survey shows that his lead in Iowa has dropped from 9 points to 1 point in a week. And the beneficiary isn't Mitt Romney but Ron Paul. The new figures have Gingrich at 22%, down 5 points, and Paul at 21%, up 3 points. Romney sticks at 16%. What's it all mean? Adam Sorensen, Time: The poll could be a fluke, but "Gingrich’s lead was always tenuous and it’s not surprising that the absolutely brutal ad campaigns against him have at very least slowed his ascent." Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: It might be time to start thinking about a deadlocked convention. "Paul winning Iowa just might mean the GOP nominating Ryan, Christie, or Daniels." Tommy Christopher, Mediaite: "Unlike Gingrich, Ron Paul has the fundraising and organizational apparatus to take him beyond wins in early states, so a victory in Iowa could very well propel him to a brokered convention, or more." The mainstream media doesn't much like Paul's chances, "but results like these make it increasingly difficult to ignore him."

"Given the importance of the job, the President through there were better people for it, and that Flynn wasn't up for the job," a former senior Obama administration official told CNN Monday. Washington (CNN) Then-President Barack Obama warned President-elect Donald Trump in November against hiring retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his national security adviser , former Obama administration officials confirmed to CNN Monday. Flynn previously served as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama until he was reportedly forced out of the post 2014 over internal disagreements over policy and management. News of the warning comes as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is set to testify before Congress on Monday about the concerns she expressed to Trump administration officials about Flynn's contacts with Russian officials, namely with Kislyak. Trump did not heed Obama's counsel on Flynn, bringing aboard the former military intelligence officer who supported Trump during his campaign as his national security adviser. Flynn, who was conducting private conversations with the Russian ambassador regarding sanctions, was then fired three weeks into the administration for misleading Vice President Pence about those conversations. The White House confirmed later Monday that Obama raised concerns about Flynn during his Oval Office sitdown with Trump in November. Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP News of the Obama warning came as Trump sought to get ahead of a day of unpleasant disclosures about his former top foreign policy aide, taking to Twitter Monday to cast aspersions on Yates, the 27-year Justice Department prosecutor who warned the White House that then-National Security Adviser Mike Flynn had misled officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Related: White House Denies Claim That Yates' Testimony Was Blocked "Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Yates, in her role as acting attorney general, warned White House counsel Don McGahn on January 26 that Flynn was lying when he denied -- both publicly and privately -- that he discussed US sanctions on Russia with Kislyak. But Trump has left many other important questions about the Flynn affair unanswered, including: What, if anything, did he know about his national security adviser’s conversations with the Russian ambassador? Monday afternoon, Yates is scheduled to testify for the first time in public, alongside James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who pushed Flynn in 2014 from his job as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017 "General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama administration -- but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that," Trump said in his first missive. There were concerns that the Trump administration was signaling Russia not to worry about the Obama administration sanctions on Russia over its election interference, which expelled Russian intelligence officers from the U.S. and blocked access to Russian diplomatic compounds here.

– When then-President Obama met with President-elect Trump in the Oval Office two days after the election, NBC News reports that Obama gave him a specific piece of advice: Don't hire Michael Flynn. (CNN says it has confirmed the story.) Trump did not take the advice and went on to make Flynn his national security adviser, only to fire him three weeks later when it emerged that Flynn had misled the White House about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Obama's concerns, however, were more about Flynn's temperament, reports NBC, which notes that the Obama administration fired Flynn in 2014 from his post as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Obama reportedly told Trump that Flynn was not suited to such an important position. The revelation comes on the day that Sally Yates, who served briefly as acting attorney general between the two administrations, is expected to testify before Congress about her concerns over Flynn's contact with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump himself addressed both aspects of the story on Monday: "General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration - but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that," he tweeted. (Spokesman Sean Spicer previously blamed the Obama White House, citing Flynn's clearance to run the DIA.) And on Yates, Trump tweeted: "Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel."

On the first night of previews for Groundhog Day the musical, as the lights go down, it’s safe to say that most of the audience already knows the story that’s about to unfold. It would be hard to find anyone who hasn’t seen, or osmotically absorbed, the 1993 Bill Murray film on which this show is based, the story of a cynical weatherman trapped in a single repeating day. But no one knows it as well as the guy in the third row: a 60-year-old with wild wisps of hair, round eyeglasses, and a Hopi-sun-symbol stud in one ear. Danny Rubin is utterly rapt, even though he’s seen this performance more than 20 times; even though he’s lived with this story for nearly 25 years; even though he’s listening to some of the same lines he first tapped out on a Toshiba laptop when he was a young man of 32. Rubin is the guy who wrote Groundhog Day the musical. He’s also the guy who wrote Groundhog Day the film — both the original script and the version he later hammered out with director Harold Ramis. It’s still the film he’s still best known for; in fact, to this day, it’s the only film he’s known for. If you look him up on imdb.com, there are just four writing credits to his name. One of them is the story credit for the Italian remake of Groundhog Day (“Stork Day”). Two others are screenplays for a 1993 Marlee Matlin thriller and a 1994 film called S.F.W. that enjoys a solid 12 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The fourth credit is Groundhog Day — a film so beloved, idiomized, and dissertated about that it’s passed into English vernacular. For almost 25 years, that lone film has remained, for good or ill, his calling card. “I’m the guy who wrote Groundhog Day,” he says now. “I’m not the amazing screenwriter who’s had this long and storied career. I’m not Tom Stoppard.” But if you have to be stuck with one movie, it could be a worse movie than Groundhog Day. “It’s delightful to be so associated with something so well loved,” Rubin says. “You could break your heart thinking you’re the victim of this amazing life you’ve got.” This is the story of how Danny Rubin wrote Groundhog Day not once but twice — maybe more times than that, but who’s counting. It’s unusual for any artist to live so long under the shadow of a single work, let alone a story that is itself intimately concerned with limits and repetition. It’s more unusual still for an artist to return to that story in another medium for an encore nearly three decades later. Yet here Rubin is, in a Broadway theater, listening to his words echo, again and again and again, into the dark. He doesn’t remember how the idea first came to him. Rubin gets ideas the way some people take drugs — in wee fistfuls. When this particular batch hit him, he wrote down ten of the best ones in a list. It was the late ’80s, and Rubin was living in Chicago, turning out scripts for industrial films. He once spent two days working the front counter of the country’s most productive McDonald’s so he could write a video showing other McDonald’s workers how to shave seconds off their time with each customer. It wasn’t glorious, but at least he was being paid for writing. Still, he wanted to try writing real screenplays. So he made a list of his ten best ideas. Idea No. 2 was a Hitchcockian thriller about a murder in the deaf community; he called it Silencer. An agent got interested and that script sold, and a version of it eventually became the decidedly un-Hitchcockian Marlee Matlin vehicle Hear No Evil. Rubin moved his family to L.A. His agent said, “Get me a writing sample,” so Rubin went back to his list. Idea No. 10 on the list was “A man lives the same day over and over.” He wasn’t the first to think of this premise. The idea of reiterating the same stretch of time goes at least as far back as a 1904 short story by a British military strategist, in which a man dreams his way through the same battle, again and again. In 1973, an American named Richard A. Lupoff published a short book titled 12:01 P.M. about a man stuck in a “disfiguration of time.” (Lupoff briefly pursued legal action against Columbia Pictures after Groundhog Day came out, but the lawsuit was never formally filed.) Rubin had never read either of these, and he didn’t care how his protagonist had come to be trapped in February 2 — a date he chose in the hope that the movie might become a holiday cable perennial, the way It’s a Wonderful Life was broadcast every Christmas. Rubin was more interested in what would happen to a man stuck reliving the same day over and over. Would he go crazy? Fall to his worst impulses? How many lifetimes would it take for someone to truly change? He thought about the possibilities for a while. Then he powered through drafting the script in four days and sent it off to his agent. Ramis, who wrote and co-starred in Ghostbusters, found the script and was hired to direct it, and he cast Bill Murray to star in it. Rubin spent weeks revising it, first with Ramis, then with Murray — the two of them throwing ideas back and forth, hanging out in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania — and then it went back to Ramis, who defended it from the studio’s worst impulses, such as inserting a scene where the main character, Phil Connors, gets cursed by a gypsy. Then they filmed it, and it was a hit. For Rubin, working with Ramis and Murray wasn’t intimidating as much as reassuring: It felt like Hollywood had recognized him for who he was, like it had realized what he could do. “It was like, ‘Finally,’ ” he says now. “ ‘This is where I belong.’ ” And then it never happened again. After the film Groundhog Day was a success, Rubin started getting calls to work on scripts. He was now a known quantity — he was the guy who wrote Groundhog Day — and all producers seemingly wanted was for him to write the same movie again. A rom-com. Something quirky. But not too quirky. Maybe something with a time warp or a weatherman. “They’d say, ‘Just write something normal and it’ll come out Danny Rubin–y. It’ll be great,’ ” he says. “But I don’t want to write something normal! It’s messing with the premise and the structure that makes it exciting!” Rubin made a list of his ten best ideas. Idea No. 10 was “A man lives the same day over and over again.” It didn’t help that he’d moved his family to Santa Fe, New Mexico, before Groundhog Day had even finished shooting. At first, L.A. tried to woo him back, regularly flying him into town. Rubin’s brother Michael, who also worked in Hollywood, knew how this was supposed to go: “They want to meet you for lunch at the Ivy and they want to think you’re a totally fun guy,” he says. “You get in the door because you wrote a hit movie, but they want to see you as a guy they can play with.” But Rubin wouldn’t play. “It would be like, Goldie Hawn has a dysfunctional family, none of them get along, so they go camping and in the end they all learn to love each other,” Rubin recalls. “Typically I would say, ‘Okay, I am going to tell you your movie.’ ” He’d lay out a perfectly respectable studio picture, with a three-act structure and a conventional conclusion. “And then I’d say, ‘Under no circumstances am I going to write that movie.’ ” He sighs. “It took me years to understand that’s why the business started disappearing.” Most people in this situation either quit the screenplay business or learn to compromise. Rubin did neither. He kept writing scripts for his own ideas, and he kept selling them, pretty steadily, over the years — to Universal, to Amblin, to Castle Rock, to Miramax. But none of them were produced, and even when one of them spent some time being developed, Rubin would often be booted off the project. He wrote a movie about a woman; they asked if it could be about a man. He wrote a silent film; they asked if it could have dialogue. “People weren’t responding to my stuff by making movies out of it,” he says. “They were optioning it, but then there were the same arguments over and over: They were trying to make a movie I said I was expressly not interested in making.” Tim Minchin, who composed the songs for Groundhog Day the musical, puts it more succinctly: Rubin, he says, “refused to write to their fucking specs.” Rubin’s daughter, Maida, was a kid back then, but she remembers her dad’s Hollywood travails. “It seemed true of all his projects that they would take out the part he found interesting,” she says. “They just wanted it to be more like something they already knew.” Even as Rubin continued to not make films, Groundhog Day became a proportionally bigger and bigger part of his résumé — and of pop culture at large. The film had been a solid success when it came out but not a phenomenon; Roger Ebert gave it three stars. But as years passed, it seemed to gain resonance. The idea of a time loop became a standard trope in movies and television, and the term “Groundhog Day” itself became vernacular for any experience that seemed endlessly to repeat. Rubin’s friends would call him up excitedly whenever they heard someone use it, until it became so common that they had to stop. People kept writing to Rubin to tell him what his movie was about. A monk saw it as a Christian allegory; a Kabbalist analyzed the significance of its numerology. Philosophy students wrote dissertations about Groundhog Day and Nietzsche’s concept of the “eternal recurrence.” An economist published a column claiming that the film “illustrates the importance of the Mises-Hayek paradigm as an alternative to equilibrium economics by illustrating the unreal nature of equilibrium theorizing.” Addicts told Rubin that the film had helped them realize they were trapped in Punxsutawneys of their own making. The letters and phone calls and emails would reach a crescendo every February 2, a day when Rubin would hear not only from strangers and fans but from his own friends and family. Someone — he never found out who — for years left him little presents, balloons or candy or a toy groundhog, on his porch in Santa Fe. “It’s like my birthday,” he says. You could imagine a version of this story in which Rubin is bitter. “He’s got every reason to have an antagonistic relationship with this beast,” says Matthew Warchus, who directed the musical. Minchin agrees: “One can assume that, Groundhog Day being so far and away his greatest success, it would cast a huge shadow over him,” he says. Rubin himself will concede only the slightest negativity. “I was always thinking, I’m not a one-hit wonder, I’m not a one-hit wonder!” he says. Then he laughs. “But even if I am — okay, that’s more than most people get.” At some point, he started leaning into it. In 2005, Ebert published a new review of Groundhog Day, upgrading it to four stars. In 2007, Rubin started a blog — Blogus Groundhogus — where he answered questions from fans and posted fictional dialogues between himself and Phil Connors, now retired from the weather business and living on a mountainside near Taos. At his brother’s suggestion, he published an ebook on screenwriting, called How to Write “Groundhog Day.” He ended up teaching screenwriting at Harvard for five years. Every year, when February 2 came around, he and his wife would invite over all their friends, push back the furniture, and dance. But the story does not end there, because it is also a love story. That’s where Minchin and Warchus come in. In 2012, they were fresh off the success of their first musical, Matilda, and they wanted Groundhog Day to be their next adaptation. Warchus knew that Rubin had been tinkering with a musical version of the film for years (partly for fun; partly because that was one of the rights he hadn’t signed away to Columbia Pictures). But they had a hunch that Rubin had to be approached cautiously. “We just knew, obviously, this story is incredibly important to Danny,” Minchin says. “He wasn’t going to trust just anyone with his baby.” Minchin, a musician and stand-up comedian from Australia, made his name performing in bare feet and mascara, and in Rubin he immediately recognized a fellow eccentric. “He’s a beautiful guy and a one-in-a-trillion really,” Minchin says. “He’s an incredibly gentle, sensitive guy, too good for the world he ended up in, too pure in his desire to write interesting things for Hollywood.” So they courted him. Warchus flew Rubin to London to see Matilda. Then he and Minchin collaborated speculatively with Rubin on the musical for years without asking for the rights, on the basis of a handshake. Minchin noticed that Rubin sometimes made jokes that didn’t seem funny. “Like joking comments that tell the truth,” Minchin says, “About how ‘You’ll just fire me off the project anyway’ — because that happens in Hollywood quite a lot.” Minchin got the sense that Rubin had been hurt by years of “having people slightly fuck with him.” Typically I’d say, ‘I am going to tell you your movie.’ Then I’d say, ‘Under no circumstances am I going to write that movie.’ Finally, he says, he took Rubin aside. “I said, ‘Danny, look at me: Sometime in the future soon, in the next two years, this will be onstage. And you will be sitting next to me, watching what we made together. That’s what’s going to happen. So you have to trust me that you’re going to be there, of course, because it’s yours … you’re going to be there if you like it or not.’ “And that was the last time he made those jokes,” Minchin says. In August 2016, the musical opened in London to mostly rave reviews. For Rubin, the process of writing Groundhog Day for the second (maybe third?) time was a kind of vindication, a do-over. Where Hollywood had mostly disposed of him by the time shooting began on the film, Minchin and Warchus saw him as a vital component all the way through workshops, rehearsals, and opening night. “In theater, the writer is supposed to be a participant. In fact, the writer is a primary participant,” Rubin says. “So if you’re a writer who’s spent 20 years being sidelined, to be allowed to be at the big-boy table — it was very satisfying.” “He’s really getting another chance,” his brother Michael says. “He is Phil! Go figure, he has made it, he’s lived through that, and he’s a better person and a cooler guy.” “It’s ironic, of course,” Minchin says, “that for him, it has come round again and he has to relive this, has to relive this story of reliving stories.” Something has happened. It’s about 15 minutes into the first preview show, and the actors have suddenly vanished from the stage. The audience murmurs. The curtain drops. Minutes go by in silence. Finally, Warchus comes out to make an announcement: Inside the stage, the complex mechanism that powers the production’s intricate onstage turntables — there are five of them, nestled within each other — has somehow broken down. It’s never happened before, and they don’t know how to fix it. The rest of the musical will be performed with the cast sitting on the stage in a row of chairs, and everyone in the audience will get tickets to a second show. The audience is, if anything, a little bit thrilled. The usual has been disrupted. They’re witnessing a one-off, an iteration of Groundhog Day that will never happen this way again. They’re now complicit in show-business history. When the evening ends, the cast is given a standing ovation. As for Rubin, he’s smiling, beatific. “What a triumph,” a stranger says to him. His friends hug him. The technical breakdown doesn’t bother him much; he’s not an easily bothered guy. The one screenplay he wrote that he most wishes someone would make is called The Hanging Tale. It’s a Scheherezade Western: A man is on the verge of being hanged, and they ask him for his final words. He starts telling a story — the story becomes the bulk of the film, “full of adventures and cliffhangers,” Rubin said. “And then you cut back to the hanging and it’s night now and he’s still standing there with the noose around his neck, and they ask, ‘What next?’ ” Eventually, the townsfolk postpone the hanging again and again, “until the story he’s telling teaches the town compassion and they let him go.” If the musical is a success, Rubin thinks, maybe he’ll get a little heat off it. Maybe he’ll be able to see one more screenplay produced. That would be something. Who knows? “I sometimes think he’s watched the story and adopted some of its wisdom,” Warchus muses about Rubin. “He’s understood what was in his story and really taken it to heart. It’s like he threw himself a lifeline 20 years ago.” The crowd files out into the New York night, and the guy who wrote Groundhog Day goes with them. He’ll be back to do it all again tomorrow. Grooming by Korey Fitzpatrick for Exclusive Artists using Murad Skin care. *This article appears in the April 3, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

– In the late 1980s, Danny Rubin, who was writing industrial film scripts at the time, made a list of his 10 best ideas. The final entry on the list read, "A man lives the same day over and over." After the No. 2 idea on Rubin's list got sold and made into Hear No Evil starring Marlee Matlin, an agent wanted another script, and Rubin chose that No. 10 idea—which became Groundhog Day. Why did Rubin choose to center the movie around a holiday, which he decided to set on Feb. 2? He was hoping, as S.I. Rosenbaum explains in an extensive piece for the New Yorker, that the film would become a "holiday cable perennial." It worked. Rosenbaum traces the film's journey, from Rubin's first draft to the final draft, from the movie's initial modest success to its current cult status. Despite its insane popularity, Rubin never went on to have another hit. Hollywood people kept trying to get him to make another movie, but he didn't want to make just a standard rom-com, and he turned them all down. "I was always thinking, I’m not a one-hit wonder, I’m not a one-hit wonder!" he tells Rosenbaum. "But even if I am—OK, that’s more than most people get." Then, in 2012, Rubin's own life began to resemble Groundhog Day when Tim Minchin and Matthew Warchus approached him about turning the film into a musical. They had to convince him they weren't going to ditch him along the way, and they didn't—Rubin has been a part of the entire process, which resulted in the beloved movie becoming a beloved musical. "I'm the guy who wrote Groundhog Day," Rubin says, but he's not bitter about it. "It’s delightful to be so associated with something so well loved." The full piece is worth a read.

"One of the things that we're still seeing is, in Iraq, places where we've got more training capacity than we have recruits," Obama said Monday after a discussion with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. The training and equipping of Sunni tribal fighters became more urgent after the fall of Ramadi last month, which is the capital of Anbar Province — referred to as the "Sunni heartland." At one point earlier this year, there were several hundred U.S. troops — including about 300 Marines — training other Iraqi forces at the base. The training is a key component of the U.S.-led military effort against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS).

– Instead of trying to help Iraqi forces recapture the city ISIS seized a year ago, the US has decided to focus on helping them capture the city militants seized less than a month ago. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, and the White House is expected to approve a Pentagon plan to establish a new base in the province and send up to 500 more military trainers there, the Wall Street Journal reports. American officials say there had been some debate about how much of a priority recapturing Mosul, the country's second-largest city, would be, but the recent fall of Ramadi settled the question; now Mosul may have to wait until 2016, reports the New York Times. Defense Secretary Ash Carter blamed the fall of Ramadi on Iraqi forces' lack of will to fight. Critics say the proposed modest expansion of the US role is nowhere near what's required to defeat ISIS, the Journal reports. "One has to wonder whether this president just wants to wait out the next year and a half and basically do nothing to stop this genocide, bloodletting, horrible things that are happening throughout the Middle East," Sen. John McCain told fellow senators Monday. The new troops will bring the number of US advisers and trainers in Iraq to around 3,600, but there's a shortage of people for them to train in at least one site, the Hill reports. Defense officials say it has been more than four weeks since the Baghdad government sent any recruits to Al Asad air base, although 2,601 Iraqis are being trained elsewhere.

Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner’s wife, said new sexual photos that have come forward today has been painful but for the most part the episode has been put behind them. Her husband, she said, made “horrible mistakes both before he resigned from Congress and after.” Abedin said that she chose to remain in the marriage “for me, for our son, and for our family.” The website The Dirty on Tuesday posted sexually-explicit exchanges and photographs provided by a source who claimed that she corresponded with Weiner until at least August 2012, over a year after he resigned from Congress. Her voice wavering at points, she said, “I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him and, as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward.” The adviser to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton acknowledged that her marriage to Weiner has “had its ups and its downs,” but said that, with a “whole lot of work and a whole lot of therapy,” the couple has made an effort to overcome their marital difficulties. Flanking her husband, Anthony Weiner, at a press conference in the wake of new revelations that he continued his sexually explicit exchanges with young women after his resignation from Congress in June 2011, Huma Abedin delivered an emotional statement to reporters. Anthony Weiner said Tuesday he's not dropping out of the New York City mayoral race in light of newly revealed explicit online correspondence with a young woman.

– Huma Abedin didn't just stand by husband Anthony Weiner's side today as he fessed up to sexting even after his resignation from Congress—she personally defended him as he announced he was staying in the race for New York City mayor. “Anthony’s made some horrible mistakes, both before he resigned from Congress and after,” she said, as per the Epoch Times. But “I love him. I have forgiven him. I believe in him, and, as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward." She added that their marriage has survived thanks to a "whole lot of work and a whole lot of therapy," reports the National Review. As for Weiner, he confirmed in the press conference that the raunchy texts which surfaced today were his, although that was never in much doubt, thanks to his dropping of details about things like his family's one-eyed cat, notes the New York Post. And he said he had no intention of leaving the mayoral race, reports AP. "This is entirely behind me," he said. The anonymous woman who emerged today says she and Weiner were exchanging texts as recently as last summer, more than a year after his resignation.

Mr. Boehner and his colleagues left the White House without speaking to waiting reporters, and quickly gathered in his Capitol suite for further discussion. “The President looks forward to making continued progress with members on both sides of the aisle.” For much of Thursday, it appeared that Washington slowly edged away from a potential default on Thursday as congressional leaders crafted plans to raise the debt ceiling ahead of the Oct. 17 deadline. A White House official sounded cool to the House GOP plan and offered support for a Senate Democratic proposal to raise the debt ceiling through the end of 2014, reiterating that the government should reopen and the debt ceiling be raised ahead of any talks. “We’re continuing to negotiate this evening.” Earlier, in a news briefing following a closed-door meeting of House Republicans to present a plan to raise the debt limit temporarily, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “What we want to do is offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling.” He described the offer as a “good-faith effort on our part to move halfway to what he’s demanded in order to have these conversations begin.” Obama is “happy” that House Republicans agree a federal debt default is not an option, but he would prefer a longer extension of the debt limit, White House spokesman Jay Carney said after the plan was disclosed. Financial markets soared earlier Thursday on the first sign of optimistic news out of Washington in almost a month, with the Dow Jones industrial average up 169 points in the first 15 minutes of trading. “The bad news is they’ve only extended the debt ceiling for six weeks.” Photo For House Republicans, the maneuvers represented a near-reversal of their original strategy in September of going to the mat over the debt limit but not shutting down the government. “Once Republicans in Congress act to remove the threat of default and end this harmful government shutdown, the president will be willing to negotiate on a broader budget agreement,” the official added. Obama met first with House Democrats late Wednesday and plans to meet with each party in the Senate in the coming days, starting with a meeting with the Senate Democratic caucus Thursday.

– President Obama and congressional Republicans groped today for a compromise to avert an unprecedented US default and end the 10-day-old government shutdown. "We expect further conversations tonight," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said cryptically at nightfall, after he, Speaker John Boehner and a delegation of other Republicans met for more than an hour with Obama at the White House. The White House issued a statement describing the session as a good one, but adding, "no specific determination was made." Yet it seemed the endgame was at hand in the crises that have bedeviled the divided government for weeks. Both sides expressed fresh hopes for a resolution soon. Washington Post: "House Republican leaders initially offered a six-week increase in the federal debt ceiling in exchange for negotiations with President Obama on longer-term 'pressing problems,' but they stopped short of agreeing to end a government shutdown now in its 10th day." New York Times: "An initial report that Mr. Obama had rejected the Republicans’ offer was too definitive and came before Republican leaders or the White House had made it clear to reporters that the negotiations would continue." Politico: "House Republicans told Obama at the White House that they could reopen the federal government by early next week if the president and Senate Democrats agree to their debt-ceiling proposal. A GOP aide said they would seek some additional concessions if they advance a government funding bill next week." Even the hint of progress sent stocks soaring today.

– The deaths of three children have been linked to parents who reportedly own a popular but controversial spanking book by a Tennessee preacher. The book, To Train Up a Child, by Michael Pearl of the No Greater Joy Ministry, promotes using a switch on babies as young as 6 months and plumbing tubing on older children to keep them in line—much like "stubborn mules" are disciplined. Some 700,000 parents, many of them home-schoolers, have purchased the self-published tome, including parents who are either currently serving prison time or have been charged in the abuse and beating deaths of three young children in the last 5 years, reports the New York Times. Pearl says it's unfair to blame his book for the actions of unstable parents, but physicians and law enforcement authorities have expressed concerns about the book's role in child abuse. “My fear is that this book, while perhaps well intended, could easily be misinterpreted and could lead to what I consider significant abuse," a pediatrician who examined one of the dead children told the Times. The book threatens to escalate violence against children because it advises that “if you don’t get results, the only thing to do is to punish harder and harder," says a woman who runs a Christian-based blog opposed to corporal punishment. Parents worried about the book have organized to pressure outlets like Amazon.com to stop selling it. One of the Pearls' five children, now 28, recalls having a "wonderful" childhood, even though her dad says she was spanked some 50 times as a toddler. Click for more from the Times' piece.

But Apple’s downmarket strategy comes with risks. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP The consumer device maker introduces its latest smartphone models, this time including a discount version, and tells users when they can download iOS 7, the new operating system. According to SlashGear, we can expect the iPhone 5S to have an 8-megapixel camera with a wider f/2.0 aperture lens and support for 1080p HD video recording. A fingerprint sensor on the next iPhone could massively boost uptake of the technology. Seeking out cost-conscious consumers who have gravitated toward inexpensive Android phones, Apple unveiled a much-anticipated cheap model in its popular iPhone series, dubbed the iPhone 5c, at a media event at its Cupertino, Calif. headquarters on Tuesday. As for the iPhone 5S, which will start at a contract price of $199, Apple is offering several upgrades from its previous model, including a new gold color. The iPhone 5c measures 4 inches diagonally, the same as the iPhone 5, and has an 8-megapixel camera like the iPhone 5. However, a number of photos showing colourful plastic rear shells alleged to be for Apple's rumored lower-cost iPhone 5C have surfaced in recent weeks: 14.42: As usual, rumours and leaks about the new iPhone started surfacing months ago. 14.30: Apple's iPhone launch event is due to start in Cupertino, California in about three and a half hours.

– Apple is hoping its new, cheaper iPhone can make plastic cool. As expected, Apple unveiled two new iterations on its popular smartphone today, the premium 5S, and the budget-friendly 5C. "The iPhone 5C is beautifully, unapologetically plastic," designer Jonathan Ive said, according to the Washington Post. Here's everything you need to know from the unveiling: The advent of the new iPhones will put the iPhone 5 out to pasture, but, curiously enough, not the 4S. As predicted, the 5S will come with a new stainless steel fingerprint-reading home button. You'll be able to use it to unlock the phone or make purchases. The fingerprint data will not be stored on Apple's servers, which means that "presumably the NSA can't tap it," the Telegraph observes. The 5S will be available in not just gold, but silver and "space gray" as well. Black will no longer be an option. The 5C, meanwhile, will come in what the Huffington Post quips are "candy colors": white, blue, green, rose, and yellow. The 5S will boast a powerful A7 chipset, and run 64-bit software. It's five times as fast as the iPhone 5 and 40 times faster than the original iPhone released six years ago. But not everyone's impressed: "They're talking about specs because they fear smartphones are becoming Good Enough," Matthew Yglesias argues. The 5C will have the same screen, camera, and A6 chip of the iPhone 5. "Looking at the specs of the 5C, it becomes clear why the 5 was retired," analyst Carolina Milanesi observes. "This is NOT the cheap product that many expected." The 5C will start at $99, while the 5S will start at $199, with a new contract. The 4S will be available for free, again, with a new contract. Apple stock is plunging following the event, and Business Insider writer Steve Kovach thinks it's because the market is disappointed that the 5C, which will cost $549 without a contract, will be too expensive for emerging markets.

'Mad Men' Star Leaves Scene After 4-Car Wreck 'Mad Men' Star Leaves Scene After 4-Car Wreck " starallegedly slammed into three parked cars and left the scene.LAPD tells TMZ January was driving a Range Rover around 9 PM last night when she allegedly lost control, hit the other cars and caused some major damage.

– January Jones, who plays the beleaguered wife of Mad Men’s Don Draper, is accused of leaving the scene after hitting three parked cars. Jones allegedly lost control of her Range Rover last night and caused major damage, TMZ reports. She left on foot, saying, “I can’t deal with this commotion,” but returned during the investigation and explained she bailed because paparazzi were following her. Alcohol and drugs were not involved, cops say. Why, pray tell, was she so eager to lose the paps? Perhaps because of some recent embarrassing photos of her doing an obvious walk of shame. See them here.

by Doug MacGunnigle, WPRO News Alan Sorrentino, the man who wrote the critical letter about women in yoga pants to the Barrington Times this week, spoke exclusively to WPRO’s John DePetro Saturday and asked organizers to call off a planned protest parade on his home Sunday, saying he has received threats on his life and property. "Yoga pants belong in the yoga studio," he wrote. He told women who wear yoga pants that he's struggling with his own physicality as he ages and said, "I don't want to struggle with yours."

– A Rhode Island man who penned a letter to the editor complaining about women wearing yoga pants says it was meant to be humorous and he doesn't have an issue with yoga pants. Alan Sorrentino tells WPRO-AM he hoped the letter published in the Barrington Times would be enjoyed as a break from the current political campaign rhetoric. Instead, the letter generated a huge outcry and a group of women say they'll parade through Sorrentino's neighborhood Sunday afternoon dressed in yoga pants. "Yoga pants belong in the yoga studio," Sorrentino wrote in the letter, via the AP. "What's next? Wearing a 'Speedo' to the supermarket? Imagine if men did that. Yuck!" Organizers say the march is not a protest against Sorrentino but part of a bigger movement against misogyny and men dictating how women should dress. Sorrentino says the response to his letter was "vicious" and he's received death threats. He asks marchers to stay away from his home. "I assumed the character of this grumpy old man that was railing about women in yoga pants because he was too tight to just relax and accept himself in his age and his own ways. It was meant to sound stupid and creepy."

Based on a ‘real’ story, the hit John Travolta film Saturday Night Fever became the prism through which the world viewed disco. Twenty years later it was revealed that the actual inspiration was a British mod called Chris... Picture it: a writer pens a magazine article and it’s an instant sensation. Producers come calling, he sells the rights for tens of thousands, the tabloids give him a nickname, acquaintances greet him as a friend, cheques flood in, he attends the premiere of his film in Los Angeles with a famous disco singer on his arm. It’s glitzy, it’s glam, it’s Hollywood, baby. But as he makes his way through the frenzy outside the theatre, through security, paparazzi and screaming teenage girls, he is filled with moral panic. Saturday Night Fever was released in 1977, and has since grossed $285m worldwide. The soundtrack became one of the bestselling film album of all time after staying at No 1 for 24 consecutive weeks, reinvigorating the Bee Gees’ career, and its star, John Travolta, became one of the youngest actors to be nominated for the best actor Oscar. Decades on, not many remember that the phenomenon was down to one man: Northern Irish rock critic Nik Cohn and his report of 7 June, 1976 for New York magazine, Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Nights, which was published 40 years ago this month. Cohn was the author of a number of books including the 1969 rock history Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom. A protege of swinging London, he partied with rock stars, joined the Who on tour, and is said by some to have been instrumental in the genesis of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. He had his portrait shot by Iain Macmillan – the photographer behind the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover – and from the age of 18 was contributing briefings about mods and rockers to the Observer. After crossing the Atlantic and signing on with New York magazine in 1975, the writer, who came to feel disenchanted with the establishment music business, persuaded the mag’s founder and editor Clay Felker to let him document disco – a new, largely ethnic, largely gay underground trend that had taken over parts of New York City. The writer was painfully aware that everything Fever had brought him – the fame, the fortune – was the result of a lie The result was the profile of an “ultimate Face”. Vincent, a young Italian-American worked in a hardware store during the week and partied at a disco club called 2001 Odyssey on the weekend. Vincent “was the very best dancer in Bay Ridge … he owned 14 floral shirts, five suits, eight pairs of shoes, three overcoats, and had appeared on American Bandstand”. He and his friends knew nothing of flower power, Bob Dylan or Ken Kesey. They were opulent but poor, proud but shy. “The new generation takes few risks,” Cohn wrote. “It goes through high school, obedient; graduates, looks for a job, saves and plans. Endures. And once a week, on Saturday night, its one great moment of release, it explodes.” The intro declared: “Everything described in this article is factual and was either witnessed by me or told to me directly by the people involved. Only the names of the main characters have been changed.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch a trailer for Saturday Night Fever The rest is cinema history: film rights were sold to producer Robert Stigwood, who had just signed a three-picture deal with a young TV actor called John Travolta. Screenwriter Norman Wexler transformed Vincent into Tony Manero. So unprecedented was the fanfare that when Stigwood’s 23-year-old assistant Kevin McCormick traipsed through Los Angeles looking for a director, one agent, according to Vanity Fair, told him, “Kid, my directors do movies. They don’t do magazine articles.” Director John Badham had no such qualms, and in December 1977 his movie took $11m in its first 11 days and Travolta became an overnight sensation. Twenty years later came a bombshell. In December 1997 New York magazine published an article in which Cohn confessed that there never was a Vincent. There was no “Lisa”, “Billy”, “John James”, “Lorraine” or “Donna” either. While 2001 Odyssey existed, it wasn’t the way the writer described it in 1976. The whole scene of disco-loving Italians, as mythologised in Saturday Night Fever, was exaggerated. The most bizarre detail was that his disco protagonists were in fact based on mods Cohn had known in London. The writer was “painfully aware” that everything Fever had brought him – the fame, the fortune – was the result of a lie. The real story went like this: in 1976 Cohn met a disco dancer named Tu Sweet, who introduced him to the clubs of New York, including one in Bay Ridge called 2001 Odyssey. One night the two trawled through the underbelly of New York – a land of auto shops, transmission specialists and alignment centres – to find the place. A drunken brawl was in progress and as Cohn opened the cab door one of the guys reeled over the gutter and threw up over his trouser leg. So he just upped and returned to the safe comforts of Manhattan. One image stayed with the writer, though, that of a figure in flared crimson pants and a black body shirt standing in the doorway of the club and calmly watching the action. There was a style about him, Cohn said, a sense of his own specialness that reminded the writer of a teen gang in his hometown of Derry and a mod named Chris he’d met in London in 1965. How we made Sister Sledge’s We Are Family Read more When Cohn went back to Odyssey he didn’t see the young man in the doorway again. “Plus, I made a lousy interviewer,” he wrote. “I knew nothing about this world, and it showed. Quite literally, I didn’t speak the language. So I faked it. I conjured up the story of the figure in the doorway, and named him Vincent. Taking all I knew about the snake-charmer in Derry and, more especially, about Chris the mod in London, I translated them as best I could to Brooklyn. Then I went back to Bay Ridge in daylight and noted the major landmarks. I walked some streets, went into a couple of stores. Studied the clothes, the gestures, the walks. Imagined how it would feel to burn up, all caged energies, with no outlet but the dancefloor and the rituals of Saturday night. Finally, I wrote it all up. And presented it as fact.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest A premiere party for Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta, right, next to a bearded Nik Cohn, Travolta’s mother below them, and producer Robert Stigwood (far left). Photograph: Ron Galella/WireImage So how did he get away with one of the most daring acts of journalistic forgery? While Tribal Rites reads like a novelisation, it must be understood in the context of the time it was written: the tail-end of the era of New Journalism, where writers used literary techniques and a subjective perspective to present fact as fiction. It followed similar works by the likes of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Hunter S Thompson and Norman Mailer. When I first approached Cohn for this article, he said he no longer wanted to discuss the topic. But after several back-and-forth emails, he did say that he doubted any magazine would publish the Tribal Rites piece today. “It reads to me as obvious fiction, albeit based on observation and some knowledge of disco culture. No way could it sneak past customs now. In the 60s and 70s, the line between fact and fiction was blurry. Many magazine writers used fictional techniques to tell supposedly factual stories. No end of liberties were taken. Few editors asked tough questions. For the most part it was a case of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. “Magazine writing then was basically a boys’ club. There was a lot of wretched excess. Along with some great writing came reams of self-indulgent bollocks. Tribal Rites being fiction was never a great secret. I remember once, at the end of a long night, blurting out to a publisher that the story was made up. ‘You don’t say,’ the publisher drawled. ‘And Liberace is gay.’” For context, Gay Talese, now a bestselling author and one of the pioneers of new journalism and author of ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold’, explains that his intention as a young journalist was to write short stories using real characters. “I have always been inspired by great short story writers, the first being the French writer Guy de Maupassant,” he said. “Later I also began reading short stories by famous novelists – F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and more contemporary writers such as John O’Hara, Irwin Shaw, Carson McCullers, John Cheever and others. My newspaper articles were all written as if short stories: there was scene-setting, dialogue, much description of people and places.” But while the articles were presented as stories, they were never fictionalised. “Nothing was invented, all the names of the characters were real, and verifiably truthful.” Caroline Miller, who edited New York magazine at the time of Cohn’s confession, said her predecessor, Felker, wouldn’t have published Tribal Rites if he thought it fabricated. “That said, remember that 70s Brooklyn was a foreign country to most New York magazine editors,” she told me. “It wasn’t cool, and some of them had probably never been there – even to Brooklyn Heights, which was Norman Mailer territory. So they may not have had good radar for credibility. Also, after the zeitgeisty opening about the blue-collar disco tribe, [Tribal Rites] is all narrative, and that much narrative detail tends to read as real. Conversation in cars. What Vincent was thinking as he looked in the mirror…” Miller and her team published Cohn’s admission because it was newsworthy. “Here’s a guy basically bragging about fabricating a legendary story and getting away with it,” she said. “And it certainly added to our understanding of pop culture myth-making – the idea that a mashup of people and scenes Nik had collected on both side of the Atlantic could go essentially unchallenged, and have such staying power.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night by Nik Cohn as featured on a 1976 New York magazine cover. Cohn has said that were it not for Jim McMullan’s accompanying illustrations the piece might never have seen daylight. McMullan based these on the photographs he took in 2001 Odyssey but, fundamentally, he never met Cohn’s protagonist. “I went to the club twice and moved around, taking my photos without interacting much with any of the patrons,” McMullan recalled. “Nik took a different path through the crowds so we didn’t exchange notes. It’s a universal story... working-class kids going out and getting off their heads to American black music Bill Brewster “I finished my paintings several weeks before Nik finished his story so I wasn’t really reacting to how he saw the scene at the club. It did seem like an amazingly dramatic story arc and the kind of ‘working-class’ story he was already famous for.” It so happened that the design director of New York magazine, Milton Glaser, was amazed by the reportage style of the paintings. “Clay also came to see the work that way... I suspect that because the art was all ready to go before Nik finished writing, it put some pressure on him to get it written. Had the paintings not already impressed Milton and Clay, I suppose it might have been easier to scuttle the whole project.” Did McMullan’s art indicate a truth to the piece? While Cohn’s descriptions of the club’s “Faces” were based on the working class in England, they weren’t entirely off the mark. “Just like the Italian-Americans, the mods shopped for that perfect shirt,” Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy, an American radio broadcaster, DJ, producer and founder of Classic Album Sundays, explained to me over coffee in London one morning. “It was about looking like they were better off than they really were, sticking their money into things like music and clothes. They bought records, certain types of trousers, certain types of jackets. It was an attitude. “It’s that culture of people who have their regular job during the week and live to go out on the weekend. A blue-collar worker in Brooklyn isn’t going to be defined by their job. Who they really are is who they are when they go out. Just like a mod. A mod might be bricklayer, but they’re a mod.” Bill Brewster, former editor of Mixmag USA and founder of Djhistory.com, echoed this: “It’s a universal story that had been going on for decades even before there were DJs playing records,” he said. “Working-class kids going out on a Friday and Saturday and getting off their heads to American black music. It was happening in the cellars of Paris during the occupation in terms of jazz records. Those archetypes, even though Cohn based them on people in London, were obviously happening in New York as well. I think it was an educated guess on his part, and a correct one.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest The multi-million-selling soundtrack album featured hits from the Bee Gees and topped the US chart for 24 consecutive weeks. Disco as a genre and culture had already been gathering pace in New York so Saturday Night Fever was just the tipping point of something that had been going on for a while. “Even before disco was officially called disco, you had David Mancuso’s loft parties, in the late 60s, in downtown Manhattan, where he played danceable acid-rock, R&B, mixing it all up,” said Murphy, who has collaborated with Mancuso in the past. “They were all about integrating different kinds of people, whether it was class, race, sexual orientation. People like David Morales and Larry Levan were going as kids. At the same time Francis Grasso became the first DJ to start mixing records together with two turntables. In the mid-70s these other clubs started rising – Studio 54, which was the glitzy manhattan club, where Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and Liza Minelli hung out, and places like 2001 Odyssey, which were for the working-class Brooklynites.” But in the end it was Cohn’s article and Saturday Night Fever that gave the decade its cultural identity. “As a child I was living in Massachusetts, in a white suburban New England small town, listening to rock and pop ,” Murphy said. “Then this article happened, the movie came out and disco blew up across white America overnight. Me and my friends would dance to the soundtrack at slumber parties. I had aunts and uncles who were taking disco-dancing lessons.” Build, baby, build: when radical architects did disco Read more Then came the backlash. DJ Steve Dahl headed up a Disco Demolition Night in Chicago in July 1979. People wore “disco sucks” T-shirts. The Bee Gees became cheesy, Chic became cheesy, and by the 80s disco was a dirty word. “Saturday Night Fever was probably the thing that killed off disco in the end,” Murphy said. Cohn, now 70, lives in Ghent, New York. His life reads like a blockbuster of its own – after Tribal Rites he continued writing, true stories mostly, and in 1983 was arrested for conspiring to import millions of dollars worth of heroin and cocaine into the US. The more serious charges were dropped and Cohn was given five years’ probation for possession. His life, the writer then realised, had been unravelling and it was time for a change. “Why did I decide to come clean in 1997? It simply felt like time,” he told me. “What seemed OK to me when I was young and stoned no longer sat right. Accountability, let’s say.” Cohn has always maintained that what was genuine was the staying power of Saturday Night Fever itself. That central figure, with all his grace, energy and passion. A nobody who once a week was a somebody. “Tribal Rites is about identity,” he said. “Finding a place in the world where you can shine. What still resonates, to me at least, is the sense of yearning. If I was writing the story today, Vincent might be trans…”

– The Guardian revisits a fascinating piece of pop culture that may be a surprise to those who either love or hate Saturday Night Fever. The 1977 movie that helped turn disco into a phenomenon and John Travolta into a mega-star was actually based on a New York magazine article by British rock critic Nik Cohn after a visit to a New York City dance club. There, he claimed to have spotted the real-life "Vincent" played by Travolta, whom he described as a blue-collar kid who let loose with his friends once a week. “Everything described in this article is factual and was either witnessed by me or told to me directly by the people involved," wrote Cohn in a preface to Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Nights. "Only the names of the main characters have been changed.” Twenty years later, however, Cohn confessed to the same magazine that his story was largely a work of fiction. “Why did I decide to come clean in 1997? It simply felt like time,” he tells Nadia Khomami of the Guardian. “What seemed OK to me when I was young and stoned no longer sat right. Accountability, let’s say.” Cohn based the Travolta character on "mods" he knew in London, and the Guardian story recounts the context of the time in which the article was written—days when big-name writers such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson blended fact with fiction in their work. Now 70, Cohn insists that a fundamental part still rings true. “Tribal Rites is about identity,” he says. “Finding a place in the world where you can shine. What still resonates, to me at least, is the sense of yearning. If I was writing the story today, Vincent might be trans ..." (Click for the full story.)