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Oksana Claims Mel Targeted TMZ Exec in Death Plot There's a story circulating thattold authorities Mel Gibson plotted to break the kneecaps of a "Hollywood figure." Well that story is about TMZ's, spoon-fed by Oksana's people.The story is much wilder than reported. Earlier this week, Oksana's rep,, told Harvey that Mel had described to Oksana a plot to kill Harvey. Jaffe said Oksana claimed Mel told her he was furious that TMZ broke the story about the anti-Semitic rant following Mel's 2006 DUI arrest . Jaffe said Oksana told him Mel had said he wanted the "blood of Jews" on his hands.According to Jaffe, Oksana said Mel told her he had someone do "surveillance" on Harvey earlier this year, having him followed to the gym at 4 AM.The plan, Jaffe said, was to "kidnap" Harvey, strip him, take him deep into the desert, break his kneecaps and leave him to die.Jaffe told Harvey the story on the heels of complaining that a particular TMZ post was not favorable enough to Oksana.We checked the "kneecap" story out and determined it was false. For starters, Oksana had the wrong gym. More telling ... Oksana never mentioned a word of this to any of her lawyers while she tried negotiating a $15 million package in May during the mediation, using the tapes as her secret weapon. One person involved in the mediation laughed, saying Oksana brought out every piece of ammunition imaginable to score a financial package, so why was this story mysteriously absent?Oksana claims to have told the Sheriff's Department the story. It seems deputies took it so seriously ... they never even contacted Harvey to give him a heads up that someone wanted him dead ... allegedly.: Sheriff's Department spokespersontells TMZ, "." ||||| Mel Gibson‘s infamous rants have earned him a lot of haters, but now they’ve also earned him the honor of having a drink named after him. At the Oak Bar in New York’s Plaza Hotel, they’re serving up a Mel ‘Bipolar’ Gibson. Executive chef Eric Hara said of the drink, “Gibson … Bipolar … All these words flying around in the media just jumped out at me. So I made a Gibson, which is a classic cocktail, into something thoroughly twisted.” The cocktail consists of a shot of gin, a shot of Van Gogh Vodka, since the painter was also bipolar, and of course cocktail onions for garnish. Let’s just hope Gibson doesn’t unleash his wrath on Hara! [People] And to get you as drunk as a celeb, we’ve rounded up a few other cocktails named after famous people. ||||| A furious Mel Gibson said, “I want Jew blood on my hands,” his girlfriend of three years, Oksana Grigorieva, told authorities who are investigating the actor for domestic abuse, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned. It’s a fresh example of the hate-filled speech that has helped make the actor infamous. The anti-Semitic slur was allegedly made by Mel in reference to a high-profile Hollywood figure who is Jewish and who Mel believed had “publicly humiliated” him. Gibson hired individuals to place this person under surveillance, Oksana told authorities. PHOTOS: Oksana Shows Off Her Post Baby Body “Oksana says Mel told her, ‘I want Jew blood on my hands,’ and said he wanted the person taken to the desert, stripped naked, knee capped and left in the heat,” a source close to one of the investigations involving Mel told RadarOnline.com exclusively. Gibson never followed through with his threats. EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: See The First Photos of Mel and Oksana In a Passionate Embrace On The Beach This is the latest vile remark attributed to the Lethal Weapon star, who targeted African Americans and Latinos in recorded arguments with his ex-girlfriend, played exclusively on RadarOnline.com. Gibson launched a shameful diatribe against Jews in 2006 during his DUI arrest and said Jews were to blame for all the wars in the world. He asked the arresting officer, “Are you a Jew?” PHOTOS: Stars Who Have Battled Drinking Problems In one of the audio tapes played on RadarOnline.com, Gibson implied he would report a female staffer to immigration authorities, saying, “I will report her to the f—ing people that take f—ing money from the wetbacks.” On another tape, Gibson lashed out at Grigorieva, calling her “an embarrassment” before suggesting the Russian musician would be “raped by a pack of n—-rs” because of the clothing that she was wearing was too provocative. PHOTOS: Celebrity Mugshots Oksana has officials investigating Mel for domestic battery, child endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon that the Oscar-winning actor/director said he had the prominent Jewish figure followed by a team of private investigators in 2009. “Oksana said Mel had hired people to engage in the surveillance of others,” said a source. “Mel thought this person had publicly humiliated him so he told Oksana that he wanted to break his knee caps’. EXCLUSIVE: Mel’s Text To Oksana After Brawl “Oksana recalled that she was initially skeptical that Mel could have hired someone to follow this person, but she said Mel revealed in great detail what his investigators had observed from the surveillance. “Oksana said she was shocked that Mel would engage in such behavior.” Oksana told authorities the story, because, she claimed, she was afraid Mel was “capable of having me followed or harmed” after the bitter break-up which has since imploded into a full-blown scandal. RELATED STORIES MEL AUDIO TAPE #1: Mel’s Racist Rant MEL AUDIO TAPE #2: Mel Gibson Admits Hitting Oksana, Threatens To Kill Her MEL AUDIO TAPE #3: Another Mel Gibson Slur Caught On Tape In Crazed Rage MEL AUDIO TAPE #4: Out Of Control Mel Gibson Says He’ll Burn Down House After Demanding Sex MEL AUDIO TAPE #5: Mel Gibson Completely Loses It: ‘B*tch, C*nt, Wh*re, Gold Digger!’ MEL AUDIO TAPE #6: The Tape That Could Destroy Mel: “No One Will Believe You”, He Says After She Charges: “You Hit The Baby”

– Another day, another shocking claim about Mel Gibson. The latest: He allegedly told Oksana Grigorieva, “I want Jew blood on my hands,” she tells authorities. Apparently Gibson was angry at, as Radar puts it, “a high-profile Hollywood figure who is Jewish” who had “publicly humiliated” Mel. He allegedly had the guy followed, and “Oksana said he wanted the person taken to the desert, stripped naked, knee capped, and left in the heat,” a source says. TMZ claims the story is about none other than Harvey Levin, the gossip site's very own head honcho—and that the whole thing isn't true. Apparently Grigorieva's rep fed the story to Levin after TMZ posted an "unfavorable" story about his client. At least drama-ridden Mel has Britney Spears to lean on during this difficult time. Click here to read about their connection, or here to read about a cocktail named after the scary movie star.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Oksana Claims Mel Targeted TMZ Exec in Death Plot There's a story circulating thattold authorities Mel Gibson plotted to break the kneecaps of a "Hollywood figure." Well that story is about TMZ's, spoon-fed by Oksana's people.The story is much wilder than reported. Earlier this week, Oksana's rep,, told Harvey that Mel had described to Oksana a plot to kill Harvey. Jaffe said Oksana claimed Mel told her he was furious that TMZ broke the story about the anti-Semitic rant following Mel's 2006 DUI arrest . Jaffe said Oksana told him Mel had said he wanted the "blood of Jews" on his hands.According to Jaffe, Oksana said Mel told her he had someone do "surveillance" on Harvey earlier this year, having him followed to the gym at 4 AM.The plan, Jaffe said, was to "kidnap" Harvey, strip him, take him deep into the desert, break his kneecaps and leave him to die.Jaffe told Harvey the story on the heels of complaining that a particular TMZ post was not favorable enough to Oksana.We checked the "kneecap" story out and determined it was false. For starters, Oksana had the wrong gym. More telling ... Oksana never mentioned a word of this to any of her lawyers while she tried negotiating a $15 million package in May during the mediation, using the tapes as her secret weapon. One person involved in the mediation laughed, saying Oksana brought out every piece of ammunition imaginable to score a financial package, so why was this story mysteriously absent?Oksana claims to have told the Sheriff's Department the story. It seems deputies took it so seriously ... they never even contacted Harvey to give him a heads up that someone wanted him dead ... allegedly.: Sheriff's Department spokespersontells TMZ, "." ||||| Mel Gibson‘s infamous rants have earned him a lot of haters, but now they’ve also earned him the honor of having a drink named after him. At the Oak Bar in New York’s Plaza Hotel, they’re serving up a Mel ‘Bipolar’ Gibson. Executive chef Eric Hara said of the drink, “Gibson … Bipolar … All these words flying around in the media just jumped out at me. So I made a Gibson, which is a classic cocktail, into something thoroughly twisted.” The cocktail consists of a shot of gin, a shot of Van Gogh Vodka, since the painter was also bipolar, and of course cocktail onions for garnish. Let’s just hope Gibson doesn’t unleash his wrath on Hara! [People] And to get you as drunk as a celeb, we’ve rounded up a few other cocktails named after famous people. ||||| A furious Mel Gibson said, “I want Jew blood on my hands,” his girlfriend of three years, Oksana Grigorieva, told authorities who are investigating the actor for domestic abuse, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned. It’s a fresh example of the hate-filled speech that has helped make the actor infamous. The anti-Semitic slur was allegedly made by Mel in reference to a high-profile Hollywood figure who is Jewish and who Mel believed had “publicly humiliated” him. Gibson hired individuals to place this person under surveillance, Oksana told authorities. PHOTOS: Oksana Shows Off Her Post Baby Body “Oksana says Mel told her, ‘I want Jew blood on my hands,’ and said he wanted the person taken to the desert, stripped naked, knee capped and left in the heat,” a source close to one of the investigations involving Mel told RadarOnline.com exclusively. Gibson never followed through with his threats. EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: See The First Photos of Mel and Oksana In a Passionate Embrace On The Beach This is the latest vile remark attributed to the Lethal Weapon star, who targeted African Americans and Latinos in recorded arguments with his ex-girlfriend, played exclusively on RadarOnline.com. Gibson launched a shameful diatribe against Jews in 2006 during his DUI arrest and said Jews were to blame for all the wars in the world. He asked the arresting officer, “Are you a Jew?” PHOTOS: Stars Who Have Battled Drinking Problems In one of the audio tapes played on RadarOnline.com, Gibson implied he would report a female staffer to immigration authorities, saying, “I will report her to the f—ing people that take f—ing money from the wetbacks.” On another tape, Gibson lashed out at Grigorieva, calling her “an embarrassment” before suggesting the Russian musician would be “raped by a pack of n—-rs” because of the clothing that she was wearing was too provocative. PHOTOS: Celebrity Mugshots Oksana has officials investigating Mel for domestic battery, child endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon that the Oscar-winning actor/director said he had the prominent Jewish figure followed by a team of private investigators in 2009. “Oksana said Mel had hired people to engage in the surveillance of others,” said a source. “Mel thought this person had publicly humiliated him so he told Oksana that he wanted to break his knee caps’. EXCLUSIVE: Mel’s Text To Oksana After Brawl “Oksana recalled that she was initially skeptical that Mel could have hired someone to follow this person, but she said Mel revealed in great detail what his investigators had observed from the surveillance. “Oksana said she was shocked that Mel would engage in such behavior.” Oksana told authorities the story, because, she claimed, she was afraid Mel was “capable of having me followed or harmed” after the bitter break-up which has since imploded into a full-blown scandal. RELATED STORIES MEL AUDIO TAPE #1: Mel’s Racist Rant MEL AUDIO TAPE #2: Mel Gibson Admits Hitting Oksana, Threatens To Kill Her MEL AUDIO TAPE #3: Another Mel Gibson Slur Caught On Tape In Crazed Rage MEL AUDIO TAPE #4: Out Of Control Mel Gibson Says He’ll Burn Down House After Demanding Sex MEL AUDIO TAPE #5: Mel Gibson Completely Loses It: ‘B*tch, C*nt, Wh*re, Gold Digger!’ MEL AUDIO TAPE #6: The Tape That Could Destroy Mel: “No One Will Believe You”, He Says After She Charges: “You Hit The Baby”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Cody Williams was arrested in late August, charged with the sexual battery of someone younger than 12. The 18-year-old Clay High School student spent 35 days in jail. One problem: He was the wrong Cody Williams. Three officers have received formal counseling for their role in the wrongful arrest and another officer faces a 10-day unpaid suspension and a transfer from investigations to patrol. Deputy Sheriff Johnny Hawkins of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office will learn Tuesday if he will receive that punishment. “As a result of your incompetence, an innocent man was arrested for an offense that he did not commit,” Sheriff Rick Beseler told Hawkins in a February disciplinary letter. Hawkins’ phone number was not listed or available Monday evening to seek comment. A girl younger than 12 told Clay Sheriff’s officers in 2013 that on or around Halloween 2012 she had sex with an older boy she identified as Cody Williams. The girl’s exact age at the time wasn’t released by authorities. The girl told police investigators what the boy looked like and where he attended school. Without showing her any photos of possible suspects, the sheriff’s office sought the arrest of Cody Lee Williams. Cody Lee Williams, of Green Cove Springs, was arrested two months later on a sexual battery charge. He was 17 at the time of the reported crime and was promptly charged as an adult by State Attorney Angela Corey’s office. Williams, who has had legal trouble in the past with marijuana, said he was aghast by the charge when he was arrested at his home. “I can’t even tell you the horror of hearing those words,” said Williams. “My heart just started beating really fast and all my insides just kind of dropped.” Sheriff Rick Beseler said his department has policies in place intended to prevent these types of wrongful arrests. “If those policies had been followed then this wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “This is not a routine problem. That’s why the supervisors are even being held accountable. We take this stuff very seriously.” Beseler noted such an occurrence is rare, considering that the office arrests between 7,000 and 8,000 people a year. Jim Pimentel, department general counsel, said in the past 10 years there was only one other allegation of wrongful arrest. In December, the sheriff’s office requested Cody Lee Williams’ arrest in the case be expunged. When Hawkins, who interviewed the victim, thought Cody Lee Williams was the suspect, he failed to show her his photo to confirm he had the right person, according to an internal report on Hawkins’ investigation. “He stressed that he usually will show a photo lineup but could not explain why he did not in this incident,” according to the report. It wasn’t until Williams went to court in early October and was given documents with the details of the charges against him that he put the pieces together. He called his mother from jail and told her he believed police were actually seeking someone else named Cody Williams. Both teens attended the same schools since seventh grade and were born the same year, Cody Lee Williams said. He said he knew Cody Raymond Williams, but didn’t run in the same social group. “We were just two guys with the same name at the same school,” he said. The two students shared the same teacher, though in different classes, and that teacher called them by their middle names to avoid confusion. After Cody Lee Williams called his mother from jail, she reached out to Hawkins, who immediately began looking into the matter and conducted a photo lineup with the victim. Hawkins included Cody Lee Williams’ photo in the lineup and asked the victim if she saw the person she had sex with in the lineup. “She stated he was not there and then pointed at Cody Lee Williams and stated, �?I do know this Cody Williams but this is not the one,’ ” according to an October report by Hawkins. Hawkins said he asked the girl why she didn’t mention that there was another Cody Williams during earlier conversations and “she had no answer,” according to the report. The internal investigation found that Hawkins failed to properly identify a suspect, failed to properly document information obtained in the investigation, made inaccurate statements in reports and failed to properly document actions taken in an investigation. Attorney Kristopher Nowicki, who is representing Williams in his potential civil action, said a photo lineup could have prevented Williams’ arrest. “It seems that there was no investigation done other than my client’s name,” he said. “It is not Cody Williams’ obligation to investigate crimes on behalf of the state of Florida.” Deputy Sheriff Jason Wright, Sgt. Daniel Moreland and Sgt. Eric Twisdale will all receive formal counseling for their roles in the Williams case that will permanently be placed in their files. Cody Raymond Williams, the one police were looking for from the beginning, is due to appear in court on the sexual assault charge on March 3. Topher Sanders: (904) 359-4169 ||||| They arrested the wrong Cody Williams, and then kept him in jail for more than a month. The Clay County, Fla., Sheriff's Office punished a deputy Tuesday for the wrongful arrest of 18-year-old Cody Lee Williams, who didn't even share the same middle name as a man accused of having sex with a young girl. “Other than the name, there’s no other similarities," Kris Nowicki, Cody Lee Williams' attorney, told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. “Cody Williams had never met this girl and didn’t know anything about her." According to the Florida Times-Union, which first reported on the story, a girl younger than 12 told investigators that she had sex with an older boy named Cody Williams on Halloween in 2012. Williams was arrested on Aug. 30 and languished in jail until Oct. 4, the day his mother pleaded with the Clay County Sheriff's Office to release her son, according to investigators' records, which the Sheriff's Office provided to The Times. “Not only did they not do a photo lineup, but further … they put him directly into adult court, filing an affidavit that not only is it this guy, but he did something" so serious that he should be charged as an adult, Nowicki said. (Williams, the wrongly arrested, would have been 17 at the time of the crime.) State Attorney Angela Corey's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. After the mixup was discovered, three deputies received counseling for their role in the arrest, the Times-Union reported. On Tuesday, a fourth official, Deputy Sheriff Johnny Hawkins, was suspended without pay for 10 days and transferred out of the investigative division, according to the Sheriff's Office. “As a result of your incompetence, an innocent man was arrested for an offense that he did not commit,” the sheriff, Beseler, told Hawkins in a February disciplinary letter obtained by the Times-Union. In a statement made after the punishment was announced Tuesday, Beseler said: “In fairness, let me say Deputy Hawkins has a good record with our agency. He has no prior discipline and many commendations in his file. "In this case, however, he took short cuts and didn’t do a thorough investigation. The result was an innocent man was accused of a terrible crime he didn’t commit. Arresting an innocent person is something we fear far more than letting a guilty person get away. I extend to Cody Lee Williams my apology for this error and we will seek to make things right for him." Officials later tracked down Cody Raymond Williams, 18, and arrested him on suspicion of sexually assaulting a girl younger than 12. According to the Clay County clerk's office, he was charged on Jan. 23 and was scheduled for a pretrial hearing on March 4. “They have protocol put in place that prevents this kind of stuff, threshold requirements that you would expect an officer to accomplish to arrest someone for this serious of a crime,” said Nowicki, the attorney for Cody Lee Williams. “I would support any kind of action that would support this kind of harm from happening in the future." Part of the confusion over why Cody Lee Williams remained in jail for so long may have come from his past criminal record, according to records from the Sheriff's Office, which said Williams would have likely faced charges for an unrelated probation violation. Cody Lee Williams had been on probation for a drug possession conviction and had failed a drug test shortly before his wrongful arrest on the sex-assault charge, the records stated. He was charged with the probation violation after his arrest on the sex-assault charge. Five days after being released from jail on the sex assault charge in October, he admitted to violating his probation to a judge, who credited him for time served and dropped the case, the records said. Follow LATimes National on Facebook Follow LA Times National on Facebook ALSO: On video: Former police chief eats evidence to protect tip Kansas, Arizona win proof-of-citizenship requirement in voting suit Report: New York man 'basically baked to death' in Rikers Island jail ||||| Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler publicly apologized Tuesday to a Green Cove Springs teen who was wrongfully arrested and spent more than a month in jail on a sexual battery charge. Cody Lee Williams, 19, spent 35 days in jail last year after Deputy Sheriff Johnny Hawkins failed to show the victim a photo of Williams to get a positive identification. Williams was charged with having sex with someone younger than 12. After seeing court documents, Williams realized police were actually seeking a different Cody Williams. Cody Lee Williams and Cody Raymond Williams were born the same year and went to the same high school. Cody Lee Williams told his mother from jail that he believed police were looking for someone else. She relayed the information to Hawkins, who determined the department had arrested the wrong person. Beseler said Hawkins has a good record with his department but took short-cuts in the Williams’ investigation. “The result was an innocent man was accused of a terrible crime he didn’t commit,” he said. “Arresting an innocent person is something we fear far more than letting a guilty person get away. I extend to Cody Lee Williams my apology for this error and we will seek to make things right for him.” Hawkins was suspended for 10 days Tuesday and transferred to patrol for his role in the wrongful arrest and jailing of the teen. The punishment is the most serious disciplinary action he has handed out as Sheriff short of termination, said Beseler through his spokeswoman Mary Justino. Beseler’s letter to Hawkins on the discipline called Hawkins’ police work incompetent. Three other officers received formal counselling for their parts in the Williams’ investigation. After investigators realized they had arrested the wrong person, Cody Lee Williams was released from jail and the charges were dropped. The sheriff’s department asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in December to expunge Williams’ record. The teen has hired an attorney and has put the sheriff’s department on notice he intends to file a lawsuit. Cody Raymond Williams, the one police were looking for from the beginning, is due to appear in court Monday on the sexual assault charge. Topher Sanders: (904) 359-4169

– A Florida teenager spent 35 days in jail on sex-assault charges because it apparently never occurred to his arresting officers that two people might have the same name, reports the Florida Times-Union. Cody Lee Williams, now 19, was arrested last August and charged as an adult after a young girl told police that a "Cody Williams" had sex with her in 2012. Turns out, police were looking for Cody Raymond Williams, who attended the same school. Clay County deputies never showed the girl a photo after the arrest. "Other than the name, there’s no other similarities," the attorney for the wrongly arrested teen tells the Los Angeles Times. Cody Lee Williams "had never met this girl and didn’t know anything about her." It was Williams himself who figured it out while looking over documents during a court appearance. Afterward, he called his mother, who helped set things straight. “We were just two guys with the same name at the same school,” he says. The other Cody Williams is due in court Monday. Three deputies had to attend counseling, and Deputy Sheriff Johnny Hawkins got suspended for 10 days without pay and transferred from the investigative unit. Hawkins apologized for the error yesterday, saying "arresting an innocent person is something we fear far more than letting a guilty person get away." The Times-Union reports that Williams plans to sue.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Cody Williams was arrested in late August, charged with the sexual battery of someone younger than 12. The 18-year-old Clay High School student spent 35 days in jail. One problem: He was the wrong Cody Williams. Three officers have received formal counseling for their role in the wrongful arrest and another officer faces a 10-day unpaid suspension and a transfer from investigations to patrol. Deputy Sheriff Johnny Hawkins of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office will learn Tuesday if he will receive that punishment. “As a result of your incompetence, an innocent man was arrested for an offense that he did not commit,” Sheriff Rick Beseler told Hawkins in a February disciplinary letter. Hawkins’ phone number was not listed or available Monday evening to seek comment. A girl younger than 12 told Clay Sheriff’s officers in 2013 that on or around Halloween 2012 she had sex with an older boy she identified as Cody Williams. The girl’s exact age at the time wasn’t released by authorities. The girl told police investigators what the boy looked like and where he attended school. Without showing her any photos of possible suspects, the sheriff’s office sought the arrest of Cody Lee Williams. Cody Lee Williams, of Green Cove Springs, was arrested two months later on a sexual battery charge. He was 17 at the time of the reported crime and was promptly charged as an adult by State Attorney Angela Corey’s office. Williams, who has had legal trouble in the past with marijuana, said he was aghast by the charge when he was arrested at his home. “I can’t even tell you the horror of hearing those words,” said Williams. “My heart just started beating really fast and all my insides just kind of dropped.” Sheriff Rick Beseler said his department has policies in place intended to prevent these types of wrongful arrests. “If those policies had been followed then this wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “This is not a routine problem. That’s why the supervisors are even being held accountable. We take this stuff very seriously.” Beseler noted such an occurrence is rare, considering that the office arrests between 7,000 and 8,000 people a year. Jim Pimentel, department general counsel, said in the past 10 years there was only one other allegation of wrongful arrest. In December, the sheriff’s office requested Cody Lee Williams’ arrest in the case be expunged. When Hawkins, who interviewed the victim, thought Cody Lee Williams was the suspect, he failed to show her his photo to confirm he had the right person, according to an internal report on Hawkins’ investigation. “He stressed that he usually will show a photo lineup but could not explain why he did not in this incident,” according to the report. It wasn’t until Williams went to court in early October and was given documents with the details of the charges against him that he put the pieces together. He called his mother from jail and told her he believed police were actually seeking someone else named Cody Williams. Both teens attended the same schools since seventh grade and were born the same year, Cody Lee Williams said. He said he knew Cody Raymond Williams, but didn’t run in the same social group. “We were just two guys with the same name at the same school,” he said. The two students shared the same teacher, though in different classes, and that teacher called them by their middle names to avoid confusion. After Cody Lee Williams called his mother from jail, she reached out to Hawkins, who immediately began looking into the matter and conducted a photo lineup with the victim. Hawkins included Cody Lee Williams’ photo in the lineup and asked the victim if she saw the person she had sex with in the lineup. “She stated he was not there and then pointed at Cody Lee Williams and stated, �?I do know this Cody Williams but this is not the one,’ ” according to an October report by Hawkins. Hawkins said he asked the girl why she didn’t mention that there was another Cody Williams during earlier conversations and “she had no answer,” according to the report. The internal investigation found that Hawkins failed to properly identify a suspect, failed to properly document information obtained in the investigation, made inaccurate statements in reports and failed to properly document actions taken in an investigation. Attorney Kristopher Nowicki, who is representing Williams in his potential civil action, said a photo lineup could have prevented Williams’ arrest. “It seems that there was no investigation done other than my client’s name,” he said. “It is not Cody Williams’ obligation to investigate crimes on behalf of the state of Florida.” Deputy Sheriff Jason Wright, Sgt. Daniel Moreland and Sgt. Eric Twisdale will all receive formal counseling for their roles in the Williams case that will permanently be placed in their files. Cody Raymond Williams, the one police were looking for from the beginning, is due to appear in court on the sexual assault charge on March 3. Topher Sanders: (904) 359-4169 ||||| They arrested the wrong Cody Williams, and then kept him in jail for more than a month. The Clay County, Fla., Sheriff's Office punished a deputy Tuesday for the wrongful arrest of 18-year-old Cody Lee Williams, who didn't even share the same middle name as a man accused of having sex with a young girl. “Other than the name, there’s no other similarities," Kris Nowicki, Cody Lee Williams' attorney, told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. “Cody Williams had never met this girl and didn’t know anything about her." According to the Florida Times-Union, which first reported on the story, a girl younger than 12 told investigators that she had sex with an older boy named Cody Williams on Halloween in 2012. Williams was arrested on Aug. 30 and languished in jail until Oct. 4, the day his mother pleaded with the Clay County Sheriff's Office to release her son, according to investigators' records, which the Sheriff's Office provided to The Times. “Not only did they not do a photo lineup, but further … they put him directly into adult court, filing an affidavit that not only is it this guy, but he did something" so serious that he should be charged as an adult, Nowicki said. (Williams, the wrongly arrested, would have been 17 at the time of the crime.) State Attorney Angela Corey's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. After the mixup was discovered, three deputies received counseling for their role in the arrest, the Times-Union reported. On Tuesday, a fourth official, Deputy Sheriff Johnny Hawkins, was suspended without pay for 10 days and transferred out of the investigative division, according to the Sheriff's Office. “As a result of your incompetence, an innocent man was arrested for an offense that he did not commit,” the sheriff, Beseler, told Hawkins in a February disciplinary letter obtained by the Times-Union. In a statement made after the punishment was announced Tuesday, Beseler said: “In fairness, let me say Deputy Hawkins has a good record with our agency. He has no prior discipline and many commendations in his file. "In this case, however, he took short cuts and didn’t do a thorough investigation. The result was an innocent man was accused of a terrible crime he didn’t commit. Arresting an innocent person is something we fear far more than letting a guilty person get away. I extend to Cody Lee Williams my apology for this error and we will seek to make things right for him." Officials later tracked down Cody Raymond Williams, 18, and arrested him on suspicion of sexually assaulting a girl younger than 12. According to the Clay County clerk's office, he was charged on Jan. 23 and was scheduled for a pretrial hearing on March 4. “They have protocol put in place that prevents this kind of stuff, threshold requirements that you would expect an officer to accomplish to arrest someone for this serious of a crime,” said Nowicki, the attorney for Cody Lee Williams. “I would support any kind of action that would support this kind of harm from happening in the future." Part of the confusion over why Cody Lee Williams remained in jail for so long may have come from his past criminal record, according to records from the Sheriff's Office, which said Williams would have likely faced charges for an unrelated probation violation. Cody Lee Williams had been on probation for a drug possession conviction and had failed a drug test shortly before his wrongful arrest on the sex-assault charge, the records stated. He was charged with the probation violation after his arrest on the sex-assault charge. Five days after being released from jail on the sex assault charge in October, he admitted to violating his probation to a judge, who credited him for time served and dropped the case, the records said. Follow LATimes National on Facebook Follow LA Times National on Facebook ALSO: On video: Former police chief eats evidence to protect tip Kansas, Arizona win proof-of-citizenship requirement in voting suit Report: New York man 'basically baked to death' in Rikers Island jail ||||| Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler publicly apologized Tuesday to a Green Cove Springs teen who was wrongfully arrested and spent more than a month in jail on a sexual battery charge. Cody Lee Williams, 19, spent 35 days in jail last year after Deputy Sheriff Johnny Hawkins failed to show the victim a photo of Williams to get a positive identification. Williams was charged with having sex with someone younger than 12. After seeing court documents, Williams realized police were actually seeking a different Cody Williams. Cody Lee Williams and Cody Raymond Williams were born the same year and went to the same high school. Cody Lee Williams told his mother from jail that he believed police were looking for someone else. She relayed the information to Hawkins, who determined the department had arrested the wrong person. Beseler said Hawkins has a good record with his department but took short-cuts in the Williams’ investigation. “The result was an innocent man was accused of a terrible crime he didn’t commit,” he said. “Arresting an innocent person is something we fear far more than letting a guilty person get away. I extend to Cody Lee Williams my apology for this error and we will seek to make things right for him.” Hawkins was suspended for 10 days Tuesday and transferred to patrol for his role in the wrongful arrest and jailing of the teen. The punishment is the most serious disciplinary action he has handed out as Sheriff short of termination, said Beseler through his spokeswoman Mary Justino. Beseler’s letter to Hawkins on the discipline called Hawkins’ police work incompetent. Three other officers received formal counselling for their parts in the Williams’ investigation. After investigators realized they had arrested the wrong person, Cody Lee Williams was released from jail and the charges were dropped. The sheriff’s department asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in December to expunge Williams’ record. The teen has hired an attorney and has put the sheriff’s department on notice he intends to file a lawsuit. Cody Raymond Williams, the one police were looking for from the beginning, is due to appear in court Monday on the sexual assault charge. Topher Sanders: (904) 359-4169

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Share Print Share His assassins had already snatched two of Garcia's officers; they drove the three 10 miles away to a dirt road near a natural gas well and shot them down. “He was never involved in things, so we never thought this could happen,” Alberto Lopez, the mayor of this village of just 2,500, said of the 62-year-old Garcia's killing last week. “We don't have gangsters in these towns, we don't have people involved in drugs. So people are very afraid.” After four years of relative calm, Mexico's gangland battles have exploded anew in the industrial cities and ranch lands along the lower Rio Grande. Dozens have been killed in the past seven weeks throughout the triangle defined by the river's mouth, the cities of Laredo and metropolitan Monterrey. The skirmishes here reflect a bitter and presumably lasting split between the so-called Gulf Cartel drug smuggling organization and its vicious former enforcers, known as the Zetas. Dispute over towns Much of Monterrey and the towns between it and the border at Laredo and Reynosa have long been considered Zeta land. Mexican officials say the Gulf Cartel's bosses, now allied with the La Familia criminal organization from central Michoacan state, are taking that territory back. “A large number of La Familia members are deployed in towns controlled by the Gulf Cartel,” Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-narcotics units, told reporters Monday. “The same towns that are being disputed with the Zetas.” An official with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organization, has also joined the alliance against the Zetas, whose rise to power has come to threaten all three of the cartels. “It's an issue of a common enemy,” said Will Glaspy, head of the DEA's office in the border town of McAllen. Rival gangsters have clashed frequently with each other and police and federal troops in Reynosa across from McAllen, in upriver towns, and in villages along and between the expressways leading from the border to Monterrey. Eight suspected gangsters were killed early Sunday when one band attacked another at a bar in Los Guerra, a Rio Grande village about 50 miles upriver from McAllen. Killers massacred seven other people Easter weekend in another bar in Tampico, the Gulf port city 200 miles south of Brownsville. “They are on top of us and while they are fighting, a stray bullet can catch some innocents,” said a Roman Catholic priest in one of the besieged towns. “You are entering the wolf's mouth.” Thousands have died Local media have been terrorized into near silence about the killings. So citizens and local officials alike find themselves largely clueless observers, and sometime hapless victims, in the latest front of many-sided warfare that has killed 18,000 people in scarcely three years. “They kill a person faster than killing a cockroach,” Juan Triana, a senior city official in Reynosa, said of the dangers. “Because killing a cockroach dirties their boots.” The fighting started in late February, about the time former Gulf Cartel boss and Zeta patron Osiel Cardenas was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Houston federal court. The light sentence was presumably in exchange for Cardenas' cooperation with prosecutors and U.S. law enforcement. With the traditional media gagged by gangster threats and officials' desire to downplay events, common citizens have largely taken to reporting on the violence on their own though You Tube, Twitter and blog postings. State and local officials first blamed such “social networks” for fueling unfounded fear. But Reynosa officials started twittering in late February about gunbattles and other “risky situations.” And the official Web site of Tamaulipas state, of which Reynosa is the largest city, has begun carrying news about such clashes. “It could be a gunshot, it could be a grenade, it could be a threat,” Triana, who directs Reynosa's Twitter efforts, said of what merits a tweeted alarm. “We are just trying to advise people so they don't run risks.” The Associated Press contributed to this report. [email protected] ||||| Nearly 18,000 people have died in drugs-related violence since 2006 Mexico's authorities say that two of the country's most powerful drugs cartels have overcome their rivalry to form an alliance against a third. Ramon Pequeno, head of the Mexican anti-narcotics police, said the Gulf and La Familia cartels were now fighting a group called the Zetas. They are fighting over a lucrative drug transit point on the US border. The Zetas began as hitmen for the Gulf cartel in the 1990s but recently pushed for their own share of the drugs trade. Believed to have emerged from among Mexican army deserters, they are notorious for their readiness to behead victims. Their criminal activities are believed to include drug-trafficking, extortion, migrant-smuggling and kidnapping. Nearly 18,000 people have been killed in drugs-related violence in Mexico since 2006. Some 40,000 soldiers have been sent to border regions to fight the cartels. 'War on everybody' The shift in allegiances is apparently fuelling drug-related violence along Mexico's border with Texas. The Zetas have been trying to wage war on everybody for a while Will Glaspy US anti-drugs official Intelligence reports indicated the Gulf cartel had recruited La Familia to crush the Zetas in the border state of Tamaulipas, said Mr Pequeno. An official with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said a third cartel, the Sinaloa, had also joined the alliance against the Zetas. "It's an issue of a common enemy," Will Glaspy, head of the DEA office in the border town of McAllen, told the Associated Press news agency. Banners began appearing in Tamaulipas earlier this year announcing the campaign by "the cartels of Mexico united against the Zetas". One banner even urged President Felipe Calderon to withdraw the army and let the new alliance exterminate the Zetas, AP notes. Another which was hung from bridges read: "The Gulf Cartel separates itself from the Z [ie the Zetas] in our ranks. We don't want kidnappers, terrorists, bank robbers, rapists, child killers and traitors." Videos and e-mails were sent around warning families to stay at home, saying the conflict would get worse. Mr Pequeno said that La Familia, whose stronghold is in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan, had sent a large number of gunmen across the country to Tamaulipas to help the Gulf cartel wipe out Los Zetas. "The Zetas have been trying to wage war on everybody for a while," Mr Glaspy added. "It's been well documented that the Gulf cartel has formed alliances with the Sinaloa cartel and [La Familia] to wage war against the Zetas." Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version

– Three of Mexico's warring drug cartels have agreed to stop shooting each other for as long as it takes to wipe out a fourth, up-and-coming cartel, the BBC reports. Anti-narcotics authorities say that the Sinaloa, La Familia, and Gulf cartels are seeking to exterminate the Zetas, a breakaway group of hitmen from the Gulf cartel seeking their own slice of the cross-border drugs trade. The Zetas—who count many Mexican Army deserters among their number and are famed for beheading their enemies—control the drug trade along much of the lower Rio Grande. The area, which had been largely untouched by the drug violence of the last several years, has seen dozens of killings in recent weeks. "They kill a person faster than killing a cockroach,” a city official in Reynosa tells the Houston Chronicle. “Because killing a cockroach dirties their boots.”

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Share Print Share His assassins had already snatched two of Garcia's officers; they drove the three 10 miles away to a dirt road near a natural gas well and shot them down. “He was never involved in things, so we never thought this could happen,” Alberto Lopez, the mayor of this village of just 2,500, said of the 62-year-old Garcia's killing last week. “We don't have gangsters in these towns, we don't have people involved in drugs. So people are very afraid.” After four years of relative calm, Mexico's gangland battles have exploded anew in the industrial cities and ranch lands along the lower Rio Grande. Dozens have been killed in the past seven weeks throughout the triangle defined by the river's mouth, the cities of Laredo and metropolitan Monterrey. The skirmishes here reflect a bitter and presumably lasting split between the so-called Gulf Cartel drug smuggling organization and its vicious former enforcers, known as the Zetas. Dispute over towns Much of Monterrey and the towns between it and the border at Laredo and Reynosa have long been considered Zeta land. Mexican officials say the Gulf Cartel's bosses, now allied with the La Familia criminal organization from central Michoacan state, are taking that territory back. “A large number of La Familia members are deployed in towns controlled by the Gulf Cartel,” Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-narcotics units, told reporters Monday. “The same towns that are being disputed with the Zetas.” An official with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organization, has also joined the alliance against the Zetas, whose rise to power has come to threaten all three of the cartels. “It's an issue of a common enemy,” said Will Glaspy, head of the DEA's office in the border town of McAllen. Rival gangsters have clashed frequently with each other and police and federal troops in Reynosa across from McAllen, in upriver towns, and in villages along and between the expressways leading from the border to Monterrey. Eight suspected gangsters were killed early Sunday when one band attacked another at a bar in Los Guerra, a Rio Grande village about 50 miles upriver from McAllen. Killers massacred seven other people Easter weekend in another bar in Tampico, the Gulf port city 200 miles south of Brownsville. “They are on top of us and while they are fighting, a stray bullet can catch some innocents,” said a Roman Catholic priest in one of the besieged towns. “You are entering the wolf's mouth.” Thousands have died Local media have been terrorized into near silence about the killings. So citizens and local officials alike find themselves largely clueless observers, and sometime hapless victims, in the latest front of many-sided warfare that has killed 18,000 people in scarcely three years. “They kill a person faster than killing a cockroach,” Juan Triana, a senior city official in Reynosa, said of the dangers. “Because killing a cockroach dirties their boots.” The fighting started in late February, about the time former Gulf Cartel boss and Zeta patron Osiel Cardenas was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Houston federal court. The light sentence was presumably in exchange for Cardenas' cooperation with prosecutors and U.S. law enforcement. With the traditional media gagged by gangster threats and officials' desire to downplay events, common citizens have largely taken to reporting on the violence on their own though You Tube, Twitter and blog postings. State and local officials first blamed such “social networks” for fueling unfounded fear. But Reynosa officials started twittering in late February about gunbattles and other “risky situations.” And the official Web site of Tamaulipas state, of which Reynosa is the largest city, has begun carrying news about such clashes. “It could be a gunshot, it could be a grenade, it could be a threat,” Triana, who directs Reynosa's Twitter efforts, said of what merits a tweeted alarm. “We are just trying to advise people so they don't run risks.” The Associated Press contributed to this report. [email protected] ||||| Nearly 18,000 people have died in drugs-related violence since 2006 Mexico's authorities say that two of the country's most powerful drugs cartels have overcome their rivalry to form an alliance against a third. Ramon Pequeno, head of the Mexican anti-narcotics police, said the Gulf and La Familia cartels were now fighting a group called the Zetas. They are fighting over a lucrative drug transit point on the US border. The Zetas began as hitmen for the Gulf cartel in the 1990s but recently pushed for their own share of the drugs trade. Believed to have emerged from among Mexican army deserters, they are notorious for their readiness to behead victims. Their criminal activities are believed to include drug-trafficking, extortion, migrant-smuggling and kidnapping. Nearly 18,000 people have been killed in drugs-related violence in Mexico since 2006. Some 40,000 soldiers have been sent to border regions to fight the cartels. 'War on everybody' The shift in allegiances is apparently fuelling drug-related violence along Mexico's border with Texas. The Zetas have been trying to wage war on everybody for a while Will Glaspy US anti-drugs official Intelligence reports indicated the Gulf cartel had recruited La Familia to crush the Zetas in the border state of Tamaulipas, said Mr Pequeno. An official with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said a third cartel, the Sinaloa, had also joined the alliance against the Zetas. "It's an issue of a common enemy," Will Glaspy, head of the DEA office in the border town of McAllen, told the Associated Press news agency. Banners began appearing in Tamaulipas earlier this year announcing the campaign by "the cartels of Mexico united against the Zetas". One banner even urged President Felipe Calderon to withdraw the army and let the new alliance exterminate the Zetas, AP notes. Another which was hung from bridges read: "The Gulf Cartel separates itself from the Z [ie the Zetas] in our ranks. We don't want kidnappers, terrorists, bank robbers, rapists, child killers and traitors." Videos and e-mails were sent around warning families to stay at home, saying the conflict would get worse. Mr Pequeno said that La Familia, whose stronghold is in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan, had sent a large number of gunmen across the country to Tamaulipas to help the Gulf cartel wipe out Los Zetas. "The Zetas have been trying to wage war on everybody for a while," Mr Glaspy added. "It's been well documented that the Gulf cartel has formed alliances with the Sinaloa cartel and [La Familia] to wage war against the Zetas." Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

President Donald Trump arrives speaks to service members at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Tuesday, March 13, 2018, in San Diego. Associated Press While speaking to US Marines in San Diego on Tuesday, President Donald Trump suggested creating a branch of the military for space. "My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain just like the land, air and sea," Trump said at Miramar Air Station. "We may even have a Space Force." "You know, I was saying it the other day cause we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space," Trump said. "I said 'maybe we need a new force, we'll call it the space force.' And I was not really serious, and then I said 'what a great idea, maybe we'll have to do that.'" "That could happen, that could be the big breaking story," Trump said. "Look at all those people back there," Trump said, pointing to the media in the background. "Look at them...Ohhhh, that fake news." While Trump appears to have wandered into the issue in his Tuesday speech, the idea is not new. The Congressional Strategic Forces Subcommittee even proposed creating such a branch last July, which they called Space Corps. But the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act that passed last November actually banned it. The proposed Space Corps would have fallen under the Air Force branch. Republican Mike Rogers, the chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, however, said in February that he expects such a force to be built in three to five years, according to Defense News. Supporters of the Space Corps have argued that it's needed to counter Russia and China's desire to build anti-satellite weaponry. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| President Donald Trump voiced support for creating a “space force” to bolster U.S. defenses, appearing to back a proposal opposed by officials in the White House and the Department of Defense. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Trump boosts ‘space force’ idea, says U.S. will reach Mars ‘very soon’ President Donald Trump predicted on Tuesday that the U.S. would reach Mars “very soon” and backed the idea of creating a militaristic “space force,” seemingly expressing support for a measure that faced opposition from officials in his own administration. Touting recent technological advancements, Trump forecast that “very soon we’re going to Mars” — a feat that he said wouldn’t have been possible had Hillary Clinton prevailed in the 2016 election. Story Continued Below “You wouldn’t have been going to Mars if my opponent won, that I can tell you. You wouldn't even be thinking about it,” Trump quipped while speaking to service members at a Marine Corps air station in Miramar, California. The president also voiced support for creating a “space force” to bolster U.S. defenses, appearing to back a proposal opposed last year by officials in the White House and the Department of Defense. Sign up for Morning Trade A speed read on global trade news — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. “My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air and sea,” Trump said. “We may even have a space force — develop another one, space force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have the space force.” The House Armed Services Committee approved a measure in June to include language to create a U.S. Space Corps, as part of the Air Force, in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. But the measure faced opposition from top officials in Trump’s own White House and Pentagon. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis came out against the measure in July, issuing a rare statement in support of a proposal to remove language on the space corps from the defense budget for 2018. “At a time when we are trying to integrate the department’s joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations,” Mattis reportedly wrote in a letter to Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who led House efforts on the matter. A White House official in July told CNN that creating a space corps was “premature at this time.” Trump marveled the achievements of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has said he’s “optimistic” that his company will be able to launch test flights to Mars by as early as 2019. “I don't know if you saw last with Elon — with the rocket boosters where they're coming back down,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. “To me, that was more amazing than watching the rocket go up because I’ve never seen that before. Nobody has seen it before, where they’re saving the boosters. They came back without wings or without anything, they landed so beautifully.” But Musk, speaking at South by Southwest on Monday, acknowledged that there were still technical hurdles that needed to be overcome before humans could successfully land on the planet. “It’s difficult, dangerous, good chance you will die, excitement for those who survive, that kind of thing,” he said.

– SpaceX founder Elon Musk cut through the excitement surrounding future travel to Mars Monday, noting "it's difficult, dangerous," and there's a "good chance you will die." A day later, President Trump appeared more optimistic, claiming Americans will reach Mars "very soon" and touting plans for a potential "space force" like in Star Wars, Politico reports. "My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea," Trump told an audience at a Marine Corps air station in San Diego on Tuesday. "I was saying it the other day ... 'Maybe we need a new force, we'll call it the Space Force.' And I was not really serious," he continued, per Business Insider. "Then I said, 'What a great idea, maybe we'll have to do that.'" The idea isn't Trump's. A "Space Corps" was first proposed last July by Congress' Strategic Forces Subcommittee. But it was left out of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act passed in November, with White House officials and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis speaking against it. Trump also seemed to take credit for advancements that could allow for flights to Mars as early as 2019. "You wouldn't have been going to Mars if my opponent won, that I can tell you," Trump said, referring to his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton. Trump later tweeted it was a "great honor" to address military members. In what CNN's Jim Acosta refers to as "baffling," Marine Corps was spelled "Marine Core" in a version of the tweet, since deleted.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.President Donald Trump arrives speaks to service members at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Tuesday, March 13, 2018, in San Diego. Associated Press While speaking to US Marines in San Diego on Tuesday, President Donald Trump suggested creating a branch of the military for space. "My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain just like the land, air and sea," Trump said at Miramar Air Station. "We may even have a Space Force." "You know, I was saying it the other day cause we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space," Trump said. "I said 'maybe we need a new force, we'll call it the space force.' And I was not really serious, and then I said 'what a great idea, maybe we'll have to do that.'" "That could happen, that could be the big breaking story," Trump said. "Look at all those people back there," Trump said, pointing to the media in the background. "Look at them...Ohhhh, that fake news." While Trump appears to have wandered into the issue in his Tuesday speech, the idea is not new. The Congressional Strategic Forces Subcommittee even proposed creating such a branch last July, which they called Space Corps. But the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act that passed last November actually banned it. The proposed Space Corps would have fallen under the Air Force branch. Republican Mike Rogers, the chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, however, said in February that he expects such a force to be built in three to five years, according to Defense News. Supporters of the Space Corps have argued that it's needed to counter Russia and China's desire to build anti-satellite weaponry. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| President Donald Trump voiced support for creating a “space force” to bolster U.S. defenses, appearing to back a proposal opposed by officials in the White House and the Department of Defense. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Trump boosts ‘space force’ idea, says U.S. will reach Mars ‘very soon’ President Donald Trump predicted on Tuesday that the U.S. would reach Mars “very soon” and backed the idea of creating a militaristic “space force,” seemingly expressing support for a measure that faced opposition from officials in his own administration. Touting recent technological advancements, Trump forecast that “very soon we’re going to Mars” — a feat that he said wouldn’t have been possible had Hillary Clinton prevailed in the 2016 election. Story Continued Below “You wouldn’t have been going to Mars if my opponent won, that I can tell you. You wouldn't even be thinking about it,” Trump quipped while speaking to service members at a Marine Corps air station in Miramar, California. The president also voiced support for creating a “space force” to bolster U.S. defenses, appearing to back a proposal opposed last year by officials in the White House and the Department of Defense. Sign up for Morning Trade A speed read on global trade news — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. “My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air and sea,” Trump said. “We may even have a space force — develop another one, space force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have the space force.” The House Armed Services Committee approved a measure in June to include language to create a U.S. Space Corps, as part of the Air Force, in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. But the measure faced opposition from top officials in Trump’s own White House and Pentagon. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis came out against the measure in July, issuing a rare statement in support of a proposal to remove language on the space corps from the defense budget for 2018. “At a time when we are trying to integrate the department’s joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations,” Mattis reportedly wrote in a letter to Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who led House efforts on the matter. A White House official in July told CNN that creating a space corps was “premature at this time.” Trump marveled the achievements of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has said he’s “optimistic” that his company will be able to launch test flights to Mars by as early as 2019. “I don't know if you saw last with Elon — with the rocket boosters where they're coming back down,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. “To me, that was more amazing than watching the rocket go up because I’ve never seen that before. Nobody has seen it before, where they’re saving the boosters. They came back without wings or without anything, they landed so beautifully.” But Musk, speaking at South by Southwest on Monday, acknowledged that there were still technical hurdles that needed to be overcome before humans could successfully land on the planet. “It’s difficult, dangerous, good chance you will die, excitement for those who survive, that kind of thing,” he said.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

SAN ANTONIO - In a viral Facebook post, a woman claims a man became angry at her teenage son and his friends because one of them was wearing what appears to be a "Make America Great Again" slogan hat. The altercation reportedly happened at a Whataburger location near Thousand Oaks and Nacogdoches Road, according to the post. In her post Wednesday, Patricia Spittler asks Facebook users to help identify the "scum bag of the year." The man in the video is shown throwing his drink at the table and shouting a racial slur. Her video was since removed or changed to a private setting. However, the video was also posted to YouTube via another account. WARNING: The video contains graphic language. "His friend was wearing a patriotic hat, and this happened! It would be nice to know who he is for someone to let him know his actions are not okay! Real tough guy... approaches a group of teenagers minding their own business just having a burger! He kept his hat, too," she wrote in the original post. At last check, the video was shared more than 50,000 times and viewed more than two million times. Whataburger released the following statement Thursday morning: “We were shocked to see this video and certainly don’t condone this type of customer behavior in our restaurants. To be clear, no Whataburger employees were involved or witnessed the incident, and we ask that questions be directed to San Antonio PD as we continue supporting their efforts.” © 2018 KENS ||||| A Texas teenager who supports President Trump says he was assaulted by a drink-throwing stranger at a Whataburger restaurant -- all because he was wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. The incident, which was captured on video and has since gone viral, reportedly happened Tuesday at one of the burger chain’s restaurants in San Antonio. “You ain’t supporting s--- n----!” the man is heard saying on camera after tossing a large drink in the direction of the person filming the video. WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE: Click here to watch the video. The individual, who has not been identified, then walks away while carrying the red hat. The man is heard muttering "b---- a-- motherf------" as one of the other teens sitting at the table appears stunned. Hunter Richard, the 16-year-old teen who says he was wearing the hat, told WOAI that some of his hair was ripped off as the man removed it from his head. "I support my President and, if you don’t, let’s have a conversation about it instead of ripping my hat off,” he told the station. “I just think a conversation about politics is more productive for the entire whole rather than taking my hat and yelling subjective words to me.” San Antonio police told Fox News on Thursday they had received a complaint and detectives had been assigned to the case. Earlier in the day, a police spokesperson said the department hadn't received a report. Whataburger told Fox News that it is cooperating with the police investigation. “We were shocked to see this video and certainly don’t condone this type of customer behavior in our restaurants," the company said. "To be clear, no Whataburger employees were involved or witnessed the incident, and we ask that questions be directed to San Antonio PD as we continue supporting their efforts.” Video of the incident reportedly was posted on a Facebook page with a request for the public to help identify the "scum bag of the year.” It racked up more than two million views before being removed or hidden, according to KENS 5. The man in the video allegedly was fired from his part-time job at a San Antonio bar after the footage began circulating on social media. “It came to our attention earlier this evening that a part-time employee was captured on cell phone video assaulting another person at a local eatery,” the Rumble bar in San Antonio posted on its Facebook page. “The assault took place, presumably, because this employee did not agree with the other individual’s political stance." It continued: “We have since terminated this employee, as his actions go against everything that this establishment stands for. THIS BAR IS A SAFE SPACE FOR EVERYONE! No matter your race, creed, ethnicity, sexual identity, and political stance, you are welcomed here!”

– A group of teens was eating at a Whataburger in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday when a "patriotic hat" got them some unwelcome attention. The hat in question appears, in a video posted by the mom of one of the teens, to be a red "Make America Great Again" hat. A man approached the group, grabbed the hat, and threw his drink at the teens as he shouted profanity and a racial slur, apparently berating them for supporting President Trump, per Fox News. The boy whose hat was taken tells WOAI some of his hair was ripped out in the process. "I support my president and if you don't let's have a conversation about it instead of ripping my hat off," he says. The mom of one of the other teens posted the video to Facebook asking for help identifying the "scum bag of the year," per KENS 5. "His friend was wearing a patriotic hat, and this happened!" she wrote. "It would be nice to know who he is for someone to let him know his actions are not okay! Real tough guy ... approaches a group of teenagers minding their own business just having a burger! He kept his hat, too." In the video, the man appears to promise he'll be burning it. A police report was filed and police are investigating, but there has been no report of charges yet. The man in the video was reportedly fired from his job at a local bar, however, with the bar posting on Facebook that it's a safe space for people of all political beliefs.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.SAN ANTONIO - In a viral Facebook post, a woman claims a man became angry at her teenage son and his friends because one of them was wearing what appears to be a "Make America Great Again" slogan hat. The altercation reportedly happened at a Whataburger location near Thousand Oaks and Nacogdoches Road, according to the post. In her post Wednesday, Patricia Spittler asks Facebook users to help identify the "scum bag of the year." The man in the video is shown throwing his drink at the table and shouting a racial slur. Her video was since removed or changed to a private setting. However, the video was also posted to YouTube via another account. WARNING: The video contains graphic language. "His friend was wearing a patriotic hat, and this happened! It would be nice to know who he is for someone to let him know his actions are not okay! Real tough guy... approaches a group of teenagers minding their own business just having a burger! He kept his hat, too," she wrote in the original post. At last check, the video was shared more than 50,000 times and viewed more than two million times. Whataburger released the following statement Thursday morning: “We were shocked to see this video and certainly don’t condone this type of customer behavior in our restaurants. To be clear, no Whataburger employees were involved or witnessed the incident, and we ask that questions be directed to San Antonio PD as we continue supporting their efforts.” © 2018 KENS ||||| A Texas teenager who supports President Trump says he was assaulted by a drink-throwing stranger at a Whataburger restaurant -- all because he was wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. The incident, which was captured on video and has since gone viral, reportedly happened Tuesday at one of the burger chain’s restaurants in San Antonio. “You ain’t supporting s--- n----!” the man is heard saying on camera after tossing a large drink in the direction of the person filming the video. WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE: Click here to watch the video. The individual, who has not been identified, then walks away while carrying the red hat. The man is heard muttering "b---- a-- motherf------" as one of the other teens sitting at the table appears stunned. Hunter Richard, the 16-year-old teen who says he was wearing the hat, told WOAI that some of his hair was ripped off as the man removed it from his head. "I support my President and, if you don’t, let’s have a conversation about it instead of ripping my hat off,” he told the station. “I just think a conversation about politics is more productive for the entire whole rather than taking my hat and yelling subjective words to me.” San Antonio police told Fox News on Thursday they had received a complaint and detectives had been assigned to the case. Earlier in the day, a police spokesperson said the department hadn't received a report. Whataburger told Fox News that it is cooperating with the police investigation. “We were shocked to see this video and certainly don’t condone this type of customer behavior in our restaurants," the company said. "To be clear, no Whataburger employees were involved or witnessed the incident, and we ask that questions be directed to San Antonio PD as we continue supporting their efforts.” Video of the incident reportedly was posted on a Facebook page with a request for the public to help identify the "scum bag of the year.” It racked up more than two million views before being removed or hidden, according to KENS 5. The man in the video allegedly was fired from his part-time job at a San Antonio bar after the footage began circulating on social media. “It came to our attention earlier this evening that a part-time employee was captured on cell phone video assaulting another person at a local eatery,” the Rumble bar in San Antonio posted on its Facebook page. “The assault took place, presumably, because this employee did not agree with the other individual’s political stance." It continued: “We have since terminated this employee, as his actions go against everything that this establishment stands for. THIS BAR IS A SAFE SPACE FOR EVERYONE! No matter your race, creed, ethnicity, sexual identity, and political stance, you are welcomed here!”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Utah is considering a bill that would allow patients with certain debilitating conditions to be treated with edible forms of marijuana. If the bill passes, the state's wildlife may "cultivate a taste" for the plant, lose their fear of humans, and basically be high all the time. That's according to testimony presented to a Utah Senate panel (time stamp 58:00) last week by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. "I deal in facts. I deal in science," said special agent Matt Fairbanks, who's been working in the state for a decade. He is member of the "marijuana eradication" team in Utah. Some of his colleagues in Georgia recently achieved notoriety by raiding a retiree's garden and seizing a number of okra plants. Fairbanks spoke of his time eliminating back-country marijuana grows in the Utah mountains, specifically the environmental costs associated with large-scale weed cultivation on public land: "Personally, I have seen entire mountainsides subjected to pesticides, harmful chemicals, deforestation and erosion," he said. "The ramifications to the flora, the animal life, the contaminated water, are still unknown." Fairbanks said that at some illegal marijuana grow sites he saw "rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana. ..." He continued: "One of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone." During a Utah Senate panel on a bill that will allow certain patients to be treated with edible forms of marijuana, special agent Matt Fairbanks warned of the environmental costs associated marijuana cultivation on public land. (Utah State Legislature) It's true that illegal pot farming can have harmful environmental consequences. Of course, nothing about these consequences is unique to marijuana. If corn were outlawed and cartels started growing it in national forests, the per-plant environmental toll would be about the same. But backcountry marijuana grows are a direct result of marijuana's illegal status. If you're concerned about the environmental impact of these grows, an alternative is to legalize and regulate the plant so that people can grow it on farms and in their gardens, rather than on remote mountainsides. Now, regarding rabbits. Some wild animals apparently do develop a taste for bud (and, yes, best to keep it away from your pets). But I don't know that the occasional high rabbit constitutes grounds for keeping marijuana prohibition in place, any more than drunk squirrels are an argument for outlawing alcohol. And let's not even get started on the nationwide epidemic of catnip abuse. There was a time, not too long ago, when drug warriors terrified a nation with images of "the devil's weed" and "reefer madness." Now, it seems that enforcers of marijuana law conjuring up a stoned bunny? Not scary enough for the Utah Senate, it seems: the panel approved the bill and sent it to the full Senate, where it will be debated this week. More marijuana news DEA group apologizes for commemorating Black History Month with the arrest of a Harlem drug dealer » Two headlines perfectly sum up everything wrong with American drug policy » The Dutch Embassy made an infographic to troll D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser over pot » Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say » Wonkblog on marijuana policy » ||||| DEA agent tells state senate of ‘rabbits that had cultivated a taste for marijuana’ and warns of problems of pesticides, deforestation and erosion Legalising medical marijuana in Utah could lead to absent-minded rabbits and other animals who don’t feel their natural instincts, a special agent for the DEA has warned the state. In testimony last week before the Utah state senate, and first spotted by the Washington Post, special agent Matt Fairbanks expressed “some severe concerns” about marijuana as a cash crop. “Now I deal in facts. I deal in science,” he said, citing his experience ranging Utah’s mountains as a member of the state’s “marijuana eradication” team to bolster his concerns. “Deforestation has left marijuana grows with even rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana,” Fairbanks declared, suggesting that hares were yet one more of an unknown number of species to have succumbed to a cannabis addiction. Leporine marijuana abuse was so severe, Fairbanks said, that “one of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone.” “Personally, I have seen entire mountainsides subjected to pesticides, harmful chemicals, deforestation and erosion,” he added. “The ramifications to the flora, the animal life, the contaminated water are still unknown.” Fairbanks did not say why marijuana cash crops would be any more destructive than the corn and wheat crops that grow in Utah and have similarly destructive consequences, also by way of the pesticides, deforestation and erosion that farmers inflict on the environment. Nor did Fairbanks present science from environmental researchers or biologists, despite his assertion that “I come to represent the actual science. I want the science studied and looked at and specifically gone over.” The bill would legalize medical marijuana for people with severe conditions but would not go so far as Colorado’s legalization of the drug, and carries provisions that would ban “back-country” grows of the kind that Fairbanks warned against. Jeremy Roberts, president of the company Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions testified to that point, beginning: “I was kind of shocked to find out the killer rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is actually in the Utah mountains.” The bill would require medical marijuana be grown indoors, Roberts said, “so the concerns of our mountains being overrun with cannabis are a little bit of a hyperbole”. “In terms of the environmental impact we’re talking about water and electricity,” he said. Although pesticides and herbicides are “an absolutely valid concern”, he added, the bill would require a laboratory to test for potency, inorganics, pesticides, fungus and mould – and would make Utah only the second state to necessitate lab tests. Roberts argued that such testing and licensing would end the mystery of what chemicals are in the marijuana currently bought from illicit vendors. “Evidently we hear that it makes rabbits go crazy if it’s grown in Utah, in the mountains, so one of the things we want to do is make sure we don’t have any crazed rabbits any more in Utah, and actually bring that into control into the Department of Professional Licensing.” Utah’s senate also heard passionate, emotional pleas in support of the bill. Forrest Shaw, a 42-year-old man, spoke about suffering from terminal prostate cancer and his experience with marijuana. “I wanted to be able to relieve some of my suffering,” he said, “I’m horrified of being taken away from my family and having my home taken away from me because I just want to seek out a little bit of peace.” Another man, Aaron Campbell, spoke of how three of his children have been diagnosed with a terminal neurological disorder, two of whom suffered failed bone marrow transplants. “It’s the stupidest thing ever for lawmakers to tell me what me and my doctors cannot do,” he said, before adding, his voice breaking, “I have full intentions of bringing cannabis into Utah and treating my daughter.” “We are Utah, we can do this, we are not Colorado,” he said. Time to take the high road and legalize marijuana – at the federal level | Nushin Rashidian and Alyson Martin Read more State senator Mark Mardsen also said that seeing children denied pain relief last year had helped move him to sponsor the bill. “I was frankly angry that public policy would have kept these kids for years from receiving something that was tremendous benefit to them and may well have saved lives.” Those who testified in opposition to the bill largely called for patience, saying the state should not “short-circuit the FDA process” and should wait for more research. Physicians remain divided about the health effects of marijuana, vouching for its analgesic effects but calling for more research into its consequences and potential for abuse, especially among young people. For most mammals – from squirrels to monkeys to dogs and deer – drugs have the same consequences as they do for humans; for that reason pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies had until recently tested substances on beagles and chimpanzees for decades. Monkeys have shown symptoms of alcohol addiction and heroin withdrawal, and edibles lying around a home can easily intoxicate cats and dogs. But unlike the fermented fruits and coca leaves that animals might take a shine to in the wild, drugs such as the alcohol and the marijuana products consumed by humans sometimes contain chemicals that uniquely harm them (eg chocolate for dogs) in addition to their usual negative effects. And while rabbits and other wild creatures can suffer the effects of chemical inebriation, they remain unable to communicate with humans even on their sober days, and incapable of expressing even to experienced DEA agents exactly the degree of their high.

– People who advocate legalizing medical marijuana in Utah clearly haven't given much thought to the risk of pot-crazed rabbits running wild, a DEA agent testified last week. Special Agent Matt Fairbanks told a state Senate hearing about how in the course of his marijuana eradication work, he had encountered animals, including rabbits, that had developed a taste for the drug, the Washington Post reports. One stoned bunny "refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone," the agent told the hearing, stressing that "I deal in facts. I deal in science." He also spoke of seeing deforestation and other damage caused by grow-ops in remote areas. The president of the company Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions told the hearing that warnings of wilderness destruction and reefer madness among wildlife may have been a bit overstated, since the bill requires medical marijuana to be grown indoors. "Evidently we hear that it makes rabbits go crazy if it's grown in Utah, in the mountains, so one of the things we want to do is make sure we don't have any crazed rabbits anymore in Utah," he said. The hearing also heard from people with medical reasons for supporting legalization, including a man who wants to use cannabis to ease the suffering of three of his children, who have been diagnosed with a terminal genetic disorder, the Guardian reports.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Utah is considering a bill that would allow patients with certain debilitating conditions to be treated with edible forms of marijuana. If the bill passes, the state's wildlife may "cultivate a taste" for the plant, lose their fear of humans, and basically be high all the time. That's according to testimony presented to a Utah Senate panel (time stamp 58:00) last week by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. "I deal in facts. I deal in science," said special agent Matt Fairbanks, who's been working in the state for a decade. He is member of the "marijuana eradication" team in Utah. Some of his colleagues in Georgia recently achieved notoriety by raiding a retiree's garden and seizing a number of okra plants. Fairbanks spoke of his time eliminating back-country marijuana grows in the Utah mountains, specifically the environmental costs associated with large-scale weed cultivation on public land: "Personally, I have seen entire mountainsides subjected to pesticides, harmful chemicals, deforestation and erosion," he said. "The ramifications to the flora, the animal life, the contaminated water, are still unknown." Fairbanks said that at some illegal marijuana grow sites he saw "rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana. ..." He continued: "One of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone." During a Utah Senate panel on a bill that will allow certain patients to be treated with edible forms of marijuana, special agent Matt Fairbanks warned of the environmental costs associated marijuana cultivation on public land. (Utah State Legislature) It's true that illegal pot farming can have harmful environmental consequences. Of course, nothing about these consequences is unique to marijuana. If corn were outlawed and cartels started growing it in national forests, the per-plant environmental toll would be about the same. But backcountry marijuana grows are a direct result of marijuana's illegal status. If you're concerned about the environmental impact of these grows, an alternative is to legalize and regulate the plant so that people can grow it on farms and in their gardens, rather than on remote mountainsides. Now, regarding rabbits. Some wild animals apparently do develop a taste for bud (and, yes, best to keep it away from your pets). But I don't know that the occasional high rabbit constitutes grounds for keeping marijuana prohibition in place, any more than drunk squirrels are an argument for outlawing alcohol. And let's not even get started on the nationwide epidemic of catnip abuse. There was a time, not too long ago, when drug warriors terrified a nation with images of "the devil's weed" and "reefer madness." Now, it seems that enforcers of marijuana law conjuring up a stoned bunny? Not scary enough for the Utah Senate, it seems: the panel approved the bill and sent it to the full Senate, where it will be debated this week. More marijuana news DEA group apologizes for commemorating Black History Month with the arrest of a Harlem drug dealer » Two headlines perfectly sum up everything wrong with American drug policy » The Dutch Embassy made an infographic to troll D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser over pot » Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say » Wonkblog on marijuana policy » ||||| DEA agent tells state senate of ‘rabbits that had cultivated a taste for marijuana’ and warns of problems of pesticides, deforestation and erosion Legalising medical marijuana in Utah could lead to absent-minded rabbits and other animals who don’t feel their natural instincts, a special agent for the DEA has warned the state. In testimony last week before the Utah state senate, and first spotted by the Washington Post, special agent Matt Fairbanks expressed “some severe concerns” about marijuana as a cash crop. “Now I deal in facts. I deal in science,” he said, citing his experience ranging Utah’s mountains as a member of the state’s “marijuana eradication” team to bolster his concerns. “Deforestation has left marijuana grows with even rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana,” Fairbanks declared, suggesting that hares were yet one more of an unknown number of species to have succumbed to a cannabis addiction. Leporine marijuana abuse was so severe, Fairbanks said, that “one of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone.” “Personally, I have seen entire mountainsides subjected to pesticides, harmful chemicals, deforestation and erosion,” he added. “The ramifications to the flora, the animal life, the contaminated water are still unknown.” Fairbanks did not say why marijuana cash crops would be any more destructive than the corn and wheat crops that grow in Utah and have similarly destructive consequences, also by way of the pesticides, deforestation and erosion that farmers inflict on the environment. Nor did Fairbanks present science from environmental researchers or biologists, despite his assertion that “I come to represent the actual science. I want the science studied and looked at and specifically gone over.” The bill would legalize medical marijuana for people with severe conditions but would not go so far as Colorado’s legalization of the drug, and carries provisions that would ban “back-country” grows of the kind that Fairbanks warned against. Jeremy Roberts, president of the company Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions testified to that point, beginning: “I was kind of shocked to find out the killer rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is actually in the Utah mountains.” The bill would require medical marijuana be grown indoors, Roberts said, “so the concerns of our mountains being overrun with cannabis are a little bit of a hyperbole”. “In terms of the environmental impact we’re talking about water and electricity,” he said. Although pesticides and herbicides are “an absolutely valid concern”, he added, the bill would require a laboratory to test for potency, inorganics, pesticides, fungus and mould – and would make Utah only the second state to necessitate lab tests. Roberts argued that such testing and licensing would end the mystery of what chemicals are in the marijuana currently bought from illicit vendors. “Evidently we hear that it makes rabbits go crazy if it’s grown in Utah, in the mountains, so one of the things we want to do is make sure we don’t have any crazed rabbits any more in Utah, and actually bring that into control into the Department of Professional Licensing.” Utah’s senate also heard passionate, emotional pleas in support of the bill. Forrest Shaw, a 42-year-old man, spoke about suffering from terminal prostate cancer and his experience with marijuana. “I wanted to be able to relieve some of my suffering,” he said, “I’m horrified of being taken away from my family and having my home taken away from me because I just want to seek out a little bit of peace.” Another man, Aaron Campbell, spoke of how three of his children have been diagnosed with a terminal neurological disorder, two of whom suffered failed bone marrow transplants. “It’s the stupidest thing ever for lawmakers to tell me what me and my doctors cannot do,” he said, before adding, his voice breaking, “I have full intentions of bringing cannabis into Utah and treating my daughter.” “We are Utah, we can do this, we are not Colorado,” he said. Time to take the high road and legalize marijuana – at the federal level | Nushin Rashidian and Alyson Martin Read more State senator Mark Mardsen also said that seeing children denied pain relief last year had helped move him to sponsor the bill. “I was frankly angry that public policy would have kept these kids for years from receiving something that was tremendous benefit to them and may well have saved lives.” Those who testified in opposition to the bill largely called for patience, saying the state should not “short-circuit the FDA process” and should wait for more research. Physicians remain divided about the health effects of marijuana, vouching for its analgesic effects but calling for more research into its consequences and potential for abuse, especially among young people. For most mammals – from squirrels to monkeys to dogs and deer – drugs have the same consequences as they do for humans; for that reason pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies had until recently tested substances on beagles and chimpanzees for decades. Monkeys have shown symptoms of alcohol addiction and heroin withdrawal, and edibles lying around a home can easily intoxicate cats and dogs. But unlike the fermented fruits and coca leaves that animals might take a shine to in the wild, drugs such as the alcohol and the marijuana products consumed by humans sometimes contain chemicals that uniquely harm them (eg chocolate for dogs) in addition to their usual negative effects. And while rabbits and other wild creatures can suffer the effects of chemical inebriation, they remain unable to communicate with humans even on their sober days, and incapable of expressing even to experienced DEA agents exactly the degree of their high.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

(Courtesy of Jerika Bolen) Jerika Bolen is going to prom. And, as you can expect from a 14-year-old with purple hair, she has thought a lot about her outfit. “I’m not much of a girly girl. I’m more of a punk bada– girl,” Jerika explained on the phone Wednesday night from her home in Appleton, Wis. “I actually have a pretty girly dress, but I’m going to have punky jewelry. Just to keep my punk soul with it.” This is Jerika’s very own prom. She’s calling it her “last dance.” And it is. Jerika Bolen has an incurable disease, type 2 spinal muscular atrophy, that typically kills during adolescence, but not before inflicting great pain. She is feeling that pain now and is being kept alive by use of a ventilator 12 hours a day. Months after turning 14, Jerika decided it was time to remove the ventilator, time to die. The alternative: She would lose the ability to control her hands and to speak, while experiencing more crushing pain and surgery along the way to an inevitable death. So by the end of August, she will turn off her ventilator she uses to breathe — and spend her final days at home with her mother and two dogs. Type 2 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA II) is a rare disease that causes debilitating pain and in her case the loss of all muscle control, save for parts of her face and hands. She has had surgeries to place rods in her back, remove all but a shard of her hip bones and fuse parts of her spine together with screws. The pain is regularly at a 7 on a 10 scale, which is akin to constantly having a migraine. Sometimes it climbs to 8, 9 or 10, because the screws in her bones pinch her nerves. People with SMA II, an inherited, incurable condition, don’t usually live into adolescence, but the people in Jerika’s life say she’s a fighter. “I just kept going,” Jerika said “I didn’t want to hurt my mom, I didn’t want to hurt my family. I wanted to keep fighting and keep fighting. I didn’t have a life. I was just laying on the couch, got up to do homework and then went back to bed because I was so sore.” She doesn’t want to fight anymore. A few months ago, she endured her 38th surgery — yet another procedure to manage the crushing pain in her back and hips. She decided it would be her last. “I sat myself down and I thought, ‘Jerika, am I here for me or am I here for my family? I can’t even do anything besides lie in bed because I’m so sore.’” ICYMI: Jerika Bolen is celebrating life before making the difficult decision to die: https://t.co/jrAraPlYVv pic.twitter.com/OwuRaFSQhV — WBAY-TV 2 (@WBAY) July 19, 2016 Jen Bolen, Jerika’s mother, knew this day was coming. As a nurse, she told the Appleton Post-Crescent on Wednesday, she understood how Jerika’s pain medications were harming her body, how she wouldn’t be able to speak or smile if she continued on. “After every big surgery, she loses a lot of strength,” Bolen said. That didn’t make it any easier to bear the news. In early June, Jerika told her mother with the assistance of the teenager’s counselor that she wanted to go off life support. The single mother first said they could just up her pain medication. Jerika was adamant. “No, Mom. I’m serious,” she had said. “I’m actually done.” For all of Jerika’s challenges, she is still Bolen’s teenage daughter. She listens to My Chemical Romance and loves YouTube celebrities. She wears green lipstick and likes to go to the mall. Her Facebook is littered with funny pictures and makeup tutorials. Jerika has a girlfriend, too; she’s gay. (Courtesy of Jerika Bolen) “I don’t know how to stop fighting for her,” Bolen said to the Post-Crescent. “That’s all I’ve done since the day she was diagnosed when she was 8 months old.” And she delights the people around her. Alyssa Dahlen, one of her nurses, told the Post-Crescent that Jerika maintains a quick wit and isn’t afraid be a little manipulative — like any teenage girl. She has perseverance beyond her years too, and is never melodramatic about her lot in life. “How do you not be bitter?” Dahlen said. “It’s amazing.” “She’s a very unselfish little girl,” her grandmother, Sue Bolen, told the Post-Crescent, “and she’s tougher than anyone I’ve ever known.” The decision to end Jerika’s life, though the family knew it was going to happen, still was not easy. After Jerika announced it, her mother felt numb, angry and deeply sad. “The first week, I was crying all the time,” Jerika said. “I was constantly thinking, ‘Oh, I’m not ever going to have kids, I’m not going to ever have a family, blah, blah, blah.” Then Jerika perked up. She said there’s a better afterlife for her — one without pain. One that’s like life before all the surgeries, all the pain that started around the time she turned 8. It might be like when she could go to school and play with friends. Except this time, maybe she could go on the monkey bars, too, instead of just watch. “I have been realizing I’m going to get to walk and not have this pain anymore and not have to, like, live this really crappy life,” Jerika said. After that appointment with her mother and her counselor, “we cried and we cried and we cried. But after a couple days, I was running around so happy. I was like, ‘I’m going to be able to walk, I’m going to be with God, I’m going to be free.’” (Courtesy of Jerika Bolen) But Jerika is scared her mother will take it too hard. What if she stops eating, stops taking care of herself? “She always says, like, I am what she like lives for sometimes,” Jerika said in the video accompanying the Post-Crescent article, seated next to her mother in their home. Bolen told the Post-Crescent she still ponders what drugs could maintain a comfortable life for Jerika, to persuade her to keep living. But she has also respected her daughter’s decision. Jerika is getting hospice care at home. The ventilator will be turned off at the end of August. The two now no longer have to fight for each other — they get to enjoy one last humid summer. She has enjoyed visits from grandparents, fireworks, movie theater outings, sleepovers and a visit to the Muscular Dystrophy Association camp that Jerika has always attended. This Friday is perhaps the most anticipated event of the summer, though. In a tulle turquoise dress, Jerika will be prom queen. She got the idea for having a prom from MDA camp. Jerika said the camp’s dance was always a great time. “It was the first time I wasn’t a punk. I was a princess.” Everyone at the camp who is 17, the last year you can attend, is named prom king and queen. Jerika won’t turn 17, though — so she’s taking the chance to be prom queen at her own ball. Drop the complaints. Live with more urgency. Be more like 14-year-old Jerika Bolen. https://t.co/R0HLTFinfl pic.twitter.com/NVNCzmBCNU — Post-Crescent Media (@PostCrescent) July 19, 2016 It’s going to be green and black, her favorite colors. They’ll play pop hits, but mostly it will be emo music such as My Chemical Romance. They’ll celebrate Jerika with hors d’oeuvres, cake and dancing in the Grand Meridian, an event hall near the Appleton water tower. “I’m just hoping that everyone can be happy,” Jerika said. Happiness is what Jerika aims for, above all. “I know I can’t always be happy every day,” she said to the Post-Crescent. “I still wonder why God picked me to have this disease, and I know I can never know the reason. Maybe because I’m strong, I guess.” ||||| Published on Jul 20, 2016 Jerika Bolen, 14, who was diagnosed with Type 2 Spinal Muscular Atrophy, has decided to go on hospice and live out her final wishes over the summer including having a prom July, 22, 2016, at the Grand Meridian in Appleton, Wis. Be Smarter. Faster. More Colorful and get the full story at usatoday.com *************************************************************************** Want even more? Subscribe to USA TODAY's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/USATODAY... Like USA TODAY on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/usatoday Follow USA TODAY on Twitter: https://twitter.com/USATODAY Follow USA TODAY on Instagram: https://instagram.com/usatoday/ ||||| Dear Friends and Family: Like any other parent I will never forget "D-day" (diagnosis) for us. My precious 8-month-old had just spent 5 hours in an MRI scanner at Children's of Milwaukee searching for a possible tumor on her spine causing her progressive lack of movement. Instead there was not a tumor and I was told about a fatal disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which was soon after confirmed by genetic blood testing. We were given a limited prognosis by the neurologist, but I refused to listen to that doctor tell me I was going to lose the best thing that ever happened to me. I immediately got on the internet and found other families like ours. My heart broke seeing all the photos of babies who lost their lives to this disease, but I also found many families whose children were living and HAPPY and I was put in touch with an amazing doctor near us in Madison. Dr. Schroth is a specialist in her disease and I can never thank her enough for all of these "extra" years we have had. Despite the fact that Jerika never crawled, walked, rode a bike or did many other things most children can she was a very happy girl. Creativity allowed for our own way of fun and we enjoyed many wonderful moments together and I couldn't begin to put words to the gift my girl has been to my life. Unfortunately, SMA is a relentless disease that has left Jerika with very little movement and an incredible amount of pain that has become too much, and like any parent, I promised my child when it got to be too much I would be behind her no matter what. She has endured more in her 14 years of life than most adults will ever have to. I am beyond proud of her for fighting so hard for this long and I am honored to be her mother. She has let me know now that she needs to be free of her broken body. She has a couple last wishes that I would love your help with. She wants a to have a "prom"..one night of music and dancing and fun. She wants a disco ball and black and lime green decor and to be surrounded by lots of friends she has been unable to see for a long time. She also wants to make it down to see her other SMA friends we see every year at Avery's Race the weekend of July 14th. After that she will come home and begin her journey to Heaven. I will be forever humbled by your support through the years for us and I would be forever grateful for any help you could give me with the end of our journey together and many prayers of strength to make the coming days as pleasant and magical as possible! Help spread the word! Share Tweet 4.4k shares on Facebook shares on Facebook ||||| CLOSE Jerika Bolen, 14, who was diagnosed with Type 2 Spinal Muscular Atrophy, has decided to go on hospice and live out her final wishes over the summer including having a prom July, 22, 2016, at the Grand Meridian in Appleton. Buy Photo Jerika Bolen, 14, browses the internet to show Angie Frank, a private duty nurse who has been working with the Bolen family for more than a year, one of the accessories she purchased for her upcoming prom. (Photo: Danny Damiani/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)Buy Photo APPLETON – But for her power wheelchair, Jerika Bolen is every bit an active 14-year-old girl – a hopeless romantic with shiny purple hair, a love of alternative music and an addiction to Facebook. She has a maturity and wisdom that belies her age, and on a recent spring day, as other 14-year-olds were finishing their final year of middle school and making summer plans, Jerika told her mother she was ready to die. The Appleton teen, who turned 14 just before Christmas, has Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2, an incurable genetic disease that often claims lives before adolescence. She’s mostly immobile and knows her already chronic pain – a seven on a scale of one to 10 on her best days, she says – will only grow worse. RELATED: Lessons plentiful as teen prepares to die RELATED: Support floods in for Appleton teen She's at peace with her decision, she said, but heartbroken for those who’ll grieve her death, expected to come by late summer. “When I decided, I felt extremely happy and sad at the same time,” she said. “There were a lot of tears, but then I realized I’m going to be in a better place, and I’m not going to be in this terrible pain. I’ve been working on it and thinking about it for way longer than anyone else has.” Jerika and her mother, Jen Bolen, made arrangements for hospice care in early June, and Jerika will go without the ventilator that now assists her breathing for 12 hours each day. Jerika wanted a full summer, so the ventilator won't be pulled until the end of August. Once the ventilator is shut down, there's no knowing how soon the end will come. Jen knows Jerika has a certain stubbornness built into her psyche – and though it's long been to her benefit, she hopes her daughter's fighting spirit will relent when it's time. "I hope it's not more than a few days," Jen said. Jerika's pain is mostly felt in her hips and back. She gets nerve spasms and her bones are weak because she's never been able to get up and move. Jerika said the aching is persistent, and she feels sharp, sudden pains. Though painkillers ratchet down the intensity, she only takes them when the pain moves into the eight-to-10 range on the scale. The medications that keep the pain at bay have damaged her body; the really tough days are becoming more frequent. Jerika said there’s peace in being able to confront the inevitable on her own terms. Is she scared? “A little bit,” she said, “but in knowing my doctors for so long, I’m pretty sure they’ll take good care of me.” Jen, a single mom who works as a nurse for ManorCare Health Services in Appleton, had long promised to stand behind Jerika’s wishes when the pain became too much. Knowing the conversation would eventually arrive made the words no easier to process – but a promise is a promise. “If she’s at peace with it, I have to find a way to make peace with it,” Jen said. ‘Maybe because I’m strong’ Spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, causes the muscles to waste away, and Jerika lost much of her physical strength as a baby. Since then, there had been times of plateau between periods of muscle loss, but the losses always returned. And the pain always built. There was a time when Jerika could raise her arms above her head. Today, her strength is limited to her hands. It’s sufficient to control her power wheelchair and entertainment sources – usually a computer mouse or smart phone. She said she wants to die at home, surrounded by her mom, extended family and her two dogs, Tupelo and Julie. For now, she’s intent on making the most of this final summer. She’s hosted sleepovers with friends, and for her final wish she’ll be going to a prom. It's July 22, and the community is invited. It’ll be a night for friends at Appleton’s Grand Meridian, with lights flashing and a disco ball spinning. Guests will enjoy candy, cake and hors d'oeuvres while the music fuels the night’s most important element – "People getting crazy on the dance floor; she loves that,” Jen said. Jerika picked out a greenish blue dress for her dream prom. “I’m super happy,” she said of the prom preparations, “and I don’t have to think about anything bad at the moment.” On a recent Saturday, Jerika maneuvered her chair into a shady spot in the yard and watched as a friend danced through the prom choreography they worked out together. She’s never been jealous of other kids’ physical abilities – dance or otherwise. Her grandmother, Sue Bolen, laughed while talking about Jerika imploring her to do the splits. “She gets a kick out of watching us try,” she said. Jerika and her mom made a recent day trip to the Muscular Dystrophy Association summer camp that has long been a summer highlight. There also was a night of fireworks with her grandparents and a trip to the movies. For all she’s lost, Jerika has maintained control of her facial muscles. She loves to smile. “I try to be as happy as possible,” Jerika said. “I know I can’t always be happy every day. I still wonder why God picked me to have this disease and I know I can never know the reason. Maybe because I’m strong, I guess.” ‘I was ready a long time ago’ Jen was encouraged by doctors to prepare for the end almost from the beginning – but 13 years ago she wanted no part of defeatist talk. She knew something was wrong when her baby went from nearly crawling to an inability to hold herself up. A devastating diagnosis, however, served as a call to action, and Jen bolstered herself to do anything for Jerika to not only survive but to live to her fullest while praying for scientists to make breakthroughs. Spinal muscular atrophy destroys nerve cells in the brain stem and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle activity.Though breakthroughs have happened in Jerika’s lifetime, “there’s still so much about this disease that we don’t know,” Jen said. Kari Stampfli, director of the pediatric palliative care program for UW Health in Madison, said both mom and daughter have been nothing short of courageous. “There is no doubt they’ve turned over every stone and tried every treatment to make things better for her, but we really haven’t been able to help her pain,” Stampfli said. They were more aggressive in attempting treatments than some families, and neither Jen nor Jerika have regrets. Jerika, they believe, has lived longer than she otherwise would have. Still, it's been a difficult fight. Jerika has been in and out of operating rooms more than 30 times. Last year, she had the heads of her femurs removed in hopes of bringing comfort to her aching hips. In 2013, she had her spine fused. Last year’s surgery was a turning point that guided her hospice decision. “I was ready then,” Jerika said. “I was ready a long time ago, but I kept going. After that surgery – it didn’t work and my pain got worse – I kind of sat down and thought, ‘Am I doing this for me or for my family?’ I kind of realized I was doing it for my family.” 'How do you not be bitter?' Those who know Jerika best are no less amazed by her attitude. Her aunt, Lisa Wilson – affectionately known as Auntie Bean – went to say good night to her niece during a recent weekend visit, and emotions caught up to her in realizing their remaining moments are few. "I'm sitting on the bed next to her crying, and she ... told me all these things to make me feel better," Wilson said. "That's Jerika." Jerika is often at the computer for sessions of “The Sims.” It’s a life simulation game that allows players to take on a character and engage in activities and relationships. She said it’s allowed her to better imagine a more typical existence. When not in her chair, Jerika lies on the couch with sunshine pouring through the south window with her Chihuahua, Julie, cuddled up next to her. Mom and daughter have a lot of time to talk as Jen tends to Jerika's needs. Jen said she’s always done her best to keep things “fun and exciting” and as typical as their atypical journey could allow. Jerika went to school at Janet Berry Elementary School and spent a year at Valley New School. She recently completed eighth grade through the online Wisconsin Connections Academy. When Jerika was little, Jen would hold her on the playground swings and take her down the slide. Jerika’s grandfather, Mike, attached a laundry basket to a saucer sled so Jerika – held tight and warm in blankets – could sit upright while being pulled through the snow. The Bolens are afforded home nurses for up to 18 hours a day, which allows Jen to work and catch some sleep. Their nurses have been like family, and members of her care team said Jerika has been more than a patient. Nurses attended school alongside her. Today, they play games or do some cooking for fun between care needs. Occasionally, they'll head to downtown Appleton or to the Fox River Mall. Jerika is quick with humor and skilled at employing a little manipulation when she wants something, nurse Alyssa Dahlen said. But she’s as sweet as she is strong, Dahlen said. She talked about Jerika’s interest in looking at pictures of her baby. She’s a girl who’s never walked, much less hopped on a bicycle. She’s mourned the loss of friends who have the same disease. “How do you not be bitter?” Dahlen asked. “It’s amazing.” ‘It’s her pain’ Jen has kept her mind occupied by making sure prom will go beyond her daughter’s expectations. Recent weeks have brought a mix of emotions, and she attributes the best moments to her daughter setting the example. “I’m strong because of her, that’s for sure,” Jen said. “It’s just we know we’ve literally done everything we can do.” Jen knows many struggle to understand Jerika's journey, including her decision to bring it to an end. She’s taken questions on how Jerika’s decision to die differs from assisted suicide. “People don’t realize what it takes to keep her alive," Jen said. She recognizes many people have discomfort with the idea of someone so young making such a huge decision. “I know she’s only 14, but she’s old enough to decide,” Jen said. “It’s her body and it’s her pain.” Stampfli dismissed all the notions of those who'd question Jerika's decision. For kids with spinal muscular atrophy, “the standard of care is often comfort measures from the beginning," she said. When taking on any course of treatment, there’s always the option to stop if it isn’t offering the quality of life that was hoped, she said. “They did it all,” she said. As both a mom and a nurse, Jen rationally knows it would still only be a matter of time. The heavy doses of painkillers are hurting Jerika’s body, but it’s the only way to give her any comfort. Logic hasn't precluded emotion, and Jen has done a lot of crying. There have been times of anger and numb feelings. “I’ll still have you,” she said while petting Tupelo, their golden retriever. Jen entertains fleeting thoughts that a perfect combination of medications might be found to restore her daughter’s comfort, but she knows it's fantasy. “I don’t think she’s changing her mind,” Jen said. Jerika already uses her ventilator on its highest settings. When taken off, she’ll be put on morphine to calm the feeling of being starved for air. But for now, as she braces herself for those final, heartbreaking events to unfold, Jen is determined to provide one last summer of joy for a girl who’s given and endured more at 14 than many will in full, long lives. “She’s a very unselfish little girl,” grandma Sue Bolen said, “and she’s tougher than anyone I’ve ever known.” Jim Collar: 920-996-7206 or [email protected]; on Twitter @JimCollar A PROM FOR JERIKA What: Jerika Bolen asked to have a prom as her final wish, and the public is invited to join the party. Guests are asked to wear their “fancy” attire to the event, which will include a DJ, cake and hors d'oeuvres. When: 7 p.m. to midnight July 22 Where: The Grand Meridian, 2621 N. Oneida St., Appleton Funding: The Bolens established a GoFundMe page to raise money for the prom and Jerika’s upcoming medical expenses. Those interested in contributing can visit gofundme.com and search for “Jen Bolen.” Read or Share this story: http://post.cr/29SeG2M

– Jerika Bolen wakes up every morning with another day ahead of her hooked up to a ventilator and wracked by terrible pain, caused by an incurable illness that usually kills its sufferers when they're in their teens. But the purple-haired 14-year-old from Appleton, Wis., has decided to wrest control back from the Type 2 spinal muscular atrophy that's plagued her by ending her own life, and she's going to go out dancing, the Washington Post reports. On Friday she'll be donning a tulle dress and attending her prom, which she calls her "last dance"—and then, after spending one final summer with her mom, they'll turn off the ventilator that keeps her alive at the end of August. Jerika's mom, Jen Bolen, has been working furiously since Jerika was a baby to ease her daughter's agonizing pain, but even after 38 surgeries, it has become unbearable (usually at a seven on a one-to-10 scale on a good day). "I used my voice that I had and said, 'This is enough pain. I don't need this anymore," Jerika tells USA Today. The director of the pediatric palliative care program at UW Health in Madison tells the Post-Crescent that even though the Bolens have "turned over every stone and tried every treatment to make things better for her … we really haven't been able to help her pain." Which is why Jen Bolen has come around to her daughter's decision, despite her own anger, sadness, and fear about what's to come. "I know she's only 14, but she's old enough to decide," Bolen says. "It's her body and it's her pain." She's put up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for Jerika's last days, which she hopes to make as "pleasant and magical as possible." "The first week, I was crying all the time," Jerika says of the days right after making her decision. "But after a couple days, I was running around so happy. I was like, 'I'm going to be able to walk, I'm going to be with God, I'm going to be free.'" (Five-year-old Julianna Snow also got her wish to die at home.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary. (Courtesy of Jerika Bolen) Jerika Bolen is going to prom. And, as you can expect from a 14-year-old with purple hair, she has thought a lot about her outfit. “I’m not much of a girly girl. I’m more of a punk bada– girl,” Jerika explained on the phone Wednesday night from her home in Appleton, Wis. “I actually have a pretty girly dress, but I’m going to have punky jewelry. Just to keep my punk soul with it.” This is Jerika’s very own prom. She’s calling it her “last dance.” And it is. Jerika Bolen has an incurable disease, type 2 spinal muscular atrophy, that typically kills during adolescence, but not before inflicting great pain. She is feeling that pain now and is being kept alive by use of a ventilator 12 hours a day. Months after turning 14, Jerika decided it was time to remove the ventilator, time to die. The alternative: She would lose the ability to control her hands and to speak, while experiencing more crushing pain and surgery along the way to an inevitable death. So by the end of August, she will turn off her ventilator she uses to breathe — and spend her final days at home with her mother and two dogs. Type 2 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA II) is a rare disease that causes debilitating pain and in her case the loss of all muscle control, save for parts of her face and hands. She has had surgeries to place rods in her back, remove all but a shard of her hip bones and fuse parts of her spine together with screws. The pain is regularly at a 7 on a 10 scale, which is akin to constantly having a migraine. Sometimes it climbs to 8, 9 or 10, because the screws in her bones pinch her nerves. People with SMA II, an inherited, incurable condition, don’t usually live into adolescence, but the people in Jerika’s life say she’s a fighter. “I just kept going,” Jerika said “I didn’t want to hurt my mom, I didn’t want to hurt my family. I wanted to keep fighting and keep fighting. I didn’t have a life. I was just laying on the couch, got up to do homework and then went back to bed because I was so sore.” She doesn’t want to fight anymore. A few months ago, she endured her 38th surgery — yet another procedure to manage the crushing pain in her back and hips. She decided it would be her last. “I sat myself down and I thought, ‘Jerika, am I here for me or am I here for my family? I can’t even do anything besides lie in bed because I’m so sore.’” ICYMI: Jerika Bolen is celebrating life before making the difficult decision to die: https://t.co/jrAraPlYVv pic.twitter.com/OwuRaFSQhV — WBAY-TV 2 (@WBAY) July 19, 2016 Jen Bolen, Jerika’s mother, knew this day was coming. As a nurse, she told the Appleton Post-Crescent on Wednesday, she understood how Jerika’s pain medications were harming her body, how she wouldn’t be able to speak or smile if she continued on. “After every big surgery, she loses a lot of strength,” Bolen said. That didn’t make it any easier to bear the news. In early June, Jerika told her mother with the assistance of the teenager’s counselor that she wanted to go off life support. The single mother first said they could just up her pain medication. Jerika was adamant. “No, Mom. I’m serious,” she had said. “I’m actually done.” For all of Jerika’s challenges, she is still Bolen’s teenage daughter. She listens to My Chemical Romance and loves YouTube celebrities. She wears green lipstick and likes to go to the mall. Her Facebook is littered with funny pictures and makeup tutorials. Jerika has a girlfriend, too; she’s gay. (Courtesy of Jerika Bolen) “I don’t know how to stop fighting for her,” Bolen said to the Post-Crescent. “That’s all I’ve done since the day she was diagnosed when she was 8 months old.” And she delights the people around her. Alyssa Dahlen, one of her nurses, told the Post-Crescent that Jerika maintains a quick wit and isn’t afraid be a little manipulative — like any teenage girl. She has perseverance beyond her years too, and is never melodramatic about her lot in life. “How do you not be bitter?” Dahlen said. “It’s amazing.” “She’s a very unselfish little girl,” her grandmother, Sue Bolen, told the Post-Crescent, “and she’s tougher than anyone I’ve ever known.” The decision to end Jerika’s life, though the family knew it was going to happen, still was not easy. After Jerika announced it, her mother felt numb, angry and deeply sad. “The first week, I was crying all the time,” Jerika said. “I was constantly thinking, ‘Oh, I’m not ever going to have kids, I’m not going to ever have a family, blah, blah, blah.” Then Jerika perked up. She said there’s a better afterlife for her — one without pain. One that’s like life before all the surgeries, all the pain that started around the time she turned 8. It might be like when she could go to school and play with friends. Except this time, maybe she could go on the monkey bars, too, instead of just watch. “I have been realizing I’m going to get to walk and not have this pain anymore and not have to, like, live this really crappy life,” Jerika said. After that appointment with her mother and her counselor, “we cried and we cried and we cried. But after a couple days, I was running around so happy. I was like, ‘I’m going to be able to walk, I’m going to be with God, I’m going to be free.’” (Courtesy of Jerika Bolen) But Jerika is scared her mother will take it too hard. What if she stops eating, stops taking care of herself? “She always says, like, I am what she like lives for sometimes,” Jerika said in the video accompanying the Post-Crescent article, seated next to her mother in their home. Bolen told the Post-Crescent she still ponders what drugs could maintain a comfortable life for Jerika, to persuade her to keep living. But she has also respected her daughter’s decision. Jerika is getting hospice care at home. The ventilator will be turned off at the end of August. The two now no longer have to fight for each other — they get to enjoy one last humid summer. She has enjoyed visits from grandparents, fireworks, movie theater outings, sleepovers and a visit to the Muscular Dystrophy Association camp that Jerika has always attended. This Friday is perhaps the most anticipated event of the summer, though. In a tulle turquoise dress, Jerika will be prom queen. She got the idea for having a prom from MDA camp. Jerika said the camp’s dance was always a great time. “It was the first time I wasn’t a punk. I was a princess.” Everyone at the camp who is 17, the last year you can attend, is named prom king and queen. Jerika won’t turn 17, though — so she’s taking the chance to be prom queen at her own ball. Drop the complaints. Live with more urgency. Be more like 14-year-old Jerika Bolen. https://t.co/R0HLTFinfl pic.twitter.com/NVNCzmBCNU — Post-Crescent Media (@PostCrescent) July 19, 2016 It’s going to be green and black, her favorite colors. They’ll play pop hits, but mostly it will be emo music such as My Chemical Romance. They’ll celebrate Jerika with hors d’oeuvres, cake and dancing in the Grand Meridian, an event hall near the Appleton water tower. “I’m just hoping that everyone can be happy,” Jerika said. Happiness is what Jerika aims for, above all. “I know I can’t always be happy every day,” she said to the Post-Crescent. “I still wonder why God picked me to have this disease, and I know I can never know the reason. Maybe because I’m strong, I guess.” ||||| Published on Jul 20, 2016 Jerika Bolen, 14, who was diagnosed with Type 2 Spinal Muscular Atrophy, has decided to go on hospice and live out her final wishes over the summer including having a prom July, 22, 2016, at the Grand Meridian in Appleton, Wis. Be Smarter. Faster. More Colorful and get the full story at usatoday.com *************************************************************************** Want even more? Subscribe to USA TODAY's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/USATODAY... Like USA TODAY on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/usatoday Follow USA TODAY on Twitter: https://twitter.com/USATODAY Follow USA TODAY on Instagram: https://instagram.com/usatoday/ ||||| Dear Friends and Family: Like any other parent I will never forget "D-day" (diagnosis) for us. My precious 8-month-old had just spent 5 hours in an MRI scanner at Children's of Milwaukee searching for a possible tumor on her spine causing her progressive lack of movement. Instead there was not a tumor and I was told about a fatal disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which was soon after confirmed by genetic blood testing. We were given a limited prognosis by the neurologist, but I refused to listen to that doctor tell me I was going to lose the best thing that ever happened to me. I immediately got on the internet and found other families like ours. My heart broke seeing all the photos of babies who lost their lives to this disease, but I also found many families whose children were living and HAPPY and I was put in touch with an amazing doctor near us in Madison. Dr. Schroth is a specialist in her disease and I can never thank her enough for all of these "extra" years we have had. Despite the fact that Jerika never crawled, walked, rode a bike or did many other things most children can she was a very happy girl. Creativity allowed for our own way of fun and we enjoyed many wonderful moments together and I couldn't begin to put words to the gift my girl has been to my life. Unfortunately, SMA is a relentless disease that has left Jerika with very little movement and an incredible amount of pain that has become too much, and like any parent, I promised my child when it got to be too much I would be behind her no matter what. She has endured more in her 14 years of life than most adults will ever have to. I am beyond proud of her for fighting so hard for this long and I am honored to be her mother. She has let me know now that she needs to be free of her broken body. She has a couple last wishes that I would love your help with. She wants a to have a "prom"..one night of music and dancing and fun. She wants a disco ball and black and lime green decor and to be surrounded by lots of friends she has been unable to see for a long time. She also wants to make it down to see her other SMA friends we see every year at Avery's Race the weekend of July 14th. After that she will come home and begin her journey to Heaven. I will be forever humbled by your support through the years for us and I would be forever grateful for any help you could give me with the end of our journey together and many prayers of strength to make the coming days as pleasant and magical as possible! Help spread the word! Share Tweet 4.4k shares on Facebook shares on Facebook ||||| CLOSE Jerika Bolen, 14, who was diagnosed with Type 2 Spinal Muscular Atrophy, has decided to go on hospice and live out her final wishes over the summer including having a prom July, 22, 2016, at the Grand Meridian in Appleton. Buy Photo Jerika Bolen, 14, browses the internet to show Angie Frank, a private duty nurse who has been working with the Bolen family for more than a year, one of the accessories she purchased for her upcoming prom. (Photo: Danny Damiani/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)Buy Photo APPLETON – But for her power wheelchair, Jerika Bolen is every bit an active 14-year-old girl – a hopeless romantic with shiny purple hair, a love of alternative music and an addiction to Facebook. She has a maturity and wisdom that belies her age, and on a recent spring day, as other 14-year-olds were finishing their final year of middle school and making summer plans, Jerika told her mother she was ready to die. The Appleton teen, who turned 14 just before Christmas, has Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2, an incurable genetic disease that often claims lives before adolescence. She’s mostly immobile and knows her already chronic pain – a seven on a scale of one to 10 on her best days, she says – will only grow worse. RELATED: Lessons plentiful as teen prepares to die RELATED: Support floods in for Appleton teen She's at peace with her decision, she said, but heartbroken for those who’ll grieve her death, expected to come by late summer. “When I decided, I felt extremely happy and sad at the same time,” she said. “There were a lot of tears, but then I realized I’m going to be in a better place, and I’m not going to be in this terrible pain. I’ve been working on it and thinking about it for way longer than anyone else has.” Jerika and her mother, Jen Bolen, made arrangements for hospice care in early June, and Jerika will go without the ventilator that now assists her breathing for 12 hours each day. Jerika wanted a full summer, so the ventilator won't be pulled until the end of August. Once the ventilator is shut down, there's no knowing how soon the end will come. Jen knows Jerika has a certain stubbornness built into her psyche – and though it's long been to her benefit, she hopes her daughter's fighting spirit will relent when it's time. "I hope it's not more than a few days," Jen said. Jerika's pain is mostly felt in her hips and back. She gets nerve spasms and her bones are weak because she's never been able to get up and move. Jerika said the aching is persistent, and she feels sharp, sudden pains. Though painkillers ratchet down the intensity, she only takes them when the pain moves into the eight-to-10 range on the scale. The medications that keep the pain at bay have damaged her body; the really tough days are becoming more frequent. Jerika said there’s peace in being able to confront the inevitable on her own terms. Is she scared? “A little bit,” she said, “but in knowing my doctors for so long, I’m pretty sure they’ll take good care of me.” Jen, a single mom who works as a nurse for ManorCare Health Services in Appleton, had long promised to stand behind Jerika’s wishes when the pain became too much. Knowing the conversation would eventually arrive made the words no easier to process – but a promise is a promise. “If she’s at peace with it, I have to find a way to make peace with it,” Jen said. ‘Maybe because I’m strong’ Spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, causes the muscles to waste away, and Jerika lost much of her physical strength as a baby. Since then, there had been times of plateau between periods of muscle loss, but the losses always returned. And the pain always built. There was a time when Jerika could raise her arms above her head. Today, her strength is limited to her hands. It’s sufficient to control her power wheelchair and entertainment sources – usually a computer mouse or smart phone. She said she wants to die at home, surrounded by her mom, extended family and her two dogs, Tupelo and Julie. For now, she’s intent on making the most of this final summer. She’s hosted sleepovers with friends, and for her final wish she’ll be going to a prom. It's July 22, and the community is invited. It’ll be a night for friends at Appleton’s Grand Meridian, with lights flashing and a disco ball spinning. Guests will enjoy candy, cake and hors d'oeuvres while the music fuels the night’s most important element – "People getting crazy on the dance floor; she loves that,” Jen said. Jerika picked out a greenish blue dress for her dream prom. “I’m super happy,” she said of the prom preparations, “and I don’t have to think about anything bad at the moment.” On a recent Saturday, Jerika maneuvered her chair into a shady spot in the yard and watched as a friend danced through the prom choreography they worked out together. She’s never been jealous of other kids’ physical abilities – dance or otherwise. Her grandmother, Sue Bolen, laughed while talking about Jerika imploring her to do the splits. “She gets a kick out of watching us try,” she said. Jerika and her mom made a recent day trip to the Muscular Dystrophy Association summer camp that has long been a summer highlight. There also was a night of fireworks with her grandparents and a trip to the movies. For all she’s lost, Jerika has maintained control of her facial muscles. She loves to smile. “I try to be as happy as possible,” Jerika said. “I know I can’t always be happy every day. I still wonder why God picked me to have this disease and I know I can never know the reason. Maybe because I’m strong, I guess.” ‘I was ready a long time ago’ Jen was encouraged by doctors to prepare for the end almost from the beginning – but 13 years ago she wanted no part of defeatist talk. She knew something was wrong when her baby went from nearly crawling to an inability to hold herself up. A devastating diagnosis, however, served as a call to action, and Jen bolstered herself to do anything for Jerika to not only survive but to live to her fullest while praying for scientists to make breakthroughs. Spinal muscular atrophy destroys nerve cells in the brain stem and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle activity.Though breakthroughs have happened in Jerika’s lifetime, “there’s still so much about this disease that we don’t know,” Jen said. Kari Stampfli, director of the pediatric palliative care program for UW Health in Madison, said both mom and daughter have been nothing short of courageous. “There is no doubt they’ve turned over every stone and tried every treatment to make things better for her, but we really haven’t been able to help her pain,” Stampfli said. They were more aggressive in attempting treatments than some families, and neither Jen nor Jerika have regrets. Jerika, they believe, has lived longer than she otherwise would have. Still, it's been a difficult fight. Jerika has been in and out of operating rooms more than 30 times. Last year, she had the heads of her femurs removed in hopes of bringing comfort to her aching hips. In 2013, she had her spine fused. Last year’s surgery was a turning point that guided her hospice decision. “I was ready then,” Jerika said. “I was ready a long time ago, but I kept going. After that surgery – it didn’t work and my pain got worse – I kind of sat down and thought, ‘Am I doing this for me or for my family?’ I kind of realized I was doing it for my family.” 'How do you not be bitter?' Those who know Jerika best are no less amazed by her attitude. Her aunt, Lisa Wilson – affectionately known as Auntie Bean – went to say good night to her niece during a recent weekend visit, and emotions caught up to her in realizing their remaining moments are few. "I'm sitting on the bed next to her crying, and she ... told me all these things to make me feel better," Wilson said. "That's Jerika." Jerika is often at the computer for sessions of “The Sims.” It’s a life simulation game that allows players to take on a character and engage in activities and relationships. She said it’s allowed her to better imagine a more typical existence. When not in her chair, Jerika lies on the couch with sunshine pouring through the south window with her Chihuahua, Julie, cuddled up next to her. Mom and daughter have a lot of time to talk as Jen tends to Jerika's needs. Jen said she’s always done her best to keep things “fun and exciting” and as typical as their atypical journey could allow. Jerika went to school at Janet Berry Elementary School and spent a year at Valley New School. She recently completed eighth grade through the online Wisconsin Connections Academy. When Jerika was little, Jen would hold her on the playground swings and take her down the slide. Jerika’s grandfather, Mike, attached a laundry basket to a saucer sled so Jerika – held tight and warm in blankets – could sit upright while being pulled through the snow. The Bolens are afforded home nurses for up to 18 hours a day, which allows Jen to work and catch some sleep. Their nurses have been like family, and members of her care team said Jerika has been more than a patient. Nurses attended school alongside her. Today, they play games or do some cooking for fun between care needs. Occasionally, they'll head to downtown Appleton or to the Fox River Mall. Jerika is quick with humor and skilled at employing a little manipulation when she wants something, nurse Alyssa Dahlen said. But she’s as sweet as she is strong, Dahlen said. She talked about Jerika’s interest in looking at pictures of her baby. She’s a girl who’s never walked, much less hopped on a bicycle. She’s mourned the loss of friends who have the same disease. “How do you not be bitter?” Dahlen asked. “It’s amazing.” ‘It’s her pain’ Jen has kept her mind occupied by making sure prom will go beyond her daughter’s expectations. Recent weeks have brought a mix of emotions, and she attributes the best moments to her daughter setting the example. “I’m strong because of her, that’s for sure,” Jen said. “It’s just we know we’ve literally done everything we can do.” Jen knows many struggle to understand Jerika's journey, including her decision to bring it to an end. She’s taken questions on how Jerika’s decision to die differs from assisted suicide. “People don’t realize what it takes to keep her alive," Jen said. She recognizes many people have discomfort with the idea of someone so young making such a huge decision. “I know she’s only 14, but she’s old enough to decide,” Jen said. “It’s her body and it’s her pain.” Stampfli dismissed all the notions of those who'd question Jerika's decision. For kids with spinal muscular atrophy, “the standard of care is often comfort measures from the beginning," she said. When taking on any course of treatment, there’s always the option to stop if it isn’t offering the quality of life that was hoped, she said. “They did it all,” she said. As both a mom and a nurse, Jen rationally knows it would still only be a matter of time. The heavy doses of painkillers are hurting Jerika’s body, but it’s the only way to give her any comfort. Logic hasn't precluded emotion, and Jen has done a lot of crying. There have been times of anger and numb feelings. “I’ll still have you,” she said while petting Tupelo, their golden retriever. Jen entertains fleeting thoughts that a perfect combination of medications might be found to restore her daughter’s comfort, but she knows it's fantasy. “I don’t think she’s changing her mind,” Jen said. Jerika already uses her ventilator on its highest settings. When taken off, she’ll be put on morphine to calm the feeling of being starved for air. But for now, as she braces herself for those final, heartbreaking events to unfold, Jen is determined to provide one last summer of joy for a girl who’s given and endured more at 14 than many will in full, long lives. “She’s a very unselfish little girl,” grandma Sue Bolen said, “and she’s tougher than anyone I’ve ever known.” Jim Collar: 920-996-7206 or [email protected]; on Twitter @JimCollar A PROM FOR JERIKA What: Jerika Bolen asked to have a prom as her final wish, and the public is invited to join the party. Guests are asked to wear their “fancy” attire to the event, which will include a DJ, cake and hors d'oeuvres. When: 7 p.m. to midnight July 22 Where: The Grand Meridian, 2621 N. Oneida St., Appleton Funding: The Bolens established a GoFundMe page to raise money for the prom and Jerika’s upcoming medical expenses. Those interested in contributing can visit gofundme.com and search for “Jen Bolen.” Read or Share this story: http://post.cr/29SeG2M

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Image copyright EON/MGM Image caption Eunice Gayson, as Sylvia Tench, met James Bond over the card table in Dr No Eunice Gayson - the actress who played the first "Bond girl" - has died at the age of 90. She played Sylvia Trench in 007's 1962 debut, Dr No. During the filming Gayson helped calm Sean Connery's nerves so he could deliver the spy's most famous catchphrase - giving his name as "Bond, James Bond" - for the first time. A post on her official Twitter feed said: "She will be very much missed." Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, producers of the Bond series, said in a statement: "We are so sad to learn that Eunice Gayson, our very first 'Bond girl', who played Sylvia Trench in Dr No and From Russia With Love, has passed away. "Our sincere thoughts are with her family." In her role as Sylvia Trench, Gayson, who died on 8 June, helped to create one of cinema's most enduring catchphrases. Meeting 007 over cards at the Le Cercle Club casino, she suggests raising the stakes. Bond replies: "I admire your courage, Miss, er... ?" "Trench, Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr... ?" "Bond, James Bond." Gayson said in 2012 that filming the scene had not been easy as Sean Connery struggled with the line. She said: "He had to say Bond, James Bond, but he came out with other permutations like Sean Bond, James Connery. 'Cut! Cut! Cut!'" At the instigation of the director, Terence Young, Gayson took Mr Connery for a drink, and he returned to deliver it perfectly. Sylvia Trench was due to be a recurring character, but the idea was dropped by the director of Goldfinger, Guy Hamilton. But while Gayson is the only woman to appear as the same Bond girl in two movies - Sylvia Trench also appears in a clinch with 007 in From Russia with Love - her voice is not heard in either of them. As with many of the Bond girls in the 1960s and 1970s, her lines were rerecorded by voiceover artist Nikki van der Zyl. Gayson was born in Surrey in 1928. She played a series of screen roles, including in Hammer Horror's 1958 movie The Revenge of Frankenstein, before becoming the first Bond girl. After the Bond films, she appeared in several classic TV series such as The Saint and The Avengers. ||||| Eunice Gayson, the first ever Bond girl, died Friday. She was 90. Gayson’s Twitter account posted the news, writing that she was “an amazing lady who left a lasting impression on everyone she met. She will be very much missed.” Gayson played Sylvia Trench in the 1962 “James Bond” franchise starter “Dr. No,” starring Sean Connery as Bond. She first asked Bond for his name at a card table, resulting in the iconic, “Bond. James Bond.” She reprised her role as Trench in “From Russia With Love.” James Bond movie producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli also remembered Grayson on Saturday in a tweet posted to the James Bond official Twitter account. “We are so sad to learn that Eunice Gayson, our very first ‘Bond girl’ who played Sylvia Trench in ‘Dr. No’ and ‘From Russia With Love’ has passed away. Our sincere thoughts are with her family.” Originally, Gayson was intended to play M’s secretary, Miss Moneypenny, but Lois Maxwell landed that role instead. After her role in the James Bond films, Gayson went on to appear in TV series “The Saint” and “The Avengers.” Her career began on stage as Frau Schrader in a production of “The Sound of Music” at the Palace Theatre, and she portrayed Margaret in the Hammer horror film “The Revenge of Frankenstein” in 1958. We are very sad to learn that our dear Eunice passed away on June 8th. An amazing lady who left a lasting impression on everyone she met. She will be very much missed. pic.twitter.com/c5kVHs256Y — Eunice Gayson (@EuniceGayson) June 9, 2018 ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Comment from Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli: “We are so sad to learn that Eunice Gayson, our very first 'Bond girl' who played Sylvia Trench in DR. NO and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE has passed away. Our sincere thoughts are with her family.”pic.twitter.com/W0UOcDEuZq ||||| Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Vaites, produciuse un problema na conexión co servidor. Queres tentalo de novo? Incluír o chío pai Incluír multimedia Ao inserires contido de Twitter no teu sitio web ou na túa aplicación, aceptas o Acordo de programadores e a Normativa de programadores. Previsualizar

– The world's first "Bond girl" has passed away at the age of 90, Variety reports. Eunice Gayson, who played Sylvia Trench in Dr. No and From Russia With Love, died Friday, according to her official Twitter feed and Bond film producers. She was "an amazing lady who left a lasting impression on everyone she met," her feed says. "She will be very much missed." She also helped Sean Connery overcome nerves to deliver his most iconic Bond line in Dr. No, the BBC reports. Encountering the British spy at Le Cercle Club casino, Gayson's character introduces herself, saying, "Trench, Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr...." But Connery apparently struggled to say the next line. "He had to say Bond, James Bond," says Gayson, "but he came out with other permutations like Sean Bond, James Connery. 'Cut! Cut! Cut!'" Director Terence Young suggested Gayson take Connery for a drink, and when they returned the Bond actor said it smoothly. The Trench character was slated to become a regular character in Bond films, but Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton nixed the plan. Another tidbit: Gayson's voice isn't heard in either of her Bond films because, like many Bond girls of that era, her words were voiced over by voice actor Nikki van der Zyl. British-born Gayson went on to star in classic TV series like The Saint and The Avengers over a 50-year career, per the Daily News.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Image copyright EON/MGM Image caption Eunice Gayson, as Sylvia Tench, met James Bond over the card table in Dr No Eunice Gayson - the actress who played the first "Bond girl" - has died at the age of 90. She played Sylvia Trench in 007's 1962 debut, Dr No. During the filming Gayson helped calm Sean Connery's nerves so he could deliver the spy's most famous catchphrase - giving his name as "Bond, James Bond" - for the first time. A post on her official Twitter feed said: "She will be very much missed." Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, producers of the Bond series, said in a statement: "We are so sad to learn that Eunice Gayson, our very first 'Bond girl', who played Sylvia Trench in Dr No and From Russia With Love, has passed away. "Our sincere thoughts are with her family." In her role as Sylvia Trench, Gayson, who died on 8 June, helped to create one of cinema's most enduring catchphrases. Meeting 007 over cards at the Le Cercle Club casino, she suggests raising the stakes. Bond replies: "I admire your courage, Miss, er... ?" "Trench, Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr... ?" "Bond, James Bond." Gayson said in 2012 that filming the scene had not been easy as Sean Connery struggled with the line. She said: "He had to say Bond, James Bond, but he came out with other permutations like Sean Bond, James Connery. 'Cut! Cut! Cut!'" At the instigation of the director, Terence Young, Gayson took Mr Connery for a drink, and he returned to deliver it perfectly. Sylvia Trench was due to be a recurring character, but the idea was dropped by the director of Goldfinger, Guy Hamilton. But while Gayson is the only woman to appear as the same Bond girl in two movies - Sylvia Trench also appears in a clinch with 007 in From Russia with Love - her voice is not heard in either of them. As with many of the Bond girls in the 1960s and 1970s, her lines were rerecorded by voiceover artist Nikki van der Zyl. Gayson was born in Surrey in 1928. She played a series of screen roles, including in Hammer Horror's 1958 movie The Revenge of Frankenstein, before becoming the first Bond girl. After the Bond films, she appeared in several classic TV series such as The Saint and The Avengers. ||||| Eunice Gayson, the first ever Bond girl, died Friday. She was 90. Gayson’s Twitter account posted the news, writing that she was “an amazing lady who left a lasting impression on everyone she met. She will be very much missed.” Gayson played Sylvia Trench in the 1962 “James Bond” franchise starter “Dr. No,” starring Sean Connery as Bond. She first asked Bond for his name at a card table, resulting in the iconic, “Bond. James Bond.” She reprised her role as Trench in “From Russia With Love.” James Bond movie producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli also remembered Grayson on Saturday in a tweet posted to the James Bond official Twitter account. “We are so sad to learn that Eunice Gayson, our very first ‘Bond girl’ who played Sylvia Trench in ‘Dr. No’ and ‘From Russia With Love’ has passed away. Our sincere thoughts are with her family.” Originally, Gayson was intended to play M’s secretary, Miss Moneypenny, but Lois Maxwell landed that role instead. After her role in the James Bond films, Gayson went on to appear in TV series “The Saint” and “The Avengers.” Her career began on stage as Frau Schrader in a production of “The Sound of Music” at the Palace Theatre, and she portrayed Margaret in the Hammer horror film “The Revenge of Frankenstein” in 1958. We are very sad to learn that our dear Eunice passed away on June 8th. An amazing lady who left a lasting impression on everyone she met. She will be very much missed. pic.twitter.com/c5kVHs256Y — Eunice Gayson (@EuniceGayson) June 9, 2018 ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Comment from Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli: “We are so sad to learn that Eunice Gayson, our very first 'Bond girl' who played Sylvia Trench in DR. NO and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE has passed away. Our sincere thoughts are with her family.”pic.twitter.com/W0UOcDEuZq ||||| Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Vaites, produciuse un problema na conexión co servidor. Queres tentalo de novo? Incluír o chío pai Incluír multimedia Ao inserires contido de Twitter no teu sitio web ou na túa aplicación, aceptas o Acordo de programadores e a Normativa de programadores. Previsualizar

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Only in France. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the superstar model-turned-songstress with a freewheeling lifestyle, now hands the job of first lady to a twice-divorced journalist who's the first presidential partner to enter the Elysee Palace without a ring on her finger. This combination of three file photos shows, on the left, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the superstar fashion model-turned songstress with a freewheeling lifestyle, who is handing the job of France's first lady... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 6, 2012 file photo, French president-elect Francois Hollande kisses his companion Valerie Trierweiler after greeting crowds gathered to celebrate his election victory in Bastille Square... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 6, 2012 file photo, French President and UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy kisses his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy as they are greeted by supporters after casting their votes in the second... (Associated Press) French president-elect Francois Hollande wave to supporters with his companion Valerie Trierweiler after greeting crowds gathered to celebrate his election victory in Bastille Square in Paris, France,... (Associated Press) And as Valerie Trierweiler prepares for her new role alongside President-elect Francois Hollande, in the wings is the woman whose man she stole _ Segolene Royal, the mother of Hollande's four children and a former presidential candidate now seeking her own seat of political power. So what's happening in the land of French officialdom, where protocol and social niceties still count? Will Trierweiler's name be listed on formal invitations to presidential events, even though she's not his spouse? It's the head of state who decides, so where's the problem? Intrigue, love lost, love found and power struggles accompanied the new first couple on their journey to the presidency, which Hollande takes over from Nicolas Sarkozy on May 15. The Hollande-Trierweiler couple gave each other a big kiss on the mouth at the victory fete watched by cheering thousands at the Bastille. FOLLOWING CARLA'S FOOTSTEPS Bruni-Sarkozy, who married the outgoing president after he divorced his second wife while in office, adapted to the job of first lady like slipping into a silver slipper. Past romantic adventures with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton faded into distant memory and she cultivated a low profile as France's "premiere dame," charming and disarming other heads of state. Some think Trierweiler may do even better. "Valerie is perfect. She's so French," Paris-based fashion writer Rebecca Voight insisted. "It's what French women see in themselves. ... She kept a respectful distance from Hollande during the campaign and also had her career, which people respect." Privilege describes the life, past and present, of Sarkozy's Italian-born wife, who comes from a wealthy Turin family. Trierweiler's roots are more humble. One of six children, she grew up in a modest neighborhood in Angers, in western France, then studied political science at the Sorbonne. "I didn't choose to have a public life. I chose Francois," she said in an interview with Paris-Match in October. "But I will adapt." THE VALERIE-FRANCOIS STORY Elegant and intelligent, Trierweiler, who has three teenage sons from her previous marriage to a colleague at the magazine Paris Match, is 10 years younger than the 57-year-old Hollande. She met Hollande years ago while covering the Socialist Party, which he headed for 11 years until 2008. Their relationship flowered starting in 2005 as Hollande's then-partner Royal was beginning to prepare her own presidential candidacy. Hollande and Royal maintained a pact of silence about their crumbling relationship _ broken only after she lost to Sarkozy in 2007. Royal then announced that she had asked Hollande to leave their family home. Royal, who soldiered through Hollande's presidential campaign with occasional appearances, now wants a piece of the political pie _ as speaker of the lower house of parliament should the Socialists win June legislative elections. As for Trierweiler, she cheered Hollande on at rallies but also kept an office at the Socialists' campaign headquarters, assuring she was never far from earshot. And on Tuesday, she let journalists waiting outside the couple's Paris apartment know who's in charge with a Tweet: "I thank my colleagues for respecting our private life and that of our neighbors. Please don't camp in front of our home." Some political enemies of Hollande threw darts, with a lawmaker in Sarkozy's conservative UMP party comparing Trierweiler to a Rottweiler. "All these attacks, one is lower than the next," the incoming first lady lamented on Radio Hollande, a station set up as part of his presidential campaign. UNWED AT THE ELYSEE Some mundane problems will need to be resolved, namely where the first couple will reside. Eschewing tradition _ and the Elysee Palace _ they want to remain in their own apartment, located in a busy Paris neighborhood and said to be a security nightmare. And how will their unwed status play to the crowd of official visitors or when traveling abroad, particularly to countries sensitive about male-female ties outside wedlock? Will they simply break down and get married? "This isn't something you do under the pretext that you're going to be president," Hollande said in an interview with the magazine Elle. "The decision is ours." Trierweiler wants to keep working even though she has been booted from her job as a political reporter to avoid conflict of interest. "Even if my press card is withdrawn, I will die a journalist. It's in my soul," she told Radio Hollande. In her new role, she is walking through the other side of the looking glass, and she knows it. "This role makes me a little uncomfortable, but I will manage very well if it is not limited just to that. I want to represent the image of France, do the necessary smiling, be well-dressed, but it shouldn't stop there. I will not be a trophy wife," she told The Times of London. CARLA'S LEGACY Carla Bruni-Sarkozy suffered legions of tasteless jokes about why she hooked up with Sarkozy _ and more tasteless Tweets this week about whether she'll leave him now that he's out of power. And she too struggled against the image of the trophy wife, according to Robb Young, author of "Power Dressing: First Ladies, Women Politicians and Fashion." "On the world stage, of course, Carla outshone many of her first lady peers at the time, but this was more to do with the star power she accumulated during her years in the fashion industry and the natural charisma that no doubt helped to elevate her to supermodel status in the first place," he wrote in an email. "What she spent most of her time as first lady trying to do _ in terms of her style at least _ was to downplay her inherent glamour quotient, detract from her beauty and whitewash some of her past by choosing rather demure and sometimes downright prim yet stately outfits," he said. He noted that Bruni-Sarkozy had a career and world-famous name before ever marrying Sarkozy, and she has a foundation working to fight AIDS and other diseases. "She will always be remembered for many more things than her comparatively brief career at the Elysee Palace," Young said. ___ Thomas Adamson and Cecile Brisson in Paris and Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report. ||||| Filling Carla Bruni’s Louboutin shoes would be a daunting prospect for anyone, but will certainly be executed with ease by the next woman charged with such a task. Valérie Trierweiler, 47, the partner — or “companion” as she prefers to be called — of new French President-elect François Hollande, is already relatively familiar to the French public, as a feisty journalist for Paris Match magazine and from work as a political talk-show presenter. Hollande insists that, unlike his predecessor, he will not have a speedy marriage to his partner, who is to be the first unmarried Première Dame in France’s history. She therefore cannot officially hold the First Lady title, but her dedication to pursuing her own career after her partner takes control on May 15 as the first French Socialist Prime Minister in nearly two decades suggests that she’s not the kind to mind. (MORE: After Winning the French Presidency, What Will François Hollande Do Next) A twice-divorced mother of three, Trierweiler reportedly began her relationship with Hollande in 2005, despite claims that Hollande and former Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, who had been together for 30 years, were still a couple during the 2007 French election campaign. Hollande and his new partner only went public in 2010. Ever hungry to dissect female public figures, media commentators have already begun branding Trierweiler as “chic” and “classic” and remarking upon her sartorial choices. Even Reuters has fallen for her appearance, fawning over her “look reminiscent of late Hollywood actress Katharine Hepburn.” In fact, rather than focusing on her own image, it is claimed that Trierweiler played a key role in transforming her erstwhile bland boyfriend into a serious contender for the French presidential position, supposedly helping him lose 10 kg and instructing him to wear glasses with thinner frames. (MORE: Who Is François Hollande? What You Need to Know About France’s Next President) She also played her part at the political side of the Socialist’s presidential bid, stationing herself at his campaign headquarters, ready to be consulted on major decisions, according to the Sunday Times. Hollande’s campaign staff members apparently were careful never to disturb him if the words mon amour flashed up on his phone, knowing that it meant Trierweiler was calling and that he would be listening attentively. It seems that despite conveying a public persona almost diametrically opposed to the glamorous, camera-friendly Bruni, the engagingly independent Trierweiler will capture just as much attention from the press and public. Yet as Hollande told the world before being elected: “I will present myself alone before the French. Alone. This is not a couple presenting itself but one person who must convince with his ideas, his approach.” We’ll soon see. MORE: François Hollande: France Needs a Return to Fairness ||||| Image copyright AP Image caption Valerie Trierweiler, a journalist, was no stranger to the world of politics She came to the Elysee on the arm of President Francois Hollande, flushed with triumph over the woman who had been her rival. But two years later, the wheel has turned. Now it is Valerie Trierweiler who suffers the pangs of the scorned. There will be unkind tongues that say it is as much as she deserved. Certainly, she never built much of a rapport with the French public, and if - after her hospitalisation - she ends up quitting her functions as first lady, it is doubtful that she will be missed. Personal rivalry In May 2012, following Francois Hollande's election victory, she became France's first unmarried presidential partner. The protocol took some time to work out - the American press called her "First Girlfriend" - but even more troublesome was the task of defining a role. Because Ms Trierweiler clearly felt she represented a new breed of presidential consort. Not for her the decorative distractions of a Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, or the prudish mumsiness of a Bernadette Chirac. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Valerie Trierweiler has been a very different First Lady from Carla Bruni (C) and Bernadette Chirac (R) A journalist for Paris-Match by profession, Valerie Trierweiler had played an important role in Mr Hollande's election campaign. She answered his post and was constantly at his side. Aides said he often turned to her for advice - often to the exasperation of more seasoned staff. For Ms Trierweiler, the election was not just a question of ensuring a Socialist triumph. It was also a personal battle she was waging against the woman from whom she had taken the president-to-be, Segolene Royal. Disastrous gambit Back in 2007 it had been Ms Royal, Mr Hollande's long-term partner and mother of his four children, who came within an ace of being elected to the Elysee herself. That was when she was the star of the Hollande-Royal couple - the one destined for greatness while Mr Hollande languished as party secretary. But in the end Ms Royal was beaten by Nicolas Sarkozy. And in her parting shot, she revealed that for the last two years her relationship with Mr Hollande had been a fiction. In fact he was with the woman from Paris-Match. Image copyright AFP Image caption Valerie Trierweiler moved to Paris to study politics Five years later, and a combination of flukes and clever strategy turned Mr Hollande into head of state. And so it was that Ms Trierweiler - not Ms Royal - walked up the steps of the Elysee. But her critics say that the rivalry never left Ms Trierweiler. Ms Royal herself accused her of harbouring a "Rebecca" complex - after the Daphne du Maurier heroine who is obsessed by her husband's first wife. Certainly Ms Trierweiler's first public foray from the Elysee was a disaster, clearly attributable to her loathing of Ms Royal. During the parliamentary elections of June 2012, she sent out a tweet backing Ms Royal's opponent (also a Socialist but one disavowed by the party) for a seat in La Rochelle. It caused major embarrassment, not least to President Hollande, who then persuaded her not to make further personal pronouncements. Hopes quashed According to an interview Ms Trierweiler gave last September to the Sunday Times, it was an awful time for her. "There was a moment [after the tweet] when I didn't come back at all [to the Elysee]. I could almost have never come back. Then, well, I got over all that and came back bit by bit." But her ambitions to be a new kind of first lady - independently expressing herself and keeping up a column in Paris-Match - were quashed. She reverted to more conventional activities - accompanying the president on trips, and dedicating herself to charities and humanitarian causes. In her interview with the Sunday Times, she admitted she had an image problem. "I'm not the nasty one people think," she said. But the popular perception of her is that she is perhaps rather brusque and hard. That may have something to do with her upbringing. Far from the privileged circles of previous first ladies, Valerie Trierweiler (nee Massonneau) grew up in a council flat in Angers. She studied politics, then became a journalist. In 1995 she married another journalist, Denis Trierweiler, with whom she had three sons. They were divorced in 2010. She has made her way in life by force of character, hard work and ambition. But perhaps she has never felt entirely secure about what she has achieved. The revelations about Hollande's affair with Julie Gayet must therefore have come as a bitter blow. To have fought so hard and won. And then to be brought low - and so publicly - by a beautiful younger rival. That is indeed worth - in an Elysee spokesman's unofficial (under)statement - a "bad case of the blues".

– France may losing Carla Bruni as first lady, but it sounds like her successor won't miss a step. Some odds and ends about 47-year-old Valerie Trierweiler, the unmarried "companion"—the term she prefers—of President-elect Francois Hollande, from Time, AP, and BBC: She is a well-known journalist for Paris Match magazine. (Time uses the descriptor "feisty.") She is twice-divorced and has three teenage children from one of those previous marriages. She and Hollande, 10 years her senior, do not plan to marry in the near future. AP says Trierweiler "stole" Hollande from Segolene Royal, who ran for president herself in 2007 but lost to Nicolas Sarkozy. Royal and Hollande have four kids together and announced their breakup after that election. "Valerie is perfect. She's so French," says Paris fashion writer Rebecca Voight. "It's what French women see in themselves. ... She kept a respectful distance from Hollande during the campaign and also had her career, which people respect." Trierweiler herself: "I didn't choose to have a public life. I chose Francois. But I will adapt."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Only in France. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the superstar model-turned-songstress with a freewheeling lifestyle, now hands the job of first lady to a twice-divorced journalist who's the first presidential partner to enter the Elysee Palace without a ring on her finger. This combination of three file photos shows, on the left, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the superstar fashion model-turned songstress with a freewheeling lifestyle, who is handing the job of France's first lady... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 6, 2012 file photo, French president-elect Francois Hollande kisses his companion Valerie Trierweiler after greeting crowds gathered to celebrate his election victory in Bastille Square... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 6, 2012 file photo, French President and UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy kisses his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy as they are greeted by supporters after casting their votes in the second... (Associated Press) French president-elect Francois Hollande wave to supporters with his companion Valerie Trierweiler after greeting crowds gathered to celebrate his election victory in Bastille Square in Paris, France,... (Associated Press) And as Valerie Trierweiler prepares for her new role alongside President-elect Francois Hollande, in the wings is the woman whose man she stole _ Segolene Royal, the mother of Hollande's four children and a former presidential candidate now seeking her own seat of political power. So what's happening in the land of French officialdom, where protocol and social niceties still count? Will Trierweiler's name be listed on formal invitations to presidential events, even though she's not his spouse? It's the head of state who decides, so where's the problem? Intrigue, love lost, love found and power struggles accompanied the new first couple on their journey to the presidency, which Hollande takes over from Nicolas Sarkozy on May 15. The Hollande-Trierweiler couple gave each other a big kiss on the mouth at the victory fete watched by cheering thousands at the Bastille. FOLLOWING CARLA'S FOOTSTEPS Bruni-Sarkozy, who married the outgoing president after he divorced his second wife while in office, adapted to the job of first lady like slipping into a silver slipper. Past romantic adventures with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton faded into distant memory and she cultivated a low profile as France's "premiere dame," charming and disarming other heads of state. Some think Trierweiler may do even better. "Valerie is perfect. She's so French," Paris-based fashion writer Rebecca Voight insisted. "It's what French women see in themselves. ... She kept a respectful distance from Hollande during the campaign and also had her career, which people respect." Privilege describes the life, past and present, of Sarkozy's Italian-born wife, who comes from a wealthy Turin family. Trierweiler's roots are more humble. One of six children, she grew up in a modest neighborhood in Angers, in western France, then studied political science at the Sorbonne. "I didn't choose to have a public life. I chose Francois," she said in an interview with Paris-Match in October. "But I will adapt." THE VALERIE-FRANCOIS STORY Elegant and intelligent, Trierweiler, who has three teenage sons from her previous marriage to a colleague at the magazine Paris Match, is 10 years younger than the 57-year-old Hollande. She met Hollande years ago while covering the Socialist Party, which he headed for 11 years until 2008. Their relationship flowered starting in 2005 as Hollande's then-partner Royal was beginning to prepare her own presidential candidacy. Hollande and Royal maintained a pact of silence about their crumbling relationship _ broken only after she lost to Sarkozy in 2007. Royal then announced that she had asked Hollande to leave their family home. Royal, who soldiered through Hollande's presidential campaign with occasional appearances, now wants a piece of the political pie _ as speaker of the lower house of parliament should the Socialists win June legislative elections. As for Trierweiler, she cheered Hollande on at rallies but also kept an office at the Socialists' campaign headquarters, assuring she was never far from earshot. And on Tuesday, she let journalists waiting outside the couple's Paris apartment know who's in charge with a Tweet: "I thank my colleagues for respecting our private life and that of our neighbors. Please don't camp in front of our home." Some political enemies of Hollande threw darts, with a lawmaker in Sarkozy's conservative UMP party comparing Trierweiler to a Rottweiler. "All these attacks, one is lower than the next," the incoming first lady lamented on Radio Hollande, a station set up as part of his presidential campaign. UNWED AT THE ELYSEE Some mundane problems will need to be resolved, namely where the first couple will reside. Eschewing tradition _ and the Elysee Palace _ they want to remain in their own apartment, located in a busy Paris neighborhood and said to be a security nightmare. And how will their unwed status play to the crowd of official visitors or when traveling abroad, particularly to countries sensitive about male-female ties outside wedlock? Will they simply break down and get married? "This isn't something you do under the pretext that you're going to be president," Hollande said in an interview with the magazine Elle. "The decision is ours." Trierweiler wants to keep working even though she has been booted from her job as a political reporter to avoid conflict of interest. "Even if my press card is withdrawn, I will die a journalist. It's in my soul," she told Radio Hollande. In her new role, she is walking through the other side of the looking glass, and she knows it. "This role makes me a little uncomfortable, but I will manage very well if it is not limited just to that. I want to represent the image of France, do the necessary smiling, be well-dressed, but it shouldn't stop there. I will not be a trophy wife," she told The Times of London. CARLA'S LEGACY Carla Bruni-Sarkozy suffered legions of tasteless jokes about why she hooked up with Sarkozy _ and more tasteless Tweets this week about whether she'll leave him now that he's out of power. And she too struggled against the image of the trophy wife, according to Robb Young, author of "Power Dressing: First Ladies, Women Politicians and Fashion." "On the world stage, of course, Carla outshone many of her first lady peers at the time, but this was more to do with the star power she accumulated during her years in the fashion industry and the natural charisma that no doubt helped to elevate her to supermodel status in the first place," he wrote in an email. "What she spent most of her time as first lady trying to do _ in terms of her style at least _ was to downplay her inherent glamour quotient, detract from her beauty and whitewash some of her past by choosing rather demure and sometimes downright prim yet stately outfits," he said. He noted that Bruni-Sarkozy had a career and world-famous name before ever marrying Sarkozy, and she has a foundation working to fight AIDS and other diseases. "She will always be remembered for many more things than her comparatively brief career at the Elysee Palace," Young said. ___ Thomas Adamson and Cecile Brisson in Paris and Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report. ||||| Filling Carla Bruni’s Louboutin shoes would be a daunting prospect for anyone, but will certainly be executed with ease by the next woman charged with such a task. Valérie Trierweiler, 47, the partner — or “companion” as she prefers to be called — of new French President-elect François Hollande, is already relatively familiar to the French public, as a feisty journalist for Paris Match magazine and from work as a political talk-show presenter. Hollande insists that, unlike his predecessor, he will not have a speedy marriage to his partner, who is to be the first unmarried Première Dame in France’s history. She therefore cannot officially hold the First Lady title, but her dedication to pursuing her own career after her partner takes control on May 15 as the first French Socialist Prime Minister in nearly two decades suggests that she’s not the kind to mind. (MORE: After Winning the French Presidency, What Will François Hollande Do Next) A twice-divorced mother of three, Trierweiler reportedly began her relationship with Hollande in 2005, despite claims that Hollande and former Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, who had been together for 30 years, were still a couple during the 2007 French election campaign. Hollande and his new partner only went public in 2010. Ever hungry to dissect female public figures, media commentators have already begun branding Trierweiler as “chic” and “classic” and remarking upon her sartorial choices. Even Reuters has fallen for her appearance, fawning over her “look reminiscent of late Hollywood actress Katharine Hepburn.” In fact, rather than focusing on her own image, it is claimed that Trierweiler played a key role in transforming her erstwhile bland boyfriend into a serious contender for the French presidential position, supposedly helping him lose 10 kg and instructing him to wear glasses with thinner frames. (MORE: Who Is François Hollande? What You Need to Know About France’s Next President) She also played her part at the political side of the Socialist’s presidential bid, stationing herself at his campaign headquarters, ready to be consulted on major decisions, according to the Sunday Times. Hollande’s campaign staff members apparently were careful never to disturb him if the words mon amour flashed up on his phone, knowing that it meant Trierweiler was calling and that he would be listening attentively. It seems that despite conveying a public persona almost diametrically opposed to the glamorous, camera-friendly Bruni, the engagingly independent Trierweiler will capture just as much attention from the press and public. Yet as Hollande told the world before being elected: “I will present myself alone before the French. Alone. This is not a couple presenting itself but one person who must convince with his ideas, his approach.” We’ll soon see. MORE: François Hollande: France Needs a Return to Fairness ||||| Image copyright AP Image caption Valerie Trierweiler, a journalist, was no stranger to the world of politics She came to the Elysee on the arm of President Francois Hollande, flushed with triumph over the woman who had been her rival. But two years later, the wheel has turned. Now it is Valerie Trierweiler who suffers the pangs of the scorned. There will be unkind tongues that say it is as much as she deserved. Certainly, she never built much of a rapport with the French public, and if - after her hospitalisation - she ends up quitting her functions as first lady, it is doubtful that she will be missed. Personal rivalry In May 2012, following Francois Hollande's election victory, she became France's first unmarried presidential partner. The protocol took some time to work out - the American press called her "First Girlfriend" - but even more troublesome was the task of defining a role. Because Ms Trierweiler clearly felt she represented a new breed of presidential consort. Not for her the decorative distractions of a Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, or the prudish mumsiness of a Bernadette Chirac. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Valerie Trierweiler has been a very different First Lady from Carla Bruni (C) and Bernadette Chirac (R) A journalist for Paris-Match by profession, Valerie Trierweiler had played an important role in Mr Hollande's election campaign. She answered his post and was constantly at his side. Aides said he often turned to her for advice - often to the exasperation of more seasoned staff. For Ms Trierweiler, the election was not just a question of ensuring a Socialist triumph. It was also a personal battle she was waging against the woman from whom she had taken the president-to-be, Segolene Royal. Disastrous gambit Back in 2007 it had been Ms Royal, Mr Hollande's long-term partner and mother of his four children, who came within an ace of being elected to the Elysee herself. That was when she was the star of the Hollande-Royal couple - the one destined for greatness while Mr Hollande languished as party secretary. But in the end Ms Royal was beaten by Nicolas Sarkozy. And in her parting shot, she revealed that for the last two years her relationship with Mr Hollande had been a fiction. In fact he was with the woman from Paris-Match. Image copyright AFP Image caption Valerie Trierweiler moved to Paris to study politics Five years later, and a combination of flukes and clever strategy turned Mr Hollande into head of state. And so it was that Ms Trierweiler - not Ms Royal - walked up the steps of the Elysee. But her critics say that the rivalry never left Ms Trierweiler. Ms Royal herself accused her of harbouring a "Rebecca" complex - after the Daphne du Maurier heroine who is obsessed by her husband's first wife. Certainly Ms Trierweiler's first public foray from the Elysee was a disaster, clearly attributable to her loathing of Ms Royal. During the parliamentary elections of June 2012, she sent out a tweet backing Ms Royal's opponent (also a Socialist but one disavowed by the party) for a seat in La Rochelle. It caused major embarrassment, not least to President Hollande, who then persuaded her not to make further personal pronouncements. Hopes quashed According to an interview Ms Trierweiler gave last September to the Sunday Times, it was an awful time for her. "There was a moment [after the tweet] when I didn't come back at all [to the Elysee]. I could almost have never come back. Then, well, I got over all that and came back bit by bit." But her ambitions to be a new kind of first lady - independently expressing herself and keeping up a column in Paris-Match - were quashed. She reverted to more conventional activities - accompanying the president on trips, and dedicating herself to charities and humanitarian causes. In her interview with the Sunday Times, she admitted she had an image problem. "I'm not the nasty one people think," she said. But the popular perception of her is that she is perhaps rather brusque and hard. That may have something to do with her upbringing. Far from the privileged circles of previous first ladies, Valerie Trierweiler (nee Massonneau) grew up in a council flat in Angers. She studied politics, then became a journalist. In 1995 she married another journalist, Denis Trierweiler, with whom she had three sons. They were divorced in 2010. She has made her way in life by force of character, hard work and ambition. But perhaps she has never felt entirely secure about what she has achieved. The revelations about Hollande's affair with Julie Gayet must therefore have come as a bitter blow. To have fought so hard and won. And then to be brought low - and so publicly - by a beautiful younger rival. That is indeed worth - in an Elysee spokesman's unofficial (under)statement - a "bad case of the blues".

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

The man suspected of shooting and seriously wounding an Idaho pastor last weekend was arrested by U.S. Secret Service agents Tuesday after he allegedly threw items over the fence at the White House, police said. The suspect in the attack on Pastor Tim Remington, Kyle Odom, was arrested about 5:30 p.m. in Washington "safely and without incident," according to Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White. White said he was told Odom threw flash drives and other unidentified items over the fence. Hazardous materials and bomb teams were working to identify the other items, he said. Odom, a former Marine from Coeur d'Alene, is suspected of shooting Remington a day after Remington led the prayer at a weekend campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Authorities say there's no indication Remington's appearance with Cruz had anything to do with the shooting, as they work to figure out what motivated the attack outside his church in broad daylight. "However, it does appear that this was a pre-planned attack," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said Monday. "And I will tell you that some details surrounding Mr. Odom's planning are disturbing." He did not elaborate. Meanwhile, several news outlets in Spokane received letters on Tuesday that purported to be from Odom, Coeur d'Alene Det. Jared Reneau said. The letters, postmarked Monday, contained a sheet of paper that read "The Truth About Kyle Odom," but had nothing else written on them, Reneau said. NEWSLETTER: Get the day's top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> "We are trying to confirm their authenticity," Reneau said. Remington, 55, regained consciousness Monday night in a Coeur d'Alene hospital, said John Padula, outreach pastor for the Altar Church, where Remington is the senior pastor. "He's whispering and talking to his family a little bit," Padula said Tuesday. "He's doing absolutely amazing. He gave me a thumb's up last night when I went in." Remington, who is married and has four children, has no feeling in his right arm, Padula said. Remington and his wife have been with the Altar Church for nearly two decades, and they have specialized in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction, Padula said. The church has extensive programs, including in-patient rehabilitation, for addicts, Padula said. Padula was a meth addict for 17 years before going through the church's program seven years ago, he said. Police said Odom drove to the Spokane area on Interstate 90 after the Sunday afternoon shooting, according to information from traffic cameras. He then turned south before they lost his trail. Odom had no connection with the church before showing up before services early Sunday, Padula said. The Coeur d'Alene Police Department issued a warrant of attempted first-degree murder for Odom, who has no criminal record but does have a history of mental illness. Odom served in the Marines from 2006 to 2010, winning an Iraq Campaign Medal and other awards. He rose to the rank of corporal. Odom later graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in biochemistry. ALSO The next battleground for LGBT rights Past Clinton drama: It's why one black pastor wants Hillary Clinton to be president Civil War ironclad Monitor's famous pump is resurrected ||||| Kyle Odom was arrested after throwing objects over the White House fence on March 8. He is suspected of shooting an Idaho pastor two days earlier, and released a manifesto warning of "Martians" in Congress before his arrest. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) Kyle Odom, the former Marine suspected of shooting Idaho pastor Tim Remington on Sunday, was arrested Tuesday evening outside the White House, according to Coeur d’Alene police and the Secret Service. The Secret Service said in a statement that Odom “threw unknown material over the south fence line at the White House Complex.” He was immediately taken into custody. Hours earlier, someone posted a message to Odom’s Facebook page claiming Remington was shot because the pastor was “from Mars” and had “ruined” Odom’s life, according to Washington television station KXLY. Odom’s Facebook profile picture also was changed to a drawing of an alien. [Suspect’s ‘hypersexual’ Martian manifesto is a window into an unraveling mind] Police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where the shooting took place, said Monday that Odom had a history of mental illness. Remington was shot several times in the head and back after delivering his Sunday sermon at the Altar Church. The shooting gained national attention, in part because Remington had prayed with Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas at a campaign rally in Coeur d’Alene on Saturday. Marine veteran Kyle Odom was arrested outside the White House on March 8 after throwing items over the south fence line. He is suspected of shooting pastor Tim Remington in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on March 6. (WUSA9) Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said that a person thought to be Odom had sent a “rambling” manifesto to media outlets. A copy of the manifesto, posted online by television station KHQ, shows that a section of it was addressed to President Obama. In it, Odom asks Obama to resist the aliens, writing: “It’s time someone took a stand to end this nonsense.” Another section, titled “noteworthy Martians,” lists 50 members of Congress — including members of both parties — and dozens of Israeli officials. The manifesto also makes threats against a second Altar Church pastor, who was placed under police protection, according to White. “What he wrote definitely played a part in raising our awareness and concern,” White said of the manifesto. The police chief added that he thought the Facebook post was genuine, as it was “consistent with other information we have received.” White also read a statement from Odom’s family members, who said they were completely unaware of Odom’s plans and asked for privacy. “We are truly thankful to God he is safe and no one else has been injured,” the family said in the statement. According to KXLY, the following message was posted to Odom’s Facebook page on Tuesday: “Things are not what they appear to be. The world is ruled by ancient civilization from Mars. Pastor Tim was one of them, and he was the reason my life was ruined. I will be sharing my story with as many people as possible. I don’t have time right now, they are chasing me. I shot Pastor Tim 12 times, there is no way any human could have survived that event. Anyway, I have sent my story to all the major news organizations. I have no time, I have to go.” The Secret Service released the following statement Tuesday night: On March 8, 2016 at approximately 8:30 pm, an individual, later identified as Kyle A. Odom, threw unknown material over the south fence line at the White House Complex. Odom was immediately taken into custody by U.S. Secret Service, Uniformed Officers. The material thrown by Odom was determined to be non-hazardous. As per standard procedures, Odom was queried through law enforcement databases. As a result, an outstanding warrant for attempted murder-first degree, filed by the Coeur d’Alene Police Department, Idaho for Odom’s arrest was discovered. Odom was arrested on the outstanding warrant, and he was transported to the Metropolitan Police Department for processing. The U.S. Secret Service, through its Washington Field Office and Spokane Resident Office, is coordinating with the Coeur d’Alene Police Department. Remington is in stable condition despite being shot as many as six times, his son told local television station KREM. John Padula, the second Altar Church pastor threatened in Odom’s letter, said Remington regained consciousness Monday. “He’s whispering and talking to his family a little bit,” Padula told the Associated Press. “He’s doing absolutely amazing. He gave me a thumbs-up last night when I went in.” Read more about Odom: Idaho pastor shooting: Manhunt widens as police disclose Marine’s mental illness

– The ex-Marine accused of trying to murder a pastor in Idaho on Sunday is in custody after allegedly chucking material over the White House fence. Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White says Kyle Odom was arrested "safely and without incident" by Secret Service agents at around 5:30pm on Tuesday after throwing flash drives and other items over the fence, the Los Angeles Times reports. The 30-year-old Iraq vet is suspected of shooting pastor Tim Remington outside his church as many as six times, reports the Washington Post. The pastor is in stable condition and regained consciousness Monday. The shootings made headlines partly because Remington had led a prayer at a Ted Cruz campaign rally a day earlier. KXLY reports that it, along with other media outlets, received a rambling manifesto and other documents believed to be from Odom. Hours before his arrest on Tuesday, Odom's Facebook profile picture was changed to a drawing of an alien and a new post read: "Things are not what they appear to be. The world is ruled by ancient civilization from Mars. Pastor Tim was one of them, and he was the reason my life was ruined. I will be sharing my story with as many people as possible. I don't have time right now, they are chasing me. I shot Pastor Tim 12 times, there is no way any human could have survived that event."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.The man suspected of shooting and seriously wounding an Idaho pastor last weekend was arrested by U.S. Secret Service agents Tuesday after he allegedly threw items over the fence at the White House, police said. The suspect in the attack on Pastor Tim Remington, Kyle Odom, was arrested about 5:30 p.m. in Washington "safely and without incident," according to Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White. White said he was told Odom threw flash drives and other unidentified items over the fence. Hazardous materials and bomb teams were working to identify the other items, he said. Odom, a former Marine from Coeur d'Alene, is suspected of shooting Remington a day after Remington led the prayer at a weekend campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Authorities say there's no indication Remington's appearance with Cruz had anything to do with the shooting, as they work to figure out what motivated the attack outside his church in broad daylight. "However, it does appear that this was a pre-planned attack," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said Monday. "And I will tell you that some details surrounding Mr. Odom's planning are disturbing." He did not elaborate. Meanwhile, several news outlets in Spokane received letters on Tuesday that purported to be from Odom, Coeur d'Alene Det. Jared Reneau said. The letters, postmarked Monday, contained a sheet of paper that read "The Truth About Kyle Odom," but had nothing else written on them, Reneau said. NEWSLETTER: Get the day's top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> "We are trying to confirm their authenticity," Reneau said. Remington, 55, regained consciousness Monday night in a Coeur d'Alene hospital, said John Padula, outreach pastor for the Altar Church, where Remington is the senior pastor. "He's whispering and talking to his family a little bit," Padula said Tuesday. "He's doing absolutely amazing. He gave me a thumb's up last night when I went in." Remington, who is married and has four children, has no feeling in his right arm, Padula said. Remington and his wife have been with the Altar Church for nearly two decades, and they have specialized in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction, Padula said. The church has extensive programs, including in-patient rehabilitation, for addicts, Padula said. Padula was a meth addict for 17 years before going through the church's program seven years ago, he said. Police said Odom drove to the Spokane area on Interstate 90 after the Sunday afternoon shooting, according to information from traffic cameras. He then turned south before they lost his trail. Odom had no connection with the church before showing up before services early Sunday, Padula said. The Coeur d'Alene Police Department issued a warrant of attempted first-degree murder for Odom, who has no criminal record but does have a history of mental illness. Odom served in the Marines from 2006 to 2010, winning an Iraq Campaign Medal and other awards. He rose to the rank of corporal. Odom later graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in biochemistry. ALSO The next battleground for LGBT rights Past Clinton drama: It's why one black pastor wants Hillary Clinton to be president Civil War ironclad Monitor's famous pump is resurrected ||||| Kyle Odom was arrested after throwing objects over the White House fence on March 8. He is suspected of shooting an Idaho pastor two days earlier, and released a manifesto warning of "Martians" in Congress before his arrest. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) Kyle Odom, the former Marine suspected of shooting Idaho pastor Tim Remington on Sunday, was arrested Tuesday evening outside the White House, according to Coeur d’Alene police and the Secret Service. The Secret Service said in a statement that Odom “threw unknown material over the south fence line at the White House Complex.” He was immediately taken into custody. Hours earlier, someone posted a message to Odom’s Facebook page claiming Remington was shot because the pastor was “from Mars” and had “ruined” Odom’s life, according to Washington television station KXLY. Odom’s Facebook profile picture also was changed to a drawing of an alien. [Suspect’s ‘hypersexual’ Martian manifesto is a window into an unraveling mind] Police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where the shooting took place, said Monday that Odom had a history of mental illness. Remington was shot several times in the head and back after delivering his Sunday sermon at the Altar Church. The shooting gained national attention, in part because Remington had prayed with Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas at a campaign rally in Coeur d’Alene on Saturday. Marine veteran Kyle Odom was arrested outside the White House on March 8 after throwing items over the south fence line. He is suspected of shooting pastor Tim Remington in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on March 6. (WUSA9) Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said that a person thought to be Odom had sent a “rambling” manifesto to media outlets. A copy of the manifesto, posted online by television station KHQ, shows that a section of it was addressed to President Obama. In it, Odom asks Obama to resist the aliens, writing: “It’s time someone took a stand to end this nonsense.” Another section, titled “noteworthy Martians,” lists 50 members of Congress — including members of both parties — and dozens of Israeli officials. The manifesto also makes threats against a second Altar Church pastor, who was placed under police protection, according to White. “What he wrote definitely played a part in raising our awareness and concern,” White said of the manifesto. The police chief added that he thought the Facebook post was genuine, as it was “consistent with other information we have received.” White also read a statement from Odom’s family members, who said they were completely unaware of Odom’s plans and asked for privacy. “We are truly thankful to God he is safe and no one else has been injured,” the family said in the statement. According to KXLY, the following message was posted to Odom’s Facebook page on Tuesday: “Things are not what they appear to be. The world is ruled by ancient civilization from Mars. Pastor Tim was one of them, and he was the reason my life was ruined. I will be sharing my story with as many people as possible. I don’t have time right now, they are chasing me. I shot Pastor Tim 12 times, there is no way any human could have survived that event. Anyway, I have sent my story to all the major news organizations. I have no time, I have to go.” The Secret Service released the following statement Tuesday night: On March 8, 2016 at approximately 8:30 pm, an individual, later identified as Kyle A. Odom, threw unknown material over the south fence line at the White House Complex. Odom was immediately taken into custody by U.S. Secret Service, Uniformed Officers. The material thrown by Odom was determined to be non-hazardous. As per standard procedures, Odom was queried through law enforcement databases. As a result, an outstanding warrant for attempted murder-first degree, filed by the Coeur d’Alene Police Department, Idaho for Odom’s arrest was discovered. Odom was arrested on the outstanding warrant, and he was transported to the Metropolitan Police Department for processing. The U.S. Secret Service, through its Washington Field Office and Spokane Resident Office, is coordinating with the Coeur d’Alene Police Department. Remington is in stable condition despite being shot as many as six times, his son told local television station KREM. John Padula, the second Altar Church pastor threatened in Odom’s letter, said Remington regained consciousness Monday. “He’s whispering and talking to his family a little bit,” Padula told the Associated Press. “He’s doing absolutely amazing. He gave me a thumbs-up last night when I went in.” Read more about Odom: Idaho pastor shooting: Manhunt widens as police disclose Marine’s mental illness

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump filed financial documents with federal campaign regulators on Wednesday and set his personal fortune at more than $10 billion with an annual income of more than $362 million. FILE - In this June 29, 2015, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles for a photographer before he addresses members of the City Club of Chicago, in Chicago. As other presidential... (Associated Press) Members of his staff had said that Trump would release the financial documents themselves, but they issued only a press release that announced the filing and included a few financial details. It provided little information about how he calculated his net worth. The $10 billion figure — up nearly 15 percent since the previous year, by Trump's calculation — would make him the wealthiest person ever to run for president, far surpassing previous magnates like Ross Perot, business heirs like Steve Forbes or private-equity investors like Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee. Among the sources of Trump's income has been $214 million in payments from NBC related to 14 seasons of the business reality television show "The Apprentice." NBC recently cut its ties with Trump following his controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants. Trump is relying almost exclusively on his personal wealth to fund his White House bid. He has already lent his campaign $1.8 million, according to federal documents he filed Wednesday. His fortune could help maintain his status as a major player in the Republican presidential primary, much to the dismay of GOP officials who worry that his hardline immigration statements could alienate Hispanic voters. Filing a personal financial disclosure with the Federal Election Commission is one of the requirements, set by the hosts, to participate in next month's televised GOP debate. Trump's statement Wednesday noted that a hypothetical Trump building worth $1.5 billion would be reported as simply worth in excess of $50 million on the federal forms, which offer broad ranges for asset values. Previous reviews of Trump's real estate holdings by both Forbes Magazine and commercial real estate trade publication The Real Deal did not identify any single property with a valuation in excess of $1 billion. His campaign noted that Trump held stakes in almost 500 business entities and said the federal forms are "not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth." "I have a Gucci store worth more than Romney," Trump told the Des Moines Register last month, referring to the fashion company's flagship store in New York's Trump Tower. Trump also valued his personal brand and marketing deals at $3.3 billion when he announced his candidacy. Forbes Magazine, however, valued his brand at just $125 million. And that was before Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants cost him business partnerships with companies such as Macy's and Univision, which experts on brand valuation said have at least temporarily tarnished the value of his name in corporate sponsorship deals. While the Forbes estimate is likely low, "the spread between Forbes $125 million and his own estimate of $3.3 billion is explained primarily by hubris," said Weston Anson, chairman of Consor Intellectual Asset Management, a California-based consulting firm. Anson said it was too early to evaluate the effect of Trump's comments on value of his name, but noted the rapid cancellation of partnership and sponsorship deals. The notoriety could also likely erode Trump's ability to charge a premium for his real estate, Anson said. Trump in the past has taken umbrage at suggestions he might not be as fantastically wealthy as he says. In 2009, he sued author Timothy O'Brien for defamation after O'Brien wrote that Trump's net worth might be as low as $150 million. Trump lost the suit and a subsequent appeal. In a deposition, the panel of appellate judges noted, Trump conceded that his public disclosures of his wealth depended partly on his mood. "Even my own feelings affect my value to myself," Trump said. ___ Associated Press writers Frederic J. Frommer and Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report. ||||| Play Facebook Twitter Embed Donald Trump: I’m worth $10 billion 2:10 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Donald Trump's campaign claims that he is worth over $10 billion and that he made $362 million in income last year. His campaign made the estimate in a press release announcing that he has filed his personal financial disclosure information with the Federal election Commission. But in the statement, Trump's campaign itemized only about $50 million of his assets, including profits from stock sales and hedge and mutual fund investments. Trump's team also made a point to lament that the FEC's personal financial disclosure form doesn't allow for a full reflection of Trump's cash. "This report was not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth," the press release stated. "For instance, they have boxes once a certain number is reached that simply state $50 million or more. Many of these boxes have been checked. As an example, if a building owned by Mr. Trump is worth $1.5 billion, the box checked is '$50,000,000 or more.'" Play Facebook Twitter Embed Mark Halperin: Trump richest person ever to run for president 2:03 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Trump did not make the entirety of his personal financial disclosure available to the public or to NBC News, although his campaign indicated that it was filed to the FEC Wednesday. The FEC has 30 days to release the information to the public. When he announced his presidential candidacy last month, Trump cited his net worth as $8.7 billion. The campaign says that figure was out of date and that the increase is due in part to increasing real estate values in New York City, San Francisco and Miami. But analysts have suggested that the real number is likely much less than that. Forbes, which has been tracking his finances for more than 30 years, estimates that his net worth is closer to $4.1 billion, less than half of Trump's figure.

– How rich is Donald Trump? His campaign says he's worth $10 billion, and that figure has been filed on disclosure forms with the Federal Election Commission, although his fortune was apparently more than the FEC's forms could handle, NBC News reports. "This report was not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth," the campaign said in a press release. "For instance, they have boxes once a certain number is reached that simply state $50 million or more. Many of these boxes have been checked. As an example, if a building owned by Mr. Trump is worth $1.5 billion, the box checked is '$50,000,000 or more.'" A $10 billion fortune would make Trump the richest person ever to run for president, the AP reports. Forbes, however, estimates Trump's fortune at $4.1 billion, and the Trump campaign's press release only had details of around $50 million in assets, NBC notes. Much of the discrepancy appears to lie in the candidate's $3.3 billion valuation of the Trump brand and marketing deals, according to the AP. Forbes calculated that the Trump brand is worth $125 million—and that estimate was made before companies like Univision and Macy's started cutting their ties with Trump. (The FAA has ditched Trump-inspired navigation codes.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump filed financial documents with federal campaign regulators on Wednesday and set his personal fortune at more than $10 billion with an annual income of more than $362 million. FILE - In this June 29, 2015, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles for a photographer before he addresses members of the City Club of Chicago, in Chicago. As other presidential... (Associated Press) Members of his staff had said that Trump would release the financial documents themselves, but they issued only a press release that announced the filing and included a few financial details. It provided little information about how he calculated his net worth. The $10 billion figure — up nearly 15 percent since the previous year, by Trump's calculation — would make him the wealthiest person ever to run for president, far surpassing previous magnates like Ross Perot, business heirs like Steve Forbes or private-equity investors like Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee. Among the sources of Trump's income has been $214 million in payments from NBC related to 14 seasons of the business reality television show "The Apprentice." NBC recently cut its ties with Trump following his controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants. Trump is relying almost exclusively on his personal wealth to fund his White House bid. He has already lent his campaign $1.8 million, according to federal documents he filed Wednesday. His fortune could help maintain his status as a major player in the Republican presidential primary, much to the dismay of GOP officials who worry that his hardline immigration statements could alienate Hispanic voters. Filing a personal financial disclosure with the Federal Election Commission is one of the requirements, set by the hosts, to participate in next month's televised GOP debate. Trump's statement Wednesday noted that a hypothetical Trump building worth $1.5 billion would be reported as simply worth in excess of $50 million on the federal forms, which offer broad ranges for asset values. Previous reviews of Trump's real estate holdings by both Forbes Magazine and commercial real estate trade publication The Real Deal did not identify any single property with a valuation in excess of $1 billion. His campaign noted that Trump held stakes in almost 500 business entities and said the federal forms are "not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth." "I have a Gucci store worth more than Romney," Trump told the Des Moines Register last month, referring to the fashion company's flagship store in New York's Trump Tower. Trump also valued his personal brand and marketing deals at $3.3 billion when he announced his candidacy. Forbes Magazine, however, valued his brand at just $125 million. And that was before Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants cost him business partnerships with companies such as Macy's and Univision, which experts on brand valuation said have at least temporarily tarnished the value of his name in corporate sponsorship deals. While the Forbes estimate is likely low, "the spread between Forbes $125 million and his own estimate of $3.3 billion is explained primarily by hubris," said Weston Anson, chairman of Consor Intellectual Asset Management, a California-based consulting firm. Anson said it was too early to evaluate the effect of Trump's comments on value of his name, but noted the rapid cancellation of partnership and sponsorship deals. The notoriety could also likely erode Trump's ability to charge a premium for his real estate, Anson said. Trump in the past has taken umbrage at suggestions he might not be as fantastically wealthy as he says. In 2009, he sued author Timothy O'Brien for defamation after O'Brien wrote that Trump's net worth might be as low as $150 million. Trump lost the suit and a subsequent appeal. In a deposition, the panel of appellate judges noted, Trump conceded that his public disclosures of his wealth depended partly on his mood. "Even my own feelings affect my value to myself," Trump said. ___ Associated Press writers Frederic J. Frommer and Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report. ||||| Play Facebook Twitter Embed Donald Trump: I’m worth $10 billion 2:10 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Donald Trump's campaign claims that he is worth over $10 billion and that he made $362 million in income last year. His campaign made the estimate in a press release announcing that he has filed his personal financial disclosure information with the Federal election Commission. But in the statement, Trump's campaign itemized only about $50 million of his assets, including profits from stock sales and hedge and mutual fund investments. Trump's team also made a point to lament that the FEC's personal financial disclosure form doesn't allow for a full reflection of Trump's cash. "This report was not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth," the press release stated. "For instance, they have boxes once a certain number is reached that simply state $50 million or more. Many of these boxes have been checked. As an example, if a building owned by Mr. Trump is worth $1.5 billion, the box checked is '$50,000,000 or more.'" Play Facebook Twitter Embed Mark Halperin: Trump richest person ever to run for president 2:03 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Trump did not make the entirety of his personal financial disclosure available to the public or to NBC News, although his campaign indicated that it was filed to the FEC Wednesday. The FEC has 30 days to release the information to the public. When he announced his presidential candidacy last month, Trump cited his net worth as $8.7 billion. The campaign says that figure was out of date and that the increase is due in part to increasing real estate values in New York City, San Francisco and Miami. But analysts have suggested that the real number is likely much less than that. Forbes, which has been tracking his finances for more than 30 years, estimates that his net worth is closer to $4.1 billion, less than half of Trump's figure.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

The teenage children of one of the victims of the shooting at a church in Charleston, say they've forgiven their mother's killer. Speaking for the first time since the attacks, they told the BBC they wanted to focus on moving on in a positive way. Their mother, Sharonda Singleton, 45, was one of nine people shot dead. Suspect Dylann Roof, 21, is now in custody. The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan reports from Charleston, South Carolina. ||||| CHARLESTON — Sharonda Coleman-Singleton’s friends threw her a big party Thursday night. She was there only in spirit. The high school speech therapist and women’s track and field coach was one of nine people shot to death Wednesday night in the basement of a church in downtown Charleston, S.C. Coleman-Singleton, 45, was at a Bible study at Emanuel A.M.E. Church when 21-year-old Dylann Roof allegedly opened fire on the pastor and other congregants Remembering the Victims of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (PHOTOS) Less than 24 hours later, friends, colleagues, and students of Coleman-Singleton filled the gymnasium of Goose Creek High School outside Charleston to honor the schoolteacher’s legacy. The vigil featured spirited gospel music and emotional tributes from school administrators and fellow coaches. At times, there seemed to be hardly a dry eye in the house. Among those mourning Coleman-Singleton was Joe Hauff, the men’s track coach at Goose Creek High. Over the years, Hauff said, the two spent countless hours together, most of them at track meets. Their lives off the track were also similar. They had kids the same age and shared a mutual passion for athletics. Each struggled with the challenge of raising children while also finding time to teach and coach. Coleman-Singleton, Hauff notes, did all that as a single parent, too. “She’s got three great kids,” Hauff said, “but she had to work at it.” When it came to track and field, Hauff said he enlightened Coleman-Singleton about some of the finer, technical aspects of the sport. But “she taught me a lot more,” he noted. Specifically, he said, “in how to handle the adversity of a teenager.” Coleman-Singleton’s track athletes expressed a similar admiration for their coach. Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason. “She supported us. She always saw greatness in us no matter what,” said Kamryn Simmons, a high school junior on the women’s track and field team. “She always had a smile on her face, even when she was yelling at us.” Simmons’s twin sister, Alexis, recalled how Coleman-Singleton would run beside her athletes to motivate them, referring to the maneuver as “cheek to cheek.” Children seemed to occupy the center of Coleman-Singleton’s universe. Many students and faculty at Goose Creek High remember her as a woman willing to help anyone in need, whether or not she was their teacher or coach. “She was always fighting for her kids,” said Goose Creek High principal Jimmy Huskey, who has worked at the school for 27 years. “She was a bulldog for her children.” As the vigil came to a close, as the gospel music faded and the gymnasium began to empty, Coleman-Singleton’s oldest son walked out with his sister and friends, headed for a memorial created beside the school’s track and football stadium. Chris Singleton, a baseball player at Charleston Southern University, carried a flower in his hand as he remembered his mother. He had last spoken to her by phone when she was at Bible study, asking her where she had hidden the remote control in the house. In the closet, she whispered to him, so his younger brother would not play too many video games. Charleston Church Shooting Aftermath (PHOTOS) They hung up, oblivious to the tragedy that was soon to unfold. Moments later, the gunman, who had allegedly sat with his victims as they prayed, began his rampage. Despite the tragedy, Chris Singleton was stoic Thursday evening as he spoke about his mother. “She was a great coach, she was an even better mother,” he said. “She smiled 24/7. That was her trademark.” Stopping before a picture of his mother near the track, he placed the flower on her memorial while a small crowd looked on. The sun had just set, and all was silent. No one had anything left to say. ||||| Sharonda Coleman-Singleton with her son Chris Singleton, a Charleston Southern baseball player, on his senior night during basketball season at Goose Creek High School. File Mother, teacher, coach, minister — Sharonda Coleman-Singleton did all of it, and with a smile and a style those who knew her will not soon forget. “She always had a smile on her face ... an awesome smile,” said one colleague at Goose Creek High School. “When she came to games, you knew she was there,” said Goose Creek Principal Jimmy Huskey. “She was going to be yelling and screaming for the Gators, and she loved Goose Creek High School.” Coleman-Singleton, 45, was one of nine people killed Wednesday night in the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. She was a minister on staff at the historic church, a role she fulfilled on top of her duties as a speech pathologist and girls track and field coach at Goose Creek High. But the most important role she played was as the mother of three children, including her oldest, Charleston Southern sophomore baseball player Chris Singleton. “She loved baseball and loved Chris,” Goose Creek baseball coach Chris Pond said. “She loved everyone and always had a positive attitude about everything.” Coleman-Singleton ran track herself, at South Carolina State University, where she helped her team to a conference championship and earned a degree in speech pathology and audiology in 1991. A member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, she also earned a master’s degree from Montclair State in her native New Jersey. She worked in school districts in Georgia before joining the Berkeley County School District in 2007, working first at Stratford and for the last eight years at Goose Creek. She earned a reputation at the latter as a fierce advocate for her students. “She was a bulldog when it came to her kids,” an emotional Huskey said Thursday. “She cared about her kids. She was a true team player, but she always wanted more for her kids, and I admired her for that.” As the Gators’ track coach, Coleman-Singleton attended to more than her athletes’ technique and times. “It’s 95 degrees out there, and she’s with those girls every day,” Huskey said. “She taught those young ladies how to be better young ladies, and that can never be replaced.” Coleman-Singleton’s older son, Chris, was a two-sport star at Goose Creek, playing baseball and basketball. She called him “Lil Chris” and sat proudly by his side on the day he signed a letter of intent to play baseball at Charleston Southern. On Chris’ senior night during basketball season, Coleman-Singleton carried a single yellow rose in her left hand, her right arm through her son’s. She was smiling. “She was a wonderful parent, very involved,” said former Goose Creek athletic director Chuck Reedy. “She was one of those people a lot of people looked up to and tried to emulate.” Her son Chris posted this Thursday on Instagram: “You were a better mother than I could have ever asked for. This has truly broken my heart in every way possible.” Jeff Hartsell

– The deadly shooting in Charleston remains fresh, but the children of one victim say they’ve already forgiven Dylann Roof, 21, for allegedly taking their mother’s life. "I'm a little bitter, but, you know, I’m overwhelmed with love," says Camryn Singleton, whose mother Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, was a minister on staff at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church. "We already forgive him for what he's done," son Chris tells the BBC. Still, the young man, a baseball player at Charleston Southern University, says his heart is broken. He last spoke to his mother by phone as she attended Bible study, asking where he could find the TV remote she had hidden to keep her youngest son from binging on video games, reports the Daily Beast. "Moments" after he hung up, the shooting began. "You were a better mother than I could have ever asked for," he wrote on Instagram, per the Post and Courier. "This has truly broken my heart in every way possible." Family and friends who gathered at Goose Creek High School yesterday to honor Singleton, a speech therapist who coached the girls' track and field team, remembered that she was constantly smiling. "She always had a smile on her face, even when she was yelling at us," says a junior on the track and field team. "She supported us. She always saw greatness in us no matter what." Chris Singleton adds smiling was his mother's "trademark." (Roof is in custody thanks to a sharp-eyed driver.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.The teenage children of one of the victims of the shooting at a church in Charleston, say they've forgiven their mother's killer. Speaking for the first time since the attacks, they told the BBC they wanted to focus on moving on in a positive way. Their mother, Sharonda Singleton, 45, was one of nine people shot dead. Suspect Dylann Roof, 21, is now in custody. The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan reports from Charleston, South Carolina. ||||| CHARLESTON — Sharonda Coleman-Singleton’s friends threw her a big party Thursday night. She was there only in spirit. The high school speech therapist and women’s track and field coach was one of nine people shot to death Wednesday night in the basement of a church in downtown Charleston, S.C. Coleman-Singleton, 45, was at a Bible study at Emanuel A.M.E. Church when 21-year-old Dylann Roof allegedly opened fire on the pastor and other congregants Remembering the Victims of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (PHOTOS) Less than 24 hours later, friends, colleagues, and students of Coleman-Singleton filled the gymnasium of Goose Creek High School outside Charleston to honor the schoolteacher’s legacy. The vigil featured spirited gospel music and emotional tributes from school administrators and fellow coaches. At times, there seemed to be hardly a dry eye in the house. Among those mourning Coleman-Singleton was Joe Hauff, the men’s track coach at Goose Creek High. Over the years, Hauff said, the two spent countless hours together, most of them at track meets. Their lives off the track were also similar. They had kids the same age and shared a mutual passion for athletics. Each struggled with the challenge of raising children while also finding time to teach and coach. Coleman-Singleton, Hauff notes, did all that as a single parent, too. “She’s got three great kids,” Hauff said, “but she had to work at it.” When it came to track and field, Hauff said he enlightened Coleman-Singleton about some of the finer, technical aspects of the sport. But “she taught me a lot more,” he noted. Specifically, he said, “in how to handle the adversity of a teenager.” Coleman-Singleton’s track athletes expressed a similar admiration for their coach. Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason. “She supported us. She always saw greatness in us no matter what,” said Kamryn Simmons, a high school junior on the women’s track and field team. “She always had a smile on her face, even when she was yelling at us.” Simmons’s twin sister, Alexis, recalled how Coleman-Singleton would run beside her athletes to motivate them, referring to the maneuver as “cheek to cheek.” Children seemed to occupy the center of Coleman-Singleton’s universe. Many students and faculty at Goose Creek High remember her as a woman willing to help anyone in need, whether or not she was their teacher or coach. “She was always fighting for her kids,” said Goose Creek High principal Jimmy Huskey, who has worked at the school for 27 years. “She was a bulldog for her children.” As the vigil came to a close, as the gospel music faded and the gymnasium began to empty, Coleman-Singleton’s oldest son walked out with his sister and friends, headed for a memorial created beside the school’s track and football stadium. Chris Singleton, a baseball player at Charleston Southern University, carried a flower in his hand as he remembered his mother. He had last spoken to her by phone when she was at Bible study, asking her where she had hidden the remote control in the house. In the closet, she whispered to him, so his younger brother would not play too many video games. Charleston Church Shooting Aftermath (PHOTOS) They hung up, oblivious to the tragedy that was soon to unfold. Moments later, the gunman, who had allegedly sat with his victims as they prayed, began his rampage. Despite the tragedy, Chris Singleton was stoic Thursday evening as he spoke about his mother. “She was a great coach, she was an even better mother,” he said. “She smiled 24/7. That was her trademark.” Stopping before a picture of his mother near the track, he placed the flower on her memorial while a small crowd looked on. The sun had just set, and all was silent. No one had anything left to say. ||||| Sharonda Coleman-Singleton with her son Chris Singleton, a Charleston Southern baseball player, on his senior night during basketball season at Goose Creek High School. File Mother, teacher, coach, minister — Sharonda Coleman-Singleton did all of it, and with a smile and a style those who knew her will not soon forget. “She always had a smile on her face ... an awesome smile,” said one colleague at Goose Creek High School. “When she came to games, you knew she was there,” said Goose Creek Principal Jimmy Huskey. “She was going to be yelling and screaming for the Gators, and she loved Goose Creek High School.” Coleman-Singleton, 45, was one of nine people killed Wednesday night in the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. She was a minister on staff at the historic church, a role she fulfilled on top of her duties as a speech pathologist and girls track and field coach at Goose Creek High. But the most important role she played was as the mother of three children, including her oldest, Charleston Southern sophomore baseball player Chris Singleton. “She loved baseball and loved Chris,” Goose Creek baseball coach Chris Pond said. “She loved everyone and always had a positive attitude about everything.” Coleman-Singleton ran track herself, at South Carolina State University, where she helped her team to a conference championship and earned a degree in speech pathology and audiology in 1991. A member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, she also earned a master’s degree from Montclair State in her native New Jersey. She worked in school districts in Georgia before joining the Berkeley County School District in 2007, working first at Stratford and for the last eight years at Goose Creek. She earned a reputation at the latter as a fierce advocate for her students. “She was a bulldog when it came to her kids,” an emotional Huskey said Thursday. “She cared about her kids. She was a true team player, but she always wanted more for her kids, and I admired her for that.” As the Gators’ track coach, Coleman-Singleton attended to more than her athletes’ technique and times. “It’s 95 degrees out there, and she’s with those girls every day,” Huskey said. “She taught those young ladies how to be better young ladies, and that can never be replaced.” Coleman-Singleton’s older son, Chris, was a two-sport star at Goose Creek, playing baseball and basketball. She called him “Lil Chris” and sat proudly by his side on the day he signed a letter of intent to play baseball at Charleston Southern. On Chris’ senior night during basketball season, Coleman-Singleton carried a single yellow rose in her left hand, her right arm through her son’s. She was smiling. “She was a wonderful parent, very involved,” said former Goose Creek athletic director Chuck Reedy. “She was one of those people a lot of people looked up to and tried to emulate.” Her son Chris posted this Thursday on Instagram: “You were a better mother than I could have ever asked for. This has truly broken my heart in every way possible.” Jeff Hartsell

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Oakland police thank Derek Carr for assist in locating missing Amber Alert toddler Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, #4, waves to the crowd at the end of a game against the Carolina Panthers which ended in a Raiders victory, of 35-32, at the Oakland Colliseum, in Oakland, California, on Sunday November 27, 2016. less Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, #4, waves to the crowd at the end of a game against the Carolina Panthers which ended in a Raiders victory, of 35-32, at the Oakland Colliseum, in Oakland, California, ... more Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Oakland police thank Derek Carr for assist in locating missing Amber Alert toddler 1 / 14 Back to Gallery A retweet may not seem like much but, when you're as famous as Derek Carr, sometimes it's enough to have a huge impact. Such was the case on Saturday, when an Amber Alert was issued for a missing Oakland toddler. The Raiders quarterback, who's a dad of two himself, retweeted the alert to his 247,000 followers. And it paid off. Oakland police say they were contacted on Twitter by an alert citizen who had seen the Amber Alert there and noticed a vehicle matching the description in it. Police located the boy and returned him safely to his mother. @OPDChris great news! Thank you for letting me know they are safe! God bless y'all! — Derek Carr (@derekcarrqb) January 15, 2017 "So it appears the secret to sharing local missing child info is a RT [retweet] by your local NFL QB," Oakland police lieutenant Chris Bolton tweeted. "Thank you, @derekcarrqb!" MORE: Raiders aim higher in 2017 after breakthrough season Carr is spending his offseason recovering from a broken leg — and apparently helping broadcast important community messages. Quite the assist, Derek. ||||| I strive to embody the values of my department and profession. Currently on a Twitter hiatus. See & for official public information.

– It appears something good came of Derek Carr's broken leg, which arguably cost his Oakland Raiders a win in the first round of the NFL playoffs. Instead of spending Saturday taking on the New England Patriots, the quarterback retweeted a notice about a missing Oakland toddler to his 247,000 Twitter followers, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Police say one Twitter user saw the Amber Alert message and called 911 after seeing a car matching the description, leading to police finding the child safe. "So it appears the secret to sharing local missing child info is a [retweet] by your local NFL QB," Lt. Chris Bolton tweeted. Carr responded to thank the police for "letting me know they are safe."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Oakland police thank Derek Carr for assist in locating missing Amber Alert toddler Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, #4, waves to the crowd at the end of a game against the Carolina Panthers which ended in a Raiders victory, of 35-32, at the Oakland Colliseum, in Oakland, California, on Sunday November 27, 2016. less Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, #4, waves to the crowd at the end of a game against the Carolina Panthers which ended in a Raiders victory, of 35-32, at the Oakland Colliseum, in Oakland, California, ... more Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Oakland police thank Derek Carr for assist in locating missing Amber Alert toddler 1 / 14 Back to Gallery A retweet may not seem like much but, when you're as famous as Derek Carr, sometimes it's enough to have a huge impact. Such was the case on Saturday, when an Amber Alert was issued for a missing Oakland toddler. The Raiders quarterback, who's a dad of two himself, retweeted the alert to his 247,000 followers. And it paid off. Oakland police say they were contacted on Twitter by an alert citizen who had seen the Amber Alert there and noticed a vehicle matching the description in it. Police located the boy and returned him safely to his mother. @OPDChris great news! Thank you for letting me know they are safe! God bless y'all! — Derek Carr (@derekcarrqb) January 15, 2017 "So it appears the secret to sharing local missing child info is a RT [retweet] by your local NFL QB," Oakland police lieutenant Chris Bolton tweeted. "Thank you, @derekcarrqb!" MORE: Raiders aim higher in 2017 after breakthrough season Carr is spending his offseason recovering from a broken leg — and apparently helping broadcast important community messages. Quite the assist, Derek. ||||| I strive to embody the values of my department and profession. Currently on a Twitter hiatus. See & for official public information.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

VALLEY, Ala. – You’ve likely heard of students bringing canned food to school for food drives, but have you ever heard of bringing a canned food item to school for safety? A letter sent to parents of students at one school in Chambers County requested just that — students were asked to arm themselves with an eight ounce canned food item. Though it sounds odd, administrators believe the practice could catch potential intruders off guard, possibly even knocking him or her out until police arrive. In the letter to parents, W.F. Burns Middle School Principal Priscilla Holley said, “As a result of school shootings throughout the United States and discussing with law enforcement on the best procedure to follow to keep our students safe, we are enhancing our procedure for intruders.” The idea to arm students with something like a can or a book comes from ALICE training. The ALICE acronym stands for: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. “I can honestly say that the major point of the the training… is to be able to get kids evacuated and not be sitting ducks hiding under desks,” Superintendent of Chambers County Schools Dr. Kelli Hodge said. Hodge said school systems in 30 states teach the principles of ALICE to students. Auburn University also uses ALICE on its campus. The ALICE program falls in line with new guidelines for school safety issued by the Department of Education in 2013. “Understandably, this is a sensitive topic. There is no single answer for what to do, but a survival mindset can increase the odds of surviving,” the Department of Education said. “There are three basic options: run, hide, or fight. You can run away from the shooter, seek a secure place where you can hide and/or deny the shooter access, or incapacitate the shooter to survive and protect others from harm.” Feedback on the Chambers County Schools program has been somewhat mixed since the letter went home to parents. Hodge said the majority of negative responses have come via Facebook, and often times by people who don’t have children in Chambers County Schools. When WHNT News 19 contacted Hodge, she said her office had received two phone calls and one email about the ALICE program. In the letter, Principal Holley said students who are armed with a canned food item will have a sense of empowerment to protect themselves in the event an intruder enters their classroom. For more information about the ALICE program, click here. Read the letter sent home to W.F. Burns Middle School parents here: ||||| Story highlights Alabama students were asked to bring canned goods for school security Cans or other heavy items could be used to fight school shooters It's part of a larger school district plan to empower students (CNN) When is a can of beans more than just a can of beans? When it's a weapon of self-defense for students to throw at an armed intruder who has just entered their school. That's one scenario Valley, Alabama, officials are considering as part of their training to respond to school shootings. Though it may strike some as an insignificant and perhaps even silly response to a deadly problem, it's no joke at W.F. Burns Middle School. It's part of active shooter response training offered by the ALICE Training Institute, a company founded by a former police officer and former elementary school principal. Read More ||||| You pretty much can’t ignore a New York Times headline that says “Alabama: School May Arm Students With Canned Peas.” And it’s exactly what it sounds like: A middle school principal wants to stockpile cans of corn and peas in classrooms for students to hurl at possible intruders as a last defense. Thank Principal Priscella Holley of W. F. Burns Middle School in Chambers County, Alabama, for this brainstorm. She sent a letter home to parents asking them to have their kids bring eight-ounce canned items to school so they can fling ’em at the bad guys. How’s this for persuasive? The can “could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive,” Ms. Holley wrote. “The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure.” It’s not an entirely insane idea. Al Franken said that after 9/11, he always carried three baseballs in his carry-on because he’s got a deadly accurate fastball and wanted to have something to take down a terrorist. Then again, he was, at the time, a professional satirist; as a senator, he has not introduced any Hurl Things For School Safety legislation. It’s not clear where Holley came up with the idea to bean intruders with actual beans, but it’s no more insane than some other brilliant ideas for keeping kids safe while ensuring that Americans have access to high-powered weaponry everywhere. Within a week of the Sandy Hook massacre, libertarian wackaloon Megan McArdle said that, short of limiting firearms, the best solution would be to “encourage people to gang rush shooters” instead of hiding, and to teach school children the value of a suicidal banzai charge. And then there were the Oklahoma entrepreneurs who want to sell schools semi-bulletproof nap mats — only $1000 each — that will provide a genuine sense of false security while sheltering in place. And they could maybe protect kids from tornados, too! Also, too, there are the more long-term societal changes that could prevent school shootings, like not letting schools be such feminized places where there are no men to protect women and children. Also, teaching morals, like “No, you should not shoot up a school,” could help. A Tennessee preacher figured that school shootings happen because teaching evolution has caused people to act like animals (also, abortion). And a Tea Party activist explained that getting rid of teachers’ unions would probably stop school shootings, though not as much as giving up on schools altogether and just homeschooling your kids. In other words, chucking cans of creamed corn at an intruder is starting to sound pretty damned reasonable. [NYT] ||||| W-F Burns Middle School in Alabama Students told to throw cans at a shooter Posted: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:42 PM EST Updated: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:54 PM EST Posted:Updated: Columbia County parents say their kids have been hours late for school The "Alice" emergency plan is used by over 15-hundred school districts across the country, and is meant to be used in active shooter situations. Auburn University released this video showing the five aspects of the plan. Alice is an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. In the video, the counter strategy involves throwing textbooks at the intruder to stop the attack. For W-F Burns Middle School, they've asked students to bring in canned goods for the same purpose. Dr. Kelli Moore Hodge, Chambers County Schools Superintendent, "their safety and security is the number one thing we are looking at here, and we're trying to give them options, rather than make them sitting ducks." The letter sent home to parents has been shared nationwide and has raised some concern about the school's plan for an emergency situation. Dr. Kelli Moore Hodge, Chambers County Schools Superintendent, "the negativity that we have seen has been put out there on facebook." Chambers County Superintendent Kelli Hodge says the part about canned goods is such a small part of the emergency plan, but she apologizes for sending the letter without educating parents beforehand. Dr. Kelli Moore Hodge, Chambers County Schools Superintendent, "this one very tiny piece got taken out of context of the whole picture." Hodge says the number one goal during an active shooter situation would be evacuation. Throwing cans or textbooks would be considered a last possible option. Dr. Moore Hodge, "what alice promotes is that you have objects around the classroom that are available to you that you can throw, and kids can run out of the room, you know, if that's ... but that is the very, very last resort and the very, very smallest part of this entire training."

– With school threats, shootings, and lockdowns in the news at a dizzying pace, educators are naturally looking at ways to keep kids safe. But while those measures typically include security guards or metal detectors, one Alabama middle school is raising more than a few eyebrows by asking parents to arm their children—with canned goods. As WHNT tells it, WF Burns Middle School Principal Priscella Holley recently sent home a letter that began, "We realize at first this may seem odd," and went on to contend that a well-chucked can "could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive. The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure." Parents are asked to give their child an 8-ounce can ("corn, beans, peas, etc.") to bring to school. An administrator tells CNN that the canned-peas defense is part of ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate) training it implements "to get kids evacuated and not be sitting ducks hiding under desks." She tells WJBF that the school has seen some "negativity" in response "out there on Facebook," and that it's "the very, very last resort and the very, very smallest part of this entire training." Wonkette runs through a list of ideas it deems much worse, before concluding, "In other words, chucking cans of creamed corn at an intruder is starting to sound pretty damned reasonable." (Schools in South Carolina might take a different approach.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.VALLEY, Ala. – You’ve likely heard of students bringing canned food to school for food drives, but have you ever heard of bringing a canned food item to school for safety? A letter sent to parents of students at one school in Chambers County requested just that — students were asked to arm themselves with an eight ounce canned food item. Though it sounds odd, administrators believe the practice could catch potential intruders off guard, possibly even knocking him or her out until police arrive. In the letter to parents, W.F. Burns Middle School Principal Priscilla Holley said, “As a result of school shootings throughout the United States and discussing with law enforcement on the best procedure to follow to keep our students safe, we are enhancing our procedure for intruders.” The idea to arm students with something like a can or a book comes from ALICE training. The ALICE acronym stands for: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. “I can honestly say that the major point of the the training… is to be able to get kids evacuated and not be sitting ducks hiding under desks,” Superintendent of Chambers County Schools Dr. Kelli Hodge said. Hodge said school systems in 30 states teach the principles of ALICE to students. Auburn University also uses ALICE on its campus. The ALICE program falls in line with new guidelines for school safety issued by the Department of Education in 2013. “Understandably, this is a sensitive topic. There is no single answer for what to do, but a survival mindset can increase the odds of surviving,” the Department of Education said. “There are three basic options: run, hide, or fight. You can run away from the shooter, seek a secure place where you can hide and/or deny the shooter access, or incapacitate the shooter to survive and protect others from harm.” Feedback on the Chambers County Schools program has been somewhat mixed since the letter went home to parents. Hodge said the majority of negative responses have come via Facebook, and often times by people who don’t have children in Chambers County Schools. When WHNT News 19 contacted Hodge, she said her office had received two phone calls and one email about the ALICE program. In the letter, Principal Holley said students who are armed with a canned food item will have a sense of empowerment to protect themselves in the event an intruder enters their classroom. For more information about the ALICE program, click here. Read the letter sent home to W.F. Burns Middle School parents here: ||||| Story highlights Alabama students were asked to bring canned goods for school security Cans or other heavy items could be used to fight school shooters It's part of a larger school district plan to empower students (CNN) When is a can of beans more than just a can of beans? When it's a weapon of self-defense for students to throw at an armed intruder who has just entered their school. That's one scenario Valley, Alabama, officials are considering as part of their training to respond to school shootings. Though it may strike some as an insignificant and perhaps even silly response to a deadly problem, it's no joke at W.F. Burns Middle School. It's part of active shooter response training offered by the ALICE Training Institute, a company founded by a former police officer and former elementary school principal. Read More ||||| You pretty much can’t ignore a New York Times headline that says “Alabama: School May Arm Students With Canned Peas.” And it’s exactly what it sounds like: A middle school principal wants to stockpile cans of corn and peas in classrooms for students to hurl at possible intruders as a last defense. Thank Principal Priscella Holley of W. F. Burns Middle School in Chambers County, Alabama, for this brainstorm. She sent a letter home to parents asking them to have their kids bring eight-ounce canned items to school so they can fling ’em at the bad guys. How’s this for persuasive? The can “could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive,” Ms. Holley wrote. “The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure.” It’s not an entirely insane idea. Al Franken said that after 9/11, he always carried three baseballs in his carry-on because he’s got a deadly accurate fastball and wanted to have something to take down a terrorist. Then again, he was, at the time, a professional satirist; as a senator, he has not introduced any Hurl Things For School Safety legislation. It’s not clear where Holley came up with the idea to bean intruders with actual beans, but it’s no more insane than some other brilliant ideas for keeping kids safe while ensuring that Americans have access to high-powered weaponry everywhere. Within a week of the Sandy Hook massacre, libertarian wackaloon Megan McArdle said that, short of limiting firearms, the best solution would be to “encourage people to gang rush shooters” instead of hiding, and to teach school children the value of a suicidal banzai charge. And then there were the Oklahoma entrepreneurs who want to sell schools semi-bulletproof nap mats — only $1000 each — that will provide a genuine sense of false security while sheltering in place. And they could maybe protect kids from tornados, too! Also, too, there are the more long-term societal changes that could prevent school shootings, like not letting schools be such feminized places where there are no men to protect women and children. Also, teaching morals, like “No, you should not shoot up a school,” could help. A Tennessee preacher figured that school shootings happen because teaching evolution has caused people to act like animals (also, abortion). And a Tea Party activist explained that getting rid of teachers’ unions would probably stop school shootings, though not as much as giving up on schools altogether and just homeschooling your kids. In other words, chucking cans of creamed corn at an intruder is starting to sound pretty damned reasonable. [NYT] ||||| W-F Burns Middle School in Alabama Students told to throw cans at a shooter Posted: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:42 PM EST Updated: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:54 PM EST Posted:Updated: Columbia County parents say their kids have been hours late for school The "Alice" emergency plan is used by over 15-hundred school districts across the country, and is meant to be used in active shooter situations. Auburn University released this video showing the five aspects of the plan. Alice is an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. In the video, the counter strategy involves throwing textbooks at the intruder to stop the attack. For W-F Burns Middle School, they've asked students to bring in canned goods for the same purpose. Dr. Kelli Moore Hodge, Chambers County Schools Superintendent, "their safety and security is the number one thing we are looking at here, and we're trying to give them options, rather than make them sitting ducks." The letter sent home to parents has been shared nationwide and has raised some concern about the school's plan for an emergency situation. Dr. Kelli Moore Hodge, Chambers County Schools Superintendent, "the negativity that we have seen has been put out there on facebook." Chambers County Superintendent Kelli Hodge says the part about canned goods is such a small part of the emergency plan, but she apologizes for sending the letter without educating parents beforehand. Dr. Kelli Moore Hodge, Chambers County Schools Superintendent, "this one very tiny piece got taken out of context of the whole picture." Hodge says the number one goal during an active shooter situation would be evacuation. Throwing cans or textbooks would be considered a last possible option. Dr. Moore Hodge, "what alice promotes is that you have objects around the classroom that are available to you that you can throw, and kids can run out of the room, you know, if that's ... but that is the very, very last resort and the very, very smallest part of this entire training."

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Beijing blamed Uighur separatists from restive Xinjiang Province for an attack in the southwestern city of Kunming that killed 29 people. State-run Xinhua news agency called it 'China's 9/11.' A woman and child passed by armed paramilitary policemen on patrol near the Kunming Railway Station in western China's Yunnan Province on Sunday, March 2, 2014. More than a dozen knife-wielding assailants killed 29 people at the station on Saturday. AP For more than a year, the Chinese media have published regular reports of deadly violent incidents in the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang, in China’s far west. More than 100 people died last year in clashes between the police and ethnic Uighurs identified by the government as terrorists seeking independence from Beijing. Saturday night’s attack in the southwestern city of Kunming, however, which officials attributed to Xinjiang separatists, appears to have been of an entirely different order. The assault by more than a dozen knife-wielding men and women who killed 29 people at the train station waiting to buy train tickets, and wounded 140 more, was the most violent episode ever involving Uighurs outside Xinjiang. It illustrates that despite heightened police surveillance of suspected Xinjiang terrorists, there is little the authorities can do to prevent attacks by determined opponents, as they cannot maintain the level of security across the country that they seek to impose in Xinjiang. “It was China’s 9/11,” said a commentary published by the Chinese state-run news agency, Xinhua. “A nationwide outrage has been stirred. Justice needs to be done and terrorists should be punished with iron fists.” Saturday’s attack follows an incident last October in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, when three members of the same Uighur family drove a car through a crowd before blowing their vehicle up. They killed themselves and two bystanders, and injured 40. The Chinese authorities blamed that attack on the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement.” A statement Sunday from the authorities in Kunming, the capital of the province of Yunnan, said the attack on Saturday evening, which eyewitnesses said involved a group of black-clad men and women slashing wildly at anyone within reach, was the work of “Xinjiang separatist forces.” Western analysts say it is unclear whether ETIM actually exists. But anti-Chinese attacks, often extremely bloody, are on the rise in Xinjiang. Possession of firearms in China is illegal, and the ban is especially strictly enforced in restive areas such as Xinjiang. But the last six months of 2013 saw at least three assaults on police stations by groups of men wielding knives to deadly effect. The band which attacked Kunming train station’s ticket hall seems to have used similar tactics, but with one crucial difference: the victims were not policemen or other agents of the state imposing Chinese rule on Xinjiang, but civilians more than a thousand miles away. No group had claimed responsibility for the attack by Sunday evening. The timing appeared linked to Monday’s opening in Beijing of the annual session of the Chinese parliament, the highlight of China’s political calendar. Independent reporting from Xinjiang is almost impossible; the police routinely impede and expel foreign journalists seeking to work there. But resentment against ethnic Han Chinese (China’s dominant ethnic group) is widespread in the oil-rich, largely arid province of Xinjiang, where many Uighurs complain that they are not allowed to practice their religion, nor follow their cultural customs, freely. Harsh government control of their lives, such as restrictions on the use of their language in schools, and a colonial-style economy that keeps most local people in menial jobs while Han Chinese immigrants run businesses and the local administration, adds to frustrations. Tensions exploded in July 2009 in anti-Han riots in which 197 Chinese died and over 1,700 were injured, according to government figures. Since the Communist government took over Xinjiang in 1949, the proportion of Han Chinese in the province has shot up from 6.7 percent to 40.6 percent, according to official figures. The Han population now almost matches the Uighur population, after a six decades-long campaign by Beijing to settle Han in the remote region. The Chinese government is extremely nervous about any signs of separatism in Xinjiang, and are wary of any Uighur figure around whom ethnic sentiment might coalesce. Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur intellectual, university professor and ethnic rights activist, was arrested last week and charged with “separatism,” his lawyer said. No date has been set for his trial. ||||| The death toll from the attack rose to 33 with four of the perpetrators among the dead. One suspect is in custody, a woman, who was reported to be hospitalized. The perpetrators were said to be Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from northwestern China’s Xinjiang region. Chinese authorities showed on a television station a black flag recovered at the scene which they said was calling for independence for the region that some Uighurs refer to as East Turkestan. PHOTOS: Knife attack in China The stabbing spree, which started after 9 p.m. Kunming time Saturday, is one of the worst attacks of its kind in China. According to multiple sources, about 10 assailants dressed in black swept through the crowds stabbing and hacking people with knifes that they had concealed in their clothing. "It was a typical terrorist attack and also a severe crime against humanity. It was China’s 9/11," the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times wrote in an editorial published Sunday morning. ALSO: In China, Michelle Obama gently broaches free speech Turkish fighter jets shoot down Syrian warplane in border zone Spain's modern-day Robin Hood seeks to level the playing field

– China is blaming Uighur separatists for yesterday's knife rampage that left 33 people dead, and state media isn't exactly downplaying the attack, notes the LA Times, calling it "a typical terrorist attack and also a severe crime against humanity. It was China’s 9/11." With four of the attackers among the dead and one in custody, Chinese authorities are still hunting at least another five; two of the attackers, including the one captured, are reportedly women. "A nationwide outrage has been stirred," said commentary published by state-run Xinhua, as per the Christian Science Monitor. "Justice needs to be done and terrorists should be punished with iron fists." No one has taken responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, the AP notes that authorities in Kunming were rounding up a small number of Uighurs for questioning. "How do we know them?" asked one Uighur man. "We could not tell if the assailants were Uighurs as they were all dressed in black. We did not like the attack either."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Beijing blamed Uighur separatists from restive Xinjiang Province for an attack in the southwestern city of Kunming that killed 29 people. State-run Xinhua news agency called it 'China's 9/11.' A woman and child passed by armed paramilitary policemen on patrol near the Kunming Railway Station in western China's Yunnan Province on Sunday, March 2, 2014. More than a dozen knife-wielding assailants killed 29 people at the station on Saturday. AP For more than a year, the Chinese media have published regular reports of deadly violent incidents in the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang, in China’s far west. More than 100 people died last year in clashes between the police and ethnic Uighurs identified by the government as terrorists seeking independence from Beijing. Saturday night’s attack in the southwestern city of Kunming, however, which officials attributed to Xinjiang separatists, appears to have been of an entirely different order. The assault by more than a dozen knife-wielding men and women who killed 29 people at the train station waiting to buy train tickets, and wounded 140 more, was the most violent episode ever involving Uighurs outside Xinjiang. It illustrates that despite heightened police surveillance of suspected Xinjiang terrorists, there is little the authorities can do to prevent attacks by determined opponents, as they cannot maintain the level of security across the country that they seek to impose in Xinjiang. “It was China’s 9/11,” said a commentary published by the Chinese state-run news agency, Xinhua. “A nationwide outrage has been stirred. Justice needs to be done and terrorists should be punished with iron fists.” Saturday’s attack follows an incident last October in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, when three members of the same Uighur family drove a car through a crowd before blowing their vehicle up. They killed themselves and two bystanders, and injured 40. The Chinese authorities blamed that attack on the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement.” A statement Sunday from the authorities in Kunming, the capital of the province of Yunnan, said the attack on Saturday evening, which eyewitnesses said involved a group of black-clad men and women slashing wildly at anyone within reach, was the work of “Xinjiang separatist forces.” Western analysts say it is unclear whether ETIM actually exists. But anti-Chinese attacks, often extremely bloody, are on the rise in Xinjiang. Possession of firearms in China is illegal, and the ban is especially strictly enforced in restive areas such as Xinjiang. But the last six months of 2013 saw at least three assaults on police stations by groups of men wielding knives to deadly effect. The band which attacked Kunming train station’s ticket hall seems to have used similar tactics, but with one crucial difference: the victims were not policemen or other agents of the state imposing Chinese rule on Xinjiang, but civilians more than a thousand miles away. No group had claimed responsibility for the attack by Sunday evening. The timing appeared linked to Monday’s opening in Beijing of the annual session of the Chinese parliament, the highlight of China’s political calendar. Independent reporting from Xinjiang is almost impossible; the police routinely impede and expel foreign journalists seeking to work there. But resentment against ethnic Han Chinese (China’s dominant ethnic group) is widespread in the oil-rich, largely arid province of Xinjiang, where many Uighurs complain that they are not allowed to practice their religion, nor follow their cultural customs, freely. Harsh government control of their lives, such as restrictions on the use of their language in schools, and a colonial-style economy that keeps most local people in menial jobs while Han Chinese immigrants run businesses and the local administration, adds to frustrations. Tensions exploded in July 2009 in anti-Han riots in which 197 Chinese died and over 1,700 were injured, according to government figures. Since the Communist government took over Xinjiang in 1949, the proportion of Han Chinese in the province has shot up from 6.7 percent to 40.6 percent, according to official figures. The Han population now almost matches the Uighur population, after a six decades-long campaign by Beijing to settle Han in the remote region. The Chinese government is extremely nervous about any signs of separatism in Xinjiang, and are wary of any Uighur figure around whom ethnic sentiment might coalesce. Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur intellectual, university professor and ethnic rights activist, was arrested last week and charged with “separatism,” his lawyer said. No date has been set for his trial. ||||| The death toll from the attack rose to 33 with four of the perpetrators among the dead. One suspect is in custody, a woman, who was reported to be hospitalized. The perpetrators were said to be Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from northwestern China’s Xinjiang region. Chinese authorities showed on a television station a black flag recovered at the scene which they said was calling for independence for the region that some Uighurs refer to as East Turkestan. PHOTOS: Knife attack in China The stabbing spree, which started after 9 p.m. Kunming time Saturday, is one of the worst attacks of its kind in China. According to multiple sources, about 10 assailants dressed in black swept through the crowds stabbing and hacking people with knifes that they had concealed in their clothing. "It was a typical terrorist attack and also a severe crime against humanity. It was China’s 9/11," the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times wrote in an editorial published Sunday morning. ALSO: In China, Michelle Obama gently broaches free speech Turkish fighter jets shoot down Syrian warplane in border zone Spain's modern-day Robin Hood seeks to level the playing field

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Video (02:23) : Danny Heinrich admitted in court to abducting, molesting, killing and burying Jacob Wetterling, so why isn't he being charged with murder? Finally, Minnesota knows. The question haunting a family and a state for nearly 27 years — what happened to Jacob Wetterling — was solved Tuesday when his murderer stood in federal court and recounted in horrific detail how he kidnapped the sandy-haired boy on a dead-end rural road, drove him into the dark countryside and sexually assaulted, then executed him. “What did I do wrong?” Jacob asked his kidnapper, Danny Heinrich, after Heinrich snatched the boy at gunpoint and sent Jacob’s little brother and best friend running away scared. The answers came after federal prosecutors cut a deal with Heinrich, who after years of denying involvement in Wetterling’s disappearance led authorities to the boy’s shallow grave in a rural pasture outside the central Minnesota town of Paynesville, some 30 miles from the site of the abduction that brought excruciating pain to the Wetterling family and nightmares to parents across the state. Heinrich, 53, pleaded guilty to one count of receiving child pornography, a crime for which he is expected to spend 20 years behind bars. Though he will not be prosecuted for Jacob’s kidnapping and murder, Heinrich could remain in state custody under Minnesota’s civil sex offender commitment. The unusual deal was struck, officials said, with the approval of Patty and Jerry Wetterling, who have advocated nationally for missing and exploited children while keeping hope that somehow their son would be found alive. Video (03:03): How Heinrich was convinced to lead authorities to Jacob Video (03:03): How Heinrich was convinced to lead authorities to Jacob “I want to say ‘Jacob, I’m so sorry.’ It’s incredibly painful to know his … last hours, last minutes,” Patty Wetterling said, fighting tears as she spoke to reporters after Heinrich’s plea hearing. “Our hearts are hurting. For us, Jacob was alive until we found him.” Exchanging a possible murder prosecution for a single child pornography charge — one of 25 Heinrich was facing — was simply the only way to get the volatile Heinrich to lead authorities to the grave that no one had been able to find after almost three decades of intensive searching, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger explained. “He’s not getting away with anything,” Luger said. “We got the truth. The Wetterling family can bring [Jacob] home.” That October night Standing in court, with Wetterling’s parents sitting in the gallery behind him, Heinrich described Jacob’s final hours in agonizing detail: “I was driving on a road, a dead-end road. I noticed three children on their bicycles with a flashlight,” Heinrich started, at times struggling to get his words out between sharp breaths. After Heinrich and the boys passed each other that night, he said, he pulled his car into a driveway and faced the direction of the road that they’d be coming back on. Then he waited. As the boys returned about 20 minutes later, Heinrich got out of his car and, with a mask on, reached for his revolver, a snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson Special. He confronted the boys, told them to get into the ditch with their bicycles, then asked their names and ages. The boys offered Heinrich the videotape that they had just rented from the convenience store, but Heinrich knocked it down. They shined their flashlight in his face, and he told them “no, don’t do that,” he testified. He told Trevor Wetterling and Aaron Larson to run away, warning them not to look back or he’d shoot. He took Jacob back to his car, handcuffed him behind his back and placed him in the passenger seat. Heinrich then drove from St. Joseph with a police scanner crackling with activity inside the car. He told Jacob to duck down as he decided to drive back toward his hometown of Paynesville. The car went on a circuitous route: west on Hwy. 75, then on Interstate 94, exiting at Albany and cruising onto another county road toward the town of Roscoe before hitting Hwy. 23 to Paynesville. On the outskirts of town, Heinrich pulled the car onto a country road that he knew well, one with a field approach about 100 yards ahead. Next to a row of trees, not far from a gravel pit, Heinrich opened Jacob’s door and uncuffed him. He took him near the trees, where they both undressed. Heinrich groped the boy and forced the boy to touch him. After about 20 minutes, Jacob told Heinrich he was cold, Heinrich recalled. He told Jacob he could get dressed. Video (03:29): Patty Wetterling: 'Jacob was alive until we found him' Video (03:29): Patty Wetterling: 'Jacob was alive until we found him' “Take me home,” the boy asked, but Heinrich said he couldn’t take him all the way home, and Jacob started to cry. When Heinrich saw a police car go by, he got scared. “I panicked and pulled the revolver out of my pocket,” Heinrich said. “It was never loaded until that point. I loaded it with two rounds and told the victim to turn around, I had to go to the bathroom. He didn’t know what I was doing.” Then, Heinrich said, with Jacob turned away, he raised the revolver to the boy’s head, turned his own head away, and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked once, but didn’t go off. He pulled the trigger again, and it fired. When he looked back, the boy was still standing, so he shot once more. Jacob fell to the ground. The execution over, Heinrich drove back to his apartment in downtown Paynesville and waited a couple of hours before returning to the scene after midnight to hide Jacob’s body. He dragged it about 100 yards, then decided the shovel he brought wasn’t big enough to do the job quickly. He walked to a nearby construction company and found a Bobcat. “I placed Jacob in the grave and I covered him back up,” Heinrich said. He returned the equipment, covered the grave with grass and brush, then threw Wetterling’s tennis shoes into a ravine as he walked back home. Heinrich returned a year later under the cover of darkness to find Jacob’s red jacket sticking out of the shallow grave. Gallery: Photos: Danny Heinrich confesses to Jacob Wetterling's killing Gallery: Photos: Danny Heinrich confesses to Jacob Wetterling's killing He gathered as much as he could into a bag — the boy’s jacket, bones and skull — and carried it all across the highway. He dug another grave about 2 feet deep, this time with an Army entrenching tool. He put Jacob’s bones in the grave, placed the jacket on top and covered him a final time. For almost 27 years, Heinrich guarded his secret from authorities. ‘Stole our innocence’ “Finally, we know,” Luger said Tuesday. “We know the truth. Danny Heinrich … is the confessed killer of Jacob Wetterling.” The day Jacob was abducted “stole our innocence,” Luger said. Authorities had interviewed Heinrich about Jacob shortly after he disappeared. They reinterviewed him at least twice in 1990, also searching his father’s house, where he then lived. They found six photos of children, including one showing a boy wrapped in a towel exiting a shower, and another of a boy in his underwear. No charges resulted. Patty Wetterling was consoled by son Trevor during a news conference after Danny Heinrich admitted killing her son Jacob. Trevor was with Jacob on the night he was abducted. In February 1990, Heinrich was arrested on probable cause in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a Cold Spring boy, Jared Scheierl. Heinrich said he was innocent and was released without being charged. Authorities had long believed Wetterling’s and Scheierl’s cases were connected. In 2015, using new technology, authorities tested DNA from Scheierl’s sweatshirt and found that it matched Heinrich. That led them to search Heinrich’s house, where they discovered more than 150 graphic images. They arrested him a final time, charging him with 25 counts of child pornography. Ten days ago, Luger said, Heinrich’s defense team reached out with an offer — a full confession, detailed directions to Jacob’s grave — but only if he wouldn’t be prosecuted for Jacob’s killing, or an earlier assault on Scheierl. “This was not an opportunity we could pass up,” said Luger, who described a “volatile and unpredictable” Heinrich as someone who might change his mind at any time. “We have to grab the moment.” What followed were several tense days as investigators worried that Heinrich might back out of the deal. None of them, Luger said, will forget the moment when searchers discovered the first fragments of Jacob’s red St. Cloud hockey jacket. They later found the bones and teeth of a child, then a T-shirt printed with the name: Wetterling. Heinrich faces the maximum 20-year sentence on the single federal child pornography charge. All other child pornography charges were dropped. At the end of his prison sentence, Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall said, Heinrich could be committed to the state’s sex offender program and “may never be released again.” Door finally opens Jacob Wetterling was 11 when he was kidnapped and killed in rural Minnesota. Friends and supporters began arriving at the courthouse Tuesday wearing buttons printed with Jacob’s photo. “We have been banging on this door forever and now it is opening,” said Alison Feigh, program manager for the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center and one of Jacob’s middle school classmates. When first announcing the federal child porn charges against Heinrich last year, federal authorities named him a “person of interest” in Wetterling’s abduction. Court documents also raised questions about whether Heinrich was responsible for a series of disturbing attacks on young boys in Paynesville months before Jacob was taken. All of the attacks took place within blocks of Heinrich’s apartment. Nine months before Jacob hopped on his bike for a quick trip to the video store, Heinrich abducted Scheierl as he walked home from a cafe in Cold Spring on a January night. He confessed in court Tuesday to forcing Scheierl into the back seat of his car and sexually assaulting him. After he was molested, Scheierl told police his attacker wore camouflage and Army boots and had a “walkie-talkie” type of device in the car. Three days later, a Stearns County deputy identified Heinrich, who was in the National Guard at the time, as a possible suspect, according to court records. A year of change Documents depict 1989 as a year of change for Heinrich. His car was repossessed in March. His mother remarried in May. His last day of work at Fingerhut Corp. was Oct. 8, leaving him unemployed. This undated photo provided by the Sherburne County Sheriff's Office shows Danny Heinrich, of Minnesota. Heinrich, who is expected to appear in federal court Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, in a child pornography case, was named last year by authorities as a person of interest in the 1989 abduction of Jacob Wetterling near his home in St. Joseph, Minn. He was never charged in that case. But he led authorities to the boy's remains last week, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing case. (Sherburne County Sheriff's Office via AP) Two weeks later, he abducted Wetterling. It was a case with frustratingly little physical evidence and a frustratingly large pool of suspects, one of whom was Heinrich, who was in his late 20s at the time. Acquaintances would later describe the quiet, awkward man with thick glasses and a pudgy build as “kind of an oddball.” Nearly 30 years later, Heinrich still wore thick glasses as he stood in court, throngs of reporters watching, as he finally told the world what he had done. Afterward, Patty Wetterling thanked everyone involved in the effort to bring her son home, but added that her family wasn’t ready to talk much yet. “We need to heal,” she said. “There’s a lot of lessons learned and there’s a lot of work to do to protect all our world’s children.” She spoke not about how Jacob died, but how he lived. “He’s taught us all how to live, how to love, how to be fair, how to be kind,” she said. “He speaks to the world that he knew, that we all believe in. It is a world worth fighting for. His legacy will go on.” Staff writers Stephen Montemayor, Jenna Ross and Paul Walsh contributed to this report. Patty Wetterling was consoled by son Trevor during a press conference after Danny Heinrich admitted killing Trevor’s brother, Jacob, on an autumn night in 1989. [email protected] 612-673-7102 [email protected] 612-673-4008 ||||| FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2009, file photo, Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob Wetterling, who was abducted in October of 1989 in St. Joseph, Minn and is still missing, in Minneapolis.... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2009, file photo, Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob Wetterling, who was abducted in October of 1989 in St. Joseph, Minn and is still missing, in Minneapolis. Patty Wetterling said Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016 that his remains have been found. Daniel Heinrich,... (Associated Press) MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota man confessed Tuesday to abducting and killing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling nearly 27 years ago, putting to rest a mystery that had haunted the state and led to changes in national sex offender laws. Danny Heinrich made the admission as he pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges that could put him behind bars for decades. Asked whether he abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered Jacob, Heinrich said: "Yes I did." Heinrich, 53, of Annandale, led authorities to Jacob's buried remains in a central Minnesota field last week, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing case. The Stearns County Sheriff's Office said Jacob's remains were identified Saturday. Appearing in court, he admitted abducting Jacob from a road near the boy's home in the central Minnesota community of St. Joseph on Oct. 22, 1989. Authorities named him as a person of interest in Jacob's disappearance last October when they announced the child pornography charges. Heinrich had long been under investigators' scrutiny. They first questioned him shortly after Jacob's abduction, but he maintained his innocence and they never had enough evidence to charge him. They turned a renewed spotlight on him as part of a fresh look into Jacob's abduction around its 25th anniversary. As part of that effort, investigators took another look at the sexual assault of 12-year-old Jared Scheierl, of Cold Spring, nine months before Jacob's disappearance. Investigators had long suspected the two cases were connected. Using technology that wasn't available in 1989, investigators found Heinrich's DNA on Scheierl's sweatshirt, and used that evidence to get a search warrant for Heinrich's home, where they found a large collection of child pornography. The statute of limitations had expired for charging him in the assault on Scheierl, but a grand jury indicted him on 25 child pornography counts. The AP typically doesn't identify victims of sexual assault, but Scheierl has spoken publicly for years about his case, saying it helped him cope with the trauma and that he hoped it could help investigators find his attacker and Jacob's kidnapper. Jacob's abduction shattered childhood innocence for many rural Minnesotans, changing the way parents let their kids roam. His smiling face was burned into Minnesota's psyche, appearing on countless posters and billboards over the years. His mother, Patty Wetterling, always kept hope her son would be found alive. She became a national advocate for missing children, and with her husband, Jerry Wetterling, founded the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, which works to help communities and families prevent child exploitation. In 1994, Congress passed a law named after Jacob that requires states to establish sex offender registries. ___ Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/amyforliti . More of her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/amy-forliti

– Last week, the parents of a Minnesota boy murdered 27 years ago finally learned the whereabouts of their son's remains. On Tuesday, they learned for sure who killed him. Danny Heinrich, a 53-year-old resident of Annandale, Minn., admitted in court that he kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, reports AP. It was Heinrich who had finally led authorities to Jacob's body, and on Tuesday he recounted the wrenching details of the 1989 abduction, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. While driving on a dead-end street, he came across three boys on their bikes, and forced two of them—Jacob's brother and a friend—to run away. Then he put Jacob in the front seat and handcuffed him. "What did I do wrong?" he said the boy asked. Heinrich made Jacob duck down in the seat because he had a police scanner and could hear reports coming in about the abduction. He drove to an area near a gravel pit, molested the boy, then told Jacob he would drive him part of the way home. When Jacob started crying, “I panicked," said Heinrich. "I pulled the revolver out of my pocket. ... I loaded it with two rounds. I told Jacob to turn around,” Heinrich said. He shot the boy twice and left, but returned later to dispose of his body. He actually buried the boy twice—Heinrich said the first location wasn't hidden enough, so he removed the remains and reburied them on a farm. The break in the case came when a review of DNA evidence with new technology linked Heinrich to another old assault. That led to a search warrant and the discovery of child pornography, and Heinrich eventually confessed.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Video (02:23) : Danny Heinrich admitted in court to abducting, molesting, killing and burying Jacob Wetterling, so why isn't he being charged with murder? Finally, Minnesota knows. The question haunting a family and a state for nearly 27 years — what happened to Jacob Wetterling — was solved Tuesday when his murderer stood in federal court and recounted in horrific detail how he kidnapped the sandy-haired boy on a dead-end rural road, drove him into the dark countryside and sexually assaulted, then executed him. “What did I do wrong?” Jacob asked his kidnapper, Danny Heinrich, after Heinrich snatched the boy at gunpoint and sent Jacob’s little brother and best friend running away scared. The answers came after federal prosecutors cut a deal with Heinrich, who after years of denying involvement in Wetterling’s disappearance led authorities to the boy’s shallow grave in a rural pasture outside the central Minnesota town of Paynesville, some 30 miles from the site of the abduction that brought excruciating pain to the Wetterling family and nightmares to parents across the state. Heinrich, 53, pleaded guilty to one count of receiving child pornography, a crime for which he is expected to spend 20 years behind bars. Though he will not be prosecuted for Jacob’s kidnapping and murder, Heinrich could remain in state custody under Minnesota’s civil sex offender commitment. The unusual deal was struck, officials said, with the approval of Patty and Jerry Wetterling, who have advocated nationally for missing and exploited children while keeping hope that somehow their son would be found alive. Video (03:03): How Heinrich was convinced to lead authorities to Jacob Video (03:03): How Heinrich was convinced to lead authorities to Jacob “I want to say ‘Jacob, I’m so sorry.’ It’s incredibly painful to know his … last hours, last minutes,” Patty Wetterling said, fighting tears as she spoke to reporters after Heinrich’s plea hearing. “Our hearts are hurting. For us, Jacob was alive until we found him.” Exchanging a possible murder prosecution for a single child pornography charge — one of 25 Heinrich was facing — was simply the only way to get the volatile Heinrich to lead authorities to the grave that no one had been able to find after almost three decades of intensive searching, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger explained. “He’s not getting away with anything,” Luger said. “We got the truth. The Wetterling family can bring [Jacob] home.” That October night Standing in court, with Wetterling’s parents sitting in the gallery behind him, Heinrich described Jacob’s final hours in agonizing detail: “I was driving on a road, a dead-end road. I noticed three children on their bicycles with a flashlight,” Heinrich started, at times struggling to get his words out between sharp breaths. After Heinrich and the boys passed each other that night, he said, he pulled his car into a driveway and faced the direction of the road that they’d be coming back on. Then he waited. As the boys returned about 20 minutes later, Heinrich got out of his car and, with a mask on, reached for his revolver, a snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson Special. He confronted the boys, told them to get into the ditch with their bicycles, then asked their names and ages. The boys offered Heinrich the videotape that they had just rented from the convenience store, but Heinrich knocked it down. They shined their flashlight in his face, and he told them “no, don’t do that,” he testified. He told Trevor Wetterling and Aaron Larson to run away, warning them not to look back or he’d shoot. He took Jacob back to his car, handcuffed him behind his back and placed him in the passenger seat. Heinrich then drove from St. Joseph with a police scanner crackling with activity inside the car. He told Jacob to duck down as he decided to drive back toward his hometown of Paynesville. The car went on a circuitous route: west on Hwy. 75, then on Interstate 94, exiting at Albany and cruising onto another county road toward the town of Roscoe before hitting Hwy. 23 to Paynesville. On the outskirts of town, Heinrich pulled the car onto a country road that he knew well, one with a field approach about 100 yards ahead. Next to a row of trees, not far from a gravel pit, Heinrich opened Jacob’s door and uncuffed him. He took him near the trees, where they both undressed. Heinrich groped the boy and forced the boy to touch him. After about 20 minutes, Jacob told Heinrich he was cold, Heinrich recalled. He told Jacob he could get dressed. Video (03:29): Patty Wetterling: 'Jacob was alive until we found him' Video (03:29): Patty Wetterling: 'Jacob was alive until we found him' “Take me home,” the boy asked, but Heinrich said he couldn’t take him all the way home, and Jacob started to cry. When Heinrich saw a police car go by, he got scared. “I panicked and pulled the revolver out of my pocket,” Heinrich said. “It was never loaded until that point. I loaded it with two rounds and told the victim to turn around, I had to go to the bathroom. He didn’t know what I was doing.” Then, Heinrich said, with Jacob turned away, he raised the revolver to the boy’s head, turned his own head away, and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked once, but didn’t go off. He pulled the trigger again, and it fired. When he looked back, the boy was still standing, so he shot once more. Jacob fell to the ground. The execution over, Heinrich drove back to his apartment in downtown Paynesville and waited a couple of hours before returning to the scene after midnight to hide Jacob’s body. He dragged it about 100 yards, then decided the shovel he brought wasn’t big enough to do the job quickly. He walked to a nearby construction company and found a Bobcat. “I placed Jacob in the grave and I covered him back up,” Heinrich said. He returned the equipment, covered the grave with grass and brush, then threw Wetterling’s tennis shoes into a ravine as he walked back home. Heinrich returned a year later under the cover of darkness to find Jacob’s red jacket sticking out of the shallow grave. Gallery: Photos: Danny Heinrich confesses to Jacob Wetterling's killing Gallery: Photos: Danny Heinrich confesses to Jacob Wetterling's killing He gathered as much as he could into a bag — the boy’s jacket, bones and skull — and carried it all across the highway. He dug another grave about 2 feet deep, this time with an Army entrenching tool. He put Jacob’s bones in the grave, placed the jacket on top and covered him a final time. For almost 27 years, Heinrich guarded his secret from authorities. ‘Stole our innocence’ “Finally, we know,” Luger said Tuesday. “We know the truth. Danny Heinrich … is the confessed killer of Jacob Wetterling.” The day Jacob was abducted “stole our innocence,” Luger said. Authorities had interviewed Heinrich about Jacob shortly after he disappeared. They reinterviewed him at least twice in 1990, also searching his father’s house, where he then lived. They found six photos of children, including one showing a boy wrapped in a towel exiting a shower, and another of a boy in his underwear. No charges resulted. Patty Wetterling was consoled by son Trevor during a news conference after Danny Heinrich admitted killing her son Jacob. Trevor was with Jacob on the night he was abducted. In February 1990, Heinrich was arrested on probable cause in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a Cold Spring boy, Jared Scheierl. Heinrich said he was innocent and was released without being charged. Authorities had long believed Wetterling’s and Scheierl’s cases were connected. In 2015, using new technology, authorities tested DNA from Scheierl’s sweatshirt and found that it matched Heinrich. That led them to search Heinrich’s house, where they discovered more than 150 graphic images. They arrested him a final time, charging him with 25 counts of child pornography. Ten days ago, Luger said, Heinrich’s defense team reached out with an offer — a full confession, detailed directions to Jacob’s grave — but only if he wouldn’t be prosecuted for Jacob’s killing, or an earlier assault on Scheierl. “This was not an opportunity we could pass up,” said Luger, who described a “volatile and unpredictable” Heinrich as someone who might change his mind at any time. “We have to grab the moment.” What followed were several tense days as investigators worried that Heinrich might back out of the deal. None of them, Luger said, will forget the moment when searchers discovered the first fragments of Jacob’s red St. Cloud hockey jacket. They later found the bones and teeth of a child, then a T-shirt printed with the name: Wetterling. Heinrich faces the maximum 20-year sentence on the single federal child pornography charge. All other child pornography charges were dropped. At the end of his prison sentence, Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall said, Heinrich could be committed to the state’s sex offender program and “may never be released again.” Door finally opens Jacob Wetterling was 11 when he was kidnapped and killed in rural Minnesota. Friends and supporters began arriving at the courthouse Tuesday wearing buttons printed with Jacob’s photo. “We have been banging on this door forever and now it is opening,” said Alison Feigh, program manager for the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center and one of Jacob’s middle school classmates. When first announcing the federal child porn charges against Heinrich last year, federal authorities named him a “person of interest” in Wetterling’s abduction. Court documents also raised questions about whether Heinrich was responsible for a series of disturbing attacks on young boys in Paynesville months before Jacob was taken. All of the attacks took place within blocks of Heinrich’s apartment. Nine months before Jacob hopped on his bike for a quick trip to the video store, Heinrich abducted Scheierl as he walked home from a cafe in Cold Spring on a January night. He confessed in court Tuesday to forcing Scheierl into the back seat of his car and sexually assaulting him. After he was molested, Scheierl told police his attacker wore camouflage and Army boots and had a “walkie-talkie” type of device in the car. Three days later, a Stearns County deputy identified Heinrich, who was in the National Guard at the time, as a possible suspect, according to court records. A year of change Documents depict 1989 as a year of change for Heinrich. His car was repossessed in March. His mother remarried in May. His last day of work at Fingerhut Corp. was Oct. 8, leaving him unemployed. This undated photo provided by the Sherburne County Sheriff's Office shows Danny Heinrich, of Minnesota. Heinrich, who is expected to appear in federal court Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, in a child pornography case, was named last year by authorities as a person of interest in the 1989 abduction of Jacob Wetterling near his home in St. Joseph, Minn. He was never charged in that case. But he led authorities to the boy's remains last week, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing case. (Sherburne County Sheriff's Office via AP) Two weeks later, he abducted Wetterling. It was a case with frustratingly little physical evidence and a frustratingly large pool of suspects, one of whom was Heinrich, who was in his late 20s at the time. Acquaintances would later describe the quiet, awkward man with thick glasses and a pudgy build as “kind of an oddball.” Nearly 30 years later, Heinrich still wore thick glasses as he stood in court, throngs of reporters watching, as he finally told the world what he had done. Afterward, Patty Wetterling thanked everyone involved in the effort to bring her son home, but added that her family wasn’t ready to talk much yet. “We need to heal,” she said. “There’s a lot of lessons learned and there’s a lot of work to do to protect all our world’s children.” She spoke not about how Jacob died, but how he lived. “He’s taught us all how to live, how to love, how to be fair, how to be kind,” she said. “He speaks to the world that he knew, that we all believe in. It is a world worth fighting for. His legacy will go on.” Staff writers Stephen Montemayor, Jenna Ross and Paul Walsh contributed to this report. Patty Wetterling was consoled by son Trevor during a press conference after Danny Heinrich admitted killing Trevor’s brother, Jacob, on an autumn night in 1989. [email protected] 612-673-7102 [email protected] 612-673-4008 ||||| FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2009, file photo, Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob Wetterling, who was abducted in October of 1989 in St. Joseph, Minn and is still missing, in Minneapolis.... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2009, file photo, Patty and Jerry Wetterling show a photo of their son Jacob Wetterling, who was abducted in October of 1989 in St. Joseph, Minn and is still missing, in Minneapolis. Patty Wetterling said Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016 that his remains have been found. Daniel Heinrich,... (Associated Press) MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota man confessed Tuesday to abducting and killing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling nearly 27 years ago, putting to rest a mystery that had haunted the state and led to changes in national sex offender laws. Danny Heinrich made the admission as he pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges that could put him behind bars for decades. Asked whether he abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered Jacob, Heinrich said: "Yes I did." Heinrich, 53, of Annandale, led authorities to Jacob's buried remains in a central Minnesota field last week, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing case. The Stearns County Sheriff's Office said Jacob's remains were identified Saturday. Appearing in court, he admitted abducting Jacob from a road near the boy's home in the central Minnesota community of St. Joseph on Oct. 22, 1989. Authorities named him as a person of interest in Jacob's disappearance last October when they announced the child pornography charges. Heinrich had long been under investigators' scrutiny. They first questioned him shortly after Jacob's abduction, but he maintained his innocence and they never had enough evidence to charge him. They turned a renewed spotlight on him as part of a fresh look into Jacob's abduction around its 25th anniversary. As part of that effort, investigators took another look at the sexual assault of 12-year-old Jared Scheierl, of Cold Spring, nine months before Jacob's disappearance. Investigators had long suspected the two cases were connected. Using technology that wasn't available in 1989, investigators found Heinrich's DNA on Scheierl's sweatshirt, and used that evidence to get a search warrant for Heinrich's home, where they found a large collection of child pornography. The statute of limitations had expired for charging him in the assault on Scheierl, but a grand jury indicted him on 25 child pornography counts. The AP typically doesn't identify victims of sexual assault, but Scheierl has spoken publicly for years about his case, saying it helped him cope with the trauma and that he hoped it could help investigators find his attacker and Jacob's kidnapper. Jacob's abduction shattered childhood innocence for many rural Minnesotans, changing the way parents let their kids roam. His smiling face was burned into Minnesota's psyche, appearing on countless posters and billboards over the years. His mother, Patty Wetterling, always kept hope her son would be found alive. She became a national advocate for missing children, and with her husband, Jerry Wetterling, founded the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, which works to help communities and families prevent child exploitation. In 1994, Congress passed a law named after Jacob that requires states to establish sex offender registries. ___ Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/amyforliti . More of her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/amy-forliti

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Full Michael Wolff: Trump White House facing '25th Amendment kind of stuff' copied! In an exclusive interview on Meet the Press, Michael Wolff, author of the new book, “Fire and Fury,” explains his reporting process to Chuck Todd, and describes the mood inside the Trump White House. Read More ||||| I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!

– Michael Wolff's book on President Trump continued to dominate headlines Sunday, with the author appearing on NBC's Meet the Press and Trump again firing back on Twitter. Some highlights: Wolff: "I went into this with absolutely no agenda," he told Chuck Todd. "I have no particular politics when it comes to Donald Trump." Trump: "I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President," Trump tweeted. "Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!"

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Full Michael Wolff: Trump White House facing '25th Amendment kind of stuff' copied! In an exclusive interview on Meet the Press, Michael Wolff, author of the new book, “Fire and Fury,” explains his reporting process to Chuck Todd, and describes the mood inside the Trump White House. Read More ||||| I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

North Korea accused the U.S. of hostility on Tuesday for suspending an agreement to provide food aid following Pyongyang's widely criticized rocket launch, and warned of retaliatory measures in response. North Korean soldiers look at a model of a rocket during a flower show to celebrate 100 years since the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea, Tuesday, April 17, 2012. (AP... (Associated Press) North Korea's Foreign Ministry also rejected the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of Friday's launch of a long-range rocket as "unreasonable," and reasserted the nation's right to develop a civilian space program. North Korea fired a three-stage rocket Friday over the Yellow Sea in defiance of international warnings against what the U.S. and other nations said would be seen as a violation of bans against nuclear and missile activity. North Korean officials called the launch a peaceful bid to send an observation satellite into space, timed to commemorate the 100th anniversary Sunday of the birth of late North Korea founder Kim Il Sung. The launch was a failure, with the rocket splintering into pieces less than two minutes after takeoff. Condemnation was swift, with the U.S. and others calling it a covert test of rocket technology that could be used to fire a long-range missile fitted with a nuclear warhead. Washington immediately halted a plan brokered in February to provide North Korea with much-needed food aid in exchange for a suspension of its nuclear and missile programs. On Monday, the U.N. Security Council, including North Korea ally China, condemned the rocket launch as a violation of resolutions prohibiting North Korea from ballistic missile and nuclear activity, and directed its sanctions committee to strengthen penalties against the country. Responding to the condemnation, North Korea accused the U.S. late Tuesday of leading a campaign to deny its right to develop its defense and civilian space programs. North Korea's Foreign Ministry vowed to press ahead with its space ambitions, and warned it would no longer adhere to the February agreement with the U.S. "We have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures, free from the agreement," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. "The U.S. will be held wholly accountable for all the ensuing consequences." "Peace is very dear for us but the dignity of the nation and the sovereignty of the country are dearer for us," the statement said, without specifying what countermeasures North Korea might take. North Korea also faced U.N. Security Council condemnation after launching a long-range rocket in 2009, and walked away from six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations in protest. Weeks later, North Korea conducted a nuclear test, its second, and revealed it had a uranium enrichment program that could give scientists a second source for building atomic weapons. ||||| Rockets are carried by military vehicles during a military parade to celebrate the centenary of the birth of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang on April 15, 2012, in this picture released by the North's KCNA news agency on April 16, 2012. SEOUL North Korea on Tuesday dismissed a rebuke by the U.N. Security Council of its failed long-range rocket launch and said it was no longer bound by an agreement with the United States for a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests and arms inspection. The Security Council on Monday condemned the North for Friday's rocket launch and warned of further action if Pyongyang carried out a nuclear test, reflecting concern that it may follow a pattern it set in 2009 with its second nuclear test. "We resolutely and totally reject the unreasonable behavior of the UNSC to violate (our) legitimate right to launch satellites," the North said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. The U.N. action was masterminded by the United States with a hostile intent denying the North of its right to conduct peaceful space research, the statement said. "As the U.S. violated the February 29 DPRK-U.S. agreement through its undisguised hostile acts, we will no longer be bound to it," the statement said, referring to a deal for a nuclear and missile test moratorium in return for food aid. "We have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures, free from the agreement," the North said, without specifying what actions it will take. The fate of a planned visit by international inspectors to the North's nuclear site under the February agreement is also in doubt since Pyongyang raised tensions by going ahead with the rocket launch against international warning. Powers including the United States, Japan and South Korea said the launch was a long-range missile test disguised as a satellite launch in violation of existing Security Council resolutions that put Pyongyang under tough sanctions. A senior U.S. military officer said on Tuesday that Washington was looking at "all options" as it sought to discourage the North from conducting a third nuclear test, in response to a question whether it would consider a surgical strike on the North's atomic test site. North Korea has revealed work on a uranium enrichment program, which arms experts said could give it a second path to building nuclear weapons after its plutonium-based program at its Yongbyon complex was suspended under a now-defunct 2005 international disarmament deal. U.S. and South Korean officials have said former U.S. President Bill Clinton considered the possibility of a surgical strike on Yongbyon at the height of a nuclear crisis in 1994 before Pyongyang struck an energy deal with Washington to suspend nuclear activities. (Reporting by Ju-min Park, Choonsik Yoo and Jack Kim; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

– North Korea says it may retaliate after its failed rocket test prompted the US to cut off food aid. Pyongyang holds that the launch was peaceful, and that Washington's move invalidated a deal requiring the North to halt nuclear and missile tests. "We have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures, free from the agreement," the country's foreign ministry said, without specifying what those measures might be, the AP reports. "The US will be held wholly accountable for all the ensuing consequences." "Peace is very dear for us but the dignity of the nation and the sovereignty of the country are dearer for us," it added. Pyongyang slammed the UN Security Council for condemning the launch. "We resolutely and totally reject the unreasonable behavior of the UNSC to violate (our) legitimate right to launch satellites," officials said, according to Reuters. Asked whether the US would consider a surgical strike to deter any North Korean nuclear ambitions, a US military officer said "all options" were on the table.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.North Korea accused the U.S. of hostility on Tuesday for suspending an agreement to provide food aid following Pyongyang's widely criticized rocket launch, and warned of retaliatory measures in response. North Korean soldiers look at a model of a rocket during a flower show to celebrate 100 years since the birth of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea, Tuesday, April 17, 2012. (AP... (Associated Press) North Korea's Foreign Ministry also rejected the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of Friday's launch of a long-range rocket as "unreasonable," and reasserted the nation's right to develop a civilian space program. North Korea fired a three-stage rocket Friday over the Yellow Sea in defiance of international warnings against what the U.S. and other nations said would be seen as a violation of bans against nuclear and missile activity. North Korean officials called the launch a peaceful bid to send an observation satellite into space, timed to commemorate the 100th anniversary Sunday of the birth of late North Korea founder Kim Il Sung. The launch was a failure, with the rocket splintering into pieces less than two minutes after takeoff. Condemnation was swift, with the U.S. and others calling it a covert test of rocket technology that could be used to fire a long-range missile fitted with a nuclear warhead. Washington immediately halted a plan brokered in February to provide North Korea with much-needed food aid in exchange for a suspension of its nuclear and missile programs. On Monday, the U.N. Security Council, including North Korea ally China, condemned the rocket launch as a violation of resolutions prohibiting North Korea from ballistic missile and nuclear activity, and directed its sanctions committee to strengthen penalties against the country. Responding to the condemnation, North Korea accused the U.S. late Tuesday of leading a campaign to deny its right to develop its defense and civilian space programs. North Korea's Foreign Ministry vowed to press ahead with its space ambitions, and warned it would no longer adhere to the February agreement with the U.S. "We have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures, free from the agreement," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. "The U.S. will be held wholly accountable for all the ensuing consequences." "Peace is very dear for us but the dignity of the nation and the sovereignty of the country are dearer for us," the statement said, without specifying what countermeasures North Korea might take. North Korea also faced U.N. Security Council condemnation after launching a long-range rocket in 2009, and walked away from six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations in protest. Weeks later, North Korea conducted a nuclear test, its second, and revealed it had a uranium enrichment program that could give scientists a second source for building atomic weapons. ||||| Rockets are carried by military vehicles during a military parade to celebrate the centenary of the birth of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang on April 15, 2012, in this picture released by the North's KCNA news agency on April 16, 2012. SEOUL North Korea on Tuesday dismissed a rebuke by the U.N. Security Council of its failed long-range rocket launch and said it was no longer bound by an agreement with the United States for a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests and arms inspection. The Security Council on Monday condemned the North for Friday's rocket launch and warned of further action if Pyongyang carried out a nuclear test, reflecting concern that it may follow a pattern it set in 2009 with its second nuclear test. "We resolutely and totally reject the unreasonable behavior of the UNSC to violate (our) legitimate right to launch satellites," the North said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. The U.N. action was masterminded by the United States with a hostile intent denying the North of its right to conduct peaceful space research, the statement said. "As the U.S. violated the February 29 DPRK-U.S. agreement through its undisguised hostile acts, we will no longer be bound to it," the statement said, referring to a deal for a nuclear and missile test moratorium in return for food aid. "We have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures, free from the agreement," the North said, without specifying what actions it will take. The fate of a planned visit by international inspectors to the North's nuclear site under the February agreement is also in doubt since Pyongyang raised tensions by going ahead with the rocket launch against international warning. Powers including the United States, Japan and South Korea said the launch was a long-range missile test disguised as a satellite launch in violation of existing Security Council resolutions that put Pyongyang under tough sanctions. A senior U.S. military officer said on Tuesday that Washington was looking at "all options" as it sought to discourage the North from conducting a third nuclear test, in response to a question whether it would consider a surgical strike on the North's atomic test site. North Korea has revealed work on a uranium enrichment program, which arms experts said could give it a second path to building nuclear weapons after its plutonium-based program at its Yongbyon complex was suspended under a now-defunct 2005 international disarmament deal. U.S. and South Korean officials have said former U.S. President Bill Clinton considered the possibility of a surgical strike on Yongbyon at the height of a nuclear crisis in 1994 before Pyongyang struck an energy deal with Washington to suspend nuclear activities. (Reporting by Ju-min Park, Choonsik Yoo and Jack Kim; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Image copyright James Gallagher Image caption Peter has Huntington's disease and his siblings Sandy and Frank also have the gene The defect that causes the neurodegenerative disease Huntington's has been corrected in patients for the first time, the BBC has learned. An experimental drug, injected into spinal fluid, safely lowered levels of toxic proteins in the brain. The research team, at University College London, say there is now hope the deadly disease can be stopped. Experts say it could be the biggest breakthrough in neurodegenerative diseases for 50 years. Huntington's is one of the most devastating diseases. Some patients described it as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and motor neurone disease rolled into one. Peter Allen, 51, is in the early stages of Huntington's and took part in the trial: "You end up in almost a vegetative state, it's a horrible end." Huntington's blights families. Peter has seen his mum Stephanie, uncle Keith and grandmother Olive die from it. Tests show his sister Sandy and brother Frank will develop the disease. The three siblings have eight children - all young adults, each of whom has a 50-50 chance of developing the disease. Worse-and-worse The unstoppable death of brain cells in Huntington's leaves patients in permanent decline, affecting their movement, behaviour, memory and ability to think clearly. Peter, from Essex, told me: "It's so difficult to have that degenerative thing in you. "You know the last day was better than the next one's going to be." Huntington's generally affects people in their prime - in their 30s and 40s Patients die around 10 to 20 years after symptoms start About 8,500 people in the UK have Huntington's and a further 25,000 will develop it when they are older Huntington's is caused by an error in a section of DNA called the huntingtin gene. Normally this contains the instructions for making a protein, called huntingtin, which is vital for brain development. But a genetic error corrupts the protein and turns it into a killer of brain cells. The treatment is designed to silence the gene. On the trial, 46 patients had the drug injected into the fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord. The procedure was carried out at the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. Doctors did not know what would happen. One fear was the injections could have caused fatal meningitis. But the first in-human trial showed the drug was safe, well tolerated by patients and crucially reduced the levels of huntingtin in the brain. Image caption Prof Sarah Tabrizi , from the UCL Institute of Neurology, led the trials. Prof Sarah Tabrizi, the lead researcher and director of the Huntington's Disease Centre at UCL, told the BBC: "I've been seeing patients in clinic for nearly 20 years, I've seen many of my patients over that time die. "For the first time we have the potential, we have the hope, of a therapy that one day may slow or prevent Huntington's disease. "This is of groundbreaking importance for patients and families." Doctors are not calling this a cure. They still need vital long-term data to show whether lowering levels of huntingtin will change the course of the disease. The animal research suggests it would. Some motor function even recovered in those experiments. Image copyright James Gallagher Image caption Sandy Sterne, Peter Allen, Hayley Allen, Frank Allen, Annie Allen and Dermot Sterne Peter, Sandy and Frank - as well as their partners Annie, Dermot and Hayley - have always promised their children they will not need to worry about Huntington's as there will be a treatment in time for them. Peter told the BBC: "I'm the luckiest person in the world to be sitting here on the verge of having that. "Hopefully that will be made available to everybody, to my brothers and sisters and fundamentally my children." He, along with the other trial participants, can continue taking the drug as part of the next wave of trials. They will set out to show whether the disease can be slowed, and ultimately prevented, by treating Huntington's disease carriers before they develop any symptoms. Prof John Hardy, who was awarded the Breakthrough Prize for his work on Alzheimer's, told the BBC: "I really think this is, potentially, the biggest breakthrough in neurodegenerative disease in the past 50 years. "That sounds like hyperbole - in a year I might be embarrassed by saying that - but that's how I feel at the moment." The UCL scientist, who was not involved in the research, says the same approach might be possible in other neurodegenerative diseases that feature the build-up of toxic proteins in the brain. The protein synuclein is implicated in Parkinson's while amyloid and tau seem to have a role in dementias. Off the back of this research, trials are planned using gene-silencing to lower the levels of tau. Prof Giovanna Mallucci, who discovered the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in any neurodegenerative disease, said the trial was a "tremendous step forward" for patients and there was now "real room for optimism". But Prof Mallucci, who is the associate director of UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, cautioned it was still a big leap to expect gene-silencing to work in other neurodegenerative diseases. She told the BBC: "The case for these is not as clear-cut as for Huntington's disease, they are more complex and less well understood. "But the principle that a gene, any gene affecting disease progression and susceptibility, can be safely modified in this way in humans is very exciting and builds momentum and confidence in pursuing these avenues for potential treatments." The full details of the trial will be presented to scientists and published next year. The therapy was developed by Ionis Pharmaceuticals, which said the drug had "substantially exceeded" expectations, and the licence has now been sold to Roche. Follow James on Twitter. ||||| Lawyers are bringing a case against a London hospital trust that could trigger major changes to the rules governing patient confidentiality. The case involves a woman who is suing doctors because they failed to tell her about her father’s fatal hereditary disease before she had her own child. The woman discovered – after giving birth – that her father carried the gene for Huntington’s disease, a degenerative, incurable brain condition. Later she found out she had inherited the gene and that her own daughter, now eight, has a 50% chance of having it. The woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – says she would have had an abortion had she known about her father’s condition, and is suing the doctors who failed to tell her about the risks she and her child faced. It is the first case in English law to deal with a relative’s claim over issues of genetic responsibility. “This could really change the way we do medicine, because it is about the duty that doctors have to share genetic test results with relatives and whether the duty exists in law,” said Anna Middleton, head of society and ethics research at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge. Experts say that as more is discovered about the genetic components of medical conditions, including cancer and dementia, doctors will come under increasing pressure to consider not only their patients’ needs but also those of relatives who may share affected genes. The case also raises questions over how much effort clinicians need to put into tracing relatives, and whether they will be sued if their attempts do not go far enough. Excitement as trial shows Huntington's drug could slow progress of disease Read more In effect, lawyers say the definition of a patient is facing change. In future, a patient may be not just the person who provided a genetic sample, but may be defined as also those affected by that genetic sample. “The outcome is potentially very important,” said a spokesman for Fieldfisher, the London law firm representing the woman. “Should clinicians be legally obliged to consider the interests of anyone they are reasonably aware of who could be affected by genetic information – or is the protection afforded by current professional guidance enough?” The woman’s father shot and killed his wife in 2007 and was convicted of manslaughter. Two years later, doctors at St George’s Hospital in south London found he had Huntington’s disease and asked him to tell his daughter about his condition and her risk of developing it. But he refused to do so because he thought she might abort the child she was carrying. The doctors accepted his decision. In April 2010 the woman gave birth to a daughter. Four months later, she learned her father had Huntington’s disease. She was subsequently diagnosed as also having the disease. She has had to cope with the impact of the disease, and the knowledge that her daughter has a 50% chance of succumbing to it. The woman decided to sue St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust, who she believed should have told her that she was at risk. Her lawyers claim the trust’s doctors had a duty of care to share the father’s diagnosis with her, even against his wishes. However, when the case went to the high court, concern was raised that allowing it to proceed could undermine the doctor-patient relationship, while doctors might also be overly burdened by having to assess whether or not to make disclosures to patients’ relatives. The woman’s claim was struck out. However, the decision was overturned by the court of appeal last year. It accepted that doctors might face extra pressure in considering whether to inform third parties about a person’s diagnosis, but said it was not necessarily in the public interest that clinicians be protected from that. This month, the case of Patient ABC versus St George’s Healthcare Trust was set for trial in November next year. However, the very fact that the court of appeal has decided this issue might be enshrined in law indicates that some changes in medical practice are now inevitable. This is emphasised by geneticist Anneke Lucassen and bioethicist Roy Gilbar, who state in the Journal of Medical Genetics: “As genetics enters mainstream medical practice, knowing when it might be appropriate to alert relatives about heritable risks becomes an issue for medical practice in general.” ”In fact, in some circumstances doctors do sometimes share information with patients’ relatives at present. But Middleton said: “Enshrining that in law actually gives doctors more protection, but how much effort should a clinician make in chasing up relatives? And those relatives might be unhappy to be tracked down and given unwelcome information – for example, that they possess a gene that predisposes them to breast cancer. You cannot take back that information once you have given it.” Huntington’s disease is a fatal neurological disease first identified by US physician George Huntington in 1872. The late US folk singer Woody Guthrie was among those who have had the condition. It is usually caused by a mutant gene inherited from a parent, although in a small number of cases the mutation appears to arise spontaneously. Symptoms usually start between 30 and 50 years of age, although they can begin much earlier or later, and include stumbling and clumsiness, depression, involuntary jerking of the limbs and mood swings. There is no cure and it is usually fatal 15 to 20 years after it appears. Doctors are able to provide some treatments for its symptoms.

– A woman who inherited Huntington's Disease is suing a London hospital for not divulging that her father had the degenerative illness, the Guardian reports. Still unidentified, the woman says she would have aborted her child if she'd known, and now worries for the future of her 8-year-old daughter—who has a 50% chance of inheriting the incurable brain condition. It's the first time England has faced such a case of genetic responsibility: "This could really change the way we do medicine, because it is about the duty that doctors have to share genetic test results with relatives and whether the duty exists in law," says Anna Middleton, an ethics expert at Cambridge University. It's "unhappy" news, she notes, and "you cannot take back that information once you have given it." The woman who's suing has a dark backstory: Her dad murdered his wife in 2007 and was diagnosed with Huntington's disease two years later, but asked doctors at St George's Hospital in south London not to tell his pregnant daughter for fear she'd get an abortion. The doctors agreed, but in 2010 the woman received her own diagnosis, giving her a 50% of succumbing to Huntington's. So she sued St. George's Healthcare NHS Trust, a case that's now proceeding after being thrown out by a high court and reinstated on appeal. On the brighter side, the BBC reported last year that an experimental drug can correct the defect that causes Huntington's. "For the first time we have the potential, we have the hope, of a therapy that one day may slow or prevent Huntington's disease," says the study's lead researcher. (Another woman is suing a hospital for ignoring her purple bracelet.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Image copyright James Gallagher Image caption Peter has Huntington's disease and his siblings Sandy and Frank also have the gene The defect that causes the neurodegenerative disease Huntington's has been corrected in patients for the first time, the BBC has learned. An experimental drug, injected into spinal fluid, safely lowered levels of toxic proteins in the brain. The research team, at University College London, say there is now hope the deadly disease can be stopped. Experts say it could be the biggest breakthrough in neurodegenerative diseases for 50 years. Huntington's is one of the most devastating diseases. Some patients described it as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and motor neurone disease rolled into one. Peter Allen, 51, is in the early stages of Huntington's and took part in the trial: "You end up in almost a vegetative state, it's a horrible end." Huntington's blights families. Peter has seen his mum Stephanie, uncle Keith and grandmother Olive die from it. Tests show his sister Sandy and brother Frank will develop the disease. The three siblings have eight children - all young adults, each of whom has a 50-50 chance of developing the disease. Worse-and-worse The unstoppable death of brain cells in Huntington's leaves patients in permanent decline, affecting their movement, behaviour, memory and ability to think clearly. Peter, from Essex, told me: "It's so difficult to have that degenerative thing in you. "You know the last day was better than the next one's going to be." Huntington's generally affects people in their prime - in their 30s and 40s Patients die around 10 to 20 years after symptoms start About 8,500 people in the UK have Huntington's and a further 25,000 will develop it when they are older Huntington's is caused by an error in a section of DNA called the huntingtin gene. Normally this contains the instructions for making a protein, called huntingtin, which is vital for brain development. But a genetic error corrupts the protein and turns it into a killer of brain cells. The treatment is designed to silence the gene. On the trial, 46 patients had the drug injected into the fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord. The procedure was carried out at the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. Doctors did not know what would happen. One fear was the injections could have caused fatal meningitis. But the first in-human trial showed the drug was safe, well tolerated by patients and crucially reduced the levels of huntingtin in the brain. Image caption Prof Sarah Tabrizi , from the UCL Institute of Neurology, led the trials. Prof Sarah Tabrizi, the lead researcher and director of the Huntington's Disease Centre at UCL, told the BBC: "I've been seeing patients in clinic for nearly 20 years, I've seen many of my patients over that time die. "For the first time we have the potential, we have the hope, of a therapy that one day may slow or prevent Huntington's disease. "This is of groundbreaking importance for patients and families." Doctors are not calling this a cure. They still need vital long-term data to show whether lowering levels of huntingtin will change the course of the disease. The animal research suggests it would. Some motor function even recovered in those experiments. Image copyright James Gallagher Image caption Sandy Sterne, Peter Allen, Hayley Allen, Frank Allen, Annie Allen and Dermot Sterne Peter, Sandy and Frank - as well as their partners Annie, Dermot and Hayley - have always promised their children they will not need to worry about Huntington's as there will be a treatment in time for them. Peter told the BBC: "I'm the luckiest person in the world to be sitting here on the verge of having that. "Hopefully that will be made available to everybody, to my brothers and sisters and fundamentally my children." He, along with the other trial participants, can continue taking the drug as part of the next wave of trials. They will set out to show whether the disease can be slowed, and ultimately prevented, by treating Huntington's disease carriers before they develop any symptoms. Prof John Hardy, who was awarded the Breakthrough Prize for his work on Alzheimer's, told the BBC: "I really think this is, potentially, the biggest breakthrough in neurodegenerative disease in the past 50 years. "That sounds like hyperbole - in a year I might be embarrassed by saying that - but that's how I feel at the moment." The UCL scientist, who was not involved in the research, says the same approach might be possible in other neurodegenerative diseases that feature the build-up of toxic proteins in the brain. The protein synuclein is implicated in Parkinson's while amyloid and tau seem to have a role in dementias. Off the back of this research, trials are planned using gene-silencing to lower the levels of tau. Prof Giovanna Mallucci, who discovered the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in any neurodegenerative disease, said the trial was a "tremendous step forward" for patients and there was now "real room for optimism". But Prof Mallucci, who is the associate director of UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, cautioned it was still a big leap to expect gene-silencing to work in other neurodegenerative diseases. She told the BBC: "The case for these is not as clear-cut as for Huntington's disease, they are more complex and less well understood. "But the principle that a gene, any gene affecting disease progression and susceptibility, can be safely modified in this way in humans is very exciting and builds momentum and confidence in pursuing these avenues for potential treatments." The full details of the trial will be presented to scientists and published next year. The therapy was developed by Ionis Pharmaceuticals, which said the drug had "substantially exceeded" expectations, and the licence has now been sold to Roche. Follow James on Twitter. ||||| Lawyers are bringing a case against a London hospital trust that could trigger major changes to the rules governing patient confidentiality. The case involves a woman who is suing doctors because they failed to tell her about her father’s fatal hereditary disease before she had her own child. The woman discovered – after giving birth – that her father carried the gene for Huntington’s disease, a degenerative, incurable brain condition. Later she found out she had inherited the gene and that her own daughter, now eight, has a 50% chance of having it. The woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – says she would have had an abortion had she known about her father’s condition, and is suing the doctors who failed to tell her about the risks she and her child faced. It is the first case in English law to deal with a relative’s claim over issues of genetic responsibility. “This could really change the way we do medicine, because it is about the duty that doctors have to share genetic test results with relatives and whether the duty exists in law,” said Anna Middleton, head of society and ethics research at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge. Experts say that as more is discovered about the genetic components of medical conditions, including cancer and dementia, doctors will come under increasing pressure to consider not only their patients’ needs but also those of relatives who may share affected genes. The case also raises questions over how much effort clinicians need to put into tracing relatives, and whether they will be sued if their attempts do not go far enough. Excitement as trial shows Huntington's drug could slow progress of disease Read more In effect, lawyers say the definition of a patient is facing change. In future, a patient may be not just the person who provided a genetic sample, but may be defined as also those affected by that genetic sample. “The outcome is potentially very important,” said a spokesman for Fieldfisher, the London law firm representing the woman. “Should clinicians be legally obliged to consider the interests of anyone they are reasonably aware of who could be affected by genetic information – or is the protection afforded by current professional guidance enough?” The woman’s father shot and killed his wife in 2007 and was convicted of manslaughter. Two years later, doctors at St George’s Hospital in south London found he had Huntington’s disease and asked him to tell his daughter about his condition and her risk of developing it. But he refused to do so because he thought she might abort the child she was carrying. The doctors accepted his decision. In April 2010 the woman gave birth to a daughter. Four months later, she learned her father had Huntington’s disease. She was subsequently diagnosed as also having the disease. She has had to cope with the impact of the disease, and the knowledge that her daughter has a 50% chance of succumbing to it. The woman decided to sue St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust, who she believed should have told her that she was at risk. Her lawyers claim the trust’s doctors had a duty of care to share the father’s diagnosis with her, even against his wishes. However, when the case went to the high court, concern was raised that allowing it to proceed could undermine the doctor-patient relationship, while doctors might also be overly burdened by having to assess whether or not to make disclosures to patients’ relatives. The woman’s claim was struck out. However, the decision was overturned by the court of appeal last year. It accepted that doctors might face extra pressure in considering whether to inform third parties about a person’s diagnosis, but said it was not necessarily in the public interest that clinicians be protected from that. This month, the case of Patient ABC versus St George’s Healthcare Trust was set for trial in November next year. However, the very fact that the court of appeal has decided this issue might be enshrined in law indicates that some changes in medical practice are now inevitable. This is emphasised by geneticist Anneke Lucassen and bioethicist Roy Gilbar, who state in the Journal of Medical Genetics: “As genetics enters mainstream medical practice, knowing when it might be appropriate to alert relatives about heritable risks becomes an issue for medical practice in general.” ”In fact, in some circumstances doctors do sometimes share information with patients’ relatives at present. But Middleton said: “Enshrining that in law actually gives doctors more protection, but how much effort should a clinician make in chasing up relatives? And those relatives might be unhappy to be tracked down and given unwelcome information – for example, that they possess a gene that predisposes them to breast cancer. You cannot take back that information once you have given it.” Huntington’s disease is a fatal neurological disease first identified by US physician George Huntington in 1872. The late US folk singer Woody Guthrie was among those who have had the condition. It is usually caused by a mutant gene inherited from a parent, although in a small number of cases the mutation appears to arise spontaneously. Symptoms usually start between 30 and 50 years of age, although they can begin much earlier or later, and include stumbling and clumsiness, depression, involuntary jerking of the limbs and mood swings. There is no cure and it is usually fatal 15 to 20 years after it appears. Doctors are able to provide some treatments for its symptoms.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and... (Associated Press) FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues have lost their latest bid to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face criminal... (Associated Press) FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues have lost their latest bid to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face criminal... (Associated Press) FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and... (Associated Press) WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Flamboyant internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues have lost their latest bid to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face criminal charges. New Zealand's Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld earlier court rulings that found the men were eligible to be handed over to U.S. authorities. Dotcom's lawyer Ira Rothken said they were disappointed with the judgment and planned to file an appeal with New Zealand's Supreme Court. "We have now been to three courts each with a different legal analysis," Rothken wrote on Twitter. The latest decision comes more than six years after U.S. authorities shut down Dotcom's file-sharing website Megaupload and filed charges of conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering against the men. If found guilty, they could face decades in prison. Megaupload was once one of the internet's most popular sites. U.S. prosecutors say it raked in at least $175 million, mainly from people using it to illegally download songs, television shows and movies. Dotcom argues that he can't be held responsible for others who chose to use his site for illegal purposes, and that any case against him should have been heard in civil court. He says he never lived in the U.S. or even visited the country and didn't have a company there. Born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, Dotcom founded Megaupload in 2005. At one point he lived in a Hong Kong hotel, before being granted permanent residency in New Zealand in 2010. He was arrested in New Zealand in 2012 during a dramatic police raid on his mansion and incarcerated for a month before being released on bail. Since then, Dotcom has released a music album, started another internet file-sharing company called Mega and launched a political party, which unsuccessfully contested the nation's 2014 election. In addition to Dotcom, who founded Megaupload and was its biggest shareholder, the U.S. is also seeking to extradite former Megaupload officers Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato.

– Flamboyant Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues have lost their latest bid to avoid extradition to the US to face criminal charges. New Zealand's Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld earlier court rulings that found the men were eligible to be handed over to US authorities, the AP reports. Dotcom's lawyer Ira Rothken said they were disappointed with the judgment and planned to file an appeal with New Zealand's Supreme Court. "We have now been to three courts each with a different legal analysis," Rothken tweeted. Dotcom, born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, was granted permanent residency in New Zealand in 2010. The latest decision comes more than six years after US authorities shut down Dotcom's file-sharing website Megaupload and filed charges of conspiracy, racketeering, and money laundering against Dotcom and his colleagues. If found guilty, they could face decades in prison. Megaupload was once one of the internet's most popular sites. US prosecutors say it raked in at least $175 million, mainly from people using it for illegal downloads. Dotcom argues that he can't be held responsible for others who chose to use his site for illegal purposes, and that any case against him should have been heard in civil court. He says he never lived in the US or even visited the country and didn't have a company there.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and... (Associated Press) FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues have lost their latest bid to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face criminal... (Associated Press) FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues have lost their latest bid to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face criminal... (Associated Press) FILE - In this July 3, 2013, file photo, Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Kim Dotcom and... (Associated Press) WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Flamboyant internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his former colleagues have lost their latest bid to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face criminal charges. New Zealand's Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld earlier court rulings that found the men were eligible to be handed over to U.S. authorities. Dotcom's lawyer Ira Rothken said they were disappointed with the judgment and planned to file an appeal with New Zealand's Supreme Court. "We have now been to three courts each with a different legal analysis," Rothken wrote on Twitter. The latest decision comes more than six years after U.S. authorities shut down Dotcom's file-sharing website Megaupload and filed charges of conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering against the men. If found guilty, they could face decades in prison. Megaupload was once one of the internet's most popular sites. U.S. prosecutors say it raked in at least $175 million, mainly from people using it to illegally download songs, television shows and movies. Dotcom argues that he can't be held responsible for others who chose to use his site for illegal purposes, and that any case against him should have been heard in civil court. He says he never lived in the U.S. or even visited the country and didn't have a company there. Born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, Dotcom founded Megaupload in 2005. At one point he lived in a Hong Kong hotel, before being granted permanent residency in New Zealand in 2010. He was arrested in New Zealand in 2012 during a dramatic police raid on his mansion and incarcerated for a month before being released on bail. Since then, Dotcom has released a music album, started another internet file-sharing company called Mega and launched a political party, which unsuccessfully contested the nation's 2014 election. In addition to Dotcom, who founded Megaupload and was its biggest shareholder, the U.S. is also seeking to extradite former Megaupload officers Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

(CNN) The rain may have stopped, but South Carolina is grappling with a host of new concerns. Dam breaks. Billions of dollars in damage. And rivers that still haven't crested. "We still have to be cautious," Gov. Nikki Haley told reporters on Tuesday afternoon. "The next 36 to 48 hours are going to be a time that we need to continue to be careful." Haley declined to provide an estimated cost of the damage -- which she called "disturbing" -- but said state and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials were making assessments. "It's hard to look at the loss we're going to have," she said. "This could be any amount of dollars." More than 400,000 state residents were under a "boil water advisory" affecting about 16 water systems, said Jim Beasley, a spokesman for the S.C. Emergency Response Team. Here's the latest on the mammoth flooding in the region: Dam breaks At least 11 dams have failed in South Carolina since Saturday, the state's Emergency Management Division said. Another 35 dams were being monitored. One failure, of the Overcreek Bridge dam in Richland County's Forest Acres, sent a torrent of floodwater raging downstream and forced evacuations near Columbia. MANDATORY EVACUATION: OVERCREEK RESIDENTS LIVING BETWEEN FOREST DR. & PERCIVAL RD. IN FOREST ACRES — SCEMD (@SCEMD) October 5, 2015 Officials allowed water to breach at least one other dam, also in Richland County. Officials conduct these controlled breaches "to prevent a much larger incident and a much larger amount of water escaping from the dam," emergency management spokesman Derrec Becker said. Haley said National Guard members were helping with sandbagging operations and other mitigation efforts. Death toll rises Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years The last 30 years have brought plenty of deadly and destructive storms to the United States, including 2005's Hurricane Katrina (here, police and others use boats to rescue people in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood). Click through the gallery to see more photos of disastrous hurricanes over the last three decades, and check out this video to find out which states have been hit the most often. Hide Caption 1 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 2 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Sandy, 2012: It technically lost its hurricane status shortly before striking New Jersey, but its gigantic size -- it covered 1.8 million square miles at landfall -- sent devastating storm surges to the coast. Here, a man looks for pieces of his beach house after It technically lost its hurricane status shortly before striking New Jersey, but its gigantic size -- it covered 1.8 million square miles at landfall -- sent devastating storm surges to the coast. Here, a man looks for pieces of his beach house after Sandy demolished it in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. With 72 directly killed in eight states, this was the most deadly tropical cyclone outside the South since 1972's Hurricane Agnes. At least 650,000 U.S. homes were damaged or destroyed in the U.S. Hide Caption 3 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 4 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Irene, 2011: After hitting North Carolina, After hitting North Carolina, Irene did most of its damage in the way of heavy rain and flooding in New York and New England. In southern Vermont alone, nearly 2,400 roads were damaged or destroyed, NOAA says. Here, Tony Carr carries a TV set September 1 from his home, which was destroyed by Irene-related floods in Prattsville, New York. Hide Caption 5 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 6 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Ike, 2008: After killing scores in the Caribbean, Ike turned to Texas, sending storm surges that leveled homes on Galveston Island. It's remnants did extensive damage as far north as Ohio, where 2.6 million people lost power. Here, an Air Force Reserve pararescueman scans the ravaged Texas landscape shortly after Ike. Hide Caption 7 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 8 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Katrina, 2005: Unforgettable Unforgettable Katrina -- the costliest hurricane and one of the five deadliest to hit the United States, according to NOAA -- devastated the Gulf Coast days after crossing Florida. Flooding destroyed thousands of homes in the New Orleans area alone; storm surges wiped out coastal towns in Mississippi. Here, people stand stranded on a roof in New Orleans. Hide Caption 9 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 10 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Rita, 2005: Just a month after Katrina, : Just a month after Katrina, Hurricane Rita piled on, slamming into the Louisiana coast. Wind, rain and tornadoes left billions in damages from eastern Texas to Alabama. Here, surging water from Rita reach the streets of New Orleans' Ninth Ward, topping a levee that had just been patched after Katrina damaged it. Hide Caption 11 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 12 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Wilma, 2005: The year might be remembered for the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita, but : The year might be remembered for the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita, but Wilma , which hit Florida after devastating Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, would become (as of May 2015) the U.S.'s fifth most costly cyclone. Here, workers remove debris from a Miami flower and plant shop on October 28. Millions were without power in the state. Hide Caption 13 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 14 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Beta, 2005: Beta wasn't one of the most devastating cyclones, but we include it here to make a point: There were so many named storms in the Atlantic in 2005 that forecasters' pre-approved 21-name list for the year was exhausted. So they went to the Greek alphabet six times, including for Hurricane Beta, which directly hit part of Nicaragua. Here, people wade through a street flooded by Beta in Honduras on October 30. Hide Caption 15 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 16 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Ivan, 2004: This year also was hurricane-heavy, punctuated by : This year also was hurricane-heavy, punctuated by Ivan , a storm with two lives. First, it killed dozens in the Caribbean and slammed into Alabama. Later, its remnants went back over Florida from the Atlantic and re-formed in the Gulf as a tropical storm, making another landfall in southwestern Louisiana. It spawned more than 100 tornadoes, one of the factors that left considerable damage across the Southeast and some mid-Atlantic states. Here, a woman walks over debris as she visits her home, destroyed by Ivan, in Perdido Key, Florida, on September 20. Hide Caption 17 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 18 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Floyd, 1999: Deadly flooding, especially in North Carolina, was one of Floyd's main legacies. Parts of eastern North Carolina and Virginia received 15 to 20 inches of rain, and flooding led to the razing of thousands of buildings -- most of them homes -- from North Carolina to New Jersey. At the time, it was the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1972. Here,a beach house, severely damaged by Floyd, sits crumbled sits in the sand on the Oak Island town of Long Beach, North Carolina, on November 10. Hide Caption 19 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 20 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Andrew, 1992: Andrew blasted its way across south Florida on August 24 as a Category 4 with peak gusts measured at 164 mph. After raking entire neighborhoods in an around Homestead, it moved across the Gulf to hit Louisiana as a Category 3. It was responsible for 23 U.S. deaths and three in the Bahamas. Here, a sailboat sits on a sidewalk at Dinner Key in Miami after Andrew washed it ashore. Hide Caption 21 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 22 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hugo, 1989: Hugo ripped through the Carolinas, starting with Charleston, South Carolina, on September 22 as a Category 4 after raking the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Here, a man stands in a destroyed house on September 27 in South Carolina. Hide Caption 23 of 23 So far, at least 17 people have died in weather-related incidents: 15 in South Carolina and two in North Carolina. At least nine people drowned and six died in traffic accidents, South Carolina's Department of Public Safety said. North Carolina reported two deaths from traffic accidents, in Cumberland and Jackson counties, a state emergency management spokeswoman said. Haley said there had been 175 water rescues so far in South Carolina, and more than 800 people were temporarily housed in shelters. More than 70 miles of Interstate 95 in the state remained closed, with five to eight bridges still awaiting structural checks, she said. Caskets float away Of all the scenes of items drifting away in the flooding, perhaps none appeared as dramatic as a casket unearthed from a cemetery. Wayne Reeves, pastor of New Life Ministries in Summerville, was in the middle of an interview when he saw the casket float away. So he headed into the waist-deep floodwater to retrieve it. This was the scene an hour ago as a SC pastor pushed an unearthed casket out of the flood waters @WCBD pic.twitter.com/qLVe3q4i5l — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 "That's somebody's family out there," he told CNN affiliate WCBD-TV . "That's (a) family suffering. That's their family there that popped up from under the ground. And I think it's the human thing to do." The casket, still adorned with white and pink flowers, carried the remains of a woman buried in May, WCBD said. Another casket, that of the woman's husband, also drifted away, but Dorchester County sheriff's officials later recovered it. As it turned out, the woman's family was watching nearby as Reeves went into the water. "This family don't want to sit on the edge of this road all night long watching their family members bob in the water like that," the pastor told WCBD. "If that was my mom or my dad, I'd walk through hell and high water. And today it happened to be high water." Apartments looted Some Columbia residents left their homes as victims of flooding. They returned to find their homes looted. Photos: Storms flood East Coast Photos: Storms flood East Coast This aerial photo shows flooding around Aberdeen Country Club in Longs, South Carolina, on Tuesday, October 6. South Carolina experienced record rainfall amounts over the weekend, forcing hundreds of evacuations and rescues. Hide Caption 1 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A woman uses her boat to check on neighbors and see if they want to evacuate in Summerville, South Carolina, on Monday, October 5. Hide Caption 2 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Police officers carry a woman to dry land after she was rescued from her home in the St. Andrews area of Columbia, South Carolina, on October 5. Hide Caption 3 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Neighbors and friends help clean up a home affected by flooding in Columbia on October 5. Hide Caption 4 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Five-month-old Jeremiah Odum, left, and his 2-year-old brother, Braxton Odum, nap on a cot in a high school gymnasium being used as a Red Cross shelter for flood evacuees in Rowesville, South Carolina, on October 5. Hide Caption 5 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Rescue teams wait for an emergency vehicle in the Forest Acres neighborhood of Columbia on Monday, October 5. Hide Caption 6 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast An oil sheen floats atop floodwater in a subdivision west of the Ashley River in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 5. Hide Caption 7 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A dog is cut off from its home in Florence, South Carolina, on October 5. Florence is about 85 miles east of the capital city, Columbia. Hide Caption 8 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Hunter Baker drives his boat down a flooded East Black Creek Road to his home following heavy rains in Florence on October 5. Hide Caption 9 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man makes his way through floodwaters in the parking lot of The Citadel Beach Club on Isle of Palms, South Carolina, on October 5. Charleston and surrounding areas are still struggling with flooding, as are areas 100 miles inland. Hide Caption 10 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Members of Norfolk Fire-Rescue pull a man from his car in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday, October 4. Hide Caption 11 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast David Linnen takes a yard rake to clear drains in front of the Winyah Apartments in Georgetown, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 12 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Charlene Stennis is escorted to safety after her son was rescued from a stranded vehicle during the heavy rains on October 4 in Columbia, South Carolina. Hide Caption 13 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast The roof of a submerged vehicle peeks above the flood waters on October 4 in Columbia, South Carolina. Hide Caption 14 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Tripp Adams, 8, walks through flood waters in Georgetown, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 15 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A person walks through the flooded Market and Water streets in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 16 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Neighbors watch employees with the city of Isle of Palms, South Carolina, cut a live oak tree that fell after heavy rain on October 4. Hide Caption 17 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man watches as a vehicle tries to navigate flood waters in Florence, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 18 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Two men row a boat on a flooded street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 19 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Police block an entrance to Highway 17 in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 20 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man paddles up to a flooded store in Columbia, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 21 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A firefighter walks down a flooded street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 22 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A worker cleans a drain on a flooded street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on Saturday, October 3. Hide Caption 23 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A utility worker examines the damage to a home Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 24 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A motorist turns back as floodwater rises in Harrisburg, North Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 25 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A woman walks through One City Plaza in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, as rain and wind pound the area on October 3. Hide Caption 26 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Bob Ashbaugh, from Pittsburgh, takes video of waves crashing over homes at risk from erosion during high tide in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 27 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Stuart Tait ties together wood after his house collapsed into an inlet on Grassy Sound during high tide on October 3 north of North Wildwood, New Jersey. Hide Caption 28 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Will Cunningham, 14, rides his bike down Station 29 on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, ahead of his paddling friend Patrick Kelly, 14, on October 3. Hide Caption 29 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Paul Banker paddles a kayak as his wife, Wink Banker, takes photos on a flooded street in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 30 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Up to 4 inches of rain could strike the waterfront between Georgia and New Jersey. Motorists deal with the conditions on Friday, October 2, in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Hide Caption 31 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Workers install a flood barrier at the entrance to the Market Pavilion Hotel in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday, October 2. Parts of the South Carolina coast braced for likely flooding. Hide Caption 32 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Flooding engulfs a neighborhood in the Strathmere section of Upper Township, New Jersey, on October 2. Hide Caption 33 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Sandbags surround a building in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Hide Caption 34 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man closes a storefront on October 2 in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Hide Caption 35 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Floodwater rises along Central Avenue in Sea Isle City, New Jersey, on October 2. Hide Caption 36 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Cars negotiate flooded streets on October 2 in Midland Beach on Staten Island, New York. Hide Caption 37 of 37 On Sunday, an apparent dam breach led to the flooding of the Willow Creek Apartments, property manager Heather Lovell told CNN affiliate WACH-TV So rescue crews in boats came to the complex and helped residents to safety. On Monday, Pamela Courts returned to her apartment and found not just flood damage but signs of theft. "Overnight, we had a break-in, so whatever was upstairs they came and took: TVs, jewelry, everything," she told WACH. Resident Juamaame Evins told the affiliate he was trying to stay positive despite the back-to-back hardships. "Even though we lost everything and stuff got stolen, we can rebuild together and help each other and be each other's backbones and carry each other through this time because we need each other," he said. Rivers still rising The flooding is far from over. Rivers might not crest for another two weeks, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said. And the mayor of Columbia, who has said he believes damage "will probably be in the billions of dollars," is bracing for more trouble. "We aren't close to being out of the woods," Mayor Steve Benjamin said Tuesday, adding that even more dams could be in danger of breaking or being topped by water. "We still expect the water to start coming down from the Upstate, coming downhill to the Midlands." The situation is the result of a weather system that funneled tropical moisture into South Carolina last week and refused to move on, Myers said. "It was a garden hose that just kept pouring ashore in one spot, and that spot was South Carolina," he said. Flooding conditions could force the South Carolina Gamecocks to move Saturday's game against Louisiana State University to Baton Rouge, University of South Carolina Athletics Director Ray Tanner said. The school hopes to make a decision in the next day or two. The University of South Carolina has canceled classes through Friday, saying that resuming normal operations for its 34,000 students and 6,000 faculty would "place an undue burden on a recovering infrastructure in the city." ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| RIDGEVILLE, SC – On Monday, an incredibly dramatic scene unfolded during a live News 2 broadcast, as a pastor from a church in Summerville walked into the flood waters surrounding a Ridgeville cemetery and pushed an unearthed vault and casket to the side of the road. Tonight, News 2 spoke with the family members of the deceased husband and wife whose caskets floated away in the floods. Wayne Reeves is a pastor at New Life Ministries in Summerville, and on Monday, on live TV, the Lowcountry watched as Reverend Reeves waded through water to retrieve the vault of a woman who was buried back in May. Reeves and another bystander pushed the casket out of the floodwaters and towards the side of Highway 61. News 2 reporter, Matt Alba, asked Reeves, “Why are you going in to get it?” Reeves replied, “That’s somebody’s family out there. This family is suffering. They had their family out there popping up out of the ground and I think it’s the human thing to do.” News 2 asked, “So you’re going in right now right?” Reeves said, “This second!” Reeves then walked over 200 yards through the water, over to where the caskets had floated. “This family doesn’t want to sit out on the edge of the road all night long watching their family members bob in and the water out there, that’s just not who we are,” said Reeves. “If that was my mama or my dad, I would walk through hell or high water…and today it happened to be high water.” Family of the deceased and church members watched from roadway with mixed feeling. Some said they felt feelings of disbelief and relief at the same time. Cousin of the deceased, Irlean Thompson, told News 2, “I just said, ‘Lord protect him,’ because I know there can be snakes out there or what have you. With the body being out there so long and the water has been rising since Sunday, we just said, ‘Lord cover him,’ and you know he wasn’t afraid. God sent him out there. She was actually my cousin.” Dorchester County Sheriff’s Deputies retrieved a second casket from the flooded scene soon after. Family members say the two vaults belonged to a husband and wife. After climbing out of the flood waters, Reeves said, “I’m going to go home and take a hot bath and wash off with a little bleach and it will take care of that, but this family is already hurt. They’re already hurt enough and I don’t want them to hurt anymore.” The cemetery at Canaan United Methodist Church had been flooded ever since it began raining last week. Authorities from Dorchester County say they’re going to assess all of the flood damage when the water recedes sometime this week. On Monday night we spoke with the family of the deceased and they told us the Dorchester County Coroner removed both of the vaults from the water and they are trying to find a place to keep them until the water recedes. Family members say authorities will then bury the vaults back where they were originally laid to rest. Residents say several caskets have floated across the submerged cemetery in Ridgeville @WCBD #SCFlood pic.twitter.com/e1eVyrTVQh — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 BREAKING: A pastor from a church in Summerville pulls an unearthed casket out of the flood waters in Ridgeville pic.twitter.com/vtOYRUQMJo — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 A man just walked about 300 yards through flood waters to pull a casket out of the flood waters. @WCBD #SCFlood pic.twitter.com/B9gmhOW8m4 — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 Second casket brought towards the side of Highway 61 pic.twitter.com/DNo8fq4zMP — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 Bringing in what appears to be another casket from the flood waters. Cemetery at Canaan United Methodist flooded pic.twitter.com/uGYWGEdNpI — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 PHOTOS: Casket floats to surface in Ridgeville cemetery ||||| While rain has stopped falling in South Carolina, the deadly storm continues to bring devastation, with numerous dams breached and damage expected to top $1 billion. Interested in ? Add as an interest to stay up to date on the latest news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest Numerous dams have been breached, bridges collapsed and hundreds of roads were inundated with floodwaters, causing emergency evacuations. President Obama has signed a disaster declaration for federal aid to help with recovery efforts, and more than 1,300 National Guard members have been deployed in the state. The storm is blamed for at least 13 deaths. More than 500 roads in the state were severely damaged by the storm. About 40,000 people in the state still do not have drinking water, and tens of thousands remain without power. "South Carolina has gone through a storm of historic proportions," Gov. Nikki Haley said. "Just because the rain stops, does not mean that we are out of the woods." Chuck Burton/AP Photo Officials went door-to-door Monday, checking on residents in flood-ravaged areas such as Columbia, and hundreds of people were evacuated to emergency shelters. The storm damage occurred despite the much-feared Hurricane Joaquin missing the East Coast. By Monday, the heaviest rains had moved into the mid-Atlantic states. Along the Jersey Shore, some beaches devastated by Superstorm Sandy three years ago lost most of their sand to the wind, rain and high surf. South Carolina authorities mostly switched Monday from search and rescue into "assessment and recovery mode," but Haley warned citizens to remain careful as a "wave" of water swelled downstream and dams had to be opened to prevent catastrophic failures above low-lying neighborhoods near the capital. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

– Eleven deaths have been reported and at least 18 South Carolina dams have breached or failed completely since Saturday, per the state's emergency management agency, leaving the region reeling in the aftermath of its torrential weekend storm, CNN reports. Of the 11 deaths, seven were from drowning and four from traffic accidents, the state Department of Public Safety reports; two additional deaths took place in North Carolina from traffic accidents, per that state's emergency management agency. Bridges have also collapsed, more than 500 roads have been severely damage, and tens of thousands are still without drinking water or power, per ABC News. Meanwhile, Columbia residents who had been evacuated returned to find their homes looted, and caskets from a Ridgeville cemetery floated away in the floodwaters, CNN notes. A pastor being interviewed Monday by News 2 in Ridgeville temporarily halted his live chat to wade into the water and grab one of the caskets floating by. "That's somebody’s family out there," he told the station. "If that was my mama or my dad, I would walk through hell or high water … and today it happened to be high water." The flooding likely isn't over, either, with a CNN meteorologist noting that rivers may not even crest for another two weeks. "South Carolina has gone through a storm of historic proportions," Gov. Nikki Haley said, per ABC. "Just because the rain stops, does not mean that we are out of the woods." The mayor of Columbia agrees, telling CNN, "I believe that things will get worse before they get better. I anticipate that damage will probably be in the billions of dollars. … Some people's lives as they know them will never be the same."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.(CNN) The rain may have stopped, but South Carolina is grappling with a host of new concerns. Dam breaks. Billions of dollars in damage. And rivers that still haven't crested. "We still have to be cautious," Gov. Nikki Haley told reporters on Tuesday afternoon. "The next 36 to 48 hours are going to be a time that we need to continue to be careful." Haley declined to provide an estimated cost of the damage -- which she called "disturbing" -- but said state and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials were making assessments. "It's hard to look at the loss we're going to have," she said. "This could be any amount of dollars." More than 400,000 state residents were under a "boil water advisory" affecting about 16 water systems, said Jim Beasley, a spokesman for the S.C. Emergency Response Team. Here's the latest on the mammoth flooding in the region: Dam breaks At least 11 dams have failed in South Carolina since Saturday, the state's Emergency Management Division said. Another 35 dams were being monitored. One failure, of the Overcreek Bridge dam in Richland County's Forest Acres, sent a torrent of floodwater raging downstream and forced evacuations near Columbia. MANDATORY EVACUATION: OVERCREEK RESIDENTS LIVING BETWEEN FOREST DR. & PERCIVAL RD. IN FOREST ACRES — SCEMD (@SCEMD) October 5, 2015 Officials allowed water to breach at least one other dam, also in Richland County. Officials conduct these controlled breaches "to prevent a much larger incident and a much larger amount of water escaping from the dam," emergency management spokesman Derrec Becker said. Haley said National Guard members were helping with sandbagging operations and other mitigation efforts. Death toll rises Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years The last 30 years have brought plenty of deadly and destructive storms to the United States, including 2005's Hurricane Katrina (here, police and others use boats to rescue people in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood). Click through the gallery to see more photos of disastrous hurricanes over the last three decades, and check out this video to find out which states have been hit the most often. Hide Caption 1 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 2 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Sandy, 2012: It technically lost its hurricane status shortly before striking New Jersey, but its gigantic size -- it covered 1.8 million square miles at landfall -- sent devastating storm surges to the coast. Here, a man looks for pieces of his beach house after It technically lost its hurricane status shortly before striking New Jersey, but its gigantic size -- it covered 1.8 million square miles at landfall -- sent devastating storm surges to the coast. Here, a man looks for pieces of his beach house after Sandy demolished it in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. With 72 directly killed in eight states, this was the most deadly tropical cyclone outside the South since 1972's Hurricane Agnes. At least 650,000 U.S. homes were damaged or destroyed in the U.S. Hide Caption 3 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 4 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Irene, 2011: After hitting North Carolina, After hitting North Carolina, Irene did most of its damage in the way of heavy rain and flooding in New York and New England. In southern Vermont alone, nearly 2,400 roads were damaged or destroyed, NOAA says. Here, Tony Carr carries a TV set September 1 from his home, which was destroyed by Irene-related floods in Prattsville, New York. Hide Caption 5 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 6 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Ike, 2008: After killing scores in the Caribbean, Ike turned to Texas, sending storm surges that leveled homes on Galveston Island. It's remnants did extensive damage as far north as Ohio, where 2.6 million people lost power. Here, an Air Force Reserve pararescueman scans the ravaged Texas landscape shortly after Ike. Hide Caption 7 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 8 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Katrina, 2005: Unforgettable Unforgettable Katrina -- the costliest hurricane and one of the five deadliest to hit the United States, according to NOAA -- devastated the Gulf Coast days after crossing Florida. Flooding destroyed thousands of homes in the New Orleans area alone; storm surges wiped out coastal towns in Mississippi. Here, people stand stranded on a roof in New Orleans. Hide Caption 9 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 10 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Rita, 2005: Just a month after Katrina, : Just a month after Katrina, Hurricane Rita piled on, slamming into the Louisiana coast. Wind, rain and tornadoes left billions in damages from eastern Texas to Alabama. Here, surging water from Rita reach the streets of New Orleans' Ninth Ward, topping a levee that had just been patched after Katrina damaged it. Hide Caption 11 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 12 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Wilma, 2005: The year might be remembered for the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita, but : The year might be remembered for the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita, but Wilma , which hit Florida after devastating Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, would become (as of May 2015) the U.S.'s fifth most costly cyclone. Here, workers remove debris from a Miami flower and plant shop on October 28. Millions were without power in the state. Hide Caption 13 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 14 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Beta, 2005: Beta wasn't one of the most devastating cyclones, but we include it here to make a point: There were so many named storms in the Atlantic in 2005 that forecasters' pre-approved 21-name list for the year was exhausted. So they went to the Greek alphabet six times, including for Hurricane Beta, which directly hit part of Nicaragua. Here, people wade through a street flooded by Beta in Honduras on October 30. Hide Caption 15 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 16 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Ivan, 2004: This year also was hurricane-heavy, punctuated by : This year also was hurricane-heavy, punctuated by Ivan , a storm with two lives. First, it killed dozens in the Caribbean and slammed into Alabama. Later, its remnants went back over Florida from the Atlantic and re-formed in the Gulf as a tropical storm, making another landfall in southwestern Louisiana. It spawned more than 100 tornadoes, one of the factors that left considerable damage across the Southeast and some mid-Atlantic states. Here, a woman walks over debris as she visits her home, destroyed by Ivan, in Perdido Key, Florida, on September 20. Hide Caption 17 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 18 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Floyd, 1999: Deadly flooding, especially in North Carolina, was one of Floyd's main legacies. Parts of eastern North Carolina and Virginia received 15 to 20 inches of rain, and flooding led to the razing of thousands of buildings -- most of them homes -- from North Carolina to New Jersey. At the time, it was the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1972. Here,a beach house, severely damaged by Floyd, sits crumbled sits in the sand on the Oak Island town of Long Beach, North Carolina, on November 10. Hide Caption 19 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 20 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Andrew, 1992: Andrew blasted its way across south Florida on August 24 as a Category 4 with peak gusts measured at 164 mph. After raking entire neighborhoods in an around Homestead, it moved across the Gulf to hit Louisiana as a Category 3. It was responsible for 23 U.S. deaths and three in the Bahamas. Here, a sailboat sits on a sidewalk at Dinner Key in Miami after Andrew washed it ashore. Hide Caption 21 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hide Caption 22 of 23 Photos: Devastating hurricanes of the last 30 years Hugo, 1989: Hugo ripped through the Carolinas, starting with Charleston, South Carolina, on September 22 as a Category 4 after raking the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Here, a man stands in a destroyed house on September 27 in South Carolina. Hide Caption 23 of 23 So far, at least 17 people have died in weather-related incidents: 15 in South Carolina and two in North Carolina. At least nine people drowned and six died in traffic accidents, South Carolina's Department of Public Safety said. North Carolina reported two deaths from traffic accidents, in Cumberland and Jackson counties, a state emergency management spokeswoman said. Haley said there had been 175 water rescues so far in South Carolina, and more than 800 people were temporarily housed in shelters. More than 70 miles of Interstate 95 in the state remained closed, with five to eight bridges still awaiting structural checks, she said. Caskets float away Of all the scenes of items drifting away in the flooding, perhaps none appeared as dramatic as a casket unearthed from a cemetery. Wayne Reeves, pastor of New Life Ministries in Summerville, was in the middle of an interview when he saw the casket float away. So he headed into the waist-deep floodwater to retrieve it. This was the scene an hour ago as a SC pastor pushed an unearthed casket out of the flood waters @WCBD pic.twitter.com/qLVe3q4i5l — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 "That's somebody's family out there," he told CNN affiliate WCBD-TV . "That's (a) family suffering. That's their family there that popped up from under the ground. And I think it's the human thing to do." The casket, still adorned with white and pink flowers, carried the remains of a woman buried in May, WCBD said. Another casket, that of the woman's husband, also drifted away, but Dorchester County sheriff's officials later recovered it. As it turned out, the woman's family was watching nearby as Reeves went into the water. "This family don't want to sit on the edge of this road all night long watching their family members bob in the water like that," the pastor told WCBD. "If that was my mom or my dad, I'd walk through hell and high water. And today it happened to be high water." Apartments looted Some Columbia residents left their homes as victims of flooding. They returned to find their homes looted. Photos: Storms flood East Coast Photos: Storms flood East Coast This aerial photo shows flooding around Aberdeen Country Club in Longs, South Carolina, on Tuesday, October 6. South Carolina experienced record rainfall amounts over the weekend, forcing hundreds of evacuations and rescues. Hide Caption 1 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A woman uses her boat to check on neighbors and see if they want to evacuate in Summerville, South Carolina, on Monday, October 5. Hide Caption 2 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Police officers carry a woman to dry land after she was rescued from her home in the St. Andrews area of Columbia, South Carolina, on October 5. Hide Caption 3 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Neighbors and friends help clean up a home affected by flooding in Columbia on October 5. Hide Caption 4 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Five-month-old Jeremiah Odum, left, and his 2-year-old brother, Braxton Odum, nap on a cot in a high school gymnasium being used as a Red Cross shelter for flood evacuees in Rowesville, South Carolina, on October 5. Hide Caption 5 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Rescue teams wait for an emergency vehicle in the Forest Acres neighborhood of Columbia on Monday, October 5. Hide Caption 6 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast An oil sheen floats atop floodwater in a subdivision west of the Ashley River in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 5. Hide Caption 7 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A dog is cut off from its home in Florence, South Carolina, on October 5. Florence is about 85 miles east of the capital city, Columbia. Hide Caption 8 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Hunter Baker drives his boat down a flooded East Black Creek Road to his home following heavy rains in Florence on October 5. Hide Caption 9 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man makes his way through floodwaters in the parking lot of The Citadel Beach Club on Isle of Palms, South Carolina, on October 5. Charleston and surrounding areas are still struggling with flooding, as are areas 100 miles inland. Hide Caption 10 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Members of Norfolk Fire-Rescue pull a man from his car in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday, October 4. Hide Caption 11 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast David Linnen takes a yard rake to clear drains in front of the Winyah Apartments in Georgetown, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 12 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Charlene Stennis is escorted to safety after her son was rescued from a stranded vehicle during the heavy rains on October 4 in Columbia, South Carolina. Hide Caption 13 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast The roof of a submerged vehicle peeks above the flood waters on October 4 in Columbia, South Carolina. Hide Caption 14 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Tripp Adams, 8, walks through flood waters in Georgetown, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 15 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A person walks through the flooded Market and Water streets in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 16 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Neighbors watch employees with the city of Isle of Palms, South Carolina, cut a live oak tree that fell after heavy rain on October 4. Hide Caption 17 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man watches as a vehicle tries to navigate flood waters in Florence, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 18 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Two men row a boat on a flooded street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 19 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Police block an entrance to Highway 17 in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 20 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man paddles up to a flooded store in Columbia, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 21 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A firefighter walks down a flooded street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on October 4. Hide Caption 22 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A worker cleans a drain on a flooded street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on Saturday, October 3. Hide Caption 23 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A utility worker examines the damage to a home Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 24 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A motorist turns back as floodwater rises in Harrisburg, North Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 25 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A woman walks through One City Plaza in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, as rain and wind pound the area on October 3. Hide Caption 26 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Bob Ashbaugh, from Pittsburgh, takes video of waves crashing over homes at risk from erosion during high tide in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 27 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Stuart Tait ties together wood after his house collapsed into an inlet on Grassy Sound during high tide on October 3 north of North Wildwood, New Jersey. Hide Caption 28 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Will Cunningham, 14, rides his bike down Station 29 on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, ahead of his paddling friend Patrick Kelly, 14, on October 3. Hide Caption 29 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Paul Banker paddles a kayak as his wife, Wink Banker, takes photos on a flooded street in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 3. Hide Caption 30 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Up to 4 inches of rain could strike the waterfront between Georgia and New Jersey. Motorists deal with the conditions on Friday, October 2, in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Hide Caption 31 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Workers install a flood barrier at the entrance to the Market Pavilion Hotel in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday, October 2. Parts of the South Carolina coast braced for likely flooding. Hide Caption 32 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Flooding engulfs a neighborhood in the Strathmere section of Upper Township, New Jersey, on October 2. Hide Caption 33 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Sandbags surround a building in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Hide Caption 34 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast A man closes a storefront on October 2 in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Hide Caption 35 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Floodwater rises along Central Avenue in Sea Isle City, New Jersey, on October 2. Hide Caption 36 of 37 Photos: Storms flood East Coast Cars negotiate flooded streets on October 2 in Midland Beach on Staten Island, New York. Hide Caption 37 of 37 On Sunday, an apparent dam breach led to the flooding of the Willow Creek Apartments, property manager Heather Lovell told CNN affiliate WACH-TV So rescue crews in boats came to the complex and helped residents to safety. On Monday, Pamela Courts returned to her apartment and found not just flood damage but signs of theft. "Overnight, we had a break-in, so whatever was upstairs they came and took: TVs, jewelry, everything," she told WACH. Resident Juamaame Evins told the affiliate he was trying to stay positive despite the back-to-back hardships. "Even though we lost everything and stuff got stolen, we can rebuild together and help each other and be each other's backbones and carry each other through this time because we need each other," he said. Rivers still rising The flooding is far from over. Rivers might not crest for another two weeks, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said. And the mayor of Columbia, who has said he believes damage "will probably be in the billions of dollars," is bracing for more trouble. "We aren't close to being out of the woods," Mayor Steve Benjamin said Tuesday, adding that even more dams could be in danger of breaking or being topped by water. "We still expect the water to start coming down from the Upstate, coming downhill to the Midlands." The situation is the result of a weather system that funneled tropical moisture into South Carolina last week and refused to move on, Myers said. "It was a garden hose that just kept pouring ashore in one spot, and that spot was South Carolina," he said. Flooding conditions could force the South Carolina Gamecocks to move Saturday's game against Louisiana State University to Baton Rouge, University of South Carolina Athletics Director Ray Tanner said. The school hopes to make a decision in the next day or two. The University of South Carolina has canceled classes through Friday, saying that resuming normal operations for its 34,000 students and 6,000 faculty would "place an undue burden on a recovering infrastructure in the city." ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| RIDGEVILLE, SC – On Monday, an incredibly dramatic scene unfolded during a live News 2 broadcast, as a pastor from a church in Summerville walked into the flood waters surrounding a Ridgeville cemetery and pushed an unearthed vault and casket to the side of the road. Tonight, News 2 spoke with the family members of the deceased husband and wife whose caskets floated away in the floods. Wayne Reeves is a pastor at New Life Ministries in Summerville, and on Monday, on live TV, the Lowcountry watched as Reverend Reeves waded through water to retrieve the vault of a woman who was buried back in May. Reeves and another bystander pushed the casket out of the floodwaters and towards the side of Highway 61. News 2 reporter, Matt Alba, asked Reeves, “Why are you going in to get it?” Reeves replied, “That’s somebody’s family out there. This family is suffering. They had their family out there popping up out of the ground and I think it’s the human thing to do.” News 2 asked, “So you’re going in right now right?” Reeves said, “This second!” Reeves then walked over 200 yards through the water, over to where the caskets had floated. “This family doesn’t want to sit out on the edge of the road all night long watching their family members bob in and the water out there, that’s just not who we are,” said Reeves. “If that was my mama or my dad, I would walk through hell or high water…and today it happened to be high water.” Family of the deceased and church members watched from roadway with mixed feeling. Some said they felt feelings of disbelief and relief at the same time. Cousin of the deceased, Irlean Thompson, told News 2, “I just said, ‘Lord protect him,’ because I know there can be snakes out there or what have you. With the body being out there so long and the water has been rising since Sunday, we just said, ‘Lord cover him,’ and you know he wasn’t afraid. God sent him out there. She was actually my cousin.” Dorchester County Sheriff’s Deputies retrieved a second casket from the flooded scene soon after. Family members say the two vaults belonged to a husband and wife. After climbing out of the flood waters, Reeves said, “I’m going to go home and take a hot bath and wash off with a little bleach and it will take care of that, but this family is already hurt. They’re already hurt enough and I don’t want them to hurt anymore.” The cemetery at Canaan United Methodist Church had been flooded ever since it began raining last week. Authorities from Dorchester County say they’re going to assess all of the flood damage when the water recedes sometime this week. On Monday night we spoke with the family of the deceased and they told us the Dorchester County Coroner removed both of the vaults from the water and they are trying to find a place to keep them until the water recedes. Family members say authorities will then bury the vaults back where they were originally laid to rest. Residents say several caskets have floated across the submerged cemetery in Ridgeville @WCBD #SCFlood pic.twitter.com/e1eVyrTVQh — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 BREAKING: A pastor from a church in Summerville pulls an unearthed casket out of the flood waters in Ridgeville pic.twitter.com/vtOYRUQMJo — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 A man just walked about 300 yards through flood waters to pull a casket out of the flood waters. @WCBD #SCFlood pic.twitter.com/B9gmhOW8m4 — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 Second casket brought towards the side of Highway 61 pic.twitter.com/DNo8fq4zMP — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 Bringing in what appears to be another casket from the flood waters. Cemetery at Canaan United Methodist flooded pic.twitter.com/uGYWGEdNpI — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015 PHOTOS: Casket floats to surface in Ridgeville cemetery ||||| While rain has stopped falling in South Carolina, the deadly storm continues to bring devastation, with numerous dams breached and damage expected to top $1 billion. Interested in ? Add as an interest to stay up to date on the latest news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest Numerous dams have been breached, bridges collapsed and hundreds of roads were inundated with floodwaters, causing emergency evacuations. President Obama has signed a disaster declaration for federal aid to help with recovery efforts, and more than 1,300 National Guard members have been deployed in the state. The storm is blamed for at least 13 deaths. More than 500 roads in the state were severely damaged by the storm. About 40,000 people in the state still do not have drinking water, and tens of thousands remain without power. "South Carolina has gone through a storm of historic proportions," Gov. Nikki Haley said. "Just because the rain stops, does not mean that we are out of the woods." Chuck Burton/AP Photo Officials went door-to-door Monday, checking on residents in flood-ravaged areas such as Columbia, and hundreds of people were evacuated to emergency shelters. The storm damage occurred despite the much-feared Hurricane Joaquin missing the East Coast. By Monday, the heaviest rains had moved into the mid-Atlantic states. Along the Jersey Shore, some beaches devastated by Superstorm Sandy three years ago lost most of their sand to the wind, rain and high surf. South Carolina authorities mostly switched Monday from search and rescue into "assessment and recovery mode," but Haley warned citizens to remain careful as a "wave" of water swelled downstream and dams had to be opened to prevent catastrophic failures above low-lying neighborhoods near the capital. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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It seems that Mountain Lake in Virginia – now nothing more than a reddish-brown pit – shows little regard for human intervention or Hollywood nostalgia Dirty Dancing lake had the time of its life, but now it's all dried up Seven miles up a winding road in Pembroke, Virginia, sits the Mountain Lake Lodge, an imposing 1930s stone building that looks out over a manicured lawn peppered with cabins. The hotel is instantly recognizable to fans of the 1987 film Dirty Dancing as Kellerman’s Resort, the luxurious summer retreat where the precocious Frances “Baby” Houseman meets hunky dance instructor Johnny Castle and romance ensues. Mountain Lake Lodge is proud of its fame, and has preserved its history to the delight of thousands of fans who flock to the resort each year to visit Dirty Dancing landmarks on the property, like Housemans’ white latticed bungalow (now called “Baby’s Cabin”), the dining room featuring the famous “no one put Baby in the corner” table, and the spot where Johnny smashes his car window. But there’s one critical part of Kellerman’s which has changed since 1987: Mountain Lake. Facebook Twitter Pinterest This Google satellite view of Mountain Lake shows how far it has receded over time Photograph: The Guardian Anyone who has seen Dirty Dancing knows that the lake is an integral part of the film: it’s where guests sun themselves while Baby and her sister Lisa try on wigs. It’s where Rockette Penny teaches a merengue class, and of course there’s the famous lift scene, where Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey practice their signature dance move in the water (although that scene was actually filmed at Lake Lure, North Carolina). But today, Mountain Lake is nothing more than a reddish-brown pit, only partially filled with water. The lake’s water levels have fluctuated dramatically in the 30 years since the film. It first dropped in 1999, and returned to its normal levels in 2003. In 2006, it dropped again, and emptied completely for several days, leaving behind dead and rotting fish. From 2008 to 2012, it was mostly empty. What happens is fairly simple: water drains out of the lake through several holes. According to Roanoke College environmental studies professor Jon Cawley, Mountain Lake’s basin is the only one in the world that goes through this sort of cycle and has this sort of plumbing system. “When the lake drains – when it actually empties out – it is cleaning itself by moving sediment that has accrued in the bottom of the lake down through that rather complex plumbing system to actually make the lake bigger, deeper, and to keep it clean,” he says. Dirty Dancing, feminist masterpiece | Melissa McEwan Read more In the hallways of the hotel, black-and-white photographs of women dressed in hats and long dresses boating on the lake in the 1800s line the walls. In 2008, the bones of a man who had been missing since a nighttime fishing trip in 1921 were found when the water level dropped. His cigarette case was still there, too. The resort strives to educate guests in order to minimize disappointment over low water levels. In 2013, local firms carried out a major construction project to stabilize the lake’s water level by plugging its holes with native sediment and stone, but within the next year, another drainage hole was found from which just under a million gallons of water were lost per day. It seems that Mountain Lake will do what it likes; it shows little regard for human intervention or Hollywood nostalgia. ||||| The stone stairs that climbed the hill before me didn’t look very impressive – particularly compared to the multimillion-dollar homes and graceful docks that wrapped the rest of the lake. But I recognised them instantly. Our boat tour of Lake Lure, at the edge of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, had just pulled into Firefly Cove. But this quiet corner of the lake is better known by its nickname: “Dirty Dancing cove”. And the staircase, which we could clearly see as we bobbed in the water, is where Frances “Baby” Houseman, the protagonist of the 1987 film, carries a watermelon. It’s her ticket to the staff party that introduces her to a world of dancing beyond the foxtrot – and, of course, to Johnny Castle, played by Patrick Swayze. I’d come here on a quest to see the locations where Dirty Dancing was shot. While it was actually filmed in Virginia and North Carolina, the movie that launched a million slumber-party fantasies was set in a scenic family resort in New York’s Catskill Mountains. That’s where 17-year-old Baby, played by Jennifer Grey – who is bound for Mt Holyoke, the Peace Corps and, it seems, a lifetime of being a daddy’s girl – vacations with her family in the summer of 1963. In that safest-seeming of places, Baby’s life changes. She falls in love with Johnny, the resort’s dance instructor from the other side of the tracks. Johnny helps her see her own value (“Nobody,” he tells her father in the film, grabbing Baby to come dance on stage, “puts Baby in a corner”). She also helps a new friend get an abortion, solves a minor crime, stands up to her father, sheds her nickname and, as in any classic coming-of-age movie, learns that her family didn’t prepare her for life’s complications, and that how she responds defines who she will become. Against so much turbulence (even turbulence sweetened with an implausible romantic arc, fun dance scenes and a catchy soundtrack), the film’s peaceful setting stands out. The decades-old Kellerman’s Resort, lush mountains and placid lake couldn't seem further removed from Baby’s angst. Or from America’s angst, for that matter: although Baby alludes to the summer of 1963 as a kind of age of innocence before events such as President Kennedy’s assassination, the country was already in turmoil; more than 978 civil rights demonstrations had taken place in 109 cities in the first six months of 1963 alone. “It’s not the changes this time, Tito. It’s that it all seems to be ending,” the resort’s owner says to the bandleader – who, in another telling nod to the era, is the only black person with a line in the movie. “It feels like it’s all slipping away.” The entire film is supposed to take place in a single location, so the setting was key. When screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein was driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina, she noticed that they looked just like the Catskills. She should know: like Baby (in fact, her family called her by the same name), she had spent summers at an upstate New York resort with her family. Mountain Lake Lodge, a 2,600-acre resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia, just north of Blacksburg, was chosen as the Kellerman’s stand-in. The lodge’s rambling stone face, shown frequently in the movie, hasn’t changed much since the film was shot here. But the lake outside the lodge, which features as a frequent backdrop in Dirty Dancing, has dried up; its disappearance baffles even experts. Luckily for fans, though, the movie was filmed in two main locations. And, as I found one weekend, the second lake used is just as wet – and lovely – as ever. It also remains deeply connected to the movie: in 2009, locals even launched the Dirty Dancing Festival, which draws about 2,000 participants each summer with activities including lift competitions and watermelon-carrying races. Lake Lure sits 235 miles southwest of Mountain Lake and 90 miles west of Charlotte. Created in 1925 when a hydroelectric dam was built on Broad River, the lake is one of the most stunning bodies of water in the US South. Today, its 27 miles of shoreline are lined with elegant, balcony-wrapped homes and private docks, surrounded by thick forests and granite mountains. At the lake’s western end rises Chimney Rock, the 315ft-tall formation that featured prominently in another movie, 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans, where North Carolina’s mountains stand in for the Adirondacks. On an October day, I signed on for a Lake Lure boat tour. At “Dirty Dancing cove”, the guide pointed out the hill above us, where an old boys’ camp once sprawled. Its red cabins served as the staff housing of Kellerman’s. The cabins are gone today, having burned in a fire (and first having been picked at by rabid fans, who even carried away rocks from the foundations). The large gymnasium that was here also burned down; that was where the movie’s pivotal dancing scenes were filmed – Johnny’s mambo with his dance partner, Penny, at the beginning, and the iconic finale, where Johnny and Baby dance together. Only the floor of the gym was salvaged; it’s now the floor of the lobby of Chimney Rock’s Esmeralda Inn. Firefly Cove, too, is where Baby and Johnny perfect their lift. There were just two problems. First, it’s all but impossible to jump from a muddy lake bottom, so a wooden platform was built underwater. Second, the movie was filmed in the fall of 1986. Leaves were turning orange and red, and temperatures were dropping fast. The trees and grass had to be brushed with green paint, and during filming, the two actors had to take frequent breaks to keep from freezing. The famous staircase, though, was the most recognisable sight from the film. Although it’s most famous for the watermelon scene, the staircase appears often: it’s where Baby practices her dance steps, applies makeup and, later, runs for help when she finds out Penny’s abortion was botched. Dirty Dancing isn’t necessarily a film to be overanalysed, but even so, it’s hard not to see the staircase as a symbol of Baby’s pathway to adulthood. The other lake site most associated with the movie, the 1927 Lake Lure Inn and Spa, has more debatable connections. An employee of the inn told me that several interior scenes were shot in what are now the Veranda Restaurant and Roosevelt Hall. Dirty Dancing Festival co-founder Michelle McConnell Yelton, though, says that the inn’s then-owner told her that none of the scenes were shot there. In fact, Yelton said, the town’s residents were worried that the movie would be too risqué; they didn’t want the iconic hotel featured. Anticipating concerns, producers called the script “Dancing”, not “Dirty Dancing”, to help win approval for film shoots in Bible Belt town halls. Few could have predicted that the film – which had a modest production budget and did so poorly in audience testing, it was almost released straight to video – would become the year’s 11th top-grossing movie and, over two decades, sell 10 million home videos. Whether or not the film was shot at the hotel, the cast did stay there. Walk along the rambling inn’s creaky, green-carpeted halls, past the walls hung with antique paintings and black-and-white photographs, and you can glimpse the room where Patrick Swayze stayed (number 215). Up a floor and at the other end of the hall is Jennifer Grey’s room (number 304/305). It’s said that the distance reflected the cool relationship the co-stars initially shared off-screen. Just as important, the Lake Lure Inn & Spa was the site of real-life dirty dancing. “We had dance parties at the hotel, and they were really crazy dance parties, and we kind of practiced our moves,” Doriana Sanchez, one of the movie’s main dancers, said in an interview for the first Dirty Dancing Festival in 2009. “So if you can imagine what was on film – add a little beer and heat, and it was pretty fun on the dance floor on our times off.” For both Mountain Lake and Lake Lure, many things may have changed since the fall of 1987. One lake dried up; cabins burned down. But the Blue Ridge Mountain remain as close to the heart of Dirty Dancing as you can get – closer, even, than the Catskills.

– Fans of Frances "Baby" Houseman and Johnny "Patrick Swayze" Castle are being put in the corner—emotionally speaking—by what has become of one of Dirty Dancing's major filming locations. The Guardian reports that nearly 30 years after the film was released, thousands of people still come to Virginia's Mountain Lake Lodge—stand-in for the fictional Kellerman's Resort—only to find its famous lake now more of a muddy pit. The water, which cooled Houseman and Castle as they practiced their signature lift, completely disappeared in 2006, killing a bunch of fish. It was largely empty again beginning in 2008, that year revealing the bones of a missing 1920s fisherman. The lake has remained mostly empty since. The water's recurring disappearances can be explained by a "plumbing system" unique in the world to Mountain Lake, environmental studies professor Jon Cawley tells the Guardian. He says water drains through holes in the lake bed to clear out old sediment. This process is actually part of a cycle, suggesting the lake should eventually be bigger and deeper someday. To appease disappointed fans, the lodge actually plugged the holes in 2013, only to have a new one open up. It's not all bad news for Dirty Dancing fans, however. A second locale used to shoot the movie was Lake Lure in North Carolina, and a BBC travel feature reports that it is "just as wet—and lovely—as ever."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.It seems that Mountain Lake in Virginia – now nothing more than a reddish-brown pit – shows little regard for human intervention or Hollywood nostalgia Dirty Dancing lake had the time of its life, but now it's all dried up Seven miles up a winding road in Pembroke, Virginia, sits the Mountain Lake Lodge, an imposing 1930s stone building that looks out over a manicured lawn peppered with cabins. The hotel is instantly recognizable to fans of the 1987 film Dirty Dancing as Kellerman’s Resort, the luxurious summer retreat where the precocious Frances “Baby” Houseman meets hunky dance instructor Johnny Castle and romance ensues. Mountain Lake Lodge is proud of its fame, and has preserved its history to the delight of thousands of fans who flock to the resort each year to visit Dirty Dancing landmarks on the property, like Housemans’ white latticed bungalow (now called “Baby’s Cabin”), the dining room featuring the famous “no one put Baby in the corner” table, and the spot where Johnny smashes his car window. But there’s one critical part of Kellerman’s which has changed since 1987: Mountain Lake. Facebook Twitter Pinterest This Google satellite view of Mountain Lake shows how far it has receded over time Photograph: The Guardian Anyone who has seen Dirty Dancing knows that the lake is an integral part of the film: it’s where guests sun themselves while Baby and her sister Lisa try on wigs. It’s where Rockette Penny teaches a merengue class, and of course there’s the famous lift scene, where Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey practice their signature dance move in the water (although that scene was actually filmed at Lake Lure, North Carolina). But today, Mountain Lake is nothing more than a reddish-brown pit, only partially filled with water. The lake’s water levels have fluctuated dramatically in the 30 years since the film. It first dropped in 1999, and returned to its normal levels in 2003. In 2006, it dropped again, and emptied completely for several days, leaving behind dead and rotting fish. From 2008 to 2012, it was mostly empty. What happens is fairly simple: water drains out of the lake through several holes. According to Roanoke College environmental studies professor Jon Cawley, Mountain Lake’s basin is the only one in the world that goes through this sort of cycle and has this sort of plumbing system. “When the lake drains – when it actually empties out – it is cleaning itself by moving sediment that has accrued in the bottom of the lake down through that rather complex plumbing system to actually make the lake bigger, deeper, and to keep it clean,” he says. Dirty Dancing, feminist masterpiece | Melissa McEwan Read more In the hallways of the hotel, black-and-white photographs of women dressed in hats and long dresses boating on the lake in the 1800s line the walls. In 2008, the bones of a man who had been missing since a nighttime fishing trip in 1921 were found when the water level dropped. His cigarette case was still there, too. The resort strives to educate guests in order to minimize disappointment over low water levels. In 2013, local firms carried out a major construction project to stabilize the lake’s water level by plugging its holes with native sediment and stone, but within the next year, another drainage hole was found from which just under a million gallons of water were lost per day. It seems that Mountain Lake will do what it likes; it shows little regard for human intervention or Hollywood nostalgia. ||||| The stone stairs that climbed the hill before me didn’t look very impressive – particularly compared to the multimillion-dollar homes and graceful docks that wrapped the rest of the lake. But I recognised them instantly. Our boat tour of Lake Lure, at the edge of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, had just pulled into Firefly Cove. But this quiet corner of the lake is better known by its nickname: “Dirty Dancing cove”. And the staircase, which we could clearly see as we bobbed in the water, is where Frances “Baby” Houseman, the protagonist of the 1987 film, carries a watermelon. It’s her ticket to the staff party that introduces her to a world of dancing beyond the foxtrot – and, of course, to Johnny Castle, played by Patrick Swayze. I’d come here on a quest to see the locations where Dirty Dancing was shot. While it was actually filmed in Virginia and North Carolina, the movie that launched a million slumber-party fantasies was set in a scenic family resort in New York’s Catskill Mountains. That’s where 17-year-old Baby, played by Jennifer Grey – who is bound for Mt Holyoke, the Peace Corps and, it seems, a lifetime of being a daddy’s girl – vacations with her family in the summer of 1963. In that safest-seeming of places, Baby’s life changes. She falls in love with Johnny, the resort’s dance instructor from the other side of the tracks. Johnny helps her see her own value (“Nobody,” he tells her father in the film, grabbing Baby to come dance on stage, “puts Baby in a corner”). She also helps a new friend get an abortion, solves a minor crime, stands up to her father, sheds her nickname and, as in any classic coming-of-age movie, learns that her family didn’t prepare her for life’s complications, and that how she responds defines who she will become. Against so much turbulence (even turbulence sweetened with an implausible romantic arc, fun dance scenes and a catchy soundtrack), the film’s peaceful setting stands out. The decades-old Kellerman’s Resort, lush mountains and placid lake couldn't seem further removed from Baby’s angst. Or from America’s angst, for that matter: although Baby alludes to the summer of 1963 as a kind of age of innocence before events such as President Kennedy’s assassination, the country was already in turmoil; more than 978 civil rights demonstrations had taken place in 109 cities in the first six months of 1963 alone. “It’s not the changes this time, Tito. It’s that it all seems to be ending,” the resort’s owner says to the bandleader – who, in another telling nod to the era, is the only black person with a line in the movie. “It feels like it’s all slipping away.” The entire film is supposed to take place in a single location, so the setting was key. When screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein was driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina, she noticed that they looked just like the Catskills. She should know: like Baby (in fact, her family called her by the same name), she had spent summers at an upstate New York resort with her family. Mountain Lake Lodge, a 2,600-acre resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia, just north of Blacksburg, was chosen as the Kellerman’s stand-in. The lodge’s rambling stone face, shown frequently in the movie, hasn’t changed much since the film was shot here. But the lake outside the lodge, which features as a frequent backdrop in Dirty Dancing, has dried up; its disappearance baffles even experts. Luckily for fans, though, the movie was filmed in two main locations. And, as I found one weekend, the second lake used is just as wet – and lovely – as ever. It also remains deeply connected to the movie: in 2009, locals even launched the Dirty Dancing Festival, which draws about 2,000 participants each summer with activities including lift competitions and watermelon-carrying races. Lake Lure sits 235 miles southwest of Mountain Lake and 90 miles west of Charlotte. Created in 1925 when a hydroelectric dam was built on Broad River, the lake is one of the most stunning bodies of water in the US South. Today, its 27 miles of shoreline are lined with elegant, balcony-wrapped homes and private docks, surrounded by thick forests and granite mountains. At the lake’s western end rises Chimney Rock, the 315ft-tall formation that featured prominently in another movie, 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans, where North Carolina’s mountains stand in for the Adirondacks. On an October day, I signed on for a Lake Lure boat tour. At “Dirty Dancing cove”, the guide pointed out the hill above us, where an old boys’ camp once sprawled. Its red cabins served as the staff housing of Kellerman’s. The cabins are gone today, having burned in a fire (and first having been picked at by rabid fans, who even carried away rocks from the foundations). The large gymnasium that was here also burned down; that was where the movie’s pivotal dancing scenes were filmed – Johnny’s mambo with his dance partner, Penny, at the beginning, and the iconic finale, where Johnny and Baby dance together. Only the floor of the gym was salvaged; it’s now the floor of the lobby of Chimney Rock’s Esmeralda Inn. Firefly Cove, too, is where Baby and Johnny perfect their lift. There were just two problems. First, it’s all but impossible to jump from a muddy lake bottom, so a wooden platform was built underwater. Second, the movie was filmed in the fall of 1986. Leaves were turning orange and red, and temperatures were dropping fast. The trees and grass had to be brushed with green paint, and during filming, the two actors had to take frequent breaks to keep from freezing. The famous staircase, though, was the most recognisable sight from the film. Although it’s most famous for the watermelon scene, the staircase appears often: it’s where Baby practices her dance steps, applies makeup and, later, runs for help when she finds out Penny’s abortion was botched. Dirty Dancing isn’t necessarily a film to be overanalysed, but even so, it’s hard not to see the staircase as a symbol of Baby’s pathway to adulthood. The other lake site most associated with the movie, the 1927 Lake Lure Inn and Spa, has more debatable connections. An employee of the inn told me that several interior scenes were shot in what are now the Veranda Restaurant and Roosevelt Hall. Dirty Dancing Festival co-founder Michelle McConnell Yelton, though, says that the inn’s then-owner told her that none of the scenes were shot there. In fact, Yelton said, the town’s residents were worried that the movie would be too risqué; they didn’t want the iconic hotel featured. Anticipating concerns, producers called the script “Dancing”, not “Dirty Dancing”, to help win approval for film shoots in Bible Belt town halls. Few could have predicted that the film – which had a modest production budget and did so poorly in audience testing, it was almost released straight to video – would become the year’s 11th top-grossing movie and, over two decades, sell 10 million home videos. Whether or not the film was shot at the hotel, the cast did stay there. Walk along the rambling inn’s creaky, green-carpeted halls, past the walls hung with antique paintings and black-and-white photographs, and you can glimpse the room where Patrick Swayze stayed (number 215). Up a floor and at the other end of the hall is Jennifer Grey’s room (number 304/305). It’s said that the distance reflected the cool relationship the co-stars initially shared off-screen. Just as important, the Lake Lure Inn & Spa was the site of real-life dirty dancing. “We had dance parties at the hotel, and they were really crazy dance parties, and we kind of practiced our moves,” Doriana Sanchez, one of the movie’s main dancers, said in an interview for the first Dirty Dancing Festival in 2009. “So if you can imagine what was on film – add a little beer and heat, and it was pretty fun on the dance floor on our times off.” For both Mountain Lake and Lake Lure, many things may have changed since the fall of 1987. One lake dried up; cabins burned down. But the Blue Ridge Mountain remain as close to the heart of Dirty Dancing as you can get – closer, even, than the Catskills.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

The moral considerations associated with doping are as complicated as the lexical challenges of the term itself. What “doping” is, precisely, and under what conditions it should be allowed are questions the sports world may never totally resolve. Caffeine is a drug that enhances performance, but it’s OK. Amphetamine is also a drug that enhances performance, but it is not. It’s all a matter of where you draw the line. So if competitive cyclists want to gain an advantage by ingesting someone else’s poop, I say we all just go ahead and let them, for crying out loud. You think I am joking, but it’s right here in this Denver Post link, the URL of which ends with “poop-doping-cycling,” and the content of which concerns a powerful microbiome. The most important, perhaps, is Prevotella. Not typically found in American and European gut microbiomes, Prevotella is thought to play a role in enhancing muscle recovery. “In my sampling, only half of cyclists have Prevotella, but top racers always have it,” she told Bicycling. “It’s not even in 10 percent of non-athletes.” Peterson reports she hosts Prevotella in her own gut – but not naturally. In fact, she might be the first case of “poop doping,” thanks to a fecal transplant she administered herself three years ago. Her donor? Another elite athlete. That’s Lauren Peterson, a microbiologist and pro endurance mountain biker, who self-administered her first poop transplant from another elite athlete three years ago. She said she did it both to improve her athletic performance and to treat symptoms from the Lyme disease she contracted as a child. Fecal transplants are rare for reasons I assume are obvious, and some reasons that are not. In the U.S., they’re pretty much only done to treat extreme cases of a specific disease, Clostridium difficile, which causes chronic diarrhea. Peterson couldn’t find a doctor willing to do a poop transplant on her, so she did it herself. Sign up Like this article? Sign up for the The Big Lead email newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning. Success Thanks for signing up. You'll be waking up a little more awesome tomorrow. Whoa! Something went wrong. Try again? “I just did it at home,” she said of the February 2014 procedure. “It’s not fun, but it’s pretty basic.” Of course, you know what happens next. It was a miracle cure, her energy went through the roof, she started winning races. “I had more energy than I knew what to do with,” she told the same podcast last year. “Like everything just changed.” All because of somebody else’s poop. Whatever is to become of “poop doping,” these are the early stages of it. Peterson is pretty sure it’s going to catch on in cycling, and given everything we’ve learned about cycling culture over the last, oh … let’s just say the whole modern history of the sport, this seems like a good bet. Peterson imagined a day when you could accomplish the same thing just by taking a pill. That would certainly be called a Prevotella pill, but we’d all know it by its street name: The Poop Pill. And if that’s what cyclists really want to do, I say go ahead. I’m not going to talk you out of eating poop. That’s what your parents are for. ||||| RELATED: Gut Science is the Future of Hydration “I couldn’t find a doctor who could help me,” remembers Petersen. An interest in finding her own solutions had already propelled her towards a career in science, and while she was in grad school she had her gut sequenced by the American Gut Project*. The results showed that her gut microbiome is 96% gram-negative bacteria. While American Gut is purely a research project and results cannot be used as a diagnostic or to inform treatment, Petersen worried that some of these bacteria might be pathogenic, and could get into her blood stream. “I had no microbes to help me break down food, and I had picked up bugs in the lab where I was working because my system was so weak and susceptible.” But a few months after her transplant, Petersen was training five days a week (up from her usual two). She started enduro racing, and was soon placing and even winning in the pro field. “I wondered if I had gotten my microbiome from a couch potato, not a racer, if I would I be doing so well,” remembers Petersen. "Then it made me wonder what the best possible microbiome for a racer would be.” RELATED: How use of Probiotics Benefits Cyclists So, she started gathering stool samples from amateur and professional bike racers. She observed that Prevotella, a microorganism she received in her own transplant, is common amongst elite racers. “The more a person trains, the more likely they are to have Prevotella,” says Petersen. “In my sampling, only half of cyclists have Prevotella, but top racers always have it... it’s not even in 10% of non-athletes.” She is currently extracting Prevotella to understand what it is, and how to boost its abundance naturally or through a probiotic pill for athletes or aspiring athletes. What she already knows: Prevotella synthesize branch chain amino acids critical for muscle recovery. RELATED: How to Change Your Gut Bacteria to Lose Weight In addition to Prevotella, Petersen has identified an archeon named Methanobrevibacter smithii, or M. smithii, which she believes is also significant. Archeon are ancient microorganisms that have managed to survive for millions of years in hostile habitats like sulfur springs and deep in the ocean. They also live in the human digestive system, where they have specialized functions. Like Prevotella, Elite cyclists often have M. smithii, but it’s less common in amateur racers. That’s significant because M. smithii also appears to be a performance-enhancing microbe. What does it do? In science terms, it thrives on hydrogen and carbon dioxide and other bacterial waste products in the gut. In 12-year old boy terms, M. smithii eats the poop of bacteria. Yes, everybody poops, even bacteria, and it can have detrimental effects on your health. Namely: buildups of hydrogen and carbon dioxide can prevent the other bacteria in your gut from properly breaking down your food for fuel, which is bad news if you need calories for that sprint. So in 12-year-old boy terms, M. smithii is kind of like a bacterial pooper scooper. In science terms, it helps you turn the food you’re eating into energy more efficiently. For example, it boosts the ability of your gut bacteria to break down fiber from fruit into the short-chain fatty acids that are critical fuel for athletes. Petersen is still investigating how different foods can impact Prevotella, M. smithii, and the rest of the 120 species and 350 strains of microbes she’s identified in bike racers' guts. And she doesn’t know if those microorganisms need other ingredients to work. She also doesn’t know if Prevotella and M. smithii are differentiators for cyclists only, or also common in elite basketball players or gymnasts. So unfortunately it could be years, not months, before you’ll be able to buy performance-enhancing probiotics. (In the mean time, you can try top-rated Ultimate Flora for $29 on Amazon.) As for actual poop doping…. fecal transplants are available, but not in the U.S. And if you do find a clinic willing to do it, Petersen warns that "you can’t choose your donor, and it’s a risky procedure. As with any transplant, your immune system could reject what you get. It’s not something you should take lightly. I did a lot of research, and I took a risk for sure.” To be clear, Petersen in no way supports 'at home' fecal transplants— she simply thinks there's room to improve our probiotic and prebiotic knowledge. RELATED: Pro Cyclist Habits to Follow— or Ignore With the data collected from the Athlete Microbiome Project, Petersen is diving into research not just on performance enhancing probiotics for cyclists, but whether cyclist-derived gut microorganisms could boost the health of athletes and non-athletes alike, providing greater long-term benefits than the probiotics currently available. “What we’re learning is going to change a lot for cyclists as well as the rest of the population,” says Petersen. “If you get tested and you’re missing something, maybe in three years you’ll be able to get it through a pill instead of a fecal transplant. We’ve got data that no one has ever seen before, and we’re learning a lot. And I think I can say with confidence that bacterial doping— call it poop doping, if you must— is coming soon.” Want to get involved? If you’re a Pro or Cat 1 cyclist and want to share what’s in your gut, contact Lauren. *The American Gut Project does not provide information that should be used for clinical decisions.

– It probably won't ever become the focus of a hit sports movie—not even if they call it Poosiers—but "poop doping" is a real thing and could possibly give competitive cyclists an edge. That's according to microbiologist and mountain biker Lauren Petersen, who tells Bicycling magazine that after being sick for more than a decade with Lyme Disease, in 2014 she gave herself an at-home fecal transplant from somebody who happened to be another racer. Petersen says she not only felt much better after the stool transplant, she upped her training to five days a week and was winning races within months, though her experience proves correlation, not causation. "I wondered if I had gotten my microbiome from a couch potato, not a racer, if I would I be doing so well," says Petersen. Petersen—who says the procedure was "not fun" but "pretty basic"—says she started collecting stool samples from top racers and found that a microorganism called Prevotella was found in almost all top racers but less than 10% of the general population. She is now doing more research into Prevotella, which is believed to help muscle recovery. Other experts, however, are skeptical, telling the Washington Post that it is far too early to draw conclusions—and warning that "bacterial doping" at home could be very dangerous. (Petersen herself acknowledges the risk and isn't endorsing it.) At the Big Lead blog, Tully Corcoran argues that if poop doping is what cyclists really want to do, we should "all just go ahead and let them, for crying out loud." (Researchers believe fecal transplants could also help with weight loss.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.The moral considerations associated with doping are as complicated as the lexical challenges of the term itself. What “doping” is, precisely, and under what conditions it should be allowed are questions the sports world may never totally resolve. Caffeine is a drug that enhances performance, but it’s OK. Amphetamine is also a drug that enhances performance, but it is not. It’s all a matter of where you draw the line. So if competitive cyclists want to gain an advantage by ingesting someone else’s poop, I say we all just go ahead and let them, for crying out loud. You think I am joking, but it’s right here in this Denver Post link, the URL of which ends with “poop-doping-cycling,” and the content of which concerns a powerful microbiome. The most important, perhaps, is Prevotella. Not typically found in American and European gut microbiomes, Prevotella is thought to play a role in enhancing muscle recovery. “In my sampling, only half of cyclists have Prevotella, but top racers always have it,” she told Bicycling. “It’s not even in 10 percent of non-athletes.” Peterson reports she hosts Prevotella in her own gut – but not naturally. In fact, she might be the first case of “poop doping,” thanks to a fecal transplant she administered herself three years ago. Her donor? Another elite athlete. That’s Lauren Peterson, a microbiologist and pro endurance mountain biker, who self-administered her first poop transplant from another elite athlete three years ago. She said she did it both to improve her athletic performance and to treat symptoms from the Lyme disease she contracted as a child. Fecal transplants are rare for reasons I assume are obvious, and some reasons that are not. In the U.S., they’re pretty much only done to treat extreme cases of a specific disease, Clostridium difficile, which causes chronic diarrhea. Peterson couldn’t find a doctor willing to do a poop transplant on her, so she did it herself. Sign up Like this article? Sign up for the The Big Lead email newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning. Success Thanks for signing up. You'll be waking up a little more awesome tomorrow. Whoa! Something went wrong. Try again? “I just did it at home,” she said of the February 2014 procedure. “It’s not fun, but it’s pretty basic.” Of course, you know what happens next. It was a miracle cure, her energy went through the roof, she started winning races. “I had more energy than I knew what to do with,” she told the same podcast last year. “Like everything just changed.” All because of somebody else’s poop. Whatever is to become of “poop doping,” these are the early stages of it. Peterson is pretty sure it’s going to catch on in cycling, and given everything we’ve learned about cycling culture over the last, oh … let’s just say the whole modern history of the sport, this seems like a good bet. Peterson imagined a day when you could accomplish the same thing just by taking a pill. That would certainly be called a Prevotella pill, but we’d all know it by its street name: The Poop Pill. And if that’s what cyclists really want to do, I say go ahead. I’m not going to talk you out of eating poop. That’s what your parents are for. ||||| RELATED: Gut Science is the Future of Hydration “I couldn’t find a doctor who could help me,” remembers Petersen. An interest in finding her own solutions had already propelled her towards a career in science, and while she was in grad school she had her gut sequenced by the American Gut Project*. The results showed that her gut microbiome is 96% gram-negative bacteria. While American Gut is purely a research project and results cannot be used as a diagnostic or to inform treatment, Petersen worried that some of these bacteria might be pathogenic, and could get into her blood stream. “I had no microbes to help me break down food, and I had picked up bugs in the lab where I was working because my system was so weak and susceptible.” But a few months after her transplant, Petersen was training five days a week (up from her usual two). She started enduro racing, and was soon placing and even winning in the pro field. “I wondered if I had gotten my microbiome from a couch potato, not a racer, if I would I be doing so well,” remembers Petersen. "Then it made me wonder what the best possible microbiome for a racer would be.” RELATED: How use of Probiotics Benefits Cyclists So, she started gathering stool samples from amateur and professional bike racers. She observed that Prevotella, a microorganism she received in her own transplant, is common amongst elite racers. “The more a person trains, the more likely they are to have Prevotella,” says Petersen. “In my sampling, only half of cyclists have Prevotella, but top racers always have it... it’s not even in 10% of non-athletes.” She is currently extracting Prevotella to understand what it is, and how to boost its abundance naturally or through a probiotic pill for athletes or aspiring athletes. What she already knows: Prevotella synthesize branch chain amino acids critical for muscle recovery. RELATED: How to Change Your Gut Bacteria to Lose Weight In addition to Prevotella, Petersen has identified an archeon named Methanobrevibacter smithii, or M. smithii, which she believes is also significant. Archeon are ancient microorganisms that have managed to survive for millions of years in hostile habitats like sulfur springs and deep in the ocean. They also live in the human digestive system, where they have specialized functions. Like Prevotella, Elite cyclists often have M. smithii, but it’s less common in amateur racers. That’s significant because M. smithii also appears to be a performance-enhancing microbe. What does it do? In science terms, it thrives on hydrogen and carbon dioxide and other bacterial waste products in the gut. In 12-year old boy terms, M. smithii eats the poop of bacteria. Yes, everybody poops, even bacteria, and it can have detrimental effects on your health. Namely: buildups of hydrogen and carbon dioxide can prevent the other bacteria in your gut from properly breaking down your food for fuel, which is bad news if you need calories for that sprint. So in 12-year-old boy terms, M. smithii is kind of like a bacterial pooper scooper. In science terms, it helps you turn the food you’re eating into energy more efficiently. For example, it boosts the ability of your gut bacteria to break down fiber from fruit into the short-chain fatty acids that are critical fuel for athletes. Petersen is still investigating how different foods can impact Prevotella, M. smithii, and the rest of the 120 species and 350 strains of microbes she’s identified in bike racers' guts. And she doesn’t know if those microorganisms need other ingredients to work. She also doesn’t know if Prevotella and M. smithii are differentiators for cyclists only, or also common in elite basketball players or gymnasts. So unfortunately it could be years, not months, before you’ll be able to buy performance-enhancing probiotics. (In the mean time, you can try top-rated Ultimate Flora for $29 on Amazon.) As for actual poop doping…. fecal transplants are available, but not in the U.S. And if you do find a clinic willing to do it, Petersen warns that "you can’t choose your donor, and it’s a risky procedure. As with any transplant, your immune system could reject what you get. It’s not something you should take lightly. I did a lot of research, and I took a risk for sure.” To be clear, Petersen in no way supports 'at home' fecal transplants— she simply thinks there's room to improve our probiotic and prebiotic knowledge. RELATED: Pro Cyclist Habits to Follow— or Ignore With the data collected from the Athlete Microbiome Project, Petersen is diving into research not just on performance enhancing probiotics for cyclists, but whether cyclist-derived gut microorganisms could boost the health of athletes and non-athletes alike, providing greater long-term benefits than the probiotics currently available. “What we’re learning is going to change a lot for cyclists as well as the rest of the population,” says Petersen. “If you get tested and you’re missing something, maybe in three years you’ll be able to get it through a pill instead of a fecal transplant. We’ve got data that no one has ever seen before, and we’re learning a lot. And I think I can say with confidence that bacterial doping— call it poop doping, if you must— is coming soon.” Want to get involved? If you’re a Pro or Cat 1 cyclist and want to share what’s in your gut, contact Lauren. *The American Gut Project does not provide information that should be used for clinical decisions.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

(CNN) -- A recent search of the home of George Zimmerman's girlfriend uncovered five weapons, including an AR-15, and more than 100 rounds of ammunition, court documents filed Monday show. Zimmerman, acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin this year, was arrested last week at the home, which he shares with his girlfriend, on suspicion of his having pointed a shotgun at her. He was released on bail and has entered a plea of not guilty. A search of the home turned up three handguns, a 12-gauge shotgun, a rifle and 106 rounds of ammunition, including two AR-15 magazines, according to a search warrant. Three handgun holsters, a pack of gum, a religious pendant, a flashlight, a pocket knife, sanitizing wipe, a soft-sided gun case and a combination lock were also recovered during the search. At the time of his arrest, Zimmerman had two cell phones. An affidavit, filed Monday, says he told authorities he recorded the altercation with his girlfriend on his cell phone. The Florida judge that set his bail put numerous conditions on it: -- Zimmerman cannot go to two Florida addresses. -- He cannot have contact with the accuser, Samantha Scheibe. -- He cannot possess weapons. -- He must wear a monitoring device. -- He cannot travel outside Florida. Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the Sanford neighborhood where Zimmerman and Martin's father lived in February 2012. Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, had a confrontation with the unarmed African-American teen after calling police to report a suspicious person and he said he shot Martin, 17, in self-defense. Zimmerman was acquitted by a six-person jury in July on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges. The high-profile case sparked a heated nationwide discussion of race as well as debate over Florida's "stand your ground" law. CNN's Jason Hanna and Steve Almasy contributed to this report. ||||| Less than a week after he requested to be declared indigent, citing millions in debts, George Zimmerman swapped his public defender in his domestic violence case for a private attorney, his former lawyer confirmed. Zimmerman was represented by the 18th Judicial Circuit Public Defender's Office during a court appearance on Tuesday, the day after his domestic violence arrest. He was granted $9,000 bail and bonded out that day. However, Zimmerman has now elected to drop the Public Defender's Office and hire a south Florida private criminal defense attorney, Jayne Weintraub, to represent him, said his former public defender, Jeff Dowdy. Meanwhile, in a new motion, Zimmerman asks for the return of several items seized by police which he says are "not related to the [domestic violence] charges in any way and are not considered evidence" in the case. Those items: An Apple iPhone, a Blackberry cell phone, a small hand-held flashlight and a pocket knife. The motion was filed by a colleague of Dowdy's, apparently before Zimmerman switched to the private lawyer. Dowdy also entered a written not-guilty plea on Zimmerman's behalf, and waived his appearance at an arraignment scheduled for January. Zimmerman faces aggravated assault with a weapon and two other charges. Zimmerman, 30, was arrested a week ago, accused of pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, smashing a glass table, forcing her from her home and barricading himself inside during a domestic dispute. It's unclear how Zimmerman will afford private representation. In indigence paperwork last week, Zimmerman claimed to have $144, and owe $2.5 million in debt. Weintraub didn't return a call seeking comment. Weintraub has appeared on the cable networks HLN and CNN as a legal commentator, including commentary on Zimmerman's high-profile murder case in the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford. Zimmerman said he fired on the unarmed Miami Gardens teen in self-defense. The case sparked widespread protest when Zimmerman wasn't initially arrested, and again after his jury's not guilty verdict in July. [email protected] or 407-420-5171

– Cops found a hefty cache of weapons and ammo at the home George Zimmerman shared with his girlfriend after his arrest on domestic violence charges last week, CNN reports. A search turned up three handguns, a 12-gauge shotgun, an AR-15 rifle, and 106 rounds of ammunition, according to court documents filed yesterday. Zimmerman was ordered to relinquish his weapons as part of bail conditions, and he also has to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, stay away from his accuser, and remain in the state of Florida. Zimmerman isn't trying to get his guns back, but he has filed a motion for the return of an iPhone, a BlackBerry cell phone, a flashlight, and a pocket knife seized by police, reports the Orlando Sentinel. He has also dropped his public defender for a private lawyer, although Jayne Weintraub, who has appeared on CNN and HLN as a legal commentator, shouldn't count on getting paid anytime soon: Zimmerman filed paperwork last week saying he is $2.5 million in debt and has just $144 to his name.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.(CNN) -- A recent search of the home of George Zimmerman's girlfriend uncovered five weapons, including an AR-15, and more than 100 rounds of ammunition, court documents filed Monday show. Zimmerman, acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin this year, was arrested last week at the home, which he shares with his girlfriend, on suspicion of his having pointed a shotgun at her. He was released on bail and has entered a plea of not guilty. A search of the home turned up three handguns, a 12-gauge shotgun, a rifle and 106 rounds of ammunition, including two AR-15 magazines, according to a search warrant. Three handgun holsters, a pack of gum, a religious pendant, a flashlight, a pocket knife, sanitizing wipe, a soft-sided gun case and a combination lock were also recovered during the search. At the time of his arrest, Zimmerman had two cell phones. An affidavit, filed Monday, says he told authorities he recorded the altercation with his girlfriend on his cell phone. The Florida judge that set his bail put numerous conditions on it: -- Zimmerman cannot go to two Florida addresses. -- He cannot have contact with the accuser, Samantha Scheibe. -- He cannot possess weapons. -- He must wear a monitoring device. -- He cannot travel outside Florida. Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the Sanford neighborhood where Zimmerman and Martin's father lived in February 2012. Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, had a confrontation with the unarmed African-American teen after calling police to report a suspicious person and he said he shot Martin, 17, in self-defense. Zimmerman was acquitted by a six-person jury in July on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges. The high-profile case sparked a heated nationwide discussion of race as well as debate over Florida's "stand your ground" law. CNN's Jason Hanna and Steve Almasy contributed to this report. ||||| Less than a week after he requested to be declared indigent, citing millions in debts, George Zimmerman swapped his public defender in his domestic violence case for a private attorney, his former lawyer confirmed. Zimmerman was represented by the 18th Judicial Circuit Public Defender's Office during a court appearance on Tuesday, the day after his domestic violence arrest. He was granted $9,000 bail and bonded out that day. However, Zimmerman has now elected to drop the Public Defender's Office and hire a south Florida private criminal defense attorney, Jayne Weintraub, to represent him, said his former public defender, Jeff Dowdy. Meanwhile, in a new motion, Zimmerman asks for the return of several items seized by police which he says are "not related to the [domestic violence] charges in any way and are not considered evidence" in the case. Those items: An Apple iPhone, a Blackberry cell phone, a small hand-held flashlight and a pocket knife. The motion was filed by a colleague of Dowdy's, apparently before Zimmerman switched to the private lawyer. Dowdy also entered a written not-guilty plea on Zimmerman's behalf, and waived his appearance at an arraignment scheduled for January. Zimmerman faces aggravated assault with a weapon and two other charges. Zimmerman, 30, was arrested a week ago, accused of pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, smashing a glass table, forcing her from her home and barricading himself inside during a domestic dispute. It's unclear how Zimmerman will afford private representation. In indigence paperwork last week, Zimmerman claimed to have $144, and owe $2.5 million in debt. Weintraub didn't return a call seeking comment. Weintraub has appeared on the cable networks HLN and CNN as a legal commentator, including commentary on Zimmerman's high-profile murder case in the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford. Zimmerman said he fired on the unarmed Miami Gardens teen in self-defense. The case sparked widespread protest when Zimmerman wasn't initially arrested, and again after his jury's not guilty verdict in July. [email protected] or 407-420-5171

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

4. The 47 percent vote Democratic. In the leaked video that went viral this past week, Romney counts the 47 percent as people who will vote for President Obama “no matter what.” There is no direct way to match people’s tax records and voting habits, so we have only circumstantial evidence on how the 47 percent votes — but they certainly aren’t all shoo-ins for Obama. Let’s take low-income and elderly households, which are particularly likely to pay no federal income taxes. Low-income households do tend to vote Democratic — when they vote. But fewer than half of individuals in households with incomes below $30,000voted in 2008, according to the census, compared with about 60 percent of people with higher incomes. On the other hand, Romney appears to hold a lead over Obama among elderly voters, a group that votes enthusiastically. 5. Tax increases are the only way to bring more of these households onto the tax rolls. Romney’s comments about the 47 percent raise the question: If too many Americans pay no federal income tax, how should we reduce that number? One strategy would be to cut back on tax benefits. The expansion of the child credit under President George W. Bush in 2001, for example, removed many households from the rolls. Allowing that expansion to expire at year’s end — one factor that could lead to falling off the “fiscal cliff” — would add many back. But few observers and almost no politicians endorse that idea or other changes, such as subjecting more Social Security benefits to taxation, that would have similar effects. But there is another way. The share of households paying no income tax is near record highs not only because of tax policy but also because of the struggling economy. Higher earnings, particularly for low- and moderate-income workers, would move more Americans into the income-tax-paying category. Indeed, projections show that the share of households paying no federal income tax will decline by more than one-fifth in the coming decade because of economic growth and inflation. That drop would be faster and steeper with a stronger, prolonged recovery, which would give more Americans the pleasure of paying federal income taxes. [email protected] William G. Gale is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center. Donald B. Marron, of the Urban Institute, is the Tax Policy Center’s director. Read more from Outlook: Five myths about Obama’s stimulus Five myths about the middle class Five myths about independent voters Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. ||||| 1. Forty-seven percent of Americans don’t pay taxes. The most pernicious misconception about people who don’t pay federal income taxes is that they don’t pay any taxes. That oft-heard claim ignores all the other taxes Americans encounter in their daily lives. Almost two-thirds of the 47 percent work, for example, and their payroll taxes help finance Social Security and Medicare. Accounting for this, the share of households paying no net federal taxes falls to 28 percent. And those aren’t the only other taxes they bear. According to economic research, the corporate income tax discourages domestic investment; that depresses wages, so workers are effectively paying some of the corporate tax. More directly, many households pay federal taxes on gasoline, beer and cigarettes. And then there are state and local sales, property and income taxes — all of which are often less progressive than the federal income tax. Putting all these together, a family of three with an income of $30,000 would owe no federal income tax (in fact, they would get money back). But they could easily pay more than $4,500, or 15 percent of their income, in taxes. 2. Members of the 47 percent will never pay federal income taxes. Politicians and commentators often talk about those who don’t pay income taxes as though they’re in a special club with lifetime membership. In fact, it’s a highly diverse group, some of whom move in and out from year to year. When they first join the workforce, for example, young people may not earn enough to pay federal income taxes. The same is true for many of the temporarily unemployed, working parents and entrepreneurs whose businesses experience a loss. But most of these people look forward to the day, perhaps in just a year or two, when their incomes will rise and they will join or rejoin the 53 percent of Americans who do pay federal income taxes. The reverse is true for many senior citizens: They may pay no federal income tax in retirement, but most did during their working years. 3. Many high-income people game the system to pay no income tax. 1 of 25 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Fact or fiction? View Photos A collection from Outlook’s popular Five Myths series. Caption A collection from Outlook’s popular Five Myths series. "[New Apple CEO Tim] Cook hasn’t stood still," writes Darrell Etherington in " Five Myths about Apple ." "Apple’s iPad mini, for instance, is risky because it may have lower-than-average gross margins, and it could end up stealing sales from the highly popular iPad, but it certainly shows a determination not to remain rooted in what has worked before." KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. Our jerry-rigged tax code leaves many Americans with a nagging sense that other people are exploiting loopholes to avoid taxes — and the rest of us have to make up the difference. Sadly, there’s an element of truth to that. But gimmickry by high-income taxpayers has essentially nothing to do with who does and doesn’t pay income taxes. Our colleagues at the Tax Policy Center estimate, for example, that households with cash incomes of $200,000 or more account for less than 0.1 percent of the 47 percent. The vast majority of people who pay no federal income tax have low earnings, are elderly or have children at home. They are exempt from the income tax because of features Congress added to the tax code, thanks to bipartisan efforts, to help these groups. For example, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both favored the earned-income tax credit (EITC), which has helped millions of families stave off poverty. About half of these households don’t pay federal income tax simply because their incomes are low. More than one-fifth are retirees who benefit from tax breaks for seniors, including an exemption for most Social Security benefits. And another one-seventh are working families with children whose income tax liability is eliminated because of the child tax credit, the EITC, or the child and dependent care credit. Together, these three groups of taxpayers account for almost 90 percent of the households that pay no federal income tax. 4. The 47 percent vote Democratic. In the leaked video that went viral this past week, Romney counts the 47 percent as people who will vote for President Obama “no matter what.” There is no direct way to match people’s tax records and voting habits, so we have only circumstantial evidence on how the 47 percent votes — but they certainly aren’t all shoo-ins for Obama. Let’s take low-income and elderly households, which are particularly likely to pay no federal income taxes. Low-income households do tend to vote Democratic — when they vote. But fewer than half of individuals in households with incomes below $30,000voted in 2008, according to the census, compared with about 60 percent of people with higher incomes. On the other hand, Romney appears to hold a lead over Obama among elderly voters, a group that votes enthusiastically. 5. Tax increases are the only way to bring more of these households onto the tax rolls. Romney’s comments about the 47 percent raise the question: If too many Americans pay no federal income tax, how should we reduce that number? One strategy would be to cut back on tax benefits. The expansion of the child credit under President George W. Bush in 2001, for example, removed many households from the rolls. Allowing that expansion to expire at year’s end — one factor that could lead to falling off the “fiscal cliff” — would add many back. But few observers and almost no politicians endorse that idea or other changes, such as subjecting more Social Security benefits to taxation, that would have similar effects. But there is another way. The share of households paying no income tax is near record highs not only because of tax policy but also because of the struggling economy. Higher earnings, particularly for low- and moderate-income workers, would move more Americans into the income-tax-paying category. Indeed, projections show that the share of households paying no federal income tax will decline by more than one-fifth in the coming decade because of economic growth and inflation. That drop would be faster and steeper with a stronger, prolonged recovery, which would give more Americans the pleasure of paying federal income taxes. [email protected] William G. Gale is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center. Donald B. Marron, of the Urban Institute, is the Tax Policy Center’s director. Read more from Outlook: Five myths about Obama’s stimulus Five myths about the middle class Five myths about independent voters Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

– Now that "the 47%" is officially a thing thanks to Mitt Romney's video, the Washington Post debunks some misconceptions about the group in its Five Myths feature, including: They pay no taxes: It's true that about 47% of Americans pay no federal income tax, but most of them pay plenty of other taxes. (Think payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, state taxes,etc.) A family of three that makes $30,000 wouldn't pay federal income tax, but it could lose 15% of that income to the others. Status never changes: The 47% isn't a "special club with lifetime membership." It's a fluid group, and people move in an out as their circumstances change. New grads may not pay, but they will when their incomes rise. Ditto with the unemployed when they find work. But when these people retire, they stop again. Click for the full list, including the misconception that the group votes Democrat as a bloc.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.4. The 47 percent vote Democratic. In the leaked video that went viral this past week, Romney counts the 47 percent as people who will vote for President Obama “no matter what.” There is no direct way to match people’s tax records and voting habits, so we have only circumstantial evidence on how the 47 percent votes — but they certainly aren’t all shoo-ins for Obama. Let’s take low-income and elderly households, which are particularly likely to pay no federal income taxes. Low-income households do tend to vote Democratic — when they vote. But fewer than half of individuals in households with incomes below $30,000voted in 2008, according to the census, compared with about 60 percent of people with higher incomes. On the other hand, Romney appears to hold a lead over Obama among elderly voters, a group that votes enthusiastically. 5. Tax increases are the only way to bring more of these households onto the tax rolls. Romney’s comments about the 47 percent raise the question: If too many Americans pay no federal income tax, how should we reduce that number? One strategy would be to cut back on tax benefits. The expansion of the child credit under President George W. Bush in 2001, for example, removed many households from the rolls. Allowing that expansion to expire at year’s end — one factor that could lead to falling off the “fiscal cliff” — would add many back. But few observers and almost no politicians endorse that idea or other changes, such as subjecting more Social Security benefits to taxation, that would have similar effects. But there is another way. The share of households paying no income tax is near record highs not only because of tax policy but also because of the struggling economy. Higher earnings, particularly for low- and moderate-income workers, would move more Americans into the income-tax-paying category. Indeed, projections show that the share of households paying no federal income tax will decline by more than one-fifth in the coming decade because of economic growth and inflation. That drop would be faster and steeper with a stronger, prolonged recovery, which would give more Americans the pleasure of paying federal income taxes. [email protected] William G. Gale is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center. Donald B. Marron, of the Urban Institute, is the Tax Policy Center’s director. Read more from Outlook: Five myths about Obama’s stimulus Five myths about the middle class Five myths about independent voters Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. ||||| 1. Forty-seven percent of Americans don’t pay taxes. The most pernicious misconception about people who don’t pay federal income taxes is that they don’t pay any taxes. That oft-heard claim ignores all the other taxes Americans encounter in their daily lives. Almost two-thirds of the 47 percent work, for example, and their payroll taxes help finance Social Security and Medicare. Accounting for this, the share of households paying no net federal taxes falls to 28 percent. And those aren’t the only other taxes they bear. According to economic research, the corporate income tax discourages domestic investment; that depresses wages, so workers are effectively paying some of the corporate tax. More directly, many households pay federal taxes on gasoline, beer and cigarettes. And then there are state and local sales, property and income taxes — all of which are often less progressive than the federal income tax. Putting all these together, a family of three with an income of $30,000 would owe no federal income tax (in fact, they would get money back). But they could easily pay more than $4,500, or 15 percent of their income, in taxes. 2. Members of the 47 percent will never pay federal income taxes. Politicians and commentators often talk about those who don’t pay income taxes as though they’re in a special club with lifetime membership. In fact, it’s a highly diverse group, some of whom move in and out from year to year. When they first join the workforce, for example, young people may not earn enough to pay federal income taxes. The same is true for many of the temporarily unemployed, working parents and entrepreneurs whose businesses experience a loss. But most of these people look forward to the day, perhaps in just a year or two, when their incomes will rise and they will join or rejoin the 53 percent of Americans who do pay federal income taxes. The reverse is true for many senior citizens: They may pay no federal income tax in retirement, but most did during their working years. 3. Many high-income people game the system to pay no income tax. 1 of 25 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Fact or fiction? View Photos A collection from Outlook’s popular Five Myths series. Caption A collection from Outlook’s popular Five Myths series. "[New Apple CEO Tim] Cook hasn’t stood still," writes Darrell Etherington in " Five Myths about Apple ." "Apple’s iPad mini, for instance, is risky because it may have lower-than-average gross margins, and it could end up stealing sales from the highly popular iPad, but it certainly shows a determination not to remain rooted in what has worked before." KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. Our jerry-rigged tax code leaves many Americans with a nagging sense that other people are exploiting loopholes to avoid taxes — and the rest of us have to make up the difference. Sadly, there’s an element of truth to that. But gimmickry by high-income taxpayers has essentially nothing to do with who does and doesn’t pay income taxes. Our colleagues at the Tax Policy Center estimate, for example, that households with cash incomes of $200,000 or more account for less than 0.1 percent of the 47 percent. The vast majority of people who pay no federal income tax have low earnings, are elderly or have children at home. They are exempt from the income tax because of features Congress added to the tax code, thanks to bipartisan efforts, to help these groups. For example, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both favored the earned-income tax credit (EITC), which has helped millions of families stave off poverty. About half of these households don’t pay federal income tax simply because their incomes are low. More than one-fifth are retirees who benefit from tax breaks for seniors, including an exemption for most Social Security benefits. And another one-seventh are working families with children whose income tax liability is eliminated because of the child tax credit, the EITC, or the child and dependent care credit. Together, these three groups of taxpayers account for almost 90 percent of the households that pay no federal income tax. 4. The 47 percent vote Democratic. In the leaked video that went viral this past week, Romney counts the 47 percent as people who will vote for President Obama “no matter what.” There is no direct way to match people’s tax records and voting habits, so we have only circumstantial evidence on how the 47 percent votes — but they certainly aren’t all shoo-ins for Obama. Let’s take low-income and elderly households, which are particularly likely to pay no federal income taxes. Low-income households do tend to vote Democratic — when they vote. But fewer than half of individuals in households with incomes below $30,000voted in 2008, according to the census, compared with about 60 percent of people with higher incomes. On the other hand, Romney appears to hold a lead over Obama among elderly voters, a group that votes enthusiastically. 5. Tax increases are the only way to bring more of these households onto the tax rolls. Romney’s comments about the 47 percent raise the question: If too many Americans pay no federal income tax, how should we reduce that number? One strategy would be to cut back on tax benefits. The expansion of the child credit under President George W. Bush in 2001, for example, removed many households from the rolls. Allowing that expansion to expire at year’s end — one factor that could lead to falling off the “fiscal cliff” — would add many back. But few observers and almost no politicians endorse that idea or other changes, such as subjecting more Social Security benefits to taxation, that would have similar effects. But there is another way. The share of households paying no income tax is near record highs not only because of tax policy but also because of the struggling economy. Higher earnings, particularly for low- and moderate-income workers, would move more Americans into the income-tax-paying category. Indeed, projections show that the share of households paying no federal income tax will decline by more than one-fifth in the coming decade because of economic growth and inflation. That drop would be faster and steeper with a stronger, prolonged recovery, which would give more Americans the pleasure of paying federal income taxes. [email protected] William G. Gale is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center. Donald B. Marron, of the Urban Institute, is the Tax Policy Center’s director. Read more from Outlook: Five myths about Obama’s stimulus Five myths about the middle class Five myths about independent voters Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Which cities show the most eco-friendly pride? In honor of Earth Day, T+L readers separate the composters from the posers to determine America’s greenest cities. San Francisco has a nationwide reputation for sustainable dining, but that’s not enough for many of its restaurants, which go to extra lengths to demonstrate their green practices. “I’ve been handed a two-page printout, detailing how a particular fish came to be on my table,” says Michael McColl, the Bay Area founder of Ecotourism-Newswire.com. Such attention to detail helps explain how San Francisco secured its spot among the top 10 of America’s Greenest Cities, according to the Travel + Leisure community. As part of the annual America’s Favorite Cities survey, readers ranked 35 metropolitan areas on a variety of travel-friendly qualities, from hotels to local microbrews and good wireless coverage. To determine the greenest cities, we tallied the results from three survey categories: cleanliness, pedestrian-friendliness and public transit, and great public parks, which offset that urban asphalt and improve air quality. The high-ranking cities support other green initiatives that benefit travelers as well as locals: in Denver, the Brown Palace Hotel uses water from its own artesian well. Minneapolis offers cheap, easy-access bike rentals. Then there’s Portland, OR, rated America’s No. 1 greenest city, where every day feels like Earth Day. One fourth of the city is shaded by tree canopy, and the ground itself features 288 parks. The Heathman Hotel, near light-rail and streetcar stops, completed a green overhaul and now even recycles “gently used” soap and shampoos, having them treated before sending them to area shelters. Other American cities, of course, are eco-friendly in ways that aren’t always readily obvious. In a Siemens 2011 study that measured CO2 emissions, land use, air quality, and environmental governance, San Francisco came out on top—the city currently recycles 78 percent of its waste—and New York City ranked in the top 3 for its efficient land use and mass transit. The Big Apple, however, didn’t crack the top 20 with Travel + Leisure voters, who were perhaps distracted by a rude welcome or subway stations in need of a good scrubbing. To be fair, the survey is based on readers’ perceptions, which can be skewed, and may not take into account recent improvements like New York’s expanding bike lanes and the High Line, a former rail track converted into an extraordinary park. So which did make the green grade with T+L’s community? Read on for America’s greenest cities—and share your opinions in the comments below. ||||| No. 6 Seattle In the No. 1 city for smart and tech-savvy locals, recycling isn’t just a passion—it’s the law for both households and businesses. Many local hotels take green practices one step further, whether it’s composting table scraps or offering free parking for guests driving hybrids. The Hyatt at Olive 8, near South Lake Union, earned LEED certification for features such as having the electricity automatically shut off when you’re not in your room. Meanwhile, you might score discounts on the top-ranked local coffee if you present the barista with your own refillable cup. See all the America’s Favorite Cities survey results!

– As part of the annual America's Favorite Cities survey, Travel + Leisure readers ranked 35 metropolitan areas on a variety of travel-friendly qualities, from cleanliness to great public parks, which offset that urban asphalt and improve air quality. Without further ado, the top 20 greenest cities in America: Portland: One-fourth of the city is shaded by tree canopy, and the ground itself features 288 parks—including the world’s smallest dedicated park, the 24-inch-long Mill Ends Park. Portland also ranked at the top of the survey for its mass transit and near the top for its groovy, offbeat locals, known for their DIY spirit and cycling culture. Savannah: The winner in the parks category is old-school green, famous for its quaint, walkable streets and its 22 tree-lined squares, which date back to 1733. Minneapolis/St. Paul: With 46 miles of city bikeways and 84 miles of off-street paths, Minneapolis is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the nation. If you’d rather stay inside, check out one of the many “green” restaurants. Denver: The Mile High City got high marks from voters for embracing nature: The outdoorsy residents ranked as the most athletic in the survey. You can keep up with the sporty locals and cut your fuel use by using the city’s B-Cycle program, where you can rent bicycles for just $8 a day. Chicago: The Windy City came in first place for its cool architecture—but the greenest view of the buildings may be from above. Chicago has more energy-efficient “green roofs” than any other US city, including lush, planted roofs on Soldier Field, O’Hare International Airport, and City Hall. See which other American cities did—and didn’t—make the top 20.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Which cities show the most eco-friendly pride? In honor of Earth Day, T+L readers separate the composters from the posers to determine America’s greenest cities. San Francisco has a nationwide reputation for sustainable dining, but that’s not enough for many of its restaurants, which go to extra lengths to demonstrate their green practices. “I’ve been handed a two-page printout, detailing how a particular fish came to be on my table,” says Michael McColl, the Bay Area founder of Ecotourism-Newswire.com. Such attention to detail helps explain how San Francisco secured its spot among the top 10 of America’s Greenest Cities, according to the Travel + Leisure community. As part of the annual America’s Favorite Cities survey, readers ranked 35 metropolitan areas on a variety of travel-friendly qualities, from hotels to local microbrews and good wireless coverage. To determine the greenest cities, we tallied the results from three survey categories: cleanliness, pedestrian-friendliness and public transit, and great public parks, which offset that urban asphalt and improve air quality. The high-ranking cities support other green initiatives that benefit travelers as well as locals: in Denver, the Brown Palace Hotel uses water from its own artesian well. Minneapolis offers cheap, easy-access bike rentals. Then there’s Portland, OR, rated America’s No. 1 greenest city, where every day feels like Earth Day. One fourth of the city is shaded by tree canopy, and the ground itself features 288 parks. The Heathman Hotel, near light-rail and streetcar stops, completed a green overhaul and now even recycles “gently used” soap and shampoos, having them treated before sending them to area shelters. Other American cities, of course, are eco-friendly in ways that aren’t always readily obvious. In a Siemens 2011 study that measured CO2 emissions, land use, air quality, and environmental governance, San Francisco came out on top—the city currently recycles 78 percent of its waste—and New York City ranked in the top 3 for its efficient land use and mass transit. The Big Apple, however, didn’t crack the top 20 with Travel + Leisure voters, who were perhaps distracted by a rude welcome or subway stations in need of a good scrubbing. To be fair, the survey is based on readers’ perceptions, which can be skewed, and may not take into account recent improvements like New York’s expanding bike lanes and the High Line, a former rail track converted into an extraordinary park. So which did make the green grade with T+L’s community? Read on for America’s greenest cities—and share your opinions in the comments below. ||||| No. 6 Seattle In the No. 1 city for smart and tech-savvy locals, recycling isn’t just a passion—it’s the law for both households and businesses. Many local hotels take green practices one step further, whether it’s composting table scraps or offering free parking for guests driving hybrids. The Hyatt at Olive 8, near South Lake Union, earned LEED certification for features such as having the electricity automatically shut off when you’re not in your room. Meanwhile, you might score discounts on the top-ranked local coffee if you present the barista with your own refillable cup. See all the America’s Favorite Cities survey results!

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts. Image taken: Feb. 10, 2010. Astronauts on the International Space Station have discovered a leak of ammonia coolant on their orbiting habitat, and NASA is looking into the problem, though it poses no immediate danger to the crew, officials said today (May 9). The space station uses chilled liquid ammonia to cool down the power systems on its eight giant solar array panels. A minor leak of this ammonia was first noticed in 2007, and NASA has been studying the issue ever since. In November 2012 two astronauts took a spacewalk to fix the problem, rewiring some coolant lines and installing a spare radiator due to fears the original radiator was damaged by a micrometeorite impact. At the time, those measures appeared to fix the problem, but today astronauts on the football field-size space station noticed a steady stream of frozen ammonia flakes leaking from the area of the suspect coolant loop in the Photovoltaic Thermal Control System (PVTCS). [Gallery: Building the International Space Station] "It is in the same area, but we don't know whether it's the same leak," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries of the Johnson Space Center in Houston told SPACE.com. Humphries said the agency was taking the leak seriously because it affects an important system — if they lose the ability to cool that particular solar array, it won't be able to generate power for the station. In fact, the leak has worsened to the point that Mission Control expects that particular loop to shut down within the next 24 hours. However, "the crew is in no danger," Humphries stressed. It's too soon to speculate on a possible spacewalk or other measure to deal with the issue, he added. Mission Control has been discussing the problem with the astronauts on the station throughout the afternoon. "What you guys have provided in the way of imagery and video has been just like gold to us on the ground," astronaut Doug Wheelock from Mission Control radioed to space station commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. "We are fairly confident that it's coming from the vicinity of the TCS." However, flight contollers noted they were still unable to pinpoint the leak's exact location. NASA engineers are reviewing plans to potentially move the station's robotic arm over to the area of the port truss, the scaffolding-like backbone of the station (the original leak was traced to the Port 6 truss). "Tomorrow we'll plan to get the arm in the game to see if we can better pinpoint the location of the leak," Wheelock said. Hadfield said he and his crewmates had noticed the rate of the leak varied depending on the orientation of the station with the sun, suggesting particular angles allowed the ammonia coolant to leak more quickly. Hadfield is in charge of the station's Expedition 35 crew, which also includes NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy, and Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko, Pavel Vinogradov, and Alexander Misurkin. He asked Mission Control to send the crew a summary of what they know about the problem, and the possible courses to take to address it, before their bedtime. "It would just be good for the six of us to know," Hadfield said. Today had otherwise been a relatively light day for the crew of the International Space Station, which had taken some time off to celebrate the Russian holiday Victory Day. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are due to depart the space station on Monday (May 13) to return to Earth after a roughly five-month stay. Three new crewmembers plan to launch on May 28 from Kazakhstan on a Russian spacecraft to take up residence on the orbiting outpost. Hadfield asked Wheelock if the leak, and resulting power loss from that solar array, could delay his planned undocking. "We don't see anything technically that we can't overcome with the undocking but we are still getting our arms fully around that issue," Wheelock responded, adding that they should have more information for the astronauts in the morning. Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com. ||||| If there's any phrase an astronaut never wants to mutter, it's "Houston, we have a problem." Calling from the International Space Station on Thursday evening, Commander Chris Hadfield did just that. Well, he didn't actually quote that excellent Tom Hanks movie, but he did make a distressing call down to mission control. The astronauts on board the ISS had noticed what they believe to be ammonium cooling fluid leaking from the hull. The fluid is used to cool the power systems that control the space station's eight solar array panels, meaning that a total failure would cripple the floating habitat's ability to generate power. But don't worry. Everything's going to be okay. NASA and Hadfield both say that the leak isn't putting the astronauts on the ISS in any immediate danger. The minor leak is actually not a new problem but an old headache that dates back to 2007. The ISS limped along for five years before astronauts fixed the problem on a space walk — or at least they thought they'd fixed it. Over the radio, Hadfield described the leak as "a very steady stream of flakes or bits" coming from the hull. (You can listen to the audio here.) "It is a serious situation, but between crew and experts on the ground, it appears to have been stabilized," Hadfield tweeted (from space!). "Tomorrow we find out for certain." So chill out, Earth. Commander Hadfield really doesn't want you to worry about him. About an hour after the scary radio call and subsequent scary tweets, Hadfield offered this, "A view to put the mind at ease." Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. Adam Clark Estes

– The International Space Station is leaking ammonia coolant used to maintain its solar-panel power gear, Space.com reports. NASA says astronauts are "in no danger," but the situation could affect the station's power capabilities. Crew members spotted the frozen ammonia leaking from from a coolant loop yesterday. A similar leak was observed in 2007, but a spacewalk last year was believed to have fixed it. The new leak "is in the same area, but we don't know whether it's the same leak," says a NASA rep. Experts are still trying to figure out the exact location of the leak. In the meantime, Commander Chris Hadfield has offered a somewhat reassuring tweet, picked up by the Atlantic Wire: "It is a serious situation, but between crew and experts on the ground, it appears to have been stabilized. Tomorrow we find out for certain."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts. Image taken: Feb. 10, 2010. Astronauts on the International Space Station have discovered a leak of ammonia coolant on their orbiting habitat, and NASA is looking into the problem, though it poses no immediate danger to the crew, officials said today (May 9). The space station uses chilled liquid ammonia to cool down the power systems on its eight giant solar array panels. A minor leak of this ammonia was first noticed in 2007, and NASA has been studying the issue ever since. In November 2012 two astronauts took a spacewalk to fix the problem, rewiring some coolant lines and installing a spare radiator due to fears the original radiator was damaged by a micrometeorite impact. At the time, those measures appeared to fix the problem, but today astronauts on the football field-size space station noticed a steady stream of frozen ammonia flakes leaking from the area of the suspect coolant loop in the Photovoltaic Thermal Control System (PVTCS). [Gallery: Building the International Space Station] "It is in the same area, but we don't know whether it's the same leak," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries of the Johnson Space Center in Houston told SPACE.com. Humphries said the agency was taking the leak seriously because it affects an important system — if they lose the ability to cool that particular solar array, it won't be able to generate power for the station. In fact, the leak has worsened to the point that Mission Control expects that particular loop to shut down within the next 24 hours. However, "the crew is in no danger," Humphries stressed. It's too soon to speculate on a possible spacewalk or other measure to deal with the issue, he added. Mission Control has been discussing the problem with the astronauts on the station throughout the afternoon. "What you guys have provided in the way of imagery and video has been just like gold to us on the ground," astronaut Doug Wheelock from Mission Control radioed to space station commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. "We are fairly confident that it's coming from the vicinity of the TCS." However, flight contollers noted they were still unable to pinpoint the leak's exact location. NASA engineers are reviewing plans to potentially move the station's robotic arm over to the area of the port truss, the scaffolding-like backbone of the station (the original leak was traced to the Port 6 truss). "Tomorrow we'll plan to get the arm in the game to see if we can better pinpoint the location of the leak," Wheelock said. Hadfield said he and his crewmates had noticed the rate of the leak varied depending on the orientation of the station with the sun, suggesting particular angles allowed the ammonia coolant to leak more quickly. Hadfield is in charge of the station's Expedition 35 crew, which also includes NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy, and Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko, Pavel Vinogradov, and Alexander Misurkin. He asked Mission Control to send the crew a summary of what they know about the problem, and the possible courses to take to address it, before their bedtime. "It would just be good for the six of us to know," Hadfield said. Today had otherwise been a relatively light day for the crew of the International Space Station, which had taken some time off to celebrate the Russian holiday Victory Day. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are due to depart the space station on Monday (May 13) to return to Earth after a roughly five-month stay. Three new crewmembers plan to launch on May 28 from Kazakhstan on a Russian spacecraft to take up residence on the orbiting outpost. Hadfield asked Wheelock if the leak, and resulting power loss from that solar array, could delay his planned undocking. "We don't see anything technically that we can't overcome with the undocking but we are still getting our arms fully around that issue," Wheelock responded, adding that they should have more information for the astronauts in the morning. Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com. ||||| If there's any phrase an astronaut never wants to mutter, it's "Houston, we have a problem." Calling from the International Space Station on Thursday evening, Commander Chris Hadfield did just that. Well, he didn't actually quote that excellent Tom Hanks movie, but he did make a distressing call down to mission control. The astronauts on board the ISS had noticed what they believe to be ammonium cooling fluid leaking from the hull. The fluid is used to cool the power systems that control the space station's eight solar array panels, meaning that a total failure would cripple the floating habitat's ability to generate power. But don't worry. Everything's going to be okay. NASA and Hadfield both say that the leak isn't putting the astronauts on the ISS in any immediate danger. The minor leak is actually not a new problem but an old headache that dates back to 2007. The ISS limped along for five years before astronauts fixed the problem on a space walk — or at least they thought they'd fixed it. Over the radio, Hadfield described the leak as "a very steady stream of flakes or bits" coming from the hull. (You can listen to the audio here.) "It is a serious situation, but between crew and experts on the ground, it appears to have been stabilized," Hadfield tweeted (from space!). "Tomorrow we find out for certain." So chill out, Earth. Commander Hadfield really doesn't want you to worry about him. About an hour after the scary radio call and subsequent scary tweets, Hadfield offered this, "A view to put the mind at ease." Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. Adam Clark Estes

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

The brand-new Twitter account belonging to the office of the First Lady posted a photo earlier today of Michelle Obama talking to some guy. You’re like, “Enough about that random guy already!” We know, we know! Michelle Obama—there’s just no other way to put this—got bangs. So, like, O.K., first things first: they obviously look great. Michelle Obama is a tremendously pretty person whose hair is one of her top-10 best physical attributes. It’s shiny and healthy and thick, so upping its prominence on her face is an excellent idea. The bangs are also short enough that they don’t obscure her face—the way mothers are always saying their daughters’ bangs do—which is a relief, since her lovely face also ranks amongst her top-10 best physical attributes. As for the bangs themselves: they’re less blunt and more feathery, which helps combat any appearance of hair heaviness. They’re also longer at the sides than in the direct center of the forehead—a flattering cut for most face shapes. In the taxonomy of bangs, their genealogical ancestry is like this: ||||| Unveiled, the First Fringe: Michelle Obama debuts 1970s-style haircut as she turns 49 What did Michelle Obama, who turned 49 on Thursday, get for her birthday? Apparently, a whole new hairdo' and Twitter account. The First Lady unveiled the White House fashion first last night - a 1970s-style fringe which shows she is clearly in touch with trends. The President's wife appears to be following the example of famous figures such as the Duchess of Cambridge, singer Beyonce and reality star Kim Kardashian with her new look. Using her new Twitter identity, @FLOTUS, the second tweet revealed her new blunt bob, with heavy bangs. Scroll down for video New year, new look: The First Lady unveiled her bangs on her 49th birthday last month via Twitter Dressed in a burnt-red, elbow-sleeved patterned jersey dress, she showed off her new hairstyle, also reminiscent of Katie Holmes' chop in 2008, when she met with Inaugural citizen co-chair David Hall earlier yesterday. Mrs Obama has always had shoulder length hair, but since her entry into the White House in 2008, she has so far preferred to keep her look loose and flowing - or tied back. Her new cut, sharper, more sophisticated, comes in the wake of supermodel Karlie Kloss' new bob, after she cut off seven inches of hair late last year. The New York Times coined this return to shorter hair, 'The Karlie,' last night. So far the response to Mrs Obama's new do' has been positive, with thousands of Twitter users agreeing in unison that they 'love' her new bangs. Loose and lovely: Mrs Obama has always had shoulder length hair, but since her entry into the White House in 2008, has so far preferred to keep her look loose and flowing Low-key glamour: Mrs Obama often paired pearls and day dresses with pulled back, wavy short hair In an age of the overused term 'style icon,' Mrs Obama proves again she is one of the few modern women to deserve it. In the past four years she has adeptly walked - usually in kitten heels or ballet flats - the line between directional fashionista and everywoman. 'Just like any woman, she wants to look pretty, and I think she's having fun with it. It must be fun to be a girl with a big White House closet,' said Kevan Hall, a Los Angeles-based designer that Mrs Obama has worn before. Traveling in style: The moment she's probably the most relaxed in her style is coming on and off Air Force One, where she would tie her hair back or put it in a headband Winning look: Michelle Obama in Narciso Rodriguez at the election night rally in Chicago on November 4 2008, her hair shoulder-length and loose She also makes 'conscious choices' about what she's going to wear, knowing that people will take note - and read into it, he says. 'Of course she thinks about it,' agrees InStyle's Foxman, 'but she isn't preoccupied by it. She thinks about it in the way that everyone else does.' ||||| Lawrence Jackson/White House First Lady Michelle Obama shows off her new ’do and sassy bangs Thursday at an Inauguration reception at White House. In the last few years alone, Obama has sported plenty of different hairstyles. What will it look like on Monday? First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated her 49th with birthday bangs Thursday. Mrs. O unveiled a chic, youthful new ’do and launched a new Twitter account, @FLOTUS, to mark the day — a birthdate she shares with Muhammad Ali, Betty White, Ben Franklin and Al Capone. Her bangtastic new coif, a sleek shoulder-length cut with thick, heavy bangs, previews her hotly anticipated Inauguration Day ensemble. PHOTOS: MICHELLE OBAMA -- FIRST LADY OF STYLE “Michelle looks beautiful with her new cut,” said celebrity hairstylist Oscar Blandi. “The bangs and bob style are feminine and flatter her. This is a classic look with a modern sensibility, and I think she looks gorgeous.” “Her bangs are right on trend, bangs are back with a softer edge. The bangs give her bob and update with a fresh crisp finish!” Jewel Samad/Getty Images Michael Buckner/Getty Images The First Lady’s office tweeted a photo of the Zac Posen-clad Mrs. O and her trendy new look on Thursday. Johnny Lavoy, a consulting hair expert with L'Oreal Paris consulting hair expert wanted to set the record straight: The First Lady is no stranger to forehead fringe. “She been wearing versions of a soft side swept bang for some time," he said. " Her new bold bang is both chic and modern, just like our First Lady.” Previously, the First Lady had sported loose curls, elegant up ’dos and sensible Mom-in-Chief blowouts. Twitter via @FLOTUS Beauty buffs and style experts are saying out with old look and in with the new. "She looks amazing! I love the way it frames her face and accentuates her eyes and her cheekbones," said Louise O'Connor, owner of Upper East Side salon OC61 Salon & Spa. "It gives her a softer, sexier look, and it's more youthful than her old hairdo. With the new term and the inauguration this weekend, it makes sense that she went with a fresh, fashion-forward to reinvigorate her fans." Want to get her look? Blow dry your hair straight toward your face using a big, round brush. Smooth frizz and flyaways by finishing off with a straightening iron, then use a product with slight hold. O'Connor likes Black 15 in1 Miracle Hair Treatment, which will also "enhance shine." Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images Chris Jackson/Getty Images Click for video

– Michelle Obama kicked off her new Twitter account (@FLOTUS) and her 49th birthday with a new hairdo yesterday, sending the Internet into a tizzy over her bangs. It's a departure for the first lady, who usually sports a loose semi-bob or pulls her hair back tightly. But what do fashionistas think? "Bangtastic," writes the New York Daily News, calling her new look "a chic, youthful new 'do." "We're loving Michelle's new look!" writes E! Online. "Super cute, Michelle O.!" is Vanity Fair's verdict, noting her bangs descend from a lineage that includes Brigitte Bardot and Taylor Swift. "In an age of the overused term 'style icon,' Mrs. Obama proves again she is one of the few modern women to deserve it," writes the Daily Mail.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.The brand-new Twitter account belonging to the office of the First Lady posted a photo earlier today of Michelle Obama talking to some guy. You’re like, “Enough about that random guy already!” We know, we know! Michelle Obama—there’s just no other way to put this—got bangs. So, like, O.K., first things first: they obviously look great. Michelle Obama is a tremendously pretty person whose hair is one of her top-10 best physical attributes. It’s shiny and healthy and thick, so upping its prominence on her face is an excellent idea. The bangs are also short enough that they don’t obscure her face—the way mothers are always saying their daughters’ bangs do—which is a relief, since her lovely face also ranks amongst her top-10 best physical attributes. As for the bangs themselves: they’re less blunt and more feathery, which helps combat any appearance of hair heaviness. They’re also longer at the sides than in the direct center of the forehead—a flattering cut for most face shapes. In the taxonomy of bangs, their genealogical ancestry is like this: ||||| Unveiled, the First Fringe: Michelle Obama debuts 1970s-style haircut as she turns 49 What did Michelle Obama, who turned 49 on Thursday, get for her birthday? Apparently, a whole new hairdo' and Twitter account. The First Lady unveiled the White House fashion first last night - a 1970s-style fringe which shows she is clearly in touch with trends. The President's wife appears to be following the example of famous figures such as the Duchess of Cambridge, singer Beyonce and reality star Kim Kardashian with her new look. Using her new Twitter identity, @FLOTUS, the second tweet revealed her new blunt bob, with heavy bangs. Scroll down for video New year, new look: The First Lady unveiled her bangs on her 49th birthday last month via Twitter Dressed in a burnt-red, elbow-sleeved patterned jersey dress, she showed off her new hairstyle, also reminiscent of Katie Holmes' chop in 2008, when she met with Inaugural citizen co-chair David Hall earlier yesterday. Mrs Obama has always had shoulder length hair, but since her entry into the White House in 2008, she has so far preferred to keep her look loose and flowing - or tied back. Her new cut, sharper, more sophisticated, comes in the wake of supermodel Karlie Kloss' new bob, after she cut off seven inches of hair late last year. The New York Times coined this return to shorter hair, 'The Karlie,' last night. So far the response to Mrs Obama's new do' has been positive, with thousands of Twitter users agreeing in unison that they 'love' her new bangs. Loose and lovely: Mrs Obama has always had shoulder length hair, but since her entry into the White House in 2008, has so far preferred to keep her look loose and flowing Low-key glamour: Mrs Obama often paired pearls and day dresses with pulled back, wavy short hair In an age of the overused term 'style icon,' Mrs Obama proves again she is one of the few modern women to deserve it. In the past four years she has adeptly walked - usually in kitten heels or ballet flats - the line between directional fashionista and everywoman. 'Just like any woman, she wants to look pretty, and I think she's having fun with it. It must be fun to be a girl with a big White House closet,' said Kevan Hall, a Los Angeles-based designer that Mrs Obama has worn before. Traveling in style: The moment she's probably the most relaxed in her style is coming on and off Air Force One, where she would tie her hair back or put it in a headband Winning look: Michelle Obama in Narciso Rodriguez at the election night rally in Chicago on November 4 2008, her hair shoulder-length and loose She also makes 'conscious choices' about what she's going to wear, knowing that people will take note - and read into it, he says. 'Of course she thinks about it,' agrees InStyle's Foxman, 'but she isn't preoccupied by it. She thinks about it in the way that everyone else does.' ||||| Lawrence Jackson/White House First Lady Michelle Obama shows off her new ’do and sassy bangs Thursday at an Inauguration reception at White House. In the last few years alone, Obama has sported plenty of different hairstyles. What will it look like on Monday? First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated her 49th with birthday bangs Thursday. Mrs. O unveiled a chic, youthful new ’do and launched a new Twitter account, @FLOTUS, to mark the day — a birthdate she shares with Muhammad Ali, Betty White, Ben Franklin and Al Capone. Her bangtastic new coif, a sleek shoulder-length cut with thick, heavy bangs, previews her hotly anticipated Inauguration Day ensemble. PHOTOS: MICHELLE OBAMA -- FIRST LADY OF STYLE “Michelle looks beautiful with her new cut,” said celebrity hairstylist Oscar Blandi. “The bangs and bob style are feminine and flatter her. This is a classic look with a modern sensibility, and I think she looks gorgeous.” “Her bangs are right on trend, bangs are back with a softer edge. The bangs give her bob and update with a fresh crisp finish!” Jewel Samad/Getty Images Michael Buckner/Getty Images The First Lady’s office tweeted a photo of the Zac Posen-clad Mrs. O and her trendy new look on Thursday. Johnny Lavoy, a consulting hair expert with L'Oreal Paris consulting hair expert wanted to set the record straight: The First Lady is no stranger to forehead fringe. “She been wearing versions of a soft side swept bang for some time," he said. " Her new bold bang is both chic and modern, just like our First Lady.” Previously, the First Lady had sported loose curls, elegant up ’dos and sensible Mom-in-Chief blowouts. Twitter via @FLOTUS Beauty buffs and style experts are saying out with old look and in with the new. "She looks amazing! I love the way it frames her face and accentuates her eyes and her cheekbones," said Louise O'Connor, owner of Upper East Side salon OC61 Salon & Spa. "It gives her a softer, sexier look, and it's more youthful than her old hairdo. With the new term and the inauguration this weekend, it makes sense that she went with a fresh, fashion-forward to reinvigorate her fans." Want to get her look? Blow dry your hair straight toward your face using a big, round brush. Smooth frizz and flyaways by finishing off with a straightening iron, then use a product with slight hold. O'Connor likes Black 15 in1 Miracle Hair Treatment, which will also "enhance shine." Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images Chris Jackson/Getty Images Click for video

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

An Iranian news agency claimed on Thursday that General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations wing, was behind the rescue of the Russian pilot downed in Syria. Soleimani was reported lightly injured earlier this week near Aleppo. After the pilot was downed by Turkey on Tuesday, “credible information was obtained that a number of special Turkish units had been sent to the scene to take the Russian pilot captive to blackmail Russia later,” the semi-official Fars News Agency reported, basing the claim on a report in the Persian-language version of the Russian Sputnik news agency. The Russian agency, in turn, quotes an unnamed Syrian officer. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up “While the Russians were planning for another operations to free the pilot immediately,” said Fars, “General Soleimani contacted them and proposed them that a special task force unit be formed of Hezbollah’s special forces and Syrian commandos who have been trained by Iran and are fully familiar with the geographical situation of the region to be tasked with the ground operations and Russia provide them with air cover and satellite intelligence.” The alleged operation to rescue the Russian pilot in Syria was carried out by eight Hezbollah fighters, 18 Syrian commandos and covered by Russian satellites and air force, the report continued. The team “saved the pilot after infiltrating 6km behind the enemy lines, killing the terrorists operating in there and destroying their hi-tech equipment,” it said. “Soleimani promised them to return the Russian pilot safe and sound; a promise that was kept in the end, according to the Syrian officer,” the report said. Moscow’s defense minister said Wednesday that Russian and Syrian special forces had freed the second pilot of a Russian warplane shot down by Turkey and he was now at a Russian air base in Syria. The first pilot was killed when fired at from the ground after the plane was hit. “The operation ended successfully. The second pilot has been brought to our base. He is alive and well,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said. The Fars News Agency further reported that “General Soleimani is fully healthy and is actively commanding operations in the frontline of the war against terrorists.” Soleimani was reported hurt in Syria on Sunday. A spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, Rameza Sharif, said Tuesday that Soleimani was “in perfect health and full of energy.” “He helps the Islamic resistance in Syria and Iraq,” Sharif added, according to SepahNews, the official site of the Revolutionary Guards. Last month, a US official said some 2,000 Iranian or Iranian-backed forces were participating in the regime’s Aleppo operations. Iran has not officially acknowledged sending troops to Syria, but says it has “advisers” on the ground assisting regime forces. Iran-backed Hezbollah also acknowledges its forces are fighting on the ground, and the presence of Iranian, Iraqi and Afghan “volunteers” has been documented. ||||| Damascus (AFP) - Syrian special forces launched an operation "behind enemy lines" to rescue the surviving crew member of a Russian warplane downed by Turkey, Syria's Al-Watan newspaper reported on Thursday. "Eleven members of an elite unit of the air force intelligence service and a (Russian-language) translator, led by an officer, infiltrated 3.5 kilometres (two miles) behind enemy lines in the Al-Atira region on Tuesday and recovered the airman," the pro-government newspaper said. Al-Atira is an area of Latakia province, around 12 kilometres (eight miles) from the border with Turkey. Syrian forces launched the operation after Turkey downed the Russian jet on Tuesday morning, forcing the two-man crew to eject over rebel-held territory. According to Al-Watan, the team set out in late morning from the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia, where Russian forces are concentrated. The plane's pilot had already been killed by rebel fire as he parachuted down but a Russian drone spotted navigator Konstantin Murakhtin in hiding on the ground. The "Russian drone communicated to Syrian special forces the navigator's location, as well as where the terrorist groups were," Al-Watan said, referring to the rebels. "He was spotted thanks to his GPS. It was a race against time because the terrorists were also looking for him." The paper said the special forces team used the codeword "Costa" for Konstantin, and the Syrian flag to identify themselves to the navigator as rescuers. It said the rescue team clashed with rebels during the 12-hour operation, but were able to recover Murakhtin, who was injured in the leg. Speaking to Russian state media on Wednesday, the navigator gave no details of his rescue, which the Russian military said involved its own special forces working alongside Syrian troops. "I feel good in general. The military doctors work miracles," he said, speaking at the Hmeimim base. "I am waiting impatiently to be released by the doctors so I can immediately return to service." Russia has not released the name of the slain pilot, although President Vladimir Putin has said he will posthumously be given Russia's highest award for valour, the Hero of Russia medal. His body is believed to still be in the hands of rebel forces in Latakia province. Murakhtin is also to be decorated along with soldiers involved in the rescue operation, including one Moscow has said was killed when his Mi-8 helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing after being hit by gunfire.

– How exactly did a Russian pilot make it out of enemy territory alive after his plane was shot down by Turkish jets? He was helped by the commander of foreign operations for Iran's Revolutionary Guards, according to an Iranian news agency. The Fars New Agency—citing a Russian agency, which quotes an unnamed Syrian officer—said on Thursday that "credible information was obtained that a number of special Turkish units had been sent to the scene to take the Russian pilot captive to blackmail Russia later," per the Times of Israel. So Iran's General Qassem Soleimani put forth a plan: He proposed that eight members of Hezbollah's Special Forces and 18 Syrian commandos trained by Iran move in on the ground, with Russia providing "air cover and satellite intelligence," per the agency. Russia agreed. The team "saved the pilot after infiltrating [about four miles] behind the enemy lines, killing the terrorists operating in there, and destroying their hi-tech equipment," the agency said. Syria's Al-Watan newspaper reported on Thursday that "11 members of an elite unit of the air force intelligence service" and a Russian translator recovered Konstantin Murakhtin two miles behind enemy lines in the Al-Atira region, about eight miles from the border with Turkey, after he was spotted hiding on the ground by a Russian drone, per AFP. "He was spotted thanks to his GPS. It was a race against time because the terrorists were also looking for him," the paper said. Murakhtin injured his leg during the 12-hour operation, but "I feel good in general," he told Russian state media on Wednesday. "I am waiting impatiently to be released by the doctors so I can immediately return to service."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.An Iranian news agency claimed on Thursday that General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations wing, was behind the rescue of the Russian pilot downed in Syria. Soleimani was reported lightly injured earlier this week near Aleppo. After the pilot was downed by Turkey on Tuesday, “credible information was obtained that a number of special Turkish units had been sent to the scene to take the Russian pilot captive to blackmail Russia later,” the semi-official Fars News Agency reported, basing the claim on a report in the Persian-language version of the Russian Sputnik news agency. The Russian agency, in turn, quotes an unnamed Syrian officer. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up “While the Russians were planning for another operations to free the pilot immediately,” said Fars, “General Soleimani contacted them and proposed them that a special task force unit be formed of Hezbollah’s special forces and Syrian commandos who have been trained by Iran and are fully familiar with the geographical situation of the region to be tasked with the ground operations and Russia provide them with air cover and satellite intelligence.” The alleged operation to rescue the Russian pilot in Syria was carried out by eight Hezbollah fighters, 18 Syrian commandos and covered by Russian satellites and air force, the report continued. The team “saved the pilot after infiltrating 6km behind the enemy lines, killing the terrorists operating in there and destroying their hi-tech equipment,” it said. “Soleimani promised them to return the Russian pilot safe and sound; a promise that was kept in the end, according to the Syrian officer,” the report said. Moscow’s defense minister said Wednesday that Russian and Syrian special forces had freed the second pilot of a Russian warplane shot down by Turkey and he was now at a Russian air base in Syria. The first pilot was killed when fired at from the ground after the plane was hit. “The operation ended successfully. The second pilot has been brought to our base. He is alive and well,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said. The Fars News Agency further reported that “General Soleimani is fully healthy and is actively commanding operations in the frontline of the war against terrorists.” Soleimani was reported hurt in Syria on Sunday. A spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, Rameza Sharif, said Tuesday that Soleimani was “in perfect health and full of energy.” “He helps the Islamic resistance in Syria and Iraq,” Sharif added, according to SepahNews, the official site of the Revolutionary Guards. Last month, a US official said some 2,000 Iranian or Iranian-backed forces were participating in the regime’s Aleppo operations. Iran has not officially acknowledged sending troops to Syria, but says it has “advisers” on the ground assisting regime forces. Iran-backed Hezbollah also acknowledges its forces are fighting on the ground, and the presence of Iranian, Iraqi and Afghan “volunteers” has been documented. ||||| Damascus (AFP) - Syrian special forces launched an operation "behind enemy lines" to rescue the surviving crew member of a Russian warplane downed by Turkey, Syria's Al-Watan newspaper reported on Thursday. "Eleven members of an elite unit of the air force intelligence service and a (Russian-language) translator, led by an officer, infiltrated 3.5 kilometres (two miles) behind enemy lines in the Al-Atira region on Tuesday and recovered the airman," the pro-government newspaper said. Al-Atira is an area of Latakia province, around 12 kilometres (eight miles) from the border with Turkey. Syrian forces launched the operation after Turkey downed the Russian jet on Tuesday morning, forcing the two-man crew to eject over rebel-held territory. According to Al-Watan, the team set out in late morning from the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia, where Russian forces are concentrated. The plane's pilot had already been killed by rebel fire as he parachuted down but a Russian drone spotted navigator Konstantin Murakhtin in hiding on the ground. The "Russian drone communicated to Syrian special forces the navigator's location, as well as where the terrorist groups were," Al-Watan said, referring to the rebels. "He was spotted thanks to his GPS. It was a race against time because the terrorists were also looking for him." The paper said the special forces team used the codeword "Costa" for Konstantin, and the Syrian flag to identify themselves to the navigator as rescuers. It said the rescue team clashed with rebels during the 12-hour operation, but were able to recover Murakhtin, who was injured in the leg. Speaking to Russian state media on Wednesday, the navigator gave no details of his rescue, which the Russian military said involved its own special forces working alongside Syrian troops. "I feel good in general. The military doctors work miracles," he said, speaking at the Hmeimim base. "I am waiting impatiently to be released by the doctors so I can immediately return to service." Russia has not released the name of the slain pilot, although President Vladimir Putin has said he will posthumously be given Russia's highest award for valour, the Hero of Russia medal. His body is believed to still be in the hands of rebel forces in Latakia province. Murakhtin is also to be decorated along with soldiers involved in the rescue operation, including one Moscow has said was killed when his Mi-8 helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing after being hit by gunfire.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

A school shooting in Perry Hall, Md., leaves one student critically hurt. It happened in the school cafeteria on the first day of class. News4's Pat Collins was on campus with the dramatic story of how the suspect was stopped. (Published Monday, Aug. 27, 2012) The father of a 15-year-old student who police say shot another student at a Baltimore County high school on the first day of classes says his son was bullied. The father spoke to a reporter at his home Monday evening and said his son was the shooter. The Associated Press is not identifying the teen or his family because he is a juvenile and has not been charged. Student Shot on First Day of Classes at Maryland High School A woman who was also at the home and said she was related to the father, gave the following statement on the family's behalf: "We are horrified. We did not see this coming and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and the victim's family." When asked about a motive for the shooting, the father indicated his son had been bullied. He gave no further details. A 17-year-old male student at Perry Hall High School was shot in the school's cafeteria about 10:45 a.m. He was flown to the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma unit, where he remained in critical condition Monday evening. The suspect was arrested shortly after the shooting. Police believe he acted alone and fired randomly. The suspect is also a student at the school. When the shooter took out a shotgun he had hidden and shot the 17-year-old, teachers and a school resource officer immediately rushed him, Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson said at a news conference Monday afternoon. The first shot may have thrown off the shooter's balance, police said, but a second shot that didn't hit anyone was fired as he was being subdued, News4's Pat Collins reported. Jordan Coates, a 17-year-old student who was in the cafeteria at the time of the shooting, said he watched teachers, including guidance counselor Jesse Wasmer, pin the student against a vending machine. “My back was to the door. I heard a pop and thought it was a bag because people do that, but then I heard another one,” Coates told The Associated Press. “And I turned around and a teacher had a kid pinned up against the vending machine, and I saw the barrel, and another shot goes off and people just start running.” Coates credited Wasmer with helping to stop the shooting, and numerous students took to Twitter to thank him. “He grabbed the gun from the kid and got him” until other teachers came over, Coates said. “We have some heroic and brave faculty members,” Schools Superintendent Dallas Dance said. “They responded very quickly to minimize damage.” Seth Warner, a youth pastor at the Faith Fellowship Church across from the high school who graduated in 1999 with Wasmer, said he was not surprised to hear that the guidance counselor had intervened. He described Wasmer as “not big, but built.” “I knew that if anyone could take him down, it would be Jesse,” Warner said. Cathy Le, 15, said students were panicking as they tried to find out what was happening. They texted and called each other frantically as they were locked in their classrooms for more than an hour, she said. WJZ-TV showed video of a shirtless male with his hands behind his back being put into a police cruiser. Several other students suffered what police called "minor, non-shooting injuries." The building was evacuated after the incident. Students were being escorted to the Perry Hall Shopping Center, where parents were able to meet them. Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger said it was too early to know what charges the shooter would face. Police said they would work with prosecutors to determine whether he would be charged as an adult. Detectives were interviewing the suspected shooter Monday afternoon, Baltimore County police spokeswoman Elise Armacost said. Officers spent several hours searching the school and found no other weapons or suspicious materials, she said. They are trying to determine how he got the gun into the school. Police planned to provide additional security when the school reopens with normal hours for students and staff Tuesday, and stress counselors were called in to work with students, faculty and staff. Gov. Martin O'Malley released a statement that read in part: "Today, on this first day of school for many students in our state, we’ve suffered a senseless act of violence. I’d like to thank the teachers and administrators for their courageous and life-saving actions. At this time, our thoughts and prayers are with the injured student and his family." Perry Hall, Md., is a middle-class community along the Interstate 95 corridor, northeast of Baltimore. Stay with News4 and NBCWashington.com for more information. Copyright Associated Press / NBC4 Washington ||||| A 15-year-old student has been charged as an adult with attempted first-degree murder in a shooting on the first day of classes at a Baltimore County High School. Robert Wayne Gladden, Jr., was also charged with first-degree assault and was being held without bail at the Baltimore County Detention Center, Baltimore County police said early Tuesday. The Associated Press is not identifying the teen or his family because he is a juvenile. Police plan to hold a news conference later Tuesday. Meanwhile, about 150 students turned out for a prayer vigil organized by local churches on the grounds of the school. Authorities say the student opened fire Monday at Perry Hall High School, allegedly getting off two shots and wounding a classmate before being rushed by teachers. The 17-year-old victim remained in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center on Monday evening, a hospital spokeswoman said. The suspect's father spoke to a reporter at his home that evening and said his son was the shooter. When asked about a motive for the shooting, the father indicated his son had been bullied. He gave no further details. A woman who was also at the home and said she was related to the father, gave the following statement on the family's behalf: "We are horrified. We did not see this coming and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and the victim's family." ||||| As police announced charges against a 15-year-old student accused of injuring a 17-year-old student in a shooting at Perry Hall High School on Monday, family members and students talked about what the suspected shooter was like. Read more: Student shot at Perry Hall High School; Suspect in custody The accused shooter was identified as 15-year-old Perry Hall sophomore Robert Gladden Jr., who lives with his mother on a secluded street north of White Marsh. He was charged as an adult Tuesday morning with attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault. A source close to the investigation described Gladden's demeanor as "unemotional" since he's been in police custody. His grandmother, Rea Gladden, said he's a good boy who holds in his emotions. She said he was in counseling because of the divorce of his parents, something that he took very hard. She said he spent this past summer being harassed by peers on social media. On his Facebook page Monday morning, where he uses a moniker "SuicidalSmile," Gladden wrote, "First day of school, last day of my life." Then, he used a phrase with an expletive about the world. "We are reviewing multiple social media sites. We're trying to reconstruct what was said, who knew what, who did what, so we will look at many, many social media sites to address that issue," Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson said. Police: No indication that bullying played a role According to people 11 News spoke with who know Gladden, he was bullied often. He was also described as very smart. However, police said Tuesday that, through interviews with Gladden, there was no indication that bullying played a role in the shooting. "We hung out when we were younger," one neighbor said. "They're all real nice people, always asking if we needed help with stuff. So, they were always good people." ||||| Charged as an adult in the Perry Hall High School shooting, 15-year-old Robert Wayne Gladden Jr. , was held without bond Tuesday as a portrait of a withdrawn and occasionally bullied student with a troubled home life emergedthrough interviews with classmates and court documents.The suspect was charged with attempted murder and assault in the cafeteria shooting on Monday, the first day of classes. He underwent a mental health evaluation Tuesday, and had been held at the Baltimore County Detention Center. In a brief statement, county prosecutors said he would not have a bail hearing Wednesday because he was at a medical facility.Gladden's lawyer, George Psoras Jr., cautioned against a rush to judgment, saying the bullying his client endured pushed him to a breaking point.Gladden's stepfather, with whom he lived along with his mother and older sister, was also arrested Monday after police searched their Kingsville home and found marijuana and firearms in the home. The stepfather, Andrew Eric Piper, 43, was previously convicted of grand theft, prohibiting him from possessing firearms, police said.The shotgun allegedly used in Monday's shooting, though, came from Gladden's father's home in Middle River, where the teenager sometimes stayed, police said.Gladden is "devastated" and "out of it," unable to comprehend the charges against him, Psoras said. Police interviewed him for hours without a lawyer on Monday and took a lengthy statement, Psoras said, claiming that authorities "usurped" the young man's will."Everybody needs to keep an open mind; this process is just beginning," Psoras said, asking outsiders to "give the Gladdens peace and some space as they deal with this family tragedy."According to charging documents, Gladden entered the school cafeteria with a shotgun and began shooting. He fired the first shot at a lunch table and struck Daniel Borowy , 17, in the back, police said. The victim remained in critical condition Wednesday afternoon at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he had been airlifted. Police said it didn't appear Gladden targeted Borowy.A deeper picture of the suspect emerged Tuesday as students returned to school under heavier security and after many attended a morning prayer vigil for Borowy. Friends and classmates described Gladden as increasingly alienated and downcast, someone whose long black hair and dark wardrobe made him "one of the weird kids" who got picked on at school, his friend Collin Asbury, 17, said Tuesday."He was just so mentally and psychologically injured," Asbury said of Gladden, adding that doesn't excuse violence. "When people act so harshly to someone for such a long period of time, it has an impact."Other students say Gladden seemed to turn inward, not talking much and tuning others out by putting his head down on his desk during classes. That was how Imaris Reyes remembers him spending some of their world history class Monday morning.About the only thing he said during class was in response to the teacher's question about how he'd like to be addressed, Reyes said. Bob or Rob, she recalled Gladden saying, adding that he didn't care.Still, the teacher worked to engage him, trying to recruit him as one of the students who gathered their classmates' work to submit to her. "We had a helper from each table," Reyes said. "[The teacher] told him to collect the papers."But Gladden didn't respond. Instead, she said, "he put his hair over his head and stared at the desk."Another student, Trent McCallum, a junior, said he noticed a change in Gladden last school year. He started wearing baggy black clothes and dying his hair black, and some students started to mock him, McCallum said."Something big changed in his life," McCallum said. "He was acting sad and he was lonely, but I think he had good in him."At 6:27 a.m. Mondayon a Facebook page in which Gladden lists his employer as "The Manson Family" and calls the Columbine shooters "inspirational people," he posted: "First day of school, last day of my life."Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson said Gladden took the school bus, carrying with him a Western Field double-barrel shotgun, 21 rounds of 16-gauge, 7.5 shot and a bottle of vodka. He went to his first- and second-period classes, then the cafeteria for lunch, Johnson said, first placing a black backpack with the shotgun, disassembled, in a nearby bathroom.Students said some kids were throwing food at Gladden in the cafeteria — and not for the first time, said Matt Pedata, 19, a senior who had an art class with him last year.

– Prosecutors have charged a 15-year-old with attempted first-degree murder and assault, and intend to try him as an adult in yesterday's shooting at Baltimore's Perry Hall School. Robert Wayne Gladden Jr. allegedly shot 17-year-old Daniel Borowy in the back in the cafeteria yesterday, before being tackled by school counselor Jesse Wasmer, the Baltimore Sun reports. "I turned around and a teacher had a kid pinned up against the vending machine," one student tells NBC Washington. "He grabbed the gun from the kid." Daniel is currently in critical condition at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, the AP reports. About 150 students showed up for a prayer vigil on the school grounds, some wearing shirts saying, "Pray for Daniel" and "Team Wasmer." Robert allegedly brought the 12-guage shotgun to school disassembled and hidden in his backpack, sources tell WBAL 11, and he had 20 rounds of ammunition. On his Facebook page, he'd written, "First day of school, last day of my life. [Expletive] the world." His father says he was bullied.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.A school shooting in Perry Hall, Md., leaves one student critically hurt. It happened in the school cafeteria on the first day of class. News4's Pat Collins was on campus with the dramatic story of how the suspect was stopped. (Published Monday, Aug. 27, 2012) The father of a 15-year-old student who police say shot another student at a Baltimore County high school on the first day of classes says his son was bullied. The father spoke to a reporter at his home Monday evening and said his son was the shooter. The Associated Press is not identifying the teen or his family because he is a juvenile and has not been charged. Student Shot on First Day of Classes at Maryland High School A woman who was also at the home and said she was related to the father, gave the following statement on the family's behalf: "We are horrified. We did not see this coming and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and the victim's family." When asked about a motive for the shooting, the father indicated his son had been bullied. He gave no further details. A 17-year-old male student at Perry Hall High School was shot in the school's cafeteria about 10:45 a.m. He was flown to the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma unit, where he remained in critical condition Monday evening. The suspect was arrested shortly after the shooting. Police believe he acted alone and fired randomly. The suspect is also a student at the school. When the shooter took out a shotgun he had hidden and shot the 17-year-old, teachers and a school resource officer immediately rushed him, Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson said at a news conference Monday afternoon. The first shot may have thrown off the shooter's balance, police said, but a second shot that didn't hit anyone was fired as he was being subdued, News4's Pat Collins reported. Jordan Coates, a 17-year-old student who was in the cafeteria at the time of the shooting, said he watched teachers, including guidance counselor Jesse Wasmer, pin the student against a vending machine. “My back was to the door. I heard a pop and thought it was a bag because people do that, but then I heard another one,” Coates told The Associated Press. “And I turned around and a teacher had a kid pinned up against the vending machine, and I saw the barrel, and another shot goes off and people just start running.” Coates credited Wasmer with helping to stop the shooting, and numerous students took to Twitter to thank him. “He grabbed the gun from the kid and got him” until other teachers came over, Coates said. “We have some heroic and brave faculty members,” Schools Superintendent Dallas Dance said. “They responded very quickly to minimize damage.” Seth Warner, a youth pastor at the Faith Fellowship Church across from the high school who graduated in 1999 with Wasmer, said he was not surprised to hear that the guidance counselor had intervened. He described Wasmer as “not big, but built.” “I knew that if anyone could take him down, it would be Jesse,” Warner said. Cathy Le, 15, said students were panicking as they tried to find out what was happening. They texted and called each other frantically as they were locked in their classrooms for more than an hour, she said. WJZ-TV showed video of a shirtless male with his hands behind his back being put into a police cruiser. Several other students suffered what police called "minor, non-shooting injuries." The building was evacuated after the incident. Students were being escorted to the Perry Hall Shopping Center, where parents were able to meet them. Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger said it was too early to know what charges the shooter would face. Police said they would work with prosecutors to determine whether he would be charged as an adult. Detectives were interviewing the suspected shooter Monday afternoon, Baltimore County police spokeswoman Elise Armacost said. Officers spent several hours searching the school and found no other weapons or suspicious materials, she said. They are trying to determine how he got the gun into the school. Police planned to provide additional security when the school reopens with normal hours for students and staff Tuesday, and stress counselors were called in to work with students, faculty and staff. Gov. Martin O'Malley released a statement that read in part: "Today, on this first day of school for many students in our state, we’ve suffered a senseless act of violence. I’d like to thank the teachers and administrators for their courageous and life-saving actions. At this time, our thoughts and prayers are with the injured student and his family." Perry Hall, Md., is a middle-class community along the Interstate 95 corridor, northeast of Baltimore. Stay with News4 and NBCWashington.com for more information. Copyright Associated Press / NBC4 Washington ||||| A 15-year-old student has been charged as an adult with attempted first-degree murder in a shooting on the first day of classes at a Baltimore County High School. Robert Wayne Gladden, Jr., was also charged with first-degree assault and was being held without bail at the Baltimore County Detention Center, Baltimore County police said early Tuesday. The Associated Press is not identifying the teen or his family because he is a juvenile. Police plan to hold a news conference later Tuesday. Meanwhile, about 150 students turned out for a prayer vigil organized by local churches on the grounds of the school. Authorities say the student opened fire Monday at Perry Hall High School, allegedly getting off two shots and wounding a classmate before being rushed by teachers. The 17-year-old victim remained in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center on Monday evening, a hospital spokeswoman said. The suspect's father spoke to a reporter at his home that evening and said his son was the shooter. When asked about a motive for the shooting, the father indicated his son had been bullied. He gave no further details. A woman who was also at the home and said she was related to the father, gave the following statement on the family's behalf: "We are horrified. We did not see this coming and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim and the victim's family." ||||| As police announced charges against a 15-year-old student accused of injuring a 17-year-old student in a shooting at Perry Hall High School on Monday, family members and students talked about what the suspected shooter was like. Read more: Student shot at Perry Hall High School; Suspect in custody The accused shooter was identified as 15-year-old Perry Hall sophomore Robert Gladden Jr., who lives with his mother on a secluded street north of White Marsh. He was charged as an adult Tuesday morning with attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault. A source close to the investigation described Gladden's demeanor as "unemotional" since he's been in police custody. His grandmother, Rea Gladden, said he's a good boy who holds in his emotions. She said he was in counseling because of the divorce of his parents, something that he took very hard. She said he spent this past summer being harassed by peers on social media. On his Facebook page Monday morning, where he uses a moniker "SuicidalSmile," Gladden wrote, "First day of school, last day of my life." Then, he used a phrase with an expletive about the world. "We are reviewing multiple social media sites. We're trying to reconstruct what was said, who knew what, who did what, so we will look at many, many social media sites to address that issue," Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson said. Police: No indication that bullying played a role According to people 11 News spoke with who know Gladden, he was bullied often. He was also described as very smart. However, police said Tuesday that, through interviews with Gladden, there was no indication that bullying played a role in the shooting. "We hung out when we were younger," one neighbor said. "They're all real nice people, always asking if we needed help with stuff. So, they were always good people." ||||| Charged as an adult in the Perry Hall High School shooting, 15-year-old Robert Wayne Gladden Jr. , was held without bond Tuesday as a portrait of a withdrawn and occasionally bullied student with a troubled home life emergedthrough interviews with classmates and court documents.The suspect was charged with attempted murder and assault in the cafeteria shooting on Monday, the first day of classes. He underwent a mental health evaluation Tuesday, and had been held at the Baltimore County Detention Center. In a brief statement, county prosecutors said he would not have a bail hearing Wednesday because he was at a medical facility.Gladden's lawyer, George Psoras Jr., cautioned against a rush to judgment, saying the bullying his client endured pushed him to a breaking point.Gladden's stepfather, with whom he lived along with his mother and older sister, was also arrested Monday after police searched their Kingsville home and found marijuana and firearms in the home. The stepfather, Andrew Eric Piper, 43, was previously convicted of grand theft, prohibiting him from possessing firearms, police said.The shotgun allegedly used in Monday's shooting, though, came from Gladden's father's home in Middle River, where the teenager sometimes stayed, police said.Gladden is "devastated" and "out of it," unable to comprehend the charges against him, Psoras said. Police interviewed him for hours without a lawyer on Monday and took a lengthy statement, Psoras said, claiming that authorities "usurped" the young man's will."Everybody needs to keep an open mind; this process is just beginning," Psoras said, asking outsiders to "give the Gladdens peace and some space as they deal with this family tragedy."According to charging documents, Gladden entered the school cafeteria with a shotgun and began shooting. He fired the first shot at a lunch table and struck Daniel Borowy , 17, in the back, police said. The victim remained in critical condition Wednesday afternoon at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he had been airlifted. Police said it didn't appear Gladden targeted Borowy.A deeper picture of the suspect emerged Tuesday as students returned to school under heavier security and after many attended a morning prayer vigil for Borowy. Friends and classmates described Gladden as increasingly alienated and downcast, someone whose long black hair and dark wardrobe made him "one of the weird kids" who got picked on at school, his friend Collin Asbury, 17, said Tuesday."He was just so mentally and psychologically injured," Asbury said of Gladden, adding that doesn't excuse violence. "When people act so harshly to someone for such a long period of time, it has an impact."Other students say Gladden seemed to turn inward, not talking much and tuning others out by putting his head down on his desk during classes. That was how Imaris Reyes remembers him spending some of their world history class Monday morning.About the only thing he said during class was in response to the teacher's question about how he'd like to be addressed, Reyes said. Bob or Rob, she recalled Gladden saying, adding that he didn't care.Still, the teacher worked to engage him, trying to recruit him as one of the students who gathered their classmates' work to submit to her. "We had a helper from each table," Reyes said. "[The teacher] told him to collect the papers."But Gladden didn't respond. Instead, she said, "he put his hair over his head and stared at the desk."Another student, Trent McCallum, a junior, said he noticed a change in Gladden last school year. He started wearing baggy black clothes and dying his hair black, and some students started to mock him, McCallum said."Something big changed in his life," McCallum said. "He was acting sad and he was lonely, but I think he had good in him."At 6:27 a.m. Mondayon a Facebook page in which Gladden lists his employer as "The Manson Family" and calls the Columbine shooters "inspirational people," he posted: "First day of school, last day of my life."Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson said Gladden took the school bus, carrying with him a Western Field double-barrel shotgun, 21 rounds of 16-gauge, 7.5 shot and a bottle of vodka. He went to his first- and second-period classes, then the cafeteria for lunch, Johnson said, first placing a black backpack with the shotgun, disassembled, in a nearby bathroom.Students said some kids were throwing food at Gladden in the cafeteria — and not for the first time, said Matt Pedata, 19, a senior who had an art class with him last year.

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Play Facebook Twitter Embed Sheriff: Trooper Shooting Suspect Is Running Out of Food 0:31 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Accused cop-killer Eric Frein appears to be surviving on cans of tuna and ramen noodles, according to police who seized a stash of food at one of his campsites in the Pennsylvania woods. State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said investigators think that the 31-year-old survivalist will soon run out of food, which may bring him out into the open as he searches for something to eat. "Because we continue to push Frein ... we believe he will be forced to search for food and shelter in other locations," Bivens said at a Friday afternoon news conference. Search teams sweeping the dense forest on the border of Pike and Monroe counties on Tuesday found a "campsite" that Frein apparently hastily left behind and seized a cluster of military-style packs, food, clothing, two pipe bombs and .380-caliber ammunition that matches the weapon used to shoot two troopers. Bivens said all of the items police have found, including soiled diapers and trash, were sent to crime labs and much of it tested positive for Frein's DNA. Frein, 31, a military buff, is accused of murdering state trooper Cpl. Bryon K Dickson II and wounding Trooper Alex T. Douglass during rifle attack on the barracks in Blooming Grove on Sept. 12. IN-DEPTH — William Angelucci and Tracy Connor ||||| BLOOMING GROVE TWP. — Eric Matthew Frein is leaving behind clothing, food, ammunition and other items as he tries to stay a step ahead of searchers who are scouring the rugged terrain near his Monroe County home, state police said. There have been three unconfirmed sightings of the accused cop killer this week in the main search area, including one in which investigators are placing a high level of confidence, Col. George Bivens said during a news conference Friday at the Blooming Grove Twp. Municipal Building. The 31-year-old suspect has been on the run since the Sept. 12 ambush at the Blooming Grove state police barracks that killed state police Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II, 38, Dunmore, and critically injured Trooper Alex T. Douglass, 31, Olyphant. On Tuesday, investigators discovered a remote campsite that appeared to have been abandoned “rather abruptly” by Mr. Frein, Col. Bivens said. Police seized the clothing and food, including tuna fish, Ramen noodles and about 90 rounds of ammunition for the .308-caliber rifle Mr. Frein is believed to have used in the shooting, he said. “I would surmise we pushed him out of there quickly,” Col. Bivens said. “I believe he would want these items and it makes life more difficult for him not to have these items.” The campsite is also where police discovered two homemade pipe bombs. Lt. Col. Bivens said the explosive devices are undergoing analysis, and police expect to be able to say more about them next week. Lt. Col. Bivens reiterated his belief that the search is putting increasing pressure on the self-taught survivalist, who may be seeking out Dumpsters for food and vacant homes and cabins for shelter. “He can’t stay concealed. ... He needs to eat. He needs to sleep. He needs to stay dry,” Lt. Col. Bivens said. He said the weather is starting to turn in favor of the search teams. The rain forecast for the area is expected to bring down leaves, making it easier to spot and pursue the fugitive. It is also going to make it more difficult for Mr. Frein to remain warm and dry, he said. Lt. Col. Bivens said Mr. Frein is making mistakes that police will eventually capitalize on to capture him. “I’m more confident than ever that he is stressed and we’re pushing him hard,” Lt. Col. Bivens said. “He’s made a number of significant mistakes in the course of this manhunt. I have no doubt he’ll make additional mistakes and we’ll capture him.” The most recent reported sighting of Mr. Frein was Thursday evening, with the last “high-level” sighting earlier in the week, Lt. Col. Bivens said. Although hunting has been banned in a 349-square-mile area in Monroe and Pike counties that includes the primary search area, any hunter who encounters Mr. Frein should try to get away and contact police, Lt. Col. Bivens said. Contact the writer: [email protected]; [email protected]

– Accused cop killer Eric Frein continues to elude authorities in the mountains of Pennsylvania, but police think his task just got a lot harder: He left behind a stash of tuna, ramen noodles, clothes, and ammo at a campsite, reports NBC News. “I would surmise we pushed him out of there quickly,” says State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens. “I believe he would want these items and it makes life more difficult for him not to have these items.” Police say Frein, who has survivalist training, will have to resort to searching dumpsters or abandoned cabins for food and shelter, reports the Scranton Times-Tribune. “He can’t stay concealed," says Bivens. "He needs to eat. He needs to sleep. He needs to stay dry." As fall settles in, Frein also is losing the cover of trees. Authorities, meanwhile, have banned hunting in an area of about 350 square miles in Pike and Monroe counties where the search is concentrated. The 31-year-old has been a fugitive since Sept. 12, when police say he killed one state trooper and wounded another in a sniper attack outside their barracks. (Previously, searchers found two functional pipe bombs in the woods.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Play Facebook Twitter Embed Sheriff: Trooper Shooting Suspect Is Running Out of Food 0:31 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Accused cop-killer Eric Frein appears to be surviving on cans of tuna and ramen noodles, according to police who seized a stash of food at one of his campsites in the Pennsylvania woods. State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said investigators think that the 31-year-old survivalist will soon run out of food, which may bring him out into the open as he searches for something to eat. "Because we continue to push Frein ... we believe he will be forced to search for food and shelter in other locations," Bivens said at a Friday afternoon news conference. Search teams sweeping the dense forest on the border of Pike and Monroe counties on Tuesday found a "campsite" that Frein apparently hastily left behind and seized a cluster of military-style packs, food, clothing, two pipe bombs and .380-caliber ammunition that matches the weapon used to shoot two troopers. Bivens said all of the items police have found, including soiled diapers and trash, were sent to crime labs and much of it tested positive for Frein's DNA. Frein, 31, a military buff, is accused of murdering state trooper Cpl. Bryon K Dickson II and wounding Trooper Alex T. Douglass during rifle attack on the barracks in Blooming Grove on Sept. 12. IN-DEPTH — William Angelucci and Tracy Connor ||||| BLOOMING GROVE TWP. — Eric Matthew Frein is leaving behind clothing, food, ammunition and other items as he tries to stay a step ahead of searchers who are scouring the rugged terrain near his Monroe County home, state police said. There have been three unconfirmed sightings of the accused cop killer this week in the main search area, including one in which investigators are placing a high level of confidence, Col. George Bivens said during a news conference Friday at the Blooming Grove Twp. Municipal Building. The 31-year-old suspect has been on the run since the Sept. 12 ambush at the Blooming Grove state police barracks that killed state police Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II, 38, Dunmore, and critically injured Trooper Alex T. Douglass, 31, Olyphant. On Tuesday, investigators discovered a remote campsite that appeared to have been abandoned “rather abruptly” by Mr. Frein, Col. Bivens said. Police seized the clothing and food, including tuna fish, Ramen noodles and about 90 rounds of ammunition for the .308-caliber rifle Mr. Frein is believed to have used in the shooting, he said. “I would surmise we pushed him out of there quickly,” Col. Bivens said. “I believe he would want these items and it makes life more difficult for him not to have these items.” The campsite is also where police discovered two homemade pipe bombs. Lt. Col. Bivens said the explosive devices are undergoing analysis, and police expect to be able to say more about them next week. Lt. Col. Bivens reiterated his belief that the search is putting increasing pressure on the self-taught survivalist, who may be seeking out Dumpsters for food and vacant homes and cabins for shelter. “He can’t stay concealed. ... He needs to eat. He needs to sleep. He needs to stay dry,” Lt. Col. Bivens said. He said the weather is starting to turn in favor of the search teams. The rain forecast for the area is expected to bring down leaves, making it easier to spot and pursue the fugitive. It is also going to make it more difficult for Mr. Frein to remain warm and dry, he said. Lt. Col. Bivens said Mr. Frein is making mistakes that police will eventually capitalize on to capture him. “I’m more confident than ever that he is stressed and we’re pushing him hard,” Lt. Col. Bivens said. “He’s made a number of significant mistakes in the course of this manhunt. I have no doubt he’ll make additional mistakes and we’ll capture him.” The most recent reported sighting of Mr. Frein was Thursday evening, with the last “high-level” sighting earlier in the week, Lt. Col. Bivens said. Although hunting has been banned in a 349-square-mile area in Monroe and Pike counties that includes the primary search area, any hunter who encounters Mr. Frein should try to get away and contact police, Lt. Col. Bivens said. Contact the writer: [email protected]; [email protected]

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Vice President Mike Pence fired up the crowd at Friday's March for Life in Washington, telling the pro-life throng their movement is succeeding. "Life is winning in America and today is a celebration in that progress," Pence said at the Washington Monument, before the march stepped off just after noon. "We’ve come to a historic moment in the cause of life and we must approach it with with compassion for every American. Life is winning in America because of you. "Let this movement be known for love," he added to thunderous applause. "Not anger. For compassion. Not confrontation." Looking forward to @March_for_Life tomorrow in the District. Everyone travel safely! See you there! — Benjamin Watson (@BenjaminSWatson) January 26, 2017 The 43rd annual event was the third major event in the nation’s capital this week, and drew activists from around the country. There was no immediate estimate of the crowd size. In addition to Pence, speakers included key adviser to President Trump Kellyanne Conway, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and others. Participants told Fox News getting to the event was a must. “There is no more important issue for me," said Amanda Fowley, 33, who traveled with her husband from Rhode Island and has attended every year since she was 13. “I am here marching to recognize the babies, of course. But I also march for the women and for the pain many of them go through after the abortion. So often they are told there are no consequences and that is not true. They are lied to about what happens after an abortion.” Morgan Hammer, 13, was attending her first march, and came with her classmates from Immaculate Conception, a Catholic school located west of St. Louis. Among her peers, she says the views on abortion are “mixed,” she said, adding that it is a topic that many of them openly discuss. “We are the next generation,” she said. “We represent the future of the [movement], so it is important to be here marching for life.” After a week of debate over crowd sizes at various events in the nation’s capital, organizers anticipated a large crowd. The speakers, who also included Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah and NFL star Benjamin Watson, and good weather, were likely to help. “Each of our speakers exemplifies this year’s theme, ‘the power of one’, in a beautiful way,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life. “Their words are sure to motivate the marchers, as well as the millions of pro-life Americans who will be watching, who dedicate themselves to restoring a culture of life in the United States.” Washington already hosted two major events in the last week that have generated debate over crowd sizes, the inauguration of President Trump one week ago and the “Women’s March on Washington" a day later. Both drew enormous crowds and were, for the most part, orderly. But Trump’s team got into a battle with much of the media over the size of his event’s crowd, and estimates for the women’s march varied, with some topping 1 million. The first March for Life drew an estimated 20,000 people, but in recent years, the event has exploded. An estimated 650,000 attended the 2013 event, although last year, a blizzard dumped two feet of snow on Washington and the crowd was much smaller. Pence was the first vice president or president ever to speak at the March for Life. “We are very pleased to welcome Vice President Mike Pence to speak at this year’s March for Life,” Mancini said. “Vice President Pence has been a friend and champion of the pro-life cause his entire career. Pro-life leaders, activists, volunteers and marchers will be thrilled to hear from Vice President Pence and are bound to leave the March for Life even more energized than when they came.” ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites.

– For the first time in the 43-year-long history of DC's annual March for Life, White House officials attended the event. Vice President Mike Pence promised the crowd Friday that "life is winning again in America," and noted that there is a "pro-life [majority]" in Congress. He said the outlook for the anti-abortion movement is better than it has been since Roe v. Wade, and promised that marchers would see action from President Donald Trump as soon as next week. That's when Trump plans to nominate someone to replace Antonin Scalia in the Supreme Court, and Pence said that the nominee would share Scalia's anti-abortion stance. Presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway also addressed the crowd, telling marchers, "This is a new day, a new dawn for life," as they chanted her name. She added that the Declaration of Independence guarantees a "right to life. It is a right. It is not a privilege. It is not a choice. It is God-given." The Fort Worth Star-Telegram notes that, though no former president or VP has ever attended the march, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush addressed marchers via video. Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Sen. Jodi Ernst, R-Iowa, also addressed this year's crowd, reports Fox News. There is no official estimate on the number of attendees yet.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Vice President Mike Pence fired up the crowd at Friday's March for Life in Washington, telling the pro-life throng their movement is succeeding. "Life is winning in America and today is a celebration in that progress," Pence said at the Washington Monument, before the march stepped off just after noon. "We’ve come to a historic moment in the cause of life and we must approach it with with compassion for every American. Life is winning in America because of you. "Let this movement be known for love," he added to thunderous applause. "Not anger. For compassion. Not confrontation." Looking forward to @March_for_Life tomorrow in the District. Everyone travel safely! See you there! — Benjamin Watson (@BenjaminSWatson) January 26, 2017 The 43rd annual event was the third major event in the nation’s capital this week, and drew activists from around the country. There was no immediate estimate of the crowd size. In addition to Pence, speakers included key adviser to President Trump Kellyanne Conway, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and others. Participants told Fox News getting to the event was a must. “There is no more important issue for me," said Amanda Fowley, 33, who traveled with her husband from Rhode Island and has attended every year since she was 13. “I am here marching to recognize the babies, of course. But I also march for the women and for the pain many of them go through after the abortion. So often they are told there are no consequences and that is not true. They are lied to about what happens after an abortion.” Morgan Hammer, 13, was attending her first march, and came with her classmates from Immaculate Conception, a Catholic school located west of St. Louis. Among her peers, she says the views on abortion are “mixed,” she said, adding that it is a topic that many of them openly discuss. “We are the next generation,” she said. “We represent the future of the [movement], so it is important to be here marching for life.” After a week of debate over crowd sizes at various events in the nation’s capital, organizers anticipated a large crowd. The speakers, who also included Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah and NFL star Benjamin Watson, and good weather, were likely to help. “Each of our speakers exemplifies this year’s theme, ‘the power of one’, in a beautiful way,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life. “Their words are sure to motivate the marchers, as well as the millions of pro-life Americans who will be watching, who dedicate themselves to restoring a culture of life in the United States.” Washington already hosted two major events in the last week that have generated debate over crowd sizes, the inauguration of President Trump one week ago and the “Women’s March on Washington" a day later. Both drew enormous crowds and were, for the most part, orderly. But Trump’s team got into a battle with much of the media over the size of his event’s crowd, and estimates for the women’s march varied, with some topping 1 million. The first March for Life drew an estimated 20,000 people, but in recent years, the event has exploded. An estimated 650,000 attended the 2013 event, although last year, a blizzard dumped two feet of snow on Washington and the crowd was much smaller. Pence was the first vice president or president ever to speak at the March for Life. “We are very pleased to welcome Vice President Mike Pence to speak at this year’s March for Life,” Mancini said. “Vice President Pence has been a friend and champion of the pro-life cause his entire career. Pro-life leaders, activists, volunteers and marchers will be thrilled to hear from Vice President Pence and are bound to leave the March for Life even more energized than when they came.” ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites.

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One U.S. refinery is shutting while management takes control of operations at six others after union workers walked out of the plants in the biggest strike since 1980. The most important business stories of the day. Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter. The United Steelworkers union that represents employees at more than 200 refineries, terminals, pipelines and chemical plants stopped work Sunday at nine sites, accounting for 10 percent of the country’s refining capacity, after contract negotiations fell apart. The union rejected five offers made by Royal Dutch Shell Plc on behalf of companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. since talks began Jan. 21. Tesoro Corp. is shutting half of its 166,000-barrel-a-day Martinez plant in California that wasn’t already idled for maintenance. Union leaders haven’t called a strike nationally since 1980, when a stoppage lasted three months. While only one of the nine plants has curbed production amid the stoppage, a full walkout of USW workers would threaten to disrupt as much as 64 percent of U.S. fuel output. Shell and union officials began negotiations amid the biggest collapse in oil prices since 2008. Refiners may cut operating rates “a little” during the strike, John Auers, executive vice president at Dallas-based Turner Mason & Co., said by phone Monday. “They won’t push the units as hard. The key will be to run them reliably and safely.” Health-Care Benefits The USW has been asking employers for pay increases, stronger rules to prevent fatigue and measures to keep union workers rather than contract employees on the job, Lynne Hancock, a union spokeswoman based in Nashville, Tennessee, said by phone on Monday. It’s also negotiating for better health-care benefits because workers are “paying too much” for deductibles and premiums, she said. United Steelworkers members do everything from operating units to performing maintenance to testing and analyzing samples in labs at U.S. refineries, Hancock said. The refineries on strike can produce 1.82 million barrels of fuel a day, data compiled by Bloomberg show. They span the U.S., from Tesoro’s plants in Martinez and Carson, California; and Anacortes, Washington, to Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s Catlettsburg complex in Kentucky to three sites in Texas, according to the USW’s statement. In Texas, Shell’s Deer Park complex, Marathon’s Galveston Bay plant and LyondellBasell Industries NV’s Houston facility are affected, according to the union. LyondellBasell activated its work-continuation plan, according to spokesman George Smalley on Sunday. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil rose $1.33, or 2.8 percent, to settle at $49.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday, erasing an earlier decline. Gasoline for March delivery rose 4.5 percent to $1.5446 a gallon, and the diesel contract for the same month gained 3.3 percent to $1.7575. Marathon Plants Brandon Daniels, a spokesman for Marathon, confirmed work stoppages at its Catlettsburg refinery and Galveston Bay plant and said the company “has plans in place to ensure the continued safe operation.” The walkout also includes Marathon’s Houston Green cogeneration plant in Texas and Shell’s Deer Park chemical plant. At Marathon’s 451,000-barrel-a-day Galveston Bay refinery, which the company bought from BP Plc in 2013, as many as 45 union workers were taking turns picketing in four-hour shifts. They wore green jackets and winter gear covering their faces, holding blue signs with “This Is An Unfair Labor Practice” scrawled across them in white lettering. David Jones, a 56-year-old pipefitter who has worked at the refinery for almost half his life, was at the union office a mile from the plant with other picketers getting his strike assignment Monday. He said many of the refinery’s supervisors have never worked its processors and other complex machinery before, or at least in many years. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the place isn’t running in a couple weeks,” Jones said. “It’s a very complicated facility. It’s not like getting in a car and driving away.” Martinez Shutting Tesoro is shutting process units at Martinez, Tina Barbee, a spokeswoman at the company’s headquarters in San Antonio, said by e-mail on Monday. The facility already had about half its processing capacity offline for maintenance. The company has “successfully transitioned and are operating” the Anacortes and Carson refineries, Barbee said. More refineries are standing by to join the sites on strike, according to two people familiar with the plan who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Shell remained “committed to resolving our differences with USW at the negotiating table and hope to resume negotiations as early as possible,” Ray Fisher, a spokesman for The Hague, Netherlands-based company, said by e-mail on Saturday. Shell activated a “contingency” plan to continue operations at its Deer Park refinery, Fisher said. Rolling Extensions Remaining USW-represented sites are operating under rolling, 24-hour contract extensions, according to the union. Refiners’ shares on the Standard & Poor’s 500 have more than doubled since the beginning of 2012, when the steelworkers last negotiated an agreement. U.S. fuel producers have been cashing in on the biggest-ever domestic oil boom, which has helped drive oil prices almost 50 percent lower in 2014. Gasoline in New York was at a premium of $15.55 a barrel to crude at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI contracts. That’s the highest profit from making the motor fuel since September. “There will be a knee-jerk reaction in gasoline and diesel prices because we don’t know how long this is going to be or how extended it might be,” Carl Larry, Houston-based director of oil and gas at Frost & Sullivan, said by phone Sunday. ||||| NEW YORK Feb 2 The last time U.S. oil workers went on strike in support of a nationwide pact, Jimmy Carter was president and KC and the Sunshine Band flew high in the Billboard chart with "Please Don't Go." As oil companies prepare to cope with strikes at nine U.S. refineries and chemical plants, accounting for about 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity, they can look to distant lessons from the three-month-long strike that started on Jan. 8, 1980. Then, plants continued to operate despite widespread picket lines by union members fighting for improved pay and benefits such as dental coverage. Much has changed in the industry over 35 years, but the companies are expected to use some of the same tactics as their counterparts in 1980, including calling on managers to don overalls and fill in for workers. In 1980, the companies also relied upon retired workers and people from other plants to run the refineries where strikes occurred, recalled Bob Landry, a retired refinery worker in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "Looking back now, we all have all our teeth when we retire. It was a good thing, you have to look at the long run," he said. On Sunday, union workers took to picket lines after the United Steelworkers union (USW) said Royal Dutch Shell Plc , the lead industry negotiator, halted talks over pay and conditions. Shell activated a strike contingency plan at its sprawling joint venture refinery and chemical plant in Deer Park, Texas, to keep operating normally, and other companies, like Tesoro Corp sprung into action at their own plants. Refinery workers in 1980 were represented by the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). Since then, the landscape has changed and unions have become less influential: many refineries have shutdown as oil production and processing trends in the U.S. have shifted. Others have expanded to become more efficient processors of crude. Free trade deals have loosened unions' grip. After a refinery's union membership voted in favor of the strike, 24-hour pickets were set up immediately, according to Donald Erlandson, who researched past strikes for a union local on the West Coast. "Picket pay was $25 a week," he wrote. "A comprehensive picket shift schedule was put together. The brothers at Allied Chemical assessed their dues an extra $20 a week to help support the effort." At the end of the strike, the union won a 5 percent pay raise nationally, plus an additional 52 cents for the first year with a 10.5 percent pay raise the second year. And they got their first dental plan. There have been other local work stoppages since then, and companies also came to the brink of strike as recently as 2012. Union workers at Tesoro Corp voted to allow a strike in the wake of difficult negotiations at four of its plants in May 2012. At the time, Tesoro CEO Greg Goff said its 166,000 barrel per day San Francisco Bay refinery in Martinez, California, would temporarily stop production but continue as a refined products terminal while replacement workers were trained. The refinery union locals ultimately reached agreements with the company, so the plans weren't tested. Canadian firm Husky Energy, where employees went on strike, did replace hourly workers with managers and other replacements. That plant also eventually reached an agreement with workers, and they returned. This time, Tesoro said it would continue operating its refineries through the strike, with the exception of its Martinez plant, which it said it would shut because maintenance work is currently underway. (Reporting By Jessica Resnick-Ault; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

– Oil workers across America started walking off the job at midnight yesterday in their first nationwide strike since Jimmy Carter was president. United Steelworkers union members are striking at nine refineries, accounting for more than 10% of US capacity, after rejecting five proposals for a new three-year contract, the BBC reports. A union spokesman says the industry is "the richest in the world," but companies are "too greedy to make a positive change in the workplace and they continue to value production and profit over health and safety, workers, and the community." The USW represents workers at more than 200 refineries, and a full walkout would affect almost two-thirds of US capacity, reports Bloomberg. Shell, the industry's lead negotiator, says it hopes to resume talks as soon as possible. The union's demands include bigger pay increases and better health coverage. Demands in the 1980 strike included dental coverage and increased pay, both of which workers received. "Looking back now, we all have all our teeth when we retire. It was a good thing, you have to look at the long run," a retired refinery worker in Louisiana tells Reuters. Analysts say that the strike could send oil prices even lower if it escalates, but for now, strike contingency plans have been implemented to keep some affected facilities operating.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.One U.S. refinery is shutting while management takes control of operations at six others after union workers walked out of the plants in the biggest strike since 1980. The most important business stories of the day. Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter. The United Steelworkers union that represents employees at more than 200 refineries, terminals, pipelines and chemical plants stopped work Sunday at nine sites, accounting for 10 percent of the country’s refining capacity, after contract negotiations fell apart. The union rejected five offers made by Royal Dutch Shell Plc on behalf of companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. since talks began Jan. 21. Tesoro Corp. is shutting half of its 166,000-barrel-a-day Martinez plant in California that wasn’t already idled for maintenance. Union leaders haven’t called a strike nationally since 1980, when a stoppage lasted three months. While only one of the nine plants has curbed production amid the stoppage, a full walkout of USW workers would threaten to disrupt as much as 64 percent of U.S. fuel output. Shell and union officials began negotiations amid the biggest collapse in oil prices since 2008. Refiners may cut operating rates “a little” during the strike, John Auers, executive vice president at Dallas-based Turner Mason & Co., said by phone Monday. “They won’t push the units as hard. The key will be to run them reliably and safely.” Health-Care Benefits The USW has been asking employers for pay increases, stronger rules to prevent fatigue and measures to keep union workers rather than contract employees on the job, Lynne Hancock, a union spokeswoman based in Nashville, Tennessee, said by phone on Monday. It’s also negotiating for better health-care benefits because workers are “paying too much” for deductibles and premiums, she said. United Steelworkers members do everything from operating units to performing maintenance to testing and analyzing samples in labs at U.S. refineries, Hancock said. The refineries on strike can produce 1.82 million barrels of fuel a day, data compiled by Bloomberg show. They span the U.S., from Tesoro’s plants in Martinez and Carson, California; and Anacortes, Washington, to Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s Catlettsburg complex in Kentucky to three sites in Texas, according to the USW’s statement. In Texas, Shell’s Deer Park complex, Marathon’s Galveston Bay plant and LyondellBasell Industries NV’s Houston facility are affected, according to the union. LyondellBasell activated its work-continuation plan, according to spokesman George Smalley on Sunday. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil rose $1.33, or 2.8 percent, to settle at $49.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday, erasing an earlier decline. Gasoline for March delivery rose 4.5 percent to $1.5446 a gallon, and the diesel contract for the same month gained 3.3 percent to $1.7575. Marathon Plants Brandon Daniels, a spokesman for Marathon, confirmed work stoppages at its Catlettsburg refinery and Galveston Bay plant and said the company “has plans in place to ensure the continued safe operation.” The walkout also includes Marathon’s Houston Green cogeneration plant in Texas and Shell’s Deer Park chemical plant. At Marathon’s 451,000-barrel-a-day Galveston Bay refinery, which the company bought from BP Plc in 2013, as many as 45 union workers were taking turns picketing in four-hour shifts. They wore green jackets and winter gear covering their faces, holding blue signs with “This Is An Unfair Labor Practice” scrawled across them in white lettering. David Jones, a 56-year-old pipefitter who has worked at the refinery for almost half his life, was at the union office a mile from the plant with other picketers getting his strike assignment Monday. He said many of the refinery’s supervisors have never worked its processors and other complex machinery before, or at least in many years. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the place isn’t running in a couple weeks,” Jones said. “It’s a very complicated facility. It’s not like getting in a car and driving away.” Martinez Shutting Tesoro is shutting process units at Martinez, Tina Barbee, a spokeswoman at the company’s headquarters in San Antonio, said by e-mail on Monday. The facility already had about half its processing capacity offline for maintenance. The company has “successfully transitioned and are operating” the Anacortes and Carson refineries, Barbee said. More refineries are standing by to join the sites on strike, according to two people familiar with the plan who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Shell remained “committed to resolving our differences with USW at the negotiating table and hope to resume negotiations as early as possible,” Ray Fisher, a spokesman for The Hague, Netherlands-based company, said by e-mail on Saturday. Shell activated a “contingency” plan to continue operations at its Deer Park refinery, Fisher said. Rolling Extensions Remaining USW-represented sites are operating under rolling, 24-hour contract extensions, according to the union. Refiners’ shares on the Standard & Poor’s 500 have more than doubled since the beginning of 2012, when the steelworkers last negotiated an agreement. U.S. fuel producers have been cashing in on the biggest-ever domestic oil boom, which has helped drive oil prices almost 50 percent lower in 2014. Gasoline in New York was at a premium of $15.55 a barrel to crude at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI contracts. That’s the highest profit from making the motor fuel since September. “There will be a knee-jerk reaction in gasoline and diesel prices because we don’t know how long this is going to be or how extended it might be,” Carl Larry, Houston-based director of oil and gas at Frost & Sullivan, said by phone Sunday. ||||| NEW YORK Feb 2 The last time U.S. oil workers went on strike in support of a nationwide pact, Jimmy Carter was president and KC and the Sunshine Band flew high in the Billboard chart with "Please Don't Go." As oil companies prepare to cope with strikes at nine U.S. refineries and chemical plants, accounting for about 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity, they can look to distant lessons from the three-month-long strike that started on Jan. 8, 1980. Then, plants continued to operate despite widespread picket lines by union members fighting for improved pay and benefits such as dental coverage. Much has changed in the industry over 35 years, but the companies are expected to use some of the same tactics as their counterparts in 1980, including calling on managers to don overalls and fill in for workers. In 1980, the companies also relied upon retired workers and people from other plants to run the refineries where strikes occurred, recalled Bob Landry, a retired refinery worker in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "Looking back now, we all have all our teeth when we retire. It was a good thing, you have to look at the long run," he said. On Sunday, union workers took to picket lines after the United Steelworkers union (USW) said Royal Dutch Shell Plc , the lead industry negotiator, halted talks over pay and conditions. Shell activated a strike contingency plan at its sprawling joint venture refinery and chemical plant in Deer Park, Texas, to keep operating normally, and other companies, like Tesoro Corp sprung into action at their own plants. Refinery workers in 1980 were represented by the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). Since then, the landscape has changed and unions have become less influential: many refineries have shutdown as oil production and processing trends in the U.S. have shifted. Others have expanded to become more efficient processors of crude. Free trade deals have loosened unions' grip. After a refinery's union membership voted in favor of the strike, 24-hour pickets were set up immediately, according to Donald Erlandson, who researched past strikes for a union local on the West Coast. "Picket pay was $25 a week," he wrote. "A comprehensive picket shift schedule was put together. The brothers at Allied Chemical assessed their dues an extra $20 a week to help support the effort." At the end of the strike, the union won a 5 percent pay raise nationally, plus an additional 52 cents for the first year with a 10.5 percent pay raise the second year. And they got their first dental plan. There have been other local work stoppages since then, and companies also came to the brink of strike as recently as 2012. Union workers at Tesoro Corp voted to allow a strike in the wake of difficult negotiations at four of its plants in May 2012. At the time, Tesoro CEO Greg Goff said its 166,000 barrel per day San Francisco Bay refinery in Martinez, California, would temporarily stop production but continue as a refined products terminal while replacement workers were trained. The refinery union locals ultimately reached agreements with the company, so the plans weren't tested. Canadian firm Husky Energy, where employees went on strike, did replace hourly workers with managers and other replacements. That plant also eventually reached an agreement with workers, and they returned. This time, Tesoro said it would continue operating its refineries through the strike, with the exception of its Martinez plant, which it said it would shut because maintenance work is currently underway. (Reporting By Jessica Resnick-Ault; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Commander of war in Afghanistan tells Senate panel that US forces had called in airstrike at Afghan request – ‘an admission of a war crime’ says MSF chief US special operations forces – not their Afghan allies – called in the deadly airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded. Shortly before General John Campbell, the commander of the US and Nato war in Afghanistan, testified to a Senate panel, the president of Doctors Without Borders – also known as Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) – said the US and Afghanistan had made an “admission of a war crime”. Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead. “Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires,” Campbell told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday morning. MSF hospital airstrike: who are the victims? Read more The airstrike on the hospital is among the worst and most visible cases of civilian deaths caused by US forces during the 14-year Afghanistan war that Barack Obama has declared all but over. It killed 12 MSF staff and 10 patients, who had sought medical treatment after the Taliban overran Kunduz last weekend. Three children died in the airstrike that came in multiple waves and burned patients alive in their beds. On Tuesday, MSF denounced Campbell’s press conference as an attempt to shift blame to the Afghans. “The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition,” said its director general, Christopher Stokes. Campbell did not explain whether the procedures to launch the airstrike took into account the GPS coordinates of the MSF field hospital, which its president, Joanne Liu, said were “regularly shared” with US, coalition and Afghan military officers and civilian officials, “as recently as Tuesday 29 September”. AC-130 gunships, which fly low, typically rely on a pilot visually identifying a target. It is also unclear where the US special operations forces were relative to the fighting, but Campbell has said that US units were “not directly engaged in the fighting”. Campbell instead said the hospital was “mistakenly struck” by US forces. “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility,” Campbell told US lawmakers, declaring that he wanted an investigation by his command to “take its course” instead of providing further detail. But Jason Cone, Doctors Without Borders’ US executive director, said Campbell’s shifting story underscored the need for an independent inquiry. “Today’s statement from General Campbell is just the latest in a long list of confusing accounts from the US military about what happened in Kunduz on Saturday,” Cone said. International criminal court must investigate bombing of Afghan hospital | Letters Read more “They are now back to talking about a ‘mistake’. A mistake that lasted for more than an hour, despite the fact that the location of the hospital was well known to them and that they were informed during the airstrike that it was a hospital being hit. All this confusion just underlines once again the crucial need for an independent investigation into how a major hospital, full of patients and MSF staff, could be repeatedly bombed.” Campbell suggested but did not say that the Afghans were taking fire from the Taliban from within the hospital grounds, a claim the Afghan government has explicitly made. MSF unequivocally denies that the hospital was a source of fire. It has also noted the precision of the strike that hit only the main hospital building and not its adjuncts. Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said that according to international humanitarian law, the critical question for determining if US forces committed a war crime was whether they had notified the hospital ahead of the strike if they understood the Taliban to be firing from the hospital. “Any serious violation of the law of armed conflict, such as attacking a hospital that is immune from intentional attack, is a war crime. Hospitals are immune from attack during an armed conflict unless being used by one party to harm the other and then only after a warning that it will be attacked,” O’Connell said. The US account has now shifted four times in four days. On Saturday, the US military said it did not know for certain that it had struck the hospital but that US forces were taking fire in Kunduz. On Sunday, it said that the strike took place in the “vicinity” of the hospital and suggested it had been accidentally struck. On Monday, Campbell said that the Afghans requested the strike and said US forces in the area were not “threatened”. On Tuesday, he clarified that US forces called in the airstrike themselves at Afghan request. Meanwhile, the defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said in a statement on Tuesday, that the Department of Defense “deeply regrets the loss of innocent lives that resulted from this tragic event”. Doctors Without Borders has demanded an independent inquiry, rejecting the three current investigations – by the US, Nato and the Afghans – as compromised by their partiality. “This attack cannot be brushed aside as a mere mistake or an inevitable consequence of war. Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on coalition forces. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime,” Liu said on Tuesday. In the past, the US has upbraided both allies and adversaries over the indiscriminate use of aerial strikes. On Thursday, the US defense secretary said Russia was pouring “gasoline on the fire” of the Syrian civil war after it launched a campaign of airstrikes against opponents of Moscow’s ally Bashar al-Assad. A day later, the National Security Council spokesman, Ned Price, said the White House was “deeply concerned” that its Saudi ally in the Yemen conflict had bombed a wedding party, something the US itself did in Yemen in 2013. When Israel shelled a UN school in Gaza housing thousands of displaced Palestinians in August 2014, a State Department spokesman said the US was “appalled” by the “disgraceful” attack. Addressing Tuesday’s committee hearing, Campbell confirmed that he has recommended to Obama that the US retain thousands of troops in Afghanistan beyond Obama’s presidency – reversing a plan to reduce the force to one focused on protecting the US embassy in Kabul. He argued for “strategic patience” in the longest war in US history, which has now stretched five years longer than the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The deadly American attack on a hospital in northern Afghanistan occurred despite "rigorous" U.S. military procedures designed to avoid such mistakes, the top commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan said Tuesday. U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the... (Associated Press) U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... (Associated Press) U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... (Associated Press) Gen. John F. Campbell also told a Senate committee that he thinks President Barack Obama should revise the current plan to reduce the U.S. force in Afghanistan at the end of 2016. The plan calls for cutting the force from 9,800 to about 1,000 embassy-based security. Campbell said he had provided his superiors with several options because conditions in Afghanistan have changed significantly since Obama approved that troop-cut plan in 2014. Testifying three days after the medical clinic strike that killed at least 22 people, Campbell said Afghan forces requested air support Saturday while engaged in combat with Taliban fighters in the city of Kunduz, communicating with U.S. special operations troops at the scene. Those U.S. forces were in contact with the AC-130 gunship that fired on the medical clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, he added. "To be clear, the decision to provide (airstrikes) was a U.S. decision, made within the U.S. chain of command," Campbell said. "The hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility." In his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Campbell said he could not provide more details about what happened, including who may have failed to follow procedures for avoiding attacks on hospitals. He said he must await the outcome of multiple investigations. Campbell had disclosed on Monday that the attack had been requested by Afghan troops. Anti-war protesters sat in the front row of Tuesday's hearing with red coloring, depicting blood, on their faces. They carried signs that read: "Healthcare not warfare," and "Kunduz victims: RIP." A woman who shouted "Bombing hospitals is a war crime! Stop the bombing now!" was escorted from the room. The chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., warned that those interfering with the hearing risked arrest. On troop levels, Campbell said the ability to train Afghan forces and conduct counterterrorism operations would be restricted if the number of U.S. troops were to drop to 1,000 by the end of next year. "If you go to just embassy only, our ability to do TAA (train, advise and assist) is very limited. Our ability to do CT (counterterror operations) is much more limited," Campbell said. He said the different options that he has provided to his superiors are for troop levels beyond a normal embassy presence. Asked if he thought the president should review his plan, Campbell said "Yes, sir." Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday the Pentagon is providing options to the White House and Obama will be making decisions about future force levels later this fall. Campbell has said the airstrike, now under investigation, was requested by Afghan forces who reported being under Taliban fire. It's unclear whether the clinic was targeted in error or whether U.S. military personnel followed procedure. They are required to verify that the target of a requested airstrike is valid before firing. Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, has said "there can be no justification for this horrible attack" and that it was critical to conduct "a full transparent independent investigation." Kunduz has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent days. A Taliban assault on Kunduz took Afghan authorities by surprise and embarrassed President Ashraf Ghani's administration. The Taliban, who attacked on multiple fronts, held the city for three days before a government counter-offensive began. Afghan forces have retaken Kunduz, an important city on the Tajikistan border, a hub for drug and gun smuggling to and from Central Asian countries. ___ Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report. ||||| WASHINGTON — The American commander in Afghanistan now believes that United States troops probably did not follow their own rules in calling in the airstrike that decimated a Doctors Without Borders hospital when no American and Afghan troops were in extreme danger, according to officials with direct knowledge of the general’s thinking. Under the rules, airstrikes are authorized to kill terrorists, protect American troops and help Afghans who request support in battles — like those in Kunduz, recently taken over by the Taliban — that can change the military landscape. The idea is to give troops leeway but keep Americans out of daily, open-ended combat. The Special Operations Forces most likely did not meet any of the criteria, the commander, Gen. John F. Campbell, has said in private discussions, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The Special Operations Forces also apparently did not have “eyes on” — that is, were unable to positively identify — the area to be attacked to confirm it was a legitimate target before calling in the strike, the officials said.

– Details continue to emerge about Saturday's bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, with the US military commander in Afghanistan testifying Tuesday that it was due to US directive. "To be clear, the decision to provide aerial fires was a US decision made within the US chain of command," Gen. John Campbell told the Senate Armed Services Committee, per the New York Times. "A hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility." But the nonprofit—also known by its French initials, MSF—wants to know why the official US story has had four incarnations since the airstrike and claims the US is simply trying blame the Afghans, the Guardian reports. "The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition," the MSF director said Tuesday. First the US claimed it wasn't sure it had struck the hospital, followed by a statement Sunday that the bombing—which killed at least 22, per the AP—was accidental. On Monday Campbell said it was the Afghans who requested the airstrike, while in Tuesday's testimony, he said the pilots of the US AC-130 gunship didn't have direct communication with Afghan forces, but with US special forces on the ground who called in the strike—an admission that has MSF fuming. "Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on coalition forces," MSF President Joanne Liu said Tuesday, a claim MSF denies. "These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime." Doctors Without Borders says it wants an impartial probe—i.e., not by the US, Afghanistan, or NATO, the Guardian notes. (It could be tough proving the bombing was a war crime.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Commander of war in Afghanistan tells Senate panel that US forces had called in airstrike at Afghan request – ‘an admission of a war crime’ says MSF chief US special operations forces – not their Afghan allies – called in the deadly airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded. Shortly before General John Campbell, the commander of the US and Nato war in Afghanistan, testified to a Senate panel, the president of Doctors Without Borders – also known as Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) – said the US and Afghanistan had made an “admission of a war crime”. Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead. “Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires,” Campbell told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday morning. MSF hospital airstrike: who are the victims? Read more The airstrike on the hospital is among the worst and most visible cases of civilian deaths caused by US forces during the 14-year Afghanistan war that Barack Obama has declared all but over. It killed 12 MSF staff and 10 patients, who had sought medical treatment after the Taliban overran Kunduz last weekend. Three children died in the airstrike that came in multiple waves and burned patients alive in their beds. On Tuesday, MSF denounced Campbell’s press conference as an attempt to shift blame to the Afghans. “The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition,” said its director general, Christopher Stokes. Campbell did not explain whether the procedures to launch the airstrike took into account the GPS coordinates of the MSF field hospital, which its president, Joanne Liu, said were “regularly shared” with US, coalition and Afghan military officers and civilian officials, “as recently as Tuesday 29 September”. AC-130 gunships, which fly low, typically rely on a pilot visually identifying a target. It is also unclear where the US special operations forces were relative to the fighting, but Campbell has said that US units were “not directly engaged in the fighting”. Campbell instead said the hospital was “mistakenly struck” by US forces. “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility,” Campbell told US lawmakers, declaring that he wanted an investigation by his command to “take its course” instead of providing further detail. But Jason Cone, Doctors Without Borders’ US executive director, said Campbell’s shifting story underscored the need for an independent inquiry. “Today’s statement from General Campbell is just the latest in a long list of confusing accounts from the US military about what happened in Kunduz on Saturday,” Cone said. International criminal court must investigate bombing of Afghan hospital | Letters Read more “They are now back to talking about a ‘mistake’. A mistake that lasted for more than an hour, despite the fact that the location of the hospital was well known to them and that they were informed during the airstrike that it was a hospital being hit. All this confusion just underlines once again the crucial need for an independent investigation into how a major hospital, full of patients and MSF staff, could be repeatedly bombed.” Campbell suggested but did not say that the Afghans were taking fire from the Taliban from within the hospital grounds, a claim the Afghan government has explicitly made. MSF unequivocally denies that the hospital was a source of fire. It has also noted the precision of the strike that hit only the main hospital building and not its adjuncts. Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said that according to international humanitarian law, the critical question for determining if US forces committed a war crime was whether they had notified the hospital ahead of the strike if they understood the Taliban to be firing from the hospital. “Any serious violation of the law of armed conflict, such as attacking a hospital that is immune from intentional attack, is a war crime. Hospitals are immune from attack during an armed conflict unless being used by one party to harm the other and then only after a warning that it will be attacked,” O’Connell said. The US account has now shifted four times in four days. On Saturday, the US military said it did not know for certain that it had struck the hospital but that US forces were taking fire in Kunduz. On Sunday, it said that the strike took place in the “vicinity” of the hospital and suggested it had been accidentally struck. On Monday, Campbell said that the Afghans requested the strike and said US forces in the area were not “threatened”. On Tuesday, he clarified that US forces called in the airstrike themselves at Afghan request. Meanwhile, the defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said in a statement on Tuesday, that the Department of Defense “deeply regrets the loss of innocent lives that resulted from this tragic event”. Doctors Without Borders has demanded an independent inquiry, rejecting the three current investigations – by the US, Nato and the Afghans – as compromised by their partiality. “This attack cannot be brushed aside as a mere mistake or an inevitable consequence of war. Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on coalition forces. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime,” Liu said on Tuesday. In the past, the US has upbraided both allies and adversaries over the indiscriminate use of aerial strikes. On Thursday, the US defense secretary said Russia was pouring “gasoline on the fire” of the Syrian civil war after it launched a campaign of airstrikes against opponents of Moscow’s ally Bashar al-Assad. A day later, the National Security Council spokesman, Ned Price, said the White House was “deeply concerned” that its Saudi ally in the Yemen conflict had bombed a wedding party, something the US itself did in Yemen in 2013. When Israel shelled a UN school in Gaza housing thousands of displaced Palestinians in August 2014, a State Department spokesman said the US was “appalled” by the “disgraceful” attack. Addressing Tuesday’s committee hearing, Campbell confirmed that he has recommended to Obama that the US retain thousands of troops in Afghanistan beyond Obama’s presidency – reversing a plan to reduce the force to one focused on protecting the US embassy in Kabul. He argued for “strategic patience” in the longest war in US history, which has now stretched five years longer than the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The deadly American attack on a hospital in northern Afghanistan occurred despite "rigorous" U.S. military procedures designed to avoid such mistakes, the top commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan said Tuesday. U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the... (Associated Press) U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... (Associated Press) U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... (Associated Press) Gen. John F. Campbell also told a Senate committee that he thinks President Barack Obama should revise the current plan to reduce the U.S. force in Afghanistan at the end of 2016. The plan calls for cutting the force from 9,800 to about 1,000 embassy-based security. Campbell said he had provided his superiors with several options because conditions in Afghanistan have changed significantly since Obama approved that troop-cut plan in 2014. Testifying three days after the medical clinic strike that killed at least 22 people, Campbell said Afghan forces requested air support Saturday while engaged in combat with Taliban fighters in the city of Kunduz, communicating with U.S. special operations troops at the scene. Those U.S. forces were in contact with the AC-130 gunship that fired on the medical clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, he added. "To be clear, the decision to provide (airstrikes) was a U.S. decision, made within the U.S. chain of command," Campbell said. "The hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility." In his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Campbell said he could not provide more details about what happened, including who may have failed to follow procedures for avoiding attacks on hospitals. He said he must await the outcome of multiple investigations. Campbell had disclosed on Monday that the attack had been requested by Afghan troops. Anti-war protesters sat in the front row of Tuesday's hearing with red coloring, depicting blood, on their faces. They carried signs that read: "Healthcare not warfare," and "Kunduz victims: RIP." A woman who shouted "Bombing hospitals is a war crime! Stop the bombing now!" was escorted from the room. The chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., warned that those interfering with the hearing risked arrest. On troop levels, Campbell said the ability to train Afghan forces and conduct counterterrorism operations would be restricted if the number of U.S. troops were to drop to 1,000 by the end of next year. "If you go to just embassy only, our ability to do TAA (train, advise and assist) is very limited. Our ability to do CT (counterterror operations) is much more limited," Campbell said. He said the different options that he has provided to his superiors are for troop levels beyond a normal embassy presence. Asked if he thought the president should review his plan, Campbell said "Yes, sir." Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday the Pentagon is providing options to the White House and Obama will be making decisions about future force levels later this fall. Campbell has said the airstrike, now under investigation, was requested by Afghan forces who reported being under Taliban fire. It's unclear whether the clinic was targeted in error or whether U.S. military personnel followed procedure. They are required to verify that the target of a requested airstrike is valid before firing. Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, has said "there can be no justification for this horrible attack" and that it was critical to conduct "a full transparent independent investigation." Kunduz has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent days. A Taliban assault on Kunduz took Afghan authorities by surprise and embarrassed President Ashraf Ghani's administration. The Taliban, who attacked on multiple fronts, held the city for three days before a government counter-offensive began. Afghan forces have retaken Kunduz, an important city on the Tajikistan border, a hub for drug and gun smuggling to and from Central Asian countries. ___ Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report. ||||| WASHINGTON — The American commander in Afghanistan now believes that United States troops probably did not follow their own rules in calling in the airstrike that decimated a Doctors Without Borders hospital when no American and Afghan troops were in extreme danger, according to officials with direct knowledge of the general’s thinking. Under the rules, airstrikes are authorized to kill terrorists, protect American troops and help Afghans who request support in battles — like those in Kunduz, recently taken over by the Taliban — that can change the military landscape. The idea is to give troops leeway but keep Americans out of daily, open-ended combat. The Special Operations Forces most likely did not meet any of the criteria, the commander, Gen. John F. Campbell, has said in private discussions, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The Special Operations Forces also apparently did not have “eyes on” — that is, were unable to positively identify — the area to be attacked to confirm it was a legitimate target before calling in the strike, the officials said.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

The suspect of killing a Navy man on the I-5 was believed to be involved in another shooting just minutes before. NBC 7's Mari Payton has more. (Published Monday, Oct. 29, 2018) The suspect identified Sunday in the murder of an active duty Navy sailor in Mountain View on Saturday was also involved another shooting minutes before, police said. Brandon Acuna, 21, was accused in the shooting death of Curtis Adams, 21, early Saturday morning, police said. Acuna was also involved in another shooting 10 minutes earlier near the 600 block of Boundary Street in Mount Hope, police said. He allegedly shot at a man who interrupted his attempt to break into the man's car, according to police. Navy Sailor Shot, Killed After Trying to Help Stranded Driver As the sailor approached the car, he was shot. NBC 7's Ramon Galindo has the details. (Published Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018) Police said Adams was driving southbound on Interstate 15 around 2:20 a.m. when he saw what he thought was a stranded driver near the northbound Interstate 5 on-ramp and pulled over to help. When Adams got out of his car and approached the stranded vehicle, he was shot, Lt. Anthony Dupree said. He was with his girlfriend at the time who quickly called 911. Adams was taken to UC San Diego Medical Center where he died. Navy Man Shot, Killed on I-15 in Mountain View A 21-year-old reportedly was just trying to help who he thought was a stranded driver. NBC 7's Ramon Galindo has more on the events that led to his death. (Published Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018) The vehicle Acuna was in sped off and he was taken into custody when California Highway Patrol spotted the car on northbound I-5, near 32nd Street and contacted SDPD. Acuna was booked into San Diego County Central Jail on charges of first-degree murder and second-degree burglary and held with no bail. Acuna has a long criminal history dating back to 2015 when he was 18 years old, according to court records. Records reveal Acuna has a history of misdemeanor offenses and show he was fined and sentenced to three years probation on Sept. 7, just six weeks before the fatal shooting. In July, Acuna pleaded guilty to creating a public nuisance. Last year, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of methamphetamine. And in September, 2015, he admitted he had driven on a suspended license, as part of a plea bargain in which prosecutors dropped a second charge of driving without a license. Each of those guilty pleas carried a three-year probation term, and fines totaling $1,450. It was unclear why Acuna shot Adams. The investigations into both incidents are ongoing, police said. Anyone with information about the incidents was urged to call the Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. ||||| Share This Article: Officers have arrested a man suspected of killing a good Samaritan sailor who pulled over on a freeway ramp to help him, police said Sunday. Support Times of San Diego's growth with a small monthly contribution Become a supporter Brandon Acuna, 21, was held on suspicion of shooting Curtis Adams, also 21, when Adams stopped to help who he thought was a stranded driver early Saturday morning, according to San Diego police Lt. Anthony Dupree. Adams’ girlfriend called police around 2:20 a.m. to report Adams had been shot on the transition ramp from southbound state Route 15 to northbound Interstate 5, Dupree said. The active duty sailor was believed to have been driving with his girlfriend when he noticed a stranded car on the ramp and stopped to help, according to Dupree. “The victim exited his vehicle and was immediately shot,” Dupree said. Adams was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The suspected killer was seen fleeing on I-5 in a white car. CHP officers later noticed a car matching the suspect vehicle’s description stopped on northbound I-5 near 32nd Street, Dupree said. Police headed to that location and detained the driver, identified as Acuna. The transition ramp where the shooting occurred was closed much of Saturday. Police asked anyone with information on the shooting to call San Diego Police Department homicide detectives at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. –City News Service Suspect Arrested In Killing of Active Duty Sailor Curtis Adams was last modified: by >> Subscribe to Times of San Diego’s free daily email newsletter! Click here Follow Us:

– There's no word on motive yet, just grim facts: Curtis Adams, a 21-year-old active-duty sailor pulled over after 2am Saturday to help what he perceived to be a stranded driver in Mountain View, Calif. San Diego police said the Good Samaritan was "immediately shot" upon exiting his car, reports the Times of San Diego. Police have arrested a suspect in the shooting: Brandon Acuna, 21. He faces charges of first-degree murder and second-degree burglary. NBC San Diego reports Adams was in the car with his girlfriend heading southbound on Interstate 15; she called 911 around 2:20am to report the shooting. The car Acuna was in promptly took off, and he was later apprehended when the California Highway Patrol sighted the car and alerted San Diego police. Police say that 10 minutes before allegedly shooting Adams, Acuna shot at a man in Mount Hope who saw him trying to break into his car. (Tragedy for these twins who tried to help a driver.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.The suspect of killing a Navy man on the I-5 was believed to be involved in another shooting just minutes before. NBC 7's Mari Payton has more. (Published Monday, Oct. 29, 2018) The suspect identified Sunday in the murder of an active duty Navy sailor in Mountain View on Saturday was also involved another shooting minutes before, police said. Brandon Acuna, 21, was accused in the shooting death of Curtis Adams, 21, early Saturday morning, police said. Acuna was also involved in another shooting 10 minutes earlier near the 600 block of Boundary Street in Mount Hope, police said. He allegedly shot at a man who interrupted his attempt to break into the man's car, according to police. Navy Sailor Shot, Killed After Trying to Help Stranded Driver As the sailor approached the car, he was shot. NBC 7's Ramon Galindo has the details. (Published Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018) Police said Adams was driving southbound on Interstate 15 around 2:20 a.m. when he saw what he thought was a stranded driver near the northbound Interstate 5 on-ramp and pulled over to help. When Adams got out of his car and approached the stranded vehicle, he was shot, Lt. Anthony Dupree said. He was with his girlfriend at the time who quickly called 911. Adams was taken to UC San Diego Medical Center where he died. Navy Man Shot, Killed on I-15 in Mountain View A 21-year-old reportedly was just trying to help who he thought was a stranded driver. NBC 7's Ramon Galindo has more on the events that led to his death. (Published Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018) The vehicle Acuna was in sped off and he was taken into custody when California Highway Patrol spotted the car on northbound I-5, near 32nd Street and contacted SDPD. Acuna was booked into San Diego County Central Jail on charges of first-degree murder and second-degree burglary and held with no bail. Acuna has a long criminal history dating back to 2015 when he was 18 years old, according to court records. Records reveal Acuna has a history of misdemeanor offenses and show he was fined and sentenced to three years probation on Sept. 7, just six weeks before the fatal shooting. In July, Acuna pleaded guilty to creating a public nuisance. Last year, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of methamphetamine. And in September, 2015, he admitted he had driven on a suspended license, as part of a plea bargain in which prosecutors dropped a second charge of driving without a license. Each of those guilty pleas carried a three-year probation term, and fines totaling $1,450. It was unclear why Acuna shot Adams. The investigations into both incidents are ongoing, police said. Anyone with information about the incidents was urged to call the Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. ||||| Share This Article: Officers have arrested a man suspected of killing a good Samaritan sailor who pulled over on a freeway ramp to help him, police said Sunday. Support Times of San Diego's growth with a small monthly contribution Become a supporter Brandon Acuna, 21, was held on suspicion of shooting Curtis Adams, also 21, when Adams stopped to help who he thought was a stranded driver early Saturday morning, according to San Diego police Lt. Anthony Dupree. Adams’ girlfriend called police around 2:20 a.m. to report Adams had been shot on the transition ramp from southbound state Route 15 to northbound Interstate 5, Dupree said. The active duty sailor was believed to have been driving with his girlfriend when he noticed a stranded car on the ramp and stopped to help, according to Dupree. “The victim exited his vehicle and was immediately shot,” Dupree said. Adams was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The suspected killer was seen fleeing on I-5 in a white car. CHP officers later noticed a car matching the suspect vehicle’s description stopped on northbound I-5 near 32nd Street, Dupree said. Police headed to that location and detained the driver, identified as Acuna. The transition ramp where the shooting occurred was closed much of Saturday. Police asked anyone with information on the shooting to call San Diego Police Department homicide detectives at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. –City News Service Suspect Arrested In Killing of Active Duty Sailor Curtis Adams was last modified: by >> Subscribe to Times of San Diego’s free daily email newsletter! Click here Follow Us:

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Supermodel star Kendall Jenner has become somewhat of a Givenchy muse for creative director Riccardo Tisci where she was the star at his first ever NYC fashion show Friday night. She looked impeccable in muted makeup and a belted white lace top with black pants: This year’s New York Fashion Week has been star-studded,… ||||| Lady Gaga made yet another talked-about entrance to an awards show courtesy of a white, human-operated horse. And her “Do What U Want” performance was no less show-stopping. Gaga went retro steamy channeling a breathless Marilyn Monroe (a la “Happy Birthday”) complete with glittering dress and R. Kelly as Mr. President. Like how only an over-the-top Gaga can do, her excited Monica Lewinsky-esque intern persona came on to the Kelly’s faux commander-in-chief by writhing on his White House desk. We especially liked Kelly’s wandering eye (right up Gaga’s barely-there skirt), all while casually holding a cigar in shades and sporting un-president-like leather jogging pants (Kanye would be so proud.) Watch all the sexiness in the video above. Lyrics for the song are now on Directlyrics. ||||| Winners from Sunday's American Music Awards Winners of the 2013 American Music Awards, presented Sunday at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles: Article continues below Artist of the year: Taylor Swift New artist of the year: Ariana Grande Single of the year: "Cruise," Florida Georgia Line featuring Nelly Pop/rock female artist: Taylor Swift Pop/rock male artist: Justin Timberlake Pop/rock band, duo or group: One Direction Pop/rock album: "Take Me Home," One Direction Country female artist: Taylor Swift Country male artist: Luke Bryan Country band, duo or group: Lady Antebellum Country album: "Red," Taylor Swift Rap/hip-hop artist: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Rap/hip-hop album: "The Heist," Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Soul/R&B female artist: Rihanna Soul/R&B male artist: Justin Timberlake Soul/R&B album: "The 20/20 Experience," Justin Timberlake Alternative rock artist: Imagine Dragons Latin artist: Marc Anthony Adult Contemporary: Maroon 5 Electronic dance music artist: Avicii Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ||||| There were no teddy bears in sight for Miley Cyrus's performance at the American Music Awards, but she still managed to keep the animal kingdom involved. She gave an impressive performance of "Wrecking Ball," but the giant kitten projected behind her pretty much stole the show by lip-syncing along. Not only did the kitty start crying during the song's emotional climax, but he (she?) also paid homage to Miley at the very end. As is always the case with Miley, this is some must-watch weirdness.

– Taylor Swift's fans have done it again, voting her the American Music Awards artist of the year for a third time. The 23-year-old pop star also won country album of the year for Red and favorite female country and pop/rock artist, giving her a leading four trophies as fans celebrated the women of pop music. Her win came after Katy Perry dazzled with her show-opening performance, Lady Gaga and R. Kelly staged a presidential affair during their performance of "Do What U Want," Rihanna's mom presented her with an award, and Miley Cyrus closed performances with the assistance of a giant lip-syncing CGI kitty on her song "Wrecking Ball." Click for the complete list of winners or more pictures from the red carpet, or check out Miley's performance or Gaga's.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Supermodel star Kendall Jenner has become somewhat of a Givenchy muse for creative director Riccardo Tisci where she was the star at his first ever NYC fashion show Friday night. She looked impeccable in muted makeup and a belted white lace top with black pants: This year’s New York Fashion Week has been star-studded,… ||||| Lady Gaga made yet another talked-about entrance to an awards show courtesy of a white, human-operated horse. And her “Do What U Want” performance was no less show-stopping. Gaga went retro steamy channeling a breathless Marilyn Monroe (a la “Happy Birthday”) complete with glittering dress and R. Kelly as Mr. President. Like how only an over-the-top Gaga can do, her excited Monica Lewinsky-esque intern persona came on to the Kelly’s faux commander-in-chief by writhing on his White House desk. We especially liked Kelly’s wandering eye (right up Gaga’s barely-there skirt), all while casually holding a cigar in shades and sporting un-president-like leather jogging pants (Kanye would be so proud.) Watch all the sexiness in the video above. Lyrics for the song are now on Directlyrics. ||||| Winners from Sunday's American Music Awards Winners of the 2013 American Music Awards, presented Sunday at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles: Article continues below Artist of the year: Taylor Swift New artist of the year: Ariana Grande Single of the year: "Cruise," Florida Georgia Line featuring Nelly Pop/rock female artist: Taylor Swift Pop/rock male artist: Justin Timberlake Pop/rock band, duo or group: One Direction Pop/rock album: "Take Me Home," One Direction Country female artist: Taylor Swift Country male artist: Luke Bryan Country band, duo or group: Lady Antebellum Country album: "Red," Taylor Swift Rap/hip-hop artist: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Rap/hip-hop album: "The Heist," Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Soul/R&B female artist: Rihanna Soul/R&B male artist: Justin Timberlake Soul/R&B album: "The 20/20 Experience," Justin Timberlake Alternative rock artist: Imagine Dragons Latin artist: Marc Anthony Adult Contemporary: Maroon 5 Electronic dance music artist: Avicii Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ||||| There were no teddy bears in sight for Miley Cyrus's performance at the American Music Awards, but she still managed to keep the animal kingdom involved. She gave an impressive performance of "Wrecking Ball," but the giant kitten projected behind her pretty much stole the show by lip-syncing along. Not only did the kitty start crying during the song's emotional climax, but he (she?) also paid homage to Miley at the very end. As is always the case with Miley, this is some must-watch weirdness.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria ’s rebel fighters — who have long staked claim to the moral high ground for battling dictatorship — are losing crucial support from a public increasingly disgusted by the actions of some rebels, including poorly planned missions, senseless destruction, criminal behavior and the coldblooded killing of prisoners. The shift in mood presents more than just a public relations problem for the loosely knit militants of the Free Syrian Army, who rely on their supporters to survive the government’s superior firepower. A dampening of that support undermines the rebels’ ability to fight and win what has become a devastating war of attrition, perpetuating the violence that has left nearly 40,000 dead, hundreds of thousands in refugee camps and more than a million forced from their homes. The rebel shortcomings have been compounded by changes in the opposition, from a force of civilians and defected soldiers who took up arms after the government used lethal force on peaceful protesters to one that is increasingly seeded with extremist jihadis. That radicalization has divided the fighters’ supporters and made Western nations more reluctant to give rebels the arms that might help break the intensifying deadlock. Instead, foreign leaders are struggling to find indirect ways to help oust Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. And now arrogance and missteps are draining enthusiasm from some of the fighters’ core supporters. “They were supposed to be the people on whom we depend to build a civil society,” lamented a civilian activist in Saraqib, a northern town where rebels were videotaped executing a group of unarmed Syrian soldiers, an act the United Nations has declared a likely war crime. An activist in Aleppo, Ahmed, who like some of the others who were interviewed gave only one name for security reasons, said he had begged rebels not to camp in a neighborhood telecommunications office. But they did, and government attacks knocked out phone service. One fighter shot into the air when customers at a bakery did not let him cut into a long line for bread, Ahmed recalled. Another, he said, was enraged when a man washing his car accidentally splashed him. “He shot at him,” Ahmed said. “But thank God he wasn’t a good shot, so the guy wasn’t hurt.” Twenty months into what is now a civil war, both supporters and opponents of the government are trapped in a darkening mood of despair, revulsion and fear that neither side can end the conflict. In recent months, both sides adopted more brutal — even desperate — methods to try to break the stalemate, but they achieved merely a new version of deadlock. To many Syrians, the extreme violence seems all the more pointless for the lack of results. The most significant shift is among the rebels’ supporters, who chant slogans not only condemning the government but also criticizing the rebels. “The people want the reform of the Free Syrian Army,” crowds have called out. “We love you. Correct your path.” Small acts of petty humiliation and atrocities like executions have led many more Syrians to believe that some rebels are as depraved as the government they fight. The activist from Saraqib said he saw rebels force government soldiers from a milk factory, then destroy it, even though residents needed the milk and had good relations with the owner. “They shelled the factory and stole everything,” the activist said. “Those are repulsive acts.” Even some of the uprising’s staunchest supporters are beginning to fear that Syria’s sufferings — lost lives, fraying social fabric, destroyed heritage — are for naught. “We thought freedom was so near,” said a fighter calling himself Abu Ahmed, his voice catching with grief as he spoke via Skype last month from Maarat al-Noaman, a strategic town on the Aleppo-Damascus highway. Hours earlier, a rebel victory there ended in disaster, as government airstrikes pulverized civilians returning to what they thought was safety. “This shows it was a big lie,” Abu Ahmed said of the dream of self-government that he said had inspired him to lead a small rebel fighting group from his nearby village, Sinbol. “We cannot reach it. We can’t even think of democracy — we will be sad for years. We are losing victims from both sides.” A chain of calamities has fueled disgust and frustration on all sides, dozens of interviews with Syrians show. In July, a rebel bombing killed four senior officials in a heavily guarded Damascus building, bringing new insecurity to government supporters. The rebels’ growing use of large bombs that kill bystanders spurred concerns on both sides. Poorly executed rebel offensives brought harsh consequences. In September, rebels launched an offensive in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, an ancient town that stood for centuries as the proud legacy of all Syrians. The fighting failed to achieve the turning point the rebels had promised. ||||| ANKARA/DOHA Thousands of Syrians fled their country on Friday in one of the biggest refugee exoduses of the 20-month civil war after rebels seized a border town, and the United Nations warned that millions more still in Syria will need help as winter sets in. In Qatar, the main opposition group outside Syria elected a new leader. However, it will start talks on Saturday with other factions, including representatives of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad's forces, on forming a wider body that hopes to gain international recognition as a government-in-waiting. The U.N. said 11,000 refugees had fled in 24 hours, mostly to Turkey. The influx caused alarm in Ankara, which is worried about its ability to cope with such large numbers and has pushed hard, so far without success, for a buffer zone to be set up inside Syria where refugees could be housed. Rebels overran the frontier town of Ras al-Ain late on Thursday, continuing a drive that has already seen them push Assad's troops from much of the north and seize several crossing points, a rebel commander and opposition sources said. "The crossing is important because it opens another line to Turkey, where we can send the wounded and get supplies," said Khaled al-Walid, a commander in the Raqqa rebel division. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that compiles opposition activist reports, said at least 20 members of the Syrian security forces were killed when rebel fighters attacked a security headquarters in Ras al-Ain. Thousands of residents poured out of the Arab and Kurd town, in the northeastern oil-producing province of Hasaka, 600 km (375 miles) from Damascus. The Syrian National Council, the main opposition body outside the country, elected veteran activist George Sabra as its new head in Doha on Friday. Sabra, a Christian, takes over a body that is under heavy criticism from international allies for being ineffective in the fight against Assad and for being riven by personal disputes. Sabra appealed for arms to fight Assad's forces. "We need only one thing to support our right to survive and to protect ourselves: we need weapons, we need weapons," he told reporters. Qatar, the United States and other powers are pressing the fractious Syrian opposition groups to come together and the SNC has agreed to open unity talks, although it fears its influence will be diluted in any new body. Western countries and Syria's neighbors fear that hardline Islamist groups close to al Qaeda are growing in influence among rebels on the ground in Syria. An outline agreement could see the SNC and other opposition figures agree on a 60-member political assembly, mirroring the Transitional National Council in Libya, which united opposition to Muammar Gaddafi last year and took power when he fell. In Geneva, a senior U.N. official highlighted the plight of Syrians still in the country. An estimated four million people would need humanitarian aid by early next year when the country is in the grip of winter, up from 2.5 million now, said John Ging, director of operations at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "Every day our humanitarian colleagues on the ground are engaging with people who are ever more desperate, ever more fearful for their lives and for the lives of their families because of this conflict," Ging told a news conference. "Since this crisis has begun we have not been able to keep pace with the increasing need." The latest flight of refugees raised the total recorded by the U.N. to over 408,000 in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and North Africa. TURKEY HITS OUT Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan hit out at world powers on the U.N. Security Council over their inaction. "It is very strange. There are currently atrocities being committed in Syria and these atrocities are being directed by a state leader," he said. "How far will this go? When will the permanent members of the Security Council take responsibility?" Turkey has responded in kind to mortar shells hitting its soil from fighting in Syria and is discussing with NATO allies whether to deploy Patriot air defense missiles on the border. The Turkish state-run Anatolian news agency reported that 26 Syrian military officers had also arrived in Turkey with their families overnight in what it called the biggest mass desertion of senior soldiers from Assad's forces in months. Advancing rebels fired mortars at the presidential palace in Damascus this week. Residents in the capital said security was being beefed up there. Assad told Russia Today television on Thursday he would "live and die in Syria", echoing words of other Arab leaders before they lost power last year. In the last three months, the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab rebels have captured outposts on the Turkish border, moving towards the northeastern heartland of Syria's one million Kurds, many of whom have tried to stay clear of violence. The Kurdish Council, a coalition of Kurdish parties opposed to Assad, called on rebels to pull their fighters out of Ras al-Ain, saying the clashes and fear of Syrian bombardment had prompted most of its 50,000 residents to flee. (Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Tom Perry and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Andrew Hammond in Dubai and Regan Doherty in Doha; Writing by Peter Graff and David Stamp; Editing by Michael Roddy) ||||| DOHA, Qatar — The quarrelsome Syrian opposition was locked in extended bartering here in Doha on Thursday over the creation of a more diverse yet unified umbrella organization that its foreign backers hope will become a credible alternative to the Damascus government. The goal was to create an executive body, including members within Syria and abroad, that could channel aid to nascent local governments in opposition-controlled areas, bolstering their hold over territory wrested from the Syrian government. If the plan works, supporters say, it will help push back against the chaos in which jihadi organizations thrive and persuade foreign governments — particularly a second Obama administration — to get invested more directly in the opposition’s success. “We have to find a way out of the cul-de-sac that we are in,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, a former confidant of President Bashar al-Assad’s turned opposition activist. “We need to find a solution so that the Syrian opposition can deal with the international community through one executive body, rather than everyone with his own opinion, his own agenda and his own allies.” The meeting in Doha represented a shift in tactics after expectations were not met that the Syrian National Council would become a sort of government in exile. The change was pushed by the United States and Qatar, which have called for Mr. Assad to step down and pledged material support for the rebels. Without a unified opposition, various foreign supporters — Qataris, Saudis, Turks, French, Americans — have fostered different groups, allowing them to survive but without the critical mass needed to create an effective counterweight to the Syrian government. If the opposition needed a reminder of the stakes, Mr. Assad provided one in a rare interview on Thursday, telling the satellite channel Russia Today that he was not leaving the country. “I am not a puppet,” he said in excerpts published on the channel’s Web site. “I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country. I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.” Asked about possible armed intervention, Mr. Assad said he did not expect the West to invade, “but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.” The price of an invasion “if it happened is going to be more than the whole world can afford,” he said in an excerpt. The station said the full interview would be broadcast Friday. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pronounced the Syrian National Council a failure last month. She said the United States and its partners would help the opposition unite “behind a shared, effective strategy that can resist the regime’s violence and begin to provide for a political transition that can demonstrate, more clearly than has been possible up until now, what the future holds for the Syrian people once the Assad regime is gone.” Members of the Syrian National Council fought back like a fish on a hook, maneuvering to avoid what members feared would be marginalization. Members gathered in Doha this week to introduce changes — including doubling the group’s membership to more than 400, with about 33 percent of members from inside Syria, up from 15 percent. But some attempts to prove its diversity backfired; for example, not a single woman won in the elections for a 40-member secretariat. The main criticism of the council, founded last fall, is that it has failed to attract the support needed to shift the balance of power away from Mr. Assad, instead spending months jockeying over internal positions. The council lacks significant support from Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect, as well as other minorities, tribal elders, religious figures and business groups. “We will not have a vehicle for the future of Syria without those,” said Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Doha Center, which helped lead the process of reshaping the opposition. “They don’t trust it.” Syrian National Council members argue that they never got the financial or military support needed to attract a wider membership. But the group’s foreign backers calculated that with no end in sight to the fighting that has claimed nearly 40,000 people, by opposition estimates, it was time for a new approach. The longer-term goal is to convince Moscow of a credible alternative to Mr. Assad. Participants here, meanwhile, made no secret of the fact that they want to get Washington more involved. The Obama administration, extracting itself from long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been adamant that it would not do more than provide nonlethal aid to the Syrians. David Cameron, the British prime minister, said this week that he would work with the administration to make the opposition more effective. “We are all waiting for Mr. Obama,” Mr. Shaikh said. While the opposition has reached a certain consensus about the need for more unity, they have been bickering about how to achieve it for months. Prodded on Thursday by various officials, including Ahmet Davutoglu, the foreign minister of Turkey, and Nabil Elaraby, the secretary general of the Arab League, about 60 representatives of various factions started talks that were scheduled to last just a day but were extended by at least another day. Participants said much of Thursday was spent on flowery speeches about nationalism rather than addressing unity. But after a marathon session that went past midnight, they said they had made progress, spurred not least by the fact that their Qatari hosts told them they must stay in Doha until they reached an agreement. Mazem Arja, the head of the Revolutionary Council in Idlib, in northern Syria, said that haphazard financing coming from abroad was demoralizing, especially because it was distributed on a political basis rather than for important needs like ambulances. He also noted that the Syrian National Council had appointed a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his 60s as the youth envoy for Idlib. “The guy had not been there for 32 years,” he said. “If you dropped him at the edge of town, I doubt he could find his old house.”

– Syria's various opposition groups met in Doha, Qatar, yesterday and argued into this morning about a plan to form one unified government that could present a plausible alternative to that of Bashar al-Assad. Western governments say they want one group they can work with, instead of the hodgepodge that have been drawing support from various world powers. They're also hoping such a government could channel aid to rebel-held regions, to reduce the chaos that fosters jihadi organizations, the New York Times reports. There was no deal in sight when talks broke off, the Wall Street Journal reports, but one rough plan being discussed would call for a body of about 60 dissidents, led by technocrats. Many had hoped the Syrian National Council could serve as an opposition government, but Hillary Clinton deemed the group a failure last month. It certainly hasn't kept hold of Syria's rebels, who have been swiftly losing public support thanks to their increasingly violent tactics, the Times reports. In other Syria news, the fighting has intensified dramatically in recent days. Turkey says that roughly 8,000 refugees have fled across its border in the last 24 hours alone, Reuters reports. Rebels, meanwhile, captured the town of Ras al-Ain, opening another route to Turkey.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria ’s rebel fighters — who have long staked claim to the moral high ground for battling dictatorship — are losing crucial support from a public increasingly disgusted by the actions of some rebels, including poorly planned missions, senseless destruction, criminal behavior and the coldblooded killing of prisoners. The shift in mood presents more than just a public relations problem for the loosely knit militants of the Free Syrian Army, who rely on their supporters to survive the government’s superior firepower. A dampening of that support undermines the rebels’ ability to fight and win what has become a devastating war of attrition, perpetuating the violence that has left nearly 40,000 dead, hundreds of thousands in refugee camps and more than a million forced from their homes. The rebel shortcomings have been compounded by changes in the opposition, from a force of civilians and defected soldiers who took up arms after the government used lethal force on peaceful protesters to one that is increasingly seeded with extremist jihadis. That radicalization has divided the fighters’ supporters and made Western nations more reluctant to give rebels the arms that might help break the intensifying deadlock. Instead, foreign leaders are struggling to find indirect ways to help oust Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. And now arrogance and missteps are draining enthusiasm from some of the fighters’ core supporters. “They were supposed to be the people on whom we depend to build a civil society,” lamented a civilian activist in Saraqib, a northern town where rebels were videotaped executing a group of unarmed Syrian soldiers, an act the United Nations has declared a likely war crime. An activist in Aleppo, Ahmed, who like some of the others who were interviewed gave only one name for security reasons, said he had begged rebels not to camp in a neighborhood telecommunications office. But they did, and government attacks knocked out phone service. One fighter shot into the air when customers at a bakery did not let him cut into a long line for bread, Ahmed recalled. Another, he said, was enraged when a man washing his car accidentally splashed him. “He shot at him,” Ahmed said. “But thank God he wasn’t a good shot, so the guy wasn’t hurt.” Twenty months into what is now a civil war, both supporters and opponents of the government are trapped in a darkening mood of despair, revulsion and fear that neither side can end the conflict. In recent months, both sides adopted more brutal — even desperate — methods to try to break the stalemate, but they achieved merely a new version of deadlock. To many Syrians, the extreme violence seems all the more pointless for the lack of results. The most significant shift is among the rebels’ supporters, who chant slogans not only condemning the government but also criticizing the rebels. “The people want the reform of the Free Syrian Army,” crowds have called out. “We love you. Correct your path.” Small acts of petty humiliation and atrocities like executions have led many more Syrians to believe that some rebels are as depraved as the government they fight. The activist from Saraqib said he saw rebels force government soldiers from a milk factory, then destroy it, even though residents needed the milk and had good relations with the owner. “They shelled the factory and stole everything,” the activist said. “Those are repulsive acts.” Even some of the uprising’s staunchest supporters are beginning to fear that Syria’s sufferings — lost lives, fraying social fabric, destroyed heritage — are for naught. “We thought freedom was so near,” said a fighter calling himself Abu Ahmed, his voice catching with grief as he spoke via Skype last month from Maarat al-Noaman, a strategic town on the Aleppo-Damascus highway. Hours earlier, a rebel victory there ended in disaster, as government airstrikes pulverized civilians returning to what they thought was safety. “This shows it was a big lie,” Abu Ahmed said of the dream of self-government that he said had inspired him to lead a small rebel fighting group from his nearby village, Sinbol. “We cannot reach it. We can’t even think of democracy — we will be sad for years. We are losing victims from both sides.” A chain of calamities has fueled disgust and frustration on all sides, dozens of interviews with Syrians show. In July, a rebel bombing killed four senior officials in a heavily guarded Damascus building, bringing new insecurity to government supporters. The rebels’ growing use of large bombs that kill bystanders spurred concerns on both sides. Poorly executed rebel offensives brought harsh consequences. In September, rebels launched an offensive in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, an ancient town that stood for centuries as the proud legacy of all Syrians. The fighting failed to achieve the turning point the rebels had promised. ||||| ANKARA/DOHA Thousands of Syrians fled their country on Friday in one of the biggest refugee exoduses of the 20-month civil war after rebels seized a border town, and the United Nations warned that millions more still in Syria will need help as winter sets in. In Qatar, the main opposition group outside Syria elected a new leader. However, it will start talks on Saturday with other factions, including representatives of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad's forces, on forming a wider body that hopes to gain international recognition as a government-in-waiting. The U.N. said 11,000 refugees had fled in 24 hours, mostly to Turkey. The influx caused alarm in Ankara, which is worried about its ability to cope with such large numbers and has pushed hard, so far without success, for a buffer zone to be set up inside Syria where refugees could be housed. Rebels overran the frontier town of Ras al-Ain late on Thursday, continuing a drive that has already seen them push Assad's troops from much of the north and seize several crossing points, a rebel commander and opposition sources said. "The crossing is important because it opens another line to Turkey, where we can send the wounded and get supplies," said Khaled al-Walid, a commander in the Raqqa rebel division. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that compiles opposition activist reports, said at least 20 members of the Syrian security forces were killed when rebel fighters attacked a security headquarters in Ras al-Ain. Thousands of residents poured out of the Arab and Kurd town, in the northeastern oil-producing province of Hasaka, 600 km (375 miles) from Damascus. The Syrian National Council, the main opposition body outside the country, elected veteran activist George Sabra as its new head in Doha on Friday. Sabra, a Christian, takes over a body that is under heavy criticism from international allies for being ineffective in the fight against Assad and for being riven by personal disputes. Sabra appealed for arms to fight Assad's forces. "We need only one thing to support our right to survive and to protect ourselves: we need weapons, we need weapons," he told reporters. Qatar, the United States and other powers are pressing the fractious Syrian opposition groups to come together and the SNC has agreed to open unity talks, although it fears its influence will be diluted in any new body. Western countries and Syria's neighbors fear that hardline Islamist groups close to al Qaeda are growing in influence among rebels on the ground in Syria. An outline agreement could see the SNC and other opposition figures agree on a 60-member political assembly, mirroring the Transitional National Council in Libya, which united opposition to Muammar Gaddafi last year and took power when he fell. In Geneva, a senior U.N. official highlighted the plight of Syrians still in the country. An estimated four million people would need humanitarian aid by early next year when the country is in the grip of winter, up from 2.5 million now, said John Ging, director of operations at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "Every day our humanitarian colleagues on the ground are engaging with people who are ever more desperate, ever more fearful for their lives and for the lives of their families because of this conflict," Ging told a news conference. "Since this crisis has begun we have not been able to keep pace with the increasing need." The latest flight of refugees raised the total recorded by the U.N. to over 408,000 in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and North Africa. TURKEY HITS OUT Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan hit out at world powers on the U.N. Security Council over their inaction. "It is very strange. There are currently atrocities being committed in Syria and these atrocities are being directed by a state leader," he said. "How far will this go? When will the permanent members of the Security Council take responsibility?" Turkey has responded in kind to mortar shells hitting its soil from fighting in Syria and is discussing with NATO allies whether to deploy Patriot air defense missiles on the border. The Turkish state-run Anatolian news agency reported that 26 Syrian military officers had also arrived in Turkey with their families overnight in what it called the biggest mass desertion of senior soldiers from Assad's forces in months. Advancing rebels fired mortars at the presidential palace in Damascus this week. Residents in the capital said security was being beefed up there. Assad told Russia Today television on Thursday he would "live and die in Syria", echoing words of other Arab leaders before they lost power last year. In the last three months, the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab rebels have captured outposts on the Turkish border, moving towards the northeastern heartland of Syria's one million Kurds, many of whom have tried to stay clear of violence. The Kurdish Council, a coalition of Kurdish parties opposed to Assad, called on rebels to pull their fighters out of Ras al-Ain, saying the clashes and fear of Syrian bombardment had prompted most of its 50,000 residents to flee. (Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Tom Perry and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Andrew Hammond in Dubai and Regan Doherty in Doha; Writing by Peter Graff and David Stamp; Editing by Michael Roddy) ||||| DOHA, Qatar — The quarrelsome Syrian opposition was locked in extended bartering here in Doha on Thursday over the creation of a more diverse yet unified umbrella organization that its foreign backers hope will become a credible alternative to the Damascus government. The goal was to create an executive body, including members within Syria and abroad, that could channel aid to nascent local governments in opposition-controlled areas, bolstering their hold over territory wrested from the Syrian government. If the plan works, supporters say, it will help push back against the chaos in which jihadi organizations thrive and persuade foreign governments — particularly a second Obama administration — to get invested more directly in the opposition’s success. “We have to find a way out of the cul-de-sac that we are in,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, a former confidant of President Bashar al-Assad’s turned opposition activist. “We need to find a solution so that the Syrian opposition can deal with the international community through one executive body, rather than everyone with his own opinion, his own agenda and his own allies.” The meeting in Doha represented a shift in tactics after expectations were not met that the Syrian National Council would become a sort of government in exile. The change was pushed by the United States and Qatar, which have called for Mr. Assad to step down and pledged material support for the rebels. Without a unified opposition, various foreign supporters — Qataris, Saudis, Turks, French, Americans — have fostered different groups, allowing them to survive but without the critical mass needed to create an effective counterweight to the Syrian government. If the opposition needed a reminder of the stakes, Mr. Assad provided one in a rare interview on Thursday, telling the satellite channel Russia Today that he was not leaving the country. “I am not a puppet,” he said in excerpts published on the channel’s Web site. “I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country. I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.” Asked about possible armed intervention, Mr. Assad said he did not expect the West to invade, “but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.” The price of an invasion “if it happened is going to be more than the whole world can afford,” he said in an excerpt. The station said the full interview would be broadcast Friday. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pronounced the Syrian National Council a failure last month. She said the United States and its partners would help the opposition unite “behind a shared, effective strategy that can resist the regime’s violence and begin to provide for a political transition that can demonstrate, more clearly than has been possible up until now, what the future holds for the Syrian people once the Assad regime is gone.” Members of the Syrian National Council fought back like a fish on a hook, maneuvering to avoid what members feared would be marginalization. Members gathered in Doha this week to introduce changes — including doubling the group’s membership to more than 400, with about 33 percent of members from inside Syria, up from 15 percent. But some attempts to prove its diversity backfired; for example, not a single woman won in the elections for a 40-member secretariat. The main criticism of the council, founded last fall, is that it has failed to attract the support needed to shift the balance of power away from Mr. Assad, instead spending months jockeying over internal positions. The council lacks significant support from Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect, as well as other minorities, tribal elders, religious figures and business groups. “We will not have a vehicle for the future of Syria without those,” said Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Doha Center, which helped lead the process of reshaping the opposition. “They don’t trust it.” Syrian National Council members argue that they never got the financial or military support needed to attract a wider membership. But the group’s foreign backers calculated that with no end in sight to the fighting that has claimed nearly 40,000 people, by opposition estimates, it was time for a new approach. The longer-term goal is to convince Moscow of a credible alternative to Mr. Assad. Participants here, meanwhile, made no secret of the fact that they want to get Washington more involved. The Obama administration, extracting itself from long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been adamant that it would not do more than provide nonlethal aid to the Syrians. David Cameron, the British prime minister, said this week that he would work with the administration to make the opposition more effective. “We are all waiting for Mr. Obama,” Mr. Shaikh said. While the opposition has reached a certain consensus about the need for more unity, they have been bickering about how to achieve it for months. Prodded on Thursday by various officials, including Ahmet Davutoglu, the foreign minister of Turkey, and Nabil Elaraby, the secretary general of the Arab League, about 60 representatives of various factions started talks that were scheduled to last just a day but were extended by at least another day. Participants said much of Thursday was spent on flowery speeches about nationalism rather than addressing unity. But after a marathon session that went past midnight, they said they had made progress, spurred not least by the fact that their Qatari hosts told them they must stay in Doha until they reached an agreement. Mazem Arja, the head of the Revolutionary Council in Idlib, in northern Syria, said that haphazard financing coming from abroad was demoralizing, especially because it was distributed on a political basis rather than for important needs like ambulances. He also noted that the Syrian National Council had appointed a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his 60s as the youth envoy for Idlib. “The guy had not been there for 32 years,” he said. “If you dropped him at the edge of town, I doubt he could find his old house.”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The FBI and local police responded to an address near Soros' home after an object that appeared to be... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The FBI and local police responded to an address near Soros' home after an object that appeared to be... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The... (Associated Press) BEDFORD, N.Y. (AP) — The FBI and local police responded to an address near the home of philanthropist George Soros after an object that appeared to be an explosive was found in a mailbox, according to authorities. The Bedford Police Department said it responded to the address in the hamlet of Katonah at 3:45 p.m. Monday after an employee of the residence opened the package. The person placed the package in a wooded area and called police, who alerted the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives. Beford police said the FBI's terrorism task force was investigating. The FBI's New York field office said on Twitter that it was "conducting an investigation at and around a residence in Bedford, NY. There is no threat to public safety, and we have no further comment at this time." Neither local nor federal authorities would say whether the object was capable of exploding. A message emailed to Soros' foundation wasn't immediately returned. Soros, a billionaire who made his fortune in hedge funds, has donated heavily to liberal causes and is vilified on the right. He is also the subject of many unfounded conspiracy theories. Recently, conservative critics have, without evidence, accused him of secretly financing a caravan of Central American migrants to make their way north toward Mexico and the U.S. Others have falsely accused him of being a Nazi collaborator during World War II, when he was a child in Hungary. Activists frequently post the addresses of homes he owns in Westchester County, north of New York City, on social media sometimes accompanied by ill wishes. FBI officials didn't respond to requests for more information late Monday. ||||| [Read our latest coverage of the pipe bomb found at George Soros’s house.] The explosive device found in a mailbox at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, on Monday afternoon was relatively small, a senior law enforcement official said on Tuesday. The device was “proactively denotated” by bomb squad technicians from the Westchester County Police Department. The bomber’s motive remained unclear. Mr. Soros is a favorite target of right-wing groups. He was not home at the time. The investigation has been taken over by the New York offices of the F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, said the senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is open. ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Soros was reportedly not at home at the time of Monday's incident A suspect package found in a post box at the home of billionaire businessman George Soros contained an explosive device, New York police have confirmed. The item was discovered on Monday by an employee of Mr Soros, who took it to a nearby wooded area, where it was later destroyed by bomb squad officers. The incident is being investigated by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. Mr Soros has become a frequent target for criticism by right-wing groups due to his support for liberal causes. What happened? Mr Soros was not at his home in the town of Bedford in Westchester County at the time of the incident, according to reports. "An employee of the residence opened the package, revealing what appeared to be an explosive device," a Bedford Police Department official told the New York Times. Officials say that police received a call about a suspicious package at about 15:45 local time (20:45 GMT) on Monday. Arriving at the scene, police discovered a device that was later confirmed by officials to have contained explosive powder and "had the components" of a bomb. It was then "proactively detonated", police said. The FBI tweeted that it was investigating an incident in the area. Police later confirmed that an "extensive investigation" had been opened with the FBI. Who is Soros? The 88-year-old Hungarian-American businessman earned his fortune through shrewd financial speculation. He has spent billions of his own money funding human rights projects and liberal democratic ventures around the world and has been a large donor to the US Democratic Party. He previously backed the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and labelled US President Donald Trump "an imposter". US-based right-wing conspiracy theorists and websites have accused Mr Soros of secretly engineering a range of recent events in US and global politics. They have alleged he was involved in recruiting crowds for the anti-Trump Women's March and even organising violence in Charlottesville to undermine the country's political right wing. Mr Soros has also become a political target worldwide for nationalists and populists, who paint him as a master manipulator of democracy.

– Police say a suspected letter bomb was found Monday in a mailbox at a New York state home owned by billionaire George Soros—a frequent target of right-wing groups. Officials tell the New York Times that the device was "proactively detonated" by the bomb squad after an employee found it at the home in Bedford, Westchester County. "An employee of the residence opened the package, revealing what appeared to be an explosive device," police said in a statement. "The employee placed the package in a wooded area and called the Bedford police." Soros, a major donor to liberal causes and the focus of numerous conspiracy theories, was not home at the time. The FBI's New York field office said in a statement that it is "conducting an investigation at and around a residence in Bedford, NY. There is no threat to public safety, and we have no further comment at this time." Authorities have not disclosed whether the device would have exploded on its own, the AP reports. Soros, 88, has donated billions to groups including the Democratic Party and conspiracy theorists accuse of him orchestrating events including last year's violence in Charlottesville, the BBC reports. Right-wing groups have been known to share his addresses on social media. (An ally of President Trump recently claimed that Soros was funding a caravan of migrants making its way to the US border.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The FBI and local police responded to an address near Soros' home after an object that appeared to be... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The FBI and local police responded to an address near Soros' home after an object that appeared to be... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 29, 2018, file photo, philanthropist George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Meeting in Paris. The... (Associated Press) BEDFORD, N.Y. (AP) — The FBI and local police responded to an address near the home of philanthropist George Soros after an object that appeared to be an explosive was found in a mailbox, according to authorities. The Bedford Police Department said it responded to the address in the hamlet of Katonah at 3:45 p.m. Monday after an employee of the residence opened the package. The person placed the package in a wooded area and called police, who alerted the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives. Beford police said the FBI's terrorism task force was investigating. The FBI's New York field office said on Twitter that it was "conducting an investigation at and around a residence in Bedford, NY. There is no threat to public safety, and we have no further comment at this time." Neither local nor federal authorities would say whether the object was capable of exploding. A message emailed to Soros' foundation wasn't immediately returned. Soros, a billionaire who made his fortune in hedge funds, has donated heavily to liberal causes and is vilified on the right. He is also the subject of many unfounded conspiracy theories. Recently, conservative critics have, without evidence, accused him of secretly financing a caravan of Central American migrants to make their way north toward Mexico and the U.S. Others have falsely accused him of being a Nazi collaborator during World War II, when he was a child in Hungary. Activists frequently post the addresses of homes he owns in Westchester County, north of New York City, on social media sometimes accompanied by ill wishes. FBI officials didn't respond to requests for more information late Monday. ||||| [Read our latest coverage of the pipe bomb found at George Soros’s house.] The explosive device found in a mailbox at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, on Monday afternoon was relatively small, a senior law enforcement official said on Tuesday. The device was “proactively denotated” by bomb squad technicians from the Westchester County Police Department. The bomber’s motive remained unclear. Mr. Soros is a favorite target of right-wing groups. He was not home at the time. The investigation has been taken over by the New York offices of the F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, said the senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is open. ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Soros was reportedly not at home at the time of Monday's incident A suspect package found in a post box at the home of billionaire businessman George Soros contained an explosive device, New York police have confirmed. The item was discovered on Monday by an employee of Mr Soros, who took it to a nearby wooded area, where it was later destroyed by bomb squad officers. The incident is being investigated by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. Mr Soros has become a frequent target for criticism by right-wing groups due to his support for liberal causes. What happened? Mr Soros was not at his home in the town of Bedford in Westchester County at the time of the incident, according to reports. "An employee of the residence opened the package, revealing what appeared to be an explosive device," a Bedford Police Department official told the New York Times. Officials say that police received a call about a suspicious package at about 15:45 local time (20:45 GMT) on Monday. Arriving at the scene, police discovered a device that was later confirmed by officials to have contained explosive powder and "had the components" of a bomb. It was then "proactively detonated", police said. The FBI tweeted that it was investigating an incident in the area. Police later confirmed that an "extensive investigation" had been opened with the FBI. Who is Soros? The 88-year-old Hungarian-American businessman earned his fortune through shrewd financial speculation. He has spent billions of his own money funding human rights projects and liberal democratic ventures around the world and has been a large donor to the US Democratic Party. He previously backed the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and labelled US President Donald Trump "an imposter". US-based right-wing conspiracy theorists and websites have accused Mr Soros of secretly engineering a range of recent events in US and global politics. They have alleged he was involved in recruiting crowds for the anti-Trump Women's March and even organising violence in Charlottesville to undermine the country's political right wing. Mr Soros has also become a political target worldwide for nationalists and populists, who paint him as a master manipulator of democracy.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - With no sign of Judgment Day arriving on Saturday as forecast by an 89 year-old California evangelical broadcaster, followers were faced with trying to make sense of his failed pronouncement. Harold Camping, the former civil engineer who heads the Family Radio Network of Christian stations, had been unwavering in his message that believers would be swept to heaven on May 21. His Oakland, California-based network broadcasts over 66 U.S. stations and through international affiliates. With the help of supporters it posted at least 2,000 billboards around the United States warning of the Judgment Day. In New York, retired transportation agency worker Robert Fitzpatrick was inspired by Camping's message to spend over $140,000 of his savings on subway posters and outdoor advertisements warning of the May 21 Judgment Day. As he stood in Times Square in New York surrounded by onlookers, Fitzpatrick, 60, carried a Bible and handed out leaflets as he waited for Judgment Day to begin. By his own reading of Bible, which was slightly different than Camping's, Fitzgerald expected the great worldwide event to begin at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. When the hour came and went, he said: "I do not understand why ...," as his speech broke off and he looked at his watch. "I do not understand why nothing has happened." Camping, who previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994, had said doomsday would begin at 6 p.m. in the various time zones around the globe. NEW DAY COMES That meant it would begin in Asia and Oceania, but with midnight local time having come and gone in those areas, taking them well into May 22, and no indication of an apocalypse, Camping seemed to have gone silent. During the day, his Family Radio played recorded church music, devotionals and life advice unrelated to Judgment Day. The headquarters of his network was shuttered on Friday and Saturday, with a sign in the door that read "This Office is Closed. Sorry we missed you!" Camping, whose deep sonorous voice is frequently heard on his radio network expounding the Bible, could not be reached for comment. The shades were drawn and no one answered the door at his house in Alameda, California. Sheila Doan, 65, who has lived next door to Camping since 1971, said he is a good neighbor and she was concerned about Camping and his wife because of the attention his pronouncement has received. "I'm concerned for them, that somebody would possibly do something stupid, you just don't know in this world what's going to happen," she said. Tom Evans, a spokesman for Camping, said earlier this week that at least several tens of thousands of people listen to Family Radio's message. The network is heard in more than 30 languages through international affiliates, according to Family Radio. In recent weeks, dozens of Camping's followers had crossed the United States in recreational vehicles emblazoned with the May 21 warning. Volunteers also handed out pamphlets as far away as the Philippines, telling people God had left clear signs the world was coming to an end. In Camping's description of Judgment Day, the Earth would be wrenched in a great earthquake and many inhabitants would perish in the coming months, until the planet's total destruction on October 21. On Saturday, some atheists in different parts of the country held celebrations and get-togethers to mark the failure of Camping's May 21 prediction to come true. In Oakland, the same city where Camping's network is based, over 200 people gathered at an atheist convention where speakers joked about the Judgment Day pronouncement and a vendor sold jewelry with the words "Good without God." Cara Lee Hickey, 32, a Christian turned atheist, said Camping's prediction got people talking. "I've heard a lot of name-calling, but most of it is from other Christians calling him a false prophet," she said. (Additional reporting by Erik Tavcar, Jonathan Allen and Noel Randewich; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Jerry Norton) ||||| Sue Espinoza was planted before the television, awaiting news of her father's now infamous prediction: cataclysmic earthquakes auguring the end of humanity.God's wrath was supposed to begin in New Zealand and then race across the globe, leaving millions of bodies wherever the clock struck 6 p.m. But the hours ticked by, and New Zealand survived. Time zone by time zone, the apocalypse failed to materialize.On Saturday morning, Espinoza, 60, received a phone call from her father, Harold Camping, the 89-year-old Oakland preacher who has spent some $100 million — and countless hours on his radio and TV show — announcing May 21 as Judgment Day. "He just said, 'I'm a little bewildered that it didn't happen, but it's still May 21 [in the United States],'" Espinoza said, standing in the doorway of her Alameda home. "It's going to be May 21 from now until midnight."But to others who put stock in Camping's prophecy, disillusionment was already profound by late morning. To them, it was clear the world and its woes would make it through the weekend.Keith Bauer, a 38-year-old tractor-trailer driver from Westminster, Md., took last week off from work, packed his wife, young son and a relative in their SUV and crossed the country.If it was his last week on Earth, he wanted to see parts of it he'd always heard about but missed, such as the Grand Canyon. With maxed-out credit cards and a growing mountain of bills, he said, the rapture would have been a relief.On Saturday morning, Bauer was parked in front of the Oakland headquarters of Camping's Family Radio empire, half expecting to see an angry mob of disenchanted believers howling for the preacher's head. The office was closed, and the street was mostly deserted save for journalists.Bauer said he was not bitter. "Worst-case scenario for me, I got to see the country," he said. "If I should be angry at anybody, it should be me."Tom Evans, who acted as Camping's PR aide in recent months, took his family to Ohio to await the rapture. Early next week, he said, he would be returning to California."You can imagine we're pretty disappointed, but the word of God is still true," he said. "We obviously went too far, and that's something we need to learn from."Despite the failure of Camping's prediction, however, he said he might continue working for him."As bad as it appears—and there's no getting around it, it is bad, flat-out—I have not found anything close to the faithfulness of Family Radio," he said.Others had risked a lot more on Camping's prediction, quitting jobs, abandoning relationships, volunteering months of their time to spread the word. Matt Tuter, the longtime producer of Camping's radio and television call-in show, said Saturday that he expected there to be "a lot of angry people" as reality proved Camping wrong.Tuter said Family Radio's AM station in Sacramento had been "severely vandalized" Friday night or Saturday morning, with air conditioning units yanked out and $25,000 worth of copper stripped from the equipment. He thinks it must have been an angry listener. He was off Saturday but planned to drive past the headquarters "and make sure nothing's burning."Camping himself, who has given innumerable interviews in recent months, was staying out of sight Saturday. No one answered the door at his Alameda home, though neighbors said he was there.By late afternoon, a small crowd had gathered in front of Camping's Oakland headquarters. There were atheists blowing up balloons in human form, which were released into the sky just after 6 p.m. in a mockery of the rapture. Someone played a CD of "The End" by the Doors, amid much laughter.There were also Christians, like James Bynum, a 45-year-old deacon at Calvary Baptist Church in Milpitas, holding signs that declared Harold Camping a false prophet. He said he was there to comfort disillusioned believers."Harold Camping will never hand out poisoned Kool-Aid," Bynum said. "It's not that kind of a cult. But he has set up a system that will destroy some people's lives." ||||| 'Judgment Day' came and went on Saturday, and John Ramsey hasn't been able to sleep. The 25-year-old Harrison, N.J. resident had rearranged his life in recent months to devote himself to spreading a fringe California preacher's prediction that May 21 would bring worldwide earthquakes and usher in a five-month period of misery before the world's destruction. Like many of those convinced of the Rapture was pending, Ramsey quit his job, donated "a couple thousand" to Harold Camping's Family Radio network and convinced family members to join him to spread news of the Rapture on Manhattan streets. His family nervously huddled in their apartment living room Saturday, holding their Bibles open, switching between CNN, Facebook and Google for news of quakes in the Pacific. They cried. They hugged. They argued. But mostly, they waited. Nothing happened. On Sunday, a dejected Ramsey said he faces a "mixed bag." He has to find a new job. So does his mother. His 19-year-old brother, who had quit high school the year prior ("It's pointless to graduate," the brother had said), is thinking of re-enrolling or finding employment. His wife, Marcia Paladines, had come to accept that she might never meet her unborn baby, whom she and Ramsey had named John Moses. Now, she's praying for a healthy birth. The child is due as early as Friday. "Life goes on," Ramsey said Sunday. "I get to live. I get to be a dad." The May 21 prediction came from the Biblical numerology of Harold Camping, an 89-year-old televangelist who owns the Oakland, Calif.-based Christian Family Radio network. Camping had previously predicted a similar end-times scenario in 1994. Several Camping followers previously interviewed by The Huffington Post did not return phone calls and emails Sunday. But a few did publicly declare their reactions. WATCH: "I guess no man knows the day or the hour," said Peter Lombardi, a 44-year-old from Jersey City, N.J. who had had taken an "indefinite break" from his job in April to preach about May 21. He had fitted his Dodge minivan with stickers proclaiming the "awesome news" of Judgment Day and paraded with neon green Caravans through Manhattan's business districts to hand hundreds of fliers about the date. On Sunday, he was peeling the stickers off. Lombardi said he is going back to work -- he owns a construction business -- and said he has "no regrets." He added, "I'm not disappointed. I'm still living today." He believes Camping and others must have read the Bible incorrectly. Lombardi had donated $1,100 to Family Radio in recent months to help the organization purchase thousands of billboards and other ads throughout the country, but said he doesn't expect any of his money back. "What can you do?" he said. "I don't think they were scamming me, but I am definitely waiting to see what they say Monday on the radio show." "It's not [Camping's] fault," said Ramsey, who added he also won't ask for his money back. "Nobody held a gun to my head. I read the Bible. The math added up. I don't think anybody would do something like this without meaning it." Camping was mostly silent over the weekend, but he spoke briefly outside his Alameda, Calif. home on Sunday with a San Francisco Chronicle Reporter. "It has been a really tough weekend," he said, adding he was "flabbergasted" and "looking for answers." Camping said he would make a detailed announcement on Monday. The Family Radio web site has not been updated. A countdown on the site says there are zero days left to 'Judgment Day' and an image shows the numbers "2012" crossed out. "Mr. Camping certainly won't shy away from this," Family Radio spokesman Tom Evans told The Huffington Post on Sunday, adding "how that will happen will be forthcoming." Evans, who had spent 'Judgment Day' with his wife and kids, said he was happy that he gets more time to be with his family, but added that "a believer's highest hope is to be with the Lord forever." As for his belief in the second coming, "nothing has changed other than the ramifications for Family Radio and Mr. Camping's credibility in the world." After Camping's failed Rapture prediction in 1994, Evans stayed with Family Radio, but he declined to say whether he would stay on the job this time. WATCH: Camping, who told The Huffington Post last week that May 21 was "no laughing matter," had refused to discuss what he would do with donations if the day passed without event. In recent months, followers have given generously to his company, which runs 66 radio stations in the U.S. and is worth at least $120 million. On Sunday, Evans said Family Radio's assets "far outweigh its liabilities," and that it will "certainly do everything it can to take care of people." But he said that there has been no decision on giving money back to donors. In 2009, the last year Family Radio publicly released a tax return, the group reported $18.4 million in income from contributions and $1 million from investments and other income. It spent $36.7 million and employed 348 people paid a total of more than $9 million in wages and benefits. Camping has said he has worked without pay for several years. Articles have noted that the station's lease runs through 2023 and that several employees were planning last week to show up to work on Monday. Followers like Ramsey and Lombardi said they had few hard feelings toward Camping and still agreed with some of the self-taught preacher's views, such as one that says all churches and denominations have been corrupted. "I have learned to study the Bible really well. This guy has opened my eyes to a lot of truths," said Lombardi. "If he makes another prediction, I can't tell you what I am going to do," said Ramsey. "But I've really taken an interest in the Bible. I know it's the word of God. And I've been reading into more parts today." He quoted Mark 13:22: "For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall [show] signs and wonders, to seduce, if [it were] possible, even the elect." ||||| the end is near Long Island Firefighter’s Wait for the Rapture Goes Unfulfilled “Wanna order a pizza?" Jeff asks. "I don’t know if we’ll have time to eat it, but we might as well get it.” It is 4:48 p.m. on May 21, and earthquakes have not yet riven the Earth. “When the sky goes dark and you feel a rumbling, I’m going to ask you and the kids to step outside very quickly," Jeff told me when I first arrived at his small ranch house in Hicksville, Long Island. "God willing, we’ll all be taken up in a whirlwind to Heaven. I know it might sound strange, but that’s my understanding of how it’s going to go.” His 6-year-old son was in the living room, playing a Star Wars game on the Wii. His 4-year-old daughter, wearing a Spider-Man bike helmet from a recent tricycle trip around the backyard, tapped me on the shoulder to show me a crayon drawing of a rainbow. Jeff orders a large Sicilian pie for delivery. “And please put a rush on it,” he tells the person taking his order. “We’re — we’re in a rush here.” Jeff is visibly nervous now, taking deep breaths. “And listen,” he says into the phone, “if you have a radio, put on 94.7. They’re talking about Judgment Day and telling everyone to ask God for mercy. It's important.” WFME 94.7 is the New York outlet for Family Radio, the station Jeff was listening to three years ago when he heard Harold Camping prophesying the End of Days. That's when Jeff left the Catholic Church and begin studying Biblical numerology. Thousands of Camping's followers fervently believe that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011; millions more know of the prophecy thanks to Family Radio billboards and newspaper ads. Jeff, 44, is a muscular firefighter from Flushing with a square jawline. When the pizza arrives, Jeff calls his friend Ron, “One of the only true believers I know who will talk to me about this stuff," and they reassure each other by speakerphone, parsing choice psalms and proverbs. “So, from the Biblical evidence you’re finding,” Jeff asks Ron, “at what hour do we now think this earthquake is going to happen?” According to Harold Camping, the earthquakes were to start at 6 p.m. at the International Date Line — 2 a.m. Eastern Time — and spread eastward around the world. When Jeff woke up on Saturday and everything was still calm, he decided this was a potentially ominous sign: “This morning the sky was crystal clear, just like 9/11. I was a firefighter then, and I couldn’t believe that on such a beautiful day, such destruction could come.” With the Rapture seemingly running behind schedule, Jeff hypothesized then predicted the earthquakes would come between 3 and 5 p.m. ET, and would wreak destruction over all the world simultaneously. After three, his prediction changed again: “Six now looks more likely, but really it might be any time before midnight.” Ron, over the phone, refuses to predict the hour. “In all this time, I’ve always been blown away by the evidence pointing to the day, but never the exact hour.” Rosana, Jeff’s wife, who had been out at a friend's birthday party, comes home a little after six. “What, nothing happened?” she asks with no small amount of contempt. Jeff buries his head in his Bible. He and Ron debate the virtues of King Solomon for another hour, while Rosana loudly opens and closes cabinets. Jeff warms up another slice of pizza and pours Pepsi into a Miller Lite pint glass. Finally, he hangs up the phone. Rosana turns to face him. “Jeff, starting at midnight tonight, I don’t want to hear any more of this crap, okay?” “Look,” he says, “I told you I knew the day, but I never claimed to know the hour—“ “I don’t want to hear it, Jeff. I’m telling you, I can’t take it.” Rosana gives me a helpless look, and she and I go into another room to chat. “I don’t know what happened to him,” she whispers to me. “He used to be normal. Now all he can talk about is the Bible and this May 21 stuff. He took all his vacation days in a row, so all he’s doing the last four weeks is sitting around reading the Bible and driving me nuts. Thank God he didn’t quit his job like some of them did.” Meanwhile, Jeff is checking his text messages. “There are a bunch of friends here who are mocking me,” he says. “And that’s all right! I just put on my spiritual shield and endure.” Ron calls again, and he and Jeff come up with a new interpretation: May 21 will not end, technically, until midnight in Hawaii. “There will be a lot of people mocking me after midnight tonight if nothing does happen,” Jeff says, breathing quickly again, “but what they don’t realize is that May 21 hasn’t been completed everywhere in the world yet. So we really can’t tell anything until six in the morning here. That’s when the truth will really be tested.” ||||| The hour of the apocalypse came quietly and went the same way _ leaving those who believed that Saturday evening would mark the world's end confused, or more faithful, or just philosophical. Alese Osborn, of the Bittersweet Cafe, shows off their tongue-in-cheek Judgment Day candy and sweets survival packs, satirizing radio evangelist Harold Camping, who claimed that the ascension into heaven... (Associated Press) Caroline Dennewith, co-owner of Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma, Wash., poses for a photo, Friday, May 20, 2011 with a poster advertising her business' "Rapture Party," which will be held Saturday, May 21, 2011,... (Associated Press) Members of the Calvary Bible Church of Milpitas appear at the closed Family Radio station offices of Harold Camping to offer support to victims of the radio evangelist, who claimed that the ascension... (Associated Press) Members of the Calvary Bible Church of Milpitas appear at the closed Family Radio station offices of Harold Camping to offer support to victims of the radio evangelist, who claimed that the ascension... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Dec. 12, 2002 file photo, Harold Camping speaks while holding the Bible, in San Leandro, Calif. A loosely organized Christian movement has spread the word around the globe that Jesus Christ... (Associated Press) Pastor Jacob Denys, left, rallies his Calvary Bible Church of Milpitas members to appear at the closed Family Radio station offices of Harold Camping to offer support to victims of the radio evangelist,... (Associated Press) Stuart Bechman and Dr. Marlene Winell discuss among other things, the radio evangelist Harold Camping, while attending the American Atheists regional meeting at the Masonic Center, setup to coincide... (Associated Press) People in a partying mood, including performing artists the Phenomenauts, gather in front of the closed Family Radio station offices of radio evangelist Harold Camping, to celebrate irreverently, the... (Associated Press) Caroline Dennewith, co-owner of Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma, Wash., poses for a photo, Friday, May 20, 2011 with a poster advertising her business' "Rapture Party," which will be held Saturday, May 21, 2011,... (Associated Press) Believers had spent months warning the world of the pending cataclysm. Some had given away earthly belongings. Others took long journeys to be with loved ones. And there were those who drained their savings accounts. All were responding to the May 21 doomsday message by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar Christian media empire that publicizes his apocalyptic prediction. "I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God," said Keith Bauer _ who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) to California for the Rapture. He started his day in the bright morning sun outside Camping's gated Oakland headquarters of Family Radio International. "I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth," said Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver who began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he "worked last week, I wouldn't have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen." According to Camping, the destruction was likely to have begun its worldwide march as it became 6 p.m. in the various time zones, although some believers said Saturday the exact timing was never written in stone. He had been projecting the apocalyptic prediction for years far and wide via broadcasts and websites. In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when the six o'clock hour simply came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world. "I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists. "Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here." Many followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith. "It's still May 21 and God's going to bring it," said Family Radio's special projects coordinator Michael Garcia, who spent Saturday morning praying and drinking two last cups of coffee with his wife at home in Alameda. "When you say something and it doesn't happen, your pride is what's hurt. But who needs pride? God said he resists the proud and gives grace to the humble." The Internet was alive with discussion, humorous or not, about the end of the world and its apparent failure to occur on cue. Many tweets declared Camping's prediction a dud or shared, tongue-in-cheek, their relief at not having to do weekend chores or take a shower. The top trends on Twitter at midday included, at No. 1, "endofworldconfessions," followed by "myraptureplaylist." As 6 p.m. approached in California, some 100 people gathered outside Family Radio International headquarters in Oakland, although it appeared none of the believers of the prophecy were among them. Camping's radio stations, TV channels, satellite broadcasts and website are controlled from a modest building sandwiched between an auto shop and a palm reader's business. Christian leaders from across the spectrum widely dismissed the prophecy, and members of a local church concerned Camping's followers could slip into a deep depression come Sunday were part of the crowd outside Family Radio International. They held signs declaring Camping a false prophet as motorists drove by. "The cold, hard reality is going to hit them that they did this, and it was false and they basically emptied out everything to follow a false teacher," the Rev. Jacob Denys, of the Milpitas-based Calvary Bible Church, said earlier. "We're not all about doom and gloom. Our message is a message of salvation and of hope." About a dozen people in a partying mood were also outside Family Radio International, creating a carnival-like atmosphere as they strolled in a variety of costumes that portrayed monks, Jesus Christ and other figures. "Am I relieved? Yeah. I've got a lot going on," Peter Erwin, a student from Oakland, said, with a hint of sarcasm. "Trying to get specific about the end of the world is crazy." Revelers counted down the seconds before the anticipated hour, and people began dancing to music as the clock struck 6 p.m. Some released shoe-shaped helium balloons into the sky in an apparent reference to the Rapture. Camping has preached that some 200 million people would be saved, and that those left behind would die in a series of scourges visiting Earth until the globe is consumed by a fireball on Oct. 21. Family Radio International's message has been broadcast in 61 languages. He has said that his earlier apocalyptic prediction in 1994 didn't come true because of a mathematical error. "I'm not embarrassed about it. It was just the fact that it was premature," he told The Associated Press last month. But this time, he said, "there is ... no possibility that it will not happen." As Saturday drew nearer, followers reported that donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities. Marie Exley, who helped put up apocalypse-themed billboards in Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, said the money allowed the nonprofit to reach as many souls as possible. She said she and her husband, mother and brother read the Bible and stayed close to the television news on Friday night awaiting word of an earthquake in the southern hemisphere. When that did not happen, she said fellow believers began reaching out to reassure one another of their faith. "Some people were saying it was going to be an earthquake at that specific time in New Zealand and be a rolling judgment, but God is keeping us in our place and saying you may know the day but you don't know the hour," she said Saturday, speaking from Bozeman, Montana. "The day is not over, it's just the morning, and we have to endure until the end." Still, the world wasn't without its normal and sometimes dreadful disturbances Saturday. Among them: a tornado killed one person and damaged at least 20 homes in Kansas, a 6.1-magnitude quake stuck 600 miles (1,100 kilometers) off New Zealand with no reports of injury, a much smaller quake, 3.6, was felt my many people Saturday evening in the San Francisco Bay area, and Iceland's most active volcano started erupting. Camping, who lives a few miles (kilometers) from his radio station, was not home late morning Saturday, and an additional attempt to seek comment from him late in the evening also was unsuccessful, with no one answering his front door. Earlier in the day, Sheila Doan, 65, Camping's next-door-neighbor of 40 years, was outside gardening and said the worldwide spotlight on his May 21 forecast has attracted far more attention than the 1994 prediction. Doan said she is a Christian and while she respects her neighbor, she doesn't share his views. "I wouldn't consider Mr. Camping a close friend and wouldn't have him over for dinner or anything, but if he needs anything, we are there for him," Doan said. ___ Associated Press reporters Terry Chea in Oakland, Don Babwin in Chicago, Mike Householder in Detroit, Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, David R. Martin in New York and video journalist Haven Daley in San Francisco contributed to this report. Garance Burke can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garanceburke

– So, how do rapture believers feel today, considering the fact that they’re still firmly on earth? A sampling of reactions from the Huffington Post, Reuters, the AP, and the Los Angeles Times: John Ramsey, 25, quit his job, donated thousands of dollars to Camping’s Family Radio, and took to the streets of Manhattan with his family to spread word of the coming end of days. Now, he and his mother must find new jobs and his 19-year-old brother, who quit high school, might re-enroll. The good news is, Ramsey’s wife will get to have her baby. “Life goes on,” he says. “I get to be a dad.” Peter Lombardi, 44, who took an “indefinite break” from his job last year, acknowledges that perhaps “no man knows the day or the hour” the world will end. He spent yesterday peeling Judgment Day stickers off his minivan, but says he’s “not disappointed.” He does want an explanation from Camping, to whom he donated money: “I don’t think they were scamming me, but I am definitely waiting to see what they say … on the radio show.” Robert Fitzpatrick, who spent much of his life savings on advertisements for the rapture, stood in Times Square at 6pm and simply said, “I do not understand why … I do not understand why nothing has happened.” He added, "I can't tell you what I feel right now. Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here." Keith Bauer, 38, loaded his family into his SUV and drove from Maryland to California to await the end of days. Though he “had some skepticism,” he says he truly wanted to believe, since he figured “heaven would be a lot better than this earth.” Even so, he says he’s not upset with Camping. “Worst-case scenario for me, I got to see the country. If I should be angry at anybody, it should be me." Click for one more sad story of a Long Island firefighter who ordered pizza with a New York reporter Saturday, even though he wasn’t sure he’d have time to eat it.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - With no sign of Judgment Day arriving on Saturday as forecast by an 89 year-old California evangelical broadcaster, followers were faced with trying to make sense of his failed pronouncement. Harold Camping, the former civil engineer who heads the Family Radio Network of Christian stations, had been unwavering in his message that believers would be swept to heaven on May 21. His Oakland, California-based network broadcasts over 66 U.S. stations and through international affiliates. With the help of supporters it posted at least 2,000 billboards around the United States warning of the Judgment Day. In New York, retired transportation agency worker Robert Fitzpatrick was inspired by Camping's message to spend over $140,000 of his savings on subway posters and outdoor advertisements warning of the May 21 Judgment Day. As he stood in Times Square in New York surrounded by onlookers, Fitzpatrick, 60, carried a Bible and handed out leaflets as he waited for Judgment Day to begin. By his own reading of Bible, which was slightly different than Camping's, Fitzgerald expected the great worldwide event to begin at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. When the hour came and went, he said: "I do not understand why ...," as his speech broke off and he looked at his watch. "I do not understand why nothing has happened." Camping, who previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994, had said doomsday would begin at 6 p.m. in the various time zones around the globe. NEW DAY COMES That meant it would begin in Asia and Oceania, but with midnight local time having come and gone in those areas, taking them well into May 22, and no indication of an apocalypse, Camping seemed to have gone silent. During the day, his Family Radio played recorded church music, devotionals and life advice unrelated to Judgment Day. The headquarters of his network was shuttered on Friday and Saturday, with a sign in the door that read "This Office is Closed. Sorry we missed you!" Camping, whose deep sonorous voice is frequently heard on his radio network expounding the Bible, could not be reached for comment. The shades were drawn and no one answered the door at his house in Alameda, California. Sheila Doan, 65, who has lived next door to Camping since 1971, said he is a good neighbor and she was concerned about Camping and his wife because of the attention his pronouncement has received. "I'm concerned for them, that somebody would possibly do something stupid, you just don't know in this world what's going to happen," she said. Tom Evans, a spokesman for Camping, said earlier this week that at least several tens of thousands of people listen to Family Radio's message. The network is heard in more than 30 languages through international affiliates, according to Family Radio. In recent weeks, dozens of Camping's followers had crossed the United States in recreational vehicles emblazoned with the May 21 warning. Volunteers also handed out pamphlets as far away as the Philippines, telling people God had left clear signs the world was coming to an end. In Camping's description of Judgment Day, the Earth would be wrenched in a great earthquake and many inhabitants would perish in the coming months, until the planet's total destruction on October 21. On Saturday, some atheists in different parts of the country held celebrations and get-togethers to mark the failure of Camping's May 21 prediction to come true. In Oakland, the same city where Camping's network is based, over 200 people gathered at an atheist convention where speakers joked about the Judgment Day pronouncement and a vendor sold jewelry with the words "Good without God." Cara Lee Hickey, 32, a Christian turned atheist, said Camping's prediction got people talking. "I've heard a lot of name-calling, but most of it is from other Christians calling him a false prophet," she said. (Additional reporting by Erik Tavcar, Jonathan Allen and Noel Randewich; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Jerry Norton) ||||| Sue Espinoza was planted before the television, awaiting news of her father's now infamous prediction: cataclysmic earthquakes auguring the end of humanity.God's wrath was supposed to begin in New Zealand and then race across the globe, leaving millions of bodies wherever the clock struck 6 p.m. But the hours ticked by, and New Zealand survived. Time zone by time zone, the apocalypse failed to materialize.On Saturday morning, Espinoza, 60, received a phone call from her father, Harold Camping, the 89-year-old Oakland preacher who has spent some $100 million — and countless hours on his radio and TV show — announcing May 21 as Judgment Day. "He just said, 'I'm a little bewildered that it didn't happen, but it's still May 21 [in the United States],'" Espinoza said, standing in the doorway of her Alameda home. "It's going to be May 21 from now until midnight."But to others who put stock in Camping's prophecy, disillusionment was already profound by late morning. To them, it was clear the world and its woes would make it through the weekend.Keith Bauer, a 38-year-old tractor-trailer driver from Westminster, Md., took last week off from work, packed his wife, young son and a relative in their SUV and crossed the country.If it was his last week on Earth, he wanted to see parts of it he'd always heard about but missed, such as the Grand Canyon. With maxed-out credit cards and a growing mountain of bills, he said, the rapture would have been a relief.On Saturday morning, Bauer was parked in front of the Oakland headquarters of Camping's Family Radio empire, half expecting to see an angry mob of disenchanted believers howling for the preacher's head. The office was closed, and the street was mostly deserted save for journalists.Bauer said he was not bitter. "Worst-case scenario for me, I got to see the country," he said. "If I should be angry at anybody, it should be me."Tom Evans, who acted as Camping's PR aide in recent months, took his family to Ohio to await the rapture. Early next week, he said, he would be returning to California."You can imagine we're pretty disappointed, but the word of God is still true," he said. "We obviously went too far, and that's something we need to learn from."Despite the failure of Camping's prediction, however, he said he might continue working for him."As bad as it appears—and there's no getting around it, it is bad, flat-out—I have not found anything close to the faithfulness of Family Radio," he said.Others had risked a lot more on Camping's prediction, quitting jobs, abandoning relationships, volunteering months of their time to spread the word. Matt Tuter, the longtime producer of Camping's radio and television call-in show, said Saturday that he expected there to be "a lot of angry people" as reality proved Camping wrong.Tuter said Family Radio's AM station in Sacramento had been "severely vandalized" Friday night or Saturday morning, with air conditioning units yanked out and $25,000 worth of copper stripped from the equipment. He thinks it must have been an angry listener. He was off Saturday but planned to drive past the headquarters "and make sure nothing's burning."Camping himself, who has given innumerable interviews in recent months, was staying out of sight Saturday. No one answered the door at his Alameda home, though neighbors said he was there.By late afternoon, a small crowd had gathered in front of Camping's Oakland headquarters. There were atheists blowing up balloons in human form, which were released into the sky just after 6 p.m. in a mockery of the rapture. Someone played a CD of "The End" by the Doors, amid much laughter.There were also Christians, like James Bynum, a 45-year-old deacon at Calvary Baptist Church in Milpitas, holding signs that declared Harold Camping a false prophet. He said he was there to comfort disillusioned believers."Harold Camping will never hand out poisoned Kool-Aid," Bynum said. "It's not that kind of a cult. But he has set up a system that will destroy some people's lives." ||||| 'Judgment Day' came and went on Saturday, and John Ramsey hasn't been able to sleep. The 25-year-old Harrison, N.J. resident had rearranged his life in recent months to devote himself to spreading a fringe California preacher's prediction that May 21 would bring worldwide earthquakes and usher in a five-month period of misery before the world's destruction. Like many of those convinced of the Rapture was pending, Ramsey quit his job, donated "a couple thousand" to Harold Camping's Family Radio network and convinced family members to join him to spread news of the Rapture on Manhattan streets. His family nervously huddled in their apartment living room Saturday, holding their Bibles open, switching between CNN, Facebook and Google for news of quakes in the Pacific. They cried. They hugged. They argued. But mostly, they waited. Nothing happened. On Sunday, a dejected Ramsey said he faces a "mixed bag." He has to find a new job. So does his mother. His 19-year-old brother, who had quit high school the year prior ("It's pointless to graduate," the brother had said), is thinking of re-enrolling or finding employment. His wife, Marcia Paladines, had come to accept that she might never meet her unborn baby, whom she and Ramsey had named John Moses. Now, she's praying for a healthy birth. The child is due as early as Friday. "Life goes on," Ramsey said Sunday. "I get to live. I get to be a dad." The May 21 prediction came from the Biblical numerology of Harold Camping, an 89-year-old televangelist who owns the Oakland, Calif.-based Christian Family Radio network. Camping had previously predicted a similar end-times scenario in 1994. Several Camping followers previously interviewed by The Huffington Post did not return phone calls and emails Sunday. But a few did publicly declare their reactions. WATCH: "I guess no man knows the day or the hour," said Peter Lombardi, a 44-year-old from Jersey City, N.J. who had had taken an "indefinite break" from his job in April to preach about May 21. He had fitted his Dodge minivan with stickers proclaiming the "awesome news" of Judgment Day and paraded with neon green Caravans through Manhattan's business districts to hand hundreds of fliers about the date. On Sunday, he was peeling the stickers off. Lombardi said he is going back to work -- he owns a construction business -- and said he has "no regrets." He added, "I'm not disappointed. I'm still living today." He believes Camping and others must have read the Bible incorrectly. Lombardi had donated $1,100 to Family Radio in recent months to help the organization purchase thousands of billboards and other ads throughout the country, but said he doesn't expect any of his money back. "What can you do?" he said. "I don't think they were scamming me, but I am definitely waiting to see what they say Monday on the radio show." "It's not [Camping's] fault," said Ramsey, who added he also won't ask for his money back. "Nobody held a gun to my head. I read the Bible. The math added up. I don't think anybody would do something like this without meaning it." Camping was mostly silent over the weekend, but he spoke briefly outside his Alameda, Calif. home on Sunday with a San Francisco Chronicle Reporter. "It has been a really tough weekend," he said, adding he was "flabbergasted" and "looking for answers." Camping said he would make a detailed announcement on Monday. The Family Radio web site has not been updated. A countdown on the site says there are zero days left to 'Judgment Day' and an image shows the numbers "2012" crossed out. "Mr. Camping certainly won't shy away from this," Family Radio spokesman Tom Evans told The Huffington Post on Sunday, adding "how that will happen will be forthcoming." Evans, who had spent 'Judgment Day' with his wife and kids, said he was happy that he gets more time to be with his family, but added that "a believer's highest hope is to be with the Lord forever." As for his belief in the second coming, "nothing has changed other than the ramifications for Family Radio and Mr. Camping's credibility in the world." After Camping's failed Rapture prediction in 1994, Evans stayed with Family Radio, but he declined to say whether he would stay on the job this time. WATCH: Camping, who told The Huffington Post last week that May 21 was "no laughing matter," had refused to discuss what he would do with donations if the day passed without event. In recent months, followers have given generously to his company, which runs 66 radio stations in the U.S. and is worth at least $120 million. On Sunday, Evans said Family Radio's assets "far outweigh its liabilities," and that it will "certainly do everything it can to take care of people." But he said that there has been no decision on giving money back to donors. In 2009, the last year Family Radio publicly released a tax return, the group reported $18.4 million in income from contributions and $1 million from investments and other income. It spent $36.7 million and employed 348 people paid a total of more than $9 million in wages and benefits. Camping has said he has worked without pay for several years. Articles have noted that the station's lease runs through 2023 and that several employees were planning last week to show up to work on Monday. Followers like Ramsey and Lombardi said they had few hard feelings toward Camping and still agreed with some of the self-taught preacher's views, such as one that says all churches and denominations have been corrupted. "I have learned to study the Bible really well. This guy has opened my eyes to a lot of truths," said Lombardi. "If he makes another prediction, I can't tell you what I am going to do," said Ramsey. "But I've really taken an interest in the Bible. I know it's the word of God. And I've been reading into more parts today." He quoted Mark 13:22: "For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall [show] signs and wonders, to seduce, if [it were] possible, even the elect." ||||| the end is near Long Island Firefighter’s Wait for the Rapture Goes Unfulfilled “Wanna order a pizza?" Jeff asks. "I don’t know if we’ll have time to eat it, but we might as well get it.” It is 4:48 p.m. on May 21, and earthquakes have not yet riven the Earth. “When the sky goes dark and you feel a rumbling, I’m going to ask you and the kids to step outside very quickly," Jeff told me when I first arrived at his small ranch house in Hicksville, Long Island. "God willing, we’ll all be taken up in a whirlwind to Heaven. I know it might sound strange, but that’s my understanding of how it’s going to go.” His 6-year-old son was in the living room, playing a Star Wars game on the Wii. His 4-year-old daughter, wearing a Spider-Man bike helmet from a recent tricycle trip around the backyard, tapped me on the shoulder to show me a crayon drawing of a rainbow. Jeff orders a large Sicilian pie for delivery. “And please put a rush on it,” he tells the person taking his order. “We’re — we’re in a rush here.” Jeff is visibly nervous now, taking deep breaths. “And listen,” he says into the phone, “if you have a radio, put on 94.7. They’re talking about Judgment Day and telling everyone to ask God for mercy. It's important.” WFME 94.7 is the New York outlet for Family Radio, the station Jeff was listening to three years ago when he heard Harold Camping prophesying the End of Days. That's when Jeff left the Catholic Church and begin studying Biblical numerology. Thousands of Camping's followers fervently believe that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011; millions more know of the prophecy thanks to Family Radio billboards and newspaper ads. Jeff, 44, is a muscular firefighter from Flushing with a square jawline. When the pizza arrives, Jeff calls his friend Ron, “One of the only true believers I know who will talk to me about this stuff," and they reassure each other by speakerphone, parsing choice psalms and proverbs. “So, from the Biblical evidence you’re finding,” Jeff asks Ron, “at what hour do we now think this earthquake is going to happen?” According to Harold Camping, the earthquakes were to start at 6 p.m. at the International Date Line — 2 a.m. Eastern Time — and spread eastward around the world. When Jeff woke up on Saturday and everything was still calm, he decided this was a potentially ominous sign: “This morning the sky was crystal clear, just like 9/11. I was a firefighter then, and I couldn’t believe that on such a beautiful day, such destruction could come.” With the Rapture seemingly running behind schedule, Jeff hypothesized then predicted the earthquakes would come between 3 and 5 p.m. ET, and would wreak destruction over all the world simultaneously. After three, his prediction changed again: “Six now looks more likely, but really it might be any time before midnight.” Ron, over the phone, refuses to predict the hour. “In all this time, I’ve always been blown away by the evidence pointing to the day, but never the exact hour.” Rosana, Jeff’s wife, who had been out at a friend's birthday party, comes home a little after six. “What, nothing happened?” she asks with no small amount of contempt. Jeff buries his head in his Bible. He and Ron debate the virtues of King Solomon for another hour, while Rosana loudly opens and closes cabinets. Jeff warms up another slice of pizza and pours Pepsi into a Miller Lite pint glass. Finally, he hangs up the phone. Rosana turns to face him. “Jeff, starting at midnight tonight, I don’t want to hear any more of this crap, okay?” “Look,” he says, “I told you I knew the day, but I never claimed to know the hour—“ “I don’t want to hear it, Jeff. I’m telling you, I can’t take it.” Rosana gives me a helpless look, and she and I go into another room to chat. “I don’t know what happened to him,” she whispers to me. “He used to be normal. Now all he can talk about is the Bible and this May 21 stuff. He took all his vacation days in a row, so all he’s doing the last four weeks is sitting around reading the Bible and driving me nuts. Thank God he didn’t quit his job like some of them did.” Meanwhile, Jeff is checking his text messages. “There are a bunch of friends here who are mocking me,” he says. “And that’s all right! I just put on my spiritual shield and endure.” Ron calls again, and he and Jeff come up with a new interpretation: May 21 will not end, technically, until midnight in Hawaii. “There will be a lot of people mocking me after midnight tonight if nothing does happen,” Jeff says, breathing quickly again, “but what they don’t realize is that May 21 hasn’t been completed everywhere in the world yet. So we really can’t tell anything until six in the morning here. That’s when the truth will really be tested.” ||||| The hour of the apocalypse came quietly and went the same way _ leaving those who believed that Saturday evening would mark the world's end confused, or more faithful, or just philosophical. Alese Osborn, of the Bittersweet Cafe, shows off their tongue-in-cheek Judgment Day candy and sweets survival packs, satirizing radio evangelist Harold Camping, who claimed that the ascension into heaven... (Associated Press) Caroline Dennewith, co-owner of Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma, Wash., poses for a photo, Friday, May 20, 2011 with a poster advertising her business' "Rapture Party," which will be held Saturday, May 21, 2011,... (Associated Press) Members of the Calvary Bible Church of Milpitas appear at the closed Family Radio station offices of Harold Camping to offer support to victims of the radio evangelist, who claimed that the ascension... (Associated Press) Members of the Calvary Bible Church of Milpitas appear at the closed Family Radio station offices of Harold Camping to offer support to victims of the radio evangelist, who claimed that the ascension... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Dec. 12, 2002 file photo, Harold Camping speaks while holding the Bible, in San Leandro, Calif. A loosely organized Christian movement has spread the word around the globe that Jesus Christ... (Associated Press) Pastor Jacob Denys, left, rallies his Calvary Bible Church of Milpitas members to appear at the closed Family Radio station offices of Harold Camping to offer support to victims of the radio evangelist,... (Associated Press) Stuart Bechman and Dr. Marlene Winell discuss among other things, the radio evangelist Harold Camping, while attending the American Atheists regional meeting at the Masonic Center, setup to coincide... (Associated Press) People in a partying mood, including performing artists the Phenomenauts, gather in front of the closed Family Radio station offices of radio evangelist Harold Camping, to celebrate irreverently, the... (Associated Press) Caroline Dennewith, co-owner of Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma, Wash., poses for a photo, Friday, May 20, 2011 with a poster advertising her business' "Rapture Party," which will be held Saturday, May 21, 2011,... (Associated Press) Believers had spent months warning the world of the pending cataclysm. Some had given away earthly belongings. Others took long journeys to be with loved ones. And there were those who drained their savings accounts. All were responding to the May 21 doomsday message by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar Christian media empire that publicizes his apocalyptic prediction. "I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God," said Keith Bauer _ who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) to California for the Rapture. He started his day in the bright morning sun outside Camping's gated Oakland headquarters of Family Radio International. "I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth," said Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver who began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he "worked last week, I wouldn't have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen." According to Camping, the destruction was likely to have begun its worldwide march as it became 6 p.m. in the various time zones, although some believers said Saturday the exact timing was never written in stone. He had been projecting the apocalyptic prediction for years far and wide via broadcasts and websites. In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when the six o'clock hour simply came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world. "I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists. "Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here." Many followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith. "It's still May 21 and God's going to bring it," said Family Radio's special projects coordinator Michael Garcia, who spent Saturday morning praying and drinking two last cups of coffee with his wife at home in Alameda. "When you say something and it doesn't happen, your pride is what's hurt. But who needs pride? God said he resists the proud and gives grace to the humble." The Internet was alive with discussion, humorous or not, about the end of the world and its apparent failure to occur on cue. Many tweets declared Camping's prediction a dud or shared, tongue-in-cheek, their relief at not having to do weekend chores or take a shower. The top trends on Twitter at midday included, at No. 1, "endofworldconfessions," followed by "myraptureplaylist." As 6 p.m. approached in California, some 100 people gathered outside Family Radio International headquarters in Oakland, although it appeared none of the believers of the prophecy were among them. Camping's radio stations, TV channels, satellite broadcasts and website are controlled from a modest building sandwiched between an auto shop and a palm reader's business. Christian leaders from across the spectrum widely dismissed the prophecy, and members of a local church concerned Camping's followers could slip into a deep depression come Sunday were part of the crowd outside Family Radio International. They held signs declaring Camping a false prophet as motorists drove by. "The cold, hard reality is going to hit them that they did this, and it was false and they basically emptied out everything to follow a false teacher," the Rev. Jacob Denys, of the Milpitas-based Calvary Bible Church, said earlier. "We're not all about doom and gloom. Our message is a message of salvation and of hope." About a dozen people in a partying mood were also outside Family Radio International, creating a carnival-like atmosphere as they strolled in a variety of costumes that portrayed monks, Jesus Christ and other figures. "Am I relieved? Yeah. I've got a lot going on," Peter Erwin, a student from Oakland, said, with a hint of sarcasm. "Trying to get specific about the end of the world is crazy." Revelers counted down the seconds before the anticipated hour, and people began dancing to music as the clock struck 6 p.m. Some released shoe-shaped helium balloons into the sky in an apparent reference to the Rapture. Camping has preached that some 200 million people would be saved, and that those left behind would die in a series of scourges visiting Earth until the globe is consumed by a fireball on Oct. 21. Family Radio International's message has been broadcast in 61 languages. He has said that his earlier apocalyptic prediction in 1994 didn't come true because of a mathematical error. "I'm not embarrassed about it. It was just the fact that it was premature," he told The Associated Press last month. But this time, he said, "there is ... no possibility that it will not happen." As Saturday drew nearer, followers reported that donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities. Marie Exley, who helped put up apocalypse-themed billboards in Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, said the money allowed the nonprofit to reach as many souls as possible. She said she and her husband, mother and brother read the Bible and stayed close to the television news on Friday night awaiting word of an earthquake in the southern hemisphere. When that did not happen, she said fellow believers began reaching out to reassure one another of their faith. "Some people were saying it was going to be an earthquake at that specific time in New Zealand and be a rolling judgment, but God is keeping us in our place and saying you may know the day but you don't know the hour," she said Saturday, speaking from Bozeman, Montana. "The day is not over, it's just the morning, and we have to endure until the end." Still, the world wasn't without its normal and sometimes dreadful disturbances Saturday. Among them: a tornado killed one person and damaged at least 20 homes in Kansas, a 6.1-magnitude quake stuck 600 miles (1,100 kilometers) off New Zealand with no reports of injury, a much smaller quake, 3.6, was felt my many people Saturday evening in the San Francisco Bay area, and Iceland's most active volcano started erupting. Camping, who lives a few miles (kilometers) from his radio station, was not home late morning Saturday, and an additional attempt to seek comment from him late in the evening also was unsuccessful, with no one answering his front door. Earlier in the day, Sheila Doan, 65, Camping's next-door-neighbor of 40 years, was outside gardening and said the worldwide spotlight on his May 21 forecast has attracted far more attention than the 1994 prediction. Doan said she is a Christian and while she respects her neighbor, she doesn't share his views. "I wouldn't consider Mr. Camping a close friend and wouldn't have him over for dinner or anything, but if he needs anything, we are there for him," Doan said. ___ Associated Press reporters Terry Chea in Oakland, Don Babwin in Chicago, Mike Householder in Detroit, Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, David R. Martin in New York and video journalist Haven Daley in San Francisco contributed to this report. Garance Burke can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garanceburke

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A 34-year-old man has filed an $800,000 lawsuit against a Albany construction company, claiming the owner fired him after he refused to attend weekly Bible study. Ryan Coleman’s lawsuit states that he discovered only after he was hired as a painter for Dahled Up Construction that the job entailed more than just fixing up homes. According to Coleman and his lawsuit, owner Joel Dahl told him all employees were required to partake in regular Bible study sessions led by a Christian pastor during the work day, while on the clock. Coleman told Dahl that the requirement was illegal, but Dahl wouldn’t budge, according to the lawsuit. In order to keep his job, Coleman obliged for nearly six months but ultimately told Dahl he couldn’t go, the suit says. “I said ‘I’ve kept an open mind, and it’s just not my thing.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m going to have to replace you,'” Coleman told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “He said ‘You’re not going to tell me how to run my own company,’” Coleman continued. “I said ‘I’m not trying to tell you how to run your own company, but you’re not going to tell me what god to pray to.’” Coleman said his religious beliefs are indigenous: He’s half Caucasian and half Native American, with Cherokee and Blackfoot heritage. Coleman worked for the small construction company from October 2017 to this past April, when he was fired, the suit states. “This is so illegal,” said Corinne Schram, a Portland attorney representing Coleman. “Unless you are a religious organization like a church, you cannot force your employees to participate in religious activities.” Dahl's Albany attorney, Kent Hickam, doesn't dispute that Dahl requires all of his employees to attend Bible study, but says it’s legal because Dahl pays them to attend. “Mr. Dahl feels that it’s unfortunate that he (Coleman) is now trying to exploit Mr. Dahl’s honorable intentions for unjustified financial gain,” Hickman said. Dahl told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he’d struggled with drugs and alcohol and served time in prison for attempted second-degree assault. He said he’s been clean and sober for seven years. He started his company in 2016, with the idea of helping other convicted felons or people who’ve battled addictions rebuild their lives. “I’m a second-chance employer,” Dahl said. (Joel Dahl says he’s not related to another second-chance employer, Dave Dahl of Dave’s Killer Bread.) God is a big part of Joel Dahl’s life. The company's Facebook page features photos of recently completed home remodels -- often alongside praise to God or Jesus. After stripping a 106-year-old home down to the studs and renovating it to look brand new, one post states: “Fixing up this old house at times I was discouraged ‘cause there was so much to fix. But Me and God did this together and we got er done.” Another post expresses gratitude for the work that has come to Dahled Up Construction: "Just finished these 2 roofs ... Look at God go. He is so awesome.” Coleman said he’s served prison time for delivery of methamphetamine and child neglect but has now been clean and sober for nearly four years. Earlier this week, he won back full custody of his two children, he said. Coleman’s past left him fearful that he wouldn’t be able to find other work, so he said stuck with the weekly, hourlong Bible study sessions for six months, until he took a stance and said he wouldn’t go. Coleman's legal team has started a web page, where it plans to offer updates about the case. Members of the public can also sign the page, in a show of support for Coleman. The page can be viewed here. The lawsuit was filed last week in Linn County Circuit Court. Read the lawsuit here. -- Aimee Green [email protected] o_aimee ||||| ALBANY, Ore. – A man is suing an Albany construction company claiming he was fired for not attending Bible study. Ryan Coleman said he was hired by Dahled Up Construction Inc. in October 2017. Soon after he started working there, he said he discovered his boss Joel Dahl required employees to attend a Christian Bible study during work time. Coleman, who is not a practicing Christian, told Dahl he was not comfortable attending and that it was it illegal for him to require his employees to do so. However, he said Dahl insisted he attend. Coleman said he believed he had no other choice and went to the Bible study in order to keep his job. In April, Coleman said he once again told Dahl on the phone that he had a right not to attend the Bible study, and was then fired by Dahl. Coleman claims Dahl and his company discriminated against him due to his religious beliefs and is asking for $800,000 in damages. Dahl’s attorney Kent Hickman told the Oregonian that Dahl does require all his employees to attend Bible study and said it is legal because he pays them to attend.

– An Oregon man who says he was fired from his construction job for refusing to attend Christian Bible study is appealing to a higher power: the court. In a lawsuit filed this month, Ryan Coleman, 34, says he didn't find out about the weekly Bible study requirement until after Joel Dahl of Albany-based Dahled Up Construction hired him as a painter in late 2017, OregonLive reports. He says he went along with it for about six months before telling Dahl, "It's just not my thing." Dahl's response, per Coleman, "He said, 'well, I'm going to have to replace you." That was in April, KEZI reports. Now, Coleman is seeking $800,000—$50,000 in lost earnings and $750,000 for "severe emotional distress, anguish, humiliation, anger, shame, and anxiety," per the lawsuit's ironically titled "prayer for relief." Dahl's attorney, accusing Coleman of seeking "unjustified financial gain," concedes that Dahled Up employees are required to go to Bible study. But it's legal, he argues, because they're still on the clock when they attend. Colman's attorney disagrees: "This is so illegal," she says, adding that only religious organizations could have such a requirement. Dahl, who admits to past legal problems, says he's a "second-chance employer," with OregonLive noting that "God is a big part of Joel Dahl's life."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.A 34-year-old man has filed an $800,000 lawsuit against a Albany construction company, claiming the owner fired him after he refused to attend weekly Bible study. Ryan Coleman’s lawsuit states that he discovered only after he was hired as a painter for Dahled Up Construction that the job entailed more than just fixing up homes. According to Coleman and his lawsuit, owner Joel Dahl told him all employees were required to partake in regular Bible study sessions led by a Christian pastor during the work day, while on the clock. Coleman told Dahl that the requirement was illegal, but Dahl wouldn’t budge, according to the lawsuit. In order to keep his job, Coleman obliged for nearly six months but ultimately told Dahl he couldn’t go, the suit says. “I said ‘I’ve kept an open mind, and it’s just not my thing.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m going to have to replace you,'” Coleman told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “He said ‘You’re not going to tell me how to run my own company,’” Coleman continued. “I said ‘I’m not trying to tell you how to run your own company, but you’re not going to tell me what god to pray to.’” Coleman said his religious beliefs are indigenous: He’s half Caucasian and half Native American, with Cherokee and Blackfoot heritage. Coleman worked for the small construction company from October 2017 to this past April, when he was fired, the suit states. “This is so illegal,” said Corinne Schram, a Portland attorney representing Coleman. “Unless you are a religious organization like a church, you cannot force your employees to participate in religious activities.” Dahl's Albany attorney, Kent Hickam, doesn't dispute that Dahl requires all of his employees to attend Bible study, but says it’s legal because Dahl pays them to attend. “Mr. Dahl feels that it’s unfortunate that he (Coleman) is now trying to exploit Mr. Dahl’s honorable intentions for unjustified financial gain,” Hickman said. Dahl told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he’d struggled with drugs and alcohol and served time in prison for attempted second-degree assault. He said he’s been clean and sober for seven years. He started his company in 2016, with the idea of helping other convicted felons or people who’ve battled addictions rebuild their lives. “I’m a second-chance employer,” Dahl said. (Joel Dahl says he’s not related to another second-chance employer, Dave Dahl of Dave’s Killer Bread.) God is a big part of Joel Dahl’s life. The company's Facebook page features photos of recently completed home remodels -- often alongside praise to God or Jesus. After stripping a 106-year-old home down to the studs and renovating it to look brand new, one post states: “Fixing up this old house at times I was discouraged ‘cause there was so much to fix. But Me and God did this together and we got er done.” Another post expresses gratitude for the work that has come to Dahled Up Construction: "Just finished these 2 roofs ... Look at God go. He is so awesome.” Coleman said he’s served prison time for delivery of methamphetamine and child neglect but has now been clean and sober for nearly four years. Earlier this week, he won back full custody of his two children, he said. Coleman’s past left him fearful that he wouldn’t be able to find other work, so he said stuck with the weekly, hourlong Bible study sessions for six months, until he took a stance and said he wouldn’t go. Coleman's legal team has started a web page, where it plans to offer updates about the case. Members of the public can also sign the page, in a show of support for Coleman. The page can be viewed here. The lawsuit was filed last week in Linn County Circuit Court. Read the lawsuit here. -- Aimee Green [email protected] o_aimee ||||| ALBANY, Ore. – A man is suing an Albany construction company claiming he was fired for not attending Bible study. Ryan Coleman said he was hired by Dahled Up Construction Inc. in October 2017. Soon after he started working there, he said he discovered his boss Joel Dahl required employees to attend a Christian Bible study during work time. Coleman, who is not a practicing Christian, told Dahl he was not comfortable attending and that it was it illegal for him to require his employees to do so. However, he said Dahl insisted he attend. Coleman said he believed he had no other choice and went to the Bible study in order to keep his job. In April, Coleman said he once again told Dahl on the phone that he had a right not to attend the Bible study, and was then fired by Dahl. Coleman claims Dahl and his company discriminated against him due to his religious beliefs and is asking for $800,000 in damages. Dahl’s attorney Kent Hickman told the Oregonian that Dahl does require all his employees to attend Bible study and said it is legal because he pays them to attend.

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Image copyright Steve Easton Image caption Steve Easton said he felt something come out of his nose and slowly unfurl itself A 51-year-old man been reunited with part of a toy dart that he played with as a child - after he sneezed it out. Steve Easton, from Surrey, was overcome by a sneezing fit and "a very uncomfortable sensation" before he felt something make its way into his left nostril and slowly unfurl itself. After he retrieved it, Mr Easton was unable to work out what it was until he phoned his mother, Pat. She knew instantly it was a rubber sucker lost more than 40 years ago. Mr Easton was at home in Camberley playing a game on the internet when it happened. "It was a very strange sensation so I retrieved it to examine it," he said. The rubber sucker became an object of curiosity that he carried around with him because people were so interested, but has since been thrown out. Mr Easton said he had grown up being able to smell and blow his nose and added: "It doesn't feel any different. Nothing has changed as far as I'm concerned." "It's the length of time," he said. "I'm not the first person this has happened to, but 43 years - it's quite out there isn't it?" Image copyright Steve Easton Image caption It was thought Mr Easton had swallowed the rubber part as a child - but X-rays could not find it Mrs Easton, 77, who lives in Buckinghamshire, had taken Steve to hospital at the age of seven or eight, suspecting he had swallowed the sucker from the dart. She said she had worried about it for years and was just glad it was out. "I don't know what he did - you know what children are - whether he put it in his mouth, but he swallowed it. "I was really worried so I took him to hospital and they X-rayed him and checked everything and they couldn't find it." She said she had never known whether he had got rid of it naturally or whether it was still inside him. "All these years later, it suddenly shot out," she said. ||||| Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video.Please install Adobe Flash ™ and try again. Alternatively upgrade to a modern browser. A man who regularly suffered a blocked nose can finally breathe easy after he sneezed out the cause – part of a toy dart that had been stuck up a nostril for more than 40 years. Steve Easton, 51, often had a case of the sniffles or a headache and put it down to hay fever. But his nasal passages are now clear for the first time since childhood after one big blow cleared the problem. As he sat at his computer he sneezed and out flew the sucker tip of a toy dart, about the size of a penny coin. Easton told his mother, Pat, and was amazed to find that at the age of seven his parents had taken him to hospital after they thought he had inhaled the dart. “I started a sneezing fit and it came out of my left nostril,” said Easton, of Camberley in Surrey. “I thought, ‘What’s this? Where the hell has this come from?’ and pulled out this rubber sucker. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A toy gun with plastic darts similar to the one which Steve Easton had stuck up his nose for 44 years Photograph: SWNS.com I spoke to my mum and she said, ‘Oh yes, we took you to hospital when you were seven because we thought you had inhaled one.’” His mother and father, Quentin, both 77, of Buckinghamshire, had found little Steve playing with his dart gun at their home in Camberley, and noticed one of the rubber tips was missing. Mrs Easton said: “There was just one of these darts without a tip. I took him to the hospital and they spent a lot of time looking for it but in the end they said perhaps it was a mistake. I knew it wasn’t and it’s always worried me and now it has suddenly shot out. We are all shocked.” Easton has suffered from the sniffles all his life but as far as he is aware the sucker has caused him no other health issues. “I brought it up with my doctor and he was amazed like everybody else but said there had been no harm done. It’s just one of those things,” he said. “It had been there in my nasal cavity for 44 years. I was completely unaware that it was in my nose for that long. I feel no different now. I wonder if there’s anything else up there.”

– When Steve Easton was about seven years old, his parents noticed that the suction cup was missing from one of his toy darts, and they were worried he had inhaled or swallowed it. So they took him to the hospital, but doctors couldn't find anything. Yet for decades, he's suffered from sniffles and headaches he thought were a result of allergies. Now, more than four decades later, it turns out his childhood doctors were wrong, the Guardian reports. In what must have been a powerful sneeze—accompanied by what he calls "a very uncomfortable sensation"—the suction cup emerged from a 51-year-old Easton's nose. "I started a sneezing fit and it came out of my left nostril,” the British man says. “I thought, 'What’s this? Where the hell has this come from?' and pulled out this rubber sucker." Easton called his mom, who told him about the hospital visit—which he had apparently forgotten. Doctors at the time said perhaps she was mistaken about her son inhaling the suction cup, she notes. "I knew it wasn’t [a mistake] and it’s always worried me, and now it has suddenly shot out. We are all shocked." Easton's current doctor doesn't think the dart caused any problems. It did, however, become a good conversation piece, and Easton toted it around for a while before he threw it away, the BBC reports. As for his nose, "it doesn't feel any different" now, he notes. (In more disturbing nasal news, a woman says a sneeze killed her sister.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Image copyright Steve Easton Image caption Steve Easton said he felt something come out of his nose and slowly unfurl itself A 51-year-old man been reunited with part of a toy dart that he played with as a child - after he sneezed it out. Steve Easton, from Surrey, was overcome by a sneezing fit and "a very uncomfortable sensation" before he felt something make its way into his left nostril and slowly unfurl itself. After he retrieved it, Mr Easton was unable to work out what it was until he phoned his mother, Pat. She knew instantly it was a rubber sucker lost more than 40 years ago. Mr Easton was at home in Camberley playing a game on the internet when it happened. "It was a very strange sensation so I retrieved it to examine it," he said. The rubber sucker became an object of curiosity that he carried around with him because people were so interested, but has since been thrown out. Mr Easton said he had grown up being able to smell and blow his nose and added: "It doesn't feel any different. Nothing has changed as far as I'm concerned." "It's the length of time," he said. "I'm not the first person this has happened to, but 43 years - it's quite out there isn't it?" Image copyright Steve Easton Image caption It was thought Mr Easton had swallowed the rubber part as a child - but X-rays could not find it Mrs Easton, 77, who lives in Buckinghamshire, had taken Steve to hospital at the age of seven or eight, suspecting he had swallowed the sucker from the dart. She said she had worried about it for years and was just glad it was out. "I don't know what he did - you know what children are - whether he put it in his mouth, but he swallowed it. "I was really worried so I took him to hospital and they X-rayed him and checked everything and they couldn't find it." She said she had never known whether he had got rid of it naturally or whether it was still inside him. "All these years later, it suddenly shot out," she said. ||||| Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video.Please install Adobe Flash ™ and try again. Alternatively upgrade to a modern browser. A man who regularly suffered a blocked nose can finally breathe easy after he sneezed out the cause – part of a toy dart that had been stuck up a nostril for more than 40 years. Steve Easton, 51, often had a case of the sniffles or a headache and put it down to hay fever. But his nasal passages are now clear for the first time since childhood after one big blow cleared the problem. As he sat at his computer he sneezed and out flew the sucker tip of a toy dart, about the size of a penny coin. Easton told his mother, Pat, and was amazed to find that at the age of seven his parents had taken him to hospital after they thought he had inhaled the dart. “I started a sneezing fit and it came out of my left nostril,” said Easton, of Camberley in Surrey. “I thought, ‘What’s this? Where the hell has this come from?’ and pulled out this rubber sucker. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A toy gun with plastic darts similar to the one which Steve Easton had stuck up his nose for 44 years Photograph: SWNS.com I spoke to my mum and she said, ‘Oh yes, we took you to hospital when you were seven because we thought you had inhaled one.’” His mother and father, Quentin, both 77, of Buckinghamshire, had found little Steve playing with his dart gun at their home in Camberley, and noticed one of the rubber tips was missing. Mrs Easton said: “There was just one of these darts without a tip. I took him to the hospital and they spent a lot of time looking for it but in the end they said perhaps it was a mistake. I knew it wasn’t and it’s always worried me and now it has suddenly shot out. We are all shocked.” Easton has suffered from the sniffles all his life but as far as he is aware the sucker has caused him no other health issues. “I brought it up with my doctor and he was amazed like everybody else but said there had been no harm done. It’s just one of those things,” he said. “It had been there in my nasal cavity for 44 years. I was completely unaware that it was in my nose for that long. I feel no different now. I wonder if there’s anything else up there.”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

FILE - In a Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 file photo, Italian writer Umberto Eco gestures as he speaks during a press conference at the 25th Annual Book Fair in Jerusalem. Eco, best known for the international... (Associated Press) FILE - In a Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 file photo, Italian writer Umberto Eco gestures as he speaks during a press conference at the 25th Annual Book Fair in Jerusalem. Eco, best known for the international best-seller “The Name of the Rose,” died Friday, Feb. 19, 2016, according to spokeswoman Lori Glazer... (Associated Press) MILAN (AP) — Umberto Eco started working a novel that set the world's imagination on fire "prodded by a seminal idea: I felt like poisoning a monk." The Italian author/academic who intrigued, puzzled and delighted readers worldwide with his best-selling historical novel "The Name of the Rose" died at home in Milan on Friday evening after a battle with cancer, according to a family member who asked not to be identified. His death was also confirmed by his American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Author of a wide range of books, Eco was fascinated with the obscure and the mundane, and his books were both engaging narratives and philosophical and intellectual exercises. The bearded, heavy-set scholar, critic and novelist took on the esoteric theory of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols in language; took on popular culture icons like James Bond; and took on the technical languages of the Internet. "The Name of the Rose" transformed him from an academic to international celebrity, especially after the medieval thriller set in a monastery was made into a film starring Sean Connery in 1986. "The Name of the Rose" sold millions of copies, a feat for a narrative filled with partially translated Latin quotes and puzzling musings on the nature of symbols. His second novel, the 1988 "Foucault's Pendulum," a byzantine tale of plotting publishers and secret sects also styled as a thriller, was successful, too — though it was so complicated that an annotated guide accompanied it to help the reader follow the plot. In 2000, when awarding Eco Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize for communications, the jury praised his works "of universal distribution and profound effect that are already classics in contemporary thought." Eco was born Jan. 5, 1932, in Alessandria, a town east of Turin. He said the reserved culture there was a source for his "world vision: a skepticism and an aversion to rhetoric." He received a university degree in philosophy from the University of Turin in 1954, beginning his fascination with the Middle Ages and the aesthetics of text. He later defined semiotics as "a philosophy of language." He had always loved storytelling and as a teenager wrote comic books and fantasy novels. "I was a perfectionist and wanted to make them look as though they had been printed, so I wrote them in capital letters and made up title pages, summaries, illustrations," he told The Paris Review in 1988. "It was so tiring that I never finished any of them. I was at that time a great writer of unaccomplished masterpieces." Eco remained involved with academia, becoming the first professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna in 1971. He also lectured at institutions worldwide and was a fellow at elite colleges like Oxford University and Columbia University. Twenty-three institutions had awarded him honorary degrees by 2000. But Eco was also able to bridge the gap between popular and intellectual culture, publishing his musings in daily newspapers and Italy's leading weekly magazine L'Espresso. Eco started in journalism in the 1950s, working for the Italian state-owned television RAI. From the 1960s onwards, he wrote columns for several Italian dailies. He also wrote children's books, including "The Bomb and the General" ("La Bomba e il Generale"). In 2003, Eco published a collection of lectures on translations, "Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation," and a year later he wrote the novel "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana," a story about an antiquarian book dealer who loses his memory. Recent works include "From the Tree to the Labyrinth," an essay on semiology and language published in 2007 and "Turning Back the Clock," a collection of essays on various subjects, ranging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to anti-Semitism and to staunch criticism of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government in Italy. His most recent novel, "Numero Zero," came out last year and recalled a political scandal from the 1990s that helped lead to Berlusconi's rise. In a 2011 interview with the Guardian newspaper, Eco explained how someone as "strongly anti-intellectual" as Berlusconi could become a political force in Italy, a cradle of Renaissance culture. "There was a fear of the intellectual as a critical power, and in this sense there was a clash between Berlusconi and the intellectual world," he said. "But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo." In the same interview, Eco shrugged off critics who found him "too erudite and philosophical, too difficult," saying he wrote "for masochists." "It's only publishers and some journalists who believe that people want simple things," Eco said. "People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged." ___ Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report from New York. ||||| The author of The Name of the Rose on why it is human to lie, how Berlusconi has used conspiracy theories to stay in power – and his love/hate relationship with his most famous book 'I am reaching the end of my ordeal," says Umberto Eco when we meet. Happily, I don't take this personally. Eco – philosopher, semiotician, novelist, bibliophile and all-round brainbox – has been on a 20-day global tour to promote his new novel, The Prague Cemetery, and says at times he has barely known what city he was in. Eco, who will be 80 in January, doesn't look too bad for his ordeal. His rotundity means he sits a little awkwardly in his chair, but he is a lively, playful interviewee, chewing on a small cigar throughout. He gave up smoking them eight years ago, but still likes to have one in his mouth and hopes some of the nicotine gets through. He has a rasping voice and an idiosyncratic take on English. The conversation occasionally breaks down when I use expressions he doesn't quite grasp. He misunderstands when I ask him whether The Prague Cemetery is, as some critics have suggested, a "return to form": for him, form is a sporting rather than a literary term. Anyway, we battle on. The elephant in our cramped little room is that the new book is not a return to form, whether literary or sporting. Set in the second half of the 19th century and following the fortunes of master forger, murderer and general bad egg Simone Simonini, who manages to have a hand in most of the great events of that period (Italian unification, Franco-Prussian war, Paris Commune, Dreyfus affair), it is a wearying read. In English at least. Perhaps it sparkles in Italian. Whether or not it is a return to form, it is certainly a return to Eco's favourite subject – conspiracies. Simonini is presented as the originator of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early 20th-century fake text that purported to detail a Jewish conspiracy aimed at world domination. Following its publication in Russia in 1903, it was widely read and believed, despite being shown to have been plagiarised from fictional sources. Hitler quoted it extensively, and even now its poison circulates. Eco pieces together what little is known of the origins of the text, and offers Simonini, an amoral Italian living in Paris, as the originator of the most toxic of all forgeries. Conspiracies in general, and the Protocols in particular, have been recurrent themes in Eco's work, notably in his second novel, Foucault's Pendulum, where as a joke three nondescript book editors concoct a grand conspiracy that comes to take over their lives. Why do the Protocols preoccupy him? "As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying. A dog doesn't lie. When it barks, it means there is somebody outside." Animals do not lie; human beings do. "From lies to forgeries the step is not so long, and I have written technical essays on the logic of forgeries and on the influence of forgeries on history. The most famous and terrible of those forgeries is the Protocols." Eco says it is not conspiracies that attract him, but the paranoia that allows them to flourish. "There are many small conspiracies, and most of them are exposed," he says. "But the paranoia of the universal conspiracy is more powerful because it is everlasting. You can never discover it because you don't know who is there. It is a psychological temptation of our species. Karl Popper wrote a beautiful essay on that, in which he said it started with Homer. Everything that happens in Troy was plotted the day before on the top of Olympus by the gods. It's a way not to feel responsible for something. That's why dictatorships use the notion of universal conspiracy as a weapon. For the first 10 years of my life I was educated by fascists at school, and they used a universal conspiracy – that you, the Englishman, the Jews and the capitalists were plotting against the poor Italian people. For Hitler it was the same. And Berlusconi has spent all his electoral campaigns speaking of the double conspiracy of the judges and the communists. There are no more communists around, even if you look for them with a lamp, but for Berlusconi they were there trying to take over." Sean Connery and Christian Slater in The Name of the Rose. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection/Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext Collection He probably does not intend to elide Hitler and Berlusconi, but nor is he a fan of Italy's recently departed prime minister. Eco has always been a prominent figure on the political left, and has opposed Berlusconi since his first stint as PM in the mid-1990s. He is pleased that the great partygoer has fallen, but warns against writing him off, suggesting he may try to return after the elections due in 2013. "Berlusconi is a genius in communication," says Eco. "Otherwise he would never have become so rich. From the beginning he identified his target – middle-aged people who watch television. Young people do not watch television; they are on the internet. The people who support Berlusconi are 50- and 60-year-old ladies and retired people, who, in a country with an ageing population, make a powerful electoral force. So even some of his famous blunders may be blunders for me and you, but probably for the provincial 60-year-old lady or gentlemen they are not. His appeal was 'pay less taxes'. When the premier says you are right not to pay taxes, you are pleased." How could a culture as intellectual and artistic as Italy's have elected such a buffoon? "Berlusconi was strongly anti-intellectual," he says, "and boasted that he hadn't read a novel for 20 years. There was a fear of the intellectual as a critical power, and in this sense there was a clash between Berlusconi and the intellectual world. But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo." Eco's new book has been attacked by some for regurgitating an antisemitic text, but he argues that the Protocols can easily be found on the internet and that "weak readers" who misunderstand his purpose will be misled elsewhere. "You are not responsible for perverse readings of your book," he says. "Catholic priests said don't give Madame Bovary to a young girl to read because she might be seduced by adultery." Does it bother him that the half-dozen novels he has produced since The Name of the Rose propelled him to fictional fame in the early 1980s have had a mixed reception? "You are always shocked by how different critics' opinions are," he says. "I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it. I was always defined as too erudite and philosophical, too difficult. Then I wrote a novel that is not erudite at all, that is written in plain language, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, and among my novels it is the one that has sold the least. So probably I am writing for masochists. It's only publishers and some journalists who believe that people want simple things. People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged." Eco had a distinguished 30-year career in the academic world, with sidelines making cultural TV programmes and working as an editor in Milan, before The Name of the Rose. Why did he feel the need to add fiction to an already overloaded CV? In part, he says, it was accident. A friend asked him to write a short detective novel for a new series she was preparing. He told her that if he did, it would be set in the middle ages and would have to be 500 pages. That was too big for the proposed series, but the idea had been planted in his mind (or, as he prefers, his belly), and a publishing phenomenon was born. Even without her intervention, however, he implies that he would eventually have written novels. The notion of poisoning a monk appealed to him, and he already had a list of monkish names filed away in his drawer for possible use. "I have always had a narrative impulse," he says. "I wrote stories and beginnings of novels at the age of 10 or 12. I then satisfied my taste for narrative by writing essays. All my researches have the structure of a whodunit." One of his professors pointed out that even his doctoral thesis on Thomas Aquinas had that structure, with the conclusion teasingly arrived at after a long process of divination. "I recognised he was right, and that I was right, and that research must be done this way. I satisfied my narrative impulse when my kids were small by telling them stories, and then when they were grown up I felt the need to write fiction. It happened to me as it happens to people when they fall in love. 'Why did you fall in love that day, that month, with that person? Are you crazy? Why?' You don't know. It happens." The Name of the Rose made Eco's reputation as a novelist, but it has also proved difficult to match. "Sometimes I say I hate The Name of the Rose," he admits, "because the following books maybe were better. But it happens to many writers. Gabriel García Márquez can write 50 books, but he will be remembered always for Cien Años de Soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude]. Every time I publish a new novel, sales of The Name of the Rose go up. What is the reaction? 'Ah, a new book of Eco. But I have never read The Name of the Rose.' Which, by the way, costs less because it is in paperback." He laughs, as he does frequently. Eco's great virtue is that he is an intellectual who doesn't take himself too seriously. Life, like fiction, is a wonderful game. It is claimed that he called the film of The Name of the Rose a travesty, but that seems unlikely. He says only that a film cannot do everything a book can. "A book like this is a club sandwich, with turkey, salami, tomato, cheese, lettuce. And the movie is obliged to choose only the lettuce or the cheese, eliminating everything else – the theological side, the political side. It's a nice movie. I was told that a girl entered a bookstore and seeing the books said: 'Oh, they have already made a book out of it.'" More laughter. The Name of the Rose sold – and continues to sell – by the bucketload. It made him rich, famous, sought after. But he chose to carry on teaching at Bologna university, and to keep up his academic work. His bibliography of non-fiction works on language, culture and belief is vast and forbidding. Hidden behind Eco the novelist and Eco the performer is a serious philosopher and literary critic. It is often said that he constructs his novels out of other books. The Prague Cemetery both explores the 19th-century novels that were plagiarised in the Protocols, and is structured like one. Alexandre Dumas is the presiding spirit, in particular his novel Joseph Balsamo, and intertextuality the name of Eco's fictional game. He has adored books since he was a child, growing up in the town of Alessandria in northern Italy with not very bookish "petit bourgeois" parents but a grandmother who loved reading. He read voraciously and still does. His two libraries, at the homes he shares with his German-born wife Renate Ramge in Milan and Rimini, contain 50,000 books, including 1,200 rare titles. He has called books "the corridors of the mind" and recently co-wrote an extended love letter to the printed text called This is Not the End of the Book. But that does not make him a digital counter-revolutionary. Indeed, to save having to carry a bag full of books, on this trip he has instead brought along an iPad with 30 titles downloaded. He nevertheless stands by his contention that this is not the end of the book. Reading devices are fine for long journeys and have advantages for reference books, but committed readers will always crave physicality – "not just Peter Pan but my Peter Pan", as he puts it. The fact that he can accommodate everything from illuminated manuscripts to iPads is typical. He is optimistic, eclectic, eternally young, interested in everything, as at home discoursing on Peanuts as he is on Proust. I ask him how he will be remembered – as novelist, critic or polymath? "I leave it up to you," he says. "Usually a novelist has a longer-lasting life than an academic, unless you are Immanuel Kant or John Locke. Illustrious thinkers of 50 years ago have already been forgotten." So is he resigned to being remembered for The Name of the Rose rather than his contribution to semiotics? "At the beginning," he says, "I had the impression that my novels had nothing to do with my academic interests. Then I discovered that critics found many connections, and the editors of the Library of Living Philosophers decided that my novels had to be taken into account as a philosophical contribution. So I surrender. I accept the idea that they match. Evidently I am not a schizophrenic." The Name of the Rose, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, and Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language are thus all of a piece. It's just their global sales that are different.

– Umberto Eco started working on a novel that set the world's imagination on fire "prodded by a seminal idea: I felt like poisoning a monk." The Italian author and academic who intrigued, puzzled, and delighted readers worldwide with his best-selling historical novel The Name of the Rose died at home in Milan on Friday evening after a battle with cancer, a family member tells the AP. He was 84. Author of a wide range of books, Eco was fascinated with the obscure and the mundane, and his books were both engaging narratives and philosophical and intellectual exercises. The Name of the Rose transformed him from an academic to international celebrity, especially after the medieval thriller set in a monastery was made into a film starring Sean Connery in 1986. His second novel, 1988's Foucault's Pendulum, a byzantine tale of plotting publishers and secret sects, was successful, too—though it was so complicated that an annotated guide accompanied it to help the reader follow the plot. Eco—whose most recent novel, Numero Zero, came out last year and recalled a '90s political scandal that helped lead to the rise of Silvio Berlusconi—shrugged off critics who found him "too erudite and philosophical, too difficult," telling the Guardian in a 2011 interview that he wrote "for masochists." "It's only publishers and some journalists who believe that people want simple things," he said. "People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged." (The death of Harper Lee was also announced on Friday.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.FILE - In a Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 file photo, Italian writer Umberto Eco gestures as he speaks during a press conference at the 25th Annual Book Fair in Jerusalem. Eco, best known for the international... (Associated Press) FILE - In a Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 file photo, Italian writer Umberto Eco gestures as he speaks during a press conference at the 25th Annual Book Fair in Jerusalem. Eco, best known for the international best-seller “The Name of the Rose,” died Friday, Feb. 19, 2016, according to spokeswoman Lori Glazer... (Associated Press) MILAN (AP) — Umberto Eco started working a novel that set the world's imagination on fire "prodded by a seminal idea: I felt like poisoning a monk." The Italian author/academic who intrigued, puzzled and delighted readers worldwide with his best-selling historical novel "The Name of the Rose" died at home in Milan on Friday evening after a battle with cancer, according to a family member who asked not to be identified. His death was also confirmed by his American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Author of a wide range of books, Eco was fascinated with the obscure and the mundane, and his books were both engaging narratives and philosophical and intellectual exercises. The bearded, heavy-set scholar, critic and novelist took on the esoteric theory of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols in language; took on popular culture icons like James Bond; and took on the technical languages of the Internet. "The Name of the Rose" transformed him from an academic to international celebrity, especially after the medieval thriller set in a monastery was made into a film starring Sean Connery in 1986. "The Name of the Rose" sold millions of copies, a feat for a narrative filled with partially translated Latin quotes and puzzling musings on the nature of symbols. His second novel, the 1988 "Foucault's Pendulum," a byzantine tale of plotting publishers and secret sects also styled as a thriller, was successful, too — though it was so complicated that an annotated guide accompanied it to help the reader follow the plot. In 2000, when awarding Eco Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize for communications, the jury praised his works "of universal distribution and profound effect that are already classics in contemporary thought." Eco was born Jan. 5, 1932, in Alessandria, a town east of Turin. He said the reserved culture there was a source for his "world vision: a skepticism and an aversion to rhetoric." He received a university degree in philosophy from the University of Turin in 1954, beginning his fascination with the Middle Ages and the aesthetics of text. He later defined semiotics as "a philosophy of language." He had always loved storytelling and as a teenager wrote comic books and fantasy novels. "I was a perfectionist and wanted to make them look as though they had been printed, so I wrote them in capital letters and made up title pages, summaries, illustrations," he told The Paris Review in 1988. "It was so tiring that I never finished any of them. I was at that time a great writer of unaccomplished masterpieces." Eco remained involved with academia, becoming the first professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna in 1971. He also lectured at institutions worldwide and was a fellow at elite colleges like Oxford University and Columbia University. Twenty-three institutions had awarded him honorary degrees by 2000. But Eco was also able to bridge the gap between popular and intellectual culture, publishing his musings in daily newspapers and Italy's leading weekly magazine L'Espresso. Eco started in journalism in the 1950s, working for the Italian state-owned television RAI. From the 1960s onwards, he wrote columns for several Italian dailies. He also wrote children's books, including "The Bomb and the General" ("La Bomba e il Generale"). In 2003, Eco published a collection of lectures on translations, "Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation," and a year later he wrote the novel "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana," a story about an antiquarian book dealer who loses his memory. Recent works include "From the Tree to the Labyrinth," an essay on semiology and language published in 2007 and "Turning Back the Clock," a collection of essays on various subjects, ranging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to anti-Semitism and to staunch criticism of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government in Italy. His most recent novel, "Numero Zero," came out last year and recalled a political scandal from the 1990s that helped lead to Berlusconi's rise. In a 2011 interview with the Guardian newspaper, Eco explained how someone as "strongly anti-intellectual" as Berlusconi could become a political force in Italy, a cradle of Renaissance culture. "There was a fear of the intellectual as a critical power, and in this sense there was a clash between Berlusconi and the intellectual world," he said. "But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo." In the same interview, Eco shrugged off critics who found him "too erudite and philosophical, too difficult," saying he wrote "for masochists." "It's only publishers and some journalists who believe that people want simple things," Eco said. "People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged." ___ Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report from New York. ||||| The author of The Name of the Rose on why it is human to lie, how Berlusconi has used conspiracy theories to stay in power – and his love/hate relationship with his most famous book 'I am reaching the end of my ordeal," says Umberto Eco when we meet. Happily, I don't take this personally. Eco – philosopher, semiotician, novelist, bibliophile and all-round brainbox – has been on a 20-day global tour to promote his new novel, The Prague Cemetery, and says at times he has barely known what city he was in. Eco, who will be 80 in January, doesn't look too bad for his ordeal. His rotundity means he sits a little awkwardly in his chair, but he is a lively, playful interviewee, chewing on a small cigar throughout. He gave up smoking them eight years ago, but still likes to have one in his mouth and hopes some of the nicotine gets through. He has a rasping voice and an idiosyncratic take on English. The conversation occasionally breaks down when I use expressions he doesn't quite grasp. He misunderstands when I ask him whether The Prague Cemetery is, as some critics have suggested, a "return to form": for him, form is a sporting rather than a literary term. Anyway, we battle on. The elephant in our cramped little room is that the new book is not a return to form, whether literary or sporting. Set in the second half of the 19th century and following the fortunes of master forger, murderer and general bad egg Simone Simonini, who manages to have a hand in most of the great events of that period (Italian unification, Franco-Prussian war, Paris Commune, Dreyfus affair), it is a wearying read. In English at least. Perhaps it sparkles in Italian. Whether or not it is a return to form, it is certainly a return to Eco's favourite subject – conspiracies. Simonini is presented as the originator of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early 20th-century fake text that purported to detail a Jewish conspiracy aimed at world domination. Following its publication in Russia in 1903, it was widely read and believed, despite being shown to have been plagiarised from fictional sources. Hitler quoted it extensively, and even now its poison circulates. Eco pieces together what little is known of the origins of the text, and offers Simonini, an amoral Italian living in Paris, as the originator of the most toxic of all forgeries. Conspiracies in general, and the Protocols in particular, have been recurrent themes in Eco's work, notably in his second novel, Foucault's Pendulum, where as a joke three nondescript book editors concoct a grand conspiracy that comes to take over their lives. Why do the Protocols preoccupy him? "As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying. A dog doesn't lie. When it barks, it means there is somebody outside." Animals do not lie; human beings do. "From lies to forgeries the step is not so long, and I have written technical essays on the logic of forgeries and on the influence of forgeries on history. The most famous and terrible of those forgeries is the Protocols." Eco says it is not conspiracies that attract him, but the paranoia that allows them to flourish. "There are many small conspiracies, and most of them are exposed," he says. "But the paranoia of the universal conspiracy is more powerful because it is everlasting. You can never discover it because you don't know who is there. It is a psychological temptation of our species. Karl Popper wrote a beautiful essay on that, in which he said it started with Homer. Everything that happens in Troy was plotted the day before on the top of Olympus by the gods. It's a way not to feel responsible for something. That's why dictatorships use the notion of universal conspiracy as a weapon. For the first 10 years of my life I was educated by fascists at school, and they used a universal conspiracy – that you, the Englishman, the Jews and the capitalists were plotting against the poor Italian people. For Hitler it was the same. And Berlusconi has spent all his electoral campaigns speaking of the double conspiracy of the judges and the communists. There are no more communists around, even if you look for them with a lamp, but for Berlusconi they were there trying to take over." Sean Connery and Christian Slater in The Name of the Rose. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection/Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext Collection He probably does not intend to elide Hitler and Berlusconi, but nor is he a fan of Italy's recently departed prime minister. Eco has always been a prominent figure on the political left, and has opposed Berlusconi since his first stint as PM in the mid-1990s. He is pleased that the great partygoer has fallen, but warns against writing him off, suggesting he may try to return after the elections due in 2013. "Berlusconi is a genius in communication," says Eco. "Otherwise he would never have become so rich. From the beginning he identified his target – middle-aged people who watch television. Young people do not watch television; they are on the internet. The people who support Berlusconi are 50- and 60-year-old ladies and retired people, who, in a country with an ageing population, make a powerful electoral force. So even some of his famous blunders may be blunders for me and you, but probably for the provincial 60-year-old lady or gentlemen they are not. His appeal was 'pay less taxes'. When the premier says you are right not to pay taxes, you are pleased." How could a culture as intellectual and artistic as Italy's have elected such a buffoon? "Berlusconi was strongly anti-intellectual," he says, "and boasted that he hadn't read a novel for 20 years. There was a fear of the intellectual as a critical power, and in this sense there was a clash between Berlusconi and the intellectual world. But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo." Eco's new book has been attacked by some for regurgitating an antisemitic text, but he argues that the Protocols can easily be found on the internet and that "weak readers" who misunderstand his purpose will be misled elsewhere. "You are not responsible for perverse readings of your book," he says. "Catholic priests said don't give Madame Bovary to a young girl to read because she might be seduced by adultery." Does it bother him that the half-dozen novels he has produced since The Name of the Rose propelled him to fictional fame in the early 1980s have had a mixed reception? "You are always shocked by how different critics' opinions are," he says. "I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it. I was always defined as too erudite and philosophical, too difficult. Then I wrote a novel that is not erudite at all, that is written in plain language, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, and among my novels it is the one that has sold the least. So probably I am writing for masochists. It's only publishers and some journalists who believe that people want simple things. People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged." Eco had a distinguished 30-year career in the academic world, with sidelines making cultural TV programmes and working as an editor in Milan, before The Name of the Rose. Why did he feel the need to add fiction to an already overloaded CV? In part, he says, it was accident. A friend asked him to write a short detective novel for a new series she was preparing. He told her that if he did, it would be set in the middle ages and would have to be 500 pages. That was too big for the proposed series, but the idea had been planted in his mind (or, as he prefers, his belly), and a publishing phenomenon was born. Even without her intervention, however, he implies that he would eventually have written novels. The notion of poisoning a monk appealed to him, and he already had a list of monkish names filed away in his drawer for possible use. "I have always had a narrative impulse," he says. "I wrote stories and beginnings of novels at the age of 10 or 12. I then satisfied my taste for narrative by writing essays. All my researches have the structure of a whodunit." One of his professors pointed out that even his doctoral thesis on Thomas Aquinas had that structure, with the conclusion teasingly arrived at after a long process of divination. "I recognised he was right, and that I was right, and that research must be done this way. I satisfied my narrative impulse when my kids were small by telling them stories, and then when they were grown up I felt the need to write fiction. It happened to me as it happens to people when they fall in love. 'Why did you fall in love that day, that month, with that person? Are you crazy? Why?' You don't know. It happens." The Name of the Rose made Eco's reputation as a novelist, but it has also proved difficult to match. "Sometimes I say I hate The Name of the Rose," he admits, "because the following books maybe were better. But it happens to many writers. Gabriel García Márquez can write 50 books, but he will be remembered always for Cien Años de Soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude]. Every time I publish a new novel, sales of The Name of the Rose go up. What is the reaction? 'Ah, a new book of Eco. But I have never read The Name of the Rose.' Which, by the way, costs less because it is in paperback." He laughs, as he does frequently. Eco's great virtue is that he is an intellectual who doesn't take himself too seriously. Life, like fiction, is a wonderful game. It is claimed that he called the film of The Name of the Rose a travesty, but that seems unlikely. He says only that a film cannot do everything a book can. "A book like this is a club sandwich, with turkey, salami, tomato, cheese, lettuce. And the movie is obliged to choose only the lettuce or the cheese, eliminating everything else – the theological side, the political side. It's a nice movie. I was told that a girl entered a bookstore and seeing the books said: 'Oh, they have already made a book out of it.'" More laughter. The Name of the Rose sold – and continues to sell – by the bucketload. It made him rich, famous, sought after. But he chose to carry on teaching at Bologna university, and to keep up his academic work. His bibliography of non-fiction works on language, culture and belief is vast and forbidding. Hidden behind Eco the novelist and Eco the performer is a serious philosopher and literary critic. It is often said that he constructs his novels out of other books. The Prague Cemetery both explores the 19th-century novels that were plagiarised in the Protocols, and is structured like one. Alexandre Dumas is the presiding spirit, in particular his novel Joseph Balsamo, and intertextuality the name of Eco's fictional game. He has adored books since he was a child, growing up in the town of Alessandria in northern Italy with not very bookish "petit bourgeois" parents but a grandmother who loved reading. He read voraciously and still does. His two libraries, at the homes he shares with his German-born wife Renate Ramge in Milan and Rimini, contain 50,000 books, including 1,200 rare titles. He has called books "the corridors of the mind" and recently co-wrote an extended love letter to the printed text called This is Not the End of the Book. But that does not make him a digital counter-revolutionary. Indeed, to save having to carry a bag full of books, on this trip he has instead brought along an iPad with 30 titles downloaded. He nevertheless stands by his contention that this is not the end of the book. Reading devices are fine for long journeys and have advantages for reference books, but committed readers will always crave physicality – "not just Peter Pan but my Peter Pan", as he puts it. The fact that he can accommodate everything from illuminated manuscripts to iPads is typical. He is optimistic, eclectic, eternally young, interested in everything, as at home discoursing on Peanuts as he is on Proust. I ask him how he will be remembered – as novelist, critic or polymath? "I leave it up to you," he says. "Usually a novelist has a longer-lasting life than an academic, unless you are Immanuel Kant or John Locke. Illustrious thinkers of 50 years ago have already been forgotten." So is he resigned to being remembered for The Name of the Rose rather than his contribution to semiotics? "At the beginning," he says, "I had the impression that my novels had nothing to do with my academic interests. Then I discovered that critics found many connections, and the editors of the Library of Living Philosophers decided that my novels had to be taken into account as a philosophical contribution. So I surrender. I accept the idea that they match. Evidently I am not a schizophrenic." The Name of the Rose, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, and Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language are thus all of a piece. It's just their global sales that are different.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Appeal Filed to State Supreme Court in Arlene's Flowers Case The Alliance Defending Freedom, the non-profit legal organization representing Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene's Flowers, has filed an appeal to the Washington State Supreme Court. In a statement, the Alliance Defending Freedom says Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the ACLU have sent a message to the people to surrender religious liberty and freedom of speech or face personal and professional ruin. In February, a Benton County Superior Court judge ruled Stutzman violated the state's consumer protection act when she refused back in 2013 to provide flowers for a same-sex couple's wedding based on her religoius beliefs. Stutzman was also fined $1,000. ||||| The author at her flower shop. (The Alliance Defending Freedom) I’ve been a florist in Richmond, Wash., for more than 30 years. In that time, I’ve developed close relationships with many of my clients. One of my favorites was Rob Ingersoll. Ingersoll came in often and we’d talk. Like me, he had an artistic eye. I’d try to create really special arrangements for him. I knew he was gay, but it didn’t matter — I enjoyed his company and his creativity. Then he asked me to create the floral arrangements for his wedding. I love Rob, and I’d always been happy to design for his special days. But there’s something different about a wedding. Every person in the creative professions regularly has to make decisions about where they lend their artistic talents and which events they will participate in. For me, it’s never about the person who walks into the shop, but about the message I’m communicating when someone asks me to “say it with flowers.” I was raised Christian. In my religious tradition, marriage is a sacred religious ceremony between a man, a woman and Christ. It’s a covenant with the church. To participate in a wedding that violates those principles violates the core of my faith. When Rob asked me, I thought about it carefully. I talked over the decision with my husband, and I prayed. But ultimately I know I had to stay true to my faith. I couldn’t do it. When I told Rob, I felt terrible that I couldn’t share this day with him, as I’d shared so many with him before. I took his hands and said, “I’m sorry I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.” Rob said he understood, and that he hoped his mom would walk him down the aisle, but he wasn’t sure. We talked about how he got engaged and why they decided to get married after all these years. He asked me for the names of other flower shops. I gave him the names of three floral artists that I knew would do a good job, because I knew he would want something very special. We hugged and he left.

– "I'm sorry I can't do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ." That's how florist Barronelle Stutzman describes the way she gently broke the news to one of her favorite clients that she wouldn't be able to do the flowers for his wedding—even though she had made "really special" arrangements for him before. The issue, as the owner of Arlene's Flowers in Richland, Wash., explains in a Washington Post opinion piece: Rob Ingersoll is gay, and taking part in such an event would "violate the core of my [Christian] faith." Ingersoll and his partner, Curt—as well as the state of Washington—have sued Stutzman, who says she was totally floored, considering what she described as a "close relationship" with Ingersoll (she says they hugged after she refused to take the job). While "we've always heard that same-sex marriage would never affect anyone aside from the same-sex couples who wanted to be married," writes Stutzman, "a judge recently told me that my freedom to live and work according to my beliefs about marriage expired the day same-sex marriage became the law in my state." Stutzman has now taken on that judge's ruling: She recently filed an appeal with the Washington State Supreme Court after the judge's February decision that she ran afoul of the state's consumer protection act with her 2013 refusal, KVEW notes. "The government is telling me I can only be a faithful Christian within the four walls of my church," she writes. "What would Rob and Curt say if the government told them they could only be who they are in their own homes?" Read Stutzman's entire take.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Appeal Filed to State Supreme Court in Arlene's Flowers Case The Alliance Defending Freedom, the non-profit legal organization representing Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene's Flowers, has filed an appeal to the Washington State Supreme Court. In a statement, the Alliance Defending Freedom says Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the ACLU have sent a message to the people to surrender religious liberty and freedom of speech or face personal and professional ruin. In February, a Benton County Superior Court judge ruled Stutzman violated the state's consumer protection act when she refused back in 2013 to provide flowers for a same-sex couple's wedding based on her religoius beliefs. Stutzman was also fined $1,000. ||||| The author at her flower shop. (The Alliance Defending Freedom) I’ve been a florist in Richmond, Wash., for more than 30 years. In that time, I’ve developed close relationships with many of my clients. One of my favorites was Rob Ingersoll. Ingersoll came in often and we’d talk. Like me, he had an artistic eye. I’d try to create really special arrangements for him. I knew he was gay, but it didn’t matter — I enjoyed his company and his creativity. Then he asked me to create the floral arrangements for his wedding. I love Rob, and I’d always been happy to design for his special days. But there’s something different about a wedding. Every person in the creative professions regularly has to make decisions about where they lend their artistic talents and which events they will participate in. For me, it’s never about the person who walks into the shop, but about the message I’m communicating when someone asks me to “say it with flowers.” I was raised Christian. In my religious tradition, marriage is a sacred religious ceremony between a man, a woman and Christ. It’s a covenant with the church. To participate in a wedding that violates those principles violates the core of my faith. When Rob asked me, I thought about it carefully. I talked over the decision with my husband, and I prayed. But ultimately I know I had to stay true to my faith. I couldn’t do it. When I told Rob, I felt terrible that I couldn’t share this day with him, as I’d shared so many with him before. I took his hands and said, “I’m sorry I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.” Rob said he understood, and that he hoped his mom would walk him down the aisle, but he wasn’t sure. We talked about how he got engaged and why they decided to get married after all these years. He asked me for the names of other flower shops. I gave him the names of three floral artists that I knew would do a good job, because I knew he would want something very special. We hugged and he left.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

While most gathered at CPAC this past weekend were busy gobbling up buffet-sized servings of Republican rage, one outsized commentator was left eating a slice of humble pie. Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against conservative firebrand and web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. The suit stems from the notorious video Breitbart posted online last year, showing an out-of-context excerpt from a speech Sherrod gave to the NAACP Freedom Fund in March 2010. The clip suggested she had used her position at the Department of Agriculture to discriminate against white farmers. The media devoured the Breitbart's version of story so voraciously that the NAACP denounced Sherrod and the Obama administration fired her. The charge was, in fact, entirely untrue. Sherrod argues in the lawsuit that the clip "damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work." Breitbart, meanwhile, denounced the suit, saying he "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech." Breitbart's media machine is doing its best to reframe Sherrod's complaint in the most favorable terms possible. One of his websites, BigGovernment.com, posted an article, titled "New Media Entrepreneur declares that his voice will not be suppressed," shortly after Breitbart was served. 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. Not surprisingly, the meme does not appear to have caught on. Breitbart's full statement: ||||| Andrew Breitbart is at CPAC again this year and his big issue is Pigford, a little-known legal settlement between the federal government and black farmers that Breitbart claims is rife with fraud. Breitbart describes Pigford as his "obsession." When I caught up with him this morning and asked about Egypt -- specifically the claims by some of Breitbart's writers that the protests there mark the beginning of an Islamic caliphate -- he said he wasn't following the issue because he's been all Pigford, all the time, for months. (Watch my interview below.) He's trying his best to force the alleged Pigford fraud into the mainstream media and use it to attack both the Obama administration and Shirley Sherrod, the obscure U.S. Department of Agriculture official who was made famous after she was attacked by Breitbart over the summer. (That "scandal" fell utterly apart in a matter of days, though not before the Obama administration had fired Sherrod.) So what is Pigford? It was originally a class action lawsuit against the government filed in the mid-1990s by a group of black farmers. The Department of Agriculture had discriminated against black farmers for many years in deciding how loans and grants were distributed. The government settled, and some farmers got a payout. But it subsequently emerged that many eligible black farmers had failed to take advantage of the settlement. So in December 2010, Congress appropriated another $1.25 billion to pay Pigford claims. It passed with bipartisan support, by unanimous consent in the Senate and a large majority in the House. (For a more in-depth history of Pigford, see this TPM piece.) But some conservatives, notably Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, have blasted Pigford as "slavery reparations" in disguise. He, like Breitbart, has alleged widespread fraud. They have argued that Pigford is an unwarranted payout to a Democratic constituency. Breitbart held a press conference here at CPAC featuring King, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Eddie Slaughter, a black farmer who is angry because he did not get a Pigford payout that he believes was due to him. How does Sherrod come into the story? She and her husband were the recipients of $13 million from the first Pigford settlement. Breitbart has since implied that Sherrod had some role in the alleged mismanagement of the program at the Department of Agriculture. Critics, like Media Matters, have argued that Breitbart is merely trying to salvage his reputation after the failed attack on Sherrod over the summer. I talked to Breitbart, who made a point of having Slaughter, the farmer, present for the interview. Our conversation went considerably more smoothly than Breitbart's angry encounter with Salon at last year's CPAC. I asked him for his take on Pigford and challenged him to answer those who doubt credibility in the wake of the Sherrod fiasco. Watch the interview:

– 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.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.While most gathered at CPAC this past weekend were busy gobbling up buffet-sized servings of Republican rage, one outsized commentator was left eating a slice of humble pie. Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against conservative firebrand and web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. The suit stems from the notorious video Breitbart posted online last year, showing an out-of-context excerpt from a speech Sherrod gave to the NAACP Freedom Fund in March 2010. The clip suggested she had used her position at the Department of Agriculture to discriminate against white farmers. The media devoured the Breitbart's version of story so voraciously that the NAACP denounced Sherrod and the Obama administration fired her. The charge was, in fact, entirely untrue. Sherrod argues in the lawsuit that the clip "damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work." Breitbart, meanwhile, denounced the suit, saying he "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech." Breitbart's media machine is doing its best to reframe Sherrod's complaint in the most favorable terms possible. One of his websites, BigGovernment.com, posted an article, titled "New Media Entrepreneur declares that his voice will not be suppressed," shortly after Breitbart was served. 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. Not surprisingly, the meme does not appear to have caught on. Breitbart's full statement: ||||| Andrew Breitbart is at CPAC again this year and his big issue is Pigford, a little-known legal settlement between the federal government and black farmers that Breitbart claims is rife with fraud. Breitbart describes Pigford as his "obsession." When I caught up with him this morning and asked about Egypt -- specifically the claims by some of Breitbart's writers that the protests there mark the beginning of an Islamic caliphate -- he said he wasn't following the issue because he's been all Pigford, all the time, for months. (Watch my interview below.) He's trying his best to force the alleged Pigford fraud into the mainstream media and use it to attack both the Obama administration and Shirley Sherrod, the obscure U.S. Department of Agriculture official who was made famous after she was attacked by Breitbart over the summer. (That "scandal" fell utterly apart in a matter of days, though not before the Obama administration had fired Sherrod.) So what is Pigford? It was originally a class action lawsuit against the government filed in the mid-1990s by a group of black farmers. The Department of Agriculture had discriminated against black farmers for many years in deciding how loans and grants were distributed. The government settled, and some farmers got a payout. But it subsequently emerged that many eligible black farmers had failed to take advantage of the settlement. So in December 2010, Congress appropriated another $1.25 billion to pay Pigford claims. It passed with bipartisan support, by unanimous consent in the Senate and a large majority in the House. (For a more in-depth history of Pigford, see this TPM piece.) But some conservatives, notably Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, have blasted Pigford as "slavery reparations" in disguise. He, like Breitbart, has alleged widespread fraud. They have argued that Pigford is an unwarranted payout to a Democratic constituency. Breitbart held a press conference here at CPAC featuring King, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Eddie Slaughter, a black farmer who is angry because he did not get a Pigford payout that he believes was due to him. How does Sherrod come into the story? She and her husband were the recipients of $13 million from the first Pigford settlement. Breitbart has since implied that Sherrod had some role in the alleged mismanagement of the program at the Department of Agriculture. Critics, like Media Matters, have argued that Breitbart is merely trying to salvage his reputation after the failed attack on Sherrod over the summer. I talked to Breitbart, who made a point of having Slaughter, the farmer, present for the interview. Our conversation went considerably more smoothly than Breitbart's angry encounter with Salon at last year's CPAC. I asked him for his take on Pigford and challenged him to answer those who doubt credibility in the wake of the Sherrod fiasco. Watch the interview:

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

DENVER (AP) — A Denver man who spent more than a quarter-century in prison for an attack he denies committing walked arm-and-arm with his wife from the doors of the jail Tuesday to applause from his children and hugs from grandkids he had never met. Clarence Moses-EL, 60, had just posted a $50,000 bond that a judge required for his freedom after she overturned his 1988 conviction on rape and assault charges and found that he would likely be acquitted if his case went to trial again. Moses-EL was convicted after the victim identified him, saying his face came to her in a dream. When police initially asked her who assaulted her, she named another man, who later confessed to having sex with her at the same time that night. Outside the jail Tuesday, Moses-EL wore a black suit and tie as he stood beside his wife, Stephanie Burke, moments after hugging three of his 12 grandchildren for the first time. Surrounded by his tearful children, he took a deep breath of the crisp late afternoon air. "This is the moment of my life, right here," Moses-EL told reporters. "I'm at a loss for words. I just want to get home to my family." Moses-EL has long maintained his innocence, and his case inspired legislation requiring preservation of DNA evidence in major felony cases for a defendant's lifetime after police threw out body swabs and the victim's clothing. Supporters posted bond for his release after Moses-EL was transferred from the prison where he was housed for decades. "I waited a long time for this," said Moses-EL, who eagerly anticipated arriving home to a special pizza "with chopped shrimp and steak, smothered in cheese," and a comfortable chair. His spirituality kept him from losing hope during 28 years of his 48-year sentence, he said. "And my innocence," he said. "That's what really kept me going." But still looming was the prospect of a new trial. Prosecutors have not decided whether to try Moses-EL again, saying they are considering the age of the case and the availability of witnesses. A tentative trial date was set for May, if prosecutors decide to pursue new charges. The case involved a woman who was attacked after she returned home from a night of drinking. When police initially asked who assaulted her, she named the man who later confessed to having sex with her. More than a day after the assault, while in the hospital, the woman identified Moses-EL as her attacker, saying his face appeared to her in a dream. Moses-EL's efforts to appeal his conviction were unsuccessful and the legal and political system repeatedly failed him in his decades-long attempt to win his freedom. He won a legal bid for DNA testing on the evidence to clear his name, but Denver police threw it away, saying they didn't see any notice from prosecutors to hold on to it. In 2008, the governor, a former Denver prosecutor, objected to legislation that would have given him a new trial and that received widespread support from lawmakers. Moses-EL's break came when L.C. Jackson, whom the victim had initially identified as her rapist, wrote to Moses-EL in 2013 saying he had sex with the woman that night. Jackson has not been charged in this case but is imprisoned for two other rapes in 1992. His attorney, Eric Klein, said it would be foolish for prosecutors not to dismiss the case against an innocent man. But, at least in his first moments of freedom, Moses-EL's mind was elsewhere. "I'm just glad to be home," he said. "That surpasses a whole lot of things right now." ||||| Clarence Moses-EL leaves prison after judge sets bond at $50,000 The temperature outside the jail was 5 degrees above freezing when Clarence Moses-EL took in his first breath of fresh air. But after serving decades in prison for a brutal crime he says he did not commit, Moses-EL could breathe easier in the brisk air than he had in 28 years. "This is the moment of my life right now," Moses-EL said. "I feel great right now." Moses-EL, who was granted a new trial after serving more than half of a 48-year sentence, was released from custody Tuesday for the first time in decades. Arm-in-arm with his wife, Moses-EL — who has maintained his innocence since his arrest — walked out of the downtown Denver jail surrounded by his family. Clarence Moses-EL, who was granted a new trial after spending 28 years in prison for a sexual assault conviction, was released from custody December 22, 2015. Moses walks with his wife Stephanie Burke and step daughter Michelle. A judge set bond at $50,000 for Moses-EL, now 60, who was convicted of the 1987 sexual assault of a woman in Denver's Five Point's neighborhood. She had been beaten, dragged and raped, she told police. (John Leyba, The Denver Post) Earlier in the day, Denver District Judge Kandace Gerdes set a $50,000 bail for Moses-EL, who was convicted of the 1987 sexual assault of a woman in Denver's Five Points neighborhood. The woman had been beaten, dragged and raped, she told police. There were six bone fractures to her face, and she lost vision in one eye. On Dec. 14, Gerdes vacated Moses-EL's convictions and granted him a new trial. Newly discovered evidence and evidence previously admitted in the case "is sufficient on salient points to allow a jury to probably return a verdict of acquittal in favor of the Defendant," Gerdes wrote in her order. Wearing a suit his attorneys had carried into the courthouse that morning, a smiling Moses-EL wrapped his arms around a grandson he had just met and one of his attorneys. Advertisement "I just want to get home with my family," Moses-EL said. "I'm just so glad to be home." Moses-EL's family was working on a special dinner order: pizza topped with chopped shrimp, steak and "lots of cheese." The Denver district attorney's office on Tuesday asked to have a new trial date set "out of an abundance of caution," although the office has not decided whether to retry Moses-EL. The DA's office does not have a deadline to decide whether it will retry the case. The trial was set to begin May 16. A motions hearing was scheduled for Feb. 25. Moses-EL faces three felony counts, including sex assault and second-degree burglary. In 1987, when police, her sister and a neighbor asked who had attacked her, the woman gave three possibilities: "LC, Earl, Darnell." A couple of days later, however, she told police for the first time that Moses-EL, a neighbor, was her attacker. His identity had come to her in a dream, she said. A Denver jury convicted him of sexual assault, assault and burglary. Moses-EL was sentenced to 48 years in prison and would have become eligible for parole in 2017. With help from fellow inmates, Moses-EL collected enough money to conduct DNA testing on the evidence. A judge approved the request, but police mistakenly destroyed the evidence before it could be analyzed. In 1997, a judge ruled that the mistake was not grounds for a new trial. But in 2013, Moses-EL received a letter at the Bent County Correctional Facility, where he was housed. The letter was from LC Jackson, a former neighbor of Moses-EL who was in prison for a rape conviction. "I don't really know what to say to you," the letter read. "But let's start by bringing what was done in the dark into the light. I have a lot on my heart. I don't know who working (sic) on this, but have them come up and see me. It's time." In a subsequent interview with defense investigators, Jackson admitted to having consensual sex with the victim on the night of the attack and hitting her, according to Moses-EL's attorneys. The Denver district attorney's office said Jackson later recanted his statement while talking to its investigators. But during a hearing this summer, Jackson reaffirmed what he said in the letter, according to Gerdes' order. Jackson's statements and blood tests indicating that the attacker had a different blood type than Moses-EL were some of the reasons Gerdes ordered a new trial. The Colorado Independent first reported Gerdes' ruling. "We're hoping (officials in the district attorney's office) look at the evidence and decide there is no point in retrying an innocent man," said Eric Klein, one of Moses-EL's attorneys. Moses-EL did not answer questions about the pending decision from the DA's office. The 28 years leading up to his release were tedious, he said. "I just kind of lost hope at one time," Moses-EL said, but "spirituality and innocence" kept him going. For now, Moses-EL said he was excited to meet all of his 12 grandchildren. He did not want any of them to see him in prison. One of his grandsons wrapped his arm around Moses-EL's left leg. Asked what the first thing was he said to his grandfather, the little boy responded: "I'm glad you're home." Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, [email protected] or @jsteffendp

– A 28-year nightmare is over for a Denver man who says he was wrongly convicted after a neighbor who had been raped and beaten told police his face appeared to her in a dream. A judge overturned the 1988 conviction of 60-year-old Clarence Moses-EL on Tuesday and he was freed on $50,000 bond ahead of a possible new trial next year, the AP reports. Moses-EL raised money with the help of fellow inmates for DNA testing of evidence, including body swabs and the woman's clothing, in 1995, only to discover that police had mistakenly destroyed the evidence after what they described as "communications problems" with the DA's office, the Denver Post reports. In Tuesday's ruling, the judge said Moses-EL will probably be acquitted if the case goes to trial again. The victim, who was attacked after a night of drinking, initially named three other men as potential attackers before giving police Moses-EL's name a day later. The breakthrough in the case came in 2013 when one of the three men, already serving time for other rape convictions, admitted to having consensual sex with the victim and to hitting her, the Post reports. "I waited a long time for this," Moses-EL told reporters after leaving jail arm-in-arm with his wife, saying he was looking forward to eating pizza "with chopped shrimp and steak." He said he was excited to finally meet his 12 grandchildren, one of whom wrapped his arms around his leg and said, "I'm glad you're home," per the Post. (This Virginia man spent almost 30 years in prison because he looked like a rapist.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.DENVER (AP) — A Denver man who spent more than a quarter-century in prison for an attack he denies committing walked arm-and-arm with his wife from the doors of the jail Tuesday to applause from his children and hugs from grandkids he had never met. Clarence Moses-EL, 60, had just posted a $50,000 bond that a judge required for his freedom after she overturned his 1988 conviction on rape and assault charges and found that he would likely be acquitted if his case went to trial again. Moses-EL was convicted after the victim identified him, saying his face came to her in a dream. When police initially asked her who assaulted her, she named another man, who later confessed to having sex with her at the same time that night. Outside the jail Tuesday, Moses-EL wore a black suit and tie as he stood beside his wife, Stephanie Burke, moments after hugging three of his 12 grandchildren for the first time. Surrounded by his tearful children, he took a deep breath of the crisp late afternoon air. "This is the moment of my life, right here," Moses-EL told reporters. "I'm at a loss for words. I just want to get home to my family." Moses-EL has long maintained his innocence, and his case inspired legislation requiring preservation of DNA evidence in major felony cases for a defendant's lifetime after police threw out body swabs and the victim's clothing. Supporters posted bond for his release after Moses-EL was transferred from the prison where he was housed for decades. "I waited a long time for this," said Moses-EL, who eagerly anticipated arriving home to a special pizza "with chopped shrimp and steak, smothered in cheese," and a comfortable chair. His spirituality kept him from losing hope during 28 years of his 48-year sentence, he said. "And my innocence," he said. "That's what really kept me going." But still looming was the prospect of a new trial. Prosecutors have not decided whether to try Moses-EL again, saying they are considering the age of the case and the availability of witnesses. A tentative trial date was set for May, if prosecutors decide to pursue new charges. The case involved a woman who was attacked after she returned home from a night of drinking. When police initially asked who assaulted her, she named the man who later confessed to having sex with her. More than a day after the assault, while in the hospital, the woman identified Moses-EL as her attacker, saying his face appeared to her in a dream. Moses-EL's efforts to appeal his conviction were unsuccessful and the legal and political system repeatedly failed him in his decades-long attempt to win his freedom. He won a legal bid for DNA testing on the evidence to clear his name, but Denver police threw it away, saying they didn't see any notice from prosecutors to hold on to it. In 2008, the governor, a former Denver prosecutor, objected to legislation that would have given him a new trial and that received widespread support from lawmakers. Moses-EL's break came when L.C. Jackson, whom the victim had initially identified as her rapist, wrote to Moses-EL in 2013 saying he had sex with the woman that night. Jackson has not been charged in this case but is imprisoned for two other rapes in 1992. His attorney, Eric Klein, said it would be foolish for prosecutors not to dismiss the case against an innocent man. But, at least in his first moments of freedom, Moses-EL's mind was elsewhere. "I'm just glad to be home," he said. "That surpasses a whole lot of things right now." ||||| Clarence Moses-EL leaves prison after judge sets bond at $50,000 The temperature outside the jail was 5 degrees above freezing when Clarence Moses-EL took in his first breath of fresh air. But after serving decades in prison for a brutal crime he says he did not commit, Moses-EL could breathe easier in the brisk air than he had in 28 years. "This is the moment of my life right now," Moses-EL said. "I feel great right now." Moses-EL, who was granted a new trial after serving more than half of a 48-year sentence, was released from custody Tuesday for the first time in decades. Arm-in-arm with his wife, Moses-EL — who has maintained his innocence since his arrest — walked out of the downtown Denver jail surrounded by his family. Clarence Moses-EL, who was granted a new trial after spending 28 years in prison for a sexual assault conviction, was released from custody December 22, 2015. Moses walks with his wife Stephanie Burke and step daughter Michelle. A judge set bond at $50,000 for Moses-EL, now 60, who was convicted of the 1987 sexual assault of a woman in Denver's Five Point's neighborhood. She had been beaten, dragged and raped, she told police. (John Leyba, The Denver Post) Earlier in the day, Denver District Judge Kandace Gerdes set a $50,000 bail for Moses-EL, who was convicted of the 1987 sexual assault of a woman in Denver's Five Points neighborhood. The woman had been beaten, dragged and raped, she told police. There were six bone fractures to her face, and she lost vision in one eye. On Dec. 14, Gerdes vacated Moses-EL's convictions and granted him a new trial. Newly discovered evidence and evidence previously admitted in the case "is sufficient on salient points to allow a jury to probably return a verdict of acquittal in favor of the Defendant," Gerdes wrote in her order. Wearing a suit his attorneys had carried into the courthouse that morning, a smiling Moses-EL wrapped his arms around a grandson he had just met and one of his attorneys. Advertisement "I just want to get home with my family," Moses-EL said. "I'm just so glad to be home." Moses-EL's family was working on a special dinner order: pizza topped with chopped shrimp, steak and "lots of cheese." The Denver district attorney's office on Tuesday asked to have a new trial date set "out of an abundance of caution," although the office has not decided whether to retry Moses-EL. The DA's office does not have a deadline to decide whether it will retry the case. The trial was set to begin May 16. A motions hearing was scheduled for Feb. 25. Moses-EL faces three felony counts, including sex assault and second-degree burglary. In 1987, when police, her sister and a neighbor asked who had attacked her, the woman gave three possibilities: "LC, Earl, Darnell." A couple of days later, however, she told police for the first time that Moses-EL, a neighbor, was her attacker. His identity had come to her in a dream, she said. A Denver jury convicted him of sexual assault, assault and burglary. Moses-EL was sentenced to 48 years in prison and would have become eligible for parole in 2017. With help from fellow inmates, Moses-EL collected enough money to conduct DNA testing on the evidence. A judge approved the request, but police mistakenly destroyed the evidence before it could be analyzed. In 1997, a judge ruled that the mistake was not grounds for a new trial. But in 2013, Moses-EL received a letter at the Bent County Correctional Facility, where he was housed. The letter was from LC Jackson, a former neighbor of Moses-EL who was in prison for a rape conviction. "I don't really know what to say to you," the letter read. "But let's start by bringing what was done in the dark into the light. I have a lot on my heart. I don't know who working (sic) on this, but have them come up and see me. It's time." In a subsequent interview with defense investigators, Jackson admitted to having consensual sex with the victim on the night of the attack and hitting her, according to Moses-EL's attorneys. The Denver district attorney's office said Jackson later recanted his statement while talking to its investigators. But during a hearing this summer, Jackson reaffirmed what he said in the letter, according to Gerdes' order. Jackson's statements and blood tests indicating that the attacker had a different blood type than Moses-EL were some of the reasons Gerdes ordered a new trial. The Colorado Independent first reported Gerdes' ruling. "We're hoping (officials in the district attorney's office) look at the evidence and decide there is no point in retrying an innocent man," said Eric Klein, one of Moses-EL's attorneys. Moses-EL did not answer questions about the pending decision from the DA's office. The 28 years leading up to his release were tedious, he said. "I just kind of lost hope at one time," Moses-EL said, but "spirituality and innocence" kept him going. For now, Moses-EL said he was excited to meet all of his 12 grandchildren. He did not want any of them to see him in prison. One of his grandsons wrapped his arm around Moses-EL's left leg. Asked what the first thing was he said to his grandfather, the little boy responded: "I'm glad you're home." Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, [email protected] or @jsteffendp

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis Star Tribune's film critic has resigned in the face of plagiarism accusations, the newspaper reported in an apology to its readers. The newspaper on Tuesday said it was tipped by a reader and confirmed instances in which Colin Covert's reviews included unique phrases previously used by writers for several publications, including The New York Times, Paste Magazine, vulture.com, The Wall Street Journal, IndieWire and Hollywood Reporter. "Using distinct phrasing from other authors without attribution is a form of plagiarism and is a violation of our journalistic standards and ethics and those of our industry," the newspaper said in its statement. Covert had been a staff writer at the Star Tribune for more than 30 years. His questioned reviews span many years and include one as recent as last month. The newspaper published a statement from Covert in which he apologized for compromising what he called the Star Tribune's "meticulous reputation for integrity." He thanked the paper for his career and said: "When blunders occur it is proper to admit them, correct them and move on." The Star Tribune apologized to the writers and publications from which Covert took material. The newspaper said it also is removing all of Covert's work from its website and alerting wire services and syndicates that use his reviews. The Associated Press has distributed to its members some of Covert's stories for use in their own publications. The AP is trying to determine whether there are any problems with those stories. ___ Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com ||||| We recently discovered that over the past decade, Star Tribune movie critic Colin Covert has written some film reviews using the same unique language of writers for other publications, without attribution. Covert, a staff writer at the Star Tribune for more than 30 years, has resigned. This matter came to editors’ attention in a recent email from a reader that said Covert in his 2009 review of the movie “Nine” had used a unique phrase from the late New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. Editors confirmed the phrase -- “self-glorifying masochistic mush” -- was used by Kael in 1974. After additional research, editors identified other phrases in Covert’s “Nine” review that are identical to phrases in other reviews written by Kael, including “archaic big-musical circus,” “comic-strip craziness” and “stardust is slightly irritating.” Further examination of some of Covert’s work identified eight other reviews that contained unique phrases used previously by writers for the New York Times, Paste Magazine, vulture.com, the Wall Street Journal, IndieWire and Hollywood Reporter. The reviews by Covert in question span many years, but one was published as recently as November 1. In that review, of the film “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, Covert wrote: “There’s breathtaking craft and control in her performance, but not once do you sense the tools at work.” A year earlier, in a Nov. 27, 2017, review of “Call Me by Your Name,” Jon Frosch wrote in the Hollywood Reporter: “There’s breathtaking craft and control in the performance, but not once do you sense the tools at work.” The Star Tribune is alerting wire services and syndicates that use Covert’s reviews and asking that they provide this information to editors of news organizations that may have re-published them. We also are removing all of Covert’s work from StarTribune.com. In his long career at the Star Tribune, Covert has made many contributions to our cultural coverage. But this pattern of using distinct phrasing from other authors without attribution is a form of plagiarism and is a violation of our journalistic standards and ethics and those of our industry. Covert offered this statement to his readers: “I’m sorry to say that through too many mistakes over the last 30 years I have compromised the Star Tribune’s meticulous reputation for integrity. The paper has given me the opportunity to craft a wonderful, important career and through its benefits safeguarded me through three serious health crises. It is no exaggeration to say that I am grateful from the bottom of my heart. When blunders occur it is proper to admit them, correct them and move on.” We also apologize to our readers, and to the writers and publications from which the material was taken. Rene Sanchez Editor [email protected] Suki Dardarian Managing Editor [email protected]

– The Minneapolis Star Tribune's film critic has resigned in the face of plagiarism accusations, the newspaper reported in an apology to its readers. The newspaper on Tuesday said it was tipped by a reader and confirmed instances in which Colin Covert's reviews included unique phrases previously used by writers for several publications, including the New York Times, Paste magazine, vulture.com, the Wall Street Journal, IndieWire and the Hollywood Reporter. "Using distinct phrasing from other authors without attribution is a form of plagiarism and is a violation of our journalistic standards and ethics and those of our industry," the newspaper said in its statement. Covert had been a staff writer at the Star Tribune for more than 30 years, the AP reports. His questioned reviews span many years, dating back to at least 2009, and include one as recent as last month. The newspaper published a statement from Covert in which he apologized for compromising what he called the Star Tribune's "meticulous reputation for integrity." He thanked the paper for his career and said: "When blunders occur it is proper to admit them, correct them and move on." The Star Tribune apologized to the writers and publications from which Covert took material. The newspaper said it also is removing all of Covert's work from its website and alerting wire services and syndicates that use his reviews. (A photojournalist was exposed as a fraud with a stolen face.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis Star Tribune's film critic has resigned in the face of plagiarism accusations, the newspaper reported in an apology to its readers. The newspaper on Tuesday said it was tipped by a reader and confirmed instances in which Colin Covert's reviews included unique phrases previously used by writers for several publications, including The New York Times, Paste Magazine, vulture.com, The Wall Street Journal, IndieWire and Hollywood Reporter. "Using distinct phrasing from other authors without attribution is a form of plagiarism and is a violation of our journalistic standards and ethics and those of our industry," the newspaper said in its statement. Covert had been a staff writer at the Star Tribune for more than 30 years. His questioned reviews span many years and include one as recent as last month. The newspaper published a statement from Covert in which he apologized for compromising what he called the Star Tribune's "meticulous reputation for integrity." He thanked the paper for his career and said: "When blunders occur it is proper to admit them, correct them and move on." The Star Tribune apologized to the writers and publications from which Covert took material. The newspaper said it also is removing all of Covert's work from its website and alerting wire services and syndicates that use his reviews. The Associated Press has distributed to its members some of Covert's stories for use in their own publications. The AP is trying to determine whether there are any problems with those stories. ___ Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com ||||| We recently discovered that over the past decade, Star Tribune movie critic Colin Covert has written some film reviews using the same unique language of writers for other publications, without attribution. Covert, a staff writer at the Star Tribune for more than 30 years, has resigned. This matter came to editors’ attention in a recent email from a reader that said Covert in his 2009 review of the movie “Nine” had used a unique phrase from the late New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. Editors confirmed the phrase -- “self-glorifying masochistic mush” -- was used by Kael in 1974. After additional research, editors identified other phrases in Covert’s “Nine” review that are identical to phrases in other reviews written by Kael, including “archaic big-musical circus,” “comic-strip craziness” and “stardust is slightly irritating.” Further examination of some of Covert’s work identified eight other reviews that contained unique phrases used previously by writers for the New York Times, Paste Magazine, vulture.com, the Wall Street Journal, IndieWire and Hollywood Reporter. The reviews by Covert in question span many years, but one was published as recently as November 1. In that review, of the film “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, Covert wrote: “There’s breathtaking craft and control in her performance, but not once do you sense the tools at work.” A year earlier, in a Nov. 27, 2017, review of “Call Me by Your Name,” Jon Frosch wrote in the Hollywood Reporter: “There’s breathtaking craft and control in the performance, but not once do you sense the tools at work.” The Star Tribune is alerting wire services and syndicates that use Covert’s reviews and asking that they provide this information to editors of news organizations that may have re-published them. We also are removing all of Covert’s work from StarTribune.com. In his long career at the Star Tribune, Covert has made many contributions to our cultural coverage. But this pattern of using distinct phrasing from other authors without attribution is a form of plagiarism and is a violation of our journalistic standards and ethics and those of our industry. Covert offered this statement to his readers: “I’m sorry to say that through too many mistakes over the last 30 years I have compromised the Star Tribune’s meticulous reputation for integrity. The paper has given me the opportunity to craft a wonderful, important career and through its benefits safeguarded me through three serious health crises. It is no exaggeration to say that I am grateful from the bottom of my heart. When blunders occur it is proper to admit them, correct them and move on.” We also apologize to our readers, and to the writers and publications from which the material was taken. Rene Sanchez Editor [email protected] Suki Dardarian Managing Editor [email protected]

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our talented and eclectic membership, AHA Today features a regular AHA Member Spotlight series. Ethan Schmidt is assistant professor of American history at Delta State University. He currently lives in Cleveland, Mississippi, and has been a member of the AHA since 2006. Alma mater/s: PhD, University of Kansas; BA, MA, Emporia State University. Fields of interest: Atlantic history, ethnohistory, colonial British North America, social history When did you first develop an interest in history? I grew up in a family that valued history. My parents were both involved in historic preservation. My father is a collector of Civil War and other 19th-century Kansas memorabilia. Both he and my mother have always exhibited considerable interest in 19th-century America, so I came of age with parents and extended family members who were as often as not engaged in some kind of discussion in which history played either a primary or tangential role. When I went to college at Emporia State University, I was originally a political science major (I wanted to be an attorney). I took US history to 1877 from Christopher Phillips (now with the University of Cincinnati) and loved it and him. I made history my minor, but continued to take every class with Chris that I could. Finally, one day I was leaving class my junior year I saw a flyer which listed the requirements to major in history and I realized I was only about six hours short. I was questioning my desire to go to law school at that point as well, so I went straight to the History Department office and declared a dual major in political science and history. Not long after that, Ronald McCoy (now at Oklahoma State University) introduced me to ethnohistory and I was hooked! What projects are you working on currently? My first monograph, The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia, is currently in production with the University of Colorado Press and should be published sometime in 2014. My second project, a synthesis of the Native American experience in the American Revolution tentatively titled The Greatest Blow That Could Have Been Dealt Us: Native Americans and the American Revolution, is under contract with ABC-CLIO. Have your interests changed since graduate school? If so, how? I am not sure that my interests have changed that much since I left graduate school, but certainly since I started my PhD in 2003 they have evolved considerably. I was originally more interested in the relationships between indigenous people and European colonists in the northern colonies. However, as my work attests my interests shifted to the South during my time working with Paul Kelton at Kansas. Additionally, I considered myself a colonial ethnohistorian. However, since being exposed to Atlantic history during my PhD I tend to consider myself an Atlantic historian more than anything else. Is there an article, book, movie, blog, etc. that you could recommend to fellow AHA members? Probably the three books that influenced my thinking as a historian more than any are Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia; E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class; and Richard White’s The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. What do you value most about the history profession? I value the fact that inquiry for the sake of inquiry is honored in the profession. We never accept the conventional wisdom or current paradigm as an acceptable answer. To be a historian (and a practitioner in any other humanities field for that matter) is to grapple with the very core of what it is that makes us human. Our triumphs, our tragedies, our flaws, and our strengths are all laid bare by the scholarly study of history and without this kind of inquiry there is little hope for mankind I think. Also, I love a crowd, I love to talk/read/write about the past, and I loved college so much I never wanted to leave it. Hence, there was really no other path for me! Why did you join the AHA? Originally, like most everyone else I joined because I went on the market in 2007. However, the AHA has been invaluable to me both in that endeavor (twice) and as a source for networking with other historians as well as a place I go to as a central location for the latest news of the profession. Do you have a favorite AHA annual meeting anecdote you would like to share? The first annual meeting I attended was in Atlanta in 2007. I was in my fourth year of my PhD was on the market for the first time. As I waited outside the room to go into my first interview I reached down and brushed the side of my suit pants only to discover they had a hole in them. For the rest of that day, I strategically kept my left hand over that particular seam. When it came time for on-campus interviews, I bought a new suit!! I landed the job by the way. Other than history, what are you passionate about? Family, teaching, Kansas Jayhawk basketball, college football, baseball, theatre, good music, good food, good drink, and good friends! ||||| — GAUTIER -- Authorities are searching for Delta State University professor Shannon Lamb, who is the suspect in a colleague's shooting on the Cleveland campus and in a woman's shooting at a home they shared on a Gautier bayou. Police said Monday evening they have been in contact with him and advised other law enforcement agencies to "use extreme caution" when contacting him because Lamb has made statements that he will not go to jail. Lamb, 45, was believed to be driving a black Dodge Avenger with Stone County tag number STF015. Police confirmed Lamb is suspected of killing Amy Prentiss, 41, whose death he reported by telephone. Gautier police Detective Matt Hoggatt said Lamb called police Monday morning saying there had been a shooting at a house on Santa Cruz Street. Police and Jackson County Deputy Coroner Deputy Jason Moody gathered at the home to collect evidence in the neighborhood, which is west of Dolphin Drive. Gautier police, in a news conference just after noon, said they believe Lamb had left the Gautier house Monday and traveled to Delta State in a green SUV. Hoggatt said university police found a green SUV matching that description. Neighbors reflect Dorothy Marcus, who lives nearby on San Marcus Street, said loud noises woke her up about 4:30 a.m., but it didn't sound like a gunshot. She said it sounded more like a wreck. Another neighbor, who lives next door to the house Lamb and the woman shared, said the couple had lived there at least since June. She asked that her name not be used. She said the couple had an old-fashioned hound named Lightning that liked to bay. She said she occasionally saw the couple on their deck. One was playing guitar and singing. Police said the dog was not killed. The woman said Lamb told her he got up early but the woman slept late. "He was nice," she said. The neighbor said a silver truck with Bolivar County tags had been parked in the yard for several months but hadn't been moved. Police later Monday towed the pickup truck off the property. The neighbor said she had wondered when Lamb would go back to Delta State since college classes had resumed. Lamb a geographer Delta State's website says Lamb is a geographer and coordinator of social sciences education and obtained his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at Delta State. His areas of expertise include geography of crime, high-stakes testing, economic geography and social science education, his profile said. He joined the staff in 2009. Lamb referenced his latest degree on his Facebook page in a post dated July 14: "Doctorate Completed!!! This will mark my 7th year teaching at Delta State University, and I want to thank all of my colleagues, friends, and family who have supported me throughout this journey. I realize for many of you it must seem as if I simply dropped off the face of the earth for the past 18 months or so. I apologize for that, but please believe me when I say that I was doing the best I could do. Ask anyone who has written a doctoral dissertation, worked a full time job, raised a family, and tried to maintain a relationship with the best girl in the whole wide world. (Amy Prentiss) I love each and everyone of you, and hope to see you all sooner rather than later. Stay tuned!!!!" Lamb's resume shows he has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity of the Mississippi Gulf Coast since 2007 on projects including jobs in Gulfport and Biloxi. He also volunteered with the Mississippi Elks Children's Summer Camp in Hattiesburg for five years, from 2006 through 2010. DSU victim shot in office Meanwhile, Bolivar County Coroner Dr. Nate Brown confirmed the victim of the Delta State shooting is DSU history professor Ethan Schmidt, who has been on campus since August 2013. Schmidt apparently was in his office when he was shot, prompting a campus lockdown. Wesley Muller, Sun Herald reporter, contributed to this story. ||||| A photo on the school's website shows them standing side by side, smiling at a 2013 holiday party. That same year, Schmidt thanked Lamb in the acknowledgments of his book Now, Schmidt is dead after someone shot him Monday in his office on the school's campus in Cleveland, Mississippi. Police say Lamb is a suspect in the slaying. Lamb remains at large and is considered armed and dangerous, Cleveland Police Chief Charles Bingham said Monday evening. Police in a city 300 miles away also described Lamb as a suspect in another homicide there -- and said they'd spoken with him at some point on Monday. Gautier Police Chief Dante Elben warned law enforcement to "use extreme caution" if they spotted the suspect. At some point on Monday, Elben said, Lamb spoke with police and told them "he wasn't going to jail." The police chief didn't specify when investigators spoke with Lamb or how. "We do not have the suspect in custody at this moment, but we are actively pursuing him," Bingham said. He declined to detail a motive in the case. "Right now we have no motive," Bingham said, "and we're not going to speculate on a motive until we have facts in hand." A photo on the Delta State University website shows Ethan Schmidt and Shannon Lamb at a holiday party. Authorities named Lamb as a suspect hours after finding Schmidt dead in his office. Schmidt was shot in the head, Bolivar County Deputy Coroner Murray Roark said. Investigators said they believe the suspect drove away from the campus after the shooting. He could be driving a black Dodge Avenger, authorities said, asking anyone with the information to call police. At this time we don't think he's on campus," Bingham told reporters, "but we're not taking anything lightly." The university, which is about 115 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee, will remain on lockdown Tuesday as the hunt for the shooter continues, University President William LaForge told reporters. But he said buildings at the school had been cleared. "We have checked the campus out thoroughly," LaForge said. "We believe that our buildings are clear. And our students, most importantly, are safe." Students who remain on campus will confined to their residence halls, LaForge said. Only 250 of the 1,150 students who normally stay there remained late Monday. Connected to another case? Police in Gautier, Mississippi, say Lamb is also a suspect in the killing of a woman found dead Monday morning in the coastal city, which is about 300 miles away from the university. Police say Shannon Lamb is a suspect in two homicides. Elben said Lamb is wanted in the shooting death of 41-year-old Amy Prentiss. The police chief described the shooting as an "isolated domestic incident." Lamb and Prentiss lived together, Gautier Police Lt. Scott Wilson said. Authorities said they received a call Monday morning reporting a shooting and discovered Prentiss dead inside a Gautier home. 'Beloved' professor At Delta State, the hunt for Schmidt's killer brought together campus police and city police as well as the Mississippi Highway Patrol, Bolivar County Sheriff's Department and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Professor Ethan Schmidt was killed at Delta State Monday. The school said it was scheduling a series of counseling sessions for Tuesday. "We lost one of our beloved professors today," Michelle Roberts, vice president of university relations, told reporters. "We are grieving on this campus." Schmidt's Delta State biography says that he taught undergraduate courses in American history, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas in 2007. Schmidt had written several books and scholarly papers and had expertise in Native American history. Before working at Delta State, he taught for six years at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he received the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2011.

– Whoever killed a Mississippi professor in his office today is still on the loose—but authorities have named the victim and a suspect. Per a county coroner, history professor Ethan Schmidt was shot dead in the head today at Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., the Clarion-Ledger reports. Authorities say their suspect is fellow Delta State instructor Shannon Lamb, reports the Sun Herald; he's also suspected in another shooting about 300 miles away. The two men were said to be romantically involved. As for the school, it remains on lockdown with all classes canceled while city police work with campus police, sheriff's deputies, ATF agents, and the Mississippi Highway Patrol to hunt down their suspect, CNN reports. Lamb, who joined Delta State's staff six years ago, is a geographer and social sciences expert who just finished his doctorate at the school. The 45-year-old also lived with a woman in the town of Gautier, where police responded to the shooting death of a woman this morning; she hasn't yet been identified. Lamb apparently left home in a green SUV that matches one authorities have found on campus. Messages on Lamb's Facebook page are urging him to give himself up to authorities: "Man, just turn yourself in bro!!" reads one. "Don't do anything to yourself or anyone else..." Schmidt was an assistant professor in US history, WLBT reports, and specialized in Native American history. See more about him at the American Historical Association.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our talented and eclectic membership, AHA Today features a regular AHA Member Spotlight series. Ethan Schmidt is assistant professor of American history at Delta State University. He currently lives in Cleveland, Mississippi, and has been a member of the AHA since 2006. Alma mater/s: PhD, University of Kansas; BA, MA, Emporia State University. Fields of interest: Atlantic history, ethnohistory, colonial British North America, social history When did you first develop an interest in history? I grew up in a family that valued history. My parents were both involved in historic preservation. My father is a collector of Civil War and other 19th-century Kansas memorabilia. Both he and my mother have always exhibited considerable interest in 19th-century America, so I came of age with parents and extended family members who were as often as not engaged in some kind of discussion in which history played either a primary or tangential role. When I went to college at Emporia State University, I was originally a political science major (I wanted to be an attorney). I took US history to 1877 from Christopher Phillips (now with the University of Cincinnati) and loved it and him. I made history my minor, but continued to take every class with Chris that I could. Finally, one day I was leaving class my junior year I saw a flyer which listed the requirements to major in history and I realized I was only about six hours short. I was questioning my desire to go to law school at that point as well, so I went straight to the History Department office and declared a dual major in political science and history. Not long after that, Ronald McCoy (now at Oklahoma State University) introduced me to ethnohistory and I was hooked! What projects are you working on currently? My first monograph, The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia, is currently in production with the University of Colorado Press and should be published sometime in 2014. My second project, a synthesis of the Native American experience in the American Revolution tentatively titled The Greatest Blow That Could Have Been Dealt Us: Native Americans and the American Revolution, is under contract with ABC-CLIO. Have your interests changed since graduate school? If so, how? I am not sure that my interests have changed that much since I left graduate school, but certainly since I started my PhD in 2003 they have evolved considerably. I was originally more interested in the relationships between indigenous people and European colonists in the northern colonies. However, as my work attests my interests shifted to the South during my time working with Paul Kelton at Kansas. Additionally, I considered myself a colonial ethnohistorian. However, since being exposed to Atlantic history during my PhD I tend to consider myself an Atlantic historian more than anything else. Is there an article, book, movie, blog, etc. that you could recommend to fellow AHA members? Probably the three books that influenced my thinking as a historian more than any are Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia; E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class; and Richard White’s The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. What do you value most about the history profession? I value the fact that inquiry for the sake of inquiry is honored in the profession. We never accept the conventional wisdom or current paradigm as an acceptable answer. To be a historian (and a practitioner in any other humanities field for that matter) is to grapple with the very core of what it is that makes us human. Our triumphs, our tragedies, our flaws, and our strengths are all laid bare by the scholarly study of history and without this kind of inquiry there is little hope for mankind I think. Also, I love a crowd, I love to talk/read/write about the past, and I loved college so much I never wanted to leave it. Hence, there was really no other path for me! Why did you join the AHA? Originally, like most everyone else I joined because I went on the market in 2007. However, the AHA has been invaluable to me both in that endeavor (twice) and as a source for networking with other historians as well as a place I go to as a central location for the latest news of the profession. Do you have a favorite AHA annual meeting anecdote you would like to share? The first annual meeting I attended was in Atlanta in 2007. I was in my fourth year of my PhD was on the market for the first time. As I waited outside the room to go into my first interview I reached down and brushed the side of my suit pants only to discover they had a hole in them. For the rest of that day, I strategically kept my left hand over that particular seam. When it came time for on-campus interviews, I bought a new suit!! I landed the job by the way. Other than history, what are you passionate about? Family, teaching, Kansas Jayhawk basketball, college football, baseball, theatre, good music, good food, good drink, and good friends! ||||| — GAUTIER -- Authorities are searching for Delta State University professor Shannon Lamb, who is the suspect in a colleague's shooting on the Cleveland campus and in a woman's shooting at a home they shared on a Gautier bayou. Police said Monday evening they have been in contact with him and advised other law enforcement agencies to "use extreme caution" when contacting him because Lamb has made statements that he will not go to jail. Lamb, 45, was believed to be driving a black Dodge Avenger with Stone County tag number STF015. Police confirmed Lamb is suspected of killing Amy Prentiss, 41, whose death he reported by telephone. Gautier police Detective Matt Hoggatt said Lamb called police Monday morning saying there had been a shooting at a house on Santa Cruz Street. Police and Jackson County Deputy Coroner Deputy Jason Moody gathered at the home to collect evidence in the neighborhood, which is west of Dolphin Drive. Gautier police, in a news conference just after noon, said they believe Lamb had left the Gautier house Monday and traveled to Delta State in a green SUV. Hoggatt said university police found a green SUV matching that description. Neighbors reflect Dorothy Marcus, who lives nearby on San Marcus Street, said loud noises woke her up about 4:30 a.m., but it didn't sound like a gunshot. She said it sounded more like a wreck. Another neighbor, who lives next door to the house Lamb and the woman shared, said the couple had lived there at least since June. She asked that her name not be used. She said the couple had an old-fashioned hound named Lightning that liked to bay. She said she occasionally saw the couple on their deck. One was playing guitar and singing. Police said the dog was not killed. The woman said Lamb told her he got up early but the woman slept late. "He was nice," she said. The neighbor said a silver truck with Bolivar County tags had been parked in the yard for several months but hadn't been moved. Police later Monday towed the pickup truck off the property. The neighbor said she had wondered when Lamb would go back to Delta State since college classes had resumed. Lamb a geographer Delta State's website says Lamb is a geographer and coordinator of social sciences education and obtained his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at Delta State. His areas of expertise include geography of crime, high-stakes testing, economic geography and social science education, his profile said. He joined the staff in 2009. Lamb referenced his latest degree on his Facebook page in a post dated July 14: "Doctorate Completed!!! This will mark my 7th year teaching at Delta State University, and I want to thank all of my colleagues, friends, and family who have supported me throughout this journey. I realize for many of you it must seem as if I simply dropped off the face of the earth for the past 18 months or so. I apologize for that, but please believe me when I say that I was doing the best I could do. Ask anyone who has written a doctoral dissertation, worked a full time job, raised a family, and tried to maintain a relationship with the best girl in the whole wide world. (Amy Prentiss) I love each and everyone of you, and hope to see you all sooner rather than later. Stay tuned!!!!" Lamb's resume shows he has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity of the Mississippi Gulf Coast since 2007 on projects including jobs in Gulfport and Biloxi. He also volunteered with the Mississippi Elks Children's Summer Camp in Hattiesburg for five years, from 2006 through 2010. DSU victim shot in office Meanwhile, Bolivar County Coroner Dr. Nate Brown confirmed the victim of the Delta State shooting is DSU history professor Ethan Schmidt, who has been on campus since August 2013. Schmidt apparently was in his office when he was shot, prompting a campus lockdown. Wesley Muller, Sun Herald reporter, contributed to this story. ||||| A photo on the school's website shows them standing side by side, smiling at a 2013 holiday party. That same year, Schmidt thanked Lamb in the acknowledgments of his book Now, Schmidt is dead after someone shot him Monday in his office on the school's campus in Cleveland, Mississippi. Police say Lamb is a suspect in the slaying. Lamb remains at large and is considered armed and dangerous, Cleveland Police Chief Charles Bingham said Monday evening. Police in a city 300 miles away also described Lamb as a suspect in another homicide there -- and said they'd spoken with him at some point on Monday. Gautier Police Chief Dante Elben warned law enforcement to "use extreme caution" if they spotted the suspect. At some point on Monday, Elben said, Lamb spoke with police and told them "he wasn't going to jail." The police chief didn't specify when investigators spoke with Lamb or how. "We do not have the suspect in custody at this moment, but we are actively pursuing him," Bingham said. He declined to detail a motive in the case. "Right now we have no motive," Bingham said, "and we're not going to speculate on a motive until we have facts in hand." A photo on the Delta State University website shows Ethan Schmidt and Shannon Lamb at a holiday party. Authorities named Lamb as a suspect hours after finding Schmidt dead in his office. Schmidt was shot in the head, Bolivar County Deputy Coroner Murray Roark said. Investigators said they believe the suspect drove away from the campus after the shooting. He could be driving a black Dodge Avenger, authorities said, asking anyone with the information to call police. At this time we don't think he's on campus," Bingham told reporters, "but we're not taking anything lightly." The university, which is about 115 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee, will remain on lockdown Tuesday as the hunt for the shooter continues, University President William LaForge told reporters. But he said buildings at the school had been cleared. "We have checked the campus out thoroughly," LaForge said. "We believe that our buildings are clear. And our students, most importantly, are safe." Students who remain on campus will confined to their residence halls, LaForge said. Only 250 of the 1,150 students who normally stay there remained late Monday. Connected to another case? Police in Gautier, Mississippi, say Lamb is also a suspect in the killing of a woman found dead Monday morning in the coastal city, which is about 300 miles away from the university. Police say Shannon Lamb is a suspect in two homicides. Elben said Lamb is wanted in the shooting death of 41-year-old Amy Prentiss. The police chief described the shooting as an "isolated domestic incident." Lamb and Prentiss lived together, Gautier Police Lt. Scott Wilson said. Authorities said they received a call Monday morning reporting a shooting and discovered Prentiss dead inside a Gautier home. 'Beloved' professor At Delta State, the hunt for Schmidt's killer brought together campus police and city police as well as the Mississippi Highway Patrol, Bolivar County Sheriff's Department and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Professor Ethan Schmidt was killed at Delta State Monday. The school said it was scheduling a series of counseling sessions for Tuesday. "We lost one of our beloved professors today," Michelle Roberts, vice president of university relations, told reporters. "We are grieving on this campus." Schmidt's Delta State biography says that he taught undergraduate courses in American history, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas in 2007. Schmidt had written several books and scholarly papers and had expertise in Native American history. Before working at Delta State, he taught for six years at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he received the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2011.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

A New York podiatrist and his girlfriend hired a hitman to kill his soon-to-be ex-wife and paid people to rough up a pair of insurance agents investigating his medical practice, police said. Ira Bernstein, 42, and Kelly Myzner Gribeluk, 36, were arraigned Tuesday in Ramapo on conspiracy and solicitation charges. Town cops began investigating the couple about a month ago when a would-be hitman came forward and told police about Bernstein and Gribeluk’s plans to murder the doctor’s wife, whom he is in the process of divorcing. The informant said the couple had offered him money if he killed the woman and made the death look like an accident, police said at a Tuesday press conference, lohud.com reported. Bernstein — who has been slammed with two malpractice lawsuits in the past two years — and Gribeluk later asked the whistleblower if he could arrange to have two United Healthcare insurance investigators roughed up. The pair of professionals was probing the doctor’s podiatry practice and had plans to refer potential fraud charges to the District Attorney's office. The cops began a sting operation and had makeup artists make the investigators look like they had been beaten up. The cops snapped photos of the faux injuries, and when the informant presented the couple with the “evidence,” they paid for the apparent abuse, police said. The two were arrested Monday and each is being held on $600,000 bail. Ira Bernstein (Rambo Police) Kelly Grideluk (Rambo Police) Ira Bernstein (l.) and Kelly Grideluk were arrested Monday. Bernstein's lawyer said his client plans on being vindicated of the charges. His malpractie cases include a 2015 incident where a jury awarded a 12-year-old patient $1.4 million after the doctor left her foot permanently deformed and in 2014, when he paid another patient $775,000 following a botched bunion operation. At the arraignment, Gribeluk's lawyer said the Rockland resident and real estate agent didn't have the means to post bail. With News Wire Services ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH VIDEO HERE. ||||| CLOSE Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel talks May 3, 2026, about the police investigation into an alleged murder-for-hire plot by Ira Bernstein and his girlfriend, Kelly Gribeluk, against his wife. Video by Steve Lieberman/The Journal News Co-defendant Kelly Gribeluk is an Airmont resident whose child-custody battle with her former husband had made headlines in the Jewish press. Ira Bernstein is charged with plotting to kill his wife (Photo: Ramapo police) RAMAPO - A podiatrist and his girlfriend plotted to kill his wife and have two insurance investigators looking into his business beaten up, town police said Tuesday. UPDATE: Police: Probe expands into podiatrist facing murder for hire charges Police arrested Ira Bernstein, 42, and Kelly Myzner Gribeluk, 35, Monday night following a month-long investigation they said was sparked when the person the couple reached out to about killing Bernstein's wife initially reported the plot to the Spring Valley police. Ramapo Detective Lt. Mark Emma said Bernstein and Gribeluk thought the man they approached had the connections they needed. He called the man "an exceptional citizen" for reporting what happened. "This person had some sort of relationship with one of them," Emma said. "They asked him to cause injury to Bernstein's wife to result in her death. They made an assumption he could help them. He doesn't do those things." Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugible, called the plot "a despicable plan to take the life of a wife and mother essentially for financial gain." Bernstein, records show, has lost two malpractice lawsuits since 2014, totaling close to $2 million in judgments. The Bernsteins, who have three children, were getting divorced, officials said. Gribeluk, who lives in Airmont, is divorced and has three children of her own who do not live with her. Bernstein and Gribeluk were arraigned Tuesday afternoon in Ramapo Town Court. Justice Thomas Newman set bail at $600,000 for each, over the objections of their lawyers. Bernstein's defense attorney Kevin Conway, argued he was not a flight risk, noting he had family and property in the area, plus his business. Gribeluk's court-appointed lawyer, Jay Golland, said the lifelong Rockland resident, a real estate agent, did not have the means to post bail. Police said Bernstein and Gribeluk are also accused of seeking to have two United Healthcare insurance investigators beaten up, allegedly because they were going to refer potential fraud charges involving Ira Bernstein's podiatry business to the Rockland District Attorney's office for investigation. Prosecutor Richard Kennison Moran said the case was strong and included video, audiotapes, and wiretapped telephone conversations, as well as an exchange of money on several occasions. Moran said Gribeluk had "made admissions to detectives as to her role in the matter." Police charged both with felony counts of second-degree conspiracy, second-degree solicitation and fourth-degree conspiracy, and a misdemeanor count of fourth-degree solicitation. Emma said at an afternoon news conference that Gribeluk was the brains behind the operation. He said the person she approached was asked to reach out to someone else to have Susan Bernstein killed and make it look like an accident. Grideluk and Ira Bernstein met with her contact several times, with the couple also eventually adding the request to have the two insurance investigators roughed up. Ramapo police, as part of the investigation, had someone put makeup on the insurance investigators to try to fool Gribeluk and Bernstein into thinking they had been assaulted as requested. The go-between showed photographs of the "injured" investigators to the pair, at which point they discussed further the plan to kill Bernstein's wife, officials said. The pair were "cold" and unemotional during the meetings with the go-between, police said. Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said a key concern in the investigation was making sure that while the two were being strung along they did not find someone else to kill Bernstein's wife. Ira Bernstein has operated podiatry offices in Ramapo and Bardonia. Kelly Myzner Gribeluk is charged with plotting to kill her boyfriend's wife (Photo: Ramapo police) A Rockland County jury found Bernstein negligent in 2015 when it awarded $1.4 million to a 12-year-old girl for injuries when he operated on her for bunions and fused her growth plates, leaving her foot deformed and unstable during a growth spurt. The girl's lawyer argued the operation was unnecessary. In 2014, Bernstein forked over $775,000 to a Nyack woman after a botched bunion operation on her feet when she was 16. The woman is now a teacher and reportedly can't stand without pain. Gribeluk's child-custody battle with her former husband made headlines in The Jewish Week. She's a former Satmar Hasidic Jew from Monsey who claimed her former husband abused her. Guillermo Gribeluk’s attorney, Eric Thorsen, told the newspaper that his client “vehemently and unequivocally denies” the allegations of abuse. Gribeluk, who police said also goes by Heidi Morris, was raised in a secular home and became religious at age 21. She claimed Rockland Family Court Judge Sherri Eisenpress favored her ex-husband to maintain her three children's religious upbringing. Her case became a rallying cry for religious parents who lost their children in custody fights. Golland, her lawyer in the criminal case, said she has visitation rights with her children, citing it as one of her local ties. Twitter: @lohudlegal Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/26Pszmf

– Cops say "an exceptional citizen" led to the arrest of a podiatrist and his girlfriend in a murder-for-hire plot to kill the doctor's wife and beat up two insurance investigators, the Journal News reports. Police say father of three Ira Bernstein, 42, of Ramapo, NY, and Kelly Myzner Gribeluk (either 35 or 36, per different sources) were arrested Monday after they allegedly reached out to the person they asked "to cause injury to Bernstein's wife to result in her death," Ramapo Detective Lt. Mark Emma says. "They made an assumption he could help them. He doesn't do those things." Evidence against the couple includes video, audio recordings, money changing hands, tapped phone calls, and Gribeluk's own confession, a prosecutor says. Records indicate Bernstein lost two recent malpractice cases that cost $2 million in judgments. Gribeluk—who is divorced, also has three children, and sometimes goes by "Heidi Morris," cops say—reportedly knew the supposed hit man. She and Bernstein allegedly wanted him to kill Susan Bernstein, whom he's divorcing, as well as beat up two UnitedHealthcare agents poking around Bernstein's business on fraud suspicions. But the supposed hit man went to the cops instead, and they started their own probe, which included putting makeup on the insurance agents to make it appear they'd been assaulted. When the two saw the pictures of the "injured" agents, they paid their liaison (who described them as lacking emotion), the New York Daily News reports. Bernstein and Gribeluk are each being held on $600,000 bail on felony charges of conspiracy and solicitation. The plot was a "despicable plan to take the life of a wife and mother, essentially for financial gain," the Rockland County DA tells the Journal News. (The Journal News touches on Gribeluk's own child-custody battle.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.A New York podiatrist and his girlfriend hired a hitman to kill his soon-to-be ex-wife and paid people to rough up a pair of insurance agents investigating his medical practice, police said. Ira Bernstein, 42, and Kelly Myzner Gribeluk, 36, were arraigned Tuesday in Ramapo on conspiracy and solicitation charges. Town cops began investigating the couple about a month ago when a would-be hitman came forward and told police about Bernstein and Gribeluk’s plans to murder the doctor’s wife, whom he is in the process of divorcing. The informant said the couple had offered him money if he killed the woman and made the death look like an accident, police said at a Tuesday press conference, lohud.com reported. Bernstein — who has been slammed with two malpractice lawsuits in the past two years — and Gribeluk later asked the whistleblower if he could arrange to have two United Healthcare insurance investigators roughed up. The pair of professionals was probing the doctor’s podiatry practice and had plans to refer potential fraud charges to the District Attorney's office. The cops began a sting operation and had makeup artists make the investigators look like they had been beaten up. The cops snapped photos of the faux injuries, and when the informant presented the couple with the “evidence,” they paid for the apparent abuse, police said. The two were arrested Monday and each is being held on $600,000 bail. Ira Bernstein (Rambo Police) Kelly Grideluk (Rambo Police) Ira Bernstein (l.) and Kelly Grideluk were arrested Monday. Bernstein's lawyer said his client plans on being vindicated of the charges. His malpractie cases include a 2015 incident where a jury awarded a 12-year-old patient $1.4 million after the doctor left her foot permanently deformed and in 2014, when he paid another patient $775,000 following a botched bunion operation. At the arraignment, Gribeluk's lawyer said the Rockland resident and real estate agent didn't have the means to post bail. With News Wire Services ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH VIDEO HERE. ||||| CLOSE Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel talks May 3, 2026, about the police investigation into an alleged murder-for-hire plot by Ira Bernstein and his girlfriend, Kelly Gribeluk, against his wife. Video by Steve Lieberman/The Journal News Co-defendant Kelly Gribeluk is an Airmont resident whose child-custody battle with her former husband had made headlines in the Jewish press. Ira Bernstein is charged with plotting to kill his wife (Photo: Ramapo police) RAMAPO - A podiatrist and his girlfriend plotted to kill his wife and have two insurance investigators looking into his business beaten up, town police said Tuesday. UPDATE: Police: Probe expands into podiatrist facing murder for hire charges Police arrested Ira Bernstein, 42, and Kelly Myzner Gribeluk, 35, Monday night following a month-long investigation they said was sparked when the person the couple reached out to about killing Bernstein's wife initially reported the plot to the Spring Valley police. Ramapo Detective Lt. Mark Emma said Bernstein and Gribeluk thought the man they approached had the connections they needed. He called the man "an exceptional citizen" for reporting what happened. "This person had some sort of relationship with one of them," Emma said. "They asked him to cause injury to Bernstein's wife to result in her death. They made an assumption he could help them. He doesn't do those things." Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugible, called the plot "a despicable plan to take the life of a wife and mother essentially for financial gain." Bernstein, records show, has lost two malpractice lawsuits since 2014, totaling close to $2 million in judgments. The Bernsteins, who have three children, were getting divorced, officials said. Gribeluk, who lives in Airmont, is divorced and has three children of her own who do not live with her. Bernstein and Gribeluk were arraigned Tuesday afternoon in Ramapo Town Court. Justice Thomas Newman set bail at $600,000 for each, over the objections of their lawyers. Bernstein's defense attorney Kevin Conway, argued he was not a flight risk, noting he had family and property in the area, plus his business. Gribeluk's court-appointed lawyer, Jay Golland, said the lifelong Rockland resident, a real estate agent, did not have the means to post bail. Police said Bernstein and Gribeluk are also accused of seeking to have two United Healthcare insurance investigators beaten up, allegedly because they were going to refer potential fraud charges involving Ira Bernstein's podiatry business to the Rockland District Attorney's office for investigation. Prosecutor Richard Kennison Moran said the case was strong and included video, audiotapes, and wiretapped telephone conversations, as well as an exchange of money on several occasions. Moran said Gribeluk had "made admissions to detectives as to her role in the matter." Police charged both with felony counts of second-degree conspiracy, second-degree solicitation and fourth-degree conspiracy, and a misdemeanor count of fourth-degree solicitation. Emma said at an afternoon news conference that Gribeluk was the brains behind the operation. He said the person she approached was asked to reach out to someone else to have Susan Bernstein killed and make it look like an accident. Grideluk and Ira Bernstein met with her contact several times, with the couple also eventually adding the request to have the two insurance investigators roughed up. Ramapo police, as part of the investigation, had someone put makeup on the insurance investigators to try to fool Gribeluk and Bernstein into thinking they had been assaulted as requested. The go-between showed photographs of the "injured" investigators to the pair, at which point they discussed further the plan to kill Bernstein's wife, officials said. The pair were "cold" and unemotional during the meetings with the go-between, police said. Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said a key concern in the investigation was making sure that while the two were being strung along they did not find someone else to kill Bernstein's wife. Ira Bernstein has operated podiatry offices in Ramapo and Bardonia. Kelly Myzner Gribeluk is charged with plotting to kill her boyfriend's wife (Photo: Ramapo police) A Rockland County jury found Bernstein negligent in 2015 when it awarded $1.4 million to a 12-year-old girl for injuries when he operated on her for bunions and fused her growth plates, leaving her foot deformed and unstable during a growth spurt. The girl's lawyer argued the operation was unnecessary. In 2014, Bernstein forked over $775,000 to a Nyack woman after a botched bunion operation on her feet when she was 16. The woman is now a teacher and reportedly can't stand without pain. Gribeluk's child-custody battle with her former husband made headlines in The Jewish Week. She's a former Satmar Hasidic Jew from Monsey who claimed her former husband abused her. Guillermo Gribeluk’s attorney, Eric Thorsen, told the newspaper that his client “vehemently and unequivocally denies” the allegations of abuse. Gribeluk, who police said also goes by Heidi Morris, was raised in a secular home and became religious at age 21. She claimed Rockland Family Court Judge Sherri Eisenpress favored her ex-husband to maintain her three children's religious upbringing. Her case became a rallying cry for religious parents who lost their children in custody fights. Golland, her lawyer in the criminal case, said she has visitation rights with her children, citing it as one of her local ties. Twitter: @lohudlegal Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/26Pszmf

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Jon Hamm Completes Rehab Stint for Alcohol Jon Hamm -- Completes Rehab Stint for Alcohol EXCLUSIVE Jon Hamm completed a 30-day rehab program for alcohol abuse, just days before the premiere of the last season of "Mad Men." We're told Hamm checked himself into Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut at the end of February. It's a high-end facility. The final season is already in the can. Hamm's people tell TMZ, "With the support of his longtime partner Jennifer Westfeldt, Jon Hamm recently completed treatment for his struggle with alcohol addiction. They have asked for privacy and sensitivity going forward." ||||| Jon Hamm as Don Draper is a little like Superman in reverse: he puts on a suit and tie, slicks his hair back, and suddenly he's superhuman (if somewhat more fallible). When I visited the Mad Men set for my Time cover story on the shooting of the final season (which premieres Sunday, April 13 at 10 p.m. on AMC), I got a few minutes to speak to Hamm in Clark Kent mode--tie un-tied, hair un-slicked, taking a break between takes on the lot of the Los Angeles Center Studios downtown. (Earlier, I posted my lengthier interview with creator Matthew Weiner .) The transcript below is edited for length and clarity: That incredible Hershey pitch [in the season 6 finale] was a situation we’ve seen Don in so many times--he’s in a professional crisis, a personal crisis and yet he goes into a pitch meeting and reaches inside himself and saves the day. And here it was sort of the opposite; he did something that was personally important for him but it also ruined the pitch. What do you think caused him to get to that point? Hamm: You know, I recently got to see that scene again because it was shown at the AFI, and I hadn’t really seen it since it aired. A friend of mine was saying it’s funny because you look at that scene and you kind of think--because we’ve seen him in that situation before--are [the Hershey executives] gonna buy this? Because it is moving. It’s just inappropriate. And we’ve seen something like that with Don--the Carousel or even back to the pilot when he pulls "It’s toasted" out of his ass. So he was kind of thinking, "They might buy this. It’s unorthodox but it’s a way to go." And, of course they don’t, but he couldn’t go in there and fake it with that particular product because it meant so much to him personally, and it just sort of spilled out in a very raw and visceral way. We’ve seen Don repeat some self-destructive patterns in his life, and at the end of last season he seemed to be making some sort of decisive break with that. Do you feel he is capable of change? I think part of why the character is so interesting is that he is a person that has habits, and not all of them are good, but yet he has shown the ability to surprise you every now and again. And I think events leading up to the end of last season and Don’s confession [at the Hershey pitch] I think was a watershed moment in his life--and I do think that was a big step for Don. Now, there are repercussions that don’t have to do with just him. Being put on leave from the agency and having a tenuous situation at home are the fallout. So he’ll have to manage both of those. But I hope for for Don that he is able to find some measure of peace with not only who he is and who he was but who he wants to be. You know we’ve been asking that question for some time on this show – who is Don Draper? He’s a different person to Roger than he is to Peggy than he is to Betty than he is to Megan than he is to Pete than he is to so many other people. But I think what we’ve been waiting for is who is he to Don. Do you find anything admirable about him? There haven’t been a lot of examples in recent history. He’s taken two steps back for every one step forward. What I find admirable about him is that he’s a creative guy and he sticks to his guns creatively. In his own way he’s an artist and he wants to be taken that way, even though he works in a very commercial, no pun intended, medium. That’s probably the only thing I can come up with. We've seen Don for seven years telling stories about himself by telling stories about products. Is there something about the advertising business that made it an especially good vehicle to talk about American history? You know, we started the show in 1960 in the waning of the Eisenhower era and pretty much the maximum of America’s global influence. And these guys were at the center of it and driving it basically-- spreading the word about the American Dream. And the American Dream was basically the American Dream for white males. And so over the course of the decade we’ve seen that power slowly whittled away--you’re looking at the rise of feminism and women in the workplace, the rise of African Americans and civil rights and homosexuals, and all of this stuff kind of percolating underneath. And it's placed in this incredibly vital time and place – New York City was arguably the most important place in the world in the sixties. And by the seventies was a dump. You’re like, “What happened? We had it all wired. And then it just all stopped." But advertisers were still selling ads and still selling this dream that had shifted and changed, so they had to change how they pitch, and it became more ironic and it became more oblique. And we have guys like Ginsberg and Peggy and Stan coming up and pitching new ideas that the older guys just don’t get. The times have changed. Music has changed. We had the scene where Don puts on "Tomorrow Never Knows" and he’s like, “I don’t like this garbage.” We touched on that very early in the show. Season two, episode one was called "For Those Who Think Young" and it was about everything being pitched to young people. We’re still in that mode. Take a look at any movie – any movie that’s not released in December is basically for 14 year olds . Are you surprised how much a lot of fans like Don Draper? Well, people like Walter White, too, and the guy's a murderer. People like Tony Soprano, another murderer. There’s a vicarious thrill to seeing these people do bad things on television and mostly get away with it. People love Omar [the stickup man from The Wire ]. You like the bad guys sometimes if they’re not too bad or if you feel like there’s a heart of gold somehow. But I’m always surprised when people are like, “I want to be just like Don Draper.” I’m like, “You want to be a miserable drunk?” I don’t think you want to be anything like that guy. You want to be like the guy on a poster maybe but not the actual guy. The actual guy’s rotting from the inside out and has to pull it together. But, and again that’s one of the biggest themes on the show: the outside looks great, the inside is rotten. That’s New York City. That’s America in the sixties. That’s all that stuff. It all looks great and when you scratch the surface you’re like, “Oh, it’s hollow and it’s rotten.” It's advertising. Put some Vaseline on that food, make it shine and look good. Can’t eat it, but it looks good. ||||| Jon Hamm has completed a 30-day program in rehab for alcohol abuse, according to TMZ. The "Mad Men" star reportedly checked himself into Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut at the end of February. "With the support of his longtime partner Jennifer Westfeldt, Jon Hamm recently completed treatment for his struggle with alcohol addiction. They have asked for privacy and sensitivity going forward," a rep for the actor told TMZ. The actor has never discussed drinking before but has spoken about how there's no reason to be jealous of his "Mad Men" character, Don Draper. "I’m always surprised when people are like, 'I want to be just like Don Draper,'" he said to Time. “I’m like, 'You want to be a miserable drunk?' I don’t think you want to be anything like that guy. "You want to be like the guy on a poster maybe but not the actual guy," he said. "The actual guy’s rotting from the inside out and has to pull it together." Although he hasn't spoken about addiction he did open up to The Guardian in 2010 about battling depression. “I struggled with chronic depression," he said. “I was in bad shape.” "I did do therapy and antidepressants for a brief period, which helped me,” he added. The final season of "Mad Men" premieres April 5. On a mobile device? Click here to watch the video.

– Jon Hamm, who stars as hard-drinking Don Draper in Mad Men, has taken steps to deal with issues of his own. He has completed a 30-day rehab program for alcohol addiction at what TMZ calls a "high-end facility" in Connecticut, just ahead of the April 5 debut of the show's seventh and final season. "With the support of his longtime partner Jennifer Westfeldt, Jon Hamm recently completed treatment for his struggle with alcohol addiction," a spokesperson says. "They have asked for privacy and sensitivity going forward." Hamm hasn't discussed alcohol addiction before, but in an interview with Time last year, he described Draper as a "miserable drunk" who is "rotting from the inside out," the New York Daily News notes. "That's one of the biggest themes on the show: The outside looks great, the inside is rotten," he said. "That's New York City. That's America in the 60s. That's all that stuff. It all looks great and when you scratch the surface you're like, 'Oh, it's hollow and it's rotten.' It's advertising. Put some Vaseline on that food, make it shine and look good. Can't eat it, but it looks good."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Jon Hamm Completes Rehab Stint for Alcohol Jon Hamm -- Completes Rehab Stint for Alcohol EXCLUSIVE Jon Hamm completed a 30-day rehab program for alcohol abuse, just days before the premiere of the last season of "Mad Men." We're told Hamm checked himself into Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut at the end of February. It's a high-end facility. The final season is already in the can. Hamm's people tell TMZ, "With the support of his longtime partner Jennifer Westfeldt, Jon Hamm recently completed treatment for his struggle with alcohol addiction. They have asked for privacy and sensitivity going forward." ||||| Jon Hamm as Don Draper is a little like Superman in reverse: he puts on a suit and tie, slicks his hair back, and suddenly he's superhuman (if somewhat more fallible). When I visited the Mad Men set for my Time cover story on the shooting of the final season (which premieres Sunday, April 13 at 10 p.m. on AMC), I got a few minutes to speak to Hamm in Clark Kent mode--tie un-tied, hair un-slicked, taking a break between takes on the lot of the Los Angeles Center Studios downtown. (Earlier, I posted my lengthier interview with creator Matthew Weiner .) The transcript below is edited for length and clarity: That incredible Hershey pitch [in the season 6 finale] was a situation we’ve seen Don in so many times--he’s in a professional crisis, a personal crisis and yet he goes into a pitch meeting and reaches inside himself and saves the day. And here it was sort of the opposite; he did something that was personally important for him but it also ruined the pitch. What do you think caused him to get to that point? Hamm: You know, I recently got to see that scene again because it was shown at the AFI, and I hadn’t really seen it since it aired. A friend of mine was saying it’s funny because you look at that scene and you kind of think--because we’ve seen him in that situation before--are [the Hershey executives] gonna buy this? Because it is moving. It’s just inappropriate. And we’ve seen something like that with Don--the Carousel or even back to the pilot when he pulls "It’s toasted" out of his ass. So he was kind of thinking, "They might buy this. It’s unorthodox but it’s a way to go." And, of course they don’t, but he couldn’t go in there and fake it with that particular product because it meant so much to him personally, and it just sort of spilled out in a very raw and visceral way. We’ve seen Don repeat some self-destructive patterns in his life, and at the end of last season he seemed to be making some sort of decisive break with that. Do you feel he is capable of change? I think part of why the character is so interesting is that he is a person that has habits, and not all of them are good, but yet he has shown the ability to surprise you every now and again. And I think events leading up to the end of last season and Don’s confession [at the Hershey pitch] I think was a watershed moment in his life--and I do think that was a big step for Don. Now, there are repercussions that don’t have to do with just him. Being put on leave from the agency and having a tenuous situation at home are the fallout. So he’ll have to manage both of those. But I hope for for Don that he is able to find some measure of peace with not only who he is and who he was but who he wants to be. You know we’ve been asking that question for some time on this show – who is Don Draper? He’s a different person to Roger than he is to Peggy than he is to Betty than he is to Megan than he is to Pete than he is to so many other people. But I think what we’ve been waiting for is who is he to Don. Do you find anything admirable about him? There haven’t been a lot of examples in recent history. He’s taken two steps back for every one step forward. What I find admirable about him is that he’s a creative guy and he sticks to his guns creatively. In his own way he’s an artist and he wants to be taken that way, even though he works in a very commercial, no pun intended, medium. That’s probably the only thing I can come up with. We've seen Don for seven years telling stories about himself by telling stories about products. Is there something about the advertising business that made it an especially good vehicle to talk about American history? You know, we started the show in 1960 in the waning of the Eisenhower era and pretty much the maximum of America’s global influence. And these guys were at the center of it and driving it basically-- spreading the word about the American Dream. And the American Dream was basically the American Dream for white males. And so over the course of the decade we’ve seen that power slowly whittled away--you’re looking at the rise of feminism and women in the workplace, the rise of African Americans and civil rights and homosexuals, and all of this stuff kind of percolating underneath. And it's placed in this incredibly vital time and place – New York City was arguably the most important place in the world in the sixties. And by the seventies was a dump. You’re like, “What happened? We had it all wired. And then it just all stopped." But advertisers were still selling ads and still selling this dream that had shifted and changed, so they had to change how they pitch, and it became more ironic and it became more oblique. And we have guys like Ginsberg and Peggy and Stan coming up and pitching new ideas that the older guys just don’t get. The times have changed. Music has changed. We had the scene where Don puts on "Tomorrow Never Knows" and he’s like, “I don’t like this garbage.” We touched on that very early in the show. Season two, episode one was called "For Those Who Think Young" and it was about everything being pitched to young people. We’re still in that mode. Take a look at any movie – any movie that’s not released in December is basically for 14 year olds . Are you surprised how much a lot of fans like Don Draper? Well, people like Walter White, too, and the guy's a murderer. People like Tony Soprano, another murderer. There’s a vicarious thrill to seeing these people do bad things on television and mostly get away with it. People love Omar [the stickup man from The Wire ]. You like the bad guys sometimes if they’re not too bad or if you feel like there’s a heart of gold somehow. But I’m always surprised when people are like, “I want to be just like Don Draper.” I’m like, “You want to be a miserable drunk?” I don’t think you want to be anything like that guy. You want to be like the guy on a poster maybe but not the actual guy. The actual guy’s rotting from the inside out and has to pull it together. But, and again that’s one of the biggest themes on the show: the outside looks great, the inside is rotten. That’s New York City. That’s America in the sixties. That’s all that stuff. It all looks great and when you scratch the surface you’re like, “Oh, it’s hollow and it’s rotten.” It's advertising. Put some Vaseline on that food, make it shine and look good. Can’t eat it, but it looks good. ||||| Jon Hamm has completed a 30-day program in rehab for alcohol abuse, according to TMZ. The "Mad Men" star reportedly checked himself into Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut at the end of February. "With the support of his longtime partner Jennifer Westfeldt, Jon Hamm recently completed treatment for his struggle with alcohol addiction. They have asked for privacy and sensitivity going forward," a rep for the actor told TMZ. The actor has never discussed drinking before but has spoken about how there's no reason to be jealous of his "Mad Men" character, Don Draper. "I’m always surprised when people are like, 'I want to be just like Don Draper,'" he said to Time. “I’m like, 'You want to be a miserable drunk?' I don’t think you want to be anything like that guy. "You want to be like the guy on a poster maybe but not the actual guy," he said. "The actual guy’s rotting from the inside out and has to pull it together." Although he hasn't spoken about addiction he did open up to The Guardian in 2010 about battling depression. “I struggled with chronic depression," he said. “I was in bad shape.” "I did do therapy and antidepressants for a brief period, which helped me,” he added. The final season of "Mad Men" premieres April 5. On a mobile device? Click here to watch the video.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Stanford researchers using smartphones to track the activity levels of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe made an intriguing discovery: In countries with little obesity, people mostly walked a similar amount per day. But big gaps between people who walked a lot and those who walked very little coincided with much higher levels of obesity. Using step data captured by smartphones, Stanford researchers have defined a new public health risk they call activity inequality. This occurs when large gaps develop inside a country between people who walk a lot and those who walk very little, leading to unhealthy levels of obesity. (Image credit: Tim Althoff) Considering that an estimated 5.3 million people die from causes associated with physical inactivity every year, these researchers looked for a simple and convenient way to measure activity across millions of people to help figure out why obesity is a bigger problem in some countries than others. The ground-breaking study, appearing in Nature, used data captured from smartphones to analyze the habits of 717,000 men and women from 111 countries, whose steps were studied for an average of 95 days. The researchers, led by computer scientist Jure Leskovec and bioengineer Scott Delp, dubbed this phenomenon “activity inequality” to evoke the well-established concept of income inequality. “If you think about some people in a country as ‘activity rich’ and others as ‘activity poor,’ the size of the gap between them is a strong indicator of obesity levels in that society,” Delp said. A related finding was the powerful role that gender played in country-to-country differences. Prior studies of physical activity, done mainly in the United States, have shown that men walk more than women, and this was borne out in the global findings. What surprised researchers, however, was how greatly this gender step gap varied from country to country with negative consequences for women. “When activity inequality is greatest, women’s activity is reduced much more dramatically than men’s activity, and thus the negative connections to obesity can affect women more greatly,” Leskovec said. The researchers, who are sharing their findings on an activity inequality website, hope their work will help improve public health campaigns against obesity and support policies to make cities more “walkable.” Smartphones and steps Smartphones are equipped with tiny sensors called accelerometers that can automatically record stepping motions. The researchers acquired the data for this study from the Azumio Argus app, which tracks physical activity and other health behaviors. Azumio anonymized the data but provided key health demographics: age, gender, height and weight. The last two data points enabled the researchers to calculate each person’s body mass index. The findings leaned most heavily on data from the 46 countries for which Azumio provided at least a thousand anonymized users, enough to form the basis for statistically valid inferences. The analysis disclosed strong correlations among activity inequality, the gender-activity gap, and obesity levels. “For instance, Sweden had one of the smallest gaps between activity rich and activity poor, and the smallest disparity between male and female steps,” said Tim Althoff, a doctoral candidate in computer science and first author on the Nature paper. “It also had one of the lowest rates of obesity.” Meanwhile, the United States ranked fourth from the bottom in overall activity inequality, indicating a large gap between activity rich and activity poor. It was fifth from the bottom in the gender step gap and it has high levels of obesity. Walkable cities To better understand the causes and consequences of activity inequality in urban settings, the researchers analyzed a large subset of data from the United States to investigate how the built environments of 69 cities related to activity, obesity and health. Prior research had scored each city by how walkable and pedestrian-friendly it is, using factors such as ease of walking to shops, restaurants, parks and other destinations. The researchers then correlated this walkability index to their smartphone activity data. Team member Jennifer Hicks, director of data science for the Mobilize Center at Stanford, said the results make clear that city design has health impacts: The cities that were most conducive to walking had the lowest activity inequality. “Looking at three California cities in close geographic proximity – San Francisco, San Jose and Fremont – we determined that San Francisco had both the highest walkability score and the lowest level of activity inequality,” she said. “In cities that are more walkable everyone tends to take more daily steps, whether male or female, young or old, healthy weight or obese.” A new research instrument? The technological star of the project was the increasingly ubiquitous smartphone. Nearly 70 percent of adults in developed countries now carry smartphones; in developing nations, the percentage is close to half. “This opens the door to new ways of doing science at a much larger scale,” Delp said. But qualifying the smartphone as a tool for this type of research was no cakewalk. “The methodology was so new that the reviewers were dubious at first,” Leskovec said. But strong data and rigorous computational methods ultimately proved the validity of this new approach. Now, having qualified the smartphone for research of this sort, the Stanford researchers are looking for new ways to leverage this tool. “With the appropriate apps and sensors we can push this research in exciting directions,” said team member Abby King, a professor of medicine and of health research and policy. “We could better link activity within and across populations with food intake, or examine the ways activity and inactivity may affect stress or mental health, as well as investigating how best to fine-tune our environments to promote increased activity.” Rok Sosic, a senior research engineer in computer science at Stanford, was a coauthor on the Nature paper. Jure Leskovec is an associate professor of computer science, a member of Bio-X and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator. Scott Delp is the James H. Clark Professor, founding chairman of the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford and director of the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research. He is a professor of bioengineering and of mechanical engineering. He is a member of Bio-X, the Child Research Institute and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Abby King is a professor of health research and policy and of medicine with the Stanford Prevention Research Center, a member of the Cardiovascular Institute and Stanford Cancer Institute and an affiliate of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Freelance science writer Glen Martin and Raymond MacDougall, lead communications specialist at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, contributed to this news release. The authors thank Azumio for donating the data for independent research. The research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health through grants to the Mobilize Center and the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research; the SAP Stanford Graduate Fellowship; and the Stanford Data Science Initiative. ||||| Image copyright Tim Althoff US scientists have amassed "planetary-scale" data from people's smartphones to see how active we really are. The Stanford University analysis of 68 million days' worth of minute-by-minute data showed the average number of daily steps was 4,961. Hong Kong was top averaging 6,880 a day, while Indonesia was bottom of the rankings with just 3,513. But the findings also uncovered intriguing details that could help tackle obesity. Most smartphones have a built-in accelerometer that can record steps and the researchers used anonymous data from more than 700,000 people who used the Argus activity monitoring app. Scott Delp, a professor of bioengineering and one of the researchers, said: "The study is 1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement. "There have been wonderful health surveys done, but our new study provides data from more countries, many more subjects, and tracks people's activity on an ongoing basis. "This opens the door to new ways of doing science at a much larger scale than we have been able to do before." Activity inequality The findings have been published in the journal Nature and the study authors say the results give important insights for improving people's health. The average number of steps in a country appears to be less important for obesity levels, for example. The key ingredient was "activity inequality" - it's like wealth inequality, except instead of the difference between rich and poor, it's the difference between the fittest and laziest. The bigger the activity inequality, the higher the rates of obesity. Tim Althoff, one of the researchers, said: "For instance, Sweden had one of the smallest gaps between activity rich and activity poor... it also had one of the lowest rates of obesity." The United States and Mexico both have similar average steps, but the US has higher activity inequality and obesity levels. Global sleeping patterns revealed by app data Has wearable tech had its day? Is that fitness tracker you're using a waste of money? The researchers were surprised that activity inequality was largely driven by differences between men and women. In countries like Japan - with low obesity and low inequality - men and women exercised to similar degrees. But in countries with high inequality, like the US and Saudi Arabia, it was women spending less time being active. Jure Leskovec, also part of the research team, said: "When activity inequality is greatest, women's activity is reduced much more dramatically than men's activity, and thus the negative connections to obesity can affect women more greatly." The Stanford team say the findings help explain global patterns of obesity and give new ideas for tackling it. For example, they rated 69 US cities for how easy they were to get about on foot. The smartphone data showed that cities like New York and San Francisco were pedestrian friendly and had "high walkability". Whereas you really need a car to get around "low walkability" cities including Houston and Memphis. Unsurprisingly, people walked more in places where it was easier to walk. Image copyright Tim Althoff The researchers say this could help design town and cities that promote greater physical activity. Follow James on Twitter. Reporter conflict of interest: I made 10,590 steps yesterday but clocked up only 129 on Sunday, I left my phone on the kitchen table all day - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. ||||| Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Here are the top 5 best places for walking and biking in the U.S. according to Money. Buzz60's Djenane Beaulieu (@djenanebeaulieu) reports. Buzz60 A Stanford study measured the number of steps taken each day be people around the world. These people are crossing an intersection in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images) Many Americans are downright lazy. And it’s making us fat. That’s among the findings of a study by Stanford University researchers using step-counters installed in most smartphones to track the walking activity of about 700,000 people in 46 countries around the world. Scott Delp, a professor of bioengineering who co-led the research, told the BBC the “study is 1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement.” The least lazy, according to the study published in the journal Nature, are the Chinese, particularly those in Hong Kong, where people averaged 6,880 a steps a day. The worst nation was nearby Indonesia, where people walked nearly half as much, averaging 3,513 steps a day. The worldwide average is 4,961 steps, with Americans averaging 4,774. (See chart below for full results of the survey.) Does that mean Indonesians are much more likely to be obese than Americans? No, the researchers say. The key is the variation in the amount of walking. In countries with less obesity, the Stanford researchers say, people typically walked a similar amount every day. In nations with higher rates of obesity, there were larger gaps between those who walked a lot and those who walked very little. Among those latter countries is the United States, where “activity inequality” ranks Americans fourth from the bottom overall. “If you think about some people in a country as ‘activity rich’ and others as ‘activity poor,’ the size of the gap between them is a strong indicator of obesity levels in that society,” Delp told the Stanford news site. Related stories: Tim Althoff, who worked on the study, pointed to Sweden, with an average of 5,863 steps, as having one of the smallest activity inequality gaps. “It also had one of the lowest rates of obesity,” he said. Another factor in activity inequality involved where people live: high-density cities or more suburban settings. Jennifer Hicks, another researcher in the study, told the Stanford news site that they examined three California cities located close to one another – San Francisco, San Jose and Fremont. They found San Francisco held both the highest walkability score and the lowest level of activity inequality. “In cities that are more walkable, everyone tends to take more daily steps, whether male or female, young or old, healthy weight or obese,” Hicks said. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2uiJKSs

– Americans are lazier than people from Russia, China, Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey, Chile, and a whole host of other countries—at least according to a new study of walking habits published in Nature. The study tracked the walking activity of more than 700,000 people using cellphone data, USA Today reports. Researcher Scott Delpy tells the BBC it was "1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement." Americans averaged 4,774 steps per day—below the worldwide average of 4,961 steps per day and good enough for 30th out of 46 countries. Hong Kong topped the list at 6,880 steps per day, and Indonesia could stake a claim as the laziest country with just 3,513 steps per day. So why doesn't Indonesia have higher rates of obesity than the US? Researchers found that more important than overall average activity levels was what they call "activity inequality," or the difference between a country's most and least active people. In countries were everyone takes about the same number of steps per day—Sweden, say—obesity levels are low. Meanwhile, the US had the fourth worst levels of activity inequality in the study. According to a press release, researchers were surprised to learn activity inequality was largely driven by women. “When activity inequality is greatest, women’s activity is reduced much more dramatically than men’s activity, and thus the negative connections to obesity can affect women more greatly,” researcher Jure Leskovec says.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Stanford researchers using smartphones to track the activity levels of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe made an intriguing discovery: In countries with little obesity, people mostly walked a similar amount per day. But big gaps between people who walked a lot and those who walked very little coincided with much higher levels of obesity. Using step data captured by smartphones, Stanford researchers have defined a new public health risk they call activity inequality. This occurs when large gaps develop inside a country between people who walk a lot and those who walk very little, leading to unhealthy levels of obesity. (Image credit: Tim Althoff) Considering that an estimated 5.3 million people die from causes associated with physical inactivity every year, these researchers looked for a simple and convenient way to measure activity across millions of people to help figure out why obesity is a bigger problem in some countries than others. The ground-breaking study, appearing in Nature, used data captured from smartphones to analyze the habits of 717,000 men and women from 111 countries, whose steps were studied for an average of 95 days. The researchers, led by computer scientist Jure Leskovec and bioengineer Scott Delp, dubbed this phenomenon “activity inequality” to evoke the well-established concept of income inequality. “If you think about some people in a country as ‘activity rich’ and others as ‘activity poor,’ the size of the gap between them is a strong indicator of obesity levels in that society,” Delp said. A related finding was the powerful role that gender played in country-to-country differences. Prior studies of physical activity, done mainly in the United States, have shown that men walk more than women, and this was borne out in the global findings. What surprised researchers, however, was how greatly this gender step gap varied from country to country with negative consequences for women. “When activity inequality is greatest, women’s activity is reduced much more dramatically than men’s activity, and thus the negative connections to obesity can affect women more greatly,” Leskovec said. The researchers, who are sharing their findings on an activity inequality website, hope their work will help improve public health campaigns against obesity and support policies to make cities more “walkable.” Smartphones and steps Smartphones are equipped with tiny sensors called accelerometers that can automatically record stepping motions. The researchers acquired the data for this study from the Azumio Argus app, which tracks physical activity and other health behaviors. Azumio anonymized the data but provided key health demographics: age, gender, height and weight. The last two data points enabled the researchers to calculate each person’s body mass index. The findings leaned most heavily on data from the 46 countries for which Azumio provided at least a thousand anonymized users, enough to form the basis for statistically valid inferences. The analysis disclosed strong correlations among activity inequality, the gender-activity gap, and obesity levels. “For instance, Sweden had one of the smallest gaps between activity rich and activity poor, and the smallest disparity between male and female steps,” said Tim Althoff, a doctoral candidate in computer science and first author on the Nature paper. “It also had one of the lowest rates of obesity.” Meanwhile, the United States ranked fourth from the bottom in overall activity inequality, indicating a large gap between activity rich and activity poor. It was fifth from the bottom in the gender step gap and it has high levels of obesity. Walkable cities To better understand the causes and consequences of activity inequality in urban settings, the researchers analyzed a large subset of data from the United States to investigate how the built environments of 69 cities related to activity, obesity and health. Prior research had scored each city by how walkable and pedestrian-friendly it is, using factors such as ease of walking to shops, restaurants, parks and other destinations. The researchers then correlated this walkability index to their smartphone activity data. Team member Jennifer Hicks, director of data science for the Mobilize Center at Stanford, said the results make clear that city design has health impacts: The cities that were most conducive to walking had the lowest activity inequality. “Looking at three California cities in close geographic proximity – San Francisco, San Jose and Fremont – we determined that San Francisco had both the highest walkability score and the lowest level of activity inequality,” she said. “In cities that are more walkable everyone tends to take more daily steps, whether male or female, young or old, healthy weight or obese.” A new research instrument? The technological star of the project was the increasingly ubiquitous smartphone. Nearly 70 percent of adults in developed countries now carry smartphones; in developing nations, the percentage is close to half. “This opens the door to new ways of doing science at a much larger scale,” Delp said. But qualifying the smartphone as a tool for this type of research was no cakewalk. “The methodology was so new that the reviewers were dubious at first,” Leskovec said. But strong data and rigorous computational methods ultimately proved the validity of this new approach. Now, having qualified the smartphone for research of this sort, the Stanford researchers are looking for new ways to leverage this tool. “With the appropriate apps and sensors we can push this research in exciting directions,” said team member Abby King, a professor of medicine and of health research and policy. “We could better link activity within and across populations with food intake, or examine the ways activity and inactivity may affect stress or mental health, as well as investigating how best to fine-tune our environments to promote increased activity.” Rok Sosic, a senior research engineer in computer science at Stanford, was a coauthor on the Nature paper. Jure Leskovec is an associate professor of computer science, a member of Bio-X and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator. Scott Delp is the James H. Clark Professor, founding chairman of the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford and director of the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research. He is a professor of bioengineering and of mechanical engineering. He is a member of Bio-X, the Child Research Institute and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Abby King is a professor of health research and policy and of medicine with the Stanford Prevention Research Center, a member of the Cardiovascular Institute and Stanford Cancer Institute and an affiliate of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Freelance science writer Glen Martin and Raymond MacDougall, lead communications specialist at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, contributed to this news release. The authors thank Azumio for donating the data for independent research. The research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health through grants to the Mobilize Center and the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research; the SAP Stanford Graduate Fellowship; and the Stanford Data Science Initiative. ||||| Image copyright Tim Althoff US scientists have amassed "planetary-scale" data from people's smartphones to see how active we really are. The Stanford University analysis of 68 million days' worth of minute-by-minute data showed the average number of daily steps was 4,961. Hong Kong was top averaging 6,880 a day, while Indonesia was bottom of the rankings with just 3,513. But the findings also uncovered intriguing details that could help tackle obesity. Most smartphones have a built-in accelerometer that can record steps and the researchers used anonymous data from more than 700,000 people who used the Argus activity monitoring app. Scott Delp, a professor of bioengineering and one of the researchers, said: "The study is 1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement. "There have been wonderful health surveys done, but our new study provides data from more countries, many more subjects, and tracks people's activity on an ongoing basis. "This opens the door to new ways of doing science at a much larger scale than we have been able to do before." Activity inequality The findings have been published in the journal Nature and the study authors say the results give important insights for improving people's health. The average number of steps in a country appears to be less important for obesity levels, for example. The key ingredient was "activity inequality" - it's like wealth inequality, except instead of the difference between rich and poor, it's the difference between the fittest and laziest. The bigger the activity inequality, the higher the rates of obesity. Tim Althoff, one of the researchers, said: "For instance, Sweden had one of the smallest gaps between activity rich and activity poor... it also had one of the lowest rates of obesity." The United States and Mexico both have similar average steps, but the US has higher activity inequality and obesity levels. Global sleeping patterns revealed by app data Has wearable tech had its day? Is that fitness tracker you're using a waste of money? The researchers were surprised that activity inequality was largely driven by differences between men and women. In countries like Japan - with low obesity and low inequality - men and women exercised to similar degrees. But in countries with high inequality, like the US and Saudi Arabia, it was women spending less time being active. Jure Leskovec, also part of the research team, said: "When activity inequality is greatest, women's activity is reduced much more dramatically than men's activity, and thus the negative connections to obesity can affect women more greatly." The Stanford team say the findings help explain global patterns of obesity and give new ideas for tackling it. For example, they rated 69 US cities for how easy they were to get about on foot. The smartphone data showed that cities like New York and San Francisco were pedestrian friendly and had "high walkability". Whereas you really need a car to get around "low walkability" cities including Houston and Memphis. Unsurprisingly, people walked more in places where it was easier to walk. Image copyright Tim Althoff The researchers say this could help design town and cities that promote greater physical activity. Follow James on Twitter. Reporter conflict of interest: I made 10,590 steps yesterday but clocked up only 129 on Sunday, I left my phone on the kitchen table all day - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. ||||| Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Here are the top 5 best places for walking and biking in the U.S. according to Money. Buzz60's Djenane Beaulieu (@djenanebeaulieu) reports. Buzz60 A Stanford study measured the number of steps taken each day be people around the world. These people are crossing an intersection in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images) Many Americans are downright lazy. And it’s making us fat. That’s among the findings of a study by Stanford University researchers using step-counters installed in most smartphones to track the walking activity of about 700,000 people in 46 countries around the world. Scott Delp, a professor of bioengineering who co-led the research, told the BBC the “study is 1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement.” The least lazy, according to the study published in the journal Nature, are the Chinese, particularly those in Hong Kong, where people averaged 6,880 a steps a day. The worst nation was nearby Indonesia, where people walked nearly half as much, averaging 3,513 steps a day. The worldwide average is 4,961 steps, with Americans averaging 4,774. (See chart below for full results of the survey.) Does that mean Indonesians are much more likely to be obese than Americans? No, the researchers say. The key is the variation in the amount of walking. In countries with less obesity, the Stanford researchers say, people typically walked a similar amount every day. In nations with higher rates of obesity, there were larger gaps between those who walked a lot and those who walked very little. Among those latter countries is the United States, where “activity inequality” ranks Americans fourth from the bottom overall. “If you think about some people in a country as ‘activity rich’ and others as ‘activity poor,’ the size of the gap between them is a strong indicator of obesity levels in that society,” Delp told the Stanford news site. Related stories: Tim Althoff, who worked on the study, pointed to Sweden, with an average of 5,863 steps, as having one of the smallest activity inequality gaps. “It also had one of the lowest rates of obesity,” he said. Another factor in activity inequality involved where people live: high-density cities or more suburban settings. Jennifer Hicks, another researcher in the study, told the Stanford news site that they examined three California cities located close to one another – San Francisco, San Jose and Fremont. They found San Francisco held both the highest walkability score and the lowest level of activity inequality. “In cities that are more walkable, everyone tends to take more daily steps, whether male or female, young or old, healthy weight or obese,” Hicks said. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2uiJKSs

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Embed this Video x Email Digg Reddit Delicious Link Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the early frontrunner in the New Hampshire Republican primary, according to a new poll. The WMUR Granite State Poll shows Romney well out in front of other potential candidates, but a large majority of likely voters said they are still trying to decide who they will support. The poll shows 40 percent of likely Republican primary voters would vote for Romney, 10 percent would vote for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 7 percent favor former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and 7 percent support former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Another 6 percent prefer former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 6 percent favor 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, 5 percent support U.S. Rep. and 2008 candidate Ron Paul, 3 percent support businessman Donald Trump, 1 percent favor former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and 1 percent prefer Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The poll of 757 randomly selected New Hampshire adults was conducted from Jan. 28 through Feb. 7 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The poll includes a subsample of 357 likely Republican voters that has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points. The survey was conducted for WMUR by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Romney has consistently led potential Republican candidates since the UNH Survey Center began tracking the race in February 2009. "Romney is doing well in part because his brand of Republicanism fits with most New Hampshire Republicans, who can be characterized as 'Rockefeller Republicans,'" said Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center. "New Hampshire is one of the least religious states in the country, and social conservatives have difficulty winning here. Fiscal issues are much more potent in the Granite State." While Romney has a strong lead, Smith said it's too early to make predictions about who will win the primary. He said 78 percent of likely Republican primary voters said they are still trying to decide who to vote for, an only 7 percent said they had definitely made up their minds. Romney also has the highest favorability ratings of the potential candidates. Currently, 73 percent of likely Republican voters said they have a favorable opinion of him. Romney's net favorability, the percentage having a favorable opinion minus the percentage of those with an unfavorable opinion, is 57 percent. Giuliani is second, with a plus-30 percent net favorability rating, Pawlenty with plus-25 percent, Huckabee with plus-22 percent and Santorum with plus-18 percent. The least popular Republicans are Palin at minus-17 percent and Trump at minus-43 percent. Barbour has a net favorability of minus 1 percent, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is at minus-1 percent and former New Mexico Gov Gary Johnson is at minus-5 percent. There is no potential Democratic challenger for President Barack Obama, but just 65 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said they plan to vote for Obama, and 27 percent are undecided. The subsample of 259 likely Democratic primary voters has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 6.1 percent. Tell Us More: E-mail WMUR your tips and story ideas. Copyright 2011 by WMUR. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Obama's chances of winning New Hampshire depend, at this point, on his opponent. In a hypothetical race between Obama and Romney, Romney leads, 49 to 41 percent. Against Palin, Obama does much better, leading 57 to 34 percent. Against Pawlenty, Obama leads 44 to 37 percent. ||||| President Obama's support in New Hampshire is less than granite solid. In a WMUR Granite State Poll released today, Mitt Romney garnered 49 percent of the vote to 41 percent for the president, who took the state in his 2008 win over Republican John McCain. Any poll this early in the election season -- no prominent GOP candidate, including Romney, has even declared yet -- is nothing more than political hardtack for old political salts to chew upon. And most of the likely voters in the poll said they have not yet decided whom to back. Nonetheless, if the former Massachusetts governor is to be successful in a second quest for the White House, the path is likely to begin in New Hampshire. Romney stumbled out of the gates in the 2008 GOP primaries, losing to McCain even though the state was in his political backyard. To prevent a rerun of that result, Romney has focused much of his early energies on the state, setting up a quasi operational base there at his summer home in the lakes region. The poll shows Romney well out in front of potential GOP challengers, getting the nod from about 40 percent of likely voters in the Republican primary. The rest of the pack were huddled in the single digits, save former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who had 10 percent of the votes. They were followed by 7 percent for former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, 7 percent for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 6 percent for former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 6 percent for 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, 5 percent backing Representative Ron Paul, another 2008 candidate, and 3 percent for businessman Donald Trump. Romney has consistently led potential Republican candidates since the UNH Survey Center began tracking the race two years ago. The center conducted the poll for WMUR. "Romney is doing well in part because his brand of Republicanism fits with most New Hampshire Republicans, who can be characterized as 'Rockefeller Republicans,'" Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, told WMUR. "New Hampshire is one of the least religious states in the country, and social conservatives have difficulty winning here. Fiscal issues are much more potent in the Granite State." President Obama fares better among all likely voters in a hypothetical matchup against Palin, winning 57 to 34 percent. The survey polled 757 randomly selected adults -- including 357 likely Republican voters -- from Jan. 28 through Feb. 7. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

– The 2012 presidential race is already heating up: A new poll shows that Mitt Romney is the frontrunner in New Hampshire, beating President Obama in a hypothetical race by 49% to 41%. Romney, not surprisingly, is also the leading Republican, coming out well ahead of other potential candidates. While a large majority of likely voters still haven't decided who they'll back, 40% said they'd vote for Romney. The second-place finisher, Rudy Giuliani, trailed at 10%, WMUR reports. It went down from there: Sarah Palin, for example, got 5% of the hypothetical vote, ahead of Donald Trump at 3%. But 78% of those potential voters said they haven't made a final decision, and only 7% claimed they had. Meanwhile, only 65% of likely Democratic voters said they'll vote to re-elect Obama, while 27% are undecided. But in the Boston Globe, Michael J Bailey notes that "any poll this early in the election season ... is nothing more than political hardtack for old political salts to chew upon."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Embed this Video x Email Digg Reddit Delicious Link Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the early frontrunner in the New Hampshire Republican primary, according to a new poll. The WMUR Granite State Poll shows Romney well out in front of other potential candidates, but a large majority of likely voters said they are still trying to decide who they will support. The poll shows 40 percent of likely Republican primary voters would vote for Romney, 10 percent would vote for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 7 percent favor former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and 7 percent support former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Another 6 percent prefer former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 6 percent favor 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, 5 percent support U.S. Rep. and 2008 candidate Ron Paul, 3 percent support businessman Donald Trump, 1 percent favor former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and 1 percent prefer Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The poll of 757 randomly selected New Hampshire adults was conducted from Jan. 28 through Feb. 7 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The poll includes a subsample of 357 likely Republican voters that has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points. The survey was conducted for WMUR by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Romney has consistently led potential Republican candidates since the UNH Survey Center began tracking the race in February 2009. "Romney is doing well in part because his brand of Republicanism fits with most New Hampshire Republicans, who can be characterized as 'Rockefeller Republicans,'" said Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center. "New Hampshire is one of the least religious states in the country, and social conservatives have difficulty winning here. Fiscal issues are much more potent in the Granite State." While Romney has a strong lead, Smith said it's too early to make predictions about who will win the primary. He said 78 percent of likely Republican primary voters said they are still trying to decide who to vote for, an only 7 percent said they had definitely made up their minds. Romney also has the highest favorability ratings of the potential candidates. Currently, 73 percent of likely Republican voters said they have a favorable opinion of him. Romney's net favorability, the percentage having a favorable opinion minus the percentage of those with an unfavorable opinion, is 57 percent. Giuliani is second, with a plus-30 percent net favorability rating, Pawlenty with plus-25 percent, Huckabee with plus-22 percent and Santorum with plus-18 percent. The least popular Republicans are Palin at minus-17 percent and Trump at minus-43 percent. Barbour has a net favorability of minus 1 percent, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is at minus-1 percent and former New Mexico Gov Gary Johnson is at minus-5 percent. There is no potential Democratic challenger for President Barack Obama, but just 65 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said they plan to vote for Obama, and 27 percent are undecided. The subsample of 259 likely Democratic primary voters has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 6.1 percent. Tell Us More: E-mail WMUR your tips and story ideas. Copyright 2011 by WMUR. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Obama's chances of winning New Hampshire depend, at this point, on his opponent. In a hypothetical race between Obama and Romney, Romney leads, 49 to 41 percent. Against Palin, Obama does much better, leading 57 to 34 percent. Against Pawlenty, Obama leads 44 to 37 percent. ||||| President Obama's support in New Hampshire is less than granite solid. In a WMUR Granite State Poll released today, Mitt Romney garnered 49 percent of the vote to 41 percent for the president, who took the state in his 2008 win over Republican John McCain. Any poll this early in the election season -- no prominent GOP candidate, including Romney, has even declared yet -- is nothing more than political hardtack for old political salts to chew upon. And most of the likely voters in the poll said they have not yet decided whom to back. Nonetheless, if the former Massachusetts governor is to be successful in a second quest for the White House, the path is likely to begin in New Hampshire. Romney stumbled out of the gates in the 2008 GOP primaries, losing to McCain even though the state was in his political backyard. To prevent a rerun of that result, Romney has focused much of his early energies on the state, setting up a quasi operational base there at his summer home in the lakes region. The poll shows Romney well out in front of potential GOP challengers, getting the nod from about 40 percent of likely voters in the Republican primary. The rest of the pack were huddled in the single digits, save former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who had 10 percent of the votes. They were followed by 7 percent for former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, 7 percent for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 6 percent for former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 6 percent for 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, 5 percent backing Representative Ron Paul, another 2008 candidate, and 3 percent for businessman Donald Trump. Romney has consistently led potential Republican candidates since the UNH Survey Center began tracking the race two years ago. The center conducted the poll for WMUR. "Romney is doing well in part because his brand of Republicanism fits with most New Hampshire Republicans, who can be characterized as 'Rockefeller Republicans,'" Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, told WMUR. "New Hampshire is one of the least religious states in the country, and social conservatives have difficulty winning here. Fiscal issues are much more potent in the Granite State." President Obama fares better among all likely voters in a hypothetical matchup against Palin, winning 57 to 34 percent. The survey polled 757 randomly selected adults -- including 357 likely Republican voters -- from Jan. 28 through Feb. 7. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The latest on developments in financial markets (all times local): 9:35 a.m. Stocks are opening sharply lower on Wall Street as an escalating trade dispute between the U.S. and China poses a threat to global economic growth and corporate profits. The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 500 points at the open, with energy, industrial and materials sectors leading the decline. Deere & Co. fell 4.3 percent and Caterpillar dropped almost 3 percent. Boeing was down 3.3 percent. The sell-off was triggered after China announced a list of U.S. products that might be subject to a 25 percent tariff in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods. European and Asian markets also fell sharply. Gold, considered a safe-haven investment, rose nearly 1 percent.

– "We are not in a trade war with China," President Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, but that didn't calm investors. The Dow opened down 500 points, and is hovering about 350 points, or about 1.5%, down as of this writing. The sell-off was sparked by news that China recommended slapping a tariff of up to 25% on 106 American products. The AP reports energy, industrial, and materials sectors are at the front of the losing pack, with Deere & Co. down 4.3% and Caterpillar down almost 3%; the new tariffs would hit American-made aircraft, one of our three biggest exports to China in 2017, and Boeing sank 3.3%. The president's tweet didn't stop at that one line, but continued, "that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!" A couple of hours later he added, "When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!"

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.NEW YORK (AP) — The latest on developments in financial markets (all times local): 9:35 a.m. Stocks are opening sharply lower on Wall Street as an escalating trade dispute between the U.S. and China poses a threat to global economic growth and corporate profits. The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 500 points at the open, with energy, industrial and materials sectors leading the decline. Deere & Co. fell 4.3 percent and Caterpillar dropped almost 3 percent. Boeing was down 3.3 percent. The sell-off was triggered after China announced a list of U.S. products that might be subject to a 25 percent tariff in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods. European and Asian markets also fell sharply. Gold, considered a safe-haven investment, rose nearly 1 percent.

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Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer walks to a cab after trying to collect signatures for his run for New York City comptroller in Union Square in New York, Monday, July 8, 2013. Spitzer, who stepped down... (Associated Press) Eliot Spitzer, whose 2008 resignation as New York's governor amid a prostitution scandal provided no shortage of fuel for gibes to late-night TV comics, ventured into the lion's den Friday, appearing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Spitzer appeared on Leno's show in California less than 24 hours after a four-day flurry of canvassing for 3,750 valid petitions to run for city comptroller _ submitting over 27,000 petitions to the city Board of Elections late Thursday night ahead of a midnight deadline. And Leno, who has poked at Spitzer's reentrance to New York City's politics since the former attorney general announced Sunday he was running to be the city's comptroller, asked him straight up: "Why enter at the 11th hour?" Spitzer said that after all he'd done in the past five years he finally thought, "You know what, there's a position there, which I've written about, thought about, the Controller's position, from which I think I can actually serve," he said. "And I said to myself I want to contribute through public service." Leno's show has provided a stage before for candidates launching unexpected campaigns: Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his ultimately successful run for California governor on Leno's set in 2003. The program also has been a memorable forum for public figures' atonement moments, as when actor Hugh Grant made his first TV appearance after he was arrested with a prostitute in 1995. Spitzer's appearance came after his leading rival said earlier Friday he wouldn't challenge the tarnished ex-governor's petitions to run for city comptroller, leaving Spitzer's surprise comeback campaign a clearer path toward the Democratic primary this fall. Other contenders or voters can contest a candidate's signatures for reasons ranging from an ambiguous address to a canvasser who's not registered in the candidate's party. But Democratic comptroller hopeful Scott Stringer, who was a heavy favorite in the comptroller's race before Spitzer got into it Monday, said he had no plans to contest Spitzer's signatures and would encourage supporters not to do so, either. "I'm not someone who challenges petitions," Stringer, who is currently Manhattan's borough president, said while greeting voters Friday in downtown Brooklyn. "Let's get into the fight now." While they won't face Spitzer in the primary, Republican candidate John Burnett and Libertarian Kristin Davis, a former madam who has criticized Spitzer, also said through aides that they wouldn't challenge his petitions. Spitzer's campaign said in a statement Friday he "looks forward to making the case every day for an independent comptroller for the City of New York." On the "Tonight Show," Leno admired Spitzer for his work as attorney general going after Wall Street and the mob and then asked him how he could "make this big a blunder," referencing the prostitution scandal. "People who fall prey to hubris, end up falling themselves," Spitzer said, adding there was no good explanation for his behavior. "And this is something that I think infected me." "Saturday Night Live" actor Bill Hader, who did an impression of Spitzer in a 2010 skit, joked with the ex-governor, who said he decided to get back into public life about a year ago and with his family's approval. Leno gleefully seized on Spitzer's newborn candidacy earlier this week, particularly relishing the fact that Davis is also a contender. "There's a tough choice for the voters, huh? I mean, one is involved in the most degrading profession of all time, and the other ran a whorehouse," Leno said during Monday's opening monologue. Spitzer's last-minute, self-financed candidacy hurled a curveball into what had seemed a straightforward race for the city's top financial post, one that conducts audits and invests huge city employee pension funds. On Leno's show, he touted his record pursuing financial crimes, telling Leno "Wall Street desperately wants me to lose," because of his previous work as attorney general, and added he would use the comptroller's control over the city's pension funds to pursue Wall Street again. "That is where the power really comes from," he said. "$140 billion of pension funds, which in the equity markets are a lever to control corporate governance, reign in CEO pay, make sure that the Wall Street titans are acting fairly and honestly, making sure that the markets are functioning properly, making sure capital is allocated as it should be." Earlier in the evening, the Wall Street Journal reported Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the former American International Group Inc. chief executive, had filed a defamation lawsuit against Spitzer in state Supreme Court. An attorney for Greenberg did not immediately return a request for comment. Spitzer's campaign issued a statement calling the lawsuit frivolous. Spitzer quickly jumped to a 42 percent-to-33 percent lead among registered Democrats, including those leaning toward but not settled on a candidate, according to a The Wall Street Journal-NBC 4 New York-Marist poll taken in the first two days of his campaign. Pundits, and even Spitzer himself, had said it would be a challenge to get the needed signatures in just four days; other candidates had started in early June. Campaigns generally gather at least two to three times as many signatures as needed, as a cushion in case some are invalidated. Stringer said he submitted more than 100,000 signatures, all of them gathered by volunteers; Spitzer's campaign paid canvassers. Burnett, who has worked in various financial capacities on Wall Street, filed about 8,000 signatures and was looking forward to facing whomever wins the Democratic primary, his campaign said. "We especially wish Eliot the best of luck," the Burnett camp said in a statement Friday. Green Party candidate Julia Willebrand's campaign didn't immediately respond to messages Thursday and Friday. ___ Associated Press writers Lynn Elber in Los Angeles and Jake Pearson in New York contributed to this report. ___ Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz ||||| Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer continued publicizing his run for New York City comptroller with an appearance on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” Friday. Here are the top quotes: Text Size - + reset On his personal mistakes: “People who fall prey to hubris, end up falling themselves. And this is something that I think infected me. And the fall from grace is incredibly painful, and is something through which you learn.” On if Anthony Weiner running for NYC mayor made a comeback easier for him: “No. The public … has been forgiving of people in certain circumstances … But that doesn’t mean the public will be forgiving of me as an individual. It needs to see contrition. It needs to see growth. It needs to see understanding. … It needs to see that you have changed in some way.” On the scandal: “My name came up in a federal investigation of people who had been seeing clients of prostitutes and when this became evident I immediately resigned.” On Wall Street: “Wall Street desperately wants me to lose.” Why comptroller: “That is where the power really comes from. $140 billion of pension funds, which in the equity markets are a lever to control corporate governance, rein in CEO pay, make sure that the Wall Street titans are acting fairly and honestly, making sure that the markets are functioning properly, making sure capital is allocated as it should be.” On if his family approved: “My family said yes. We agree that attempting to return to public life is fine.” On Saturday Night Live comedian and Spitzer impressionist Bill Hader: “My long lost twin who got all the talent. I usually hit the remote when I see him. ” After a clip of impersonation was shown: “Why did I accept this invitation?”

– Eliot Spitzer followed in Hugh Grant's infamous hookin'-boot steps to Jay Leno's couch last night, continuing his string of mea culpas as he looks to re-enter the public arena via a run for New York City comptroller. Leno was to the point, notes the AP, asking the onetime Client No. 9, "Why enter at the 11th hour?" Responded Spitzer, "You know what, there's a position there, which I've written about, thought about, the comptroller's position, from which I think I can actually serve. And I said to myself I want to contribute through public service." Other highlights from the interview, as per Politico: On Wall Street: "Wall Street desperately wants me to lose. It's no secret that when I was attorney general and we prosecuted the folks on Wall Street, there was some animus that was generated." He cites a lawyer who warned him ahead of a court filing, "Be careful, we have powerful friends." On his downfall: “People who fall prey to hubris, end up falling themselves. And this is something that I think infected me. And the fall from grace is incredibly painful, and is something through which you learn." On whether Anthony Weiner paved the way for his return: “No. The public has been forgiving of people in certain circumstances. But that doesn’t mean the public will be forgiving of me as an individual. It needs to see contrition. It needs to see growth. It needs to see that you have changed in some way.” On what the family thinks: "My family said yes. We agree that attempting to return to public life is fine."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer walks to a cab after trying to collect signatures for his run for New York City comptroller in Union Square in New York, Monday, July 8, 2013. Spitzer, who stepped down... (Associated Press) Eliot Spitzer, whose 2008 resignation as New York's governor amid a prostitution scandal provided no shortage of fuel for gibes to late-night TV comics, ventured into the lion's den Friday, appearing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Spitzer appeared on Leno's show in California less than 24 hours after a four-day flurry of canvassing for 3,750 valid petitions to run for city comptroller _ submitting over 27,000 petitions to the city Board of Elections late Thursday night ahead of a midnight deadline. And Leno, who has poked at Spitzer's reentrance to New York City's politics since the former attorney general announced Sunday he was running to be the city's comptroller, asked him straight up: "Why enter at the 11th hour?" Spitzer said that after all he'd done in the past five years he finally thought, "You know what, there's a position there, which I've written about, thought about, the Controller's position, from which I think I can actually serve," he said. "And I said to myself I want to contribute through public service." Leno's show has provided a stage before for candidates launching unexpected campaigns: Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his ultimately successful run for California governor on Leno's set in 2003. The program also has been a memorable forum for public figures' atonement moments, as when actor Hugh Grant made his first TV appearance after he was arrested with a prostitute in 1995. Spitzer's appearance came after his leading rival said earlier Friday he wouldn't challenge the tarnished ex-governor's petitions to run for city comptroller, leaving Spitzer's surprise comeback campaign a clearer path toward the Democratic primary this fall. Other contenders or voters can contest a candidate's signatures for reasons ranging from an ambiguous address to a canvasser who's not registered in the candidate's party. But Democratic comptroller hopeful Scott Stringer, who was a heavy favorite in the comptroller's race before Spitzer got into it Monday, said he had no plans to contest Spitzer's signatures and would encourage supporters not to do so, either. "I'm not someone who challenges petitions," Stringer, who is currently Manhattan's borough president, said while greeting voters Friday in downtown Brooklyn. "Let's get into the fight now." While they won't face Spitzer in the primary, Republican candidate John Burnett and Libertarian Kristin Davis, a former madam who has criticized Spitzer, also said through aides that they wouldn't challenge his petitions. Spitzer's campaign said in a statement Friday he "looks forward to making the case every day for an independent comptroller for the City of New York." On the "Tonight Show," Leno admired Spitzer for his work as attorney general going after Wall Street and the mob and then asked him how he could "make this big a blunder," referencing the prostitution scandal. "People who fall prey to hubris, end up falling themselves," Spitzer said, adding there was no good explanation for his behavior. "And this is something that I think infected me." "Saturday Night Live" actor Bill Hader, who did an impression of Spitzer in a 2010 skit, joked with the ex-governor, who said he decided to get back into public life about a year ago and with his family's approval. Leno gleefully seized on Spitzer's newborn candidacy earlier this week, particularly relishing the fact that Davis is also a contender. "There's a tough choice for the voters, huh? I mean, one is involved in the most degrading profession of all time, and the other ran a whorehouse," Leno said during Monday's opening monologue. Spitzer's last-minute, self-financed candidacy hurled a curveball into what had seemed a straightforward race for the city's top financial post, one that conducts audits and invests huge city employee pension funds. On Leno's show, he touted his record pursuing financial crimes, telling Leno "Wall Street desperately wants me to lose," because of his previous work as attorney general, and added he would use the comptroller's control over the city's pension funds to pursue Wall Street again. "That is where the power really comes from," he said. "$140 billion of pension funds, which in the equity markets are a lever to control corporate governance, reign in CEO pay, make sure that the Wall Street titans are acting fairly and honestly, making sure that the markets are functioning properly, making sure capital is allocated as it should be." Earlier in the evening, the Wall Street Journal reported Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the former American International Group Inc. chief executive, had filed a defamation lawsuit against Spitzer in state Supreme Court. An attorney for Greenberg did not immediately return a request for comment. Spitzer's campaign issued a statement calling the lawsuit frivolous. Spitzer quickly jumped to a 42 percent-to-33 percent lead among registered Democrats, including those leaning toward but not settled on a candidate, according to a The Wall Street Journal-NBC 4 New York-Marist poll taken in the first two days of his campaign. Pundits, and even Spitzer himself, had said it would be a challenge to get the needed signatures in just four days; other candidates had started in early June. Campaigns generally gather at least two to three times as many signatures as needed, as a cushion in case some are invalidated. Stringer said he submitted more than 100,000 signatures, all of them gathered by volunteers; Spitzer's campaign paid canvassers. Burnett, who has worked in various financial capacities on Wall Street, filed about 8,000 signatures and was looking forward to facing whomever wins the Democratic primary, his campaign said. "We especially wish Eliot the best of luck," the Burnett camp said in a statement Friday. Green Party candidate Julia Willebrand's campaign didn't immediately respond to messages Thursday and Friday. ___ Associated Press writers Lynn Elber in Los Angeles and Jake Pearson in New York contributed to this report. ___ Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz ||||| Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer continued publicizing his run for New York City comptroller with an appearance on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” Friday. Here are the top quotes: Text Size - + reset On his personal mistakes: “People who fall prey to hubris, end up falling themselves. And this is something that I think infected me. And the fall from grace is incredibly painful, and is something through which you learn.” On if Anthony Weiner running for NYC mayor made a comeback easier for him: “No. The public … has been forgiving of people in certain circumstances … But that doesn’t mean the public will be forgiving of me as an individual. It needs to see contrition. It needs to see growth. It needs to see understanding. … It needs to see that you have changed in some way.” On the scandal: “My name came up in a federal investigation of people who had been seeing clients of prostitutes and when this became evident I immediately resigned.” On Wall Street: “Wall Street desperately wants me to lose.” Why comptroller: “That is where the power really comes from. $140 billion of pension funds, which in the equity markets are a lever to control corporate governance, rein in CEO pay, make sure that the Wall Street titans are acting fairly and honestly, making sure that the markets are functioning properly, making sure capital is allocated as it should be.” On if his family approved: “My family said yes. We agree that attempting to return to public life is fine.” On Saturday Night Live comedian and Spitzer impressionist Bill Hader: “My long lost twin who got all the talent. I usually hit the remote when I see him. ” After a clip of impersonation was shown: “Why did I accept this invitation?”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Seventeen year old Langley High School junior Andrew Shapiro shattered three Guinness World Records over the weekend at a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Andrew Shapiro’s quest to set a Guinness World Record began seven months ago, with American Ninja Warrior and his father’s cancer diagnosis. Shapiro, a fan of the obstacle course challenge television show, decided he wanted to dedicate himself to getting into peak physical condition. Inspired by his father’s five-year battle against colon cancer, the 17-year-old practiced incessant pull-ups with the goal of setting three world records during a Relay for Life event in Fairfax County, Va. Andrew Shapiro broke three different world records for pull-ups in just one day. Watch the Va. teenager practice his way to the history books. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) Beginning Saturday at 8 a.m., he started his pull-up marathon. Within six hours, the Langley High School junior completed 3,515 pull-ups — a new world record. By 12 hours, he had finished 5,742 pull-ups — another world record. Then he set his sights on a final record — the most pull-ups performed in 24 hours: 6,800 completed by Czech Republic athlete Jan Kares in 2015. At the 15-hour mark, Shapiro matched Kares’ 24-hour record and kept going. After 18 hours of pull-ups, Shapiro stopped, having put his chin above the bar 7,306 times. His family set up three video cameras to continuously record Shapiro’s attempt while 15 judges observed his efforts and completed paperwork to certify the achievement for the Guinness World Records books. So how did Shapiro do it? He credits his success to American Ninja Warrior, the Star Wars movies, sushi and pineapple. [For one high school runner, better fitness, and acclaim, one mile at a time] After breaking three world records for pull-ups, Northern Virginia teen Andrew Shapiro gave some Washington Post employees one-on-one lessons. Watch these three journalists grunt and kick their way to a pull-up. (Dalton Bennett,Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) Shapiro said he became interested in fitness after watching the show and has a long-term goal of auditioning to compete on it. (At 17, Shapiro has to wait four more years until he can go on American Ninja Warrior, which he said he considers, “the biggest challenge out there.”) Shapiro’s training to set the world records was extensive. To test his endurance, he performed 10 pull ups a minute for six hours straight and watched the Star Wars movies, as well as Indiana Jones and the X-Men flicks, to help pass the time. For snacks, he ate boxes of sushi and half pound cartons of pineapple. Setting the record became an obsession. Along the way he blistered his hands. His shoulders ached. He gave up baseball this year, skipping the season in order to train full time for pull-ups. “It was blood, sweat and hours and hours and hours of hard work,” Shapiro said. Shapiro not only completed his goal but also raised $4,000 for the American Cancer Society. His mother, Stephanie Shapiro, said that her husband was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in 2011. He’s endured two major surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation and is now cancer free and in remission. The younger Shapiro said that he hopes his experience at the Relay for Life event will prepare him for competition infront of a national television audience. “I’ve always liked challenging myself so I’ll add this to my resume as a person for American Ninja Warrior,” Shapiro said. “I figure they won’t say no to someone who has the world record for pull-ups.” ||||| This amazing feat took its toll physically and emotionally. "When I first told people nobody believed me that I wanted to do this." Langley High School junior Andrew Shapiro set out to set new 'pull-up' world records - and to raise money to fight cancer in the process. Andrew's father Allen is a colon cancer survivor. Last weekend, Andrew prevailed, setting three world records - pending Guinness verification. In all, Andrew did 7,306 pull-ups in 18 hours. His dad was there to help pull Andrew through. Andrew, whose efforts raised over $5000, says he is still coming to grips with what he accomplished. A world record holder - and son - who wouldn't quit. "When you see a child accomplish his goals as a parent, that has to be one of the best feelings you could ever have," said Allen. "It's great when you accomplish goals, but when your child accomplishes those goals, that has to be something that you'll never forget." Watch the video above to see our story on Andrew's amazing and profound feat.

– Three new Guinness World Records were just set by a 17-year-old Virginia kid inspired by American Ninja Warrior and his dad's fight against colon cancer and fueled by pineapple and boxes of sushi, the Washington Post reports. Andrew Shapiro has been training for the past seven months, watching Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies during six-hour pull-up marathons. Last weekend, that training paid off when he set the record for pull-ups in six hours (3,515), 12 hours (5,742), and 24 hours (7,306). Shapiro shattered the old 24-hour record by more than 500 pull-ups with six hours to spare. Shapiro used his 7,306 pull-ups to raise $4,000 for the American Cancer Society and did his father Allen proud. "When you see a child accomplish his goals as a parent, that has to be one of the best feelings you could ever have," Allen tells WJLA. "It's great when you accomplish goals, but when your child accomplishes those goals, that has to be something that you'll never forget."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary. Seventeen year old Langley High School junior Andrew Shapiro shattered three Guinness World Records over the weekend at a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Andrew Shapiro’s quest to set a Guinness World Record began seven months ago, with American Ninja Warrior and his father’s cancer diagnosis. Shapiro, a fan of the obstacle course challenge television show, decided he wanted to dedicate himself to getting into peak physical condition. Inspired by his father’s five-year battle against colon cancer, the 17-year-old practiced incessant pull-ups with the goal of setting three world records during a Relay for Life event in Fairfax County, Va. Andrew Shapiro broke three different world records for pull-ups in just one day. Watch the Va. teenager practice his way to the history books. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) Beginning Saturday at 8 a.m., he started his pull-up marathon. Within six hours, the Langley High School junior completed 3,515 pull-ups — a new world record. By 12 hours, he had finished 5,742 pull-ups — another world record. Then he set his sights on a final record — the most pull-ups performed in 24 hours: 6,800 completed by Czech Republic athlete Jan Kares in 2015. At the 15-hour mark, Shapiro matched Kares’ 24-hour record and kept going. After 18 hours of pull-ups, Shapiro stopped, having put his chin above the bar 7,306 times. His family set up three video cameras to continuously record Shapiro’s attempt while 15 judges observed his efforts and completed paperwork to certify the achievement for the Guinness World Records books. So how did Shapiro do it? He credits his success to American Ninja Warrior, the Star Wars movies, sushi and pineapple. [For one high school runner, better fitness, and acclaim, one mile at a time] After breaking three world records for pull-ups, Northern Virginia teen Andrew Shapiro gave some Washington Post employees one-on-one lessons. Watch these three journalists grunt and kick their way to a pull-up. (Dalton Bennett,Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) Shapiro said he became interested in fitness after watching the show and has a long-term goal of auditioning to compete on it. (At 17, Shapiro has to wait four more years until he can go on American Ninja Warrior, which he said he considers, “the biggest challenge out there.”) Shapiro’s training to set the world records was extensive. To test his endurance, he performed 10 pull ups a minute for six hours straight and watched the Star Wars movies, as well as Indiana Jones and the X-Men flicks, to help pass the time. For snacks, he ate boxes of sushi and half pound cartons of pineapple. Setting the record became an obsession. Along the way he blistered his hands. His shoulders ached. He gave up baseball this year, skipping the season in order to train full time for pull-ups. “It was blood, sweat and hours and hours and hours of hard work,” Shapiro said. Shapiro not only completed his goal but also raised $4,000 for the American Cancer Society. His mother, Stephanie Shapiro, said that her husband was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in 2011. He’s endured two major surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation and is now cancer free and in remission. The younger Shapiro said that he hopes his experience at the Relay for Life event will prepare him for competition infront of a national television audience. “I’ve always liked challenging myself so I’ll add this to my resume as a person for American Ninja Warrior,” Shapiro said. “I figure they won’t say no to someone who has the world record for pull-ups.” ||||| This amazing feat took its toll physically and emotionally. "When I first told people nobody believed me that I wanted to do this." Langley High School junior Andrew Shapiro set out to set new 'pull-up' world records - and to raise money to fight cancer in the process. Andrew's father Allen is a colon cancer survivor. Last weekend, Andrew prevailed, setting three world records - pending Guinness verification. In all, Andrew did 7,306 pull-ups in 18 hours. His dad was there to help pull Andrew through. Andrew, whose efforts raised over $5000, says he is still coming to grips with what he accomplished. A world record holder - and son - who wouldn't quit. "When you see a child accomplish his goals as a parent, that has to be one of the best feelings you could ever have," said Allen. "It's great when you accomplish goals, but when your child accomplishes those goals, that has to be something that you'll never forget." Watch the video above to see our story on Andrew's amazing and profound feat.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| On Saturday, the "House of Cards" actor wryly responded to being deemed an "arrogant SOB" by the Toronto mayor's brother. Kevin Spacey showcased a wry sense of humor with an accommodation to Doug Ford, the brother of the Toronto mayor who deemed him an "arrogant SOB" for not taking a photo backstage during an recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! On Saturday, the House of Cards actor posted on Twitter a Photoshopped version of his cameo in Ellen DeGeneres' famed Oscar selfie along with a screenshot of Rob Ford, the embattled Canadian politician, and his brother. When did Mayor Ford start doing what people tell him to do? All you had to do was ask, guys. Here’s your pic. pic.twitter.com/DtDTqAl8Lb — Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) March 15, 2014 A day earlier, Doug Ford lashed out at Spacey during an episode of the brothers' web show, Ford Nation. "In my opinion, he's an arrogant SOB, and I'll tell you the reason why," Doug Ford said. "Any actor that makes a living off the people that watch his shows -- he wouldn't take a picture with anyone? We were told you can't take a picture, and you can't speak to him. Who does this character think he is?" The actor, the Toronto mayor and his brother had all appeared on a March 3 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where the ABC late-night host had grilled the Canadian politician about his tabloid antics. ||||| The infamous mayor of Toronto may have been given the cold shoulder by popular actor Kevin Spacey while on a recent trip to Los Angeles That's what Rob Ford's brother and fellow city councillor Doug Ford is telling the viewers of Ford Nation, the YouTube show produced by the brothers. He says while the mayor was waiting to appear on late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Fords were told they couldn't talk to or take a picture with Spacey, who is currently starring in Netflix's hit show House of Cards. Doug Ford says while Spacey is "an incredible actor," he also thinks the star is "an arrogant S.O.B.." He says Spacey should get off his "high horse and be real and take pictures with people." Rob Ford took a more muted approach, saying he doesn't watch movies and wouldn't know Spacey if he "ran over him." Spacey, who appeared on Kimmel's show ahead of the mayor's main appearance, was asked about sharing a dressing room with the controversial politician to which he responded: "Well, he threw up all over it, but those are the chances you take."

– We'll go ahead and score this one a win for Kevin Spacey. After the Ford brothers of Toronto—that would be Mayor Rob and city councillor Doug—complained about not being allowed to have their photo taken with the actor, Spacey responded on Twitter by Photoshopping himself between the two. "When did Mayor Ford start doing what people tell him to do?" asks Spacey. "All you had to do was ask, guys. Here’s your pic." (It's his mug from Ellen DeGeneres' famous Oscar selfie, notes the Hollywood Reporter.) The brothers' beef began when they appeared on Jimmy Kimmel's show earlier this month, but were apparently told they couldn't be photographed back stage with the House of Cards star. He's "an arrogant SOB," Doug said afterward on their Ford Nation YouTube show, reports CBC. The mayor was more diplomatic, saying only that he wouldn't know Spacey if he "ran over him." (Not that there's even a remote chance of that happening.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| On Saturday, the "House of Cards" actor wryly responded to being deemed an "arrogant SOB" by the Toronto mayor's brother. Kevin Spacey showcased a wry sense of humor with an accommodation to Doug Ford, the brother of the Toronto mayor who deemed him an "arrogant SOB" for not taking a photo backstage during an recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! On Saturday, the House of Cards actor posted on Twitter a Photoshopped version of his cameo in Ellen DeGeneres' famed Oscar selfie along with a screenshot of Rob Ford, the embattled Canadian politician, and his brother. When did Mayor Ford start doing what people tell him to do? All you had to do was ask, guys. Here’s your pic. pic.twitter.com/DtDTqAl8Lb — Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) March 15, 2014 A day earlier, Doug Ford lashed out at Spacey during an episode of the brothers' web show, Ford Nation. "In my opinion, he's an arrogant SOB, and I'll tell you the reason why," Doug Ford said. "Any actor that makes a living off the people that watch his shows -- he wouldn't take a picture with anyone? We were told you can't take a picture, and you can't speak to him. Who does this character think he is?" The actor, the Toronto mayor and his brother had all appeared on a March 3 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where the ABC late-night host had grilled the Canadian politician about his tabloid antics. ||||| The infamous mayor of Toronto may have been given the cold shoulder by popular actor Kevin Spacey while on a recent trip to Los Angeles That's what Rob Ford's brother and fellow city councillor Doug Ford is telling the viewers of Ford Nation, the YouTube show produced by the brothers. He says while the mayor was waiting to appear on late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Fords were told they couldn't talk to or take a picture with Spacey, who is currently starring in Netflix's hit show House of Cards. Doug Ford says while Spacey is "an incredible actor," he also thinks the star is "an arrogant S.O.B.." He says Spacey should get off his "high horse and be real and take pictures with people." Rob Ford took a more muted approach, saying he doesn't watch movies and wouldn't know Spacey if he "ran over him." Spacey, who appeared on Kimmel's show ahead of the mayor's main appearance, was asked about sharing a dressing room with the controversial politician to which he responded: "Well, he threw up all over it, but those are the chances you take."

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

FILE- In this Sept. 18, 2006, file photo, New York gossip columnist Liz Smith, left, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., share a moment after they spoke during a memorial for former Texas Gov. Ann... (Associated Press) Liz Smith, the syndicated gossip columnist whose mixture of banter, barbs, and bon mots about the glitterati helped her climb the A-list as high as many of the celebrities she covered, died Sunday at the age of 94. Joni Evans, Smith's literary agent, told The Associated Press she died of natural causes. For more than a quarter-century, Smith's column — titled simply "Liz Smith" — was one of the most widely read in the world. The column's success was due in part to Smith's own celebrity status, giving her an insider's access rather than relying largely on tipsters, press releases and publicists. With a big smile and her sweet southern manner, the Texas native endeared herself to many celebrities and scored major tabloid scoops: Donald and Ivana Trump's divorce, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow's impending parenthood. One item proved embarrassingly premature: In 2012, she released a column online mourning the death of her friend Nora Ephron. But Ephron, who was indeed gravely ill, did not die until a few hours later and an impending tragedy that Ephron had tried to keep secret became known to the world. Smith held a lighthearted opinion of her own legacy. "We mustn't take ourselves too seriously in this world of gossip," she told The Associated Press in 1987. "When you look at it realistically, what I do is pretty insignificant. "Still, I'm having a lot of fun." "I was fortunate enough to work with the amazing Liz Smith," Al Roker tweeted. He said that during his time at WNBC, she was nothing short of "fabulous." "Liz Smith was the definition of a lady," actor James Woods tweeted. "She dished, but always found a way to make it entertaining and fun." After graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Texas, Smith recalled buying a one-way ticket to New York in 1949 with a dream of being the next Walter Winchell. But unlike Winchell and his imitators, Smith succeeded with kindness and an aversion to cheap shots. Whether reporting on entertainers, politicians or power brokers, the "Dame of Dish" never bothered with unfounded rumors, sexual preferences or who's-sleeping-with-whom. "When she escorts us into the private lives of popular culture's gods and monsters, it's with a spirit of wonder, not meanness," wrote Jane and Michael Stern in reviewing Smith's 2000 autobiography, "Natural Blonde," for the New York Times Book Review. But it may have been the question of her own sexuality which kept her from discussing that of the stars. A subject in the gay press for many years, Smith acknowledged in her 2000 book that she had relationships with both men and women, and confirmed a long-rumored, long-term relationship with archaeologist Iris Love. Evans said Smith had a series of small strokes earlier this year but nothing serious that slowed her down. She was still having breakfast, lunch and dinner outings with friends, family and associates, Evans said. She called her "a light." Born Mary Elizabeth Smith in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1923, she was the daughter of devout Baptist mother and an eccentric father. Smith said her dad received his divine inspiration more from the race track than the pulpit. As a young girl, Smith quickly fell in love with the silver screen, since movies were one of the few things her mother did not consider a sin. After a brief marriage while attending Hardin-Simmons University, Smith earned her journalism degree and headed off for New York with two suitcases and $50. For nearly 30 years, Smith bounced from job to job: publicist for singer Kaye Ballard; assistant to Mike Wallace and Candid Camera creator Allen Funt; ghostwriter for Igor Cassini's "Cholly Knickerbocker" gossip column. Smith ultimately wrote for nine New York newspapers and dozens of magazines, but it was a stint writing for Cosmopolitan that led to her break. While establishing herself as an authority on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Smith attracted the attention of the New York Daily News. She started her own column at the tabloid in 1976. A gossip star was born. In 1978, during a strike at the News, Smith helped usher in the era of celebrity journalism on television by joining WNBC-TV for three nights a week commentary. Ten years later she jumped to Fox, and she later did work for the cable channel E! Entertainment Television. During that time, Smith migrated from the News to the rival New York Post and finally to Newsday, ultimately earning salaries well into six figures. Her column was syndicated nationwide, drawing millions of readers. She was married a second time, but it was also short-lived. In between all the parties, movie premieres and late-night soirees at celebrity hangouts like Elaine's, Smith found time to host an ever-widening array of charity fund-raisers. She raised money for groups such from Literacy Volunteers, which teaches adults to read and write, to the Women's Action Alliance, which promotes full equality for women. She is survived by several nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be held to honor her this spring. ||||| "She still wants to be his wife," Smith wrote of Ivana at the time. "But the bottom line is, she won't give up her self-respect to do it. ||||| Former New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith, who won her own A-list status with her witty chronicling of the glitterati, died of natural causes on Sunday, said her literary agent, Joni Evans. She was 94. An affable blonde known for pealing laughter, Smith wrote a column that celebrated her famous friends, from Tom Hanks to Liza Minnelli to Madonna, and was read around the world for more than a quarter-century. Despite her towering reputation, Smith held a lighthearted opinion of herself. “We mustn’t take ourselves too seriously in this world of gossip,” she said in 1987. “When you look at it realistically, what I do is pretty insignificant. Still, I’m having a lot of fun.” Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1923, Smith graduated from the University of Texas in 1949 with a degree in journalism and, a year later, moved to the Big Apple. For nearly 30 years, Smith bounced from job to job — publicist for singer Kaye Ballard; assistant to Mike Wallace and “Candid Camera” creator Allen Funt; ghostwriter for Igor Cassini’s Cholly Knickerbocker gossip column. Smith ultimately wrote for nine New York newspapers and dozens of magazines, but it was a stint writing for Cosmopolitan that led to her big break. While establishing herself as an authority on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Smith attracted the attention of the New York Daily News. She started her own column at the tabloid in 1976 — and a gossip star was born. By the 1990s, she began a syndicated daily column that ran in Newsday and the New York Post. The column, which was reprinted across the country and abroad, reportedly earned her more than $1 million a year. Her scoops included Donald Trump’s 1990 split from first wife Ivana. Later, in The Post, she supported her celebrity friends, including backing Billy Bob Thornton after word got out that he and Angelina Jolie had gotten married and exchanged necklaces adorned with vials of each other’s blood. Smith’s 2000 memoir, “Natural Blonde,” in which she admitted she was bisexual despite having married two men, was a best-seller. In an interview with the New York Times this past July, Smith revealed that she was having trouble moving after suffering a minor stroke. “I can’t walk. I can’t talk as well as I used to, but I’m relatively healthy otherwise,” she explained. She also responded to criticism that she was a little too friendly with the celebrities she covered. “I needed access to people,” she said. “And you’re not supposed to seek access. You’re just supposed to be pure and you go to the person you’re writing about and you write the truth. Nobody can do it totally.” “But everybody gives up something to be able to do a job, a demanding job,” she added. “And being a reporter is a demanding, dangerous job. It may be glamorous or put you in harm’s way. I gave up being considered ethical and acceptable, for a while.” With wire services

– Liz Smith, the legendary gossip columnist who started dishing up inside info on celebrities when the grandparents of some of today's stars were babies, has died. She was 94. The New York Post, one of nine New York newspapers Smith wrote for in her long career, reports that her publicist says she died from natural causes on Sunday. After graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Texas in 1949 and going to New York on a one-way ticket with $50 to her name, Smith worked a variety of jobs, including ghostwriting the popular '50s gossip column as "Cholly Knickerbocker," the AP reports. After working for magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Smith ended up with her own column at the New York Daily News in the 1970s and was eventually syndicated to around 70 newspapers. She was known as the "Grande Dame of Dish," though she won praise—and plenty of celebrity friends—by ignoring unfounded rumors and approaching celebrities with what reviewers of her 2000 memoir Natural Blonde called a "spirit of wonder, not meanness." One of her big scoops was Donald Trump's first divorce, in 1990. Ivana "still wants to be his wife. But the bottom line is, she won't give up her self-respect to do it," Smith wrote. "Intimates say she had every chance to continue being Mrs. Trump by allowing her husband to live in an open marriage."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.FILE- In this Sept. 18, 2006, file photo, New York gossip columnist Liz Smith, left, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., share a moment after they spoke during a memorial for former Texas Gov. Ann... (Associated Press) Liz Smith, the syndicated gossip columnist whose mixture of banter, barbs, and bon mots about the glitterati helped her climb the A-list as high as many of the celebrities she covered, died Sunday at the age of 94. Joni Evans, Smith's literary agent, told The Associated Press she died of natural causes. For more than a quarter-century, Smith's column — titled simply "Liz Smith" — was one of the most widely read in the world. The column's success was due in part to Smith's own celebrity status, giving her an insider's access rather than relying largely on tipsters, press releases and publicists. With a big smile and her sweet southern manner, the Texas native endeared herself to many celebrities and scored major tabloid scoops: Donald and Ivana Trump's divorce, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow's impending parenthood. One item proved embarrassingly premature: In 2012, she released a column online mourning the death of her friend Nora Ephron. But Ephron, who was indeed gravely ill, did not die until a few hours later and an impending tragedy that Ephron had tried to keep secret became known to the world. Smith held a lighthearted opinion of her own legacy. "We mustn't take ourselves too seriously in this world of gossip," she told The Associated Press in 1987. "When you look at it realistically, what I do is pretty insignificant. "Still, I'm having a lot of fun." "I was fortunate enough to work with the amazing Liz Smith," Al Roker tweeted. He said that during his time at WNBC, she was nothing short of "fabulous." "Liz Smith was the definition of a lady," actor James Woods tweeted. "She dished, but always found a way to make it entertaining and fun." After graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Texas, Smith recalled buying a one-way ticket to New York in 1949 with a dream of being the next Walter Winchell. But unlike Winchell and his imitators, Smith succeeded with kindness and an aversion to cheap shots. Whether reporting on entertainers, politicians or power brokers, the "Dame of Dish" never bothered with unfounded rumors, sexual preferences or who's-sleeping-with-whom. "When she escorts us into the private lives of popular culture's gods and monsters, it's with a spirit of wonder, not meanness," wrote Jane and Michael Stern in reviewing Smith's 2000 autobiography, "Natural Blonde," for the New York Times Book Review. But it may have been the question of her own sexuality which kept her from discussing that of the stars. A subject in the gay press for many years, Smith acknowledged in her 2000 book that she had relationships with both men and women, and confirmed a long-rumored, long-term relationship with archaeologist Iris Love. Evans said Smith had a series of small strokes earlier this year but nothing serious that slowed her down. She was still having breakfast, lunch and dinner outings with friends, family and associates, Evans said. She called her "a light." Born Mary Elizabeth Smith in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1923, she was the daughter of devout Baptist mother and an eccentric father. Smith said her dad received his divine inspiration more from the race track than the pulpit. As a young girl, Smith quickly fell in love with the silver screen, since movies were one of the few things her mother did not consider a sin. After a brief marriage while attending Hardin-Simmons University, Smith earned her journalism degree and headed off for New York with two suitcases and $50. For nearly 30 years, Smith bounced from job to job: publicist for singer Kaye Ballard; assistant to Mike Wallace and Candid Camera creator Allen Funt; ghostwriter for Igor Cassini's "Cholly Knickerbocker" gossip column. Smith ultimately wrote for nine New York newspapers and dozens of magazines, but it was a stint writing for Cosmopolitan that led to her break. While establishing herself as an authority on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Smith attracted the attention of the New York Daily News. She started her own column at the tabloid in 1976. A gossip star was born. In 1978, during a strike at the News, Smith helped usher in the era of celebrity journalism on television by joining WNBC-TV for three nights a week commentary. Ten years later she jumped to Fox, and she later did work for the cable channel E! Entertainment Television. During that time, Smith migrated from the News to the rival New York Post and finally to Newsday, ultimately earning salaries well into six figures. Her column was syndicated nationwide, drawing millions of readers. She was married a second time, but it was also short-lived. In between all the parties, movie premieres and late-night soirees at celebrity hangouts like Elaine's, Smith found time to host an ever-widening array of charity fund-raisers. She raised money for groups such from Literacy Volunteers, which teaches adults to read and write, to the Women's Action Alliance, which promotes full equality for women. She is survived by several nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be held to honor her this spring. ||||| "She still wants to be his wife," Smith wrote of Ivana at the time. "But the bottom line is, she won't give up her self-respect to do it. ||||| Former New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith, who won her own A-list status with her witty chronicling of the glitterati, died of natural causes on Sunday, said her literary agent, Joni Evans. She was 94. An affable blonde known for pealing laughter, Smith wrote a column that celebrated her famous friends, from Tom Hanks to Liza Minnelli to Madonna, and was read around the world for more than a quarter-century. Despite her towering reputation, Smith held a lighthearted opinion of herself. “We mustn’t take ourselves too seriously in this world of gossip,” she said in 1987. “When you look at it realistically, what I do is pretty insignificant. Still, I’m having a lot of fun.” Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1923, Smith graduated from the University of Texas in 1949 with a degree in journalism and, a year later, moved to the Big Apple. For nearly 30 years, Smith bounced from job to job — publicist for singer Kaye Ballard; assistant to Mike Wallace and “Candid Camera” creator Allen Funt; ghostwriter for Igor Cassini’s Cholly Knickerbocker gossip column. Smith ultimately wrote for nine New York newspapers and dozens of magazines, but it was a stint writing for Cosmopolitan that led to her big break. While establishing herself as an authority on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Smith attracted the attention of the New York Daily News. She started her own column at the tabloid in 1976 — and a gossip star was born. By the 1990s, she began a syndicated daily column that ran in Newsday and the New York Post. The column, which was reprinted across the country and abroad, reportedly earned her more than $1 million a year. Her scoops included Donald Trump’s 1990 split from first wife Ivana. Later, in The Post, she supported her celebrity friends, including backing Billy Bob Thornton after word got out that he and Angelina Jolie had gotten married and exchanged necklaces adorned with vials of each other’s blood. Smith’s 2000 memoir, “Natural Blonde,” in which she admitted she was bisexual despite having married two men, was a best-seller. In an interview with the New York Times this past July, Smith revealed that she was having trouble moving after suffering a minor stroke. “I can’t walk. I can’t talk as well as I used to, but I’m relatively healthy otherwise,” she explained. She also responded to criticism that she was a little too friendly with the celebrities she covered. “I needed access to people,” she said. “And you’re not supposed to seek access. You’re just supposed to be pure and you go to the person you’re writing about and you write the truth. Nobody can do it totally.” “But everybody gives up something to be able to do a job, a demanding job,” she added. “And being a reporter is a demanding, dangerous job. It may be glamorous or put you in harm’s way. I gave up being considered ethical and acceptable, for a while.” With wire services

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Image caption It is not yet clear what Mr Papandreou's role in a coalition government would be Greek PM George Papandreou has said efforts to form a new government of national unity will get under way soon. Mr Papandreou said these were "critical times" as he attempts to push a vital EU bailout deal through parliament. He was speaking after talks with President Karolos Papoulias, a day after narrowly winning a parliamentary confidence vote. The main opposition New Democracy party wants snap elections and says it will not join a Papandreou-led coalition. The party's leader, Antonis Samaras, says Mr Papandreou is "dangerous for Greece" and must resign. Mr Samaras is due to meet the president on Sunday. Mr Papandreou says early elections would be "catastrophic" for Greece, and the bailout must be agreed first. Without the bailout funds, Greece may go bankrupt before the end of the year. Mr Papandreou said he had gone to the presidential palace on Saturday to inform Mr Papoulias of his "intention to contribute decisively to the creation of a government of the widest possible consensus". That government must have as its focus the ratification of the agreement reached by EU leaders on 27 October, he said. That hard-fought package offers loans and debt reduction in exchange for drastic spending cuts and austerity measures. "These are critical times. In the immediate future the necessary process will begin to form the widest possible consensus government," said Mr Papandreou. Analysis Mr Papandreou said he would contribute decisively to the new government, but it is by no means clear whether he intends to lead it. The main opposition says he must resign before it takes part. In short, Greek politics is in chaos at a time when stability is urgently needed. Greece's woes have spread uncertainty in the markets which has compounded Italy's debt problems. The cost of borrowing has shot up for Italy, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is under intense pressure too. The instability is spreading. Earlier, said he was concerned that "a lack of co-operation could trouble how our partners see our will and desire to remain in the central core of the European Union and the euro". Mr Papandreou has hinted that he could stand aside if it would enable progress, and the BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says it is looking increasingly unlikely that Mr Papandreou will lead a future coalition. Suggestions are emerging that Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos could replace him as interim prime minister. He has previously said elections could be held once procedures for securing the EU bailout package were finished. 'Catastrophic' Greece's mounting debt crisis and the implementation of austerity measures have proved hugely unpopular with the public, prompting widespread protests, strikes and occasional bursts of violence. Eurozone deal Private banks holding Greek debt accept a 50% loss European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to be boosted to 1tn euros ($1.4tn:£880bn) Banks told to recapitalise by 106bn euros Eurozone emergency deal: Key elements Profile: George Papandreou Q&A: Greek debt crisis But if Greece defaults on its debts, the cost of borrowing would rocket for other countries, potentially leading to a new banking crisis. Earlier this week, Mr Papandreou shocked EU partners and sent markets into turmoil by calling for a national referendum on the deal which they thought had been secured. He faced calls to resign even from within his own party, and although the plan was abandoned the confidence vote went ahead. The late-night vote was on a knife-edge, but the government eventually won with 153 votes to 145. Bankruptcy threat On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a key figure in negotiating the deal for Greece, said it could take a decade for Europe to resolve its debt crisis and that this could only be done by countries placing legal limits on their debts. What went wrong in Greece? What went wrong in Greece? Greece's economic reforms, which led to it abandoning the drachma as its currency in favour of the euro in 2002, made it easier for the country to borrow money. What went wrong in Greece? Greece went on a big, debt-funded spending spree, including paying for high-profile projects such as the 2004 Athens Olympics, which went well over its budget. What went wrong in Greece? The country was hit by the downturn, which meant it had to spend more on benefits and received less in taxes. There were also doubts about the accuracy of its economic statistics. What went wrong in Greece? Greece's economic problems meant lenders started charging higher interest rates to lend it money. Widespread tax evasion also hit the government's coffers. What went wrong in Greece? There have been demonstrations against the government's austerity measures to deal with its debt, such as cuts to public sector pay and pensions, reduced benefits and increased taxes. What went wrong in Greece? Eurozone leaders are worried that if Greece were to default, and even leave the euro, it would cause a major financial crisis that could spread to much bigger economies such as Italy and Spain. What went wrong in Greece? In 2010, the EU, IMF and ECB agreed a bailout worth 110bn euros (£92bn; $145bn) for Greece. Prime Minister George Papandreou quit the following year while negotiating its follow-up. What went wrong in Greece? Lucas Papademos, who succeeded Mr Papandreou, has negotiated a second bailout of 130bn euros, plus a debt writedown of 107bn euros. The price: increased austerity and eurozone monitoring. What went wrong in Greece? In May 2012 elections a majority of voters backed parties opposed to austerity, but no group won an overall majority resulting in political deadlock. Fresh elections have been called in June. BACK {current} of {total} NEXT "Everyone in Europe must make an effort to achieve all that is required," she said in comments posted on her website. The Greek crisis dominated the agenda at the G20 summit in Cannes this week, where Mr Papandreou was summoned for urgent talks on Wednesday. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso acknowledged it was possible that Greece could end up leaving the eurozone, but said it was "in their interests" to stay. "I think the principle of a country leaving the euro is not a good one. But at the end, it depends on them being able to implement the decisions taken together," he said. The summit put the next tranche of Greece's existing bailout on hold. The leaders in Cannes also agreed to boost the resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in an effort to support economic growth. The EU bailout deal, agreed last month, would give the heavily indebted Greek government 130bn euros (£111bn; $178bn) and it imposes a 50% write-off on private holders of Greek debts, in return for deeply unpopular austerity measures. Although the Greek public has strongly resisted the austerity measures, a recent opinion poll in a newspaper showed 70% wanted to remain within the eurozone. ||||| Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com ATHENS—Antonis Samaras, head of Greece's main opposition New Democracy party, Saturday renewed his call for early elections and rejected efforts by the country's embattled Socialist government to form a bipartisan coalition government. Mr. Samaras's remarks come after Prime Minister George Papandreou briefed Greek President Karolos Papoulias earlier in the day of his intentions for a cross-party government that would implement a €130 billion ($179 billion) aid package agreed to by European leaders late last month. "I will do whatever I can to help form a coalition government," Mr. Papandreou said in remarks that were televised nationally. "The Oct. 26 decisions ...

– Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has been busy shuttling around all day in a bid to put together a coalition government—so it can ratify the nation's European bailout and ease world markets—but the results so far are just more "political uncertainty," according to the New York Times. Opposition leader Antonis Samaris won't budge, insisting he will not join any coalition led by Papandreou and reiterating his call that the prime minister resign. Tomorrow could be pivotal, with Papandreou and Samaris scheduled to meet in person. Both the BBC and Wall Street Journal think Papandreou will agree to step aside and cede control of a coalition government to a third party, probably finance chief Evangelos Venizelos. It's possible the new government could be in place by Monday, ahead of meeting of euro-zone finance officials in Brussels. Click to read about Papandreou's close call in a confidence vote yesterday.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Image caption It is not yet clear what Mr Papandreou's role in a coalition government would be Greek PM George Papandreou has said efforts to form a new government of national unity will get under way soon. Mr Papandreou said these were "critical times" as he attempts to push a vital EU bailout deal through parliament. He was speaking after talks with President Karolos Papoulias, a day after narrowly winning a parliamentary confidence vote. The main opposition New Democracy party wants snap elections and says it will not join a Papandreou-led coalition. The party's leader, Antonis Samaras, says Mr Papandreou is "dangerous for Greece" and must resign. Mr Samaras is due to meet the president on Sunday. Mr Papandreou says early elections would be "catastrophic" for Greece, and the bailout must be agreed first. Without the bailout funds, Greece may go bankrupt before the end of the year. Mr Papandreou said he had gone to the presidential palace on Saturday to inform Mr Papoulias of his "intention to contribute decisively to the creation of a government of the widest possible consensus". That government must have as its focus the ratification of the agreement reached by EU leaders on 27 October, he said. That hard-fought package offers loans and debt reduction in exchange for drastic spending cuts and austerity measures. "These are critical times. In the immediate future the necessary process will begin to form the widest possible consensus government," said Mr Papandreou. Analysis Mr Papandreou said he would contribute decisively to the new government, but it is by no means clear whether he intends to lead it. The main opposition says he must resign before it takes part. In short, Greek politics is in chaos at a time when stability is urgently needed. Greece's woes have spread uncertainty in the markets which has compounded Italy's debt problems. The cost of borrowing has shot up for Italy, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is under intense pressure too. The instability is spreading. Earlier, said he was concerned that "a lack of co-operation could trouble how our partners see our will and desire to remain in the central core of the European Union and the euro". Mr Papandreou has hinted that he could stand aside if it would enable progress, and the BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says it is looking increasingly unlikely that Mr Papandreou will lead a future coalition. Suggestions are emerging that Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos could replace him as interim prime minister. He has previously said elections could be held once procedures for securing the EU bailout package were finished. 'Catastrophic' Greece's mounting debt crisis and the implementation of austerity measures have proved hugely unpopular with the public, prompting widespread protests, strikes and occasional bursts of violence. Eurozone deal Private banks holding Greek debt accept a 50% loss European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to be boosted to 1tn euros ($1.4tn:£880bn) Banks told to recapitalise by 106bn euros Eurozone emergency deal: Key elements Profile: George Papandreou Q&A: Greek debt crisis But if Greece defaults on its debts, the cost of borrowing would rocket for other countries, potentially leading to a new banking crisis. Earlier this week, Mr Papandreou shocked EU partners and sent markets into turmoil by calling for a national referendum on the deal which they thought had been secured. He faced calls to resign even from within his own party, and although the plan was abandoned the confidence vote went ahead. The late-night vote was on a knife-edge, but the government eventually won with 153 votes to 145. Bankruptcy threat On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a key figure in negotiating the deal for Greece, said it could take a decade for Europe to resolve its debt crisis and that this could only be done by countries placing legal limits on their debts. What went wrong in Greece? What went wrong in Greece? Greece's economic reforms, which led to it abandoning the drachma as its currency in favour of the euro in 2002, made it easier for the country to borrow money. What went wrong in Greece? Greece went on a big, debt-funded spending spree, including paying for high-profile projects such as the 2004 Athens Olympics, which went well over its budget. What went wrong in Greece? The country was hit by the downturn, which meant it had to spend more on benefits and received less in taxes. There were also doubts about the accuracy of its economic statistics. What went wrong in Greece? Greece's economic problems meant lenders started charging higher interest rates to lend it money. Widespread tax evasion also hit the government's coffers. What went wrong in Greece? There have been demonstrations against the government's austerity measures to deal with its debt, such as cuts to public sector pay and pensions, reduced benefits and increased taxes. What went wrong in Greece? Eurozone leaders are worried that if Greece were to default, and even leave the euro, it would cause a major financial crisis that could spread to much bigger economies such as Italy and Spain. What went wrong in Greece? In 2010, the EU, IMF and ECB agreed a bailout worth 110bn euros (£92bn; $145bn) for Greece. Prime Minister George Papandreou quit the following year while negotiating its follow-up. What went wrong in Greece? Lucas Papademos, who succeeded Mr Papandreou, has negotiated a second bailout of 130bn euros, plus a debt writedown of 107bn euros. The price: increased austerity and eurozone monitoring. What went wrong in Greece? In May 2012 elections a majority of voters backed parties opposed to austerity, but no group won an overall majority resulting in political deadlock. Fresh elections have been called in June. BACK {current} of {total} NEXT "Everyone in Europe must make an effort to achieve all that is required," she said in comments posted on her website. The Greek crisis dominated the agenda at the G20 summit in Cannes this week, where Mr Papandreou was summoned for urgent talks on Wednesday. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso acknowledged it was possible that Greece could end up leaving the eurozone, but said it was "in their interests" to stay. "I think the principle of a country leaving the euro is not a good one. But at the end, it depends on them being able to implement the decisions taken together," he said. The summit put the next tranche of Greece's existing bailout on hold. The leaders in Cannes also agreed to boost the resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in an effort to support economic growth. The EU bailout deal, agreed last month, would give the heavily indebted Greek government 130bn euros (£111bn; $178bn) and it imposes a 50% write-off on private holders of Greek debts, in return for deeply unpopular austerity measures. Although the Greek public has strongly resisted the austerity measures, a recent opinion poll in a newspaper showed 70% wanted to remain within the eurozone. ||||| Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com ATHENS—Antonis Samaras, head of Greece's main opposition New Democracy party, Saturday renewed his call for early elections and rejected efforts by the country's embattled Socialist government to form a bipartisan coalition government. Mr. Samaras's remarks come after Prime Minister George Papandreou briefed Greek President Karolos Papoulias earlier in the day of his intentions for a cross-party government that would implement a €130 billion ($179 billion) aid package agreed to by European leaders late last month. "I will do whatever I can to help form a coalition government," Mr. Papandreou said in remarks that were televised nationally. "The Oct. 26 decisions ...

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Audrina Patridge Files for Divorce I'm Afraid for My Safety and My Daughter's Audrina Patridge Files for Divorce, Gets Restraining Order Against Husband (UPDATE) EXCLUSIVE Audrina Patridge is divorcing her husband of less than a year, on the heels of running to court to get protection from him ... TMZ has learned. The former 'Hills' star filed to divorce Corey Bohan on Wednesday, and according to docs the split appears to be triggered by a series of incidents she considers menacing and emotionally abusive. In the docs, obtained by TMZ, Audrina says the violence began in mid August when they argued about her accusing him of cheating. She says she was holding their daughter, Kirra Max, when Corey pushed her back. Audrina says he then emptied out her backpack and purse, and began punching himself in the head ... and threatening to bash himself in the head with a metal canister if she left. She says Corey had threatened suicide before -- in July while she was out of town on a business trip. According to docs, on Sept. 6, Corey was at home watching KIirra, and when Audrina got home, he began calling her names and harassing her. Audrina says she grabbed Kirra and went upstairs, but he followed and told her she's "f**ked up" because of her childhood and her messed up mother. She says she started recording video of him, and he said, "Grow some balls and pull the trigger and file for divorce." At this point, she says she was terrified and called police to file a report. On Sept. 15, she says child protective services came to the house to meet with her. Her breaking point came this past weekend. Audrina says she was on a panel at a beauty event, and Corey showed up and followed her on the stage. She doesn't say it got physical, but he demanded to know where Kirra was and said he was going to get her. Audrina says, "I was shaking at this point." Audrina filed for a temporary restraining order against him on Monday, Sept. 18 ... which was granted. Corey -- an Australian BMX rider -- and Audrina just got married in Hawaii in November 2016. They seemed like a happy family in early August while on a staycation with 15-month-old Kirra. Audrina's rep says, "Audrina's number one priority is her daughter." ||||| After less than a year of marriage, Audrina Patridge and Corey Bohan are calling it quits. She filed for divorce two days after receiving a restraining order against Corey, according to a shocking new report. Audrina Patridge filed for divorce from her husband, Corey Bohan, on Sept. 21, according to TMZ. The site reports that two days earlier, she also filed for a temporary restraining order, leading to speculation that a possible domestic violence incident could have caused the breakup. The Hills star and her husband have been married for less than one year, and their daughter, Kirra, was just born in June 2016. We actually first met Corey when Audrina was starring on The Hills, and they’ve been together on and off since 2008. Their wedding ceremony in Hawaii in Nov. 2016 was completely picturesque, but unfortunately, the fairytale just didn’t last. As of now, TMZ does not have any details about why Audrina filed a restraining order, but HollywoodLife.com has reached out to the reality star’s rep for comment. Before Corey, Audrina famously dated “Justin Bobby” on The Hills and was also briefly romantically involved with Ryan Cabrera. However, it was the Australian BMX rider who eventually stole her heart, although it took him several years to finally pop the question, which he did while they were on vacation in Nov. 2015. Just a month and a half ago, on Aug. 7, Audrina posted an adorable family photo of herself, Corey and Kirra to Twitter, and they all had huge smiles on their faces. Considering this relationship was on and off for so many years before the pair got married, it definitely appears that they’ve had issues, but something pretty serious must have happened for her to file for divorce so suddenly. HollywoodLifers, did you expect Audrina and Corey’s relationship to end so soon?

– Audrina Patridge, a former star of MTV's The Hills, has filed for divorce from her husband of less than a year and been granted a temporary restraining order against him, reports TMZ. Patridge—who wed Australian BMX rider Corey Bohan last November, five months after giving birth to the couple's first child, per Hollywood Life—filed the order on Monday, following by divorce papers on Wednesday, after an alleged abusive incident. TMZ says it has seen the court docs on that incident, which Patridge says took place on Sept. 6. Per the filing, she arrived home on that day, where Bohan was watching their infant daughter, Kirra, and Bohan started name-calling and harassing her, telling her she was "f---ed up" because of the way she was raised. She says when she started filming, Bohan said: "Grow some balls and pull the trigger and file for divorce." Patridge claims he yanked her phone away and deleted the video, and she then filed a police report. Her decision to get a restraining order apparently was made after last weekend, when Bohan allegedly followed her to a panel appearance and unnerved her. Patridge says she has already met with CPS at least once.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Audrina Patridge Files for Divorce I'm Afraid for My Safety and My Daughter's Audrina Patridge Files for Divorce, Gets Restraining Order Against Husband (UPDATE) EXCLUSIVE Audrina Patridge is divorcing her husband of less than a year, on the heels of running to court to get protection from him ... TMZ has learned. The former 'Hills' star filed to divorce Corey Bohan on Wednesday, and according to docs the split appears to be triggered by a series of incidents she considers menacing and emotionally abusive. In the docs, obtained by TMZ, Audrina says the violence began in mid August when they argued about her accusing him of cheating. She says she was holding their daughter, Kirra Max, when Corey pushed her back. Audrina says he then emptied out her backpack and purse, and began punching himself in the head ... and threatening to bash himself in the head with a metal canister if she left. She says Corey had threatened suicide before -- in July while she was out of town on a business trip. According to docs, on Sept. 6, Corey was at home watching KIirra, and when Audrina got home, he began calling her names and harassing her. Audrina says she grabbed Kirra and went upstairs, but he followed and told her she's "f**ked up" because of her childhood and her messed up mother. She says she started recording video of him, and he said, "Grow some balls and pull the trigger and file for divorce." At this point, she says she was terrified and called police to file a report. On Sept. 15, she says child protective services came to the house to meet with her. Her breaking point came this past weekend. Audrina says she was on a panel at a beauty event, and Corey showed up and followed her on the stage. She doesn't say it got physical, but he demanded to know where Kirra was and said he was going to get her. Audrina says, "I was shaking at this point." Audrina filed for a temporary restraining order against him on Monday, Sept. 18 ... which was granted. Corey -- an Australian BMX rider -- and Audrina just got married in Hawaii in November 2016. They seemed like a happy family in early August while on a staycation with 15-month-old Kirra. Audrina's rep says, "Audrina's number one priority is her daughter." ||||| After less than a year of marriage, Audrina Patridge and Corey Bohan are calling it quits. She filed for divorce two days after receiving a restraining order against Corey, according to a shocking new report. Audrina Patridge filed for divorce from her husband, Corey Bohan, on Sept. 21, according to TMZ. The site reports that two days earlier, she also filed for a temporary restraining order, leading to speculation that a possible domestic violence incident could have caused the breakup. The Hills star and her husband have been married for less than one year, and their daughter, Kirra, was just born in June 2016. We actually first met Corey when Audrina was starring on The Hills, and they’ve been together on and off since 2008. Their wedding ceremony in Hawaii in Nov. 2016 was completely picturesque, but unfortunately, the fairytale just didn’t last. As of now, TMZ does not have any details about why Audrina filed a restraining order, but HollywoodLife.com has reached out to the reality star’s rep for comment. Before Corey, Audrina famously dated “Justin Bobby” on The Hills and was also briefly romantically involved with Ryan Cabrera. However, it was the Australian BMX rider who eventually stole her heart, although it took him several years to finally pop the question, which he did while they were on vacation in Nov. 2015. Just a month and a half ago, on Aug. 7, Audrina posted an adorable family photo of herself, Corey and Kirra to Twitter, and they all had huge smiles on their faces. Considering this relationship was on and off for so many years before the pair got married, it definitely appears that they’ve had issues, but something pretty serious must have happened for her to file for divorce so suddenly. HollywoodLifers, did you expect Audrina and Corey’s relationship to end so soon?

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Facebook has lost its bid to stop a lawsuit by a 14-year old girl whose naked photo appeared on the platform. The girl, who cannot be named because of her age, is suing Facebook (FB) and the man who repeatedly posted her photo on the social network. A judge in Belfast, Northern Ireland, rejected Facebook's request to dismiss the case on Monday, meaning it will now go to a full trial. The company argued in court that it took the picture down on more than one occasion as soon as it was notified. The girl's lawyers said Facebook should have prevented republication of the photo by using a process to identify and track the image. Back in 2011, Facebook said that it uses Microsoft (MSFT) technology called PhotoDNA to detect child exploitation material. The tool can prevent photos from ever being uploaded on the site. The company is still using the tool. Responding to the judge's ruling, the company said it does not allow nudity and sexual exploitation on its network. "There's no place for this kind of content on Facebook and we remove it when it's reported to us," a spokesperson said. Facebook did not comment on why this image -- once flagged -- wasn't caught by the PhotoDNA system. The girl's lawyers said the photo was posted on Facebook as an act of revenge. They compared posting the photo to a method of child abuse. They also said the posts amounted to hate speech. The girl is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act. Related: Revenge porn victim: My naked photos were everywhere Paul Tweed, a media law expert and senior partner at Johnsons Solicitors, said the case suggested a lack of consistency in how Facebook deals with nude images. "Facebook has the tools to remove images promptly and block them, but it is not consistent...compare it with the case when Facebook took down a 1972 war photo last week and then self-policed to bring it back," he said. Facebook ran into trouble last week for censoring the "Napalm Girl" Vietnam War photo. The image, which shows a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, violated Facebook's ban on images of naked children, the company said. But after fierce criticism, Facebook reversed course and allow users to post the photo. -- Samuel Burke and Peter Taggart contributed reporting. ||||| Facebook has lost a legal bid to prevent a 14-year-old girl from suing the social media giant over a naked photo that was posted on a “shame page.” The social network insists it is protected under European law. A high court judge in Belfast rejected an attempt by Facebook to have the girl’s claim thrown out on Monday. The teen, who cannot be named due to her age, is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence, and breach of the Data Protection Act, after a naked photo was posted on a “shame page” several times between November 2014 and January 2016. Read more The girl’s lawyers allege the nude photo was obtained through blackmail and was published as a form of revenge. The attorneys also argue that Facebook had to power to block re-publication of the picture by using a tracking process to identify the image. They equated the incidents to a form of child abuse. But a lawyer for Facebook has argued that the claim for damages should be dismissed, stressing that the company took down the photos when it was notified. The company’s attorneys also cited a European directive which they say provides protection from having to monitor vast amounts of material uploaded online. The girl is also taking legal action against the man who allegedly posted the picture on the site. The case against both Facebook and the man behind the photo will now move to full trial in Belfast. Although lawyers claim this is the first case of its kind in the UK, similar incidents involving nude photos on Facebook have occurred elsewhere. Just last week, the social network came under fire for removing a famous image of a naked girl running away from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War, claiming it violated the site’s standards on nudity. The Prime Minister of Norway re-posted the image following its removal, criticizing the social network for removing it in the first place. Following public outrage, Facebook eventually said it would allow the image, with Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg telling the Prime Minister: “These are difficult decisions and we don’t always get it right...we intend to do better.” In 2014, a Texas woman sued the company for $123 million for failing to stop posts which superimposed her face on naked pictures. The case, however, was dismissed.

– While Facebook refused to allow one of the world's most famous photos of a young naked girl during the Vietnam War, another girl has won the right to sue the social media site for her own nude pic, RT.com reports. A Belfast high court ruled to let the 14-year-old's suit go forward against Facebook, which allegedly allowed her pic to be continually reposted for more than a year on a "shame page" by a man (whom she's also suing) seeking revenge, per the Guardian. The teen is seeking damages for negligence, misuse of private info, and violation of the Data Protection Act, amounting to child abuse, her attorneys say. The main beef: that Facebook uses a special Microsoft technology called PhotoDNA that tags and flags child exploitation materials so they won't repeatedly show up—yet the offending pic was re-added often to the site between November 2014 and January 2016, per CNNMoney. Facebook, which hasn't offered an explanation as to why its software didn't pick up on this photo, argues that it did take down the picture each time it was notified about it, and it's trying to fall back on European rules that would shield it from having to keep an eye on all of the material that ends up on the site—a virtually impossible task, if you ask Facebook. But it's how the site's been deciding what stays and what goes that has some in a tizzy. "Facebook has the tools to remove images promptly and block them, but it is not consistent," a media law expert tells CNN, comparing it with the Vietnam War photo that has since been uncensored on the site. A full trial will be held in Belfast at an undetermined date. (A huge payout in a Michigan revenge-porn case.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Facebook has lost its bid to stop a lawsuit by a 14-year old girl whose naked photo appeared on the platform. The girl, who cannot be named because of her age, is suing Facebook (FB) and the man who repeatedly posted her photo on the social network. A judge in Belfast, Northern Ireland, rejected Facebook's request to dismiss the case on Monday, meaning it will now go to a full trial. The company argued in court that it took the picture down on more than one occasion as soon as it was notified. The girl's lawyers said Facebook should have prevented republication of the photo by using a process to identify and track the image. Back in 2011, Facebook said that it uses Microsoft (MSFT) technology called PhotoDNA to detect child exploitation material. The tool can prevent photos from ever being uploaded on the site. The company is still using the tool. Responding to the judge's ruling, the company said it does not allow nudity and sexual exploitation on its network. "There's no place for this kind of content on Facebook and we remove it when it's reported to us," a spokesperson said. Facebook did not comment on why this image -- once flagged -- wasn't caught by the PhotoDNA system. The girl's lawyers said the photo was posted on Facebook as an act of revenge. They compared posting the photo to a method of child abuse. They also said the posts amounted to hate speech. The girl is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence and breach of the Data Protection Act. Related: Revenge porn victim: My naked photos were everywhere Paul Tweed, a media law expert and senior partner at Johnsons Solicitors, said the case suggested a lack of consistency in how Facebook deals with nude images. "Facebook has the tools to remove images promptly and block them, but it is not consistent...compare it with the case when Facebook took down a 1972 war photo last week and then self-policed to bring it back," he said. Facebook ran into trouble last week for censoring the "Napalm Girl" Vietnam War photo. The image, which shows a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, violated Facebook's ban on images of naked children, the company said. But after fierce criticism, Facebook reversed course and allow users to post the photo. -- Samuel Burke and Peter Taggart contributed reporting. ||||| Facebook has lost a legal bid to prevent a 14-year-old girl from suing the social media giant over a naked photo that was posted on a “shame page.” The social network insists it is protected under European law. A high court judge in Belfast rejected an attempt by Facebook to have the girl’s claim thrown out on Monday. The teen, who cannot be named due to her age, is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence, and breach of the Data Protection Act, after a naked photo was posted on a “shame page” several times between November 2014 and January 2016. Read more The girl’s lawyers allege the nude photo was obtained through blackmail and was published as a form of revenge. The attorneys also argue that Facebook had to power to block re-publication of the picture by using a tracking process to identify the image. They equated the incidents to a form of child abuse. But a lawyer for Facebook has argued that the claim for damages should be dismissed, stressing that the company took down the photos when it was notified. The company’s attorneys also cited a European directive which they say provides protection from having to monitor vast amounts of material uploaded online. The girl is also taking legal action against the man who allegedly posted the picture on the site. The case against both Facebook and the man behind the photo will now move to full trial in Belfast. Although lawyers claim this is the first case of its kind in the UK, similar incidents involving nude photos on Facebook have occurred elsewhere. Just last week, the social network came under fire for removing a famous image of a naked girl running away from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War, claiming it violated the site’s standards on nudity. The Prime Minister of Norway re-posted the image following its removal, criticizing the social network for removing it in the first place. Following public outrage, Facebook eventually said it would allow the image, with Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg telling the Prime Minister: “These are difficult decisions and we don’t always get it right...we intend to do better.” In 2014, a Texas woman sued the company for $123 million for failing to stop posts which superimposed her face on naked pictures. The case, however, was dismissed.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Please enable Javascript to watch this video OREM, Utah -- A Lindon man says employees at a Rite Aid in Orem wouldn't help him when his car went up in flames in their parking lot. Video from Daryl Kemsley shows his DeLorean engulfed in flames on Friday. Kemsley said the car began emitting smoke after a fender bender, and when he pulled into the parking lot of a Rite Aid he saw a small flame so he got out and called 911. The man said he went into the Rite Aid to ask to borrow a fire extinguisher, but he says the employees told him no because the extinguisher was company property. The man said he asked the employee to use the extinguisher on his car since they wouldn’t loan it to him, and he said the employee told him she didn’t know how to use the extinguisher and declined. “I know legally they don't have to help me, but it just baffles me that they don't know how to use a fire extinguisher,” he said. Firefighters arrived on scene and extinguished the blaze, but the car is a total loss. A manager at the Rite Aid told Fox 13 News they are not able to comment on the incident. Kemsley said he suffered very minor burns while trying to put out the fire with a smaller extinguisher that a bystander loaned him. Kemsley said the DeLorean has been his dream car ever since he saw the “Back to the Future” movies as a child. He said he spent thousands of dollars restoring the vintage vehicle, which he said had only 8,100 miles on it. He said he hoped to sell the car for a profit and had some offers in place prior to the fire breaking out. ||||| This is one of those stories that, at first, just seems simple and terrible. Unfortunately, the more that gets revealed, the less simple everything becomes. The whole thing revolves around one awful event: a 1981 DeLorean destroyed by fire. However, since it’s blown up on the local news and Car Internet, a lot of people are asking questions about what happened. Around noon on Jan. 5, Daryl Kemsley, a 22-year old YouTuber with a taste for exotic cars, was driving his 1981 DeLorean, his childhood dream car. Kemsley claims he had just agreed to sell the DeLorean for $70,000, and was driving the car back from a mechanic after a pre-sale inspection. Advertisement During the drive in Orem, Utah, Kemsley claims in a Facebook post that he was rear-ended by a driver who fled the scene. Although the impact was said to be minor, when Kemsley said he attempted to pursue the other driver, he found that the DeLorean wouldn’t go more than 25 or 30 mph, and noted smoke from the rear, as he explained to me in a series of Facebook messages. He pulled into a nearby Rite Aid parking lot, where he noticed flames coming from the car’s rear engine bay, the Facebook post said. Advertisement Already a bad day, sure, but it gets worse. Kemsley claims that he went into the Rite Aid and asked to use their fire extinguisher, but was refused by an employee. Kemsley describes it in the Facebook post, which has been shared more than 4,000 times as of this writing: “I called 911 and ran into rite aid, and politely asked the cashier if I can borrow their fire extinguisher that was RIGHT there next to her. She told me that I could not use it because it was company property. I then pointed to my car on fire, and all she said was “Call 911”, (I already was talking to them on the phone). I then ask if she can help or go extinguish it since she wouldn’t let me use it, and she told me she didn’t know how to use it. I stood there in front of her for minutes begging and pleading to borrow the fire extinguisher, all while the flames got bigger. Eventually, a stranger handed me a portable fire extinguisher he had, and I tried to go fight the now huge flames with it, but it was too late. The flame eventually engulfed my vintage, collectors 1 previous owner DeLorean (that I was selling for a large amount later today), and the fire department put it out.” Advertisement Yes, this is absolutely maddening. The idea that a car—let alone an interesting vintage car—could be on fire in a parking lot, and yet the use of a fire extinguisher is denied for inane reasons and ignorance is, of course, terrible. Kemsley certainly appears to be a victim of many things: a hit-and-run driver, the alarming act of a DeLorean self-immolating from a very minor traffic incident, the callous disregard and ignorance of the Rite Aid employee, and fate itself. The details of what started the fire aren’t clear, exactly. An impact to the rear of a DeLorean doesn’t seem like the sort of thing likely to start a fire, since a DeLorean has its fuel system components mostly clustered at the opposite end of the engine, by the firewall. Still, it’s an old car, so anything is possible when it comes to things going wrong. Advertisement (I spoke with a Walgreens-Rite Aid spokesperson about the situation, and they declined to comment until they conduct more research into the situation.) This is not the first time Kemsley has had such terrible luck with cars. Last year his BMW i8 was severely vandalized, and he offered a well-publicized $10,000 reward for information about who was responsible. Of course, not all of this may be as it seems, because there appears to be more going on here. Advertisement As I was talking to Kemsley, I got an email from DeLorean Performance Industries with the subject line “DeLorean Arson Utah.” An incendiary subject line, for sure. DeLorean Performance Industries (DPI) is a repair and restoration shop well-known in that car’s community of owners. DPI had done some work on Kemsley’s car, but not a full restoration, though this was claimed by Kemsley’s eBay ad used to sell the DeLorean: “This DeLorean has gone through extensive restoration at DeLorean Performance Industries totaling around $30,000.” Advertisement We can be sure the ad is for Kemsley’s DeLorean because the VIN referenced in the ad matches the last four digits of the one mentioned by Kemsley in a Facebook post from yesterday: Here’s what the company told me: “We have unfortunately been fighting this individual for months due to his false advertising of his vehicle as one of our build cars. All in an attempt to get a premium in the sale to an unsuspecting buyer. We have stopped over a dozen sales of this car prior to the fire as interested parties contacted us directly for the build details of our product. It is rare for one of our innovative builds to hit the market privately as they are serialized and built to order raising flags all over the DeLorean community leading up to this. Out of financial desperation he decided to destroy torch the car in an attempt to collect his assured value.” Advertisement As evidence of their claims, DeLorean Performance Industries sent me screenshots of text exchanges with Kemsley where they requested that ads for the sale of his DeLorean be changed because the text could be “misinterpreted as we did a full restoration on this car.” They also requested that references to them be deleted from YouTube, and complained to him that people were under the impression that they had restored the car, which they had not. They don’t have any direct proof that the fire was intentional, despite their suggestions that it was set deliberately because Kemsley had financial issues and was hoping for an insurance payout. Advertisement I’ve reached out to the Orem, Utah police department to see if I could find out how the fire was being investigated. I have yet to hear a response, though a somewhat strange post on the Orem Police Department’s Facebook page suggests that they are aware: There’s a video of the burning DMC from some passers-by, but all it shows is that most people have no idea where a DeLorean’s engine is and probably watch too many gangster movies: And still, there is some confusing testimony surrounding the fire itself. Advertisement In a comment that has now been removed from Kemsley’s initial post, a Facebook user named Megan Kessler commented, among all the predictable Back to the Future jokes: “Hey, remember me? I’m the girl who handed you the Rite-Aid fire extinguisher, which you refused, because you said you had already tried using one and it didn’t help. I’m not sure what happened after I left the store, but you were not refused a fire extinguisher. Why are you lying about this story?” I asked Kemsley about this comment, and he responded that he had replied in the thread, and went on to say that “Yes, my comments are on that thread. She did not even appear until it was too late to save, and apparently just stole it from rite aid without asking. I already used the small extinguisher from a stranger at this point and was suffering my injuries. At this point flames were 5-7 feet.” Advertisement Complicating the situation further is that a GoFundMe drive with a $50,000 goal was started to raise money to replace the car, though Kemsley insists he had nothing to do with the GoFundMe, and has not had any contact with the person who started it, Brian N. Godfrey. I spoke with Godfrey, and it appears that he did not know Kemsley, and made the GoFundMe as a nice gesture from someone loves 1980s cars and who’s had experience with car fires. When asked why he started the GoFundMe, Godfrey told me: A common friend of his told me he was a good kid, and he earned all of the money himself and his parents didn’t help, etc. I went by that testimony initially. I’m sure he’s got haters who are just jealous, but, because he hasn’t responded to me, I’m not sure what to really believe. I had no idea how much money he had made or does make, I just felt horrible that he had to watch his dream car burn up and that the rite aid employees wouldn’t or couldn’t help. Advertisement He has had no contact with Kemsley, despite repeated attempts to contact him. (And as of Tuesday, the GoFundMe page has been deleted.) Kemsley insists the fire was not deliberate, and has some very specific thoughts regarding what he feels would be a reasonable end to this mess: “My insurance and car is a complete financial loss- I’ve come to terms with it. I want a public apology from Rite Aid, and their employees to be trained to handle safety equipment, which they legally should, and better management and training on the employees they hire.” Advertisement Kemsley continues: “This story is on the news everywhere, but a personal end goal I want is to be interviewed by my favorite YouTuber, Ethan Klein of H3. In the past he has done all the proper research and given justice to people in similar positions. I believe he has the reach and influence to explain the whole situation throughly and give me the justice I am longing for.” If this is Ethan Klein he’s referring to, I’m even more confused. Advertisement So, what the hell is going on here? Is this a genuine accident, exacerbated by some very questionable policies and behaviors on the part of Rite Aid? Or, is it possible this could be, as DeLorean Performance Industries and others are suggesting, a non-accidental fire? All we can really say for sure is that there is one mint DeLorean less in the world and everything is always painfully and depressingly more complicated than it seems.

– Where there's smoke, there's usually fire—a phrase that may apply doubly to a strange story out of Utah. Daryl Kemsley, a 22-year-old YouTuber and car aficionado, tells Fox 13 that his dream car, a 1981 DeLorean driven just 8,100 miles, began to smoke after it was rear-ended in a hit-and-run in Orem on Friday, after Kemsley had decided to sell it for $70,000. Kemsley says he pulled into a Rite Aid parking lot and watched as the car—one of about 9,000 made between 1981 and 1982—caught flame. The vehicle was eventually destroyed, but Kemsley says he could've saved it—and perhaps avoided minor burns—if a Rite Aid employee hadn't impeded him. According to Kemsley, a female employee refused to let him borrow the store's fire extinguisher, claiming it was company property, and declined to use it herself, saying she didn't know how. "I stood there in front of her for minutes begging and pleading … all while the flames got bigger," Kemsley writes in a Facebook post. A since-removed comment on the same post points to a different story, per Jalopnik. "I'm the girl who handed you the Rite Aid fire extinguisher, which you refused," it reads. "Why are you lying about this story?" DeLorean Performance Industries has a theory. It says Kemsley had falsely claimed the company fully restored the car "to get a premium in the sale," and "he decided to [destroy-torch] the car in an attempt to collect his assured value." The Orem Police Department's own Facebook post about the fire adds to the suspicion. "We can all speculate as to why this happened this weekend … #youbethejudge," it reads. Kemsley denies wrongdoing, telling Jalopnik that the Facebook commenter "stole" the extinguisher and arrived at the fire too late.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Please enable Javascript to watch this video OREM, Utah -- A Lindon man says employees at a Rite Aid in Orem wouldn't help him when his car went up in flames in their parking lot. Video from Daryl Kemsley shows his DeLorean engulfed in flames on Friday. Kemsley said the car began emitting smoke after a fender bender, and when he pulled into the parking lot of a Rite Aid he saw a small flame so he got out and called 911. The man said he went into the Rite Aid to ask to borrow a fire extinguisher, but he says the employees told him no because the extinguisher was company property. The man said he asked the employee to use the extinguisher on his car since they wouldn’t loan it to him, and he said the employee told him she didn’t know how to use the extinguisher and declined. “I know legally they don't have to help me, but it just baffles me that they don't know how to use a fire extinguisher,” he said. Firefighters arrived on scene and extinguished the blaze, but the car is a total loss. A manager at the Rite Aid told Fox 13 News they are not able to comment on the incident. Kemsley said he suffered very minor burns while trying to put out the fire with a smaller extinguisher that a bystander loaned him. Kemsley said the DeLorean has been his dream car ever since he saw the “Back to the Future” movies as a child. He said he spent thousands of dollars restoring the vintage vehicle, which he said had only 8,100 miles on it. He said he hoped to sell the car for a profit and had some offers in place prior to the fire breaking out. ||||| This is one of those stories that, at first, just seems simple and terrible. Unfortunately, the more that gets revealed, the less simple everything becomes. The whole thing revolves around one awful event: a 1981 DeLorean destroyed by fire. However, since it’s blown up on the local news and Car Internet, a lot of people are asking questions about what happened. Around noon on Jan. 5, Daryl Kemsley, a 22-year old YouTuber with a taste for exotic cars, was driving his 1981 DeLorean, his childhood dream car. Kemsley claims he had just agreed to sell the DeLorean for $70,000, and was driving the car back from a mechanic after a pre-sale inspection. Advertisement During the drive in Orem, Utah, Kemsley claims in a Facebook post that he was rear-ended by a driver who fled the scene. Although the impact was said to be minor, when Kemsley said he attempted to pursue the other driver, he found that the DeLorean wouldn’t go more than 25 or 30 mph, and noted smoke from the rear, as he explained to me in a series of Facebook messages. He pulled into a nearby Rite Aid parking lot, where he noticed flames coming from the car’s rear engine bay, the Facebook post said. Advertisement Already a bad day, sure, but it gets worse. Kemsley claims that he went into the Rite Aid and asked to use their fire extinguisher, but was refused by an employee. Kemsley describes it in the Facebook post, which has been shared more than 4,000 times as of this writing: “I called 911 and ran into rite aid, and politely asked the cashier if I can borrow their fire extinguisher that was RIGHT there next to her. She told me that I could not use it because it was company property. I then pointed to my car on fire, and all she said was “Call 911”, (I already was talking to them on the phone). I then ask if she can help or go extinguish it since she wouldn’t let me use it, and she told me she didn’t know how to use it. I stood there in front of her for minutes begging and pleading to borrow the fire extinguisher, all while the flames got bigger. Eventually, a stranger handed me a portable fire extinguisher he had, and I tried to go fight the now huge flames with it, but it was too late. The flame eventually engulfed my vintage, collectors 1 previous owner DeLorean (that I was selling for a large amount later today), and the fire department put it out.” Advertisement Yes, this is absolutely maddening. The idea that a car—let alone an interesting vintage car—could be on fire in a parking lot, and yet the use of a fire extinguisher is denied for inane reasons and ignorance is, of course, terrible. Kemsley certainly appears to be a victim of many things: a hit-and-run driver, the alarming act of a DeLorean self-immolating from a very minor traffic incident, the callous disregard and ignorance of the Rite Aid employee, and fate itself. The details of what started the fire aren’t clear, exactly. An impact to the rear of a DeLorean doesn’t seem like the sort of thing likely to start a fire, since a DeLorean has its fuel system components mostly clustered at the opposite end of the engine, by the firewall. Still, it’s an old car, so anything is possible when it comes to things going wrong. Advertisement (I spoke with a Walgreens-Rite Aid spokesperson about the situation, and they declined to comment until they conduct more research into the situation.) This is not the first time Kemsley has had such terrible luck with cars. Last year his BMW i8 was severely vandalized, and he offered a well-publicized $10,000 reward for information about who was responsible. Of course, not all of this may be as it seems, because there appears to be more going on here. Advertisement As I was talking to Kemsley, I got an email from DeLorean Performance Industries with the subject line “DeLorean Arson Utah.” An incendiary subject line, for sure. DeLorean Performance Industries (DPI) is a repair and restoration shop well-known in that car’s community of owners. DPI had done some work on Kemsley’s car, but not a full restoration, though this was claimed by Kemsley’s eBay ad used to sell the DeLorean: “This DeLorean has gone through extensive restoration at DeLorean Performance Industries totaling around $30,000.” Advertisement We can be sure the ad is for Kemsley’s DeLorean because the VIN referenced in the ad matches the last four digits of the one mentioned by Kemsley in a Facebook post from yesterday: Here’s what the company told me: “We have unfortunately been fighting this individual for months due to his false advertising of his vehicle as one of our build cars. All in an attempt to get a premium in the sale to an unsuspecting buyer. We have stopped over a dozen sales of this car prior to the fire as interested parties contacted us directly for the build details of our product. It is rare for one of our innovative builds to hit the market privately as they are serialized and built to order raising flags all over the DeLorean community leading up to this. Out of financial desperation he decided to destroy torch the car in an attempt to collect his assured value.” Advertisement As evidence of their claims, DeLorean Performance Industries sent me screenshots of text exchanges with Kemsley where they requested that ads for the sale of his DeLorean be changed because the text could be “misinterpreted as we did a full restoration on this car.” They also requested that references to them be deleted from YouTube, and complained to him that people were under the impression that they had restored the car, which they had not. They don’t have any direct proof that the fire was intentional, despite their suggestions that it was set deliberately because Kemsley had financial issues and was hoping for an insurance payout. Advertisement I’ve reached out to the Orem, Utah police department to see if I could find out how the fire was being investigated. I have yet to hear a response, though a somewhat strange post on the Orem Police Department’s Facebook page suggests that they are aware: There’s a video of the burning DMC from some passers-by, but all it shows is that most people have no idea where a DeLorean’s engine is and probably watch too many gangster movies: And still, there is some confusing testimony surrounding the fire itself. Advertisement In a comment that has now been removed from Kemsley’s initial post, a Facebook user named Megan Kessler commented, among all the predictable Back to the Future jokes: “Hey, remember me? I’m the girl who handed you the Rite-Aid fire extinguisher, which you refused, because you said you had already tried using one and it didn’t help. I’m not sure what happened after I left the store, but you were not refused a fire extinguisher. Why are you lying about this story?” I asked Kemsley about this comment, and he responded that he had replied in the thread, and went on to say that “Yes, my comments are on that thread. She did not even appear until it was too late to save, and apparently just stole it from rite aid without asking. I already used the small extinguisher from a stranger at this point and was suffering my injuries. At this point flames were 5-7 feet.” Advertisement Complicating the situation further is that a GoFundMe drive with a $50,000 goal was started to raise money to replace the car, though Kemsley insists he had nothing to do with the GoFundMe, and has not had any contact with the person who started it, Brian N. Godfrey. I spoke with Godfrey, and it appears that he did not know Kemsley, and made the GoFundMe as a nice gesture from someone loves 1980s cars and who’s had experience with car fires. When asked why he started the GoFundMe, Godfrey told me: A common friend of his told me he was a good kid, and he earned all of the money himself and his parents didn’t help, etc. I went by that testimony initially. I’m sure he’s got haters who are just jealous, but, because he hasn’t responded to me, I’m not sure what to really believe. I had no idea how much money he had made or does make, I just felt horrible that he had to watch his dream car burn up and that the rite aid employees wouldn’t or couldn’t help. Advertisement He has had no contact with Kemsley, despite repeated attempts to contact him. (And as of Tuesday, the GoFundMe page has been deleted.) Kemsley insists the fire was not deliberate, and has some very specific thoughts regarding what he feels would be a reasonable end to this mess: “My insurance and car is a complete financial loss- I’ve come to terms with it. I want a public apology from Rite Aid, and their employees to be trained to handle safety equipment, which they legally should, and better management and training on the employees they hire.” Advertisement Kemsley continues: “This story is on the news everywhere, but a personal end goal I want is to be interviewed by my favorite YouTuber, Ethan Klein of H3. In the past he has done all the proper research and given justice to people in similar positions. I believe he has the reach and influence to explain the whole situation throughly and give me the justice I am longing for.” If this is Ethan Klein he’s referring to, I’m even more confused. Advertisement So, what the hell is going on here? Is this a genuine accident, exacerbated by some very questionable policies and behaviors on the part of Rite Aid? Or, is it possible this could be, as DeLorean Performance Industries and others are suggesting, a non-accidental fire? All we can really say for sure is that there is one mint DeLorean less in the world and everything is always painfully and depressingly more complicated than it seems.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

The Humane League convinces America’s largest representative of egg producers to take a historic stance on ending the practice of shredding newborn male chicks Following exclusive conversations with The Humane League, United Egg Producers announced today that it will eliminate the culling of male chicks at egg laying hen hatcheries by 2020, replacing the practice with in-ovo egg sexing technology. United Egg Producers represents 95% of all eggs produced in the country, making today's statement historic in its firm stance against the slaughter of newborn male chicks, which is currently standard practice at nearly every egg hatchery in the country. Male chicks are useless to the egg industry, so industry disposes of these newborns in the most brutal of ways. While still alive and just hours old - the babies are thrown into a high-speed industrial grinder, have their spinal cords severed or are suffocated. Hundreds of millions of newborn male chicks are killed this way in the United States each year. To address this practice of grinding and suffocating day-old chicks, the embryo-sexing technology will enable the termination of all male-identified eggs from the hatchery, preventing them from ever being hatched and culled. This process will also spare tens of thousands of hens from suffering a lifetime on factory farms as the male-identified eggs will be used for an alternative supply, like vaccinations or pet food, reducing demand on the current flock of egg laying hens. The Humane League has an agreement with United Egg Producers to touch base periodically to understand the status of the availability and adoption of this new technology. United Egg Producer's decision to end its support of shredding and suffocating baby male chicks is historic, as it will virtually eliminate this practice in the American egg industry. Though this is not an issue that many people are aware of, The Humane League is proud to have played such a pivotal role in doing away with this barbaric convention and to help pave the way to a more humane future. It is clear that chick culling will soon be a thing of the past in the United States. After waging a successful war on cages by securing commitments to eliminate cages from the supply chains of over 150 companies, including Walmart, Kroger, Sodexo, ConAgra and Denny's, The Humane League approached United Egg Producers earlier this year with a request to work on eliminating the practice of chick culling. Through exclusive conversations and strategizing, The Humane League and United Egg Producers determined a feasible timeline for the egg producers the cooperative represents to implement the new embryo-sexing technology as it becomes available for commercial use. United Egg Producer's decision to support the elimination of newborn male chick culling is a historic tipping point and will prevent the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals each year. ||||| In a massive victory for animal rights activists, and for America's chickens, United Egg Producers, a group that represents 95 percent of all eggs produced in the United States, has announced that it will eliminate culling of male chicks at hatcheries where egg-laying hens are born by 2020. This may sound like a technical development, but its magnitude in humanitarian terms is difficult to overstate. That's because standard practice at hatcheries that supply egg farms with hens is to kill almost all male chicks shortly after birth, usually by grinding them to death, as you can see in this horrifying video: Gassing is also sometimes used. Hundreds of millions of male chicks are killed this way, every year, in the United States alone. The business logic behind chick culling is hard to get around. There's no reason to keep the male chicks alive; they're not useful for meat, as broiler chickens are bred in a totally different manner, to maximize size and quantity of meat. In the past, animal welfare advocates have proposed breeding "dual-purpose" chickens, which could be raised humanely for meat as well as serving as hens, to get around this, but got little traction. But ending chick culling has become possible recently due to technology. United Egg Producers says it will replace culling with "in-ovo egg sexing." This is a process that can determine the sex of chicks before they develop inside their egg. That enables egg producers to terminate the male eggs and potentially use them to help make vaccines or for pet food (most humans would presumably be grossed out by cooking fertilized eggs). Horrific infanticides will be replaced with humane, painless chicken abortions. Unilever became the first major corporation to take a stand against culling in 2014, declaring its intention to use in-ovo egg selection to avoid chick culling in hatcheries where the hens that lay eggs for Ben & Jerry's, Hellman's Mayonnaise, and its other egg-based products are born. In Germany, where much of the research enabling in-ovo sexing took place, policymakers committed last year to use the technology to eliminate chick culling by 2017. Government action in the US hasn't been forthcoming, but these new UEP policy changes — which follow negotiations with the Humane League, a relatively young but shockingly effective and influential animal rights organization — are the next best thing. In a statement, Humane League executive director David Coman-Hidy stated that the UEP commitment "will virtually eliminate this practice in the American egg industry. … It is clear that chick culling will soon be a thing of the past in the United States." This solidifies the Humane League as one of America's most important animal rights groups The Humane League (THL) does not have the public recognition that groups like PETA or the Humane Society of the United States do, but it's quickly become one of the most important and effective voices for animals in the United States. It was founded relatively recently, in 2005, and until very recently had only a handful of staffers. But it soon figured out a very effective way of making progress: corporate campaigns. It lobbies companies that buy large quantities of meat and eggs to demand higher animal welfare standards from their suppliers. This really works. For example, THL contacted colleges and universities that employ the food services company Sodexo, along with students at those colleges and universities, and asked them to demand that Sodexo only use cage-free eggs. Eventually, Sodexo committed to do just that. And THL did all this at very low cost. "Up until a year ago, THL had achieved 2-4 corporate victories per year with two part-time staff working on corporate campaigns," the Open Philanthropy Project wrote in an analysis earlier this year. "Since putting four full-time staff on corporate campaigns a year ago, THL has achieved about 35 victories." "These are all standard tactics," Coman-Hidy told me in an interview last year. "But with only a few people and a few laptops, we could replicate the work over and over with new clients each week, and that was what made the campaign. Sodexo lasted two months. … If you perfect your tactics, it costs almost nothing. Getting 54 companies was done by three or four people with laptops," In total, the Open Philanthropy Project estimated that THL spent less than $250,000 on corporate campaigns and, estimating very roughly, spared about 300 hens from cage confinement for every dollar spent. Even if that estimate is off by an order of magnitude, it's a very impressive figure. These negotiations on chick culling will have an even bigger impact. If the changes stick, THL's activism will have prevented the deaths of literally millions of chicks going forward, at roughly no cost. "For the Humane League, the cost is solely our time put into the conversations," Jessie Lingenfelter at THL tells me. That is impact of just an astonishing scale. Undercover videos help explain meat in America ||||| A day-old baby chick. (Juana Arias for The Washington Post) It’s a disturbing practice most Americans probably know nothing about: On the day they’re born, all the fluffy male chicks born to egg-laying hens at hatcheries are gruesomely killed — usually by being run, while conscious, through what is essentially a blender. That’s because they’re useless to the industry. They can’t grow up to lay eggs, and they weren’t bred to be the fast-growing chickens sold as meat. But that’s going to change. In what counts as huge news in the animal welfare world, United Egg Producers — the industry group that represents hatcheries that produce 95 percent of all eggs produced in the United States — announced Thursday that it would end this “culling” of millions of chicks by 2020, or as soon as it’s “economically feasible” and an alternative is “commercially available,” according to the Humane League, which negotiated the agreement. [The adorable way some birds help chicks learn to sing: ‘Baby talk’] What’s the alternative? The main one is called in-ovo sexing, and it identifies the gender of a future chick inside a fertilized egg. The technology, developed in Germany and the Netherlands, will mean those male chicks will never be born — or ground or gassed or suffocated, the kill methods some hatcheries employ. Other alternatives are also being explored, including one that would turn male chick eggs a different color from those of females, Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States, said in a recent interview. “We are aware that there are a number of international research initiatives underway in this area, and we encourage the development of an alternative with the goal of eliminating the culling,” Chad Gregory, the president and chief executive of United Egg Producers, said in a statement. A chick pecking its way out of its egg in an incubator at a lab at Germany’s Dresden Institute of Technology as part of a project to determine the sex of chicks before they hatch. (John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images) The pledge follows a wave of vows by major U.S. companies — including McDonald’s and Walmart — to switch in the coming years to eggs laid by hens that are not confined in cages. Those commitments are one pillar of a series of big, consumer-driven animal rights achievements in recent years, many of them in the farm industry. But the male chick issue hasn’t been at the top of the agenda of most animal welfare organizations, which have focused more on cage-free eggs. As Shapiro explained recently, the males are “the lucky ones” compared with the females that go on to lay about 270 eggs each year in cages the size of a piece of notebook paper. “Their sisters are still going to be slaughtered, but they’re going to spend 18 months in a cage where they can never spread their wings,” he said. “Eighteen months of unmitigated misery is far worse than what happens to these male chicks.” [What Harambe’s death means for a critically endangered species of gorilla] But the Humane League, a relatively new group that’s also played a big role in pressuring companies to switch to cage-free eggs, evidently also decided to drill down on the male culling. Its statement, issued jointly with United Egg Producers, said it brokered the industry group’s commitment to ending the practice “through exclusive conversations.” “United Egg Producer’s decision to support the elimination of newborn male chick culling is a historic tipping point and will prevent the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals each year,” the statement said. In 2014, Unilever, which owns Hellman’s mayonnaise and egg-using companies, publicly committed to supporting the development of in-ovo technology and switching to it. What’s become of that effort is unclear, however. A company spokeswoman told The Washington Post last month that the company was working with the Dutch firm In Ovo but did not respond to requests for more information. What is clear is that the United States may be among the first nations to do away with male chick culling. (Germany has pledged to end it by 2017, but the country’s Parliament recently voted down a ban.) In a country that’s hardly famous for humane animal farming practices, this is a big deal. Read more: Seagull fell in vat of chicken tikka masala, turned orange, ‘smelled amazing’ A victory for lab rats: Congress moves to limit chemical testing on animals I saw the baby bison that tourists tried to save. Here’s what you don’t know about the story.

– In a move Vox calls "the best news for America's animals in decades," United Egg Producers announced Thursday that it will stop culling newborn boy chicks. The Humane League negotiated the move with the UEP, the US's biggest representative of egg producers, and it will be carried out by 2020. Most people probably aren't aware of the practice of culling: Nearly all male chicks born at egg-laying hen hatcheries are killed—typically by grinding or gassing—soon after birth because they can't be raised for meat. Chickens to be used that way are bred differently in order to grow quickly and achieve maximum size and amount of meat. Now, UEP will start using "in-ovo egg sexing" to figure out which eggs are male and terminate them. The fertilized eggs can still be used, though likely not for human food—other uses include pet food or vaccines. The move will save hundreds of millions of male chicks from culling per year in the US, and, as the Humane League points out, it "will also spare tens of thousands of hens from suffering a lifetime on factory farms" because the male eggs will reduce demand on egg-laying hens. Germany has also pledged to end chick culling by 2017, but the US is among the first nations to make such a pledge, the Washington Post reports. The Humane League previously convinced more than 150 companies to eliminate cages for chickens from their supply chains. (McDonald's is cleaning up the McNugget.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.The Humane League convinces America’s largest representative of egg producers to take a historic stance on ending the practice of shredding newborn male chicks Following exclusive conversations with The Humane League, United Egg Producers announced today that it will eliminate the culling of male chicks at egg laying hen hatcheries by 2020, replacing the practice with in-ovo egg sexing technology. United Egg Producers represents 95% of all eggs produced in the country, making today's statement historic in its firm stance against the slaughter of newborn male chicks, which is currently standard practice at nearly every egg hatchery in the country. Male chicks are useless to the egg industry, so industry disposes of these newborns in the most brutal of ways. While still alive and just hours old - the babies are thrown into a high-speed industrial grinder, have their spinal cords severed or are suffocated. Hundreds of millions of newborn male chicks are killed this way in the United States each year. To address this practice of grinding and suffocating day-old chicks, the embryo-sexing technology will enable the termination of all male-identified eggs from the hatchery, preventing them from ever being hatched and culled. This process will also spare tens of thousands of hens from suffering a lifetime on factory farms as the male-identified eggs will be used for an alternative supply, like vaccinations or pet food, reducing demand on the current flock of egg laying hens. The Humane League has an agreement with United Egg Producers to touch base periodically to understand the status of the availability and adoption of this new technology. United Egg Producer's decision to end its support of shredding and suffocating baby male chicks is historic, as it will virtually eliminate this practice in the American egg industry. Though this is not an issue that many people are aware of, The Humane League is proud to have played such a pivotal role in doing away with this barbaric convention and to help pave the way to a more humane future. It is clear that chick culling will soon be a thing of the past in the United States. After waging a successful war on cages by securing commitments to eliminate cages from the supply chains of over 150 companies, including Walmart, Kroger, Sodexo, ConAgra and Denny's, The Humane League approached United Egg Producers earlier this year with a request to work on eliminating the practice of chick culling. Through exclusive conversations and strategizing, The Humane League and United Egg Producers determined a feasible timeline for the egg producers the cooperative represents to implement the new embryo-sexing technology as it becomes available for commercial use. United Egg Producer's decision to support the elimination of newborn male chick culling is a historic tipping point and will prevent the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals each year. ||||| In a massive victory for animal rights activists, and for America's chickens, United Egg Producers, a group that represents 95 percent of all eggs produced in the United States, has announced that it will eliminate culling of male chicks at hatcheries where egg-laying hens are born by 2020. This may sound like a technical development, but its magnitude in humanitarian terms is difficult to overstate. That's because standard practice at hatcheries that supply egg farms with hens is to kill almost all male chicks shortly after birth, usually by grinding them to death, as you can see in this horrifying video: Gassing is also sometimes used. Hundreds of millions of male chicks are killed this way, every year, in the United States alone. The business logic behind chick culling is hard to get around. There's no reason to keep the male chicks alive; they're not useful for meat, as broiler chickens are bred in a totally different manner, to maximize size and quantity of meat. In the past, animal welfare advocates have proposed breeding "dual-purpose" chickens, which could be raised humanely for meat as well as serving as hens, to get around this, but got little traction. But ending chick culling has become possible recently due to technology. United Egg Producers says it will replace culling with "in-ovo egg sexing." This is a process that can determine the sex of chicks before they develop inside their egg. That enables egg producers to terminate the male eggs and potentially use them to help make vaccines or for pet food (most humans would presumably be grossed out by cooking fertilized eggs). Horrific infanticides will be replaced with humane, painless chicken abortions. Unilever became the first major corporation to take a stand against culling in 2014, declaring its intention to use in-ovo egg selection to avoid chick culling in hatcheries where the hens that lay eggs for Ben & Jerry's, Hellman's Mayonnaise, and its other egg-based products are born. In Germany, where much of the research enabling in-ovo sexing took place, policymakers committed last year to use the technology to eliminate chick culling by 2017. Government action in the US hasn't been forthcoming, but these new UEP policy changes — which follow negotiations with the Humane League, a relatively young but shockingly effective and influential animal rights organization — are the next best thing. In a statement, Humane League executive director David Coman-Hidy stated that the UEP commitment "will virtually eliminate this practice in the American egg industry. … It is clear that chick culling will soon be a thing of the past in the United States." This solidifies the Humane League as one of America's most important animal rights groups The Humane League (THL) does not have the public recognition that groups like PETA or the Humane Society of the United States do, but it's quickly become one of the most important and effective voices for animals in the United States. It was founded relatively recently, in 2005, and until very recently had only a handful of staffers. But it soon figured out a very effective way of making progress: corporate campaigns. It lobbies companies that buy large quantities of meat and eggs to demand higher animal welfare standards from their suppliers. This really works. For example, THL contacted colleges and universities that employ the food services company Sodexo, along with students at those colleges and universities, and asked them to demand that Sodexo only use cage-free eggs. Eventually, Sodexo committed to do just that. And THL did all this at very low cost. "Up until a year ago, THL had achieved 2-4 corporate victories per year with two part-time staff working on corporate campaigns," the Open Philanthropy Project wrote in an analysis earlier this year. "Since putting four full-time staff on corporate campaigns a year ago, THL has achieved about 35 victories." "These are all standard tactics," Coman-Hidy told me in an interview last year. "But with only a few people and a few laptops, we could replicate the work over and over with new clients each week, and that was what made the campaign. Sodexo lasted two months. … If you perfect your tactics, it costs almost nothing. Getting 54 companies was done by three or four people with laptops," In total, the Open Philanthropy Project estimated that THL spent less than $250,000 on corporate campaigns and, estimating very roughly, spared about 300 hens from cage confinement for every dollar spent. Even if that estimate is off by an order of magnitude, it's a very impressive figure. These negotiations on chick culling will have an even bigger impact. If the changes stick, THL's activism will have prevented the deaths of literally millions of chicks going forward, at roughly no cost. "For the Humane League, the cost is solely our time put into the conversations," Jessie Lingenfelter at THL tells me. That is impact of just an astonishing scale. Undercover videos help explain meat in America ||||| A day-old baby chick. (Juana Arias for The Washington Post) It’s a disturbing practice most Americans probably know nothing about: On the day they’re born, all the fluffy male chicks born to egg-laying hens at hatcheries are gruesomely killed — usually by being run, while conscious, through what is essentially a blender. That’s because they’re useless to the industry. They can’t grow up to lay eggs, and they weren’t bred to be the fast-growing chickens sold as meat. But that’s going to change. In what counts as huge news in the animal welfare world, United Egg Producers — the industry group that represents hatcheries that produce 95 percent of all eggs produced in the United States — announced Thursday that it would end this “culling” of millions of chicks by 2020, or as soon as it’s “economically feasible” and an alternative is “commercially available,” according to the Humane League, which negotiated the agreement. [The adorable way some birds help chicks learn to sing: ‘Baby talk’] What’s the alternative? The main one is called in-ovo sexing, and it identifies the gender of a future chick inside a fertilized egg. The technology, developed in Germany and the Netherlands, will mean those male chicks will never be born — or ground or gassed or suffocated, the kill methods some hatcheries employ. Other alternatives are also being explored, including one that would turn male chick eggs a different color from those of females, Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States, said in a recent interview. “We are aware that there are a number of international research initiatives underway in this area, and we encourage the development of an alternative with the goal of eliminating the culling,” Chad Gregory, the president and chief executive of United Egg Producers, said in a statement. A chick pecking its way out of its egg in an incubator at a lab at Germany’s Dresden Institute of Technology as part of a project to determine the sex of chicks before they hatch. (John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images) The pledge follows a wave of vows by major U.S. companies — including McDonald’s and Walmart — to switch in the coming years to eggs laid by hens that are not confined in cages. Those commitments are one pillar of a series of big, consumer-driven animal rights achievements in recent years, many of them in the farm industry. But the male chick issue hasn’t been at the top of the agenda of most animal welfare organizations, which have focused more on cage-free eggs. As Shapiro explained recently, the males are “the lucky ones” compared with the females that go on to lay about 270 eggs each year in cages the size of a piece of notebook paper. “Their sisters are still going to be slaughtered, but they’re going to spend 18 months in a cage where they can never spread their wings,” he said. “Eighteen months of unmitigated misery is far worse than what happens to these male chicks.” [What Harambe’s death means for a critically endangered species of gorilla] But the Humane League, a relatively new group that’s also played a big role in pressuring companies to switch to cage-free eggs, evidently also decided to drill down on the male culling. Its statement, issued jointly with United Egg Producers, said it brokered the industry group’s commitment to ending the practice “through exclusive conversations.” “United Egg Producer’s decision to support the elimination of newborn male chick culling is a historic tipping point and will prevent the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals each year,” the statement said. In 2014, Unilever, which owns Hellman’s mayonnaise and egg-using companies, publicly committed to supporting the development of in-ovo technology and switching to it. What’s become of that effort is unclear, however. A company spokeswoman told The Washington Post last month that the company was working with the Dutch firm In Ovo but did not respond to requests for more information. What is clear is that the United States may be among the first nations to do away with male chick culling. (Germany has pledged to end it by 2017, but the country’s Parliament recently voted down a ban.) In a country that’s hardly famous for humane animal farming practices, this is a big deal. Read more: Seagull fell in vat of chicken tikka masala, turned orange, ‘smelled amazing’ A victory for lab rats: Congress moves to limit chemical testing on animals I saw the baby bison that tourists tried to save. Here’s what you don’t know about the story.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Admiral Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard commander in overall charge of the operation, declared that the preventer "will be taken into custody" and become part of the "evidence material that's been required by the joint investigative team". His comments reflected another shift in the direction of a tragedy that has claimed 11 lives, cost BP chief executive Tony Hayward his job, BP and its shareholders at least $50bn (£32.3bn), diminished the credibility of President Obama, disrupted fishing and tourism, and threatened the environment around the Gulf states. The preventer, now under close guard and inspection, has almost assumed a criminal dimension. It will form a crucial part of the evidence the US Justice Department is examining to see whether BP or Transocean, owners of the stricken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, have broken any rules that could result in a successful prosecution. Law enforcement officers were on hand to take charge as soon as the preventer broke surface, 5000ft above the seabed. BP is already facing more than 300 private civil lawsuits resulting from the April 20 explosion and oil spill but the prospect of a Justice Department prosecution, whether civil or criminal, is likely to be the most damaging if not costly. The information provided from an exhaustive examination will play a vital part in any case mounted against BP. Experts want to know whether the failure was down to the equipment or human error. ||||| Investigators looking into what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are a step closer to answers now that a key piece of evidence is secure aboard a ship. In this Sept. 4, 2010 picture, the Helix Q4000, center, the vessel responsible for lifting the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack from the sea floor, is seen from a helicopter during its landing... (Associated Press) Workers secure the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 after lifting it from the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick... (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is lifted out of the Gulf of Mexico by the Helix Q4000 near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) Workers watch as the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick... (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) In this Sept. 4, 2010 picture, the Helix Q4000, the vessel responsible for lifting the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack from the sea floor, is seen on the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana.... (Associated Press) In this Sept. 4, 2010 picture, the Helix Q4000, bottom, the vessel responsible for lifting the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack from the sea floor, is seen on the Gulf of Mexico near the coast... (Associated Press) Workers watch as the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack is lowered onto red supports on the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP... (Associated Press) Engineers took 29 1/2 hours to lift the 50-foot, 300-ton blowout preventer from a mile beneath the sea. The five-story high device breached the water's surface at 6:54 p.m. CDT, and looked largely intact with black stains on the yellow metal. FBI agents were among the 137 people aboard the Helix Q4000 vessel, taking photos and video of the device. They will escort it back to a NASA facility in Louisiana for analysis. The AP was the only news outlet with a print reporter and photographer on board the ship. The blowout preventer was placed into a metal contraption specifically designed to hold the massive device at 9:16 p.m. CDT Saturday. As it was maneuvered into place, crew members were silent and water dripped off the device. Crews had been delayed raising the device after icelike crystals _ called hydrates _ formed on it. The device couldn't be safely lifted from the water until the hydrates melted because the hydrates are combustible, said Darin Hilton, the captain of the Helix Q4000. Hydrates form when gases such as methane mix with water under high pressure and cold temperatures. The crystals caused BP PLC problems in May, when hydrates formed on a 100-ton, four-story dome the company tried to place over the leak to contain it. As a large hatch opened up on the Helix to allow the blowout preventer to pass through, several hundred feet of light sheen could be seen near the boat, though crews weren't exactly sure what it was. The April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP PLC's undersea well. Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting. But they don't know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don't know why the blowout preventer didn't seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to. While the device didn't close _ or may have closed partially _ investigative hearings have produced no clear picture of why it didn't plug the well. Documents emerged showing that a part of the device had a hydraulic leak, which would have reduced its effectiveness, and that a passive "deadman" trigger had a low, perhaps even dead, battery. Steve Newman, president of rig owner Transocean, told lawmakers following the disaster that there was no evidence the device itself failed and suggested debris might have been forced into it by the surging gas. There has also been testimony that the blowout preventer didn't undergo a rigorous recertification process in 2005 as required by federal regulators. Testimony from BP and Transocean officials also showed that repairs were not always authorized by the manufacturer, Cameron International, and that confusion about the equipment delayed attempts to close the well in the days after the explosion. A Transocean official has said he knew the blowout preventer was functioning because he personally oversaw its maintenance, and he said the device underwent tests to ensure it was working. The device, he said, had undergone a maintenance overhaul in February as it was being moved to the Deepwater Horizon to be placed over BP's well. Also, according to testimony, a BP well site leader performed a pressure test April 9 on the blowout preventer, and he said it passed. Some have cautioned that the blowout preventer will not provide clues to what caused the gas bubble. And it is possible a thorough review may not be able to show why it didn't work. That could leave investigators to speculate on causes using data, records and testimony. Lawyers will be watching closely, too, as hundreds of lawsuits have been filed over the oil spill. Future liabilities faced by a number of corporations could be riding on what the analysis of the blowout preventer shows. A temporary cap that stopped oil from gushing into the Gulf in mid-July was removed Thursday. No more oil was expected to leak into the sea, but crews were standing by with collection vessels in case. The government said a new blowout preventer was placed on the blown-out well late Friday.

– No sooner had BP raised the device that was supposed to prevent an oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico than the US Coast Guard took possession of it yesterday. The blowout preventer will be a key piece of evidence in the US probe into what went wrong in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. The 350 ton, 5-story-tall device was hoisted into a metal contraption with FBI agents standing by, and it is now under constant guard, reports the Telegraph. It will be ferried to a NASA facility in Louisiana for examination, according to AP.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Admiral Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard commander in overall charge of the operation, declared that the preventer "will be taken into custody" and become part of the "evidence material that's been required by the joint investigative team". His comments reflected another shift in the direction of a tragedy that has claimed 11 lives, cost BP chief executive Tony Hayward his job, BP and its shareholders at least $50bn (£32.3bn), diminished the credibility of President Obama, disrupted fishing and tourism, and threatened the environment around the Gulf states. The preventer, now under close guard and inspection, has almost assumed a criminal dimension. It will form a crucial part of the evidence the US Justice Department is examining to see whether BP or Transocean, owners of the stricken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, have broken any rules that could result in a successful prosecution. Law enforcement officers were on hand to take charge as soon as the preventer broke surface, 5000ft above the seabed. BP is already facing more than 300 private civil lawsuits resulting from the April 20 explosion and oil spill but the prospect of a Justice Department prosecution, whether civil or criminal, is likely to be the most damaging if not costly. The information provided from an exhaustive examination will play a vital part in any case mounted against BP. Experts want to know whether the failure was down to the equipment or human error. ||||| Investigators looking into what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are a step closer to answers now that a key piece of evidence is secure aboard a ship. In this Sept. 4, 2010 picture, the Helix Q4000, center, the vessel responsible for lifting the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack from the sea floor, is seen from a helicopter during its landing... (Associated Press) Workers secure the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 after lifting it from the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick... (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is lifted out of the Gulf of Mexico by the Helix Q4000 near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) Workers watch as the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick... (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack is lifted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Associated Press) In this Sept. 4, 2010 picture, the Helix Q4000, the vessel responsible for lifting the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack from the sea floor, is seen on the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana.... (Associated Press) In this Sept. 4, 2010 picture, the Helix Q4000, bottom, the vessel responsible for lifting the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack from the sea floor, is seen on the Gulf of Mexico near the coast... (Associated Press) Workers watch as the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer stack is lowered onto red supports on the deck of the Helix Q4000 in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2010. (AP... (Associated Press) Engineers took 29 1/2 hours to lift the 50-foot, 300-ton blowout preventer from a mile beneath the sea. The five-story high device breached the water's surface at 6:54 p.m. CDT, and looked largely intact with black stains on the yellow metal. FBI agents were among the 137 people aboard the Helix Q4000 vessel, taking photos and video of the device. They will escort it back to a NASA facility in Louisiana for analysis. The AP was the only news outlet with a print reporter and photographer on board the ship. The blowout preventer was placed into a metal contraption specifically designed to hold the massive device at 9:16 p.m. CDT Saturday. As it was maneuvered into place, crew members were silent and water dripped off the device. Crews had been delayed raising the device after icelike crystals _ called hydrates _ formed on it. The device couldn't be safely lifted from the water until the hydrates melted because the hydrates are combustible, said Darin Hilton, the captain of the Helix Q4000. Hydrates form when gases such as methane mix with water under high pressure and cold temperatures. The crystals caused BP PLC problems in May, when hydrates formed on a 100-ton, four-story dome the company tried to place over the leak to contain it. As a large hatch opened up on the Helix to allow the blowout preventer to pass through, several hundred feet of light sheen could be seen near the boat, though crews weren't exactly sure what it was. The April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP PLC's undersea well. Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting. But they don't know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don't know why the blowout preventer didn't seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to. While the device didn't close _ or may have closed partially _ investigative hearings have produced no clear picture of why it didn't plug the well. Documents emerged showing that a part of the device had a hydraulic leak, which would have reduced its effectiveness, and that a passive "deadman" trigger had a low, perhaps even dead, battery. Steve Newman, president of rig owner Transocean, told lawmakers following the disaster that there was no evidence the device itself failed and suggested debris might have been forced into it by the surging gas. There has also been testimony that the blowout preventer didn't undergo a rigorous recertification process in 2005 as required by federal regulators. Testimony from BP and Transocean officials also showed that repairs were not always authorized by the manufacturer, Cameron International, and that confusion about the equipment delayed attempts to close the well in the days after the explosion. A Transocean official has said he knew the blowout preventer was functioning because he personally oversaw its maintenance, and he said the device underwent tests to ensure it was working. The device, he said, had undergone a maintenance overhaul in February as it was being moved to the Deepwater Horizon to be placed over BP's well. Also, according to testimony, a BP well site leader performed a pressure test April 9 on the blowout preventer, and he said it passed. Some have cautioned that the blowout preventer will not provide clues to what caused the gas bubble. And it is possible a thorough review may not be able to show why it didn't work. That could leave investigators to speculate on causes using data, records and testimony. Lawyers will be watching closely, too, as hundreds of lawsuits have been filed over the oil spill. Future liabilities faced by a number of corporations could be riding on what the analysis of the blowout preventer shows. A temporary cap that stopped oil from gushing into the Gulf in mid-July was removed Thursday. No more oil was expected to leak into the sea, but crews were standing by with collection vessels in case. The government said a new blowout preventer was placed on the blown-out well late Friday.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

1.5 out of 4 stars Written by Cameron Crowe Directed by Cameron Crowe Starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams Genre Romance Classification PG Country USA Language English Conventional wisdom holds that it is difficult, if not impossible, to make a good movie in Hawaii. Filming in a tropical paradise tends to make filmmakers soft and scattered, more focused on how to spend their free time than the work at hand. So it is wise to be skeptical of a movie made in Hawaii, and about Hawaii, and swooningly in love with Hawaii – and cursed with the most generic imaginable title for a Hawaii-themed movie – from Cameron Crowe, a filmmaker inclined to gooey softness even when he's not filming in one of the most enchanting places on Earth. Tonally and thematically, Aloha feels like a willfully perverse return to Crowe's 2005 Elizabethtown, the director's biggest flop, but clearly a film he loves so much he inexplicably felt the need to make it twice, once in the American South and once even further south in Honolulu. Both films centre on men whose extraordinary early promise has curdled into disillusionment, leaving them broken and distraught before they return to a homey little paradise, complete with fantasy love interest. In Elizabethtown, the prodigy made bad was a disgraced superstar shoe designer played by Orlando Bloom. Here, it's the depressed Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper, reverting to the blandly handsome blankness of his pre-Silver Linings Playbook career), a space-obsessed genius who has accepted a mercenary post working for oily billionaire defence contractor Carson Welch (Bill Murray) following a series of personal and professional mistakes that have left him a broken husk of a man. Story continues below advertisement But just as fate provides Bloom's sad sack an antidote to his soul-sickness in the form of a flight attendant played by Kirsten Dunst, who will not rest until he's bursting with joy, in Aloha, Brian's gloom meets an even more powerful force for happiness in the form of Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone), his defence department-appointed guide. Allison is supposed to be adorably irritating. Instead, she comes off as irritatingly adorable, despite the extraordinary charm and magnetism of Stone. Dunst's performance in Elizabethtown inspired me to coin the phrase "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" to describe the strangely ubiquitous archetype of the bubbly life-lover who exists in movies like this to instill life lessons and engender a rapturous appreciation of the world's wonders to gloomy male depressives. Considering the criticism he received for Dunst's performance in Elizabethtown, it's bewildering that Crowe apparently instructed Stone to give an identical turn in a suspiciously similar role. Crowe has a small-time politician's fawning deference to the innate kindness and decency of common people, and an aging hippie's distrust of the man. As in Elizabethtown, the protagonist is partially healed by the unwavering enthusiasm and support of an impossibly cheerful, upbeat figure of romantic fantasy and partially by interacting with the salt-of-the-earth natives of a charmed Southern utopia. Aloha's politics are bumper-sticker simplistic and reductive. It is the cinematic equivalent of a "War is harmful for children and other living things" sticker slapped on a Volkswagen van, particularly in a third act that turns on missiles being the enemy of outer space, which is all beautiful and pure and sacred, man. At his best, Crowe's kindness toward his characters and unapologetic embrace of sincerity is a formidable strength in his great early movies like Almost Famous, Say Anything and Jerry Maguire, but at this point his kindness is a weakness and his fondness for his characters has devolved into sloppy sentimentality. Aloha is a marshmallow of a film: soft on the inside, soft on the outside and wholly devoid of substance. For a film overflowing with grand proclamations of love and wonder, Aloha's best moments are devoid of dialogue. As in the similarly maudlin St. Vincent, Murray is strongest during the rare instances where he's able to break free of a leaden screenplay and simply exult in the glory of being Bill Murray, most notably in a scene where he dances defiantly and exuberantly with Stone. Like Murray, the actress is better served by scenes where she doesn't have to talk than by the reams of self-conscious banter Crowe forces upon her. In one of the film's many bizarre miscalculations, the wry and wisecracking John Krasinski is miscast as John (Woody) Woodside, the strong, silent husband of Brian's ex-girlfriend Tracy (the delightful Rachel McAdams, underserved in a role and subplot begging for the cutting room floor). Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement The single joke of Woody's character, and a joke the film returns to over and over again to its cutesy detriment (perhaps because it has so few others), is that he communicates a lot without actually speaking. Within the context of the film, this causes problems in his marriage with Tracy. But given the nature of Crowe's desperately overwritten screenplay, a reluctance to fill the world with bubbly, unnecessary and stridently clever verbiage is less a flaw than a strength every character in the film should share. ||||| Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone fall in and out of love in the comedy “Aloha.” (Photo: Neal Preston / AP) Where to begin with “Aloha”? Begin by not going to the movie. But wait — Bradley Cooper’s in this movie. And Emma Stone. And Bill Murray! How bad can it be if it’s got Bill Murray? Pretty bad. Apparently Bill Murray is not the cure for everything. Especially not this script. This is a romantic comedy in which a mad billionaire (Murray) tries to fill outer space with nuclear bombs under his control. “Where’s the romance or comedy in that?” you ask. Exactly. It’s like adding Dr. Evil to “Sleepless in Seattle.” Cooper plays Brian Gilcrest, a government contractor who returns to his Hawaiian homeland to smooth the way for the billionaire’s secret space program. Immediately upon landing, he encounters his long-abandoned girlfriend, Tracy (Rachel McAdams), who is now married to another old friend, Woody (John Krasinski). Gilcrest is also introduced to his official handler, the overeager Capt. Ng (Stone). From there the film becomes a splatter of random quirks. Gilcrest may be an ancient Hawaiian myth come to life ... until that storyline is dropped. He and Ng have knowing conversations that are hard to interpret. Ng suddenly sits down with some actual native Hawaiian people — this movie has very few such folk — for a painfully cliched singalong. A colonel (Danny McBride) does twitchy things with his hands, Woody apparently communicates psychically, and Ng and Gilcrest encounter warrior ghosts while driving down a road. Then the two are in love, then they’re not; then they are, then they’re not ... and then suddenly, with no set-up, he’s a world-class computer genius. Whaaaat? Writer-director Cameron Crowe has done good work (“Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire”), but he’s also produced absolute mush (“Elizabethtown,” “We Bought a Zoo”). Simply put, “Aloha” is more mush. ‘Aloha’ GRADE: D Rated PG-13 for some language including suggestive comments Running time: 105 minutes Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1Hzx8Bp ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites.

– An all-star cast of Bradley Cooper, Rachel McAdams, Emma Stone, and Bill Murray comes together in Aloha, a love-triangle romantic comedy set in, you guessed it, Hawaii. But that all-star cast wasn't enough to win over most critics: "Aloha is a marshmallow of a film: soft on the inside, soft on the outside, and wholly devoid of substance," writes Nathan Rabin at the Globe and Mail. He argues the flick is a remake of director Cameron Crowe's "biggest flop," 2005's Elizabethtown, only in a new location. The actors are plagued by a "desperately overwritten screenplay," and only when free from dialogue do they show their potential. In one such scene, Murray basks "in the glory of being Bill Murray" as he "dances defiantly and exuberantly with Stone." Tom Long opens his review with this line: "Where to begin with Aloha? Begin by not going to the movie." The idea to squeeze a mad billionaire's plan for space domination into a romantic romp is not a good one, he writes at the Detroit News: "It's like adding Dr. Evil to Sleepless in Seattle." The flick in general is "mush" filled with "a splatter of random quirks," he says. "Apparently Bill Murray is not the cure for everything." Over the ukuleles, Steven Rea hears "the drip-drop of flop sweat." More than a few details in Aloha are "hard to swallow," including Stone's character's supposed one-quarter Hawaiian ancestry, he writes at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Stone also seems too young to be a fighter pilot carrying on a relationship with Cooper's defense contractor. More importantly, though, "For all the screwball patter, smart-aleck similes, and zingy one-liners that Crowe has handed his mismatched cast, a kerplunking emptiness runs through Aloha." But Rene Rodriguez at the Miami Herald appears to be a fan. Aloha is Crowe's "strangest movie to date ... and in some ways, it is also his worst," he writes. But "there are moments of such emotional honesty ... that prove he can still turn cliched situations into moments of clear-eyed insight into the infuriating, heartbreaking vagaries of love." The flick may be an "overstuffed" mess, "but messes can be fascinating," he continues. "The doors to the Aloha cult fan club are officially open. I'll take one ticket, please."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.1.5 out of 4 stars Written by Cameron Crowe Directed by Cameron Crowe Starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams Genre Romance Classification PG Country USA Language English Conventional wisdom holds that it is difficult, if not impossible, to make a good movie in Hawaii. Filming in a tropical paradise tends to make filmmakers soft and scattered, more focused on how to spend their free time than the work at hand. So it is wise to be skeptical of a movie made in Hawaii, and about Hawaii, and swooningly in love with Hawaii – and cursed with the most generic imaginable title for a Hawaii-themed movie – from Cameron Crowe, a filmmaker inclined to gooey softness even when he's not filming in one of the most enchanting places on Earth. Tonally and thematically, Aloha feels like a willfully perverse return to Crowe's 2005 Elizabethtown, the director's biggest flop, but clearly a film he loves so much he inexplicably felt the need to make it twice, once in the American South and once even further south in Honolulu. Both films centre on men whose extraordinary early promise has curdled into disillusionment, leaving them broken and distraught before they return to a homey little paradise, complete with fantasy love interest. In Elizabethtown, the prodigy made bad was a disgraced superstar shoe designer played by Orlando Bloom. Here, it's the depressed Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper, reverting to the blandly handsome blankness of his pre-Silver Linings Playbook career), a space-obsessed genius who has accepted a mercenary post working for oily billionaire defence contractor Carson Welch (Bill Murray) following a series of personal and professional mistakes that have left him a broken husk of a man. Story continues below advertisement But just as fate provides Bloom's sad sack an antidote to his soul-sickness in the form of a flight attendant played by Kirsten Dunst, who will not rest until he's bursting with joy, in Aloha, Brian's gloom meets an even more powerful force for happiness in the form of Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone), his defence department-appointed guide. Allison is supposed to be adorably irritating. Instead, she comes off as irritatingly adorable, despite the extraordinary charm and magnetism of Stone. Dunst's performance in Elizabethtown inspired me to coin the phrase "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" to describe the strangely ubiquitous archetype of the bubbly life-lover who exists in movies like this to instill life lessons and engender a rapturous appreciation of the world's wonders to gloomy male depressives. Considering the criticism he received for Dunst's performance in Elizabethtown, it's bewildering that Crowe apparently instructed Stone to give an identical turn in a suspiciously similar role. Crowe has a small-time politician's fawning deference to the innate kindness and decency of common people, and an aging hippie's distrust of the man. As in Elizabethtown, the protagonist is partially healed by the unwavering enthusiasm and support of an impossibly cheerful, upbeat figure of romantic fantasy and partially by interacting with the salt-of-the-earth natives of a charmed Southern utopia. Aloha's politics are bumper-sticker simplistic and reductive. It is the cinematic equivalent of a "War is harmful for children and other living things" sticker slapped on a Volkswagen van, particularly in a third act that turns on missiles being the enemy of outer space, which is all beautiful and pure and sacred, man. At his best, Crowe's kindness toward his characters and unapologetic embrace of sincerity is a formidable strength in his great early movies like Almost Famous, Say Anything and Jerry Maguire, but at this point his kindness is a weakness and his fondness for his characters has devolved into sloppy sentimentality. Aloha is a marshmallow of a film: soft on the inside, soft on the outside and wholly devoid of substance. For a film overflowing with grand proclamations of love and wonder, Aloha's best moments are devoid of dialogue. As in the similarly maudlin St. Vincent, Murray is strongest during the rare instances where he's able to break free of a leaden screenplay and simply exult in the glory of being Bill Murray, most notably in a scene where he dances defiantly and exuberantly with Stone. Like Murray, the actress is better served by scenes where she doesn't have to talk than by the reams of self-conscious banter Crowe forces upon her. In one of the film's many bizarre miscalculations, the wry and wisecracking John Krasinski is miscast as John (Woody) Woodside, the strong, silent husband of Brian's ex-girlfriend Tracy (the delightful Rachel McAdams, underserved in a role and subplot begging for the cutting room floor). Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement The single joke of Woody's character, and a joke the film returns to over and over again to its cutesy detriment (perhaps because it has so few others), is that he communicates a lot without actually speaking. Within the context of the film, this causes problems in his marriage with Tracy. But given the nature of Crowe's desperately overwritten screenplay, a reluctance to fill the world with bubbly, unnecessary and stridently clever verbiage is less a flaw than a strength every character in the film should share. ||||| Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone fall in and out of love in the comedy “Aloha.” (Photo: Neal Preston / AP) Where to begin with “Aloha”? Begin by not going to the movie. But wait — Bradley Cooper’s in this movie. And Emma Stone. And Bill Murray! How bad can it be if it’s got Bill Murray? Pretty bad. Apparently Bill Murray is not the cure for everything. Especially not this script. This is a romantic comedy in which a mad billionaire (Murray) tries to fill outer space with nuclear bombs under his control. “Where’s the romance or comedy in that?” you ask. Exactly. It’s like adding Dr. Evil to “Sleepless in Seattle.” Cooper plays Brian Gilcrest, a government contractor who returns to his Hawaiian homeland to smooth the way for the billionaire’s secret space program. Immediately upon landing, he encounters his long-abandoned girlfriend, Tracy (Rachel McAdams), who is now married to another old friend, Woody (John Krasinski). Gilcrest is also introduced to his official handler, the overeager Capt. Ng (Stone). From there the film becomes a splatter of random quirks. Gilcrest may be an ancient Hawaiian myth come to life ... until that storyline is dropped. He and Ng have knowing conversations that are hard to interpret. Ng suddenly sits down with some actual native Hawaiian people — this movie has very few such folk — for a painfully cliched singalong. A colonel (Danny McBride) does twitchy things with his hands, Woody apparently communicates psychically, and Ng and Gilcrest encounter warrior ghosts while driving down a road. Then the two are in love, then they’re not; then they are, then they’re not ... and then suddenly, with no set-up, he’s a world-class computer genius. Whaaaat? Writer-director Cameron Crowe has done good work (“Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire”), but he’s also produced absolute mush (“Elizabethtown,” “We Bought a Zoo”). Simply put, “Aloha” is more mush. ‘Aloha’ GRADE: D Rated PG-13 for some language including suggestive comments Running time: 105 minutes Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1Hzx8Bp ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

The U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday overturned a jury's decision to award $1.8 million to former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura in a 2014 defamation case. A three-judge panel unanimously threw out the $1.35 million award to Ventura for "unjust enrichment," saying Minnesota law did not permit it. And in a 2-1 decision, it reversed the $500,000 award for defamation, remanding the case to the district court for a new trial on that question. The decision was a victory for Taya Kyle, the widow of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who wrote the bestselling memoir "American Sniper" that Ventura said defamed him. It was also a win for national news organizations that had urged that the verdict be thrown out. "If a person bringing a libel suit could collect not just for damages, but for unjust enrichment … the whole nature of libel law would have been changed in a very threatening way," said Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment attorney in New York, who had filed an amicus brief on behalf of 33 news organizations. The ruling was a serious blow to Ventura, the former professional wrestler who served as governor from 1999 to 2003. A Ventura spokeswoman said Monday he was waiting to consult with his attorneys and would not comment at this time. His attorneys did not return phone calls. Taya Kyle could not be reached, and neither her attorneys nor "American Sniper" publisher HarperCollins would comment. Ventura Ventura's suit claimed that Kyle's memoir contained a false account of a fight in a California bar in 2006 in which Kyle claimed he punched a man named "Scruff Face" for disparaging the war in Iraq and saying the SEALs "deserve to lose a few." Kyle later identified the man as Ventura. Ventura contended that the incident never happened and the passage ruined his reputation among Navy SEALs, whose reunions he routinely attended after serving with the SEALs during the Vietnam War. Taya Kyle appealed the jury's verdict, which came after a three-week federal trial in St. Paul in July 2014. After six days of deliberations, the 10-member jury deadlocked. Not knowing which side the jury favored, U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle, no relation to Chris Kyle, won agreement from the attorneys on both sides to allow for the split decision. The verdict favored Ventura 8 to 2. The appeals court found that the unjust enrichment claim was not applicable in Ventura's case. To prevail, Ventura would have had to establish that he had at least a "preexisting contractual or quasi-contractual relationship with Kyle," the ruling said. No such contract existed, said the court. "Ventura's unjust-enrichment claim is not allowed by Minnesota law." In addition, the appellate court said, the "adequate remedy" for compensation in defamation cases was a defamation award for unjust enrichment. However, the appeals court majority also overturned the $500,000 defamation award. It hinged its reversal on a more technical argument, but one that was a centerpiece of the appeal filed by the attorneys for Taya Kyle and her late husband's estate. The appellate court said that Ventura's attorney, David B. Olsen, was wrong to suggest at trial that any payouts by Taya Kyle — should the jury conclude Ventura was defamed — would be covered by insurance purchased by HarperCollins, the publisher of "American Sniper." Olsen raised the insurance issue in questioning two employees of HarperCollins and during closing arguments. The mention of insurance prejudiced the jury, the Eighth Circuit said. Jurors would be less hesitant to make a substantial defamation award if they were aware that Taya Kyle was covered by an insurance policy, the court said. Olsen had argued in court and in his appeal that the publishing contract mentions the insurance policy and Taya Kyle's attorneys introduced the contract into evidence. The Eighth Circuit stated, "We must conclude Ventura's counsel's closing remarks, in combination with the improper cross-examination of two witnesses about Kyle's insurance coverage, prevented Kyle from receiving a fair trial. The district court clearly abused its discretion in denying a new trial. … We remand the defamation claim for a new trial." The decision was written by William J. Riley, chief judge of the Eighth Circuit, joined by Judge Bobby E. Shepherd. In a partial dissent, Judge Lavenski Smith concurred with the majority's decision to reverse the unjust enrichment award but said the defamation award should be upheld. Smith wrote that Olsen's statement and questions to witnesses about insurance were "harmless and nonprejudicial." In addition, he wrote, there was only a passing reference to insurance during Olsen's hourlong closing argument. Kyle Wrote Smith, "The $500,000 in damages on the defamation claim is not an excessive verdict; as even the majority concedes, the verdict 'is probably not beyond the bounds of rationality.' " Mark Anfinson, a local media attorney, called the appeals decision "a huge victory, not just for the media but for free speech generally." "There had never been, so far as anyone knew, an award in a defamation case for unjust enrichment as well." It is unclear what Ventura will do. "It is going to be back to the drawing board as to whether Ventura wants to go through this again," said Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Leonard Niehoff, a University of Michigan law professor who wrote an amicus brief signed by First Amendment scholars, said, "As a practical matter, when cases go back for retrial, retrials do not happen for one reason or another, but it is still a reversal and a very important victory for the defendants." ||||| (Reuters) - A divided federal appeals court on Monday overturned a $1.85 million award that former Minnesota Governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura won after claiming he was defamed by the late author of the best-selling memoir “American Sniper.” Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura speaks to the media a at the governor's office in the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, November 4, 2002. REUTERS/Eric Miller The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voided a St. Paul, Minnesota jury’s July 2014 award of $500,000 for defamation and about $1.35 million for unjust enrichment against the estate of former U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle. It ordered a new trial on the defamation claim. Kyle had been the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history, responsible for 160 kills during his career. He was shot to death at age 38 at a Texas shooting range in February 2013. His memoir became a blockbuster movie. Ventura’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Kyle’s widow Taya referred requests for comment to News Corp’s HarperCollins, the memoir’s publisher. A spokeswoman, Erin Crum, said HarperCollins was reviewing the decision. In his 2012 memoir, Chris Kyle wrote that he had in October 2006 punched out a man identified as “Scruff Face” in a southern California bar, following the funeral of a fellow SEAL. He said the incident occurred after Scruff Face criticized the Iraq war and former U.S. President George W. Bush, said the SEALs deserved “to lose a few,” and took a swing at Kyle. While promoting the memoir, Kyle identified Ventura as Scruff Face. Ventura, a former SEAL, has said he was at the bar, but that the altercation was made up, and the memoir hurt his reputation. By a 2-1 vote, the appeals court said the defamation award must be voided because of improper questioning of two witnesses, and improper remarks by Ventura’s lawyer during closing arguments, suggesting that insurance might cover any judgment against Kyle’s estate. “It is difficult to see how Ventura’s counsel’s comments were anything other than a deliberate strategic choice to try to influence and enhance damages by referencing an impersonal deep-pocket insurer,” Chief Judge William Riley wrote. The appeals court unanimously voided the $1.35 million award for unjust enrichment, representing some profits from Kyle’s memoir, saying Minnesota law did not support Ventura’s claim. Jurors had recommended the award, which the trial judge adopted. Ventura was Minnesota’s governor from 1999 to 2003. “American Sniper” became a 2014 movie starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood, and grossed more than $500 million worldwide. The case is Ventura v Kyle et al, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 14-3876. ||||| Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura said Wednesday his successful lawsuit against the estate of late Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle was about "the truth" and that he has no plans to reach out to Kyle's widow, who is the executor of the Kyle's estate, now that the trial is over. "All I wanted to do was clear my name, and it has nothing to do with a widow or anything like that," Ventura said on "CBS This Morning" during his first post-trial interview. The dispute revolves around the description of an alleged incident in Kyle's book, "American Sniper," in which the former SEAL claimed he punched Ventura in 2006 after the former governor said the SEALs "deserved to lose a few" in Iraq. "I would have been a big-time loser had I not pursued the lawsuit, because ... the whole story was fabricated," Ventura said. "I was accused of treason, which in the military is the death penalty." Before he was killed at a Texas gun range by a fellow veteran last year, Chris Kyle delivered testimony that the story was true. Taya Kyle, Kyle's widow, has also maintained through her legal team that she believes the story was true. John Borger, an attorney for Kyle's estate, told The Associated Press that Taya was "surprised and upset" when she learned of the $1.8 million verdict against the estate. The lawsuit was filed before Kyle was killed. Ventura has also said he is upset because he is a former Navy SEAL and Kyle's claim hit him personally. "I can't go to a SEAL reunion anymore," Ventura said. "That was the one place that I always felt safe. I can't go there anymore. I would be looking over my shoulder now wondering who's going to come after me next. And so, don't think I come out of this unscathed." Much of the criticism against Ventura has centered around the size of the verdict against Kyle's estate, which is providing for his widow and two children. Ventura said that criticism doesn't bother him. "Taya Kyle had all of her attorney fees paid by insurance. I did not. I incurred two-and-a-half years of lawyer fees that I have to pay to clear my name, and she had insurance paying everything for her," Ventura said on "CBS This Morning." "It was me against an insurance company." Ventura said he will use his winnings to pay his lawyers' fees. When asked why he thought Kyle might have made up the tale of the punch-out, Ventura called it a "sea story." "In the Navy it happens all the time," Ventura said. "One sailor lies to another sailor. That second sailor then tells the story three more times, and all of the sudden, the sea story becomes the truth. They were drunk. They were drinking heavily, and it was just a story that happened in another bar and erupted six years later." The dispute over Kyle's book may not be over, either. Ventura said on "CBS This Morning" he plans to "visit" the book's publisher, HarperCollins. "They published the book and did no due diligence to find out if the story was true," Ventura said. EDITOR'S NOTE: After Ventura appeared on "CBS This Morning," HarperCollins released a statement saying it was removing the passage about the former governor from "American Sniper." ||||| MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal appeals court has thrown out a $1.8 million judgment awarded to former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who says he was defamed in the late author Chris Kyle's bestselling book "American Sniper." The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday rejected the jury's 2014 award of $500,000 for defamation and $1.3 million for unjust enrichment against Kyle's estate. The court reversed the unjust-enrichment award, saying it fails as a matter of law. It also vacated the defamation award, but ordered a new trial for that portion of the case. Kyle, a Navy SEAL and the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history, claimed to have punched Ventura at a California bar in 2006 after Ventura said the SEALs "deserve to lose a few" in Iraq. Ventura, a former SEAL, testified he never made the comments and that the altercation never happened.

– Ex-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura was set to collect $1.8 million from the estate of Chris Kyle, claiming the late Navy SEAL defamed him in his 2012 book American Sniper, but a federal appeals court nixed that 2014 judgment on Monday, the AP reports. In a 2-1 decision, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals nullified Ventura's $1.35 million award for "unjust enrichment," though it did call for a new trial for the defamation part of the case, which netted Ventura $500,000, the Star Tribune reports. The court said due to improper cross-examination of witnesses and comments made by Ventura's lawyer during closing arguments, Kyle's estate didn't get a fair trial, per Reuters. The 2006 incident in question that Ventura balked at: Kyle's description in his book of a supposed altercation in which he punched Ventura in a California bar after Ventura goaded him by saying Navy SEALs "deserve to lose a few" in Iraq. Ventura, a former SEAL himself, says he never made that remark and that there was no punch. "I would have been a big-time loser had I not pursued the lawsuit, because … the whole story was fabricated," Ventura told CBS News in 2014. "I was accused of treason, which in the military is the death penalty." (Meanwhile, a report says Kyle exaggerated his war record.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.The U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday overturned a jury's decision to award $1.8 million to former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura in a 2014 defamation case. A three-judge panel unanimously threw out the $1.35 million award to Ventura for "unjust enrichment," saying Minnesota law did not permit it. And in a 2-1 decision, it reversed the $500,000 award for defamation, remanding the case to the district court for a new trial on that question. The decision was a victory for Taya Kyle, the widow of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who wrote the bestselling memoir "American Sniper" that Ventura said defamed him. It was also a win for national news organizations that had urged that the verdict be thrown out. "If a person bringing a libel suit could collect not just for damages, but for unjust enrichment … the whole nature of libel law would have been changed in a very threatening way," said Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment attorney in New York, who had filed an amicus brief on behalf of 33 news organizations. The ruling was a serious blow to Ventura, the former professional wrestler who served as governor from 1999 to 2003. A Ventura spokeswoman said Monday he was waiting to consult with his attorneys and would not comment at this time. His attorneys did not return phone calls. Taya Kyle could not be reached, and neither her attorneys nor "American Sniper" publisher HarperCollins would comment. Ventura Ventura's suit claimed that Kyle's memoir contained a false account of a fight in a California bar in 2006 in which Kyle claimed he punched a man named "Scruff Face" for disparaging the war in Iraq and saying the SEALs "deserve to lose a few." Kyle later identified the man as Ventura. Ventura contended that the incident never happened and the passage ruined his reputation among Navy SEALs, whose reunions he routinely attended after serving with the SEALs during the Vietnam War. Taya Kyle appealed the jury's verdict, which came after a three-week federal trial in St. Paul in July 2014. After six days of deliberations, the 10-member jury deadlocked. Not knowing which side the jury favored, U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle, no relation to Chris Kyle, won agreement from the attorneys on both sides to allow for the split decision. The verdict favored Ventura 8 to 2. The appeals court found that the unjust enrichment claim was not applicable in Ventura's case. To prevail, Ventura would have had to establish that he had at least a "preexisting contractual or quasi-contractual relationship with Kyle," the ruling said. No such contract existed, said the court. "Ventura's unjust-enrichment claim is not allowed by Minnesota law." In addition, the appellate court said, the "adequate remedy" for compensation in defamation cases was a defamation award for unjust enrichment. However, the appeals court majority also overturned the $500,000 defamation award. It hinged its reversal on a more technical argument, but one that was a centerpiece of the appeal filed by the attorneys for Taya Kyle and her late husband's estate. The appellate court said that Ventura's attorney, David B. Olsen, was wrong to suggest at trial that any payouts by Taya Kyle — should the jury conclude Ventura was defamed — would be covered by insurance purchased by HarperCollins, the publisher of "American Sniper." Olsen raised the insurance issue in questioning two employees of HarperCollins and during closing arguments. The mention of insurance prejudiced the jury, the Eighth Circuit said. Jurors would be less hesitant to make a substantial defamation award if they were aware that Taya Kyle was covered by an insurance policy, the court said. Olsen had argued in court and in his appeal that the publishing contract mentions the insurance policy and Taya Kyle's attorneys introduced the contract into evidence. The Eighth Circuit stated, "We must conclude Ventura's counsel's closing remarks, in combination with the improper cross-examination of two witnesses about Kyle's insurance coverage, prevented Kyle from receiving a fair trial. The district court clearly abused its discretion in denying a new trial. … We remand the defamation claim for a new trial." The decision was written by William J. Riley, chief judge of the Eighth Circuit, joined by Judge Bobby E. Shepherd. In a partial dissent, Judge Lavenski Smith concurred with the majority's decision to reverse the unjust enrichment award but said the defamation award should be upheld. Smith wrote that Olsen's statement and questions to witnesses about insurance were "harmless and nonprejudicial." In addition, he wrote, there was only a passing reference to insurance during Olsen's hourlong closing argument. Kyle Wrote Smith, "The $500,000 in damages on the defamation claim is not an excessive verdict; as even the majority concedes, the verdict 'is probably not beyond the bounds of rationality.' " Mark Anfinson, a local media attorney, called the appeals decision "a huge victory, not just for the media but for free speech generally." "There had never been, so far as anyone knew, an award in a defamation case for unjust enrichment as well." It is unclear what Ventura will do. "It is going to be back to the drawing board as to whether Ventura wants to go through this again," said Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Leonard Niehoff, a University of Michigan law professor who wrote an amicus brief signed by First Amendment scholars, said, "As a practical matter, when cases go back for retrial, retrials do not happen for one reason or another, but it is still a reversal and a very important victory for the defendants." ||||| (Reuters) - A divided federal appeals court on Monday overturned a $1.85 million award that former Minnesota Governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura won after claiming he was defamed by the late author of the best-selling memoir “American Sniper.” Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura speaks to the media a at the governor's office in the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, November 4, 2002. REUTERS/Eric Miller The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voided a St. Paul, Minnesota jury’s July 2014 award of $500,000 for defamation and about $1.35 million for unjust enrichment against the estate of former U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle. It ordered a new trial on the defamation claim. Kyle had been the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history, responsible for 160 kills during his career. He was shot to death at age 38 at a Texas shooting range in February 2013. His memoir became a blockbuster movie. Ventura’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Kyle’s widow Taya referred requests for comment to News Corp’s HarperCollins, the memoir’s publisher. A spokeswoman, Erin Crum, said HarperCollins was reviewing the decision. In his 2012 memoir, Chris Kyle wrote that he had in October 2006 punched out a man identified as “Scruff Face” in a southern California bar, following the funeral of a fellow SEAL. He said the incident occurred after Scruff Face criticized the Iraq war and former U.S. President George W. Bush, said the SEALs deserved “to lose a few,” and took a swing at Kyle. While promoting the memoir, Kyle identified Ventura as Scruff Face. Ventura, a former SEAL, has said he was at the bar, but that the altercation was made up, and the memoir hurt his reputation. By a 2-1 vote, the appeals court said the defamation award must be voided because of improper questioning of two witnesses, and improper remarks by Ventura’s lawyer during closing arguments, suggesting that insurance might cover any judgment against Kyle’s estate. “It is difficult to see how Ventura’s counsel’s comments were anything other than a deliberate strategic choice to try to influence and enhance damages by referencing an impersonal deep-pocket insurer,” Chief Judge William Riley wrote. The appeals court unanimously voided the $1.35 million award for unjust enrichment, representing some profits from Kyle’s memoir, saying Minnesota law did not support Ventura’s claim. Jurors had recommended the award, which the trial judge adopted. Ventura was Minnesota’s governor from 1999 to 2003. “American Sniper” became a 2014 movie starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood, and grossed more than $500 million worldwide. The case is Ventura v Kyle et al, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 14-3876. ||||| Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura said Wednesday his successful lawsuit against the estate of late Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle was about "the truth" and that he has no plans to reach out to Kyle's widow, who is the executor of the Kyle's estate, now that the trial is over. "All I wanted to do was clear my name, and it has nothing to do with a widow or anything like that," Ventura said on "CBS This Morning" during his first post-trial interview. The dispute revolves around the description of an alleged incident in Kyle's book, "American Sniper," in which the former SEAL claimed he punched Ventura in 2006 after the former governor said the SEALs "deserved to lose a few" in Iraq. "I would have been a big-time loser had I not pursued the lawsuit, because ... the whole story was fabricated," Ventura said. "I was accused of treason, which in the military is the death penalty." Before he was killed at a Texas gun range by a fellow veteran last year, Chris Kyle delivered testimony that the story was true. Taya Kyle, Kyle's widow, has also maintained through her legal team that she believes the story was true. John Borger, an attorney for Kyle's estate, told The Associated Press that Taya was "surprised and upset" when she learned of the $1.8 million verdict against the estate. The lawsuit was filed before Kyle was killed. Ventura has also said he is upset because he is a former Navy SEAL and Kyle's claim hit him personally. "I can't go to a SEAL reunion anymore," Ventura said. "That was the one place that I always felt safe. I can't go there anymore. I would be looking over my shoulder now wondering who's going to come after me next. And so, don't think I come out of this unscathed." Much of the criticism against Ventura has centered around the size of the verdict against Kyle's estate, which is providing for his widow and two children. Ventura said that criticism doesn't bother him. "Taya Kyle had all of her attorney fees paid by insurance. I did not. I incurred two-and-a-half years of lawyer fees that I have to pay to clear my name, and she had insurance paying everything for her," Ventura said on "CBS This Morning." "It was me against an insurance company." Ventura said he will use his winnings to pay his lawyers' fees. When asked why he thought Kyle might have made up the tale of the punch-out, Ventura called it a "sea story." "In the Navy it happens all the time," Ventura said. "One sailor lies to another sailor. That second sailor then tells the story three more times, and all of the sudden, the sea story becomes the truth. They were drunk. They were drinking heavily, and it was just a story that happened in another bar and erupted six years later." The dispute over Kyle's book may not be over, either. Ventura said on "CBS This Morning" he plans to "visit" the book's publisher, HarperCollins. "They published the book and did no due diligence to find out if the story was true," Ventura said. EDITOR'S NOTE: After Ventura appeared on "CBS This Morning," HarperCollins released a statement saying it was removing the passage about the former governor from "American Sniper." ||||| MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal appeals court has thrown out a $1.8 million judgment awarded to former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who says he was defamed in the late author Chris Kyle's bestselling book "American Sniper." The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday rejected the jury's 2014 award of $500,000 for defamation and $1.3 million for unjust enrichment against Kyle's estate. The court reversed the unjust-enrichment award, saying it fails as a matter of law. It also vacated the defamation award, but ordered a new trial for that portion of the case. Kyle, a Navy SEAL and the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history, claimed to have punched Ventura at a California bar in 2006 after Ventura said the SEALs "deserve to lose a few" in Iraq. Ventura, a former SEAL, testified he never made the comments and that the altercation never happened.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Mitt Romney could cut all US income tax rates by a fifth and still keep popular deductions for the middle class, the Republican presidential candidate’s running mate Paul Ryan said Sunday. “You can lower tax rates by 20 per cent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class, for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for healthcare,” said Mr Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who is Mr Romney’s candidate for vice-president, in an interview with Fox News. It was a rare comment on deductions and Republicans have come under fire for specifying plans to cut tax rates, but declining to say which loopholes would be eliminated to pay for them. Mr Ryan’s remarks suggest a Romney tax reform would let many people carry on deducting mortgage interest and medical costs from their tax bills. But that raises questions about whether it is possible to have such a big cut in rates without increasing the deficit. Mr Ryan blasted as “so thoroughly discredited” a study by the Tax Policy Center that argued it would be impossible for Mr Romney to cut all rates by 20 per cent, keep government revenues stable, and avoid any increase in tax for those earning less than $200,000. But Mr Ryan declined to lay out the costs of the rate cut and the offsetting revenue increase from scrapping deductions, saying that it would “take me too long to go through all of the math” during the interview. ||||| Fox News' Chris Wallace pressed GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Sunday morning to try to explain how Mitt Romney's tax plan would add up. The conundrum is that Romney is proposing to lower all individual rates by 20 percent by targeting deductions for high-income earners, without putting the burden on the middle class or adding to the deficit—a plan the Tax Policy Center has shown to be "mathematically impossible." Wallace tried to get Ryan to explain how the tax plan achieved all of these goals and pointed out that the plan was "not revenue neutral unless you take away the deductions," but the Wisconsin Republican deflected the question: RYAN: We’re saying, limited deductions so you can lower tax rates for everybody. Start with people at the higher end...lowering tax rates by broadening the tax base works. WALLACE: You haven’t given me the math. RYAN: (laughs) Well, I don’t have the time. It would take me too long to go through all the math. But let me say it this way, you can lower tax rates by 20 percent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for health care... WALLACE: If — just suppose — that the doubters are right, President Romney takes office and the math doesn’t add up… RYAN: First of all, we've run the numbers. I've run them in Congress, they do*. We've got five other studies that show you can do this. So the basic message from Ryan here is: Trust us—the math adds up. The problem is, even one of the studies that Romney has cited to justify his plan—which Ryan refers to in passing above—shows that his tax plan won't work unless taxes go up for those making over $100,000, which Romney still counts as middle-class. Another study that the Romney camp cites, by Princeton's Harvey Rosen, uses implausibly optimistic assumptions about economic growth, as my colleague Dylan Matthews explains here. *Update: This quote originally ran as "First of all, run the numbers. They've run them in Congress." It's been corrected, per the official Fox transcript.

– Asked today to defend Mitt Romney's tax plan, Paul Ryan said he didn't "have the time"—but did give an overview and referred the curious to various studies, the Washington Post reports. Chris Wallace was pressing Ryan on Fox News Sunday about how Romney could reduce high-income individual tax rates by 20% and still come out revenue neutral. "You haven't given me the math," said Wallace. Ryan laughed and said, "Well, I don’t have the time. It would take me too long to go through all the math." But he did say the government could "lower tax rates by 20% across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for health care…" He also told Wallace to check out five studies that support the plan, and blasted a Tax Policy Center study that said Romney couldn't make the 20% cut without boosting taxes on the middle class, reports the Financial Times.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Mitt Romney could cut all US income tax rates by a fifth and still keep popular deductions for the middle class, the Republican presidential candidate’s running mate Paul Ryan said Sunday. “You can lower tax rates by 20 per cent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class, for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for healthcare,” said Mr Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who is Mr Romney’s candidate for vice-president, in an interview with Fox News. It was a rare comment on deductions and Republicans have come under fire for specifying plans to cut tax rates, but declining to say which loopholes would be eliminated to pay for them. Mr Ryan’s remarks suggest a Romney tax reform would let many people carry on deducting mortgage interest and medical costs from their tax bills. But that raises questions about whether it is possible to have such a big cut in rates without increasing the deficit. Mr Ryan blasted as “so thoroughly discredited” a study by the Tax Policy Center that argued it would be impossible for Mr Romney to cut all rates by 20 per cent, keep government revenues stable, and avoid any increase in tax for those earning less than $200,000. But Mr Ryan declined to lay out the costs of the rate cut and the offsetting revenue increase from scrapping deductions, saying that it would “take me too long to go through all of the math” during the interview. ||||| Fox News' Chris Wallace pressed GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Sunday morning to try to explain how Mitt Romney's tax plan would add up. The conundrum is that Romney is proposing to lower all individual rates by 20 percent by targeting deductions for high-income earners, without putting the burden on the middle class or adding to the deficit—a plan the Tax Policy Center has shown to be "mathematically impossible." Wallace tried to get Ryan to explain how the tax plan achieved all of these goals and pointed out that the plan was "not revenue neutral unless you take away the deductions," but the Wisconsin Republican deflected the question: RYAN: We’re saying, limited deductions so you can lower tax rates for everybody. Start with people at the higher end...lowering tax rates by broadening the tax base works. WALLACE: You haven’t given me the math. RYAN: (laughs) Well, I don’t have the time. It would take me too long to go through all the math. But let me say it this way, you can lower tax rates by 20 percent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for health care... WALLACE: If — just suppose — that the doubters are right, President Romney takes office and the math doesn’t add up… RYAN: First of all, we've run the numbers. I've run them in Congress, they do*. We've got five other studies that show you can do this. So the basic message from Ryan here is: Trust us—the math adds up. The problem is, even one of the studies that Romney has cited to justify his plan—which Ryan refers to in passing above—shows that his tax plan won't work unless taxes go up for those making over $100,000, which Romney still counts as middle-class. Another study that the Romney camp cites, by Princeton's Harvey Rosen, uses implausibly optimistic assumptions about economic growth, as my colleague Dylan Matthews explains here. *Update: This quote originally ran as "First of all, run the numbers. They've run them in Congress." It's been corrected, per the official Fox transcript.

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Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The governors of Illinois and Ohio have bet each other cases of beer, pizza and other ballpark favorites ahead of the World Series contest between the Cubs and the Indians. In a Monday tweet on his Twitter page , Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner wagered an extra-large Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and a case of microbrew beer from Chicago if the Indians win. In a Monday response on his Twitter page , Ohio Gov. John Kasich returned his fellow Republican's challenge, saying he would send Rauner "fan favorites" should the Cubs win. A Kasich spokeswoman says those would include items such as local beer, ballpark mustard from Cleveland and other products from the city. The series begins Tuesday in Cleveland. ||||| Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more

– The governors of Illinois and Ohio have bet each other cases of beer, pizza, and other ballpark favorites ahead of the World Series contest between the Cubs and the Indians. In a Monday tweet, Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner wagered an extra-large Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and a case of microbrew beer from Chicago if the Indians win, the AP reports. But "you're not going to get that delicious food and beer," Rauner said. "We're going to eat it here. Because you know what? The Cubs are going to win." Ohio Gov. John Kasich returned his fellow Republican's challenge, also acknowledging the bet in a tweet and noting he would send Rauner "fan favorites" should the Cubs end their 108-year title drought. "I'm gonna match him in that bet because I know the Indians are going to roll, and they're going to roll not just for Cleveland but for people all across the great Buckeye State," he said. A Kasich spokeswoman says the "fan favorites" would include items such as local beer, ballpark mustard from Cleveland, and other products from the city. The series begins Tuesday in Cleveland.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The governors of Illinois and Ohio have bet each other cases of beer, pizza and other ballpark favorites ahead of the World Series contest between the Cubs and the Indians. In a Monday tweet on his Twitter page , Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner wagered an extra-large Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and a case of microbrew beer from Chicago if the Indians win. In a Monday response on his Twitter page , Ohio Gov. John Kasich returned his fellow Republican's challenge, saying he would send Rauner "fan favorites" should the Cubs win. A Kasich spokeswoman says those would include items such as local beer, ballpark mustard from Cleveland and other products from the city. The series begins Tuesday in Cleveland. ||||| Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more

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Hedge fund operator Robert Mercer almost never talks about himself, and neither do the people who know him. Yet Mercer's money is sure making a lot of noise on the campaign trail. The third most generous Republican donor this cycle, Mercer has cut checks for a total of $37 million in the past six years, supporting pro-life candidates, those who deny man-made global warming, as well as helping fund the effort to block construction of a mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York. In fact, this year he gave more to the Koch brothers' organization, $2.5 million, than the Kansas founders, David and Charles, who each chipped in just $2 million to Freedom Partners Action Fund. Bloomberg Visual Data Yet the man who first made his mark by upending the field of computer linguistics and is now seeking to bend the national political debate in his conservative direction, is a stranger to the electorate he seeks to sway and the public that would be affected should he succeed. He is the ultimate behind-the-scenes kingmaker in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate who almost never talks—publicly or otherwise. An address to computer scientists at an awards ceremony in Baltimore this summer was a rare exception, and he admitted to finding it daunting. It was only after he agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award that it dawned on him that he'd have to address attendees for about an hour. "Which, by the way, is more than I typically talk in a month," he said. About 10 minutes into the lecture, he paused, and took a sip of water. "I've just reached one week of speaking," he said, "so I have to take a little drink." Asked to share their impressions about Mercer, people who have met him at conservative gatherings said they could recall little about about the man behind the checkbook. "I've only talked to him one time," said James Bopp, a normally outspoken campaign finance attorney who runs the USA Super PAC, a boutique political group backing Republican Pete Ricketts' gubernatorial bid in Nebraska. Bopp's super-PAC has just seven donors, including Mercer. Senator Rob Portman, the National Republican Senatorial Committee's finance chair and a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate simply said, "I don't have any insights" about the man who is one of two people who've donated to the Portman Victory Committee. The other contributor is Mercer's wife of more than 40 years, Diana. "The conversation I had with him was about the direction of the country. His focus with me was on the economic issues and the fiscal issues," Portman said. Mercer declined to comment for this story via his a spokesman, Jonathan Gasthalter. Mercer's daughter Rebekah, who runs the $37.6 million Mercer Family Foundation and sits on the board of at least one conservative non-profit that the family funds, didn't respond to messages seeking comment. Along with her two sisters Jenji and Heather Sue, she operates a pastry store in mid-town Manhattan. (The business, unlike the vast majority of Mercer's projects, has bipartisan support. The shop's website includes rave reviews from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.) Rebekah Mercer is also a budding political donor, and among the recipients of her largess is Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican. In addition to a broader desire to shape national policy, Mercer has business interests in the midterms. His company, Renaissance Technologies, which runs the Medallion fund and has produced 35 percent returns annualized over two decades, was hauled before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in July and quizzed over how the firm calculates its taxes. According to the committee, RenTech has used sophisticated financial maneuvers to lower the amount it's investors paid to the Internal Revenue Service by $6 billion over 14 years. “It meant enormous profit for both the banks and the hedge funds,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat who chairs the panel. “Ordinary Americans had to shoulder a tax burden of billions of dollars, a burden that was shrugged off by those hedge funds.” Gasthalter, also a spokesman for RenTech, said in a statement at the time that the IRS has been reviewing the hedge funds transactions for the past six years. “We believe that the tax treatment for the option transactions being reviewed by the [Senate committee] is appropriate under current law," he said. With RenTech's outsized profits, Mercer is earning more than enough to fund political campaigns, and so far this cycle, he's contributed $8.8 million. The beneficiaries of that money have been, across the board, Republicans—House candidates, Senate candidates, institutional super-PACs that give to lots of candidates and smaller super-PACs focused on individual candidates and conservative non-profits. Mercer has dipped into state races, including Ken Cuccinelli's 2013 gubernatorial contest in Virginia to which he gave a $600,000 contribution to an outside group. Cuccinelli recalled asking Mercer for support just after Mitt Romney had lost his 2012 presidential bid, when Republican money people were in what he referred to as deep donor depression. "He's very solid and understated," said Cuccinelli, who met with him on a fundraising trip to New York. "You wouldn't know you were talking to someone with that kind of force." Pet causes such as gun rights and charter schools don't seem to be the primary motivator for Mercer, unlike some donors, Cuccinelli said. "He just thinks our country is off track and he's in a position to do something to get it back on track," he said. Only once during Mercer's talk in Baltimore did his conservative politics show. He recounted how he worked at a military base during college and he'd re-written an unwieldy computer program to make it faster. The bosses, to his surprise, added more to the program, slowing the computer back down. "The point of government-funded research was not to get answers but to consume the computer budget," he quipped to the crowd. "Which has left me with a jaundiced view of government research." Mercer was born in July 1946 and grew up in New Mexico. He was obsessed with computers—writing code in high school even though he didn't have a machine to run it on. In graduate school he studied computer science. "I loved the solitude of the computer lab late at night," he said, during a 2013 talk to computer scientists. "I loved the air conditioned smell of the place. I loved the sound of the disks whirring and the printers clacking." Later, he joined IBM and worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, focusing on the then-vexing problem of programming computers to recognize speech. He and his IBM colleague Peter Brown both joined RenTech in 1993, where the two men are now co-CEOs. The company's founder, James Simons, is the 54th richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He's also a hefty political donor—to Democrats. In March he wrote a $2 million check to the Senate Majority PAC, dedicated to keeping Democrats in power in the Senate. The company was profiled in one chapter of Sebastian Mallaby's book "More Money Than God," which details the world's most successful hedge funds. In it, Mallaby shared only a few observations about Mercer. "He was an icy cold poker player; he never recalled having a nightmare; his IBM boss jokingly called him an automaton." Mallaby wrote. Last year, Mercer's household staff sued him, claiming their wages were improperly docked for failing to replacing shampoo bottles, closing doors improperly and not straightening pictures. Get the latest on global politics in your inbox, every day. Get our newsletter daily. Despite Mercer's material success, he political record is mixed. In 2010, he poured money into an Oregon House race to support a man—Republican Arthur Robinson, who was challenging incumbent Representative Peter DeFazio—who's skeptical work on climate change Mercer had funded. DeFazio's campaign put Mercer front and center that year, running radio ads saying Robinson was funded by a secretive donor with Wall Street ties. "Oregon isn't a state that likes outside interference," DeFazio said. "Once we focused on who Mercer was we began to move our poll numbers." DeFazio won. This year, Robinson is running again to oust DeFazio, but Mercer hasn't dropped mega-dollars into the race. Robinson declined comment for this story. ||||| Ted Cruz’s presidential effort is getting into the shock-and-awe fundraising business. An associate of the Texas senator, a recently announced presidential candidate, tells Bloomberg that a cluster of affiliated super-political action committees was formed only this week, and among them they are expected to have $31 million in the bank by Friday. Even in the context of a presidential campaign cycle in which the major party nominees are expected to raise more than $1.5 billion, Cruz’s haul is eye-popping, one that instantly raises the stakes in the Republican fundraising contest. “Our goal is to guarantee Senator Cruz can compete against any candidate. ” Dathan Voelter Although super-PACs have radically changed the pace at which committees backing presidential candidates can raise money, the Cruz haul is remarkable. There are no known cases in which an operation backing a White House hopeful has collected this much money in less than a week. Those involved in the Cruz super-PACS say many of his biggest financial backers haven’t yet made contributions to the new organizations and are expected to do so in the coming months. By law, super-PACS can accept unlimited contributions from individuals. From his time as a Senate candidate in 2012, Cruz has been one of the country’s most aggressive and successful super-PAC fundraisers. His political team has calculated from the start of their planning for a presidential campaign that his overall operation would be able to keep pace with rivals in part because of a robust super-PAC operation. They have talked among themselves about the names of numerous wealthy Cruz backers who they fully expect will contribute several million dollars each. Still, even some Cruz supporters, and many others who have been skeptical that his candidacy could draw significant financial support, are certain to be stunned by this initial round of contributions. While former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is universally expected to easily lead all other Republican presidential candidates in financial backing, a hotly debated topic in political circles has been who would finish second to Bush in money raised by the end of 2015. This week’s apparent lightning strike could help Cruz claim that spot, possibly besting other leading prospects such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Cruz’s campaign is also expected to raise money competitively at the grassroots level through the Internet and small-dollar contributions, as well as through traditional bundling of so-called hard-dollar checks, which are subject to limits of $2,700 per election per individual. Either of those methods, of course, would require significantly more than a week to generate $31 million. According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, the treasurer for the three of the new super-PACS is Dathan Voelter, an Austin, Texas, attorney who is a longtime friend and financial backer of Cruz. A fourth lists as its treasurer Jacquelyn James of Port Jefferson Station, N.Y. All four PACS have a variant of the name “Keep the Promise.” A document prepared by the super-PAC organizers says they “are committed to raising the resources necessary to promote Senator Cruz in his efforts to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.” The document quotes Voelter as saying, “We’re just getting started … Our goal is to guarantee Senator Cruz can compete against any candidate. Supporters of the Senator now have a powerful vehicle with the resources necessary to aid in his effort to secure the Republican nomination and win back the White House.” The document describes those “leading the financial charge” as “a group of close, personal friends of Senator Cruz, who share his conservative vision for America.” According to the source close to Cruz, more than $20 million of the $31 million is expected by Wednesday, with the rest due in by the end of the week. Those cash figures could not be independently confirmed by Bloomberg, and sources declined to provide financial documents to support the claim. The group does not plan to reveal the names or number of donors until they are legally required to do so, at the end of the FEC reporting period on July 15. According to a person familiar with the workings and financing of the new super-PACs, many of the donors are former backers of George W. Bush and Perry. Bush’s brother, of course, and Perry himself, are seeking the White House now, which makes Cruz’s coup that much more impressive. A Houston-area associate of Cruz’s has led the effort to pull together the donors, many of whom are Texans and New Yorkers. The PAC names are “Keep the Promise,” "Keep the Promise I," “Keep the Promise II,” and “Keep the Promise III.” An internal document describing the groups’ intentions says, “Every PAC in the Keep the Promise network will fully comply with all disclosure and recordkeeping obligations set forth in federal law. The use of multiple PACS, however, will allow Keep the Promise to uniquely and flexibly tailor its activities in support of Senator Cruz and afford donors greater control over PAC operations.” In a cover letter dated April 6, sent to the FEC along with the formal filings for three of the super-PAC entities, Voelter says that the trio “are affiliated with one another for legal and regulatory purposes.” It lists an Austin post office box as their shared address, and the Fifth Third Bank in Atlanta as the place where funds are being deposited. Voelter declined to comment. The document from the group says that “Keep the Promise can provide the ‘appropriate air cover’ in the battle against Senator Cruz’s opponents in the Washington establishment and on the political left. We plan to support the effort of millions of courageous conservatives who believe 2016 is our last opportunity to ‘keep the promise’ of America for future generations.” This story has been updated to reflect the filing of paperwork for a fourth super-PAC.

– If other GOP contenders shrugged off Ted Cruz's chances of winning the nomination, it's a safe bet they're reassessing things after four new super PACS announced they'd raised a staggering $31 million to support his new candidacy. "Even in the context of a presidential campaign cycle in which the major party nominees are expected to raise more than $1.5 billion, Cruz’s haul is eye-popping, one that instantly raises the stakes in the Republican fundraising contest," writes Mark Halperin at Bloomberg. The super PACs in question are only a week old, and it's unprecedented to have raised so much so quickly. So who's behind the money? The New York Times identifies the main player as a "reclusive Long Islander" named Robert Mercer. Mercer began his career at IBM but now runs a hedge fund called Renaissance Technologies, and like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, he is taking advantage of the Citizens United case that loosened restrictions on wealthy donors. He's "a very low-profile guy, but he’s becoming a bigger and bigger player,” says one campaign finance expert. And his backing of Cruz “sends the message to other donors that Cruz is a serious guy,” which in turn encourages other donors. The Times notes that Mercer's hedge fund is under investigation by the IRS, an agency that Cruz would love to abolish. A previous profile of Mercer at Bloomberg describes him as "one of the most powerful men in Republican politics that nobody is talking about."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Hedge fund operator Robert Mercer almost never talks about himself, and neither do the people who know him. Yet Mercer's money is sure making a lot of noise on the campaign trail. The third most generous Republican donor this cycle, Mercer has cut checks for a total of $37 million in the past six years, supporting pro-life candidates, those who deny man-made global warming, as well as helping fund the effort to block construction of a mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York. In fact, this year he gave more to the Koch brothers' organization, $2.5 million, than the Kansas founders, David and Charles, who each chipped in just $2 million to Freedom Partners Action Fund. Bloomberg Visual Data Yet the man who first made his mark by upending the field of computer linguistics and is now seeking to bend the national political debate in his conservative direction, is a stranger to the electorate he seeks to sway and the public that would be affected should he succeed. He is the ultimate behind-the-scenes kingmaker in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate who almost never talks—publicly or otherwise. An address to computer scientists at an awards ceremony in Baltimore this summer was a rare exception, and he admitted to finding it daunting. It was only after he agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award that it dawned on him that he'd have to address attendees for about an hour. "Which, by the way, is more than I typically talk in a month," he said. About 10 minutes into the lecture, he paused, and took a sip of water. "I've just reached one week of speaking," he said, "so I have to take a little drink." Asked to share their impressions about Mercer, people who have met him at conservative gatherings said they could recall little about about the man behind the checkbook. "I've only talked to him one time," said James Bopp, a normally outspoken campaign finance attorney who runs the USA Super PAC, a boutique political group backing Republican Pete Ricketts' gubernatorial bid in Nebraska. Bopp's super-PAC has just seven donors, including Mercer. Senator Rob Portman, the National Republican Senatorial Committee's finance chair and a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate simply said, "I don't have any insights" about the man who is one of two people who've donated to the Portman Victory Committee. The other contributor is Mercer's wife of more than 40 years, Diana. "The conversation I had with him was about the direction of the country. His focus with me was on the economic issues and the fiscal issues," Portman said. Mercer declined to comment for this story via his a spokesman, Jonathan Gasthalter. Mercer's daughter Rebekah, who runs the $37.6 million Mercer Family Foundation and sits on the board of at least one conservative non-profit that the family funds, didn't respond to messages seeking comment. Along with her two sisters Jenji and Heather Sue, she operates a pastry store in mid-town Manhattan. (The business, unlike the vast majority of Mercer's projects, has bipartisan support. The shop's website includes rave reviews from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.) Rebekah Mercer is also a budding political donor, and among the recipients of her largess is Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican. In addition to a broader desire to shape national policy, Mercer has business interests in the midterms. His company, Renaissance Technologies, which runs the Medallion fund and has produced 35 percent returns annualized over two decades, was hauled before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in July and quizzed over how the firm calculates its taxes. According to the committee, RenTech has used sophisticated financial maneuvers to lower the amount it's investors paid to the Internal Revenue Service by $6 billion over 14 years. “It meant enormous profit for both the banks and the hedge funds,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat who chairs the panel. “Ordinary Americans had to shoulder a tax burden of billions of dollars, a burden that was shrugged off by those hedge funds.” Gasthalter, also a spokesman for RenTech, said in a statement at the time that the IRS has been reviewing the hedge funds transactions for the past six years. “We believe that the tax treatment for the option transactions being reviewed by the [Senate committee] is appropriate under current law," he said. With RenTech's outsized profits, Mercer is earning more than enough to fund political campaigns, and so far this cycle, he's contributed $8.8 million. The beneficiaries of that money have been, across the board, Republicans—House candidates, Senate candidates, institutional super-PACs that give to lots of candidates and smaller super-PACs focused on individual candidates and conservative non-profits. Mercer has dipped into state races, including Ken Cuccinelli's 2013 gubernatorial contest in Virginia to which he gave a $600,000 contribution to an outside group. Cuccinelli recalled asking Mercer for support just after Mitt Romney had lost his 2012 presidential bid, when Republican money people were in what he referred to as deep donor depression. "He's very solid and understated," said Cuccinelli, who met with him on a fundraising trip to New York. "You wouldn't know you were talking to someone with that kind of force." Pet causes such as gun rights and charter schools don't seem to be the primary motivator for Mercer, unlike some donors, Cuccinelli said. "He just thinks our country is off track and he's in a position to do something to get it back on track," he said. Only once during Mercer's talk in Baltimore did his conservative politics show. He recounted how he worked at a military base during college and he'd re-written an unwieldy computer program to make it faster. The bosses, to his surprise, added more to the program, slowing the computer back down. "The point of government-funded research was not to get answers but to consume the computer budget," he quipped to the crowd. "Which has left me with a jaundiced view of government research." Mercer was born in July 1946 and grew up in New Mexico. He was obsessed with computers—writing code in high school even though he didn't have a machine to run it on. In graduate school he studied computer science. "I loved the solitude of the computer lab late at night," he said, during a 2013 talk to computer scientists. "I loved the air conditioned smell of the place. I loved the sound of the disks whirring and the printers clacking." Later, he joined IBM and worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, focusing on the then-vexing problem of programming computers to recognize speech. He and his IBM colleague Peter Brown both joined RenTech in 1993, where the two men are now co-CEOs. The company's founder, James Simons, is the 54th richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He's also a hefty political donor—to Democrats. In March he wrote a $2 million check to the Senate Majority PAC, dedicated to keeping Democrats in power in the Senate. The company was profiled in one chapter of Sebastian Mallaby's book "More Money Than God," which details the world's most successful hedge funds. In it, Mallaby shared only a few observations about Mercer. "He was an icy cold poker player; he never recalled having a nightmare; his IBM boss jokingly called him an automaton." Mallaby wrote. Last year, Mercer's household staff sued him, claiming their wages were improperly docked for failing to replacing shampoo bottles, closing doors improperly and not straightening pictures. Get the latest on global politics in your inbox, every day. Get our newsletter daily. Despite Mercer's material success, he political record is mixed. In 2010, he poured money into an Oregon House race to support a man—Republican Arthur Robinson, who was challenging incumbent Representative Peter DeFazio—who's skeptical work on climate change Mercer had funded. DeFazio's campaign put Mercer front and center that year, running radio ads saying Robinson was funded by a secretive donor with Wall Street ties. "Oregon isn't a state that likes outside interference," DeFazio said. "Once we focused on who Mercer was we began to move our poll numbers." DeFazio won. This year, Robinson is running again to oust DeFazio, but Mercer hasn't dropped mega-dollars into the race. Robinson declined comment for this story. ||||| Ted Cruz’s presidential effort is getting into the shock-and-awe fundraising business. An associate of the Texas senator, a recently announced presidential candidate, tells Bloomberg that a cluster of affiliated super-political action committees was formed only this week, and among them they are expected to have $31 million in the bank by Friday. Even in the context of a presidential campaign cycle in which the major party nominees are expected to raise more than $1.5 billion, Cruz’s haul is eye-popping, one that instantly raises the stakes in the Republican fundraising contest. “Our goal is to guarantee Senator Cruz can compete against any candidate. ” Dathan Voelter Although super-PACs have radically changed the pace at which committees backing presidential candidates can raise money, the Cruz haul is remarkable. There are no known cases in which an operation backing a White House hopeful has collected this much money in less than a week. Those involved in the Cruz super-PACS say many of his biggest financial backers haven’t yet made contributions to the new organizations and are expected to do so in the coming months. By law, super-PACS can accept unlimited contributions from individuals. From his time as a Senate candidate in 2012, Cruz has been one of the country’s most aggressive and successful super-PAC fundraisers. His political team has calculated from the start of their planning for a presidential campaign that his overall operation would be able to keep pace with rivals in part because of a robust super-PAC operation. They have talked among themselves about the names of numerous wealthy Cruz backers who they fully expect will contribute several million dollars each. Still, even some Cruz supporters, and many others who have been skeptical that his candidacy could draw significant financial support, are certain to be stunned by this initial round of contributions. While former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is universally expected to easily lead all other Republican presidential candidates in financial backing, a hotly debated topic in political circles has been who would finish second to Bush in money raised by the end of 2015. This week’s apparent lightning strike could help Cruz claim that spot, possibly besting other leading prospects such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Cruz’s campaign is also expected to raise money competitively at the grassroots level through the Internet and small-dollar contributions, as well as through traditional bundling of so-called hard-dollar checks, which are subject to limits of $2,700 per election per individual. Either of those methods, of course, would require significantly more than a week to generate $31 million. According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, the treasurer for the three of the new super-PACS is Dathan Voelter, an Austin, Texas, attorney who is a longtime friend and financial backer of Cruz. A fourth lists as its treasurer Jacquelyn James of Port Jefferson Station, N.Y. All four PACS have a variant of the name “Keep the Promise.” A document prepared by the super-PAC organizers says they “are committed to raising the resources necessary to promote Senator Cruz in his efforts to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.” The document quotes Voelter as saying, “We’re just getting started … Our goal is to guarantee Senator Cruz can compete against any candidate. Supporters of the Senator now have a powerful vehicle with the resources necessary to aid in his effort to secure the Republican nomination and win back the White House.” The document describes those “leading the financial charge” as “a group of close, personal friends of Senator Cruz, who share his conservative vision for America.” According to the source close to Cruz, more than $20 million of the $31 million is expected by Wednesday, with the rest due in by the end of the week. Those cash figures could not be independently confirmed by Bloomberg, and sources declined to provide financial documents to support the claim. The group does not plan to reveal the names or number of donors until they are legally required to do so, at the end of the FEC reporting period on July 15. According to a person familiar with the workings and financing of the new super-PACs, many of the donors are former backers of George W. Bush and Perry. Bush’s brother, of course, and Perry himself, are seeking the White House now, which makes Cruz’s coup that much more impressive. A Houston-area associate of Cruz’s has led the effort to pull together the donors, many of whom are Texans and New Yorkers. The PAC names are “Keep the Promise,” "Keep the Promise I," “Keep the Promise II,” and “Keep the Promise III.” An internal document describing the groups’ intentions says, “Every PAC in the Keep the Promise network will fully comply with all disclosure and recordkeeping obligations set forth in federal law. The use of multiple PACS, however, will allow Keep the Promise to uniquely and flexibly tailor its activities in support of Senator Cruz and afford donors greater control over PAC operations.” In a cover letter dated April 6, sent to the FEC along with the formal filings for three of the super-PAC entities, Voelter says that the trio “are affiliated with one another for legal and regulatory purposes.” It lists an Austin post office box as their shared address, and the Fifth Third Bank in Atlanta as the place where funds are being deposited. Voelter declined to comment. The document from the group says that “Keep the Promise can provide the ‘appropriate air cover’ in the battle against Senator Cruz’s opponents in the Washington establishment and on the political left. We plan to support the effort of millions of courageous conservatives who believe 2016 is our last opportunity to ‘keep the promise’ of America for future generations.” This story has been updated to reflect the filing of paperwork for a fourth super-PAC.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

NASA abruptly called off space shuttle Endeavour's final launch Friday because of a puzzling heater failure in a critical power unit, disappointing huge crowds converging on the area for the afternoon liftoff. The space shuttle Endeavour sits on Launch Pad 39-A during fueling at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, April 29, 2011. Endeavour, on her final flight, is scheduled to lift off this... (Associated Press) The space shuttle Endeavour sits on Launch Pad 39-A during fueling at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, April 29, 2011. Endeavour is scheduled to lift off one her final flight this... (Associated Press) In this picture made available by NASA, the last crew of the space shuttle Endeavour stands together on Launch Pad 39A in front of its external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters at the Kennedy Space... (Associated Press) The space shuttle Endeavour is seen on launch pad 39a as a storm passes by prior to the rollback of the Rotating Service Structure (RSS), Thursday, April 28, 2011, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral,... (Associated Press) Space shuttle Endeavour sits on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday evening, April 28, 2011. The Endeavour is scheduled for a Friday afternoon launch. (AP Photo/J.... (Associated Press) President Barack Obama and his family were planning to watch Endeavour blast off. It would have been the first time in NASA history that a sitting president and his family witnessed a launch. Already at Cape Canaveral for the liftoff was wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wife of the shuttle's commander. Launch commentator George Diller said the next try likely would be Monday at the earliest. Officials huddled in launch control, discussing a path forward. "They are trying to assess what all is going to be required and how much time we're going to need," Diller said. "We still don't know what's wrong or why these multiple heater failures occurred." Commander Mark Kelly and his crew were already on their way to the launch pad, when NASA announced the delay. The astronauts' van did a U-turn at the launch control center, and returned the astronauts to crew quarters. The first family had not yet arrived in Florida when launch was canceled. Around noon (1600 GMT), NASA reported that two heaters on an auxiliary power unit had failed. Engineers could not understand the problem and were uncomfortable about proceeding with the 3:47 p.m. (1947 GMT) launch. An electrical short was suspected. Three power units provide hydraulic pressure to the main engines at liftoff and to the rudder and speed brake during landing. They are crucial components; each must be working perfectly before launch. The news took guests by surprise as well as journalists who were outside watching the astrovan drive by. There was confusion when the van pulled into the driveway in front of launch control, rather than head straight for the pad three miles (five kilometers) away. Then the official announcement came over the speakers. Endeavour's mission to the International Space Station is the last in its 19-year history. The shuttle was built to replace Challenger, destroyed during liftoff in 1986, and made its maiden voyage six years later. Obama will still travel to Cape Canaveral Friday to tour an orbiter processing facility at NASA. It's unclear whether Obama will meet with fellow Democrat Giffords when he is in Florida. From Cape Canaveral, Obama will head to south Florida to deliver a commencement address at Miami Dade College. ___ Online: NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle ||||| NASA mission managers say they'll try again to launch the space shuttle Endeavour as early as Monday, once they figure out the cause of a puzzling problem with heaters in one of the craft's auxiliary power units. Friday's high-profile countdown was called off even as Endeavour's six-man crew was heading for Launch Pad 39A. Liftoff would be delayed for at least three days, and possibly longer, NASA launch director Mike Leinbach said. "We will not fly this machine until it's ready, and today it was not ready to go," he told journalists. The shuttle's three auxiliary power units provide hydraulic pressure to operate the control system during atmospheric flight. Although the shuttle can operate with only one of the units working, NASA's launch rules state that all three have to be functional for liftoff. One of the thermostats in the heating system apparently suffered a hard failure, and another was exhibiting "funny behavior," Leinbach reported. He said engineers suspect that there may be a short circuit either in a switchbox or in an electrical line leading to the box. "If we can go down the easy path, we're still on track for Monday morning," he said. But Leinbach said NASA might have to delay the next launch attempt for more than a week if the problem turns out to be complicated. He expected a weekend round of troubleshooting to tell the tale. The delay meant that hundreds of thousands of spectators would miss out on seeing Endeavour's final liftoff on Friday. Would-be witnesses included President Barack Obama and his family; and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically wounded during a January mass shooting. Giffords — who is married to Endeavour's commander, Mark Kelly — was flown to Florida from her Houston rehabilitation center this week to watch the launch. "Bummed about the scrub!!" the congresswoman's staff wrote in a Twitter update. "But important to make sure everything on shuttle is working properly." "We're all bummed," NASA astronaut Ron Garan tweeted back from the International Space Station, Endeavour's intended destination. Thousands go home disappointed Giffords and the Obamas were to watch the liftoff from secure locations here at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while NASA expected as many as 750,000 other spectators to gather at VIP areas and public viewing spots. Thousands of people had already taken up places along the roads surrounding the launch site and had to go home disappointed. Despite the launch scrub, Obama and his entourage were flown in to Kennedy Space Center on military helicopters for a quick tour of NASA facilities, allowing the president to meet with Kelly and Giffords as well as other members of Endeavour's crew and their families. Most popular The launch was called off less than four hours before the scheduled 3:47 p.m. ET liftoff time, just as Kelly and his crew were heading out toward the launch pad. The van carrying the crew stopped at NASA's launch control center, then turned around to return to crew quarters as word of the postponement got out. Before the postponement, forecasters said there was a 70 percent chance of acceptable weather for launch. When the appointed time for liftoff came, they said Endeavour would have been "go" for launch if weather were the only determining factor. Mike Moses, who chairs NASA's pre-launch mission management team, said that fact served to rub "a little salt in the wound." Endeavour's mission to the space station, known as STS-134, represents the shuttle's last scheduled flight before retirement and the second-last flight of the 30-year space shuttle program. 15 tons of supplies Endeavour is loaded up with nearly 15 tons of supplies and equipment, highlighted by the 7.5-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will be attached to the space station's exterior during a robotic arm operation. Once it's installed, the $2 billion particle detector will almost immediately start sending down data about cosmic rays. Physicists from 16 nations have worked for 17 years to build the AMS, and for a while it looked as if all that effort would be wasted. Fortunately, Congress and NASA worked together to get the van-sized device on this mission. Over the next decade or longer, physicists hope that findings from the AMS will shed light on the mysteries surrounding the nature of dark matter, and the balance of matter and antimatter in the universe. Endeavour's payload also includes a platform that will be used to store spare parts at the station, communication equipment and a wide range of scientific experiments. Shuttle program's last spacewalks Four spacewalks are to be conducted during the shuttle's visit, marking the last outings by shuttle astronauts at the space station. The spacewalkers are to install equipment, do electrical work and conduct maintenance on the station's cooling system and robotic arm system. In addition to Kelly, the all-male, all-veteran crew includes pilot Greg Johnson, spacewalkers Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff, and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori. The mission is currently scheduled to last 14 days, but NASA could extend it another day or two. When Endeavour's mission is over, it will be prepared as a museum piece for the California Science Center in Los Angeles. NASA has scheduled only one more shuttle flight to the station, to be taken on by Atlantis this summer. After the shuttles retire, NASA will have to depend on Russian, European and Japanese transports to get supplies to the space station — at least until next year, when U.S. commercial cargo flights are due to begin. NASA hopes that commercial crew transports will become available starting in the middle of this decade. Earlier this month, NASA said it would pay up to $269.3 million to four companies — Blue Origin, the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX — to work on those future spaceships. Mark Sirangelo, Sierra Nevada's executive vice president, said he saw the program as a "bridge" between the shuttle era and the next stage of human spaceflight. "I don't see it as an end," he told reporters. "I see it as the beginning of the next step." More from Cape Canaveral:

– No Endeavour launch today—or probably this weekend either. NASA postponed the high-profile launch to investigate trouble with heaters in the shuttle's power system, reports MSNBC. No word yet on what that means for the day's most awaited spectator, Gabby Giffords. Husband Mark Kelly and crew were less than four hours from liftoff when the news broke. The next attempt will likely be Monday at the earliest, reports AP. "They are trying to assess what all is going to be required and how much time we're going to need," said a NASA official. "We still don't know what's wrong or why these multiple heater failures occurred." Despite the postponement, President Obama planned to travel to Cape Canaveral anyway for a tour and a possible meeting with Giffords.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.NASA abruptly called off space shuttle Endeavour's final launch Friday because of a puzzling heater failure in a critical power unit, disappointing huge crowds converging on the area for the afternoon liftoff. The space shuttle Endeavour sits on Launch Pad 39-A during fueling at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, April 29, 2011. Endeavour, on her final flight, is scheduled to lift off this... (Associated Press) The space shuttle Endeavour sits on Launch Pad 39-A during fueling at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, April 29, 2011. Endeavour is scheduled to lift off one her final flight this... (Associated Press) In this picture made available by NASA, the last crew of the space shuttle Endeavour stands together on Launch Pad 39A in front of its external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters at the Kennedy Space... (Associated Press) The space shuttle Endeavour is seen on launch pad 39a as a storm passes by prior to the rollback of the Rotating Service Structure (RSS), Thursday, April 28, 2011, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral,... (Associated Press) Space shuttle Endeavour sits on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday evening, April 28, 2011. The Endeavour is scheduled for a Friday afternoon launch. (AP Photo/J.... (Associated Press) President Barack Obama and his family were planning to watch Endeavour blast off. It would have been the first time in NASA history that a sitting president and his family witnessed a launch. Already at Cape Canaveral for the liftoff was wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wife of the shuttle's commander. Launch commentator George Diller said the next try likely would be Monday at the earliest. Officials huddled in launch control, discussing a path forward. "They are trying to assess what all is going to be required and how much time we're going to need," Diller said. "We still don't know what's wrong or why these multiple heater failures occurred." Commander Mark Kelly and his crew were already on their way to the launch pad, when NASA announced the delay. The astronauts' van did a U-turn at the launch control center, and returned the astronauts to crew quarters. The first family had not yet arrived in Florida when launch was canceled. Around noon (1600 GMT), NASA reported that two heaters on an auxiliary power unit had failed. Engineers could not understand the problem and were uncomfortable about proceeding with the 3:47 p.m. (1947 GMT) launch. An electrical short was suspected. Three power units provide hydraulic pressure to the main engines at liftoff and to the rudder and speed brake during landing. They are crucial components; each must be working perfectly before launch. The news took guests by surprise as well as journalists who were outside watching the astrovan drive by. There was confusion when the van pulled into the driveway in front of launch control, rather than head straight for the pad three miles (five kilometers) away. Then the official announcement came over the speakers. Endeavour's mission to the International Space Station is the last in its 19-year history. The shuttle was built to replace Challenger, destroyed during liftoff in 1986, and made its maiden voyage six years later. Obama will still travel to Cape Canaveral Friday to tour an orbiter processing facility at NASA. It's unclear whether Obama will meet with fellow Democrat Giffords when he is in Florida. From Cape Canaveral, Obama will head to south Florida to deliver a commencement address at Miami Dade College. ___ Online: NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle ||||| NASA mission managers say they'll try again to launch the space shuttle Endeavour as early as Monday, once they figure out the cause of a puzzling problem with heaters in one of the craft's auxiliary power units. Friday's high-profile countdown was called off even as Endeavour's six-man crew was heading for Launch Pad 39A. Liftoff would be delayed for at least three days, and possibly longer, NASA launch director Mike Leinbach said. "We will not fly this machine until it's ready, and today it was not ready to go," he told journalists. The shuttle's three auxiliary power units provide hydraulic pressure to operate the control system during atmospheric flight. Although the shuttle can operate with only one of the units working, NASA's launch rules state that all three have to be functional for liftoff. One of the thermostats in the heating system apparently suffered a hard failure, and another was exhibiting "funny behavior," Leinbach reported. He said engineers suspect that there may be a short circuit either in a switchbox or in an electrical line leading to the box. "If we can go down the easy path, we're still on track for Monday morning," he said. But Leinbach said NASA might have to delay the next launch attempt for more than a week if the problem turns out to be complicated. He expected a weekend round of troubleshooting to tell the tale. The delay meant that hundreds of thousands of spectators would miss out on seeing Endeavour's final liftoff on Friday. Would-be witnesses included President Barack Obama and his family; and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically wounded during a January mass shooting. Giffords — who is married to Endeavour's commander, Mark Kelly — was flown to Florida from her Houston rehabilitation center this week to watch the launch. "Bummed about the scrub!!" the congresswoman's staff wrote in a Twitter update. "But important to make sure everything on shuttle is working properly." "We're all bummed," NASA astronaut Ron Garan tweeted back from the International Space Station, Endeavour's intended destination. Thousands go home disappointed Giffords and the Obamas were to watch the liftoff from secure locations here at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while NASA expected as many as 750,000 other spectators to gather at VIP areas and public viewing spots. Thousands of people had already taken up places along the roads surrounding the launch site and had to go home disappointed. Despite the launch scrub, Obama and his entourage were flown in to Kennedy Space Center on military helicopters for a quick tour of NASA facilities, allowing the president to meet with Kelly and Giffords as well as other members of Endeavour's crew and their families. Most popular The launch was called off less than four hours before the scheduled 3:47 p.m. ET liftoff time, just as Kelly and his crew were heading out toward the launch pad. The van carrying the crew stopped at NASA's launch control center, then turned around to return to crew quarters as word of the postponement got out. Before the postponement, forecasters said there was a 70 percent chance of acceptable weather for launch. When the appointed time for liftoff came, they said Endeavour would have been "go" for launch if weather were the only determining factor. Mike Moses, who chairs NASA's pre-launch mission management team, said that fact served to rub "a little salt in the wound." Endeavour's mission to the space station, known as STS-134, represents the shuttle's last scheduled flight before retirement and the second-last flight of the 30-year space shuttle program. 15 tons of supplies Endeavour is loaded up with nearly 15 tons of supplies and equipment, highlighted by the 7.5-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will be attached to the space station's exterior during a robotic arm operation. Once it's installed, the $2 billion particle detector will almost immediately start sending down data about cosmic rays. Physicists from 16 nations have worked for 17 years to build the AMS, and for a while it looked as if all that effort would be wasted. Fortunately, Congress and NASA worked together to get the van-sized device on this mission. Over the next decade or longer, physicists hope that findings from the AMS will shed light on the mysteries surrounding the nature of dark matter, and the balance of matter and antimatter in the universe. Endeavour's payload also includes a platform that will be used to store spare parts at the station, communication equipment and a wide range of scientific experiments. Shuttle program's last spacewalks Four spacewalks are to be conducted during the shuttle's visit, marking the last outings by shuttle astronauts at the space station. The spacewalkers are to install equipment, do electrical work and conduct maintenance on the station's cooling system and robotic arm system. In addition to Kelly, the all-male, all-veteran crew includes pilot Greg Johnson, spacewalkers Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff, and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori. The mission is currently scheduled to last 14 days, but NASA could extend it another day or two. When Endeavour's mission is over, it will be prepared as a museum piece for the California Science Center in Los Angeles. NASA has scheduled only one more shuttle flight to the station, to be taken on by Atlantis this summer. After the shuttles retire, NASA will have to depend on Russian, European and Japanese transports to get supplies to the space station — at least until next year, when U.S. commercial cargo flights are due to begin. NASA hopes that commercial crew transports will become available starting in the middle of this decade. Earlier this month, NASA said it would pay up to $269.3 million to four companies — Blue Origin, the Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX — to work on those future spaceships. Mark Sirangelo, Sierra Nevada's executive vice president, said he saw the program as a "bridge" between the shuttle era and the next stage of human spaceflight. "I don't see it as an end," he told reporters. "I see it as the beginning of the next step." More from Cape Canaveral:

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Tune in to "AC360º" for the latest on what's next for Libya, the opposition and Moammar Gadhafi. Watch "AC360º" at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday on CNN. Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- The head of the interim government in eastern Libya pleaded Wednesday for the international community to move quickly to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, declaring that any delay would result in more casualties. "It has to be immediate action," Mustafa Abdul-Jalil told CNN in an exclusive interview in this eastern opposition stronghold. "The longer the situation carries on, the more blood is shed. That's the message that we want to send to the international community. They have to live up to their responsibility with regards to this." After the uprising began February 15, Abdul-Jalil was among the government officials who broke with the regime. He has gone on to lead the opposition's National Transitional Council, a 31-member group representing most regions in Libya. The group has met in Benghazi, an eastern town that has become an opposition stronghold. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi told a Turkish reporter in an interview Tuesday that the imposition of a no-fly zone would simply unite the Libyan people behind him. "They will be united against the new attempt for occupation and imperialistic interests and it will be clear that they are conspiring against Libya," he said. "It will also be clear that the intentions are to control Libya's oil, choke Libya's liberty, land and people." Abdul-Jalil's remarks came shortly after Gadhafi's regime announced a reward for Abdul-Jalil's capture, branding him "an agent spy." In an "urgent" banner on state television, the government said its General Administration for Criminal Investigation was offering 500,000 Libyan dinars ($410,900 U.S.) "for whoever captures and hands over" the "agent spy" Abdul-Jalil, and "another offer of 200,000 Libyan dinars ($164,300 U.S.) for whoever offers information leading to his actual arrest." In a letter to the U.N. General Assembly, the transitional council asked that it be recognized as "the sole representative of all Libya." It also asked the international community to "fulfill its obligations to protect the Libyan people from any further genocide and crimes against humanity without any direct military intervention on Libyan soil." The letter, which was dated March 5, was made public Wednesday. The move to target Abdul-Jalil came as Gadhafi fought to advance against rebels who have taken control of many parts of the country. On Wednesday, pro-Gadhafi forces launched fresh attacks on Ras Lanuf, using planes and heavy artillery in an effort to retake the eastern oil city. Opposition fighters, armed with anti-aircraft guns and Soviet rifles, were outgunned by the heavily armed pro-Gadhafi forces. CNN's Ben Wedeman reported that an intense artillery bombardment was under way on the western edge of Ras Lanuf, where ambulances lined up to the emergency ward at Ras Lanuf's only hospital to drop off the wounded. More than 25 people were wounded, said Dr. Ali Al-Bart, at Ras Lanuf Hospital. "It's very bad, the situation is very bad," he said. Opposition efforts remained, but appeared weak. Ahmed Faturi left his clothing store in Benghazi to carry a SAM-7 surface-to-air missile, but knew he had little chance of hitting a plane with it. And he expressed little hope that a no-fly zone would ever materialize. "Just talk," he said. A few days ago, the rebel forces were advancing steadily westward toward Gadhafi's stronghold in the capital city of Tripoli. But that advancement appears to have reversed. In Ras Lanuf, an oil storage tank to the west was hit in the fighting, though it was not clear who was responsible. Libyan state television reported that "armed groups supported by al Qaeda blew up an oil tank as they withdrew from Ras Lanuf against the advancing Libyan armed forces." The attack marked the first time since the rebellion began more than three weeks ago that Libya's oil infrastructure has been damaged. Gadhafi has shown no sign of giving up. On state television, he again insisted Tuesday night that youths misled and drugged by al Qaeda were to blame for the fighting. "For them, everybody's their enemy," Gadhafi said. "They know nothing other than killing." The speech was recorded earlier Tuesday when Gadhafi addressed a youth group of tribal supporters, urging them to defend Libya from those who envy its standard of living. "They want to take your petrol," he said. "This is what America, this is what the French, those colonialists, want." A private Libyan aircraft crossed Greek airspace Wednesday en route to Cairo, Egypt, and the pilot said there were two passengers on board, according to Greek civil aviation authorities. The pilot did not identify the passengers, aviation authorities said. Multiple media reports said the plane landed in Cairo. The development raised questions about whether Libyan officials may have flown to Cairo. On Tuesday, an opposition member said Gadhafi was negotiating an exit deal, but other opposition members and the government denied that. In the fourth week of what has become a civil war, Gadhafi's regime has held on to the capital, while losing control to the opposition in some other areas. Benghazi, in eastern Libya, is an opposition stronghold. People in some towns in the western part of the country told CNN Wednesday their areas were under rebel control. In Zuwarah, two sources said the city, which is located between Zawiya and the country's western border, with Tunisia, was surrounded by Gadhafi supporters but most shops and banks were operating normally. A witness described the scene as tense, with schools, government offices and businesses closed. Demonstrations were no longer being held because, the witness said, "There is no one to protest against." Two Zuwarah residents said "messengers from Gadhafi" had warned local leaders Wednesday to surrender or face attack. The "messengers" told the leaders that replacing the pre-Gadhafi regime flag in the city with the government's green flag would be interpreted as a sign of solidarity with the regime, the sources said. They added that there had been implicit threats against Zuwarah to bomb two nearby facilities: a petro-chemical plant 15 kilometers away and a gas export facility 30 kilometers away. In Zawiya, two sources said the fighting continued in the city center Wednesday, but to a lesser extent than on Tuesday. They said the opposition occupied the city center, which was surrounded by the military. On the outskirts of the city, pro-Gadhafi rallies were being held, they said. But Libyan television reported that Gadhafi supporters were celebrating "the liberation of the town from the armed terrorist elements backed by al Qaeda" in the main square. Access to the city was limited. A witness told CNN she tried to travel from Tripoli to Zawiya but was turned away at various checkpoints. Communications were so difficult that CNN was not able to talk with anyone in the city. One Zawiya resident, who told CNN she had to make the 40-minute trip to Tripoli to make a phone call, said there had been no electricity in Zawiya for the previous day. In addition, two medical clinics that were shut Tuesday by the military remained closed Wednesday, she said. Another source who fled Zawiya Tuesday for the Tunisian border said many bodies in the city lay unclaimed because relatives -- fearing violence -- would not go to graveyards to bury them. Residents of Zuwarah sent weapons, explosives, and medical supplies via a small boat to Zawiya, the witness said. The man who drove the boat dropped the supplies immediately upon arrival and fled out of fear. Libyan state TV showed video of government supporters cheering in Zawiya's streets and hoisting the government flag on Wednesday. Witnesses said fear remained widespread in the capital, where schools were closed. A resident said she called several banks to ask about taking out money but was told that there was a shortage of cash. Nalut was under opposition control and calm Wednesday, a witness said. In Ajdabiya and Misrata, spokesmen for opposition groups said those towns remained under opposition control and were calm as well. Two doctors in Misrata said medical supplies were in short supply. More than 80 people remained at Central Misrata Hospital recovering from wounds suffered Sunday in fighting, they said. Libya's government sought Wednesday to influence international sentiment, announcing that Libya's secretary of state for international relations will travel to Portugal, Greece and Malta on an exploratory fact-finding mission that may include other destinations. Libya has invited British, French, Dutch and German fact-finding teams to Libya to examine reports of aerial bombardment and massacres. Libya had received no response from any of the invitees. The decision about whether to impose a no-fly zone is a complicated one, said Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. "There's no assurance that the imposition of even a no-fly zone would make a decisive difference in the battle," Burns said. "Gadhafi has ground forces. He has artillery, he has a mercenary army. That's 95 percent of the fighting under way in Libya." And it would not prove to be a panacea, the head of the U.S. Marine Corps told lawmakers Tuesday. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James F. Amos said that a no-fly zone would do little to thwart Libya's helicopters, which he called "their greatest threat." A no-fly zone would typically be enforced by fighter jets whose speed and altitude make it difficult to target helicopters, which move low and slow, Amos said. For its part, Libya said it was not misusing its air force. Any no-fly zone would be tantamount to an act of war, Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Karim said Tuesday. The military, he said, "are taking purely defensive positions; they are not taking offensive ones." He said the Libyan government has asked for international monitors to verify that assertion. The protests against the 68-year-old Gadhafi began February 15 as anti-government demonstrators sought his ouster after nearly 42 years of rule. Death toll estimates have ranged from more than 1,000 to as many as 2,000. And the war has forced out 215,000 people, many of them poor migrant workers who have been stranded at both the Tunisian and Egyptian borders, the U.N. refugee agency has said. While many countries chartered planes and dispatched ships to whisk away their citizens to safety, those stuck at the border are sheltered in cramped, unsanitary quarters with little to eat. The United Nations' special representative for children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said her office had received unconfirmed reports of violence against children, "including killing and maiming and use of children as combatants and the denial of humanitarian access." Valerie Amos, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, called for all Libyan civilians to be protected. "I am deeply concerned about the reportedly indiscriminate nature of the fighting, and particularly the use of heavy artillery and aerial bombardments," she said in a statement. "We are also hearing reports of hospital closures at the very time when people most need medical care." The U.N. World Food Programme has initiated a $39.2 million emergency operation intended to provide food to more than 1 million people in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia over a three-month period. In the latest sign of international solidarity with the Libyan opposition, a group of people entered a home in London Wednesday owned by Saif Gadhafi, the Libyan leader's son who has spoken on behalf of the regime in recent weeks. They could be seen hanging a banner out an upstairs window with a picture of Gadhafi in a red circle with a line through it. "Out of Libya," the sign says, "Out of London." London Metropolitan police said only the situation was "being treated as a civil matter." CNN's Ben Wedeman, Whitney Hurst, Nic Robertson, Chris Lawrence, Arwa Damon, Salma Abdelaziz, Jomana Karadsheh and Caroline Faraj contributed to this report ||||| RAS LANOUF, Libya — Forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi struck an oil pipeline and oil storage facility Wednesday, sending a giant yellow fireball into the sky as they pounded rebels with artillery and gunfire in at least two major cities. Gaddafi appeared to be keeping up the momentum he has seized in recent days in his fight against rebels trying to move on the capital, Tripoli, from territory they hold in eastern Libya. State television claimed Gaddafi's forces had retaken Zawiya, the city closest to Tripoli that had fallen into opposition hands. There was no was to immediately verify the claim. Gaddafi forces have been waging a heavy siege on the city since last week, and phone lines there have not been working for days. State TV showed a crowd of hundreds, purportedly in Zawiya's main square on Wednesday, carrying images of Gaddafi and shouting "The people want Colonel Gaddafi!" The fall of Zawiya to anti-Gaddafi residents early on in the uprising that began Feb. 15 had illustrated the initial, blazing progress of the opposition, which has now been blunted. In the east, an Associated Press reporter at Ras Lanouf near the front line of fighting saw an explosion from the area of the Sidr oil facility, 360 miles (580 kilometers) east of Tripoli. Three columns of thick smoke rose from the area, apparently from burning oil. Mustafa Gheriani, an opposition spokesman, said the government artillery hit a pipeline supplying Sidr from oil fields in the desert. An oil storage depot also was hit, apparently by an airstrike, he said. Gaddafi's successes have left Western powers struggling to come up with a plan to support the rebels without becoming ensnared in the complex and fast-moving conflict. On Wednesday, a high-ranking member of the Libyan military flew to Cairo with a message for Egyptian army officials from Gaddafi, but no further details were known. President Barack Obama's most senior advisers were meeting Wednesday to outline what steps are realistic and possible to pressure Gaddafi to halt the violence and give up power. They planned to examine the ramifications of a no-fly zone over Libya and other potential military options, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations. Britain and France are pushing for the U.N. to create a no-fly zone over the country, and while the U.S. may be persuaded to sign on, such a move is unlikely to win the backing of veto-wielding Security Council members Russia and China, which traditionally object to such steps as infringements on national sovereignty. The two sides in Libya traded barrages of artillery shells and rockets Wednesday afternoon about 12 miles (20 kilometers) west of the oil port of Ras Lanouf, an indication that regime forces were much closer than previously known to that city. Ras Lanouf is the westernmost point seized by rebels moving along the country's main highway on the Mediterranean coast. Four bodies were brought to the morgue at the hospital in Ras Lanouf, doctors said. Warplanes streaked overhead and a yellow fireball erupted at or near the location of a small oil terminal. Pillars of black smoke also rose from the direction of the town of Bin Jawwad, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) to the west. 03/11/2011 6:31 PM EST U.S. Extends Sanctions On Libya Reports the AP: The Obama administration extended its Libya sanctions to more Gadhafi family members and close advisers on Thursday, blacklisting business with the Libyan leader's wife, four of his children and his chief of military intelligence. The Treasury Department froze the assets of nine Libyans in all as part of the strategy to peel off Moammar Gadhafi's closest advisers while punishing those who remain loyal to the regime even as it commits human rights violations. The sanctions come on top of those previously announced by the administration, which accounted for $32 billion in Libyan government assets blocked in the United States. 03/11/2011 5:33 PM EST Sarkozy Calls For Air Strikes If Gaddafi Attacks Civilians French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for airstrikes against Gaddafi forces if the leader attacks civilians. According to the Guardian: Nicolas Sarkozy has called for targeted air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's regime if his forces use chemical weapons or launch air strikes against civilians. As the EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton, warned that a no-fly zone could risk civilian lives in Libya, the French president told an emergency EU summit in Brussels that air strikes may soon be justified. "The strikes would be solely of a defensive nature if Mr Gaddafi makes use of chemical weapons or air strikes against non-violent protesters," Sarkozy said. The French president qualified his remarks by saying he had many reservations about military intervention in Libya "because Arab revolutions belong to Arabs". 03/11/2011 5:06 PM EST Dutch Helicopter Crew Freed A Dutch helicopter crew taken captive in Libya has been freed and sent to Greece. The BBC is reporting: The two men and one woman arrived in Athens on a Greek military transport plane hours after a son of Muammar Gaddafi announced their release. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said Libya would hold on to the crew's Lynx helicopter. The woman pilot, Yvonne Niersman, took part in a mission last year to free a German ship from Somali pirates. Ms Niersman and her fellow crew members were captured in Libya after flying in from the Dutch warship Tromp, anchored off the coast. Read the entire report here. 03/11/2011 4:43 PM EST McCain Praises Moroccan King Senator John McCain praised Morocco's King Mohammed VI for his pledge to introduce democratic reforms. According to the AFP: "This new reform agenda builds on the king's long-standing commitment to lead Morocco to a future of reform and modernization, and it could ensure that the Kingdom of Morocco will continue to stand as a positive example to governments across the Middle East and North Africa," said McCain. 03/11/2011 3:40 PM EST Gaddafi Offers Amnesty To Rebels Reuters is reporting that Gaddafi is now offering to offer amnesty to those rebels who lay own arms. 03/11/2011 3:28 PM EST 2 Protesters Killed In Tunisia The AP reports: Tunisia's Interior Ministry says a new eruption of violence between police and protesters has killed two people and injured 20. The ministry says on its Facebook page that police fired tear gas and demonstrators threw stones and gasoline bombs. The statement says two protesters were killed in the incident in Metlaoui, a mining town in the center of the Mediterranean country. The violence comes as Tunisia's interim government is trying to restore stability after deadly protests that drove out longtime leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January. That prompted uprisings around the Arab world. 03/11/2011 2:39 PM EST Berlusconi Says Hardline With Gaddafi A Mistake Berlusconi is saying that the West may have made a mistake by taking a hardline against Gaddafi, which may have backed the Libyan leader into a corner. Reports Reuters: The hardline stance taken by major powers against Muammar Gaddafi may have backed the Libyan leader into a corner and prevented a quiet exit, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Friday. Speaking after a special meeting of EU leaders, Berlusconi, one of Gaddafi's closest friends in Europe until the current upheaval, said the chances of persuading him to give up power voluntarily now appeared to have disappeared. "Once someone put forward the idea of bringing Gaddafi before the International Criminal Court, I think the idea of staying in power became entrenched with him and I don't think anyone can make him change his mind," he told reporters. Read the entire report here. 03/11/2011 2:16 PM EST Who Are The Libyan Rebels? The AP is reporting that the rebels fighting Gaddafi forces are amateurs, but deeply committed to the cause: Moammar Gadhafi has ruled Libya since long before the 25-year-old was born, and he hates the dictator enough to risk his life by fighting for the ragtag rebel force battling government troops along a desolate highway on the North African country's Mediterranean coast. "I will fight forever. I will die or win, like Omar Mukhtar," said Salem, invoking the legendary Libyan hero who fought Italian occupiers in the 1930s, was ultimately executed, and has become a symbol for the new revolutionaries. The front-line force trying to advance toward Gadhafi's stronghold in the capital Tripoli is surprisingly small. Not counting supporters who bolster them in the towns along their path, it is estimated at 1,500 at most — Libyans from all walks of life, from students and coffeeshop owners to businessmen who picked up whatever weapons they could and joined the fight. No one seems to know their full size, and they could be picking up new members all the time. Its ramshackle nature explains the dramatic lurches the fighting has taken. Last week, they took control over a stretch of Mediterranean coastal land that included major oil installations in the ports of Brega and Ras Lanouf. They charged enthusiastically further west, reaching within a few dozen miles of Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte, a bastion of support for the leader of 41 years. 03/11/2011 1:03 PM EST Gaddafi Forces Show Signs Of Victory Reports the AP: Moammar Gadhafi's regime has gained momentum with the capture of a key city near Tripoli after days of fierce fighting with rebels. The battle for Zawiya has emerged as a key test in the government's ability to maintain its hold on the Libyan capital and surrounding areas. The government had claimed victory on Wednesday, but the rebels who are seeking to oust Gadhafi said fighting was ongoing. An Associated Press reporter, who was escorted with other journalists into the city on Friday, says the main square that had been the center of resistance is clearly in government control. 03/11/2011 12:47 PM EST Obama On Libya Obama noted all of the sanctions and property seizures that have already been implemented against Gaddafi, saying, "Across the board, we are tightening the noose on Gaddafi." He says that NATO is discussing potential military actions in Libya, including a no-fly zone, and will meet on Tuesday. He said that a position will be created for a liaison to speak with Libyan opposition groups. He said that the international community had moved quickly to isolate Gaddafi. Obama said that no options have been taken off the table so far. In response to a question about whether it would ever be acceptable to the U.S. for Gaddafi to stay in power, Obama stated that "it is in the U.S.' interest and the interest of the Libyan people for Gaddafi to leave." He added, however, that when making a decision to engage militarily, he would weigh the "costs and benefits." Load More

– Moammar Gadhafi put a price on the head of a Libyan opposition leader today, offering the equivalent of $419,000 for the capture of Mustafa Abdul Jalil, CNN reports. Libyan state television branded the head of the interim government in eastern Libya an "agent spy" and offered an additional $164,300 for information leading to his capture. Meanwhile, the rebel leader himself urged the international community to put a no-fly zone in effect. "It has to be immediate action," said Abdul Jalil, who resigned as Gadhafi's minister of justice when the unrest began. "The longer the situation carries on, the more blood is shed." Click for the latest on the day's fighting.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Tune in to "AC360º" for the latest on what's next for Libya, the opposition and Moammar Gadhafi. Watch "AC360º" at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday on CNN. Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- The head of the interim government in eastern Libya pleaded Wednesday for the international community to move quickly to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, declaring that any delay would result in more casualties. "It has to be immediate action," Mustafa Abdul-Jalil told CNN in an exclusive interview in this eastern opposition stronghold. "The longer the situation carries on, the more blood is shed. That's the message that we want to send to the international community. They have to live up to their responsibility with regards to this." After the uprising began February 15, Abdul-Jalil was among the government officials who broke with the regime. He has gone on to lead the opposition's National Transitional Council, a 31-member group representing most regions in Libya. The group has met in Benghazi, an eastern town that has become an opposition stronghold. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi told a Turkish reporter in an interview Tuesday that the imposition of a no-fly zone would simply unite the Libyan people behind him. "They will be united against the new attempt for occupation and imperialistic interests and it will be clear that they are conspiring against Libya," he said. "It will also be clear that the intentions are to control Libya's oil, choke Libya's liberty, land and people." Abdul-Jalil's remarks came shortly after Gadhafi's regime announced a reward for Abdul-Jalil's capture, branding him "an agent spy." In an "urgent" banner on state television, the government said its General Administration for Criminal Investigation was offering 500,000 Libyan dinars ($410,900 U.S.) "for whoever captures and hands over" the "agent spy" Abdul-Jalil, and "another offer of 200,000 Libyan dinars ($164,300 U.S.) for whoever offers information leading to his actual arrest." In a letter to the U.N. General Assembly, the transitional council asked that it be recognized as "the sole representative of all Libya." It also asked the international community to "fulfill its obligations to protect the Libyan people from any further genocide and crimes against humanity without any direct military intervention on Libyan soil." The letter, which was dated March 5, was made public Wednesday. The move to target Abdul-Jalil came as Gadhafi fought to advance against rebels who have taken control of many parts of the country. On Wednesday, pro-Gadhafi forces launched fresh attacks on Ras Lanuf, using planes and heavy artillery in an effort to retake the eastern oil city. Opposition fighters, armed with anti-aircraft guns and Soviet rifles, were outgunned by the heavily armed pro-Gadhafi forces. CNN's Ben Wedeman reported that an intense artillery bombardment was under way on the western edge of Ras Lanuf, where ambulances lined up to the emergency ward at Ras Lanuf's only hospital to drop off the wounded. More than 25 people were wounded, said Dr. Ali Al-Bart, at Ras Lanuf Hospital. "It's very bad, the situation is very bad," he said. Opposition efforts remained, but appeared weak. Ahmed Faturi left his clothing store in Benghazi to carry a SAM-7 surface-to-air missile, but knew he had little chance of hitting a plane with it. And he expressed little hope that a no-fly zone would ever materialize. "Just talk," he said. A few days ago, the rebel forces were advancing steadily westward toward Gadhafi's stronghold in the capital city of Tripoli. But that advancement appears to have reversed. In Ras Lanuf, an oil storage tank to the west was hit in the fighting, though it was not clear who was responsible. Libyan state television reported that "armed groups supported by al Qaeda blew up an oil tank as they withdrew from Ras Lanuf against the advancing Libyan armed forces." The attack marked the first time since the rebellion began more than three weeks ago that Libya's oil infrastructure has been damaged. Gadhafi has shown no sign of giving up. On state television, he again insisted Tuesday night that youths misled and drugged by al Qaeda were to blame for the fighting. "For them, everybody's their enemy," Gadhafi said. "They know nothing other than killing." The speech was recorded earlier Tuesday when Gadhafi addressed a youth group of tribal supporters, urging them to defend Libya from those who envy its standard of living. "They want to take your petrol," he said. "This is what America, this is what the French, those colonialists, want." A private Libyan aircraft crossed Greek airspace Wednesday en route to Cairo, Egypt, and the pilot said there were two passengers on board, according to Greek civil aviation authorities. The pilot did not identify the passengers, aviation authorities said. Multiple media reports said the plane landed in Cairo. The development raised questions about whether Libyan officials may have flown to Cairo. On Tuesday, an opposition member said Gadhafi was negotiating an exit deal, but other opposition members and the government denied that. In the fourth week of what has become a civil war, Gadhafi's regime has held on to the capital, while losing control to the opposition in some other areas. Benghazi, in eastern Libya, is an opposition stronghold. People in some towns in the western part of the country told CNN Wednesday their areas were under rebel control. In Zuwarah, two sources said the city, which is located between Zawiya and the country's western border, with Tunisia, was surrounded by Gadhafi supporters but most shops and banks were operating normally. A witness described the scene as tense, with schools, government offices and businesses closed. Demonstrations were no longer being held because, the witness said, "There is no one to protest against." Two Zuwarah residents said "messengers from Gadhafi" had warned local leaders Wednesday to surrender or face attack. The "messengers" told the leaders that replacing the pre-Gadhafi regime flag in the city with the government's green flag would be interpreted as a sign of solidarity with the regime, the sources said. They added that there had been implicit threats against Zuwarah to bomb two nearby facilities: a petro-chemical plant 15 kilometers away and a gas export facility 30 kilometers away. In Zawiya, two sources said the fighting continued in the city center Wednesday, but to a lesser extent than on Tuesday. They said the opposition occupied the city center, which was surrounded by the military. On the outskirts of the city, pro-Gadhafi rallies were being held, they said. But Libyan television reported that Gadhafi supporters were celebrating "the liberation of the town from the armed terrorist elements backed by al Qaeda" in the main square. Access to the city was limited. A witness told CNN she tried to travel from Tripoli to Zawiya but was turned away at various checkpoints. Communications were so difficult that CNN was not able to talk with anyone in the city. One Zawiya resident, who told CNN she had to make the 40-minute trip to Tripoli to make a phone call, said there had been no electricity in Zawiya for the previous day. In addition, two medical clinics that were shut Tuesday by the military remained closed Wednesday, she said. Another source who fled Zawiya Tuesday for the Tunisian border said many bodies in the city lay unclaimed because relatives -- fearing violence -- would not go to graveyards to bury them. Residents of Zuwarah sent weapons, explosives, and medical supplies via a small boat to Zawiya, the witness said. The man who drove the boat dropped the supplies immediately upon arrival and fled out of fear. Libyan state TV showed video of government supporters cheering in Zawiya's streets and hoisting the government flag on Wednesday. Witnesses said fear remained widespread in the capital, where schools were closed. A resident said she called several banks to ask about taking out money but was told that there was a shortage of cash. Nalut was under opposition control and calm Wednesday, a witness said. In Ajdabiya and Misrata, spokesmen for opposition groups said those towns remained under opposition control and were calm as well. Two doctors in Misrata said medical supplies were in short supply. More than 80 people remained at Central Misrata Hospital recovering from wounds suffered Sunday in fighting, they said. Libya's government sought Wednesday to influence international sentiment, announcing that Libya's secretary of state for international relations will travel to Portugal, Greece and Malta on an exploratory fact-finding mission that may include other destinations. Libya has invited British, French, Dutch and German fact-finding teams to Libya to examine reports of aerial bombardment and massacres. Libya had received no response from any of the invitees. The decision about whether to impose a no-fly zone is a complicated one, said Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. "There's no assurance that the imposition of even a no-fly zone would make a decisive difference in the battle," Burns said. "Gadhafi has ground forces. He has artillery, he has a mercenary army. That's 95 percent of the fighting under way in Libya." And it would not prove to be a panacea, the head of the U.S. Marine Corps told lawmakers Tuesday. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James F. Amos said that a no-fly zone would do little to thwart Libya's helicopters, which he called "their greatest threat." A no-fly zone would typically be enforced by fighter jets whose speed and altitude make it difficult to target helicopters, which move low and slow, Amos said. For its part, Libya said it was not misusing its air force. Any no-fly zone would be tantamount to an act of war, Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Karim said Tuesday. The military, he said, "are taking purely defensive positions; they are not taking offensive ones." He said the Libyan government has asked for international monitors to verify that assertion. The protests against the 68-year-old Gadhafi began February 15 as anti-government demonstrators sought his ouster after nearly 42 years of rule. Death toll estimates have ranged from more than 1,000 to as many as 2,000. And the war has forced out 215,000 people, many of them poor migrant workers who have been stranded at both the Tunisian and Egyptian borders, the U.N. refugee agency has said. While many countries chartered planes and dispatched ships to whisk away their citizens to safety, those stuck at the border are sheltered in cramped, unsanitary quarters with little to eat. The United Nations' special representative for children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said her office had received unconfirmed reports of violence against children, "including killing and maiming and use of children as combatants and the denial of humanitarian access." Valerie Amos, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, called for all Libyan civilians to be protected. "I am deeply concerned about the reportedly indiscriminate nature of the fighting, and particularly the use of heavy artillery and aerial bombardments," she said in a statement. "We are also hearing reports of hospital closures at the very time when people most need medical care." The U.N. World Food Programme has initiated a $39.2 million emergency operation intended to provide food to more than 1 million people in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia over a three-month period. In the latest sign of international solidarity with the Libyan opposition, a group of people entered a home in London Wednesday owned by Saif Gadhafi, the Libyan leader's son who has spoken on behalf of the regime in recent weeks. They could be seen hanging a banner out an upstairs window with a picture of Gadhafi in a red circle with a line through it. "Out of Libya," the sign says, "Out of London." London Metropolitan police said only the situation was "being treated as a civil matter." CNN's Ben Wedeman, Whitney Hurst, Nic Robertson, Chris Lawrence, Arwa Damon, Salma Abdelaziz, Jomana Karadsheh and Caroline Faraj contributed to this report ||||| RAS LANOUF, Libya — Forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi struck an oil pipeline and oil storage facility Wednesday, sending a giant yellow fireball into the sky as they pounded rebels with artillery and gunfire in at least two major cities. Gaddafi appeared to be keeping up the momentum he has seized in recent days in his fight against rebels trying to move on the capital, Tripoli, from territory they hold in eastern Libya. State television claimed Gaddafi's forces had retaken Zawiya, the city closest to Tripoli that had fallen into opposition hands. There was no was to immediately verify the claim. Gaddafi forces have been waging a heavy siege on the city since last week, and phone lines there have not been working for days. State TV showed a crowd of hundreds, purportedly in Zawiya's main square on Wednesday, carrying images of Gaddafi and shouting "The people want Colonel Gaddafi!" The fall of Zawiya to anti-Gaddafi residents early on in the uprising that began Feb. 15 had illustrated the initial, blazing progress of the opposition, which has now been blunted. In the east, an Associated Press reporter at Ras Lanouf near the front line of fighting saw an explosion from the area of the Sidr oil facility, 360 miles (580 kilometers) east of Tripoli. Three columns of thick smoke rose from the area, apparently from burning oil. Mustafa Gheriani, an opposition spokesman, said the government artillery hit a pipeline supplying Sidr from oil fields in the desert. An oil storage depot also was hit, apparently by an airstrike, he said. Gaddafi's successes have left Western powers struggling to come up with a plan to support the rebels without becoming ensnared in the complex and fast-moving conflict. On Wednesday, a high-ranking member of the Libyan military flew to Cairo with a message for Egyptian army officials from Gaddafi, but no further details were known. President Barack Obama's most senior advisers were meeting Wednesday to outline what steps are realistic and possible to pressure Gaddafi to halt the violence and give up power. They planned to examine the ramifications of a no-fly zone over Libya and other potential military options, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations. Britain and France are pushing for the U.N. to create a no-fly zone over the country, and while the U.S. may be persuaded to sign on, such a move is unlikely to win the backing of veto-wielding Security Council members Russia and China, which traditionally object to such steps as infringements on national sovereignty. The two sides in Libya traded barrages of artillery shells and rockets Wednesday afternoon about 12 miles (20 kilometers) west of the oil port of Ras Lanouf, an indication that regime forces were much closer than previously known to that city. Ras Lanouf is the westernmost point seized by rebels moving along the country's main highway on the Mediterranean coast. Four bodies were brought to the morgue at the hospital in Ras Lanouf, doctors said. Warplanes streaked overhead and a yellow fireball erupted at or near the location of a small oil terminal. Pillars of black smoke also rose from the direction of the town of Bin Jawwad, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) to the west. 03/11/2011 6:31 PM EST U.S. Extends Sanctions On Libya Reports the AP: The Obama administration extended its Libya sanctions to more Gadhafi family members and close advisers on Thursday, blacklisting business with the Libyan leader's wife, four of his children and his chief of military intelligence. The Treasury Department froze the assets of nine Libyans in all as part of the strategy to peel off Moammar Gadhafi's closest advisers while punishing those who remain loyal to the regime even as it commits human rights violations. The sanctions come on top of those previously announced by the administration, which accounted for $32 billion in Libyan government assets blocked in the United States. 03/11/2011 5:33 PM EST Sarkozy Calls For Air Strikes If Gaddafi Attacks Civilians French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for airstrikes against Gaddafi forces if the leader attacks civilians. According to the Guardian: Nicolas Sarkozy has called for targeted air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's regime if his forces use chemical weapons or launch air strikes against civilians. As the EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton, warned that a no-fly zone could risk civilian lives in Libya, the French president told an emergency EU summit in Brussels that air strikes may soon be justified. "The strikes would be solely of a defensive nature if Mr Gaddafi makes use of chemical weapons or air strikes against non-violent protesters," Sarkozy said. The French president qualified his remarks by saying he had many reservations about military intervention in Libya "because Arab revolutions belong to Arabs". 03/11/2011 5:06 PM EST Dutch Helicopter Crew Freed A Dutch helicopter crew taken captive in Libya has been freed and sent to Greece. The BBC is reporting: The two men and one woman arrived in Athens on a Greek military transport plane hours after a son of Muammar Gaddafi announced their release. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said Libya would hold on to the crew's Lynx helicopter. The woman pilot, Yvonne Niersman, took part in a mission last year to free a German ship from Somali pirates. Ms Niersman and her fellow crew members were captured in Libya after flying in from the Dutch warship Tromp, anchored off the coast. Read the entire report here. 03/11/2011 4:43 PM EST McCain Praises Moroccan King Senator John McCain praised Morocco's King Mohammed VI for his pledge to introduce democratic reforms. According to the AFP: "This new reform agenda builds on the king's long-standing commitment to lead Morocco to a future of reform and modernization, and it could ensure that the Kingdom of Morocco will continue to stand as a positive example to governments across the Middle East and North Africa," said McCain. 03/11/2011 3:40 PM EST Gaddafi Offers Amnesty To Rebels Reuters is reporting that Gaddafi is now offering to offer amnesty to those rebels who lay own arms. 03/11/2011 3:28 PM EST 2 Protesters Killed In Tunisia The AP reports: Tunisia's Interior Ministry says a new eruption of violence between police and protesters has killed two people and injured 20. The ministry says on its Facebook page that police fired tear gas and demonstrators threw stones and gasoline bombs. The statement says two protesters were killed in the incident in Metlaoui, a mining town in the center of the Mediterranean country. The violence comes as Tunisia's interim government is trying to restore stability after deadly protests that drove out longtime leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January. That prompted uprisings around the Arab world. 03/11/2011 2:39 PM EST Berlusconi Says Hardline With Gaddafi A Mistake Berlusconi is saying that the West may have made a mistake by taking a hardline against Gaddafi, which may have backed the Libyan leader into a corner. Reports Reuters: The hardline stance taken by major powers against Muammar Gaddafi may have backed the Libyan leader into a corner and prevented a quiet exit, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Friday. Speaking after a special meeting of EU leaders, Berlusconi, one of Gaddafi's closest friends in Europe until the current upheaval, said the chances of persuading him to give up power voluntarily now appeared to have disappeared. "Once someone put forward the idea of bringing Gaddafi before the International Criminal Court, I think the idea of staying in power became entrenched with him and I don't think anyone can make him change his mind," he told reporters. Read the entire report here. 03/11/2011 2:16 PM EST Who Are The Libyan Rebels? The AP is reporting that the rebels fighting Gaddafi forces are amateurs, but deeply committed to the cause: Moammar Gadhafi has ruled Libya since long before the 25-year-old was born, and he hates the dictator enough to risk his life by fighting for the ragtag rebel force battling government troops along a desolate highway on the North African country's Mediterranean coast. "I will fight forever. I will die or win, like Omar Mukhtar," said Salem, invoking the legendary Libyan hero who fought Italian occupiers in the 1930s, was ultimately executed, and has become a symbol for the new revolutionaries. The front-line force trying to advance toward Gadhafi's stronghold in the capital Tripoli is surprisingly small. Not counting supporters who bolster them in the towns along their path, it is estimated at 1,500 at most — Libyans from all walks of life, from students and coffeeshop owners to businessmen who picked up whatever weapons they could and joined the fight. No one seems to know their full size, and they could be picking up new members all the time. Its ramshackle nature explains the dramatic lurches the fighting has taken. Last week, they took control over a stretch of Mediterranean coastal land that included major oil installations in the ports of Brega and Ras Lanouf. They charged enthusiastically further west, reaching within a few dozen miles of Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte, a bastion of support for the leader of 41 years. 03/11/2011 1:03 PM EST Gaddafi Forces Show Signs Of Victory Reports the AP: Moammar Gadhafi's regime has gained momentum with the capture of a key city near Tripoli after days of fierce fighting with rebels. The battle for Zawiya has emerged as a key test in the government's ability to maintain its hold on the Libyan capital and surrounding areas. The government had claimed victory on Wednesday, but the rebels who are seeking to oust Gadhafi said fighting was ongoing. An Associated Press reporter, who was escorted with other journalists into the city on Friday, says the main square that had been the center of resistance is clearly in government control. 03/11/2011 12:47 PM EST Obama On Libya Obama noted all of the sanctions and property seizures that have already been implemented against Gaddafi, saying, "Across the board, we are tightening the noose on Gaddafi." He says that NATO is discussing potential military actions in Libya, including a no-fly zone, and will meet on Tuesday. He said that a position will be created for a liaison to speak with Libyan opposition groups. He said that the international community had moved quickly to isolate Gaddafi. Obama said that no options have been taken off the table so far. In response to a question about whether it would ever be acceptable to the U.S. for Gaddafi to stay in power, Obama stated that "it is in the U.S.' interest and the interest of the Libyan people for Gaddafi to leave." He added, however, that when making a decision to engage militarily, he would weigh the "costs and benefits." Load More

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Photo: Whitney Roberts Logan Via Facebook Image 1 of / 25 Caption Close Image 1 of 25 Whitney Logan's Christmas post about Jesus being a Middle Eastern refugee has gone viral, attracting 370 shares and 266 reactions as of Friday. Image source: Facebook Whitney Logan's Christmas post about Jesus being a Middle Eastern refugee has gone viral, attracting 370 shares and 266 reactions as of Friday. Image source: Facebook Photo: Whitney Roberts Logan Via Facebook Image 2 of 25 Actors who have played God, Jesus or Satan When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see. The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its accompanying film "Son of God" starred Diogo Morgado as Jesus. less When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see.The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its accompanying film "Son of God" starred Diogo Morgado as Jesus. Actors who have played God, Jesus or Satan When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see. The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see.The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its ... more Photo: Joe Alblas, Unit Stills Photographer Image 3 of 25 Willem Dafoe stars as the tempted Jesus of Nazareth in 1988's "The Last Temptation of Christ." Willem Dafoe stars as the tempted Jesus of Nazareth in 1988's "The Last Temptation of Christ." Photo: Universal City Studios Image 5 of 25 Morgan Freeman as God in "Evan Almighty," 2007. Morgan Freeman as God in "Evan Almighty," 2007. Photo: Ralph Nelson, Universal Studios Image 6 of 25 Elizabeth Hurley, as the devil, turns the bikini into an item of evil in the 2000 comedy ''Bedazzled.'' Elizabeth Hurley, as the devil, turns the bikini into an item of evil in the 2000 comedy ''Bedazzled.'' Image 7 of 25 Alanis Morissette made a hippie-ish God in the 1999 film "Dogma." Alanis Morissette made a hippie-ish God in the 1999 film "Dogma." Photo: Dave Hogan, Getty Images Image 8 of 25 Al Pacino as Satan in "Devil's Advocate," 1997. Al Pacino as Satan in "Devil's Advocate," 1997. Photo: Murray Close Image 9 of 25 Robert De Niro played the devil in "Angel Heart," 1987. Robert De Niro played the devil in "Angel Heart," 1987. Image 10 of 25 Harvey Keitel as Satan in "Little Nicky," 2000. Harvey Keitel as Satan in "Little Nicky," 2000. Photo: Myles Aronowitz, New Line Cinema Image 11 of 25 Christian Bale as Jesus in "Mary, Mother of Jesus," 1999. Christian Bale as Jesus in "Mary, Mother of Jesus," 1999. Photo: EGON ENDRENYI, NBC Image 12 of 25 Jack Nicholson played Satan in "The Witches of Eastwick," 1987. Jack Nicholson played Satan in "The Witches of Eastwick," 1987. Photo: Silver Screen Collection, Getty Images Image 13 of 25 Whoopi Goldberg played God in "A Little Bit of Heaven," 2011. Whoopi Goldberg played God in "A Little Bit of Heaven," 2011. Photo: Timothy White Image 14 of 25 Jeremy Sisto starred in the 2000 TV miniseries "Jesus." Jeremy Sisto starred in the 2000 TV miniseries "Jesus." Image 15 of 25 Tim Curry played the Lord of Darkness in the 1985 film "Legend." Tim Curry played the Lord of Darkness in the 1985 film "Legend." Photo: Universal Pictures Image 16 of 25 George Burns played God in his film "Oh God!" in 1977 and also played the devil in "Oh God! You Devil" in 1984. George Burns played God in his film "Oh God!" in 1977 and also played the devil in "Oh God! You Devil" in 1984. Photo: HANDOUT, KRT Image 17 of 25 Jim Caviezel played Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ," 2004. Jim Caviezel played Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ," 2004. Photo: handout Image 18 of 25 Rosalinda Celentano played the role of Satan in 2004's "The Passion of the Christ." Rosalinda Celentano played the role of Satan in 2004's "The Passion of the Christ." Photo: J. Vespa, Wireimage/Getty Image 19 of 25 Viggo Mortensen, who played the lead role in "The Road," was also Satan in the 1995 film "The Prophecy." Viggo Mortensen, who played the lead role in "The Road," was also Satan in the 1995 film "The Prophecy." Image 20 of 25 Rocker Dave Grohl plays Satan in "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny," 2006. Rocker Dave Grohl plays Satan in "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny," 2006. Photo: Ian Gavan, Getty Images Image 21 of 25 Victor Garber played the role of the Messiah in "Godspell," 1973. Victor Garber played the role of the Messiah in "Godspell," 1973. Photo: Michael Buckner, Getty Images Image 22 of 25 Peter Fonda played the devil in "Ghost Rider" in 2007. Peter Fonda played the devil in "Ghost Rider" in 2007. Image 23 of 25 Peter Stormare was Lucifer in the 2005 movie "Constantine." Peter Stormare was Lucifer in the 2005 movie "Constantine." Photo: GABRIEL BOUYS, AFP/Getty Images Image 24 of 25 Gene Hackman supplied the voice of God in 1983's "Two of a Kind." Gene Hackman supplied the voice of God in 1983's "Two of a Kind." ||||| Advertisement After a divisive election season, the holidays are finally here and people are creating clever Christmas cards to inject optimism into people’s lives. But a 33-year-old psychotherapist didn’t want to shy away from current events — so she addressed them head on in her 2016 Christmas card. Whitney Roberts Logan told Your Daily Dish that she felt disheartened by the anti-refugee and the anti-immigrant sentiment during the election, which is why she added a special message to the Christmas card with her husband and child.“This Christmas season, we would like to remind everyone that Jesus was a Middle Eastern Refugee ,” the message read. As someone who studied religion in college, this message had a special meaning for Roberts Logan. “I created the card because I wanted to remind Christians – specifically – of this part of the Christmas story,” she wrote to Your Daily Dish. “Shortly after Jesus was born, he and his parents fled to Egypt to escape from King Herod, who wanted to kill him. If we say we love God, and he says ‘whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me’ (paraphrase), then we have a pretty clear spiritual directive when it comes to caring for those who would seek refuge.” She shared her card with Pantsuit Nation — the “secret” Facebook page for Hillary Clinton supporters — before sharing it on her Facebook page. In both cases, the card went viral.“I couldn’t bring myself to say something like, ‘Wishing you and yours a blessed season and a happy new year!'” she told Refinery29. “I thought it would be insincere and out of touch and pretty disconnected from the actual message in the Christmas story itself. ” With the recent situation of refugees in Aleppo , Roberts Logan hopes that her card will create some awareness about this. “As far as the reaction to the card goes, I am grateful to be able to shine a light on the crisis in Aleppo, and hope that many people will feel inspired to donate to relief organizations assisting refugees now,” she wrote to Your Daily Dish. ||||| Mourners carry the body of a Syrian man following an airstrike by government forces in Aleppo on Jan. 16, 2016. (Photo by Ameer Alhalbi/NurPhoto) More than 1 in 10 Syrians have been wounded or killed since the beginning of the war in 2011, according to a new report that finds a staggering 470,000 deaths have been caused by the conflict, either directly or indirectly. The grim tally from the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR) represents a dramatic increase from the total of 250,000 fatalities often cited by the United Nations, which stopped independently counting Syria’s war dead early in 2014. In all, 11.5 percent of Syria’s population has been wounded or killed since 2011, according to the SCPR analysis. The vast majority of deaths — 400,000 — were caused by violence, while 70,000 came as an indirect result of the war — the collapse of the country’s health-care infrastructure, lack of access to medicine, poor sanitation, the spread of communicable diseases, falling vaccination rates, food scarcity and malnutrition. Another 1.88 million Syrians have been injured. The loss of life was the “most catastrophic visible and direct” impact of the war, according to the report, with life expectancy dropping from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015. “Hundreds of thousands of people, particularly male breadwinners, have [been] killed, injured, arrested, and kidnapped, enormously endangering their lives and the living conditions of their families,” the report said. “The widespread insecurity and unbearable economic conditions and hardship, have forced millions of Syrians to resettle inside or outside the country and to depend completely on local and international humanitarian aids. This loss of security in all its forms has compromised human rights and dignity of the Syrian population.” The report’s author, Rabie Nasser, told The Guardian that indirect deaths would only increase in the future. “We are sure of this figure,” Nasser said, noting that earlier counts from the U.N. likely “underestimated the casualties due to lack of access to information during the crisis.” Research for the SCPR study was carried out on the ground in Syria, according to The Guardian, which first reported the figures. The SCPR analysis comes as bombing by the Syrian government and Russia of rebel-held Aleppo, the nation’s second largest city, has prompted a new exodus of tens of thousands of Syrians. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that the latest fighting has displaced 50,000 Syrians in Aleppo province, with around 30,000 gathering near Syria’s border with Turkey, which remains closed. Those who remain in Aleppo face a potential siege as forces allied with President Bashar al Assad slowly encircle the area. In the meantime, diplomacy has been faltering. Earlier this month, international talks aimed at ending the war barely got off the ground in Geneva before they were suspended. The prospect for further negotiations appear dim despite plans to resume them on Feb. 25. While not apportioning blame to either side in the conflict, the SCPR noted that fighting has destroyed Syria’s health-care infrastructure, while sieges and the restriction of movement have worsened the health of those with chronic illnesses. Physicians for Human Rights, a group that tracks the deaths of health-care workers in Syria, said in separate research released last December that 2015 was one of the worst years on record for strikes on medical facilities in the country, with government forces launching more than 100 attacks. Since March 2011, the human rights group has recorded 336 attacks on medical facilities and the deaths of 697 medical personnel — a vast majority of which it attributes to the government and its allies. In Aleppo, Physicians for Human Rights estimates that 95 percent of doctors have either fled, been detained or killed. Those who are still there struggle with shortages of supplies and equipment, and live under the near-constant threat of bombings. The SCPR also looked at the economic and social impact of the war, placing Syria’s total economic loss by the end of 2015 at an estimated $254.7 billion. More than 85 percent of the country is living in poverty, with close to 7 in 10 Syrians stuck in extreme poverty — unable to afford essentials like food or water. At the start of the war in 2011, joblessness stood at 14.9 percent. By the end of last year, it surged to 52.9 percent. ||||| National Zoo's panda takes a roll in the snow One of the pandas at the National Zoo in Washington had some fun in the snow on Saturday, December 9. Mei Xiang frolicked and rolled down the hill as spectators watched. The zoo’s giant pandas are native to the cold climate of China’s western mountains and are more active during the winter month, the zoo said. The National Weather Service reported that just over two inches of snow fell at the zoo on Saturday.

– Whitney Roberts Logan hasn't felt quite as "merry" this season as she did when she wrote that one word on her Christmas card last year. With the number of Syrians killed in that nation's civil war estimated at near half a million, as PBS reported earlier this year, and on the heels of a divisive election during which Donald Trump's son likened Syrian refugees to Skittles, the Kansas mom says she felt compelled to do something different, reports the Houston Chronicle. So this year she penned a sentence, and it's gone viral: "This Christmas season we would like to remind everyone that Jesus was a Middle Eastern refugee." Logan has posted her card to her personal Facebook page with the message, "Part of our human family is in crisis, and there are real ways you can help today," followed by links to places to help. She also shared it with Pantsuit Nation, a Facebook page for Hillary Clinton supporters, and it quickly garnered 180,000 responses, the Kansas City Star reports. She was driven, she writes to the Daily Dish, to "remind Christians specifically" of the refugee part of the Christmas story, given that Jesus and his parents fled to Egypt to escape King Herod. "If we say we love God, and he says 'whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me' (paraphrase), then we have a pretty clear spiritual directive when it comes to caring for those who would seek refuge." (A now-famous young Syrian girl is safely out of Aleppo.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Photo: Whitney Roberts Logan Via Facebook Image 1 of / 25 Caption Close Image 1 of 25 Whitney Logan's Christmas post about Jesus being a Middle Eastern refugee has gone viral, attracting 370 shares and 266 reactions as of Friday. Image source: Facebook Whitney Logan's Christmas post about Jesus being a Middle Eastern refugee has gone viral, attracting 370 shares and 266 reactions as of Friday. Image source: Facebook Photo: Whitney Roberts Logan Via Facebook Image 2 of 25 Actors who have played God, Jesus or Satan When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see. The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its accompanying film "Son of God" starred Diogo Morgado as Jesus. less When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see.The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its accompanying film "Son of God" starred Diogo Morgado as Jesus. Actors who have played God, Jesus or Satan When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see. The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its When you imagine unimaginable figures, what do they look like to you? Here's what Hollywood thinks we're supposed to see.The 2013 miniseries "The Bible" and its ... more Photo: Joe Alblas, Unit Stills Photographer Image 3 of 25 Willem Dafoe stars as the tempted Jesus of Nazareth in 1988's "The Last Temptation of Christ." Willem Dafoe stars as the tempted Jesus of Nazareth in 1988's "The Last Temptation of Christ." Photo: Universal City Studios Image 5 of 25 Morgan Freeman as God in "Evan Almighty," 2007. Morgan Freeman as God in "Evan Almighty," 2007. Photo: Ralph Nelson, Universal Studios Image 6 of 25 Elizabeth Hurley, as the devil, turns the bikini into an item of evil in the 2000 comedy ''Bedazzled.'' Elizabeth Hurley, as the devil, turns the bikini into an item of evil in the 2000 comedy ''Bedazzled.'' Image 7 of 25 Alanis Morissette made a hippie-ish God in the 1999 film "Dogma." Alanis Morissette made a hippie-ish God in the 1999 film "Dogma." Photo: Dave Hogan, Getty Images Image 8 of 25 Al Pacino as Satan in "Devil's Advocate," 1997. Al Pacino as Satan in "Devil's Advocate," 1997. Photo: Murray Close Image 9 of 25 Robert De Niro played the devil in "Angel Heart," 1987. Robert De Niro played the devil in "Angel Heart," 1987. Image 10 of 25 Harvey Keitel as Satan in "Little Nicky," 2000. Harvey Keitel as Satan in "Little Nicky," 2000. Photo: Myles Aronowitz, New Line Cinema Image 11 of 25 Christian Bale as Jesus in "Mary, Mother of Jesus," 1999. Christian Bale as Jesus in "Mary, Mother of Jesus," 1999. Photo: EGON ENDRENYI, NBC Image 12 of 25 Jack Nicholson played Satan in "The Witches of Eastwick," 1987. Jack Nicholson played Satan in "The Witches of Eastwick," 1987. Photo: Silver Screen Collection, Getty Images Image 13 of 25 Whoopi Goldberg played God in "A Little Bit of Heaven," 2011. Whoopi Goldberg played God in "A Little Bit of Heaven," 2011. Photo: Timothy White Image 14 of 25 Jeremy Sisto starred in the 2000 TV miniseries "Jesus." Jeremy Sisto starred in the 2000 TV miniseries "Jesus." Image 15 of 25 Tim Curry played the Lord of Darkness in the 1985 film "Legend." Tim Curry played the Lord of Darkness in the 1985 film "Legend." Photo: Universal Pictures Image 16 of 25 George Burns played God in his film "Oh God!" in 1977 and also played the devil in "Oh God! You Devil" in 1984. George Burns played God in his film "Oh God!" in 1977 and also played the devil in "Oh God! You Devil" in 1984. Photo: HANDOUT, KRT Image 17 of 25 Jim Caviezel played Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ," 2004. Jim Caviezel played Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ," 2004. Photo: handout Image 18 of 25 Rosalinda Celentano played the role of Satan in 2004's "The Passion of the Christ." Rosalinda Celentano played the role of Satan in 2004's "The Passion of the Christ." Photo: J. Vespa, Wireimage/Getty Image 19 of 25 Viggo Mortensen, who played the lead role in "The Road," was also Satan in the 1995 film "The Prophecy." Viggo Mortensen, who played the lead role in "The Road," was also Satan in the 1995 film "The Prophecy." Image 20 of 25 Rocker Dave Grohl plays Satan in "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny," 2006. Rocker Dave Grohl plays Satan in "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny," 2006. Photo: Ian Gavan, Getty Images Image 21 of 25 Victor Garber played the role of the Messiah in "Godspell," 1973. Victor Garber played the role of the Messiah in "Godspell," 1973. Photo: Michael Buckner, Getty Images Image 22 of 25 Peter Fonda played the devil in "Ghost Rider" in 2007. Peter Fonda played the devil in "Ghost Rider" in 2007. Image 23 of 25 Peter Stormare was Lucifer in the 2005 movie "Constantine." Peter Stormare was Lucifer in the 2005 movie "Constantine." Photo: GABRIEL BOUYS, AFP/Getty Images Image 24 of 25 Gene Hackman supplied the voice of God in 1983's "Two of a Kind." Gene Hackman supplied the voice of God in 1983's "Two of a Kind." ||||| Advertisement After a divisive election season, the holidays are finally here and people are creating clever Christmas cards to inject optimism into people’s lives. But a 33-year-old psychotherapist didn’t want to shy away from current events — so she addressed them head on in her 2016 Christmas card. Whitney Roberts Logan told Your Daily Dish that she felt disheartened by the anti-refugee and the anti-immigrant sentiment during the election, which is why she added a special message to the Christmas card with her husband and child.“This Christmas season, we would like to remind everyone that Jesus was a Middle Eastern Refugee ,” the message read. As someone who studied religion in college, this message had a special meaning for Roberts Logan. “I created the card because I wanted to remind Christians – specifically – of this part of the Christmas story,” she wrote to Your Daily Dish. “Shortly after Jesus was born, he and his parents fled to Egypt to escape from King Herod, who wanted to kill him. If we say we love God, and he says ‘whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me’ (paraphrase), then we have a pretty clear spiritual directive when it comes to caring for those who would seek refuge.” She shared her card with Pantsuit Nation — the “secret” Facebook page for Hillary Clinton supporters — before sharing it on her Facebook page. In both cases, the card went viral.“I couldn’t bring myself to say something like, ‘Wishing you and yours a blessed season and a happy new year!'” she told Refinery29. “I thought it would be insincere and out of touch and pretty disconnected from the actual message in the Christmas story itself. ” With the recent situation of refugees in Aleppo , Roberts Logan hopes that her card will create some awareness about this. “As far as the reaction to the card goes, I am grateful to be able to shine a light on the crisis in Aleppo, and hope that many people will feel inspired to donate to relief organizations assisting refugees now,” she wrote to Your Daily Dish. ||||| Mourners carry the body of a Syrian man following an airstrike by government forces in Aleppo on Jan. 16, 2016. (Photo by Ameer Alhalbi/NurPhoto) More than 1 in 10 Syrians have been wounded or killed since the beginning of the war in 2011, according to a new report that finds a staggering 470,000 deaths have been caused by the conflict, either directly or indirectly. The grim tally from the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR) represents a dramatic increase from the total of 250,000 fatalities often cited by the United Nations, which stopped independently counting Syria’s war dead early in 2014. In all, 11.5 percent of Syria’s population has been wounded or killed since 2011, according to the SCPR analysis. The vast majority of deaths — 400,000 — were caused by violence, while 70,000 came as an indirect result of the war — the collapse of the country’s health-care infrastructure, lack of access to medicine, poor sanitation, the spread of communicable diseases, falling vaccination rates, food scarcity and malnutrition. Another 1.88 million Syrians have been injured. The loss of life was the “most catastrophic visible and direct” impact of the war, according to the report, with life expectancy dropping from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015. “Hundreds of thousands of people, particularly male breadwinners, have [been] killed, injured, arrested, and kidnapped, enormously endangering their lives and the living conditions of their families,” the report said. “The widespread insecurity and unbearable economic conditions and hardship, have forced millions of Syrians to resettle inside or outside the country and to depend completely on local and international humanitarian aids. This loss of security in all its forms has compromised human rights and dignity of the Syrian population.” The report’s author, Rabie Nasser, told The Guardian that indirect deaths would only increase in the future. “We are sure of this figure,” Nasser said, noting that earlier counts from the U.N. likely “underestimated the casualties due to lack of access to information during the crisis.” Research for the SCPR study was carried out on the ground in Syria, according to The Guardian, which first reported the figures. The SCPR analysis comes as bombing by the Syrian government and Russia of rebel-held Aleppo, the nation’s second largest city, has prompted a new exodus of tens of thousands of Syrians. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that the latest fighting has displaced 50,000 Syrians in Aleppo province, with around 30,000 gathering near Syria’s border with Turkey, which remains closed. Those who remain in Aleppo face a potential siege as forces allied with President Bashar al Assad slowly encircle the area. In the meantime, diplomacy has been faltering. Earlier this month, international talks aimed at ending the war barely got off the ground in Geneva before they were suspended. The prospect for further negotiations appear dim despite plans to resume them on Feb. 25. While not apportioning blame to either side in the conflict, the SCPR noted that fighting has destroyed Syria’s health-care infrastructure, while sieges and the restriction of movement have worsened the health of those with chronic illnesses. Physicians for Human Rights, a group that tracks the deaths of health-care workers in Syria, said in separate research released last December that 2015 was one of the worst years on record for strikes on medical facilities in the country, with government forces launching more than 100 attacks. Since March 2011, the human rights group has recorded 336 attacks on medical facilities and the deaths of 697 medical personnel — a vast majority of which it attributes to the government and its allies. In Aleppo, Physicians for Human Rights estimates that 95 percent of doctors have either fled, been detained or killed. Those who are still there struggle with shortages of supplies and equipment, and live under the near-constant threat of bombings. The SCPR also looked at the economic and social impact of the war, placing Syria’s total economic loss by the end of 2015 at an estimated $254.7 billion. More than 85 percent of the country is living in poverty, with close to 7 in 10 Syrians stuck in extreme poverty — unable to afford essentials like food or water. At the start of the war in 2011, joblessness stood at 14.9 percent. By the end of last year, it surged to 52.9 percent. ||||| National Zoo's panda takes a roll in the snow One of the pandas at the National Zoo in Washington had some fun in the snow on Saturday, December 9. Mei Xiang frolicked and rolled down the hill as spectators watched. The zoo’s giant pandas are native to the cold climate of China’s western mountains and are more active during the winter month, the zoo said. The National Weather Service reported that just over two inches of snow fell at the zoo on Saturday.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A white county commissioner in northeast Kansas who told a black city planner that he belongs to "the master race" as he rejected her proposed development plan is coming under pressure from fellow commissioners to resign. Leavenworth County Commissioner Louis Klemp cited the master race — the Nazi ideology of Aryan supremacy — at a board meeting Tuesday while responding to a presentation by Triveece Penelton and a colleague on road development options in Tonganoxie, just west of Kansas City. "I don't want you to think I'm picking on you because we're part of the master race," Klemp told Penelton . He then said he didn't like any of the land use options that she had presented to the commission. Commissioners Robert Holland and Doug Smith called on Klemp to resign before his term ends Jan. 15. The Republican Party appointed Klemp to the commission in October 2017 to fill a vacancy created by a resignation. "In the best interest of the county, he should resign," Smith told The Leavenworth Times for a story published Thursday. "I was shocked. I was in disbelief," Holland said. "He should resign. I don't care if he's got two days left, he should resign." Klemp told KSHB-TV off camera that his comment was a joke. A message left at his home Thursday was not immediately returned. Klemp, who once ran for governor, has come under criticism in the past for making controversial comments. Last December, while the commission was discussing holiday schedules, Klemp suggested Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army in the Civil War, should be honored. "Not everybody does them all because we have Robert E. Lee...Oh God Robert E. Lee...wonderful part of history," Klemp said. He also said George Washington probably wouldn't get his own holiday because he was a slave owner. "It bothers me that if we're going to have Martin Luther King Day, why don't we have a George Washington?" he said. "I think George was a pretty important guy." ||||| Democrat Laura Kelly talks to the crowd at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center in Topeka, Kans., after she defeated Republican Kris Kobach Tuesday night to become the next Kansas governor. (Thad Allton/The... (Associated Press) Democrat Laura Kelly talks to the crowd at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center in Topeka, Kans., after she defeated Republican Kris Kobach Tuesday night to become the next Kansas governor. (Thad Allton/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP) (Associated Press) TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democrat Laura Kelly promised a new tone of bipartisanship after a victory in the Kansas governor's race brought her national attention. She faces a Republican-dominated Legislature with leaders who call her proposals impractical and vow to hold her to a pledge she made during the campaign not to raise taxes. Kelly is a veteran state senator from Topeka and defeated Republican firebrand Kris Kobach. He is the Kansas secretary of state and an ally of President Donald Trump. She wooed GOP moderates and independent voters by pitching herself as a lawmaker who has worked across party lines. But the same electorate that rejected Kobach's conservative politics moved the Legislature further to the right. And top Republicans view with skepticism Kelly's goals including another boost in funding for public schools. ||||| KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Leavenworth County Commissioner is once again calling for his colleague to resign after a county commission meeting Tuesday. The commissioners had been listening to a land-use study and commenting on the presentation. At one point during his comments, commissioner Louis Klemp addressed an African-American woman who had just presented the study. "I don’t want you to think I am picking on you because we are part of the master race. You have a gap in your teeth. We are part of the master race, don’t you forget that," Klemp said. "I was shocked. I was in disbelief," said commissioner Robert Holland. "He should resign. I don't care if he's got two days left, he should resign." 41 Action News received an email about Klemp's comments and tried to contact the commissioner several times by phone. He would not speak on camera when 41 Action News knocked on his door. Instead, off-camera he implied his comment was a joke. This is not the first time the commissioner's remarks have sparked controversy. Last year, while discussing the county's holiday schedule, Klemp made controversial remarks about Robert E. Lee and George Washington. "Not everybody does them all because we have Robert E. Lee...Oh God Robert E. Lee...wonderful part of history," Klemp said at the time. "It bothers me that if we're going to have Martin Luther King Day, why don't we have a George Washington? I think George was a pretty important guy," he later added. Klemp was appointed as commissioner after Clyde Graeber resigned for health reasons. Klemp's last day as commissioner is Jan. 15. "I'm ashamed of one of our commissioners and what he has done. We shouldn't be labeled as Leavenworth County, the racist county. That's the way I feel we are being labeled," said Holland.

– The Kansas governor has issued a response to a controversy over a county commissioner who made statements that evoked Nazi ideology while addressing a black city planner: Louis Klemp needs to apologize and quit, Gov. Jeff Colyer said over the weekend. "Racial and discriminative language have no place in our society and most especially when spoken by someone holding public office," the Republican said. Colyer joined members of the Leavenworth County Commission in calling for Klemp to resign before his term is up Jan. 15. According to KSHB, Klemp previously made waves with remarks he made about Robert E. Lee. Per the AP, Klemp cited the master race-the Nazi ideology of Aryan supremacy-at a board meeting Nov. 15 while responding to a presentation by Triveece Penelton. "I don't want you to think I'm picking on you because we're part of the master race," Klemp told Penelton. He then said he didn't like any of the land use options that she had presented to the commission. Klemp told KSHB off camera that his comment was a joke. (Kansas recently elected a Democrat in what many saw as a tightly contested gubernatorial race.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A white county commissioner in northeast Kansas who told a black city planner that he belongs to "the master race" as he rejected her proposed development plan is coming under pressure from fellow commissioners to resign. Leavenworth County Commissioner Louis Klemp cited the master race — the Nazi ideology of Aryan supremacy — at a board meeting Tuesday while responding to a presentation by Triveece Penelton and a colleague on road development options in Tonganoxie, just west of Kansas City. "I don't want you to think I'm picking on you because we're part of the master race," Klemp told Penelton . He then said he didn't like any of the land use options that she had presented to the commission. Commissioners Robert Holland and Doug Smith called on Klemp to resign before his term ends Jan. 15. The Republican Party appointed Klemp to the commission in October 2017 to fill a vacancy created by a resignation. "In the best interest of the county, he should resign," Smith told The Leavenworth Times for a story published Thursday. "I was shocked. I was in disbelief," Holland said. "He should resign. I don't care if he's got two days left, he should resign." Klemp told KSHB-TV off camera that his comment was a joke. A message left at his home Thursday was not immediately returned. Klemp, who once ran for governor, has come under criticism in the past for making controversial comments. Last December, while the commission was discussing holiday schedules, Klemp suggested Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army in the Civil War, should be honored. "Not everybody does them all because we have Robert E. Lee...Oh God Robert E. Lee...wonderful part of history," Klemp said. He also said George Washington probably wouldn't get his own holiday because he was a slave owner. "It bothers me that if we're going to have Martin Luther King Day, why don't we have a George Washington?" he said. "I think George was a pretty important guy." ||||| Democrat Laura Kelly talks to the crowd at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center in Topeka, Kans., after she defeated Republican Kris Kobach Tuesday night to become the next Kansas governor. (Thad Allton/The... (Associated Press) Democrat Laura Kelly talks to the crowd at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center in Topeka, Kans., after she defeated Republican Kris Kobach Tuesday night to become the next Kansas governor. (Thad Allton/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP) (Associated Press) TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democrat Laura Kelly promised a new tone of bipartisanship after a victory in the Kansas governor's race brought her national attention. She faces a Republican-dominated Legislature with leaders who call her proposals impractical and vow to hold her to a pledge she made during the campaign not to raise taxes. Kelly is a veteran state senator from Topeka and defeated Republican firebrand Kris Kobach. He is the Kansas secretary of state and an ally of President Donald Trump. She wooed GOP moderates and independent voters by pitching herself as a lawmaker who has worked across party lines. But the same electorate that rejected Kobach's conservative politics moved the Legislature further to the right. And top Republicans view with skepticism Kelly's goals including another boost in funding for public schools. ||||| KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Leavenworth County Commissioner is once again calling for his colleague to resign after a county commission meeting Tuesday. The commissioners had been listening to a land-use study and commenting on the presentation. At one point during his comments, commissioner Louis Klemp addressed an African-American woman who had just presented the study. "I don’t want you to think I am picking on you because we are part of the master race. You have a gap in your teeth. We are part of the master race, don’t you forget that," Klemp said. "I was shocked. I was in disbelief," said commissioner Robert Holland. "He should resign. I don't care if he's got two days left, he should resign." 41 Action News received an email about Klemp's comments and tried to contact the commissioner several times by phone. He would not speak on camera when 41 Action News knocked on his door. Instead, off-camera he implied his comment was a joke. This is not the first time the commissioner's remarks have sparked controversy. Last year, while discussing the county's holiday schedule, Klemp made controversial remarks about Robert E. Lee and George Washington. "Not everybody does them all because we have Robert E. Lee...Oh God Robert E. Lee...wonderful part of history," Klemp said at the time. "It bothers me that if we're going to have Martin Luther King Day, why don't we have a George Washington? I think George was a pretty important guy," he later added. Klemp was appointed as commissioner after Clyde Graeber resigned for health reasons. Klemp's last day as commissioner is Jan. 15. "I'm ashamed of one of our commissioners and what he has done. We shouldn't be labeled as Leavenworth County, the racist county. That's the way I feel we are being labeled," said Holland.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Six degrees of separation. Six degrees of separation is the idea that all living things and everything else in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized in an eponymous 1990 play written by John Guare. It is sometimes generalized to the average social distance being logarithmic in the size of the population. Early conceptions [ edit ] Shrinking world [ edit ] Theories on optimal design of cities, city traffic flows, neighborhoods, and demographics were in vogue after World War I. These[citation needed] conjectures were expanded in 1929 by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy, who published a volume of short stories titled Everything is Different. One of these pieces was titled "Chains," or "Chain-Links." The story investigated – in abstract, conceptual, and fictional terms – many of the problems that would captivate future generations of mathematicians, sociologists, and physicists within the field of network theory.[1][2] Due to technological advances in communications and travel, friendship networks could grow larger and span greater distances. In particular, Karinthy believed that the modern world was 'shrinking' due to this ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. He posited that despite great physical distances between the globe's individuals, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller.[3] As a result of this hypothesis, Karinthy's characters believed that any two individuals could be connected through at most five acquaintances. In his story, the characters create a game out of this notion. He wrote: A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth – anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.[4] This idea both directly and indirectly influenced a great deal of early thought on social networks. Karinthy has been regarded as the originator of the notion of six degrees of separation.[2] A related theory deals with the quality of connections, rather than their existence. The theory of three degrees of influence was created by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler.[citation needed] Small world [ edit ] Michael Gurevich conducted seminal work in his empirical study of the structure of social networks in his 1961 Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD dissertation under Ithiel de Sola Pool.[5] Mathematician Manfred Kochen, an Austrian who had been involved in urban design, extrapolated these empirical results in a mathematical manuscript, Contacts and Influences,[6] concluding that in a U.S.-sized population without social structure, "it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at most two intermediaries. In a [socially] structured population it is less likely but still seems probable. And perhaps for the whole world's population, probably only one more bridging individual should be needed." They subsequently constructed Monte Carlo simulations based on Gurevich's data, which recognized that both weak and strong acquaintance links are needed to model social structure. The simulations, carried out on the relatively limited computers of 1973, were nonetheless able to predict that a more realistic three degrees of separation existed across the U.S. population, foreshadowing the findings of American psychologist Stanley Milgram.[citation needed] Milgram continued Gurevich's experiments in acquaintanceship networks at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. Kochen and de Sola Pool's manuscript, Contacts and Influences,[7] was conceived while both were working at the University of Paris in the early 1950s, during a time when Milgram visited and collaborated in their research. Their unpublished manuscript circulated among academics for over 20 years before publication in 1978. It formally articulated the mechanics of social networks, and explored the mathematical consequences of these (including the degree of connectedness). The manuscript left many significant questions about networks unresolved, and one of these was the number of degrees of separation in actual social networks. Milgram took up the challenge on his return from Paris, leading to the experiments reported in The Small World Problem [8] in popular science journal Psychology Today, with a more rigorous version of the paper appearing in Sociometry two years later.[9] The Psychology Today article generated enormous publicity for the experiments, which are well known today, long after much of the formative work has been forgotten. Milgram's article made famous[8] his 1967 set of experiments to investigate de Sola Pool and Kochen's "small world problem." Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, born in Warsaw, growing up in Poland then France, was aware of the Statist rule of thumb, and was also a colleague of de Sola Pool, Kochen and Milgram at the University of Paris during the early 1950s (Kochen brought Mandelbrot to work at the Institute for Advanced Study and later IBM in the U.S.). This circle of researchers was fascinated by the interconnectedness and "social capital" of human networks. Milgram's study results showed that people in the United States seemed to be connected by approximately three friendship links, on average, without speculating on global linkages; he never actually used the term "six degrees of separation." Since the Psychology Today article gave the experiments wide publicity, Milgram, Kochen, and Karinthy all had been incorrectly attributed as the origin of the notion of six degrees; the most likely popularizer of the term "six degrees of separation" would be John Guare, who attributed the value '6' to Marconi.[10] Continued research: Small World Project [ edit ] In 2003, Columbia University conducted an analogous experiment on social connectedness amongst Internet email users. Their effort was named the Columbia Small World Project, and included 24,163 e-mail chains, aimed at 18 targets from 13 different countries around the world.[11] Almost 100,000 people registered, but only 384 (0.4%) reached the final target. Amongst the successful chains, while shorter lengths were more common some reached their target after only 7, 8, 9 or 10 steps. Dodds et al. noted that participants (all of whom volunteers) were strongly biased towards existing models of Internet users[Note 1] and that connectedness based on professional ties was much stronger than those within families or friendships. The authors cite "lack of interest" as the predominating factor in the high attrition rate,[Note 2] a finding consistent with earlier studies.[12] Research [ edit ] Several studies, such as Milgram's small world experiment, have been conducted to measure this connectedness empirically . The phrase "six degrees of separation" is often used as a synonym for the idea of the "small world" phenomenon.[13] However, detractors argue that Milgram's experiment did not demonstrate such a link,[14] and the "six degrees" claim has been decried as an "academic urban myth".[12][15] Also, the existence of isolated groups of humans, for example the Korubo and other native Brazilian populations,[16] would tend to invalidate the strictest interpretation of the hypothesis. Computer networks [ edit ] In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, attempted to recreate Milgram's experiment on the Internet, using an e-mail message as the "package" that needed to be delivered, with 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries). Watts found that the average (though not maximum) number of intermediaries was around six.[17] A 2007 study by Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz examined a data set of instant messages composed of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. They found the average path length among Microsoft Messenger users to be 6.[18] It has been suggested by some commentators[19] that interlocking networks of computer mediated lateral communication could diffuse single messages to all interested users worldwide as per the 6 degrees of separation principle via Information Routing Groups, which are networks specifically designed to exploit this principle and lateral diffusion. An optimal algorithm to calculate degrees of separation in social networks [ edit ] Bakhshandeh et al.[20] have addressed the search problem of identifying the degree of separation between two users in social networks such as Twitter. They have introduced new search techniques to provide optimal or near optimal solutions. The experiments are performed using Twitter, and they show an improvement of several orders of magnitude over greedy approaches. Their optimal algorithm finds an average degree of separation of 3.43 between two random Twitter users, requiring an average of only 67 requests for information over the Internet to Twitter. A near-optimal solution of length 3.88 can be found by making an average of 13.3 requests. Popularization [ edit ] No longer limited strictly to academic or philosophical thinking, the notion of six degrees recently has become influential throughout popular culture. Further advances in communication technology – and particularly the Internet – have drawn great attention to social networks and human interconnectedness. As a result, many popular media sources have addressed the term. The following provide a brief outline of the ways such ideas have shaped popular culture. Popularization of offline practice [ edit ] John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation [ edit ] American playwright John Guare wrote a play in 1990 and later released a film in 1993 that popularized it. It is Guare's most widely known work.[citation needed] The play ruminates upon the idea that any two individuals are connected by at most five others. As one of the characters states: I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we're so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.[21] Guare, in interviews, attributed his awareness of the "six degrees" to Marconi.[citation needed] Although this idea had been circulating in various forms for decades, it is Guare's piece that is most responsible for popularizing the phrase "six degrees of separation."[citation needed] Following Guare's lead, many future television and film sources would later incorporate the notion into their stories.[citation needed] J. J. Abrams, the executive producer of television series Six Degrees and Lost, played the role of Doug in the film adaptation of this play.[citation needed] Many of the play's themes are apparent in his television shows (see below).[citation needed] Kevin Bacon game [ edit ] The game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"[22] was invented as a play on the concept: the goal is to link any actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections, where two actors are connected if they have appeared in a movie or commercial together. It was created by three students at Albright College in Pennsylvania,[23] who came up with the concept while watching Footloose. On September 13, 2012, Google made it possible to search for any given actor's 'Bacon Number' through their search engine. Upon the arrival of the 4G mobile network in the United Kingdom, Kevin Bacon appears in several commercials for the EE Network in which he links himself to several well known celebrities and TV shows in the UK. Six Degrees of Der Kommissar [ edit ] Music critics have fun tracing the history and dissecting the popular song "Der Kommissar" which was first written and recorded by Austrian musician Falco with German vocals in 1981, then passed on and reworked in English by British band After The Fire in 1982, then lyrically rewritten and renamed "Deep In The Dark" by Laura Branigan in 1983 in the U.S., then rerecorded in its traditional style in 2007 by Dale Bozzio, who is the former lead singer of new wave band Missing Persons. In this situation, connections among six such diverse musical expressionists were generated through a song. In the beginning, the composer might never have thought that the song could spread so far. However, the six degree has demonstrated that "the small world" does exist. John L. Sullivan [ edit ] An early version involved former world Heavyweight boxing champion, John L. Sullivan, in which people would ask others to "shake the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand of 'the great John L.'"[24] In popular culture [ edit ] Website and application [ edit ] Six Degrees of Wikipedia [ edit ] In late February 2018, the website www.SixDegreesOfWikipedia.com was published by Jacob Wenger. This site takes any two Wikipedia articles and finds the various hyperlink paths that interconnect the two in the least number of clicks. It then shows each of the steps that were taken to do so and also presents a graphical display of the connections. On March 14, 2018, the site stated that among searches up to that date (~half a million), there have been an average separation of 3.0190°. From these, the number of searches that required six or more degrees was 1.417 percent. It also stated that searches with no connection found was 1.07%, and this was attributed to certain articles being dead ends or having very few links.[30] (Wenger's open source code is available on GitHub, and this enabled other sites to copy the concept, such as degreesofwikipedia.com.) Facebook [ edit ] A Facebook platform application named "Six Degrees" was developed by Karl Bunyan, which calculates the degrees of separation between different people. It had over 5.8 million users, as seen from the group's page. The average separation for all users of the application is 5.73 degrees, whereas the maximum degree of separation is 12. The application has a "Search for Connections" window to input any name of a Facebook user, to which it then shows the chain of connections. In June 2009, Bunyan shut down the application, presumably due to issues with Facebook's caching policy; specifically, the policy prohibited the storing of friend lists for more than 24 hours, which would have made the application inaccurate.[31] A new version of the application became available at Six Degrees after Karl Bunyan gave permission to a group of developers led by Todd Chaffee to re-develop the application based on Facebook's revised policy on caching data.[32][33] The initial version of the application was built at a Facebook Developers Garage London hackathon with Mark Zuckerberg in attendance.[34] Yahoo! Research Small World Experiment has been conducting an experiment and everyone with a Facebook account can take part in it. According to the research page, this research has the potential of resolving the still unresolved theory of six degrees of separation.[22][35] Facebook's data team released two papers in November 2011 which document that amongst all Facebook users at the time of research (721 million users with 69 billion friendship links) there is an average distance of 4.74.[36][37] Probabilistic algorithms were applied on statistical metadata to verify the accuracy of the measurements.[38] It was also found that 99.91% of Facebook users were interconnected, forming a large connected component.[39] Year Distance 2008 5.28 5.28 2011 4.74 4.74 2016 4.57 4.57 Distances as reported in Feb 2016 [37][40] Facebook reported that the distance had decreased to 4.57 in February 2016, when it had 1.6 billion users (about 22% of world population).[37] LinkedIn [ edit ] The LinkedIn professional networking site operates the degree of separation one is away from a person with which he or she wishes to communicate. On LinkedIn, one's network is made up of 1st-degree, 2nd-degree, and 3rd-degree connections and fellow members of LinkedIn Groups. In addition, LinkedIn notifies the user how many connections they and any other user have in common. SixDegrees.com was an early social-networking website that existed from 1997 to 2001. It allowed users to list friends, family members and acquaintances, send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their first, second, and third degrees, and see their connection to any other user on the site. At its height, it had 3,500,000 fully registered members.[41] However, it was closed in 2000. [42] Twitter [ edit ] Users on Twitter can follow other users creating a network. According to a study of 5.2 billion such relationships by social media monitoring firm Sysomos, the average distance on Twitter is 4.67. On average, about 50% of people on Twitter are only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone is five steps or less away.[43] In another work, researchers have shown that the average distance of 1,500 random users in Twitter is 3.435. They calculated the distance between each pair of users using all the active users in Twitter.[44] Mathematics [ edit ] Mathematicians use an analogous notion of collaboration distance:[45] two persons are linked if they are coauthors of an article. The collaboration distance with mathematician Paul Erdős is called the Erdős number. Erdős-Bacon numbers and Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath (EBS) numbers[46] are further extensions of the same thinking. Watts and Strogatz showed that the average path length between two nodes in a random network is equal to ln N / ln K, where N = total nodes and K = acquaintances per node. Thus if N = 300,000,000 (90% of the US population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 19.5 / 3.4 = 5.7 and if N = 6,000,000,000 (90% of the World population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 22.5 / 3.4 = 6.6. (Assume 10% of population is too young to participate.) Psychology [ edit ] A 2007 article published in The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist,[47] by Jesse S. Michel from Michigan State University, applied Stanley Milgram's small world phenomenon (i.e., “small world problem”) to the field of I-O psychology through co-author publication linkages. Following six criteria, Scott Highhouse (Bowling Green State University professor and fellow of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology) was chosen as the target. Co-author publication linkages were determined for (1) top authors within the I-O community, (2) quasi-random faculty members of highly productive I-O programs in North America, and (3) publication trends of the target. Results suggest that the small world phenomenon is alive and well with mean linkages of 3.00 to top authors, mean linkages of 2.50 to quasi-random faculty members, and a relatively broad and non-repetitive set of co-author linkages for the target. The author then provided a series of implications and suggestions for future research. See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] ^ [11] "More than half of all participants resided in North America and were middle class, professional, college educated, and Christian, reflecting commonly held notions of the Internet-using population" ^ [11] "suggesting lack of interest ... was the main reason" for the "extremely low completion rate" ||||| Happy Friends Day, Fellow Earthlings! We have some news on this new Facebook-invented holiday that, depending on your view of your fellow planetary inhabitants, may be intensely thrilling or tremendously frightening. According to the modern-day oracle that is Facebook (FB), we are all far less separated than we imagined. At least, that’s the case for users of the social network. For years, we have been led to believe by the sages of TV and Hollywood that we are separated by a relatively comfortable six degrees. That is, anyone can find a link to anyone else in the world by just tracing a path through six acquaintances. But lo, Facebook cometh to shatter our widely held belief in this myth and replace it with cold, hard data: The number is actually 3.57. “In honor of Friends Day, we’ve crunched the Facebook friend graph and determined that the number is actually 3.57,” writes Facebook’s data team. “Each person in the world (at least among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook) is connected to every other person by an average of three and a half other people.” This is mind-blowing stuff, people; this CHANGES EVERYTHING! To begin with, so much of our popular culture is going to be turned upside down. The joyous thinking of six degrees gave us the wonder of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Will Smith even made a movie out of it, which was based on a play, which was based on some real life events. Somehow, the “3.57 degrees of Kevin Bacon” just doesn’t work. But it also creates a massive existential dilemma for nearly every user of Facebook who had, until now, come to terms with their place in the universe and how they related to the other 1.5 billion users, not to mention the planet’s other 5.5 billion people. For instance, until yesterday, I could brag with confidence that Barack Obama is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine. Yo. But today? Is he a friend of a friend of a friend? Or a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend? The .57 makes it all very hard to sort out. Six was such a nice even number. Easy to wrap our heads around. Also, now I feel more responsible for a greater swath of humanity. I mean, if you’re only 3 people rather than 6 away from me, what is my obligation here? Are we friends? Should I call in to check up on you every now and then? Or Snapchat you? Invite you to our Halloween party? Or what? On the plus side, I’m much closer to Paul McCartney than I realized, which is cool. On the other hand, Donald Trump is just a digital hop, skip, and a jump away friendship-wise. Shudder. Now, if you think you’re going to have trouble sleeping at night, there’s a tool to help put your mind at ease. On the blog post, Facebook includes a calculator that will tell you how close (if you’re logged in) you are from everyone else. Me? I’m 2.89. Zuck is 3.17. (I feel comfortable calling him that since we’re practically related now.) COO Sheryl Sandberg is 2.92. The thing is that even if you adapt to this bombshell of proximity, you can’t rest easy. Facebook says those degrees of separation are shrinking! “Our collective ‘degrees of separation’ have shrunk over the past five years,” Facebook’s data team writes. “In 2011, researchers at Cornell, the Università degli Studi di Milano, and Facebook computed the average across the 721 million people using the site then, and found that it was 3.74. Now, with twice as many people using the site, we’ve grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world.” If Facebook’s prediction that it will have 5 billion users by 2030 comes true, then at this rate, the whole world will be practically sitting in your digital lap at that point. But gosh, that’s a lot of negativity. This is Friends Day! So don’t worry about all the creepy lowlifes who are much closer to you than you thought or that vague sense that suddenly the walls are closing in all around you and it’s getting very, very hard to breathe. Just be happy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU ||||| “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names. . . . How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet. But to find the right six people . . .” - John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation (1990) How connected is the world? Playwrights [1], poets [2], and scientists [3] have proposed that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else by six other people. In honor of Friends Day, we've crunched the Facebook friend graph and determined that the number is 3.57. Each person in the world (at least among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook) is connected to every other person by an average of three and a half other people. The average distance we observe is 4.57, corresponding to 3.57 intermediaries or "degrees of separation." Within the US, people are connected to each other by an average of 3.46 degrees. Our collective “degrees of separation” have shrunk over the past five years. In 2011, researchers at Cornell, the Università degli Studi di Milano, and Facebook computed the average across the 721 million people using the site then, and found that it was 3.74 [4,5]. Now, with twice as many people using the site, we've grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world. Calculating this number across billions of people and hundreds of billions of friendship connections is challenging; we use statistical techniques described below to precisely estimate distance based on de-identified, aggregate data. My degrees of separation Please log in to Facebook to see your number. Some Facebook employees Mark Zuckerberg 3.17 degrees of separation Sheryl Sandberg 2.92 degrees of separation The majority of the people on Facebook have averages between 2.9 and 4.2 degrees of separation. Figure 1 (below) shows the distribution of averages for each person. Figure 1. Estimated average degrees of separation between all people on Facebook. The average person is connected to every other person by an average of 3.57 steps. The majority of people have an average between 3 and 4 steps. Calculating degrees-of-separation at scale Calculating degrees of separation in a network with hundreds of billions of edges is a monumental task, because the number of people reached grows very quickly with the degree of separation. Imagine a person with 100 friends. If each of his friends also has 100 friends, then the number of friends-of-friends will be 10,000. If each of those friends-of-friends also has 100 friends then the number of friends-of-friends-of-friends will be 1,000,000. Some of those friends may overlap, so we need to filter down to the unique connections. We're only two hops away and the number is already big. In reality this number grows even faster since most people on Facebook have more than 100 friends. We also need to do this computation 1.6 billion times; that is, for every person on Facebook. Rather than calculate it exactly, we relied on statistical algorithms developed by Kang and others [6-8] to estimate distances with great accuracy, basically finding the approximate number of people within 1, 2, 3 (and so on) hops away from a source. More accurately, for each number of hops we estimate the number of distinct people you can reach from every source. This estimation can be done efficiently using the Flajolet-Martin algorithm [9]. How does it work? Imagine you have a set of people and you want to count how many are unique. First you assign each person a random integer; let's call it hash. Approximately 1/2 of the people will have an even hash: the binary representation of the hash will end with 0. Approximately 1/4 of the people will have a hash divisible by 4; that is, the binary representation ends with 00. In general, 1/2n people will have the binary representation of their hash end with n zeros. Now, we can reverse this and try to count how many different people we have by reading their hash values one by one. To do that, we track the biggest number of zeroes we've seen. Intuitively, if there were n zeroes, we can expect set to have c*2n unique numbers, where c is some constant. For better accuracy we can do this computation multiple times with different hash values. This algorithm maps well to our problem: you just find the biggest number of zeroes among all friends' hashes. By using a bitwise OR operation on the hash, this process can be repeated recursively to estimate the number of unique friends-of-friends, and then friends-of-friends-of-friends. We used Apache Giraph [10] to run this computation on the entire Facebook friendship graph. In our implementation, at each step each person sends a bitwise ORed hash value to all his friends. We do this recursively and use Flajolet-Martin's math to estimate the number of unique friends for each degree of separation. In summary, we find that the world is more closely connected than you might think. By Sergey Edunov (3.46), Carlos Greg Diuk (3.16), Ismail Onur Filiz (3.33), Smriti Bhagat (3.32), and Moira Burke (3.35) Cover image by Diana MacLean (3.26) References [1] Six Degrees of Separation (play) - Wikipedia [2] Frigyes Karinthy - Wikipedia [3] Small-world experiment - Wikipedia [4] Backstrom, L., Boldi, P., Rosa, M., Ugander, J., & Vigna, S. (2012). Four degrees of separation . Proceedings of the 4th Annual ACM Web Science Conference, 33-42.[5] Ugander, J., Karrer, B., Backstrom, L., & Marlow, C. (2011). The anatomy of the Facebook social graph [6] Kang, U., Papadimitriou, S., Sun, J., Tong H. (2011). Centralities in Large Networks: Algorithms and Observations . Proceedings of the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining.[7] Palmer, C., Gibbons, P., & Faloutsos, C. (2002). ANF: A fast and scalable tool for data mining in massive graphs . Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining. 81-90.[8] Cohen, E. (1997) Size-estimation framework with applications to transitive closure and reachability . Journal of Computer and System Sciences 55(3): 441-453.[9] Flajolet-Martin algorithm [10] http://giraph.apache.org/

– Ever since the theory of six degrees of separation was unveiled in 1929, people have been under the impression that they're connected to any other person through just six acquaintances. In honor of Facebook's 12th birthday and its self-invented Friends Day, the social network has updated the figure: "Each person in the world (at least among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook) is connected to every other person by an average of three and a half other people," Facebook's research team writes in a blog post. The global average is 3.57, though Facebook's heavy number of US users drops the American average to 3.46 degrees. What does that mean? Basically, you can now brag that Barack Obama is something like a friend of a friend of a friend of a partial-friend, per VentureBeat. Facebook came up with the number using complex statistical algorithms, but it explains the process fairly simply like this: "Imagine a person with 100 friends. If each of his friends also has 100 friends, then the number of friends-of-friends will be 10,000." That's one degree. "If each of those friends-of-friends also has 100 friends, then the number of friends-of-friends-of-friends will be 1,000,000." That's two degrees. And so on. Facebook actually did a similar study back in 2011 and found its 721 million users were separated by 3.74 degrees. In 2008, it was 4.28 degrees, reports the Telegraph, meaning our degrees of separation are only shrinking as the site's user base grows. Facebook crunches your own specific number here. (Most Facebook users have just four close friends.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Six degrees of separation. Six degrees of separation is the idea that all living things and everything else in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized in an eponymous 1990 play written by John Guare. It is sometimes generalized to the average social distance being logarithmic in the size of the population. Early conceptions [ edit ] Shrinking world [ edit ] Theories on optimal design of cities, city traffic flows, neighborhoods, and demographics were in vogue after World War I. These[citation needed] conjectures were expanded in 1929 by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy, who published a volume of short stories titled Everything is Different. One of these pieces was titled "Chains," or "Chain-Links." The story investigated – in abstract, conceptual, and fictional terms – many of the problems that would captivate future generations of mathematicians, sociologists, and physicists within the field of network theory.[1][2] Due to technological advances in communications and travel, friendship networks could grow larger and span greater distances. In particular, Karinthy believed that the modern world was 'shrinking' due to this ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. He posited that despite great physical distances between the globe's individuals, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller.[3] As a result of this hypothesis, Karinthy's characters believed that any two individuals could be connected through at most five acquaintances. In his story, the characters create a game out of this notion. He wrote: A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth – anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.[4] This idea both directly and indirectly influenced a great deal of early thought on social networks. Karinthy has been regarded as the originator of the notion of six degrees of separation.[2] A related theory deals with the quality of connections, rather than their existence. The theory of three degrees of influence was created by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler.[citation needed] Small world [ edit ] Michael Gurevich conducted seminal work in his empirical study of the structure of social networks in his 1961 Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD dissertation under Ithiel de Sola Pool.[5] Mathematician Manfred Kochen, an Austrian who had been involved in urban design, extrapolated these empirical results in a mathematical manuscript, Contacts and Influences,[6] concluding that in a U.S.-sized population without social structure, "it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at most two intermediaries. In a [socially] structured population it is less likely but still seems probable. And perhaps for the whole world's population, probably only one more bridging individual should be needed." They subsequently constructed Monte Carlo simulations based on Gurevich's data, which recognized that both weak and strong acquaintance links are needed to model social structure. The simulations, carried out on the relatively limited computers of 1973, were nonetheless able to predict that a more realistic three degrees of separation existed across the U.S. population, foreshadowing the findings of American psychologist Stanley Milgram.[citation needed] Milgram continued Gurevich's experiments in acquaintanceship networks at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. Kochen and de Sola Pool's manuscript, Contacts and Influences,[7] was conceived while both were working at the University of Paris in the early 1950s, during a time when Milgram visited and collaborated in their research. Their unpublished manuscript circulated among academics for over 20 years before publication in 1978. It formally articulated the mechanics of social networks, and explored the mathematical consequences of these (including the degree of connectedness). The manuscript left many significant questions about networks unresolved, and one of these was the number of degrees of separation in actual social networks. Milgram took up the challenge on his return from Paris, leading to the experiments reported in The Small World Problem [8] in popular science journal Psychology Today, with a more rigorous version of the paper appearing in Sociometry two years later.[9] The Psychology Today article generated enormous publicity for the experiments, which are well known today, long after much of the formative work has been forgotten. Milgram's article made famous[8] his 1967 set of experiments to investigate de Sola Pool and Kochen's "small world problem." Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, born in Warsaw, growing up in Poland then France, was aware of the Statist rule of thumb, and was also a colleague of de Sola Pool, Kochen and Milgram at the University of Paris during the early 1950s (Kochen brought Mandelbrot to work at the Institute for Advanced Study and later IBM in the U.S.). This circle of researchers was fascinated by the interconnectedness and "social capital" of human networks. Milgram's study results showed that people in the United States seemed to be connected by approximately three friendship links, on average, without speculating on global linkages; he never actually used the term "six degrees of separation." Since the Psychology Today article gave the experiments wide publicity, Milgram, Kochen, and Karinthy all had been incorrectly attributed as the origin of the notion of six degrees; the most likely popularizer of the term "six degrees of separation" would be John Guare, who attributed the value '6' to Marconi.[10] Continued research: Small World Project [ edit ] In 2003, Columbia University conducted an analogous experiment on social connectedness amongst Internet email users. Their effort was named the Columbia Small World Project, and included 24,163 e-mail chains, aimed at 18 targets from 13 different countries around the world.[11] Almost 100,000 people registered, but only 384 (0.4%) reached the final target. Amongst the successful chains, while shorter lengths were more common some reached their target after only 7, 8, 9 or 10 steps. Dodds et al. noted that participants (all of whom volunteers) were strongly biased towards existing models of Internet users[Note 1] and that connectedness based on professional ties was much stronger than those within families or friendships. The authors cite "lack of interest" as the predominating factor in the high attrition rate,[Note 2] a finding consistent with earlier studies.[12] Research [ edit ] Several studies, such as Milgram's small world experiment, have been conducted to measure this connectedness empirically . The phrase "six degrees of separation" is often used as a synonym for the idea of the "small world" phenomenon.[13] However, detractors argue that Milgram's experiment did not demonstrate such a link,[14] and the "six degrees" claim has been decried as an "academic urban myth".[12][15] Also, the existence of isolated groups of humans, for example the Korubo and other native Brazilian populations,[16] would tend to invalidate the strictest interpretation of the hypothesis. Computer networks [ edit ] In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, attempted to recreate Milgram's experiment on the Internet, using an e-mail message as the "package" that needed to be delivered, with 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries). Watts found that the average (though not maximum) number of intermediaries was around six.[17] A 2007 study by Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz examined a data set of instant messages composed of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. They found the average path length among Microsoft Messenger users to be 6.[18] It has been suggested by some commentators[19] that interlocking networks of computer mediated lateral communication could diffuse single messages to all interested users worldwide as per the 6 degrees of separation principle via Information Routing Groups, which are networks specifically designed to exploit this principle and lateral diffusion. An optimal algorithm to calculate degrees of separation in social networks [ edit ] Bakhshandeh et al.[20] have addressed the search problem of identifying the degree of separation between two users in social networks such as Twitter. They have introduced new search techniques to provide optimal or near optimal solutions. The experiments are performed using Twitter, and they show an improvement of several orders of magnitude over greedy approaches. Their optimal algorithm finds an average degree of separation of 3.43 between two random Twitter users, requiring an average of only 67 requests for information over the Internet to Twitter. A near-optimal solution of length 3.88 can be found by making an average of 13.3 requests. Popularization [ edit ] No longer limited strictly to academic or philosophical thinking, the notion of six degrees recently has become influential throughout popular culture. Further advances in communication technology – and particularly the Internet – have drawn great attention to social networks and human interconnectedness. As a result, many popular media sources have addressed the term. The following provide a brief outline of the ways such ideas have shaped popular culture. Popularization of offline practice [ edit ] John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation [ edit ] American playwright John Guare wrote a play in 1990 and later released a film in 1993 that popularized it. It is Guare's most widely known work.[citation needed] The play ruminates upon the idea that any two individuals are connected by at most five others. As one of the characters states: I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we're so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.[21] Guare, in interviews, attributed his awareness of the "six degrees" to Marconi.[citation needed] Although this idea had been circulating in various forms for decades, it is Guare's piece that is most responsible for popularizing the phrase "six degrees of separation."[citation needed] Following Guare's lead, many future television and film sources would later incorporate the notion into their stories.[citation needed] J. J. Abrams, the executive producer of television series Six Degrees and Lost, played the role of Doug in the film adaptation of this play.[citation needed] Many of the play's themes are apparent in his television shows (see below).[citation needed] Kevin Bacon game [ edit ] The game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"[22] was invented as a play on the concept: the goal is to link any actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections, where two actors are connected if they have appeared in a movie or commercial together. It was created by three students at Albright College in Pennsylvania,[23] who came up with the concept while watching Footloose. On September 13, 2012, Google made it possible to search for any given actor's 'Bacon Number' through their search engine. Upon the arrival of the 4G mobile network in the United Kingdom, Kevin Bacon appears in several commercials for the EE Network in which he links himself to several well known celebrities and TV shows in the UK. Six Degrees of Der Kommissar [ edit ] Music critics have fun tracing the history and dissecting the popular song "Der Kommissar" which was first written and recorded by Austrian musician Falco with German vocals in 1981, then passed on and reworked in English by British band After The Fire in 1982, then lyrically rewritten and renamed "Deep In The Dark" by Laura Branigan in 1983 in the U.S., then rerecorded in its traditional style in 2007 by Dale Bozzio, who is the former lead singer of new wave band Missing Persons. In this situation, connections among six such diverse musical expressionists were generated through a song. In the beginning, the composer might never have thought that the song could spread so far. However, the six degree has demonstrated that "the small world" does exist. John L. Sullivan [ edit ] An early version involved former world Heavyweight boxing champion, John L. Sullivan, in which people would ask others to "shake the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand of 'the great John L.'"[24] In popular culture [ edit ] Website and application [ edit ] Six Degrees of Wikipedia [ edit ] In late February 2018, the website www.SixDegreesOfWikipedia.com was published by Jacob Wenger. This site takes any two Wikipedia articles and finds the various hyperlink paths that interconnect the two in the least number of clicks. It then shows each of the steps that were taken to do so and also presents a graphical display of the connections. On March 14, 2018, the site stated that among searches up to that date (~half a million), there have been an average separation of 3.0190°. From these, the number of searches that required six or more degrees was 1.417 percent. It also stated that searches with no connection found was 1.07%, and this was attributed to certain articles being dead ends or having very few links.[30] (Wenger's open source code is available on GitHub, and this enabled other sites to copy the concept, such as degreesofwikipedia.com.) Facebook [ edit ] A Facebook platform application named "Six Degrees" was developed by Karl Bunyan, which calculates the degrees of separation between different people. It had over 5.8 million users, as seen from the group's page. The average separation for all users of the application is 5.73 degrees, whereas the maximum degree of separation is 12. The application has a "Search for Connections" window to input any name of a Facebook user, to which it then shows the chain of connections. In June 2009, Bunyan shut down the application, presumably due to issues with Facebook's caching policy; specifically, the policy prohibited the storing of friend lists for more than 24 hours, which would have made the application inaccurate.[31] A new version of the application became available at Six Degrees after Karl Bunyan gave permission to a group of developers led by Todd Chaffee to re-develop the application based on Facebook's revised policy on caching data.[32][33] The initial version of the application was built at a Facebook Developers Garage London hackathon with Mark Zuckerberg in attendance.[34] Yahoo! Research Small World Experiment has been conducting an experiment and everyone with a Facebook account can take part in it. According to the research page, this research has the potential of resolving the still unresolved theory of six degrees of separation.[22][35] Facebook's data team released two papers in November 2011 which document that amongst all Facebook users at the time of research (721 million users with 69 billion friendship links) there is an average distance of 4.74.[36][37] Probabilistic algorithms were applied on statistical metadata to verify the accuracy of the measurements.[38] It was also found that 99.91% of Facebook users were interconnected, forming a large connected component.[39] Year Distance 2008 5.28 5.28 2011 4.74 4.74 2016 4.57 4.57 Distances as reported in Feb 2016 [37][40] Facebook reported that the distance had decreased to 4.57 in February 2016, when it had 1.6 billion users (about 22% of world population).[37] LinkedIn [ edit ] The LinkedIn professional networking site operates the degree of separation one is away from a person with which he or she wishes to communicate. On LinkedIn, one's network is made up of 1st-degree, 2nd-degree, and 3rd-degree connections and fellow members of LinkedIn Groups. In addition, LinkedIn notifies the user how many connections they and any other user have in common. SixDegrees.com was an early social-networking website that existed from 1997 to 2001. It allowed users to list friends, family members and acquaintances, send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their first, second, and third degrees, and see their connection to any other user on the site. At its height, it had 3,500,000 fully registered members.[41] However, it was closed in 2000. [42] Twitter [ edit ] Users on Twitter can follow other users creating a network. According to a study of 5.2 billion such relationships by social media monitoring firm Sysomos, the average distance on Twitter is 4.67. On average, about 50% of people on Twitter are only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone is five steps or less away.[43] In another work, researchers have shown that the average distance of 1,500 random users in Twitter is 3.435. They calculated the distance between each pair of users using all the active users in Twitter.[44] Mathematics [ edit ] Mathematicians use an analogous notion of collaboration distance:[45] two persons are linked if they are coauthors of an article. The collaboration distance with mathematician Paul Erdős is called the Erdős number. Erdős-Bacon numbers and Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath (EBS) numbers[46] are further extensions of the same thinking. Watts and Strogatz showed that the average path length between two nodes in a random network is equal to ln N / ln K, where N = total nodes and K = acquaintances per node. Thus if N = 300,000,000 (90% of the US population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 19.5 / 3.4 = 5.7 and if N = 6,000,000,000 (90% of the World population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 22.5 / 3.4 = 6.6. (Assume 10% of population is too young to participate.) Psychology [ edit ] A 2007 article published in The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist,[47] by Jesse S. Michel from Michigan State University, applied Stanley Milgram's small world phenomenon (i.e., “small world problem”) to the field of I-O psychology through co-author publication linkages. Following six criteria, Scott Highhouse (Bowling Green State University professor and fellow of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology) was chosen as the target. Co-author publication linkages were determined for (1) top authors within the I-O community, (2) quasi-random faculty members of highly productive I-O programs in North America, and (3) publication trends of the target. Results suggest that the small world phenomenon is alive and well with mean linkages of 3.00 to top authors, mean linkages of 2.50 to quasi-random faculty members, and a relatively broad and non-repetitive set of co-author linkages for the target. The author then provided a series of implications and suggestions for future research. See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] ^ [11] "More than half of all participants resided in North America and were middle class, professional, college educated, and Christian, reflecting commonly held notions of the Internet-using population" ^ [11] "suggesting lack of interest ... was the main reason" for the "extremely low completion rate" ||||| Happy Friends Day, Fellow Earthlings! We have some news on this new Facebook-invented holiday that, depending on your view of your fellow planetary inhabitants, may be intensely thrilling or tremendously frightening. According to the modern-day oracle that is Facebook (FB), we are all far less separated than we imagined. At least, that’s the case for users of the social network. For years, we have been led to believe by the sages of TV and Hollywood that we are separated by a relatively comfortable six degrees. That is, anyone can find a link to anyone else in the world by just tracing a path through six acquaintances. But lo, Facebook cometh to shatter our widely held belief in this myth and replace it with cold, hard data: The number is actually 3.57. “In honor of Friends Day, we’ve crunched the Facebook friend graph and determined that the number is actually 3.57,” writes Facebook’s data team. “Each person in the world (at least among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook) is connected to every other person by an average of three and a half other people.” This is mind-blowing stuff, people; this CHANGES EVERYTHING! To begin with, so much of our popular culture is going to be turned upside down. The joyous thinking of six degrees gave us the wonder of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Will Smith even made a movie out of it, which was based on a play, which was based on some real life events. Somehow, the “3.57 degrees of Kevin Bacon” just doesn’t work. But it also creates a massive existential dilemma for nearly every user of Facebook who had, until now, come to terms with their place in the universe and how they related to the other 1.5 billion users, not to mention the planet’s other 5.5 billion people. For instance, until yesterday, I could brag with confidence that Barack Obama is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine. Yo. But today? Is he a friend of a friend of a friend? Or a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend? The .57 makes it all very hard to sort out. Six was such a nice even number. Easy to wrap our heads around. Also, now I feel more responsible for a greater swath of humanity. I mean, if you’re only 3 people rather than 6 away from me, what is my obligation here? Are we friends? Should I call in to check up on you every now and then? Or Snapchat you? Invite you to our Halloween party? Or what? On the plus side, I’m much closer to Paul McCartney than I realized, which is cool. On the other hand, Donald Trump is just a digital hop, skip, and a jump away friendship-wise. Shudder. Now, if you think you’re going to have trouble sleeping at night, there’s a tool to help put your mind at ease. On the blog post, Facebook includes a calculator that will tell you how close (if you’re logged in) you are from everyone else. Me? I’m 2.89. Zuck is 3.17. (I feel comfortable calling him that since we’re practically related now.) COO Sheryl Sandberg is 2.92. The thing is that even if you adapt to this bombshell of proximity, you can’t rest easy. Facebook says those degrees of separation are shrinking! “Our collective ‘degrees of separation’ have shrunk over the past five years,” Facebook’s data team writes. “In 2011, researchers at Cornell, the Università degli Studi di Milano, and Facebook computed the average across the 721 million people using the site then, and found that it was 3.74. Now, with twice as many people using the site, we’ve grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world.” If Facebook’s prediction that it will have 5 billion users by 2030 comes true, then at this rate, the whole world will be practically sitting in your digital lap at that point. But gosh, that’s a lot of negativity. This is Friends Day! So don’t worry about all the creepy lowlifes who are much closer to you than you thought or that vague sense that suddenly the walls are closing in all around you and it’s getting very, very hard to breathe. Just be happy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU ||||| “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names. . . . How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet. But to find the right six people . . .” - John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation (1990) How connected is the world? Playwrights [1], poets [2], and scientists [3] have proposed that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else by six other people. In honor of Friends Day, we've crunched the Facebook friend graph and determined that the number is 3.57. Each person in the world (at least among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook) is connected to every other person by an average of three and a half other people. The average distance we observe is 4.57, corresponding to 3.57 intermediaries or "degrees of separation." Within the US, people are connected to each other by an average of 3.46 degrees. Our collective “degrees of separation” have shrunk over the past five years. In 2011, researchers at Cornell, the Università degli Studi di Milano, and Facebook computed the average across the 721 million people using the site then, and found that it was 3.74 [4,5]. Now, with twice as many people using the site, we've grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world. Calculating this number across billions of people and hundreds of billions of friendship connections is challenging; we use statistical techniques described below to precisely estimate distance based on de-identified, aggregate data. My degrees of separation Please log in to Facebook to see your number. Some Facebook employees Mark Zuckerberg 3.17 degrees of separation Sheryl Sandberg 2.92 degrees of separation The majority of the people on Facebook have averages between 2.9 and 4.2 degrees of separation. Figure 1 (below) shows the distribution of averages for each person. Figure 1. Estimated average degrees of separation between all people on Facebook. The average person is connected to every other person by an average of 3.57 steps. The majority of people have an average between 3 and 4 steps. Calculating degrees-of-separation at scale Calculating degrees of separation in a network with hundreds of billions of edges is a monumental task, because the number of people reached grows very quickly with the degree of separation. Imagine a person with 100 friends. If each of his friends also has 100 friends, then the number of friends-of-friends will be 10,000. If each of those friends-of-friends also has 100 friends then the number of friends-of-friends-of-friends will be 1,000,000. Some of those friends may overlap, so we need to filter down to the unique connections. We're only two hops away and the number is already big. In reality this number grows even faster since most people on Facebook have more than 100 friends. We also need to do this computation 1.6 billion times; that is, for every person on Facebook. Rather than calculate it exactly, we relied on statistical algorithms developed by Kang and others [6-8] to estimate distances with great accuracy, basically finding the approximate number of people within 1, 2, 3 (and so on) hops away from a source. More accurately, for each number of hops we estimate the number of distinct people you can reach from every source. This estimation can be done efficiently using the Flajolet-Martin algorithm [9]. How does it work? Imagine you have a set of people and you want to count how many are unique. First you assign each person a random integer; let's call it hash. Approximately 1/2 of the people will have an even hash: the binary representation of the hash will end with 0. Approximately 1/4 of the people will have a hash divisible by 4; that is, the binary representation ends with 00. In general, 1/2n people will have the binary representation of their hash end with n zeros. Now, we can reverse this and try to count how many different people we have by reading their hash values one by one. To do that, we track the biggest number of zeroes we've seen. Intuitively, if there were n zeroes, we can expect set to have c*2n unique numbers, where c is some constant. For better accuracy we can do this computation multiple times with different hash values. This algorithm maps well to our problem: you just find the biggest number of zeroes among all friends' hashes. By using a bitwise OR operation on the hash, this process can be repeated recursively to estimate the number of unique friends-of-friends, and then friends-of-friends-of-friends. We used Apache Giraph [10] to run this computation on the entire Facebook friendship graph. In our implementation, at each step each person sends a bitwise ORed hash value to all his friends. We do this recursively and use Flajolet-Martin's math to estimate the number of unique friends for each degree of separation. In summary, we find that the world is more closely connected than you might think. By Sergey Edunov (3.46), Carlos Greg Diuk (3.16), Ismail Onur Filiz (3.33), Smriti Bhagat (3.32), and Moira Burke (3.35) Cover image by Diana MacLean (3.26) References [1] Six Degrees of Separation (play) - Wikipedia [2] Frigyes Karinthy - Wikipedia [3] Small-world experiment - Wikipedia [4] Backstrom, L., Boldi, P., Rosa, M., Ugander, J., & Vigna, S. (2012). Four degrees of separation . Proceedings of the 4th Annual ACM Web Science Conference, 33-42.[5] Ugander, J., Karrer, B., Backstrom, L., & Marlow, C. (2011). The anatomy of the Facebook social graph [6] Kang, U., Papadimitriou, S., Sun, J., Tong H. (2011). Centralities in Large Networks: Algorithms and Observations . Proceedings of the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining.[7] Palmer, C., Gibbons, P., & Faloutsos, C. (2002). ANF: A fast and scalable tool for data mining in massive graphs . Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining. 81-90.[8] Cohen, E. (1997) Size-estimation framework with applications to transitive closure and reachability . Journal of Computer and System Sciences 55(3): 441-453.[9] Flajolet-Martin algorithm [10] http://giraph.apache.org/

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Speaking in Aston, Pa., Sept. 13, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rolled out his child-care policy as his daughter Ivanka stood by his side. (The Washington Post) Donald Trump released Tuesday a paid maternity leave plan — the first from a Republican presidential nominee. The measure, a pillar of the real estate mogul’s child-care proposal, bears close resemblance to an idea floated by Bill Clinton in 1999. Trump’s plan would guarantee six weeks of paid maternity leave to women; currently, federal policy provides only 12 weeks of unpaid time off. He would fund the change by tweaking the unemployment insurance employers must provide under federal law, according to the campaign. The country’s Federal-State Unemployment Insurance supplies benefits to workers who lose their job through no fault of their own. What that means varies by state, but the state-run program generally covers workers who are laid off. Trump’s proposal would open the aid to new mothers, who often miss wages as life’s expenses surge. Employers would not absorb the burden, Trump aides said, because reductions in the existing program would offset the cost. Advocates for working families in the late 1990s called a version of this concept baby unemployment insurance, or “Baby UI.” The first iteration emerged in Vermont, where policymakers saw the legislation as a way to boost working mothers, the breadwinners in a growing number of American households. It never passed, but Vermont legislators sought the federal Labor Department's approval in hopes the model would spread nationwide. At the time, Clinton told former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman to draft regulations allowing states to grant unemployment insurance benefits to new parents. The Labor Department’s resulting Baby UI plan, released in 2000, allowed states to fund both maternity and paternity leave for 12 weeks. By 2003, however, the movement chilled. The Bush administration rescinded the policy, insisting it would hurt employers, stifle business and put women at risk of employment discrimination. Trump’s spin on Baby UI would be cheaper than the design Clinton backed. Mothers would be eligible for the new safety-net if their workplace lacked the benefit. Fathers, however, would not qualify. The program would cover half the time Democrats fought for 17 years ago — six weeks instead of 12. Trump said he would eliminate fraud within the program to keep the cost down, the Post's Robert Costa reported, though the Trump campaign did not specify how that would work. On Tuesday, Trump aides addressed the long-held conservative concerns about using unemployment insurance to fund maternity leave. In a campaign memo shared with The Post, they said women who intend to have children would not become “less desirable” to employers. The program reductions would pay for the change without raising taxes, staffers said, so hiring a potential mother would not add to a business’s costs. Economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the nonpartisan Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said the plan would still single out women by extending guaranteed paid leave to only one gender. But she welcomes the conversation, which she said was previously silent on the right. “It’s great that a Republican candidate for president is indicating support for paid maternity leave,” Hartman said. “It’s also interesting that Trump is proposing half of Bill Clinton’s idea from the year 2000.” Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., said Trump’s plan isn’t free — it’s a government program expansion, dressed up to look fiscally conservative. “Someone’s going to pay that cost,” he said. “Arguably it’s the employer. The reality is the costs are always passed on to the employee in one way or another. Ultimately, you'll have men or women who don't have children paying for women who do.” That could mean lost vacation time, Tanner said, or lower wages. Hillary Clinton has proposed 12 weeks of paid family leave funded through tax increases on the wealthy. Trump first mentioned the plight of working families last month in a Detroit speech on the economy, pledging to make childcare tax-free. Both his eldest daughter, 34-year-old Ivanka Trump, and campaign manager, veteran Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, have urged him to roll out policy ideas that support working mothers. Advocates generally applaud Trump’s focus on working family issues — with caveats. “It's great to see candidates addressing the need for paid leave, given that the U.S. is at the very bottom of the world's nations when it comes to affordable time to care,” Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values @ Work, said in a statement. “But we need to remember that it's not just pregnant women who welcome new children. Fathers and adoptive parents need time as well.” More on Wonkblog: Inside Donald Trump's strategy to win over women Ivanka Trump's clothing designer does not offer paid maternity leave What Donald Trump doesn't understand about calling women beautiful ||||| Trump Campaign Sketches Out Family Care Plans; Questions Linger Over Funding Enlarge this image toggle caption John Moore/Getty Images John Moore/Getty Images Donald Trump is once again taking the fight to Democrats and Hillary Clinton. During a week in which the Republican presidential nominee has been attacking Clinton for disparaging half of his supporters as "deplorables," Trump plans to roll out a new proposal that treads deep into the core issues that Clinton and other Democrats regularly campaign on: making child care more accessible and affordable. In a speech Tuesday evening in suburban Philadelphia, Trump is expected, according to campaign aides, to go into more detail on a proposal he originally laid out last month in a wide-ranging economic speech — allowing parents to deduct the average cost of child care from their taxes. How the plan works Trump's expanded plan would allow parents to deduct the average cost of child care from their taxes. The campaign says this is focused on "working and middle-class families," though its income caps — $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples — far exceed most people's definition of working class. After his economic speech last month, Trump was criticized for a plan that didn't do anything for those who don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes. They wouldn't be able to take advantage of the deductions, and because child care costs what it costs, it has an outsize impact on the poor. To address this, Trump's campaign unveiled child care rebates — up to $1,200, staffers say — to provide benefits to people who currently don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes. The Trump campaign says that stay-at-home parents would also be eligible for the same tax deductions working parents currently receive. As CNBC found in its analysis when Trump's plan was unveiled last month, Trump's plan "would create a substantial tax break for working parents, but further widen the deficit." That's because: "On average, households with a woman working outside her home and taking care of a child under 15 paid an average $127 a week on child care, according to a Census Bureau analysis of 2010 data. That works out to about $6,600 a year. With some 24 million households in that category, the child-care tax break would cost the government $158 billion a year. "For families paying for child care, the current tax break offers little relief. Only 3.5 million tax returns claimed the existing child-care tax credit for the 2010 tax year, according to IRS data, saving those households $1.9 billion. (Nearly 10 million returns claimed a separate tax credit for all parents, whether or not the family had child-care expenses, for another $14 billion in tax savings.) "So total out-of-pocket child-care costs amounted to about $142 billion, which a Trump administration would either have to make up with higher taxes or add to the budget deficit." Along with all this, the campaign is now promising to "guarantee" six weeks of paid maternity leave. (Paternity leave is not mentioned.) Clinton's proposal would be open to fathers as well. She also wants to institute a hard cap on families' child care costs, at 10 percent of their overall income. Tax-free savings accounts Trump would also create a Dependent Care Savings Account, which would allow "tax-deductible contributions and tax-free appreciation year-to-year," according to a campaign-provided fact sheet. What's more, the government would match half of the first $1,000 deposited per year. That could come at a whopping cost. There are some 124 million households in the U.S., about 43 percent of which include children. That's more than 50 million households. If all of those families put in $1,000 per year, it would cost the government $25 billion annually. Even if half of all families contributed to it, that's still a big price tag, and the Trump campaign outlines no way to pay for it. Not to mention that that kind of benefit doesn't help the families who can't afford to put that much in per year. Trump campaign policy adviser Stephen Miller told NPR's Sarah McCammon that a Trump administration would focus on fraud to finance the family leave portion. Miller's estimate was $5.3 billion in unemployment insurance fraud, which the campaign believes it can recoup half of. Republicans wary of increasing government spending frequently suggest funding new proposals by saying they will eliminate fraud. "We estimate we can easily recover $2.5 [billion] for paid leave," Miller said. That still would leave a sizable gap in how to pay for the overall plan. Miller added, "The rest is paid for through comprehensive tax and economic reform." And the campaign believes it would be "deficit-neutral." But if that's based on "growth," that can always be a murky calculation. Trump has already overhauled his tax plan once during this election campaign. One outside analysis of his initial tax plan estimated a 10-year cost to taxpayers of $9.5 trillion. An economic adviser to Trump estimated in August his updated plan would cost $3 trillion over a decade. The Trump campaign says Trump's daughter Ivanka was deeply involved in coming up with this proposal. It echoes a notable line from her speech at the Republican National Convention in July, when she told Republicans that Trump would "focus on making quality child care affordable and accessible for all." Democrats have long pushed for guaranteed paid family leave, but many Republicans in Congress have been resistant because of the cost to employers. ||||| Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed new subsidies for child care in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, hoping to reach out to women and suburban swing voters. Photo: Getty Images ASTON, Pa.—Donald Trump proposed new federal subsidies for child care, including tax deductions, rebates for lower-income households and tax-preferred savings accounts, as well as a promise of paid maternity leave for workers who don’t have it. The proposal, unveiled at a speech outside Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, is the latest move by the Republican presidential nominee to build up a policy agenda that has been short on detail. The child-care proposal could help Mr. Trump appeal to blocs of voters who have resisted him,...

– Donald Trump says he has gone where no GOP presidential nominee has gone before with promises of paid maternity leave and federal subsidies for child care. Accompanied by his daughter, Ivanka, Trump unveiled his plan in a speech outside Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, the Wall Street Journal reports. His campaign says the estimated $2.5 billion cost of providing six weeks of paid maternity leave through unemployment benefits will be covered by reducing waste elsewhere in the program. He promised to make child care tax-deductible for couples making less than $500,000, and give "spending rebates" of up to $1,200 to lower-income families. A roundup of coverage: NPR takes a close look at the plan—which also includes special savings accounts for caring for children and elderly relatives—and at how the Trump campaign says it will pay for it. The funding plan involves "comprehensive tax and economic reform," according to a campaign spokesman. The Washington Post notes that Trump's paid maternity leave looks a lot like the "Baby UI" plan that Bill Clinton supported in 1999, which the Bush administration rolled back in 2003. Fiscal conservatives aren't happy about what they see as an expansion of government spending, though the New York Times reports that social conservatives are pleased that Trump's plan includes tax credits for stay-at-home moms. "My opponent has no child care plan," Trump said. Politico, however, notes that Hillary Clinton's plan includes 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, to be paid for by raising taxes on the rich.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Speaking in Aston, Pa., Sept. 13, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rolled out his child-care policy as his daughter Ivanka stood by his side. (The Washington Post) Donald Trump released Tuesday a paid maternity leave plan — the first from a Republican presidential nominee. The measure, a pillar of the real estate mogul’s child-care proposal, bears close resemblance to an idea floated by Bill Clinton in 1999. Trump’s plan would guarantee six weeks of paid maternity leave to women; currently, federal policy provides only 12 weeks of unpaid time off. He would fund the change by tweaking the unemployment insurance employers must provide under federal law, according to the campaign. The country’s Federal-State Unemployment Insurance supplies benefits to workers who lose their job through no fault of their own. What that means varies by state, but the state-run program generally covers workers who are laid off. Trump’s proposal would open the aid to new mothers, who often miss wages as life’s expenses surge. Employers would not absorb the burden, Trump aides said, because reductions in the existing program would offset the cost. Advocates for working families in the late 1990s called a version of this concept baby unemployment insurance, or “Baby UI.” The first iteration emerged in Vermont, where policymakers saw the legislation as a way to boost working mothers, the breadwinners in a growing number of American households. It never passed, but Vermont legislators sought the federal Labor Department's approval in hopes the model would spread nationwide. At the time, Clinton told former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman to draft regulations allowing states to grant unemployment insurance benefits to new parents. The Labor Department’s resulting Baby UI plan, released in 2000, allowed states to fund both maternity and paternity leave for 12 weeks. By 2003, however, the movement chilled. The Bush administration rescinded the policy, insisting it would hurt employers, stifle business and put women at risk of employment discrimination. Trump’s spin on Baby UI would be cheaper than the design Clinton backed. Mothers would be eligible for the new safety-net if their workplace lacked the benefit. Fathers, however, would not qualify. The program would cover half the time Democrats fought for 17 years ago — six weeks instead of 12. Trump said he would eliminate fraud within the program to keep the cost down, the Post's Robert Costa reported, though the Trump campaign did not specify how that would work. On Tuesday, Trump aides addressed the long-held conservative concerns about using unemployment insurance to fund maternity leave. In a campaign memo shared with The Post, they said women who intend to have children would not become “less desirable” to employers. The program reductions would pay for the change without raising taxes, staffers said, so hiring a potential mother would not add to a business’s costs. Economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the nonpartisan Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said the plan would still single out women by extending guaranteed paid leave to only one gender. But she welcomes the conversation, which she said was previously silent on the right. “It’s great that a Republican candidate for president is indicating support for paid maternity leave,” Hartman said. “It’s also interesting that Trump is proposing half of Bill Clinton’s idea from the year 2000.” Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., said Trump’s plan isn’t free — it’s a government program expansion, dressed up to look fiscally conservative. “Someone’s going to pay that cost,” he said. “Arguably it’s the employer. The reality is the costs are always passed on to the employee in one way or another. Ultimately, you'll have men or women who don't have children paying for women who do.” That could mean lost vacation time, Tanner said, or lower wages. Hillary Clinton has proposed 12 weeks of paid family leave funded through tax increases on the wealthy. Trump first mentioned the plight of working families last month in a Detroit speech on the economy, pledging to make childcare tax-free. Both his eldest daughter, 34-year-old Ivanka Trump, and campaign manager, veteran Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, have urged him to roll out policy ideas that support working mothers. Advocates generally applaud Trump’s focus on working family issues — with caveats. “It's great to see candidates addressing the need for paid leave, given that the U.S. is at the very bottom of the world's nations when it comes to affordable time to care,” Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values @ Work, said in a statement. “But we need to remember that it's not just pregnant women who welcome new children. Fathers and adoptive parents need time as well.” More on Wonkblog: Inside Donald Trump's strategy to win over women Ivanka Trump's clothing designer does not offer paid maternity leave What Donald Trump doesn't understand about calling women beautiful ||||| Trump Campaign Sketches Out Family Care Plans; Questions Linger Over Funding Enlarge this image toggle caption John Moore/Getty Images John Moore/Getty Images Donald Trump is once again taking the fight to Democrats and Hillary Clinton. During a week in which the Republican presidential nominee has been attacking Clinton for disparaging half of his supporters as "deplorables," Trump plans to roll out a new proposal that treads deep into the core issues that Clinton and other Democrats regularly campaign on: making child care more accessible and affordable. In a speech Tuesday evening in suburban Philadelphia, Trump is expected, according to campaign aides, to go into more detail on a proposal he originally laid out last month in a wide-ranging economic speech — allowing parents to deduct the average cost of child care from their taxes. How the plan works Trump's expanded plan would allow parents to deduct the average cost of child care from their taxes. The campaign says this is focused on "working and middle-class families," though its income caps — $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples — far exceed most people's definition of working class. After his economic speech last month, Trump was criticized for a plan that didn't do anything for those who don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes. They wouldn't be able to take advantage of the deductions, and because child care costs what it costs, it has an outsize impact on the poor. To address this, Trump's campaign unveiled child care rebates — up to $1,200, staffers say — to provide benefits to people who currently don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes. The Trump campaign says that stay-at-home parents would also be eligible for the same tax deductions working parents currently receive. As CNBC found in its analysis when Trump's plan was unveiled last month, Trump's plan "would create a substantial tax break for working parents, but further widen the deficit." That's because: "On average, households with a woman working outside her home and taking care of a child under 15 paid an average $127 a week on child care, according to a Census Bureau analysis of 2010 data. That works out to about $6,600 a year. With some 24 million households in that category, the child-care tax break would cost the government $158 billion a year. "For families paying for child care, the current tax break offers little relief. Only 3.5 million tax returns claimed the existing child-care tax credit for the 2010 tax year, according to IRS data, saving those households $1.9 billion. (Nearly 10 million returns claimed a separate tax credit for all parents, whether or not the family had child-care expenses, for another $14 billion in tax savings.) "So total out-of-pocket child-care costs amounted to about $142 billion, which a Trump administration would either have to make up with higher taxes or add to the budget deficit." Along with all this, the campaign is now promising to "guarantee" six weeks of paid maternity leave. (Paternity leave is not mentioned.) Clinton's proposal would be open to fathers as well. She also wants to institute a hard cap on families' child care costs, at 10 percent of their overall income. Tax-free savings accounts Trump would also create a Dependent Care Savings Account, which would allow "tax-deductible contributions and tax-free appreciation year-to-year," according to a campaign-provided fact sheet. What's more, the government would match half of the first $1,000 deposited per year. That could come at a whopping cost. There are some 124 million households in the U.S., about 43 percent of which include children. That's more than 50 million households. If all of those families put in $1,000 per year, it would cost the government $25 billion annually. Even if half of all families contributed to it, that's still a big price tag, and the Trump campaign outlines no way to pay for it. Not to mention that that kind of benefit doesn't help the families who can't afford to put that much in per year. Trump campaign policy adviser Stephen Miller told NPR's Sarah McCammon that a Trump administration would focus on fraud to finance the family leave portion. Miller's estimate was $5.3 billion in unemployment insurance fraud, which the campaign believes it can recoup half of. Republicans wary of increasing government spending frequently suggest funding new proposals by saying they will eliminate fraud. "We estimate we can easily recover $2.5 [billion] for paid leave," Miller said. That still would leave a sizable gap in how to pay for the overall plan. Miller added, "The rest is paid for through comprehensive tax and economic reform." And the campaign believes it would be "deficit-neutral." But if that's based on "growth," that can always be a murky calculation. Trump has already overhauled his tax plan once during this election campaign. One outside analysis of his initial tax plan estimated a 10-year cost to taxpayers of $9.5 trillion. An economic adviser to Trump estimated in August his updated plan would cost $3 trillion over a decade. The Trump campaign says Trump's daughter Ivanka was deeply involved in coming up with this proposal. It echoes a notable line from her speech at the Republican National Convention in July, when she told Republicans that Trump would "focus on making quality child care affordable and accessible for all." Democrats have long pushed for guaranteed paid family leave, but many Republicans in Congress have been resistant because of the cost to employers. ||||| Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed new subsidies for child care in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, hoping to reach out to women and suburban swing voters. Photo: Getty Images ASTON, Pa.—Donald Trump proposed new federal subsidies for child care, including tax deductions, rebates for lower-income households and tax-preferred savings accounts, as well as a promise of paid maternity leave for workers who don’t have it. The proposal, unveiled at a speech outside Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, is the latest move by the Republican presidential nominee to build up a policy agenda that has been short on detail. The child-care proposal could help Mr. Trump appeal to blocs of voters who have resisted him,...

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Three environmental groups asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to order the EPA to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. EarthJustice, which is representing the Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council, was responding to the EPA’s recent announcement that it would not be following through on its own decision to ban the pesticide, which has been repeatedly found to damage children’s developing brains. Scientists have spent years documenting that exposure to chlorpyrifos increases children’s chances of having long-term, developmental problems, including attention, memory and intelligence deficits, tremors, and autism. After carefully weighing that evidence — as well as critiques of it from Dow Chemical, which patented and still sells most of the pesticide — the EPA decided to move ahead with a ban on chlorpyrifos in 2015. On November 10, the agency took what was supposed to be a final step in banning the pesticide: issuing a revised assessment of the chemical’s effects on human health, which set a new exposure limit for the pesticide. According to the report, many children are already being exposed to high levels of chlorpyrifos and some children between ages one and two are exposed to levels that are more than 14,000 percent above that limit. Only a 60-day public comment period was necessary before the pesticide would be removed from use. But the deadline the federal court gave EPA to finalize its decision — March 31 — pushed the finalization of the decision into Trump’s presidency. Many have since been watching chlorpyrifos as a test for whether the new administration would tackle even the clearest, most studied health threats. The pesticide presented a case in which scientific questions have already been asked and answered and in which children are being directly harmed. Safe drinking water is at stake, and that’s something both Trump and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt have insisted they care about and want to protect. And because the president seems to be particularly concerned about autism, some had hoped he would not stand in the way of a move that would likely have reduced the incidence of autism cases. Dow was clearly opposed to the ban — and had hired a lobbyist to try to avert it and a science-for-hire company to criticize the science on which it was based. In his few months in office, Trump has not just proven to be not just opposed to government regulation, but also very close to Dow Chemical, which contributed $1 million to his inaugural committee. Trump named Dow CEO Andrew Liveris to head his manufacturing council and the president’s team sends the businessman emails “if not every day, then every other day,” as Liveris told the Washington Post. When Scott Pruitt announced his decision to reverse the agency’s decision to ban chlorpyrifos on March 29, he talked about businesses rather than children. “We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos,” Pruitt said, according to an EPA press release. The release also included a statement from Sheryl Kunickis, director of the Office of Pest Management Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who said the decision “frees American farmers from significant trade disruptions that could have been caused by an unnecessary, unilateral revocation of chlorpyrifos tolerances in the United States.” Though the agency has already extensively reviewed the science of chlorpyrifos over the past decade, the EPA’s decision called for further study. Photo: Jasmine Goldband/Tribune Review/AP To Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the failure to ban chlorpyrifos is only the most egregious instance in an emerging pattern of failing to take action on other dangerous pesticides, including the weed killer, glyphosate. Four members wrote to the committee’s chair, Rep. Greg Walden, asking him to investigate Pruitt’s reversal on chlorpyrifos, which they said “increases our concern that the Trump Administration is failing to properly implement the Food Quality Protection Act.” Noting that the industry group CropLife America intervened in the EPA process to defend glyphosate, the Democratic members asked for a hearing that would ask if Dow raised “similar concerns or request changes to the Science Advisory Panel for chlorpyrifos?” The lawyers who petitioned the court for action today have already seen industry pressure on chlorpyrifos slow efforts to regulate it. The environmental groups have been asking EPA to ban the pesticide since at least 2000, and first sued the agency over chlorpyrifos back in 2007. Since then, the Dow presence at EPA has increased, according to Patti Goldman, an EarthJustice attorney who has been working to protect the public from the risks of chlorpyrifos for more than 20 years. Yet the environmental groups think they may still be able to get chlorpyrifos banned – in part because Pruitt’s decision was so clearly at odds with years of research that shows the dangers of chlorpyrifos. “It’s outrageous that the new EPA administrator would reject the scientific findings of its own agency and defy the law and court orders to keep this nasty pesticide on the market,” says Goldman, who notes that the EPA is required to make sure pesticides meet safety standards. Though the appeals court had ordered the EPA to finalize its decision back in 2015, “EPA’s response to the petition is no response at all and certainly not what this Court ordered EPA to do,” according to Wednesday’s filing. And that, according to Goldman, won’t sit well with the judges. “This is defying the court and they don’t like that.” ||||| The EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, has ignored the scientific recommendation of his own agency to allow continued use of chlorpyrifos, despite its links to brain damage Environmental groups have filed a complaint against the US government over its support of a pesticide linked to brain damage in children, one week after Donald Trump’s administration rejected federally backed science and reversed an Obama-era policy. The Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed the case against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday, seeking to force the government to follow through with the Obama administration’s recommendations to ban an insecticide widely used in agriculture. The appeal in San Francisco federal court sets the stage for one of the first major legal battles between the new EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, and environmental organizations. The case is centered on a pesticide called chlorpyrifos that researchers have concluded is correlated with lower IQ, attention deficit disorders and developmental delays. Two widely used pesticides likely to harm 97% of endangered species in US Read more The chemical is a type of insecticide currently used on corn, strawberries, wheat, citrus, apples, broccoli and a number of other crops, as well as golf courses, turf and in greenhouses. Researchers and environmentalists have long fought for a full agricultural ban on the neurotoxic pesticide after the US government blocked the chemical for residential use in 2000 due to health concerns. After years of litigation, the EPA released an assessment of chlorpyrifos in November, concluding that current usage of the pesticide carries dietary and drinking water risks. The EPA further concluded that the residues on food crops exceed safety standards and that there were risks to workers who apply chlorpyrifos to crops. The agency also raised concerns about risks associated with drift to schools and homes. As a result of this growing body of research – including long-term studies suggesting moderate exposure during pregnancy can lead to long-term brain impacts on children – the Obama administration proposed banning all applications of chlorpyrifos on food. Despite conclusions by experts in his agency, Pruitt reversed the move to ban chlorpyrifos last week, just before a federal court deadline to make a final decision on the pesticide. “We are returning to using sound science in decision-making,” he said in a statement. The action from Pruitt, who has vowed to roll back climate change and pollution regulations, means the EPA will not have to re-evaluate potential health risks of chlorpyrifos until 2022. “Given the science, we thought it seemed practically impossible to not move forward with the ban,” said Paul Towers, organizing director and policy advocate with the Pesticide Action Network. “We know it can have a profound impact on children’s brain architecture and their lifelong learning.” The new complaint, filed by lawyers with advocacy group Earthjustice, asks a panel of three federal appeals court judges to order the EPA to permanently ban chlorpyrifos based on its own science. Dow Chemical, which manufactures the pesticide under the name Lorsban, has aggressively lobbied to keep the product in use and claimed that the science is not conclusive. A spokesperson said in an email on Wednesday morning that the company is aware of the complaint, but has “not had sufficient time to review it”. EPA representatives declined to comment. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a University of California, Davis environmental health sciences professor, compared chlorpyrifos to lead, which was widely used in the US until researchers proved that low-level exposures were harming children. Pesticides in paradise: Hawaii's spike in birth defects puts focus on GM crops Read more “They used the term ‘silent epidemic’ with lead, and I think that’s really what we’re talking about here,” said Hertz-Picciotto, whose research has found links between autism and maternal exposure to the class of pesticides that includes chlorpyrifos. “The longer this goes on, the more accumulated evidence there is. It’s not like there is other evidence coming in that detracts from the conclusion that this is not safe and it’s not healthy.” Research has further linked chlorpyrifos exposure to loss of working memory, delayed motor development and decreases in cognitive functioning. “Parents shouldn’t have to worry that a dangerous chemical might be lurking in the fruits and veggies they feed their kids,” Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, senior scientist at NRDC, said in a statement. “It’s eating away at the development of vulnerable brains,” added Hertz-Picciotto, who said she had hoped the ban initiated under Obama would have paved the way for further restrictions of harmful pesticides. “All bets are off at this point.” Bonnie Wirtz, a farmer in Minnesota who said she was exposed to a chlorpyrifos drift from an alfalfa field when she was at her home, slammed Pruitt’s decision. “By leaving this chemical on the market we are gambling with the lives of children and their long-term wellbeing and they have no choice in the matter,” she said in a statement. “That’s reckless and heartbreaking.”

– Environmental groups first asked the Environmental Protection Agency to ban chlorpyrifos back in 2000. Fifteen years later, the EPA agreed to move forward with a ban on the pesticide, which has been linked repeatedly to problems including autism, attention deficit disorders, and developmental delays in children. But the ban hadn't yet taken effect when President Trump was sworn into office, and late last month, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the agency had reversed its decision. The pesticide, patented by Dow Chemical, which has close ties to Trump, would not be banned after all because "thousands of American farms ... rely on" it. Now, three environmental groups are suing, asking a federal appeals court to order the EPA to ban the pesticide, the Intercept reports. "It’s outrageous that the new EPA administrator would reject the scientific findings of its own agency," says an activist and attorney. The EPA, which spent years reviewing studies on chlorpyrifos before agreeing to the ban, had issued its own assessment of how the chemical affects health; in that report, the agency concluded that some young children are exposed to levels more than 14,000% higher than the limit set by the agency. The EPA concluded there were risks of exposure via drinking water, residue on food, and drift to schools and homes, the Guardian reports. Yet in its reversal, the EPA said more study is needed. Dow, naturally, opposed the ban and had hired a lobbyist to fight it; the Intercept notes that Dow also contributed $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee, and the company's CEO heads Trump's manufacturing council. Four Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have also asked the committee chair to investigate the EPA's reversal and whether intervention from Dow played a role.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Three environmental groups asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to order the EPA to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. EarthJustice, which is representing the Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council, was responding to the EPA’s recent announcement that it would not be following through on its own decision to ban the pesticide, which has been repeatedly found to damage children’s developing brains. Scientists have spent years documenting that exposure to chlorpyrifos increases children’s chances of having long-term, developmental problems, including attention, memory and intelligence deficits, tremors, and autism. After carefully weighing that evidence — as well as critiques of it from Dow Chemical, which patented and still sells most of the pesticide — the EPA decided to move ahead with a ban on chlorpyrifos in 2015. On November 10, the agency took what was supposed to be a final step in banning the pesticide: issuing a revised assessment of the chemical’s effects on human health, which set a new exposure limit for the pesticide. According to the report, many children are already being exposed to high levels of chlorpyrifos and some children between ages one and two are exposed to levels that are more than 14,000 percent above that limit. Only a 60-day public comment period was necessary before the pesticide would be removed from use. But the deadline the federal court gave EPA to finalize its decision — March 31 — pushed the finalization of the decision into Trump’s presidency. Many have since been watching chlorpyrifos as a test for whether the new administration would tackle even the clearest, most studied health threats. The pesticide presented a case in which scientific questions have already been asked and answered and in which children are being directly harmed. Safe drinking water is at stake, and that’s something both Trump and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt have insisted they care about and want to protect. And because the president seems to be particularly concerned about autism, some had hoped he would not stand in the way of a move that would likely have reduced the incidence of autism cases. Dow was clearly opposed to the ban — and had hired a lobbyist to try to avert it and a science-for-hire company to criticize the science on which it was based. In his few months in office, Trump has not just proven to be not just opposed to government regulation, but also very close to Dow Chemical, which contributed $1 million to his inaugural committee. Trump named Dow CEO Andrew Liveris to head his manufacturing council and the president’s team sends the businessman emails “if not every day, then every other day,” as Liveris told the Washington Post. When Scott Pruitt announced his decision to reverse the agency’s decision to ban chlorpyrifos on March 29, he talked about businesses rather than children. “We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos,” Pruitt said, according to an EPA press release. The release also included a statement from Sheryl Kunickis, director of the Office of Pest Management Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who said the decision “frees American farmers from significant trade disruptions that could have been caused by an unnecessary, unilateral revocation of chlorpyrifos tolerances in the United States.” Though the agency has already extensively reviewed the science of chlorpyrifos over the past decade, the EPA’s decision called for further study. Photo: Jasmine Goldband/Tribune Review/AP To Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the failure to ban chlorpyrifos is only the most egregious instance in an emerging pattern of failing to take action on other dangerous pesticides, including the weed killer, glyphosate. Four members wrote to the committee’s chair, Rep. Greg Walden, asking him to investigate Pruitt’s reversal on chlorpyrifos, which they said “increases our concern that the Trump Administration is failing to properly implement the Food Quality Protection Act.” Noting that the industry group CropLife America intervened in the EPA process to defend glyphosate, the Democratic members asked for a hearing that would ask if Dow raised “similar concerns or request changes to the Science Advisory Panel for chlorpyrifos?” The lawyers who petitioned the court for action today have already seen industry pressure on chlorpyrifos slow efforts to regulate it. The environmental groups have been asking EPA to ban the pesticide since at least 2000, and first sued the agency over chlorpyrifos back in 2007. Since then, the Dow presence at EPA has increased, according to Patti Goldman, an EarthJustice attorney who has been working to protect the public from the risks of chlorpyrifos for more than 20 years. Yet the environmental groups think they may still be able to get chlorpyrifos banned – in part because Pruitt’s decision was so clearly at odds with years of research that shows the dangers of chlorpyrifos. “It’s outrageous that the new EPA administrator would reject the scientific findings of its own agency and defy the law and court orders to keep this nasty pesticide on the market,” says Goldman, who notes that the EPA is required to make sure pesticides meet safety standards. Though the appeals court had ordered the EPA to finalize its decision back in 2015, “EPA’s response to the petition is no response at all and certainly not what this Court ordered EPA to do,” according to Wednesday’s filing. And that, according to Goldman, won’t sit well with the judges. “This is defying the court and they don’t like that.” ||||| The EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, has ignored the scientific recommendation of his own agency to allow continued use of chlorpyrifos, despite its links to brain damage Environmental groups have filed a complaint against the US government over its support of a pesticide linked to brain damage in children, one week after Donald Trump’s administration rejected federally backed science and reversed an Obama-era policy. The Pesticide Action Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed the case against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday, seeking to force the government to follow through with the Obama administration’s recommendations to ban an insecticide widely used in agriculture. The appeal in San Francisco federal court sets the stage for one of the first major legal battles between the new EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, and environmental organizations. The case is centered on a pesticide called chlorpyrifos that researchers have concluded is correlated with lower IQ, attention deficit disorders and developmental delays. Two widely used pesticides likely to harm 97% of endangered species in US Read more The chemical is a type of insecticide currently used on corn, strawberries, wheat, citrus, apples, broccoli and a number of other crops, as well as golf courses, turf and in greenhouses. Researchers and environmentalists have long fought for a full agricultural ban on the neurotoxic pesticide after the US government blocked the chemical for residential use in 2000 due to health concerns. After years of litigation, the EPA released an assessment of chlorpyrifos in November, concluding that current usage of the pesticide carries dietary and drinking water risks. The EPA further concluded that the residues on food crops exceed safety standards and that there were risks to workers who apply chlorpyrifos to crops. The agency also raised concerns about risks associated with drift to schools and homes. As a result of this growing body of research – including long-term studies suggesting moderate exposure during pregnancy can lead to long-term brain impacts on children – the Obama administration proposed banning all applications of chlorpyrifos on food. Despite conclusions by experts in his agency, Pruitt reversed the move to ban chlorpyrifos last week, just before a federal court deadline to make a final decision on the pesticide. “We are returning to using sound science in decision-making,” he said in a statement. The action from Pruitt, who has vowed to roll back climate change and pollution regulations, means the EPA will not have to re-evaluate potential health risks of chlorpyrifos until 2022. “Given the science, we thought it seemed practically impossible to not move forward with the ban,” said Paul Towers, organizing director and policy advocate with the Pesticide Action Network. “We know it can have a profound impact on children’s brain architecture and their lifelong learning.” The new complaint, filed by lawyers with advocacy group Earthjustice, asks a panel of three federal appeals court judges to order the EPA to permanently ban chlorpyrifos based on its own science. Dow Chemical, which manufactures the pesticide under the name Lorsban, has aggressively lobbied to keep the product in use and claimed that the science is not conclusive. A spokesperson said in an email on Wednesday morning that the company is aware of the complaint, but has “not had sufficient time to review it”. EPA representatives declined to comment. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a University of California, Davis environmental health sciences professor, compared chlorpyrifos to lead, which was widely used in the US until researchers proved that low-level exposures were harming children. Pesticides in paradise: Hawaii's spike in birth defects puts focus on GM crops Read more “They used the term ‘silent epidemic’ with lead, and I think that’s really what we’re talking about here,” said Hertz-Picciotto, whose research has found links between autism and maternal exposure to the class of pesticides that includes chlorpyrifos. “The longer this goes on, the more accumulated evidence there is. It’s not like there is other evidence coming in that detracts from the conclusion that this is not safe and it’s not healthy.” Research has further linked chlorpyrifos exposure to loss of working memory, delayed motor development and decreases in cognitive functioning. “Parents shouldn’t have to worry that a dangerous chemical might be lurking in the fruits and veggies they feed their kids,” Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, senior scientist at NRDC, said in a statement. “It’s eating away at the development of vulnerable brains,” added Hertz-Picciotto, who said she had hoped the ban initiated under Obama would have paved the way for further restrictions of harmful pesticides. “All bets are off at this point.” Bonnie Wirtz, a farmer in Minnesota who said she was exposed to a chlorpyrifos drift from an alfalfa field when she was at her home, slammed Pruitt’s decision. “By leaving this chemical on the market we are gambling with the lives of children and their long-term wellbeing and they have no choice in the matter,” she said in a statement. “That’s reckless and heartbreaking.”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

– A snack company that came under fire for an ad that critics said encouraged anorexia has scrapped the message—and apologized. "You can never be too thin," said the ad for low-fat Snack Factory Pretzel Crisps, posted on New York City bus shelters and phone booths. "We didn't intend to advocate unhealthy weight loss with our ads," said a company message posted on Twitter. "Thanks to all for the feedback. The ads will be taken down asap." It may already be too late for the ad writers' calorie-starved brains, however—one of the ads has been replaced with the extremely lame (and puzzling): "There's a new star in The Garden," notes NYCtheBlog.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Cutting calories may reduce the risk of age-related diseases and may even help you live longer, a new small study suggests. People in the study who cut their daily calories by 15 percent for two years experienced two potentially beneficial effects compared with people who kept their regular diet: They had a slower metabolism, which is a sign that their bodies were using energy more efficiently, and less "oxidative stress," a process that can damage cells. Both a slower metabolism and reduced oxidative stress have been linked with a lower risk of age-related diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, according to the study, published today (March 22) in the journal Cell Metabolism. The researchers think that this is because a slow metabolism leads to less oxidative stress, which, in turn, leads to less damage to cells and organs in the body. "Restricting calories can slow your basal metabolism, and if by-products of metabolism accelerate aging processes, calorie restriction sustained over several years may help to decrease risk for chronic disease and prolong life," lead study author Leanne Redman, an associate professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, said in a statement. Still, the study was only two years long, so the researchers can't say whether calorie restriction actually results in a lower risk of age-related diseases or a longer life. More studies that last for longer periods of time are needed to determine this. [Extending Life: 7 Ways to Live Past 100] For decades, researchers have observed that calorie restriction tends to prolong life in a number of animal species, but whether it also leads to longer life spans in humans has been unclear. In the new study, the researchers examined the effects of calorie restriction on 53 healthy, nonobese men and women ages 21 to 50. The participants were randomly assigned to either a calorie-restriction group or a control group that ate what they wanted. After two years, those in the calorie-restriction group lost nearly 20 lbs. (9 kilograms) on average, while those in the control group maintained their weight. To look at changes in the participants' metabolism, the researchers used a "metabolic chamber," which is a sealed room that lets researchers precisely measure the number of calories people are burning. They found that the people in the calorie-restriction group were burning about 80 to 120 fewer calories per day than would be expected based on their weight alone. This was mostly due to slowed metabolism during sleep. The participants in this group also saw a reduction in markers of oxidative stress. Those in the calorie-restriction group didn't experience harmful effects from their diet — they didn't develop anemia, excessive bone loss or, among the women, menstrual disorders. What's more, they actually had improvements in their mood and quality of life, the researchers said. Dr. Luigi Fontana, a research professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, called the work a "very nice study," and said the findings confirm that calorie restriction lowers metabolic rate in humans. However, Fontana disagreed with the idea that a lower metabolic rate and reduced oxidative stress are responsible for the longer life spans tied to calorie restriction. Instead, he said some studies show that changes in the way organisms' cells sense nutrients may be responsible. But regardless of the reason for the link between calorie restriction and longer life, Fontana said many people in the U.S. could benefit from cutting their calories. "In this country, 70 percent of people are overweight or obese," and obesity is tied to a number of diseases, including heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, Fontana told Live Science. And the only way to lower rates of obesity is with calorie restriction and exercise, he said. The researchers of the new study say that future research could look at the effects of calorie restriction along with the consumption of certain substances, such as foods with antioxidants, or resveratrol (a compound found in red wine and other foods), which may mimic the effects of calorie restriction. Original article on Live Science. ||||| You May Live Longer By Severely Restricting Calories, Scientists Say Enlarge this image toggle caption VisualField/Getty Images VisualField/Getty Images Research has shown that sharp reductions in the amount of food consumed can help fish, rats and monkeys live longer. But there have been very few studies in humans. Now, some researchers have found that when people severely cut calories, they can slow their metabolism and possibly the aging process. Clinical physiologist Leanne Redman, who headed the study at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, says the first challenge was finding people willing to take part. After all, they would have to cut their typical plate for breakfast, lunch and dinner by up to 25 percent. And, she says, none of them were overweight. Ultimately, she recruited 53 healthy volunteers. One-third ate their regular meals. The rest were on the severe calorie reduction plan for two years. "I don't know if you understand the rigor of what it means to do calorie restriction every day," she says, but the volunteers were committed. Not surprisingly, the people cutting calories lost quite a bit of weight — on average, 25 pounds. Those in the control group gained as much as 4 pounds. But weight loss was not the point. Redman wanted to know whether this dramatic reduction in calories could affect how quickly people age. For testing, participants spent 24 hours in special rooms that measured their metabolic rates via gas, oxygen and carbon dioxide and how it changed over time. Redman noticed that for those on the restricted diet, their metabolism slowed and became more efficient. "Basically it just means that cells are needing less oxygen in order to generate the energy the body needs to survive; and so the body and the cells are becoming more energy efficient," Redman explains. And if less oxygen is needed to burn energy, then dangerous byproducts of that burning — free radicals — can be reduced. "Oxygen can actually be damaging to tissues and cells, and so if the cells have become more efficient, then they've got less oxygen left over that can cause this damage," she says. And that damage can accelerate aging. The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism last month. Now, these findings don't directly prove that drastic calorie-cutting will actually help people live longer. People would have to be followed for their lifetimes to prove that. But the study did find that blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides were lower in the group on severe calorie restriction. When those numbers are high, they can lead to life-shortening diseases. The challenge is, most people may not be able to do a severe calorie-restricted diet, or even want to do it. Lowering metabolism can cause other problems. Biochemist Valter Longo, who studies longevity at the University of Southern California, says severely restricting calories for a time can mean you're more likely to gain weight in the end. "Basically, you have to eat progressively less to maintain the same weight." Most Americans struggle with carrying around too much weight, which can cause countless health problems. "For most people, if you consider 70 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese, then you can see how, for most people, this would be a big problem," Longo says. It could lead to more "yo-yo dieting," where people who go off the diet eat more and return to their previous weight or even gain more weight. He is also concerned about the potential for muscle loss and a weakened immune system in those on severe calorie-restricted diets. Instead of chronic calorie restriction, Longo is a proponent of mini-fasts. These are short reductions in calories to just 900 a day for five days a month, which he says have the benefits of fasting without the potentially negative long-term effects. In fact, he wrote the book on it: The Longevity Diet. Longo stresses the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat. It may not ultimately lengthen your life, he says, but it can certainly help you maintain a healthy weight and avoid the kinds of chronic illnesses that can shorten it. These practices are not for everyone. If you have a history of eating disorders check with your doctor before starting any new regimen.

– A new study suggests that those who hope to live long lives should start reducing the portions on their plates. The study in Cell Metabolism followed 53 non-obese men and women over the course of two years, some of whom reduced the amount of calories they ate by 15%, reports Live Science. At that point, researchers put the participants through a series of tests. Yes, those who cut calories lost more weight than the control group, though that wasn't the goal, explains NPR. The more interesting discovery is that the calorie cutters showed a marked improvement in their metabolism. In short, it became more efficient. "Restricting calories can slow your basal metabolism, and if by-products of metabolism accelerate aging processes, calorie restriction sustained over several years may help to decrease risk for chronic disease and prolong life," says lead author Leanne Redman of the Pennington Biomedical Research in Baton Rouge. The researchers acknowledge that the study is fairly small and fairly short, but it backs up similar findings in creatures such as rats and monkeys. As for the weight loss, the calories cutters dropped an average of 25 pounds. A scientist not involved with the study points out a potential drawback: Those who severely restrict calories often end up gaining back more weight in the long run, which could end up shortening longevity. (Another study suggests what matters is when you eat.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Cutting calories may reduce the risk of age-related diseases and may even help you live longer, a new small study suggests. People in the study who cut their daily calories by 15 percent for two years experienced two potentially beneficial effects compared with people who kept their regular diet: They had a slower metabolism, which is a sign that their bodies were using energy more efficiently, and less "oxidative stress," a process that can damage cells. Both a slower metabolism and reduced oxidative stress have been linked with a lower risk of age-related diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, according to the study, published today (March 22) in the journal Cell Metabolism. The researchers think that this is because a slow metabolism leads to less oxidative stress, which, in turn, leads to less damage to cells and organs in the body. "Restricting calories can slow your basal metabolism, and if by-products of metabolism accelerate aging processes, calorie restriction sustained over several years may help to decrease risk for chronic disease and prolong life," lead study author Leanne Redman, an associate professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, said in a statement. Still, the study was only two years long, so the researchers can't say whether calorie restriction actually results in a lower risk of age-related diseases or a longer life. More studies that last for longer periods of time are needed to determine this. [Extending Life: 7 Ways to Live Past 100] For decades, researchers have observed that calorie restriction tends to prolong life in a number of animal species, but whether it also leads to longer life spans in humans has been unclear. In the new study, the researchers examined the effects of calorie restriction on 53 healthy, nonobese men and women ages 21 to 50. The participants were randomly assigned to either a calorie-restriction group or a control group that ate what they wanted. After two years, those in the calorie-restriction group lost nearly 20 lbs. (9 kilograms) on average, while those in the control group maintained their weight. To look at changes in the participants' metabolism, the researchers used a "metabolic chamber," which is a sealed room that lets researchers precisely measure the number of calories people are burning. They found that the people in the calorie-restriction group were burning about 80 to 120 fewer calories per day than would be expected based on their weight alone. This was mostly due to slowed metabolism during sleep. The participants in this group also saw a reduction in markers of oxidative stress. Those in the calorie-restriction group didn't experience harmful effects from their diet — they didn't develop anemia, excessive bone loss or, among the women, menstrual disorders. What's more, they actually had improvements in their mood and quality of life, the researchers said. Dr. Luigi Fontana, a research professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, called the work a "very nice study," and said the findings confirm that calorie restriction lowers metabolic rate in humans. However, Fontana disagreed with the idea that a lower metabolic rate and reduced oxidative stress are responsible for the longer life spans tied to calorie restriction. Instead, he said some studies show that changes in the way organisms' cells sense nutrients may be responsible. But regardless of the reason for the link between calorie restriction and longer life, Fontana said many people in the U.S. could benefit from cutting their calories. "In this country, 70 percent of people are overweight or obese," and obesity is tied to a number of diseases, including heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, Fontana told Live Science. And the only way to lower rates of obesity is with calorie restriction and exercise, he said. The researchers of the new study say that future research could look at the effects of calorie restriction along with the consumption of certain substances, such as foods with antioxidants, or resveratrol (a compound found in red wine and other foods), which may mimic the effects of calorie restriction. Original article on Live Science. ||||| You May Live Longer By Severely Restricting Calories, Scientists Say Enlarge this image toggle caption VisualField/Getty Images VisualField/Getty Images Research has shown that sharp reductions in the amount of food consumed can help fish, rats and monkeys live longer. But there have been very few studies in humans. Now, some researchers have found that when people severely cut calories, they can slow their metabolism and possibly the aging process. Clinical physiologist Leanne Redman, who headed the study at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, says the first challenge was finding people willing to take part. After all, they would have to cut their typical plate for breakfast, lunch and dinner by up to 25 percent. And, she says, none of them were overweight. Ultimately, she recruited 53 healthy volunteers. One-third ate their regular meals. The rest were on the severe calorie reduction plan for two years. "I don't know if you understand the rigor of what it means to do calorie restriction every day," she says, but the volunteers were committed. Not surprisingly, the people cutting calories lost quite a bit of weight — on average, 25 pounds. Those in the control group gained as much as 4 pounds. But weight loss was not the point. Redman wanted to know whether this dramatic reduction in calories could affect how quickly people age. For testing, participants spent 24 hours in special rooms that measured their metabolic rates via gas, oxygen and carbon dioxide and how it changed over time. Redman noticed that for those on the restricted diet, their metabolism slowed and became more efficient. "Basically it just means that cells are needing less oxygen in order to generate the energy the body needs to survive; and so the body and the cells are becoming more energy efficient," Redman explains. And if less oxygen is needed to burn energy, then dangerous byproducts of that burning — free radicals — can be reduced. "Oxygen can actually be damaging to tissues and cells, and so if the cells have become more efficient, then they've got less oxygen left over that can cause this damage," she says. And that damage can accelerate aging. The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism last month. Now, these findings don't directly prove that drastic calorie-cutting will actually help people live longer. People would have to be followed for their lifetimes to prove that. But the study did find that blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides were lower in the group on severe calorie restriction. When those numbers are high, they can lead to life-shortening diseases. The challenge is, most people may not be able to do a severe calorie-restricted diet, or even want to do it. Lowering metabolism can cause other problems. Biochemist Valter Longo, who studies longevity at the University of Southern California, says severely restricting calories for a time can mean you're more likely to gain weight in the end. "Basically, you have to eat progressively less to maintain the same weight." Most Americans struggle with carrying around too much weight, which can cause countless health problems. "For most people, if you consider 70 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese, then you can see how, for most people, this would be a big problem," Longo says. It could lead to more "yo-yo dieting," where people who go off the diet eat more and return to their previous weight or even gain more weight. He is also concerned about the potential for muscle loss and a weakened immune system in those on severe calorie-restricted diets. Instead of chronic calorie restriction, Longo is a proponent of mini-fasts. These are short reductions in calories to just 900 a day for five days a month, which he says have the benefits of fasting without the potentially negative long-term effects. In fact, he wrote the book on it: The Longevity Diet. Longo stresses the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat. It may not ultimately lengthen your life, he says, but it can certainly help you maintain a healthy weight and avoid the kinds of chronic illnesses that can shorten it. These practices are not for everyone. If you have a history of eating disorders check with your doctor before starting any new regimen.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

By Radar Staff An attempted reconciliation dinner between Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez Friday night went terribly wrong. They exited Yamato Japanese restaurant in Encino, where they were planning to dine, just minutes after arriving in separate cars, with Selena speeding off first. Back at her house, Selena drove in first, and when Justin arrived, she wouldn’t let him in! As you can see in the photos obtained by RadarOnline.com, Justin couldn’t get further than the locked gate blocking the driveway! PHOTOS: Selena Gomez Locks Justin Bieber Out Of Her House The teen singer stood at the gate, shouting for Selena, and when she didn’t respond, he could be seen pouting, standing next to the open door of his white Ferrari. The tantrum went on for several minutes, eyewitnesses say, with the Biebs literally hanging on to the gate and calling out for his estranged girlfriend. PHOTOS: Justin Bieber Has Game — Even In Israel Maybe it was the bizarre harem pants Justin was wearing that turned her off but Selena apparently was having none of it. When Justin finally walked back to his car, the actress was spotted looking out her walk-in gate at the Baby singer. PHOTOS: Selena Gomez Cheers For Justin Bieber at Soccer Game At some point during the night, Selena finally relented and let Bieber in. Maybe it was his Tweet that won her over? “Things arent always easy. there is alot of pressure. im figuring it all out. im trying. but i care, i notice, i still hear u,” he wrote. By early Saturday morning, his Ferrari was spotted inside the gate and by midway he was seen racing away from the house RELATED STORIES: Ashley Benson Dumped Justin Bieber’s BFF For James Franco, Selena Gomez Ticked Off! Full-Frontal Nude Photos Of Justin Bieber’s Dad Being Shopped Justin Bieber Is A Style Icon! Pop Star Partners With adidas NEO Label Justin Bieber Is Related To Ryan Gosling, Avril Lavigne & Celine Dion! ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez Drive of Shame? Just hours after the two had a nuclear fight,'s white Ferrari was seen pulling out of's home early Saturday morning.As TMZ first reported, the on-again/off-again couple went out to dinner Friday night, but left after just 10 minutes. The two then drove separately back to Selena's place (Justin was a few minutes behind) but she denied him at the gate The way things are going, these two will break up and get back together a few more times before the weekend is out.

– At least their rocky romance isn't exactly boring: Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez got off to such a terrible start at dinner last night that she bolted from an LA restaurant after just 10 minutes, Radar reports. Bieber followed close behind but couldn't get past her driveway's locked gate—so he hung on it and shouted her name for a while. Finally the pouting star got back into his white Ferrari and drove off. But that wasn't the end—because she let him back in during the night. Could it have been his late-night tweet? "Things arent always easy. there is alot of pressure. im figuring it all out. im trying. but i care, i notice, i still hear u," he tweeted. His car was seen inside her gate early this morning, and he rode off by mid-day. "The way things are going, these two will break up and get back together a few more times before the weekend is out," cracks TMZ.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.By Radar Staff An attempted reconciliation dinner between Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez Friday night went terribly wrong. They exited Yamato Japanese restaurant in Encino, where they were planning to dine, just minutes after arriving in separate cars, with Selena speeding off first. Back at her house, Selena drove in first, and when Justin arrived, she wouldn’t let him in! As you can see in the photos obtained by RadarOnline.com, Justin couldn’t get further than the locked gate blocking the driveway! PHOTOS: Selena Gomez Locks Justin Bieber Out Of Her House The teen singer stood at the gate, shouting for Selena, and when she didn’t respond, he could be seen pouting, standing next to the open door of his white Ferrari. The tantrum went on for several minutes, eyewitnesses say, with the Biebs literally hanging on to the gate and calling out for his estranged girlfriend. PHOTOS: Justin Bieber Has Game — Even In Israel Maybe it was the bizarre harem pants Justin was wearing that turned her off but Selena apparently was having none of it. When Justin finally walked back to his car, the actress was spotted looking out her walk-in gate at the Baby singer. PHOTOS: Selena Gomez Cheers For Justin Bieber at Soccer Game At some point during the night, Selena finally relented and let Bieber in. Maybe it was his Tweet that won her over? “Things arent always easy. there is alot of pressure. im figuring it all out. im trying. but i care, i notice, i still hear u,” he wrote. By early Saturday morning, his Ferrari was spotted inside the gate and by midway he was seen racing away from the house RELATED STORIES: Ashley Benson Dumped Justin Bieber’s BFF For James Franco, Selena Gomez Ticked Off! Full-Frontal Nude Photos Of Justin Bieber’s Dad Being Shopped Justin Bieber Is A Style Icon! Pop Star Partners With adidas NEO Label Justin Bieber Is Related To Ryan Gosling, Avril Lavigne & Celine Dion! ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez Drive of Shame? Just hours after the two had a nuclear fight,'s white Ferrari was seen pulling out of's home early Saturday morning.As TMZ first reported, the on-again/off-again couple went out to dinner Friday night, but left after just 10 minutes. The two then drove separately back to Selena's place (Justin was a few minutes behind) but she denied him at the gate The way things are going, these two will break up and get back together a few more times before the weekend is out.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Thanksgiving: Where will Trump and Pence chow down? Trump will spend Thanksgiving at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. (Photo: Lynne Sladky, AP) Donald Trump will spend Thanksgiving thawing out at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., aides said Monday. The president-elect will head south either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. “Hopefully he’s eating some Turkey,” spokesman Jason Miller said on a call with reporters after he was asked if Trump had any plans for meetings while he was in Florida. “This will be time to get together with family and have a brief break in the action.” Trump has kept a busy schedule entertaining a parade of advisers, officials, cabinet-hopefuls and well-wishers at both Trump Tower in New York City and his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., as he works to build his Cabinet. Vice President-elect Mike Pence will spend the holiday in Mississippi where his son, who is a Marine, is stationed. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2gduLPY ||||| WASHINGTON (WUSA9) - The President-elect landed in Florida on Tuesday, where he’ll spend the Thanksgiving holiday. After a whirlwind week and a half of meetings in New York and New Jersey, Donald Trump still has a lot of big jobs to fill in his administration. PREVIOUS: President-elect meets with New York Times reporters Trump is still on or ahead of schedule in naming members of his cabinet. That effort likely pauses now for a few days, with some big names left hanging over the holiday. Mitt Romney’s weekend summit with the man he called a “fraud” and a “phony” during the height of the campaign appears to have gone well. So well, in fact, that the Wall Street Journal reports Romney has become the leading candidate for Secretary of State in Donald Trump’s administration. Another former Trump rival could be also be moving to Washington. Donald Trump tweeted today that he was seriously considering offering the job of HUD secretary to Dr. Ben Carson. I am seriously considering Dr. Ben Carson as the head of HUD. I've gotten to know him well--he's a greatly talented person who loves people! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016 On Fox News, Carson said Trump did offer him the job, and defended his credentials on issues of housing and urban development. "I know that I grew up in an inner city and have spent a lot of time there," said Carson. "I have dealt with a lot of patients from that area. And I recognize that we cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities." On Tuesday, a former Washingtonian signaled she would be unlikely to return. Michelle Rhee, the past chancellor of schools, tweeted that she was “not pursuing” a job with the Administration, despite a Saturday meeting with Mr. Trump. “I will do whatever I can to be supportive.” In his meeting with the New York Times, Trump seemed enamored with another of his Saturday guests... retired Marine General James Mattis. Mattis apparently talked the president elect OUT of his desire to bring back waterboarding. “I’ve never found it useful,” Trump said the general told him. “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better.” Mattis is reportedly Mr. Trump’s top choice for Secretary of Defense, but by law, he hasn’t been out of the military long enough to be eligible for that job. Congress would have to grant him a waiver. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. / Updated By William M. Arkin, Cynthia McFadden, Ken Dilanian and Corky Siemaszko As the soon-to-be first family sat down in Florida for their Thanksgiving feast, they were watched over by the core part of their new extended family — a contingent of at least 150 Secret Service personnel. And when Donald Trump gets sworn in as president on Jan. 20, that contingent will balloon to more than 920 Secret Service agents and support personnel in Washington and his hometown, New York. The price tag for all that security is already very big, or as the Manhattan mogul might put it, "Yuge," internal Homeland Security and Secret Service documents reviewed by NBC News show. "Secret Service protection is the most intrusive thing that anyone could ever experience" Right now, the cost to taxpayers is more than $2 million a day, the documents show, a number that is sure to increase whenever the president or the first lady travels — or when the threat level rises. Meanwhile, the New York Police Department is already handling external security at Trump Tower, the president-elect's Manhattan home base, at an estimated cost of $1 million per day. "You put a price tag on anything around the president, then you're putting a price tag on his life, and that is priceless," Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent who has protected every living president, including Barack Obama, told NBC News in an exclusive interview. Protecting Trump's family presents unprecedented challenges. First off, it's a big family — 18 members in all, including Melania Trump and her 10-year-old son, Barron, as well as four adult children, three of them married, with a combined eight grandchildren. The Secret Service has not had to protect the adult children of a president-elect in a long time, Wackrow said. Also complicating security arrangements is Melania Trump's decision to stay in Manhattan until Barron is done with school in June. Donald Trump has told his team that he intends to make regular weekend trips home to Trump Tower until his wife moves into the White House. So millions of dollars worth of infrastructure will have to be installed in Trump Tower to turn it into a White House North. "You have to be able to conduct a global war from the front porch — that is just the reality of the situation," said Terry Sullivan of the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan organization that helps prepare the staffs of incoming presidents for the rigors of working in the White House. When Trump heads home to the luxury 58-story high rise on Fifth Avenue, the feds will also need to find accommodations for staffers in a building where a modest one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment rents for $5,250 a month, according to the StreetEasy real estate site. "They would need at least a whole floor, and every apartment on that floor would need to be turned into an office," Sullivan said. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is so concerned about the city's getting stuck with the bill that he's already been in touch with outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, as well as with the president-elect's transition team, to ensure that the feds guarantee reimbursement. "I made clear to [Johnson] how committed we are to the president-elect's security, but I've also made clear to him that there's extraordinary costs involved and that we want to start the process of understanding what kind of federal reimbursement we can get," the mayor said recently. "I will be speaking to the president-elect's team as early as next week on this topic." Former Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras, who was part of the security details that protected Obama and President George W. Bush, said she hopes Trump will reconsider at least his own weekend plans once he becomes president. "This is one of those situations where they really should have an honest conversation with him and just really explain to him that this is not a good idea," she told NBC's Brian Williams. "To physically re-create the security that exists at the White House in New York City, it's not going to happen." She added: "There's buses going by. There's trucks going by. When that detonates, that building is not going to withstand that blast." Related: Sand Trucks, Vapor Dogs Guard Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade In a subsequent interview with NBC News, Poumpouras said that flights out of LaGuardia Airport would have to be rerouted so they didn't fly directly over Trump Tower and that the subways running below the building would have to be fortified and closely watched. "Routes will need to change," she said. "All the security changes to make this happen will cost millions upon millions." Then there's presidential gridlock. Any time the commander-in-chief ventures in and out of New York City, traffic grinds to a halt, and commuter chaos ensues. Three days after he was elected, Trump's motorcade forced the shutdown of the Lincoln Tunnel — a key artery connecting New York City to New Jersey — for 60 minutes at the height of the evening rush hour. Back in 2009, there was gridlock across Manhattan when the Obamas flew in one Saturday for dinner and a Broadway show. And while the first couple has been back home to Chicago numerous times in the eight years they've been in the Washington, they've spent only 14 nights in their Hyde Park home, according to White House records. For a taste of things to come, consider how Trump arrived Tuesday evening at Mar-a-Lago, his 126-room, 110,000-square-foot mansion in exclusive Palm Beach, Florida, for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was in a 45-vehicle convoy that included limousines, vans — and an ambulance. Trump's glamorous Florida getaway will also get a bit of a makeover. "It is the case that the Secret Service regularly upgrades a president's off-campus residence," Sullivan said. "Typically, it includes security apparatus and global communications." Trump will have to get used to having lots of unfamiliar faces around him all of the time. "Just think about you at your home tonight and four strangers just show up and they're standing in your kitchen," Wackrow, the former agent, told NBC News. "Secret Service protection is the most intrusive thing that anyone could ever experience. We experience parts of your life, but we're also there in those private times when things aren't good — family arguments, family loss. We're there when staff goes away and the military goes away. The only ones left are the Secret Service agents. We're there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year." That takes some getting used to. For example, Obama was told early in his administration that his protective detail needed four hours' notice to safely manage his pickup basketball games. That, at first, did not go over well. "It takes a little bit of time, and it takes a little bit of give and take on both sides," Wackrow said. He said that the Secret Service will "need to understand [what] is unique about protecting Donald Trump and the first lady." "If the president-elect says, 'No,' there's going to be a conversation," Wackrow added. "We're not going to just say OK. We're going to actually push back. We may have to modify, but we'll understand what that pressure point is and then work around it." The Trumps' trip to Florida wound up being a compromise on both sides, a Homeland Security official familiar with the operation told NBC News. The cost to U.S. taxpayers? Seven million dollars, the official said.

– Donald Trump arrived in Florida Tuesday, and will spend the Thanksgiving holiday at Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, reports WUSA9. NBC News takes a look at what it's taking to protect the president-elect and his 17-member family (that's Melania, Barron, 4 adult children, 3 spouses, and 8 grandchildren) and dubs it "yuge": $7 million for the Florida trip, according to an unnamed Homeland Security official. The network reports that when Trump drove onto the grounds of his 126-room mansion, he wasn't exactly alone: A 45-vehicle convoy made up of limos, vans, and an ambulance streamed in. As for where Mike Pence is Thursday, USA Today reports he'll be spending the holiday with a son, who is stationed in Mississippi as a Marine. Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday posted a 1:44 Thanksgiving message on YouTube in which he expressed that his prayer on this holiday is that we "begin to heal our divisions and move forward as one country." He continues, "We have just finished a long and bruising political campaign. Emotions are raw and tensions just don’t heal overnight. It doesn’t go quickly, unfortunately, but we have before us the chance now to make history together ... I am asking you to join me in this effort. It is time to restore the bonds of trust between citizens. Because when America is unified, there is nothing beyond our reach, and I mean absolutely nothing. Let us give thanks for all that we have, and let us boldly face the exciting new frontiers that lie ahead."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Thanksgiving: Where will Trump and Pence chow down? Trump will spend Thanksgiving at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. (Photo: Lynne Sladky, AP) Donald Trump will spend Thanksgiving thawing out at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., aides said Monday. The president-elect will head south either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. “Hopefully he’s eating some Turkey,” spokesman Jason Miller said on a call with reporters after he was asked if Trump had any plans for meetings while he was in Florida. “This will be time to get together with family and have a brief break in the action.” Trump has kept a busy schedule entertaining a parade of advisers, officials, cabinet-hopefuls and well-wishers at both Trump Tower in New York City and his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., as he works to build his Cabinet. Vice President-elect Mike Pence will spend the holiday in Mississippi where his son, who is a Marine, is stationed. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2gduLPY ||||| WASHINGTON (WUSA9) - The President-elect landed in Florida on Tuesday, where he’ll spend the Thanksgiving holiday. After a whirlwind week and a half of meetings in New York and New Jersey, Donald Trump still has a lot of big jobs to fill in his administration. PREVIOUS: President-elect meets with New York Times reporters Trump is still on or ahead of schedule in naming members of his cabinet. That effort likely pauses now for a few days, with some big names left hanging over the holiday. Mitt Romney’s weekend summit with the man he called a “fraud” and a “phony” during the height of the campaign appears to have gone well. So well, in fact, that the Wall Street Journal reports Romney has become the leading candidate for Secretary of State in Donald Trump’s administration. Another former Trump rival could be also be moving to Washington. Donald Trump tweeted today that he was seriously considering offering the job of HUD secretary to Dr. Ben Carson. I am seriously considering Dr. Ben Carson as the head of HUD. I've gotten to know him well--he's a greatly talented person who loves people! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016 On Fox News, Carson said Trump did offer him the job, and defended his credentials on issues of housing and urban development. "I know that I grew up in an inner city and have spent a lot of time there," said Carson. "I have dealt with a lot of patients from that area. And I recognize that we cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities." On Tuesday, a former Washingtonian signaled she would be unlikely to return. Michelle Rhee, the past chancellor of schools, tweeted that she was “not pursuing” a job with the Administration, despite a Saturday meeting with Mr. Trump. “I will do whatever I can to be supportive.” In his meeting with the New York Times, Trump seemed enamored with another of his Saturday guests... retired Marine General James Mattis. Mattis apparently talked the president elect OUT of his desire to bring back waterboarding. “I’ve never found it useful,” Trump said the general told him. “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better.” Mattis is reportedly Mr. Trump’s top choice for Secretary of Defense, but by law, he hasn’t been out of the military long enough to be eligible for that job. Congress would have to grant him a waiver. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. / Updated By William M. Arkin, Cynthia McFadden, Ken Dilanian and Corky Siemaszko As the soon-to-be first family sat down in Florida for their Thanksgiving feast, they were watched over by the core part of their new extended family — a contingent of at least 150 Secret Service personnel. And when Donald Trump gets sworn in as president on Jan. 20, that contingent will balloon to more than 920 Secret Service agents and support personnel in Washington and his hometown, New York. The price tag for all that security is already very big, or as the Manhattan mogul might put it, "Yuge," internal Homeland Security and Secret Service documents reviewed by NBC News show. "Secret Service protection is the most intrusive thing that anyone could ever experience" Right now, the cost to taxpayers is more than $2 million a day, the documents show, a number that is sure to increase whenever the president or the first lady travels — or when the threat level rises. Meanwhile, the New York Police Department is already handling external security at Trump Tower, the president-elect's Manhattan home base, at an estimated cost of $1 million per day. "You put a price tag on anything around the president, then you're putting a price tag on his life, and that is priceless," Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent who has protected every living president, including Barack Obama, told NBC News in an exclusive interview. Protecting Trump's family presents unprecedented challenges. First off, it's a big family — 18 members in all, including Melania Trump and her 10-year-old son, Barron, as well as four adult children, three of them married, with a combined eight grandchildren. The Secret Service has not had to protect the adult children of a president-elect in a long time, Wackrow said. Also complicating security arrangements is Melania Trump's decision to stay in Manhattan until Barron is done with school in June. Donald Trump has told his team that he intends to make regular weekend trips home to Trump Tower until his wife moves into the White House. So millions of dollars worth of infrastructure will have to be installed in Trump Tower to turn it into a White House North. "You have to be able to conduct a global war from the front porch — that is just the reality of the situation," said Terry Sullivan of the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan organization that helps prepare the staffs of incoming presidents for the rigors of working in the White House. When Trump heads home to the luxury 58-story high rise on Fifth Avenue, the feds will also need to find accommodations for staffers in a building where a modest one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment rents for $5,250 a month, according to the StreetEasy real estate site. "They would need at least a whole floor, and every apartment on that floor would need to be turned into an office," Sullivan said. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is so concerned about the city's getting stuck with the bill that he's already been in touch with outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, as well as with the president-elect's transition team, to ensure that the feds guarantee reimbursement. "I made clear to [Johnson] how committed we are to the president-elect's security, but I've also made clear to him that there's extraordinary costs involved and that we want to start the process of understanding what kind of federal reimbursement we can get," the mayor said recently. "I will be speaking to the president-elect's team as early as next week on this topic." Former Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras, who was part of the security details that protected Obama and President George W. Bush, said she hopes Trump will reconsider at least his own weekend plans once he becomes president. "This is one of those situations where they really should have an honest conversation with him and just really explain to him that this is not a good idea," she told NBC's Brian Williams. "To physically re-create the security that exists at the White House in New York City, it's not going to happen." She added: "There's buses going by. There's trucks going by. When that detonates, that building is not going to withstand that blast." Related: Sand Trucks, Vapor Dogs Guard Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade In a subsequent interview with NBC News, Poumpouras said that flights out of LaGuardia Airport would have to be rerouted so they didn't fly directly over Trump Tower and that the subways running below the building would have to be fortified and closely watched. "Routes will need to change," she said. "All the security changes to make this happen will cost millions upon millions." Then there's presidential gridlock. Any time the commander-in-chief ventures in and out of New York City, traffic grinds to a halt, and commuter chaos ensues. Three days after he was elected, Trump's motorcade forced the shutdown of the Lincoln Tunnel — a key artery connecting New York City to New Jersey — for 60 minutes at the height of the evening rush hour. Back in 2009, there was gridlock across Manhattan when the Obamas flew in one Saturday for dinner and a Broadway show. And while the first couple has been back home to Chicago numerous times in the eight years they've been in the Washington, they've spent only 14 nights in their Hyde Park home, according to White House records. For a taste of things to come, consider how Trump arrived Tuesday evening at Mar-a-Lago, his 126-room, 110,000-square-foot mansion in exclusive Palm Beach, Florida, for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was in a 45-vehicle convoy that included limousines, vans — and an ambulance. Trump's glamorous Florida getaway will also get a bit of a makeover. "It is the case that the Secret Service regularly upgrades a president's off-campus residence," Sullivan said. "Typically, it includes security apparatus and global communications." Trump will have to get used to having lots of unfamiliar faces around him all of the time. "Just think about you at your home tonight and four strangers just show up and they're standing in your kitchen," Wackrow, the former agent, told NBC News. "Secret Service protection is the most intrusive thing that anyone could ever experience. We experience parts of your life, but we're also there in those private times when things aren't good — family arguments, family loss. We're there when staff goes away and the military goes away. The only ones left are the Secret Service agents. We're there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year." That takes some getting used to. For example, Obama was told early in his administration that his protective detail needed four hours' notice to safely manage his pickup basketball games. That, at first, did not go over well. "It takes a little bit of time, and it takes a little bit of give and take on both sides," Wackrow said. He said that the Secret Service will "need to understand [what] is unique about protecting Donald Trump and the first lady." "If the president-elect says, 'No,' there's going to be a conversation," Wackrow added. "We're not going to just say OK. We're going to actually push back. We may have to modify, but we'll understand what that pressure point is and then work around it." The Trumps' trip to Florida wound up being a compromise on both sides, a Homeland Security official familiar with the operation told NBC News. The cost to U.S. taxpayers? Seven million dollars, the official said.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

It all started with a wrong number. Deorick Williams was inadvertently looped into a group text about the birth of a baby boy, only he didn’t know anyone on the chain of celebratory messages filling up his phone. When he alerted the group of strangers that they had sent the texts to the wrong person, they quickly apologized for the mix-up. But the story didn’t end there. Williams decided he wanted to meet the proud parents and asked if the family wouldn’t mind visitors at Memorial Hospital in Bainbridge, Georgia. "We have gifts," Williams texted the group. Deorick Williams The series of texts have since gone viral after Williams shared screenshots of his conversations on social media. Williams said he and his brother brought diapers, pacifiers and baby bottles to the new parents, Mark and Lindsey Lashley. The family welcomed the Williams brothers into their hospital room and seemed touched by the gesture. "We had a great time," Williams told ABC News. "I was invited already, so I thought I might as well go. And why not bring gifts?" A family friend shared a picture of the brothers on Facebook and wrote: "You 2 are great guys and thank you for giving to someone you don't know!" ||||| Deorick Williams and his brother stopped by with gifts for a stranger's baby. (Facebook photo) A newborn baby scored some unexpected gifts, thanks to a wrong number. As Mark and Lindsey Lashley celebrated the birth of their son, Cason, new grandma Teresa couldn't wait to spread the word. One problem - her happy text messages accidentally went to a wrong number belonging to Deorick Williams, a total stranger. Williams played along, offering his congratulations and offering to stop by and take a picture with the baby boy. After Teresa apologized, Deorick asked for more information. "What's the room number? Bainbridge hospital right? We have gifts," he wrote. Teresa replied with the info and Deorick and his brother Dennis were on their way. While he may not have gotten a picture with young Cason, Deorick did take a picture with the new, proud parents, which Teresa shared on Facebook. Deorick shared the photo Saturday and it has been shared more than 20,000 times. Speaking Tuesday to WALB-TV, Williams said he and his brother were welcomed with open arms. "I mean, basically, it doesn't matter how you look, as long as you come with a kind heart. No matter where you come from, as long as you have a kind heart," he said. The brothers brought the proud new parents diapers, pacifiers and baby bottles. (h/t BET.com)

– A woman spreading the word about her new grandson accidentally texted a complete stranger on Saturday. He responded in the best possible way. Deorick Williams of Tallahassee, Fla., tells Fox 13 that his brother, Dennis Williams, started getting texts about the impending birth of a baby at a hospital in Bainbridge, Ga. "We are at the hospital. Having a baby today!" read the first, according to a Facebook post that has so far been shared 195,000 times. "Congrats lol but I think someone got the wrong number," Dennis replied. Then came a photo of newborn Cason Knox, born to parents Mark and Lindsey Lashley, per WTHR. "Well I don't know Yall but me and the boys will be thru to take picture with the baby," Dennis added. The grandmother quickly apologized for having included him in the group conversation, but the Williams brothers were adamant that they wanted to meet the new baby and his parents. And they indeed appeared at the hospital—having driven an hour from their home—bearing gifts of diapers, pacifiers, and baby bottles, reports ABC News. They also took a photo with the new parents. "We had a great time," Deorick says. "I was invited already, so I thought I might as well go. And why not bring gifts?" "What a blessing these two guys were to our family," the grandmother adds on Facebook. "They were so sweet and kind to do this! You 2 are great guys and thank you for giving to someone you didn't know! … If we all only had this kind of a heart."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.It all started with a wrong number. Deorick Williams was inadvertently looped into a group text about the birth of a baby boy, only he didn’t know anyone on the chain of celebratory messages filling up his phone. When he alerted the group of strangers that they had sent the texts to the wrong person, they quickly apologized for the mix-up. But the story didn’t end there. Williams decided he wanted to meet the proud parents and asked if the family wouldn’t mind visitors at Memorial Hospital in Bainbridge, Georgia. "We have gifts," Williams texted the group. Deorick Williams The series of texts have since gone viral after Williams shared screenshots of his conversations on social media. Williams said he and his brother brought diapers, pacifiers and baby bottles to the new parents, Mark and Lindsey Lashley. The family welcomed the Williams brothers into their hospital room and seemed touched by the gesture. "We had a great time," Williams told ABC News. "I was invited already, so I thought I might as well go. And why not bring gifts?" A family friend shared a picture of the brothers on Facebook and wrote: "You 2 are great guys and thank you for giving to someone you don't know!" ||||| Deorick Williams and his brother stopped by with gifts for a stranger's baby. (Facebook photo) A newborn baby scored some unexpected gifts, thanks to a wrong number. As Mark and Lindsey Lashley celebrated the birth of their son, Cason, new grandma Teresa couldn't wait to spread the word. One problem - her happy text messages accidentally went to a wrong number belonging to Deorick Williams, a total stranger. Williams played along, offering his congratulations and offering to stop by and take a picture with the baby boy. After Teresa apologized, Deorick asked for more information. "What's the room number? Bainbridge hospital right? We have gifts," he wrote. Teresa replied with the info and Deorick and his brother Dennis were on their way. While he may not have gotten a picture with young Cason, Deorick did take a picture with the new, proud parents, which Teresa shared on Facebook. Deorick shared the photo Saturday and it has been shared more than 20,000 times. Speaking Tuesday to WALB-TV, Williams said he and his brother were welcomed with open arms. "I mean, basically, it doesn't matter how you look, as long as you come with a kind heart. No matter where you come from, as long as you have a kind heart," he said. The brothers brought the proud new parents diapers, pacifiers and baby bottles. (h/t BET.com)

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

There's a new meteor shower coming this week. Maybe! From midnight to dawn PDT on Saturday morning, Earth might pass through a stream of debris left in the wake of a comet hundreds of years ago. The result could be a spectacular light show with as many as 200 meteors falling gracefully toward Earth per hour. Or, we might see nothing at all. The maybe meteor shower has been dubbed the May Camelopardalids (Camel-Oh-par-dalids). "For all our computer models and equipment, we astronomers are just like the average sky watcher in North America," said Bill Cooke, who heads up the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's Meteoroid Environment Office. "We can't tell you what will happen." Related story: NASA: On the lookout for a new meteor shower Science at NASA's video on the potential new meteor shower. Science at NASA's video on the potential new meteor shower. See more videos Peter Jenniskens, the astronomer who first predicted the maybe meteor shower a decade ago, put it this way: "It's science. It's exploration." Most meteor showers occur when Earth orbits through a trail of dust shed by a comet as it makes its own way around the sun. That dust burns up in our atmosphere, and causes what looks like shooting stars to streak across the sky. In the case of this weekend's maybe meteor shower, the dust responsible for the meteors would have been shed hundreds of years ago by a relatively small periodic comet called 209P/LINEAR that was discovered in 2004. However, scientists don't know how much dust the comet left in its wake. Today, the comet is only weakly active, which means it is not shedding much of anything as it orbits the sun. If it was similarly anemic 200 or 300 years ago, then we won't get much of a show. "That is the big mystery," said Jenniskens. "We don't know what the comet was doing hundreds of years ago." Up until now, Earth has never had the opportunity to pass through this hypothesized centuries-old debris stream. The comet's 5.1-year-orbit takes it out by Jupiter, where the gas giant's gravity alters the comet's orbit. And because a comet's dust stream moves along a similar orbit to its parent comet, Jupiter's gravity has also acted on this dust stream. "If you look at the models, Jupiter's gravity has tugged this stuff into the Earth's path this year, but by next year, Jupiter's gravity will have pulled it away again," said Cooke. So, early Saturday morning may be your first and last time to see the Camelopardalids--the potentially great, maybe meteor shower of 2014. No one is going to guarantee you will see a show, but wouldn't you hate to miss it if there is one? The Camelopardalids shower should peak between midnight and dawn on Saturday. If it is visible at all, it will be visible across North America. Astronomers suggest looking up between 11 p.m. Friday night to 1 a.m. Saturday morning PDT for your best chances to see the shower. ||||| CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — There's a new meteor shower in town and it might even turn into a full-fledged storm. Early Saturday, the planet will pass by debris from Comet 209P/Linear. The dusty debris is what creates the meteor shower. Scientists believe the shower could produce three, four or more — possibly a few hundred more — shooting stars per minute. North American sky-gazers will have the best views. The shower should peak from around 2 a.m. local time until nearly dawn. Comet 209P/Linear was discovered in 2004. It will be about 7.6 million miles from Earth on Saturday. Next Tuesday, the comet will pass within 5 million miles. The shower's name is a mouthful: Camelopardalids (CA-mull-oh-PAR-duh-lids). It's named after the giraffe constellation. ___ Online: NASA: http://tinyurl.com/q2kdqud Slooh observatories: https://www.slooh.com/ ||||| Trending Now Never Before Seen Meteor Shower to Ignite Across Skies: Where to See It By Michael Kuhne, AccuWeather.Com Staff Writer May 23, 2014; 11:35 PM ET For the first time ever, a debris field of the newly discovered Comet LINEAR will pass through Earth's atmosphere, sparking a new meteor shower for sky-watchers primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. "The peak will occur from Friday night into Saturday morning," AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Mark Paquette said, adding meteors can still be seen a few days before and after, but the main grouping of meteors will occur at that time. The new meteor shower, Camelopardalids, is a result of Comet 209P/LINEAR which was discovered in 2004, he said. "It's brand new," he said, referring to the opportunity to view the shower this week. The best viewing conditions will be areas across most of North America. "Generally it will be best (due to clearer skies) across the West, the Great Lakes, mid-Atlantic and eastern Gulf Coast," Paquette said. The best states for viewing include California, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina. Areas hindered by clouds will include much of New England, the Plains, southern Rockies and Pacific Northwest. Early predictions indicate an average of 100 meteors per hour, which constitutes an average meteor shower. "Meteor storms and meteor showers are different, a shower is generally anywhere from 40 or 50 to 100 meteors per hours," Paquette said. "A meteor storm is usually 1,000 per hour." Another issue for viewing meteor showers is the lunar phase, Paquette added, but the night that the meteor shower peaks, a waning crescent will be present. "The moon shouldn't be a huge deal for this event," he said. RELATED: AccuWeather.com Astronomy Blog Will the New Meteor Shower This Weekend Sizzle or Fizzle? AccuWeather.com Astronomy Facebook Page Sky-watchers should look to Polaris, or the North Star, for direction when looking for the meteors. Unlike most meteor showers, the Camelopardalids was not predicted well in advance because it is such a new discovery. Astronomers can usually predict meteor showers well in advance because they know the location of debris fields and the movement of Earth's orbit. Meteors are a collection of dust and small rocks, usually high in iron, that glow bright when they enter the Earth's atmosphere and are disintegrated by the high heat, resulting from friction upon entry, Paquette said. ||||| Meteors streak from the Perseids meteor shower above the Wyoming countryside north of Cheyenne in this time-lapse photo taken Aug. 13, 2013. (Photo: Blaline McCartney, AP) A first-of-its-kind meteor shower is expected to happen Friday night and into early Saturday morning. Here is what you need to know about the all-new shower: 1. What is the Camelopardalid meteor shower? It would be dust from a periodic comet called the 209P/LINEAR. The Earth has never run into the debris from this particular comet before. WATCH: Live feed of meteor shower 2. Why is it unique? Unlike other meteor showers expected to be visible around the same time of year, the Camelopardalid is uncommon because its debris is strongly influenced by Jupiter's gravity. No one has seen it before, but the May shower could rival the Perseid meteor shower in August. Meteor shower viewing map (Photo: AccuWeather) 3. When is the optimal time to view it? People in North America will get the best look, and peak activity will be from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. ET Saturday. YOUR TAKE: Share your best night sky photo 4. What will it look like? Perhaps what is most exciting is that it is unclear what the shower will resemble. "It could be practically nothing, or it could be a couple hundred meteors per hour," said William Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. 5. Camelopardalid is an odd moniker. How are they named? Meteor showers' names are for the constellation from which the meteors seem to radiate. That point is known as the radiant, and the radiant for Camelopardalid will be the constellation Camelopardalis (the giraffe). Follow @jessicadurando on Twitter Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1gTGNMf

– If it's clear your way late tonight and early tomorrow morning, you might just glimpse something never before seen from Earth: the Camelopardalid meteor shower. As the AP explains, the planet will tonight encounter debris from the Comet 209P/LINEAR, which was discovered just a decade ago; the dusty debris is what creates the meteor shower, named for the constellation from which it will appear to radiate (that would be Camelopardalis, the giraffe). Scientists believe the shower could produce three, four, or more—possibly a few hundred more—shooting stars per hour, and USA Today notes it could rival August's Perseid meteor shower. The Los Angeles Times explains why it's uncertain just how spectacular it'll be: The dust Earth will orbit through was shed by 209P/LINEAR hundreds of years ago. Today, the comet isn't shedding much, and we don't know what the shedding level was centuries ago—if it was high, we'll be in for a treat. If you're in California, Virginia, Ohio, or North Carolina, you'll likely have prime viewing, but AccuWeather.com has a map of conditions across the US. The best time to tune in? Between 2am and 4am ET Saturday.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.There's a new meteor shower coming this week. Maybe! From midnight to dawn PDT on Saturday morning, Earth might pass through a stream of debris left in the wake of a comet hundreds of years ago. The result could be a spectacular light show with as many as 200 meteors falling gracefully toward Earth per hour. Or, we might see nothing at all. The maybe meteor shower has been dubbed the May Camelopardalids (Camel-Oh-par-dalids). "For all our computer models and equipment, we astronomers are just like the average sky watcher in North America," said Bill Cooke, who heads up the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's Meteoroid Environment Office. "We can't tell you what will happen." Related story: NASA: On the lookout for a new meteor shower Science at NASA's video on the potential new meteor shower. Science at NASA's video on the potential new meteor shower. See more videos Peter Jenniskens, the astronomer who first predicted the maybe meteor shower a decade ago, put it this way: "It's science. It's exploration." Most meteor showers occur when Earth orbits through a trail of dust shed by a comet as it makes its own way around the sun. That dust burns up in our atmosphere, and causes what looks like shooting stars to streak across the sky. In the case of this weekend's maybe meteor shower, the dust responsible for the meteors would have been shed hundreds of years ago by a relatively small periodic comet called 209P/LINEAR that was discovered in 2004. However, scientists don't know how much dust the comet left in its wake. Today, the comet is only weakly active, which means it is not shedding much of anything as it orbits the sun. If it was similarly anemic 200 or 300 years ago, then we won't get much of a show. "That is the big mystery," said Jenniskens. "We don't know what the comet was doing hundreds of years ago." Up until now, Earth has never had the opportunity to pass through this hypothesized centuries-old debris stream. The comet's 5.1-year-orbit takes it out by Jupiter, where the gas giant's gravity alters the comet's orbit. And because a comet's dust stream moves along a similar orbit to its parent comet, Jupiter's gravity has also acted on this dust stream. "If you look at the models, Jupiter's gravity has tugged this stuff into the Earth's path this year, but by next year, Jupiter's gravity will have pulled it away again," said Cooke. So, early Saturday morning may be your first and last time to see the Camelopardalids--the potentially great, maybe meteor shower of 2014. No one is going to guarantee you will see a show, but wouldn't you hate to miss it if there is one? The Camelopardalids shower should peak between midnight and dawn on Saturday. If it is visible at all, it will be visible across North America. Astronomers suggest looking up between 11 p.m. Friday night to 1 a.m. Saturday morning PDT for your best chances to see the shower. ||||| CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — There's a new meteor shower in town and it might even turn into a full-fledged storm. Early Saturday, the planet will pass by debris from Comet 209P/Linear. The dusty debris is what creates the meteor shower. Scientists believe the shower could produce three, four or more — possibly a few hundred more — shooting stars per minute. North American sky-gazers will have the best views. The shower should peak from around 2 a.m. local time until nearly dawn. Comet 209P/Linear was discovered in 2004. It will be about 7.6 million miles from Earth on Saturday. Next Tuesday, the comet will pass within 5 million miles. The shower's name is a mouthful: Camelopardalids (CA-mull-oh-PAR-duh-lids). It's named after the giraffe constellation. ___ Online: NASA: http://tinyurl.com/q2kdqud Slooh observatories: https://www.slooh.com/ ||||| Trending Now Never Before Seen Meteor Shower to Ignite Across Skies: Where to See It By Michael Kuhne, AccuWeather.Com Staff Writer May 23, 2014; 11:35 PM ET For the first time ever, a debris field of the newly discovered Comet LINEAR will pass through Earth's atmosphere, sparking a new meteor shower for sky-watchers primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. "The peak will occur from Friday night into Saturday morning," AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Mark Paquette said, adding meteors can still be seen a few days before and after, but the main grouping of meteors will occur at that time. The new meteor shower, Camelopardalids, is a result of Comet 209P/LINEAR which was discovered in 2004, he said. "It's brand new," he said, referring to the opportunity to view the shower this week. The best viewing conditions will be areas across most of North America. "Generally it will be best (due to clearer skies) across the West, the Great Lakes, mid-Atlantic and eastern Gulf Coast," Paquette said. The best states for viewing include California, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina. Areas hindered by clouds will include much of New England, the Plains, southern Rockies and Pacific Northwest. Early predictions indicate an average of 100 meteors per hour, which constitutes an average meteor shower. "Meteor storms and meteor showers are different, a shower is generally anywhere from 40 or 50 to 100 meteors per hours," Paquette said. "A meteor storm is usually 1,000 per hour." Another issue for viewing meteor showers is the lunar phase, Paquette added, but the night that the meteor shower peaks, a waning crescent will be present. "The moon shouldn't be a huge deal for this event," he said. RELATED: AccuWeather.com Astronomy Blog Will the New Meteor Shower This Weekend Sizzle or Fizzle? AccuWeather.com Astronomy Facebook Page Sky-watchers should look to Polaris, or the North Star, for direction when looking for the meteors. Unlike most meteor showers, the Camelopardalids was not predicted well in advance because it is such a new discovery. Astronomers can usually predict meteor showers well in advance because they know the location of debris fields and the movement of Earth's orbit. Meteors are a collection of dust and small rocks, usually high in iron, that glow bright when they enter the Earth's atmosphere and are disintegrated by the high heat, resulting from friction upon entry, Paquette said. ||||| Meteors streak from the Perseids meteor shower above the Wyoming countryside north of Cheyenne in this time-lapse photo taken Aug. 13, 2013. (Photo: Blaline McCartney, AP) A first-of-its-kind meteor shower is expected to happen Friday night and into early Saturday morning. Here is what you need to know about the all-new shower: 1. What is the Camelopardalid meteor shower? It would be dust from a periodic comet called the 209P/LINEAR. The Earth has never run into the debris from this particular comet before. WATCH: Live feed of meteor shower 2. Why is it unique? Unlike other meteor showers expected to be visible around the same time of year, the Camelopardalid is uncommon because its debris is strongly influenced by Jupiter's gravity. No one has seen it before, but the May shower could rival the Perseid meteor shower in August. Meteor shower viewing map (Photo: AccuWeather) 3. When is the optimal time to view it? People in North America will get the best look, and peak activity will be from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. ET Saturday. YOUR TAKE: Share your best night sky photo 4. What will it look like? Perhaps what is most exciting is that it is unclear what the shower will resemble. "It could be practically nothing, or it could be a couple hundred meteors per hour," said William Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. 5. Camelopardalid is an odd moniker. How are they named? Meteor showers' names are for the constellation from which the meteors seem to radiate. That point is known as the radiant, and the radiant for Camelopardalid will be the constellation Camelopardalis (the giraffe). Follow @jessicadurando on Twitter Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1gTGNMf

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

(CNN) Police describe twin terror plots, one involving the bombing of a passenger plane and the other a potential poison gas attack, as the "most sophisticated" ever attempted on Australian soil. A senior ISIS commander sent parts -- including weapons-grade explosives -- by air cargo from Turkey intending to build an improvised explosive device, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said during a press conference Friday. The other scheme involved a plan to release a toxic gas in public that was foiled when the accused couldn't produce the deadly gas. Two men living in Sydney, identified by CNN affiliate Seven News as Khaled Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32, were charged with terror-related offenses Thursday. The two appeared by video link Friday in Sydney's Parramatta Court. No plea has been entered. Neither man applied for bail, and a court hearing has been deferred until November 14 after a brief of evidence was requested. "At the moment, all I can say is they are entitled to the presumption of innocence," their legal representative, Michael Coroneos, told CNN affiliate Sky News Australia. "Once the brief of evidence is served, we can assess their legal position." One other man remains in police custody, and a fourth has been released. After the foiled plan to down the plane was revealed Saturday, authorities described it as an Islamist-inspired plot, but they did not link it to a specific terror group until Friday. JUST WATCHED Four arrested in alleged airplane terror plot Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Four arrested in alleged airplane terror plot 01:39 Brother to be unwitting bomber The would-be attackers planned to place the IED on an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 but "at no stage did the IED breach airline security," the Australian Federal Police's Phelan said. One of the suspects planned to plant the IED on his brother, who was unaware of his role in the planned attack, Phelan said. The brother is currently abroad, and there are no plans to arrest him According to Phelan, the device didn't get past the airline's check-in desk, and a subsequent test of airport security using a dummy device was performed, resulting in the decoy also being found. Phelan said the device was in luggage due to be checked in, rather than carry-on baggage. Seven News reported that police had found parts of a meat grinder at the suspects' home , which they suspect was to be used to carry the explosives aboard the plane. Phelan did not elaborate on why the attack did not proceed as planned, beyond saying there was "a little bit of conjecture as to why it did not go ahead." The accused men received the bomb parts in Australia and assembled what police believe was a "full functioning" IED, he said. The Australian Federal Police's Michael Phelan says suspects assembled a functioning explosive device. Toxic chemical The second terror plot in which the two men have been charged in connection with involved an attempt to create a "improvised chemical dispersion device" to release hydrogen sulfide, Phelan said. It is suspected the device would have been used to disperse the toxic chemical in "closed spaces, potentially public transport." However, there is "no information at all to suggest" the device would be used on an airplane, Phelan said. Hydrogen sulfide is highly toxic, and it has a particular smell, Ian Musgrave, a molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist at the University of Adelaide, told CNN. When inhaled, the gas can cause respiratory paralysis and death. It can be made with high-school laboratory equipment, but a large amount of the compound is needed to be effective. Concentrations of more than 500 parts per million (ppm) of hydrogen sulfide can result in asphyxia, Musgrave said. Concentrations of 700 ppm will result in death if not rescued promptly, he said. However, no evidence exists that the device was completed due to the difficulty of producing the highly toxic chemical, he said. "We were a long way away from having a functional device," Phelan said. Ongoing investigation Two search warrants of properties in connection with the case are ongoing, he said. Authorities have carried out raids at properties across Sydney since Saturday, including the suburbs of Surry Hills, Lakemba, Wiley Park and Punchbowl. Police prepare to search for evidence Monday in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba. Investigators were seen rifling through garbage and removing items from houses, dressed in full protective gear. Threat level lowered On Thursday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the threat to aviation in Australia had been "disrupted and contained" following the arrests and the level of security at airports was being lowered. Stricter airport security measures had been put in place following Saturday's arrests, with Australian airports warning of possible delays and longer check-in times. There have been five attacks and 13 "major counterterrorism disruptions" -- including Saturday's arrests -- in Australia since the national terrorism threat level was raised in September 2014, according to a representative for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. As many as 70 people have been charged as a result of 31 counterterrorism operations, the representative said. Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the two men charged had pleaded not guilty. No plea was entered. ||||| A Sydney-born terrorism plot to place a bomb on a passenger plane was dangerously close to being carried out before it was unwittingly thwarted at an airline check-in counter. New details about the attempt to bring down the commercial flight out of Sydney provides a chilling insight into how close Islamic State-inspired terrorists allegedly came to executing the mass-casualty attack. Fairfax Media understands an improvised device reached Sydney Airport's international terminal after a passenger packed it inside a piece of luggage. The passenger was queried about the weight of the luggage at the check-in counter and learnt it was too heavy. The bag was never checked in or carried on the plane. Authorities uncovered this after Khaled Merhi, Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat were arrested in counter-terrorism raids across Sydney on Saturday evening. They were detained over an alleged and pending plot to smuggle an improvised explosive device on to an Etihad flight departing Sydney for Abu Dhabi. Advertisement On Thursday night, the Australian Federal Police charged Mahmoud Khayat, 32, and Khaled Mahmoud Khayat, 49, each with two counts of acting in preparation for or planning a terrorist act. Both men are scheduled to appear in Parramatta Court on Friday morning. The maximum penalty each could face is life imprisonment. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Security at Sydney Airport has been ramped up. Photo: Michele Mossop Khaled Merhi remains in custody. His brother, Abdul Merhi, 50, was released from police custody without charge on Tuesday night. For the past several days, police have been scouring through the Surry Hills, Lakemba, Punchbowl, Bankstown and Wiley Park homes of the four men, who are related through marriage. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Khaled Khayat, pictured at Sydney Airport in 2014, is one of the men arrested. Photo: Supplied A meat mincer, which would either explode or disperse deadly gas, was the suspected weapon. It is understood it was among the items seized from the Surry Hills terrace. Since police turned their focus to the alleged plotters last week, investigators uncovered information about the alleged earlier attempt that got as far as the airport terminal. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller. Photo: Daniel Munoz It is unclear when the close call occurred, although it was before police launched their investigation into the Sydney men last week. Multiple sources have confirmed the earlier attempt but said that, even if the device did make it past the airline check-in, it might have been detected in a security screening. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Police examine items outside Khaled Khayat's Lakemba unit as part of their investigation into an alleged terrorism plot. Photo: AAP NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said on Thursday there had been a lot of speculation about what the alleged attack entailed, but added that police stopped what could had been a "horrible crime". "Terrorism is very different to other crimes; you cannot wait until you have the perfect brief, you cannot wait until you have all the pieces of the puzzle because you cannot afford to let the criminal act happen," he said. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Police at the scene of the terrorism raid in Surry Hills Photo: Brook Mitchell "When we go early to protect the community, it gives us an opportunity to make sure we gather all the necessary evidence." Security measures at Australia's major airports were heightened last week after police received information about the alleged bomb threat. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link The scene of a terrorism raid in Surry Hills. Photo: Brook Mitchell The move prompted lengthy passenger queues that snaked outside terminal doors as travellers were urged to arrive hours before their flights. However, following advice from ASIO that there was no longer an active threat to the aviation industry, some security measures would be eased, Mr Turnbull said. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Khaled Khayat allegedly took a bomb back home to Lakemba after it was too heavy to be checked in on an Etihad flight. Photo: Supplied People should follow the directions of their airline, he added. "There will be continued enhanced security measures. Some of them will be visible to travellers, some of them will not," he said. SHARE Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Link Five properties in Surry Hills, Punchbowl, Wiley Park and Lakemba were raided as part of a counter-terrorism operation in Sydney. Photo: Channel Nine News It is understood that British and US spies fed information about the alleged bomb plot to their Australian counterparts. That came after communication was intercepted between members of the alleged Sydney terrorist cell and Islamic State operatives in Syria. Police then launched the dramatic counter-terrorism raids on Saturday evening. Investigators are now looking closely at the background and associations of those involved, who were little more than a blip on the terrorism radar before last week. Khaled and Abdul Merhi are understood to be related to Ahmed Merhi, who was once viewed as an active recruiter for IS in Syria, where he has been based since 2014. However Abdul Merhi's lawyer, Moustafa Kheir, said it was "unfathomable" his client would be associated with such a terrorist plot. "A lot of information was divulged, including his identity," he said on Wednesday. "That's caused a lot of damage to him. We want to review all the information police had and what basis they had to do what they did." Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, the group's alleged target, issued a statement on Tuesday saying it was helping police with the investigation. ||||| SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man sent his unsuspecting brother to Sydney airport to catch an Etihad Airways flight carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat-mincer built at the direction of a senior Islamic State commander, police said on Friday. Detailing one of Australia’s “most sophisticated” militant plots, police said two men, who have been charged with terror-related offences, also planned to build a device to release poisonous gas in a public area. High-grade military explosives used to build the bomb were sent by air cargo from Turkey as part of a plot “inspired and directed” by the militant Islamic State group, police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said. The plot targeted an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 but the bomb never made it past airport security, he said. “This is one of the most sophisticated plots that has ever been attempted on Australian soil,” Phelan said. Police allege that one of the two men charged late on Thursday had been introduced to Islamic State by his brother, who they said was a senior member of the group in Syria. Communication between the accused man and Islamic State began around April, police said. Under the instruction of the unidentified Islamic State commander, the men built a “fully functioning IED” (improvised explosive device). One of the brothers was unaware that he was carrying a bomb, disguised as a commercial meat mincer, in his luggage, and tried to check it in at the airport, police said. “We’ll be alleging that the person who was to carry the IED on the plane had no idea they were going to be carrying an IED,” Phelan said. Such a device would work like a large grenade, exploding with enough force to blow a hole in an airplane, even if it went off in the cargo hold, said Professor Greg Barton, a security expert at Deakin University in Melbourne. “I think the logic would be that you pack your explosives in and seal it up, and if someone does a quick physical inspection it just looks like what it is, a meat grinder, because it’s not electrical or electronic, it’s less likely to be suspicious.” Police said there was “a little bit of conjecture” about what happened next, but it appeared one of the accused then left the airport, taking the luggage with him. The man’s brother boarded the plane and has not since returned to Australia. Senior Australian police officers arrive at a house in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, Australia, August 4, 2017 after raids in relation to a plot to attack a commercial aircraft. REUTERS/Jason Reed “I want to make it quite clear - it never got near screening. I don’t want anyone to suggest that it ... penetrated airport security layers ... because it did not. It didn’t go anywhere near it,” Phelan said. Etihad said in a statement on Friday it had been working closely with the Australian investigation. GAS PLOT ALSO UNCOVERED Police arrested four men last weekend in raids across Sydney, Australia’s biggest city. One man has been released, while another is still being held without charge under special counter-terror laws. The two who have been charged are Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat, who each face two counts of planning a terrorist act. The charges carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. The men did not apply for bail at a court hearing on Friday, a spokeswoman for New South Wales Courts said, and bail was formally denied. Their next scheduled court appearance is on Nov. 14. Police also said they had uncovered the early stages of a plot to build an “improvised chemical dispersion device” designed to release hydrogen sulfide gas. Precursor chemicals and other components were found but the accused were “a long way” from making a functioning device. Foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide, or “rotten egg gas”, is deadly in high concentrations. Police said “preliminary and hypothetical” discussions between the accused and Islamic State suggested a plan to deploy it in a crowded place, such as public transport. Australia, a staunch U.S. ally that has sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been on heightened alert since 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East, or their supporters. While there have been several “lone wolf” attacks, officials say 13 significant plots have been foiled in that time. A gunman in a 2014 Sydney cafe siege boasted about links with Islamic State militants, although no direct ties with the group were established. The gunman and two other people were killed in the siege. Slideshow (5 Images) Since police revealed details of the scheme, security experts said it exposed weaknesses in air cargo screening, particularly in Turkey, where intelligence agencies have been weakened by a government purge in the wake of last year’s failed coup. “Islamic State is now positioned in Turkey such that it can send military-grade explosive via cargo flights out of Turkey around the world,” said Deakin University’s Barton. “Now presumably Sydney is not a one-off and they are going to try this elsewhere and that’s a level of risk that we hadn’t thought of before.”

– If all had gone according to plan, a bomb disguised as a meat grinder would have taken down a plane in Australia last month. The existence of the plot was revealed late last month, and now police are providing details: Khaled Mahmoud Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32, were charged Thursday with planning a terrorist act. Police on Friday said the unsuspecting brother of one of the men was to carry an IED disguised as a meat mincer onto an Etihad Airways flight departing Sydney for Abu Dhabi on July 15, reports Reuters. The bomb had been created with guidance from ISIS, which allegedly mailed the men some of the necessary components via Turkey. But though the luggage in which the IED had been placed entered Sydney Airport, it never made it beyond the check-in counter. The details here are a bit vague: The Sydney Morning Herald reports the bag was determined to be too heavy and was never checked in. Reuters says it's believed one of the suspects left the airport with the bag; the unwitting brother boarded the flight. Police reportedly seized the IED device in raids last month. A security expert speculates on the methodology to Reuters: "If someone does a quick physical inspection it just looks like what it is, a meat grinder, because it's not electrical or electronic, it's less likely to be suspicious." Under the direction of an ISIS operative in Syria, the suspects were also trying to create a chemical device intended to release hydrogen sulfide in a crowded public area, "potentially public transport," police say, per CNN. However, they were "a long way" from having a usable device.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.(CNN) Police describe twin terror plots, one involving the bombing of a passenger plane and the other a potential poison gas attack, as the "most sophisticated" ever attempted on Australian soil. A senior ISIS commander sent parts -- including weapons-grade explosives -- by air cargo from Turkey intending to build an improvised explosive device, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said during a press conference Friday. The other scheme involved a plan to release a toxic gas in public that was foiled when the accused couldn't produce the deadly gas. Two men living in Sydney, identified by CNN affiliate Seven News as Khaled Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32, were charged with terror-related offenses Thursday. The two appeared by video link Friday in Sydney's Parramatta Court. No plea has been entered. Neither man applied for bail, and a court hearing has been deferred until November 14 after a brief of evidence was requested. "At the moment, all I can say is they are entitled to the presumption of innocence," their legal representative, Michael Coroneos, told CNN affiliate Sky News Australia. "Once the brief of evidence is served, we can assess their legal position." One other man remains in police custody, and a fourth has been released. After the foiled plan to down the plane was revealed Saturday, authorities described it as an Islamist-inspired plot, but they did not link it to a specific terror group until Friday. JUST WATCHED Four arrested in alleged airplane terror plot Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Four arrested in alleged airplane terror plot 01:39 Brother to be unwitting bomber The would-be attackers planned to place the IED on an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 but "at no stage did the IED breach airline security," the Australian Federal Police's Phelan said. One of the suspects planned to plant the IED on his brother, who was unaware of his role in the planned attack, Phelan said. The brother is currently abroad, and there are no plans to arrest him According to Phelan, the device didn't get past the airline's check-in desk, and a subsequent test of airport security using a dummy device was performed, resulting in the decoy also being found. Phelan said the device was in luggage due to be checked in, rather than carry-on baggage. Seven News reported that police had found parts of a meat grinder at the suspects' home , which they suspect was to be used to carry the explosives aboard the plane. Phelan did not elaborate on why the attack did not proceed as planned, beyond saying there was "a little bit of conjecture as to why it did not go ahead." The accused men received the bomb parts in Australia and assembled what police believe was a "full functioning" IED, he said. The Australian Federal Police's Michael Phelan says suspects assembled a functioning explosive device. Toxic chemical The second terror plot in which the two men have been charged in connection with involved an attempt to create a "improvised chemical dispersion device" to release hydrogen sulfide, Phelan said. It is suspected the device would have been used to disperse the toxic chemical in "closed spaces, potentially public transport." However, there is "no information at all to suggest" the device would be used on an airplane, Phelan said. Hydrogen sulfide is highly toxic, and it has a particular smell, Ian Musgrave, a molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist at the University of Adelaide, told CNN. When inhaled, the gas can cause respiratory paralysis and death. It can be made with high-school laboratory equipment, but a large amount of the compound is needed to be effective. Concentrations of more than 500 parts per million (ppm) of hydrogen sulfide can result in asphyxia, Musgrave said. Concentrations of 700 ppm will result in death if not rescued promptly, he said. However, no evidence exists that the device was completed due to the difficulty of producing the highly toxic chemical, he said. "We were a long way away from having a functional device," Phelan said. Ongoing investigation Two search warrants of properties in connection with the case are ongoing, he said. Authorities have carried out raids at properties across Sydney since Saturday, including the suburbs of Surry Hills, Lakemba, Wiley Park and Punchbowl. Police prepare to search for evidence Monday in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba. Investigators were seen rifling through garbage and removing items from houses, dressed in full protective gear. Threat level lowered On Thursday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the threat to aviation in Australia had been "disrupted and contained" following the arrests and the level of security at airports was being lowered. Stricter airport security measures had been put in place following Saturday's arrests, with Australian airports warning of possible delays and longer check-in times. There have been five attacks and 13 "major counterterrorism disruptions" -- including Saturday's arrests -- in Australia since the national terrorism threat level was raised in September 2014, according to a representative for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. As many as 70 people have been charged as a result of 31 counterterrorism operations, the representative said. Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the two men charged had pleaded not guilty. No plea was entered. ||||| A Sydney-born terrorism plot to place a bomb on a passenger plane was dangerously close to being carried out before it was unwittingly thwarted at an airline check-in counter. New details about the attempt to bring down the commercial flight out of Sydney provides a chilling insight into how close Islamic State-inspired terrorists allegedly came to executing the mass-casualty attack. Fairfax Media understands an improvised device reached Sydney Airport's international terminal after a passenger packed it inside a piece of luggage. The passenger was queried about the weight of the luggage at the check-in counter and learnt it was too heavy. The bag was never checked in or carried on the plane. Authorities uncovered this after Khaled Merhi, Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat were arrested in counter-terrorism raids across Sydney on Saturday evening. They were detained over an alleged and pending plot to smuggle an improvised explosive device on to an Etihad flight departing Sydney for Abu Dhabi. Advertisement On Thursday night, the Australian Federal Police charged Mahmoud Khayat, 32, and Khaled Mahmoud Khayat, 49, each with two counts of acting in preparation for or planning a terrorist act. Both men are scheduled to appear in Parramatta Court on Friday morning. The maximum penalty each could face is life imprisonment. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Security at Sydney Airport has been ramped up. Photo: Michele Mossop Khaled Merhi remains in custody. His brother, Abdul Merhi, 50, was released from police custody without charge on Tuesday night. For the past several days, police have been scouring through the Surry Hills, Lakemba, Punchbowl, Bankstown and Wiley Park homes of the four men, who are related through marriage. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Khaled Khayat, pictured at Sydney Airport in 2014, is one of the men arrested. Photo: Supplied A meat mincer, which would either explode or disperse deadly gas, was the suspected weapon. It is understood it was among the items seized from the Surry Hills terrace. Since police turned their focus to the alleged plotters last week, investigators uncovered information about the alleged earlier attempt that got as far as the airport terminal. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller. Photo: Daniel Munoz It is unclear when the close call occurred, although it was before police launched their investigation into the Sydney men last week. Multiple sources have confirmed the earlier attempt but said that, even if the device did make it past the airline check-in, it might have been detected in a security screening. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Police examine items outside Khaled Khayat's Lakemba unit as part of their investigation into an alleged terrorism plot. Photo: AAP NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said on Thursday there had been a lot of speculation about what the alleged attack entailed, but added that police stopped what could had been a "horrible crime". "Terrorism is very different to other crimes; you cannot wait until you have the perfect brief, you cannot wait until you have all the pieces of the puzzle because you cannot afford to let the criminal act happen," he said. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Police at the scene of the terrorism raid in Surry Hills Photo: Brook Mitchell "When we go early to protect the community, it gives us an opportunity to make sure we gather all the necessary evidence." Security measures at Australia's major airports were heightened last week after police received information about the alleged bomb threat. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link The scene of a terrorism raid in Surry Hills. Photo: Brook Mitchell The move prompted lengthy passenger queues that snaked outside terminal doors as travellers were urged to arrive hours before their flights. However, following advice from ASIO that there was no longer an active threat to the aviation industry, some security measures would be eased, Mr Turnbull said. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Khaled Khayat allegedly took a bomb back home to Lakemba after it was too heavy to be checked in on an Etihad flight. Photo: Supplied People should follow the directions of their airline, he added. "There will be continued enhanced security measures. Some of them will be visible to travellers, some of them will not," he said. SHARE Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Link Five properties in Surry Hills, Punchbowl, Wiley Park and Lakemba were raided as part of a counter-terrorism operation in Sydney. Photo: Channel Nine News It is understood that British and US spies fed information about the alleged bomb plot to their Australian counterparts. That came after communication was intercepted between members of the alleged Sydney terrorist cell and Islamic State operatives in Syria. Police then launched the dramatic counter-terrorism raids on Saturday evening. Investigators are now looking closely at the background and associations of those involved, who were little more than a blip on the terrorism radar before last week. Khaled and Abdul Merhi are understood to be related to Ahmed Merhi, who was once viewed as an active recruiter for IS in Syria, where he has been based since 2014. However Abdul Merhi's lawyer, Moustafa Kheir, said it was "unfathomable" his client would be associated with such a terrorist plot. "A lot of information was divulged, including his identity," he said on Wednesday. "That's caused a lot of damage to him. We want to review all the information police had and what basis they had to do what they did." Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, the group's alleged target, issued a statement on Tuesday saying it was helping police with the investigation. ||||| SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man sent his unsuspecting brother to Sydney airport to catch an Etihad Airways flight carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat-mincer built at the direction of a senior Islamic State commander, police said on Friday. Detailing one of Australia’s “most sophisticated” militant plots, police said two men, who have been charged with terror-related offences, also planned to build a device to release poisonous gas in a public area. High-grade military explosives used to build the bomb were sent by air cargo from Turkey as part of a plot “inspired and directed” by the militant Islamic State group, police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said. The plot targeted an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 but the bomb never made it past airport security, he said. “This is one of the most sophisticated plots that has ever been attempted on Australian soil,” Phelan said. Police allege that one of the two men charged late on Thursday had been introduced to Islamic State by his brother, who they said was a senior member of the group in Syria. Communication between the accused man and Islamic State began around April, police said. Under the instruction of the unidentified Islamic State commander, the men built a “fully functioning IED” (improvised explosive device). One of the brothers was unaware that he was carrying a bomb, disguised as a commercial meat mincer, in his luggage, and tried to check it in at the airport, police said. “We’ll be alleging that the person who was to carry the IED on the plane had no idea they were going to be carrying an IED,” Phelan said. Such a device would work like a large grenade, exploding with enough force to blow a hole in an airplane, even if it went off in the cargo hold, said Professor Greg Barton, a security expert at Deakin University in Melbourne. “I think the logic would be that you pack your explosives in and seal it up, and if someone does a quick physical inspection it just looks like what it is, a meat grinder, because it’s not electrical or electronic, it’s less likely to be suspicious.” Police said there was “a little bit of conjecture” about what happened next, but it appeared one of the accused then left the airport, taking the luggage with him. The man’s brother boarded the plane and has not since returned to Australia. Senior Australian police officers arrive at a house in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, Australia, August 4, 2017 after raids in relation to a plot to attack a commercial aircraft. REUTERS/Jason Reed “I want to make it quite clear - it never got near screening. I don’t want anyone to suggest that it ... penetrated airport security layers ... because it did not. It didn’t go anywhere near it,” Phelan said. Etihad said in a statement on Friday it had been working closely with the Australian investigation. GAS PLOT ALSO UNCOVERED Police arrested four men last weekend in raids across Sydney, Australia’s biggest city. One man has been released, while another is still being held without charge under special counter-terror laws. The two who have been charged are Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat, who each face two counts of planning a terrorist act. The charges carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. The men did not apply for bail at a court hearing on Friday, a spokeswoman for New South Wales Courts said, and bail was formally denied. Their next scheduled court appearance is on Nov. 14. Police also said they had uncovered the early stages of a plot to build an “improvised chemical dispersion device” designed to release hydrogen sulfide gas. Precursor chemicals and other components were found but the accused were “a long way” from making a functioning device. Foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide, or “rotten egg gas”, is deadly in high concentrations. Police said “preliminary and hypothetical” discussions between the accused and Islamic State suggested a plan to deploy it in a crowded place, such as public transport. Australia, a staunch U.S. ally that has sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been on heightened alert since 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East, or their supporters. While there have been several “lone wolf” attacks, officials say 13 significant plots have been foiled in that time. A gunman in a 2014 Sydney cafe siege boasted about links with Islamic State militants, although no direct ties with the group were established. The gunman and two other people were killed in the siege. Slideshow (5 Images) Since police revealed details of the scheme, security experts said it exposed weaknesses in air cargo screening, particularly in Turkey, where intelligence agencies have been weakened by a government purge in the wake of last year’s failed coup. “Islamic State is now positioned in Turkey such that it can send military-grade explosive via cargo flights out of Turkey around the world,” said Deakin University’s Barton. “Now presumably Sydney is not a one-off and they are going to try this elsewhere and that’s a level of risk that we hadn’t thought of before.”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

It's a line you'll hear in almost any crime show after someone finds the body — the detective turns to the medical examiner and asks, "Time of death?" But in real life, medical examiners don't have a very precise method for figuring out how long ago someone died. Now, researchers say they could use the bacteria found on the body to provide a more accurate way to pinpoint the time of death, according to a new study. In the study, published today (Dec. 22) in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers examined the "necrobiomes" of 21 cadavers. The necrobiome, or the community of bacteria found on a dead body, changes considerably as time passes after death and the body decomposes, according to the study. [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt and Beyond] Currently, medical examiners estimate the time of death by physically inspecting the body for signs of early-phase decomposition and, in later stages of decomposition, by looking at the insects present on the body, the researchers wrote. But "these techniques are notoriously unreliable," thanks to factors such as temperature, weather conditions and geographic location, the researchers wrote. But "by knowing which microbes take over a dead body and how long it takes, forensic scientists might be able to use [the necrobiome] to determine time of death or other aspects of a crime scene," Robert DeSalle, curator of molecular systematics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said in a statement. DeSalle was not involved in the study. In the study, the researchers took samples of bacteria from the ear and nasal canals of the cadavers, which were at the Anthropological Research Facility at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The cadavers were placed outdoors, in a temperate, deciduous forest, and were left to decompose naturally over the course of several weeks. The researchers sequenced the DNA of the bacteria, and used their findings to construct a model that could predict a body's time of death to up to 55 "accumulated degree-days," which is equal to about two summer days. Accumulated degree-days are a way to measure the passage of time and temperature simultaneously, said senior study author Nathan Lents, a professor of microbiology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York. Because human decomposition is strictly dependent on both time and temperature, scientists cannot consider the passage of time alone, Lents told Live Science. "When it comes to rates of decay, one day in summer time is like two weeks in winter time," he said. The bacterial communities found on a dead body change over time, Lents said. "Think about a decomposing vertebrate as an ecosystem" teeming with various life-forms, Lents said. "The ecosystem is very dynamic because the environment of the decomposing host is in a state of wild changes." For example, cycles of high and low oxygen levels play a role in which bacteria are present, as oxygen is consumed and carbon dioxide builds up in the body. But the body's tissues eventually rupture, and oxygen flows back in, changing the environment again. There are also cycles of high and low nutrient richness, Lents said; nutrient levels may be low until a tissue ruptures and nutrients spill out. Ultimately, "the environment is a feeding frenzy for alternating groups of organisms, setting up a succession of bacteria that proliferate when their time comes," Lents said. [Ear Maggots and Brain Amoeba: 5 Creepy Flesh-Eating Critters] But researchers still have a great deal to learn about this ecosystem, Lents added. The new study is "a very promising proof of concept," Lents said in a statement. Still, the method could be improved by adding more data, from a larger study at multiple locations, and involving bacteria from additional parts of the body, they wrote in the study. Originally published on Live Science. ||||| New York, NY, December 22, 2016 – Currently, when a deceased human is discovered, the forensic techniques for estimating time elapsed since death are not very precise. However, in a new study appearing in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers have turned to analyzing the human microbiome, the bacteria and other microbes that live on and in our bodies, for clues about the postmortem interval of a cadaver. A team led by Professor Nathan H. Lents of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY), sampled bacteria from the ear and nasal canals of 21 cadavers through several weeks of decomposition. They then analyzed the bacterial samples using Next-Generation metagenomic DNA sequencing to determine the identity and abundance of all microbes present. With this very large data set, the researchers used a machine learning approach to scrutinize the bacterial communities and how they change over time as the bodies decomposed. Through iterative testing and tweaking of their computational tools, the investigators built a statistical model that predicts the postmortem interval of unknown samples to within 55 accumulated degree-days, or about two days in summertime. This degree of accuracy holds through several weeks of decomposition, a substantial improvement over presently available methods. "Our approach had the benefit of sampling the same cadavers repeatedly as they decomposed and we think that this really added to the ability of our machine learning approach to see through all of the massive amount of noisy data and detect the underlying patterns," said Dr. Lents. "While we consider this a pilot study, it is a very promising proof-of-concept, and I think that microbiome-based approaches will eventually become the standard method of determining the time since death for bodies that are discovered after some time of decomposition." “This study takes us a step further [than the human microbiome], and tells us about the necrobiome, the collection of microbes on a dead body,” said Dr. Robert DeSalle, Curator of Entomology at the American Museum of Natural History, who was not affiliated with the CUNY study. “By knowing which microbes take over a dead body and how long it takes, forensic scientists might be able to use this technique to determine time of death or other aspects of a crime scene.” With additional research, this microbiome-based method promises a far more definitive method to establish time since death, which could open and close avenues of investigation in homicide cases, shed light upon possible suspects, and corroborate or disprove alibis. To read the full study published in PLOS ONE, click here. About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu. MEDIA COVERAGE Scientific American December 22, 2016 "Necrobiome" Reveals a Corpse's Time of Death ||||| Research on the human microbiome, the microbiota that live in, on, and around the human person, has revolutionized our understanding of the complex interactions between microbial life and human health and disease. The microbiome may also provide a valuable tool in forensic death investigations by helping to reveal the postmortem interval (PMI) of a decedent that is discovered after an unknown amount of time since death. Current methods of estimating PMI for cadavers discovered in uncontrolled, unstudied environments have substantial limitations, some of which may be overcome through the use of microbial indicators. In this project, we sampled the microbiomes of decomposing human cadavers, focusing on the skin microbiota found in the nasal and ear canals. We then developed several models of statistical regression to establish an algorithm for predicting the PMI of microbial samples. We found that the complete data set, rather than a curated list of indicator species, was preferred for training the regressor. We further found that genus and family, rather than species, are the most informative taxonomic levels. Finally, we developed a k-nearest- neighbor regressor, tuned with the entire data set from all nasal and ear samples, that predicts the PMI of unknown samples with an average error of ±55 accumulated degree days (ADD). This study outlines a machine learning approach for the use of necrobiome data in the prediction of the PMI and thereby provides a successful proof-of- concept that skin microbiota is a promising tool in forensic death investigations. Funding: Reagents, supplies, and sequencing was made by possible by a grant to NHL from the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program (67672-00-45) and the Seed Funding Program from the John Jay College Office for the Advancement of Research. Student stipends to DT, SG, ZK, and JP were provided by the PRISM program at John Jay College, funded by the Title V and HSI-STEM programs of the US Department of Education and the New York state CSTEP Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Data Availability: Sequence data are available from the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under accession number SUB2118662. Other data underlying the study’s findings are available within the paper and its Supporting Information file. Copyright: © 2016 Johnson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. In this study, we sampled the bacterial communities in the ear and nasal canals of 17 cadavers, four of them repeatedly, throughout the course of surface decomposition and analyzed those communities with 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Statistical analysis at all taxonomic levels was used in a machine learning approach toward development of a computational model for prediction of the postmortem interval. To that end, we were successful in constructing a k = 4 nearest-neighbor regression model which accurately predicted the true postmortem interval to within 55 accumulated degree days (ADD), or two days at an average temperature of 27.5°C. We were also able to identify the bacterial taxa that are most informative of our predictive model of decomposition. To date, most reports on the microbiome have focused on the communities of the GI tract, as it is the site of the richest diversity of microflora to begin with. However, we propose that that the skin microbiome offers several advantages as a site-of-interest for research into the postmortem microbiome. Specifically, we chose the aural and nasal cavities for our study, which are included as sites of interest in the NIH Human Microbiome Project. [ 13 ] These two niches are each unique environments in the body but are also accessible and non-invasive to sample. Using the ear and nasal cavities would offer distinct advantages during an active criminal investigation of a crime scene, as it would leave the cadaver essentially undisturbed. In the largest and most comprehensive study on the human necrobiome to date, Metcalf, et al. used machine learning methods to characterize how the microbes derived from both the soil and the decomposing human or mouse cadaver assemble into a decomposition ecosystem with a predictable succession of bacterial and fungal organisms. [ 8 ] Using mouse cadavers in laboratory conditions and human cadavers in uncontrolled outdoor conditions, this study found that patterns of microbial succession were surprisingly independent of soil type and seasonal effects. In addition, researchers found many microbial taxa that are active in a similar schedule in both the human and mouse conditions. This implies that the sudden influx of carrion-derived nutrients into the soil initiates a common biological chain of events at the microbial level, regardless of the mammal species from which the carrion derives. This commonality bodes well for the forensic utility of the necrobiome. Recently, Hauther, et al., repeatedly sampled bacteria from the large intestine of 12 cadavers as they decomposed in outdoor environmental conditions. [ 12 ] This study performed quantitative analysis of bacterial communities using the 16S rRNA gene for phylogenetic identifications and identified three specific genera of bacteria that show specific promise as quantitative indicators of the postmortem interval. Other interesting work on the necrobiome has probed how microbial communities in cadaver tissue and the soil merge into one dynamic system. Studies by Finley, et al., and Cobaugh, et al. have reported that cadaver-derived microbes can be detected in the nearby soil for up to a year and possibly much longer. [ 10 , 11 ] Importantly, the detection of microbes in nearby soil appears to follow a steady progression and could prove fruitful for forensic estimation of the postmortem interval, even long after a body has been removed the scene. A study by Pechal, et al. reported on the usefulness of monitoring the succession of bacterial taxa during the course of decomposition of pigs in an uncontrolled environment. [ 7 ] In that study, they were able to build a statistical model using metagenomic sampling that explained nearly 95% of the microbiome changes that occurred through the course of decomposition. This convincingly demonstrated that a data analytics approach can overcome the inevitable noised introduced by sampling from an outdoor environment. An earlier study by the same group described temperate-zone seasonal variations of the swine necrobiome, an important consideration for forensic investigations throughout the global North. [ 8 ] Seasonal variations in the decomposition microbiome of pigs were also reported by Carter, et al., who also reported an important contribution of soil-derived microbes to the decomposition ecosystem of the pig cadavers. [ 9 ] In a 2013 study Metcalf, et al. endeavored to discover a so-called “microbial clock” to provide estimates of the postmortem interval in mice. [ 6 ] Impressively, the model that they developed was accurate to within three days of error over a period of 48 days of decomposition. It is worth noting, however, that the ambient conditions were held steady during the course of the experiment and insects were excluded in order to reduces sources of environmental variability. The controlled environment is an important first step, but favors construction of a robust predictive model at the expense of attempting to replicate the conditions when the model might actually be used, that is, human decedents discovered after an unknown period of time in uncontrolled environments. Several recent reports have aimed to describe the postmortem human microbiome. Not surprisingly, the various microbial communities that colonize the human person change considerably following the death of the host as the chemical and biological milieu changes in almost every conceivable way. [ 5 ] The primary goal of research into the postmortem microbiome, or necrobiome, is to aid in death investigations by providing a means to reliably estimate the postmortem interval (PMI). Current methods of estimating the PMI of a deceased human person discovered in an uncontrolled environment are quite crude, involving subjective physical inspection of the cadaver for early-phase decomposition and insect colonization in later-phase decomposition. However, these techniques are notoriously unreliable. The use of entomology, in particular, is confounded by temperature, weather conditions, seasonal variation, geographic location, and many other factors, both known and unknown. The high variability of these PMI estimation techniques makes it clear that additional approaches are needed. Microbiome-based estimates may prove particularly useful in cases where insects are absent or delayed, such as indoors, burials, or in colder temperatures. The human body is inhabited by a vast number of microorganisms, which have occupied every conceivable ecological niche. Recent advances in sequencing has resulted in a great deal of research focused on the human microbiome. [ 1 ] In particular, the microbiota of the skin is increasingly the subject of research into inter-personal differences and microbe-host interactions, revealing that microbial communities differ between individuals and between different sites on the body. [ 2 ] Compared to that of the gut and oral cavity, the skin microbiome appears to be more influenced by the host environment. [ 3 ] It is also becoming apparent that skin microbial communities play a role in many diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cancer and chronic inflammatory disease. [ 4 ] While the skin microbiome of living individuals has recieved attention, we know much less about the fate of these microbial communities after host death. These microbes are likely strongly influenced by the decomposition environment, which includes insect colonization and changes in soft tissue chemistry. Because the events of tissue decomposition are equally dependent on time and temperature, we calculated the accumulated degree days (ADD) for each sample, with each 24 hour period postmortem counting as an equivalent to its average temperature in Celsius, as explained in Michaud, et al. [ 14 ] The following assumptions were made in these calculations. First, because cadaver placements at the ARF facility take place between 11:00A.M. and 1:00P.M., and all swabs are taken around that same time, we converted each day into two-half days, halving the average temperature for each day. Secondly, all cadavers were kept at 3°C for all days between the date of death and placement at the facility. Thirdly, if a cadaver was frozen, those days counted as zero toward the cumulative ADD value. Fourthly, average temperature listed for Knoxville, Tennessee, as recorded in Weather Underground ( www.wunderground.com ) was used as a proxy measurement for the average temperature at the ARF facility, which does not track and archive precise local temperature. The barcoded DNA amplicons were pooled together and delivered to the Genome Technology Center at NYU Langone Medical Center for next-generation 16S metagenomic sequencing using the MiSeq platform (Illumina). Compiled sequence libraries were analyzed and phylogentically classified using the BaseSpace program (Illumina). Spreadsheets with absolute numbers of sequence reads for each taxon in each sample were extracted and transformed to relative abundance measures as explained below. Next, 25 μL of the purified amplicon PCR product was barcoded by index PCR using the Nextera XT Index Kit from Illumina, as per provided protocol. Following PCR cleanup (again using the AMPure XL kit), 2 μL of each barcoded PCR product was subjected to agarose gel electrophoresis to verify integrity of each sample through visualization of a 630bp band. Following the amplification step, 2 μL of each sample was run in a 1.5% agarose gel to ensure that the PCR was successful. Only those samples that yielded a clean PCR product at 550bp were included in future steps. PCR clean up was performed using the Agencourt AMPure XP beads kit by Beckman Coulter, following the provided protocol precisely. Final purified DNA was eluted in a volume of 50 μL and [DNA] was determined. Samples with less than 15 ng/μL were concentrated down to ≈ 25 μL using a speedvac before proceeding to the index PCR. Preparation of sample amplification for sequencing was completed by following the 16S Metagenomic Sequencing Library Preparation protocol by Illumina. Briefly, the V3 and V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene were amplified using universal degenerate primers in the provided kit. Procedures were exactly according to protocol with the following exceptions: volumes used were 7.5 μL template DNA, 2.5 μL Amplicon PCR Forward Primer (1 M), 2.5 μL Amplicon PCR Reverse Primer (1μM), and 12.5μL 2x KAPA HiFi HotStart ReadyMix for a total of 25μL. This modification was to increase the DNA concentration used per sample, since some samples were too low to follow the recommended protocol precisely. DNA was extracted using the PowerLyzer PowerSoil DNA Isolation Kit (MoBio Laboratory) precisely according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Final purified DNA was eluted in a final volume of 100 μL. DNA concentration was determined by measuring the absorbance of each sample at 260 nm using the NanoDrop 2000 Spectrophotometer (Thermo Scientific). Only samples harboring at least 1 ng/μL DNA and yielded a clean spectrogram with a peak at 260 nm were included in subsequent amplification steps. During sample collection, aseptic technique was utilized as much as possible. Because the bodies were placed prostrate, the heads are turned, facing one side of the other. For each cadaver, the nostril and ear canal chosen for sampling was that on the side of the face facing away from the ground, preventing or minimizing the sampling of bacteria from the soil and nearby cadavers. Just prior to each sample collection, the extreme tip of a fresh, sterile, Cap-Shure™ swab was briefly dipped into sterile phosphate-buffered saline (obtained 1X from Fisher Scientific). Then, the swab was placed into the nostril or ear canal until the entire cotton swab was inside the canal. The swab was gently pressed against the outside wall before moving the swab in a circular motion for two complete rotations. The swab was then placed back into its collection tube, which was itself placed back into its plastic wrapping, separately, and then into a sterile sample collection bag. Sample bags were kept at -20°C until DNA extraction was performed. All samples were collected from cadavers placed at the Anthropological Research Facility (ARF) at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The use of deceased human subjects at the ARF does not require IRB approval as the bodies were donated for research purposes to the facility. In addition, this research was reviewed and approved by the Internal Review Board of the City University of New York as part of larger project (protocol #514576). The ARF is a preserved temperate deciduous forest with well-drained fine textured clayey soils. All cadavers were placed on the surface of the soil and allowed to decompose naturally. Bodies were placed in a prostrate position, unclothed, and loosely covered to reduce mass scavenging by large animals. A total of 144 sample swabs were taken from a total of 21 cadavers, most as a single collection event for each cadaver. However, four of these cadavers were swabbed repeatedly through the course of decomposition, starting at placement and continuing every 2–3 days until the tissues were too decomposed to access the ear and/or nose. Data from only these four cadavers was used in the early phase of our computational analysis when the models that were best suited for our data were selected, as explained below. Subsequent computational modeling included data from all suitable samples. The RFR regressor is an ensemble method, meaning it employs a voting approach based on a family of simpler regressors. In the case of RFR, the simpler family of regressors consists of decision trees. This model neither has parameters nor is it instance-based. A more lengthy discussion can be found in the references. [ 21 ] The KNR regressor is a simple instance-based approach, which means that no parameters are fit to the data. [ 15 ] Rather, the data itself is stored directly and used to predict the values for new instances. In the KNR case, this happens simply by averaging the known ADD for the k most similar training points for some new (test) instance. The measure of similarity may be Euclidean distance (when the data are regarded as vectors) or something more exotic. Though the KNR regressor does not have parameters, it does have hyperparameters, namely k and specifics of the algorithm used, which might specify the meaning of “similarity” or weight the training vectors in certain ways in an attempt to improve performance. An interesting corollary of the instance-based nature of KNR is that the training accuracy (the accuracy of the predictions the model makes on the training set) is always perfect. Describing each of these regressors in detail is beyond the scope of this report, but a few general remarks may be helpful. The regressors SVR, RR, RFR, LR and BRR all fit a collection of linear coefficients to the data. They differ from one another and from simple linear regression in the objective function and their constraints, which are optimized during the fitting process. All of these regressors include some kind of regularization which is a penalty assigned in the objective function to complicated solutions. [ 15 ] Usually this amounts to penalizing coefficients which, when viewed as a vector, have a large norm with respect to either the L1 or L2 norms (the Manhattan metric and Euclidean metric, respectively). The values that control the degree to which complicated solutions are penalized are known as the hyperparameters for the regressor. [ 15 ] Fitting the hyperparameters to the data is important to avoid overfitting. Note that for the non-curated dataset, we have n > m in all cases except for kingdom and phylum, necessitating some form of regularization to avoid trivial solutions. To analyze the data, several regression techniques were considered. To evaluate the effectiveness of the regressors, we used a machine learning approach, splitting the data randomly into two mutually exclusive groups called a training set and a testing set. The train/test split depends only on m and is the same for every taxon. The training set is selected uniformly at random to comprise 80% of the instances. The testing set is then taken as the remaining 20% of instances. [ 17 ] The regressors we employed in our analysis were the following (as implemented by the scikit-learn project, version 0.17): [ 18 ] Support Vector Regression (SVR) [ 19 ], K-neighbors Regression (KNR) [ 15 ], Ridge Regression (RR) [ 20 ], Lasso Regression (LR) [ 15 ], Elastic Net Regression (ENR), Random Forest Regression (RFR) [ 21 ], and Bayesian Ridge Regression (BRR) [ 20 ]. It is not necessary that q D be computed literally with respect to species. For example the p i can be sample composition percentages at the level of phylum, genus, etc, in which case q D represents diversity at the level of the appropriate taxon. For a fixed q, higher values of q D correspond to higher levels of diversity. Intuitively, when q is small, q D provides a formalization of diversity which emphasizes species richness, whereas when q is large, equal representation of species in the environment (i.e. equitability) becomes more influential. In fact when q = 0, q D is simply the species richnes. Note also that special values of q cause q D to specialize to a number of well known diversity indices. For example, if q = 2, then q D is Simpson’s diversity index , and while q D is undefined for q = 1, it is the case that lim q → 1 q D = exp(H′) where H′ denotes the Shannon index defined by . Here the variable S refers to species richness (the number of species present) and p i is the proportion of the population accounted for by the i th species. This quantity, which depends on a nonnegative free variable q, can be understood as the reciprocal of the weighted power mean (with power q − 1) of the proportions p i of the various species, where the weight of species i is p i . In our discussion of diversity, we will use the following quantity to measure diversity of the microbial communities in each swab: [ 16 ] The exact set of organisms used for each level for both non-curated and curated cases can be found in our supplementary materials ( http://bit.ly/2f4ltDH ). When the data matrix X is built from a spreadsheet, it contains integers for entries, with entry x i,j reflecting the absolute number of instances for organism j detected in sample i. Because this number may depend on, for example, the richness of the swab offered to the analyzer, it is normalized in the following way. For each row i of X, we compute s i = Σ j ≤ n x i,j , and replace with . Note that this form of normalization depends only on the row (i.e. sample), and can be done to new data without information from X. We do not perform column-based normalization (so-called feature normalization) manually, but this may be done in some of the algorithms we use for regression. Consult our code in the supplementary materials for details. The number of rows in each table is 67 for all data, and the number of columns is the number of organisms, as shown. We also provide the logarithm of the number of columns in each dataset, for later reference. A separate pruning was done at each level of the taxonomic hierarchy. The effect is that the curated data set has many fewer columns than the non-curated data, though they have an equal number of rows. The curated data is also higher quality in the sense that the selected taxa have unusually high agreement across cadavers as well as higher magnitude correlation values with respect to ADD and percent composition. Table 1 summarizes the dimensions of our data matrices. For data that came from the four cadavers that were sampled repeatedly throughout decomposition, we also attempted to refine our data matrices into two different types: curated and non-curated. The non-curated data matrices X have one column corresponding to each organism occurring a nonzero number of times in some ear sample, or some nose sample (the same organism is frequently represented twice–once for the ear and once for the nose). The curated data employs a reduced set of organisms (both for ear and for the nose). The pruning of organisms was done manually through visual inspection, considering factors such as the correlation coefficient of the organism with the dependent variable, and the coherence of any correlation across multiple cadavers. To facilitate this process, code was written to plot ADD against percentage composition for each taxon, producing 5243 individual plots. In these images, data was color coded by cadaver, allowing an intuitive judgement to be made regarding the agreement across cadavers, as well as the plausibility of a functional relationship between ADD and percent composition. Fig 1 provides an example of an image of this type. We regard the data as matrices X in which rows correspond to instances–swabs–and columns correspond to features—organisms (or taxa). The symbol X can be regarded as a multidimensional independent variable, for which there is a corresponding dependent vector variable y. If X is m × n then y is a column vector of length m, where row i of X determines (at least partly) the ADD value found in row i of y. There are a number of different possible matrices X, depending on which swabs, which organisms, and which taxonomic levels are considered. For instance, we may consider only nose swabs and restrict our attention to a special subset of organisms at the phylum level, and attempt a regression of y from the resulting matrix X. In another case, X may include both ear and nose swabs, and refer to the data at the class level. We thus consider several different transformations of our data to see which transformation performs best with respect to the problem of determining y from X. The main differences analyzed refer to whether X contains only ear data, only nose data, or both jointly, and whether all organisms are considered, or only a special curated subset, as described below. In addition to species classification, each sequence read was also assigned to its proper kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, and genus. Mathematically, the species measurements may be considered to be the raw data, with data corresponding to higher taxonomic levels understood as transformations of the original data. In the parlance of machine learning, this is a form of feature extraction. Considering the data at higher taxa clusters the species into similar kinds, preserving some amount of information, while reducing the number of independent variables, and possibly increasing the effectiveness of the regression. [ 15 ] The data for this project was produced by collecting a series of bacterial swabs from the ear and nasal canals of cadavers undergoing active decomposition in uncontrolled environmental conditions. Each swab is annotated with a time-since-death measurement that accounts for both temperature and time elapsed in a single variable, accumulated degree days (ADD). The DNA collected in each swab was subjected to quantitative sequencing of the 16S rDNA gene, which allowed detection of individual species and subsequent calculation of its relative abundance in the entire sample. Thus, the raw data consists of percent-abundance of each sequence (representing a bacterial species) and the ADD to which the cadavers were exposed at the time of the swab. In order to study these data as a regression problem, we set the independent variables as the relative abundance of the species (or higher taxa) in each collection swab and the dependent variable as the ADD value for that swab. The aim of our regression analysis was to observe if the dependent variable, ADD, can be determined as a function of the independent variables. 4 Results 4.1 Effect of Decomposition on Microbial Diversity We began the analysis of our data by inquiring if there was a useful relationship between ADD and sample diversity. For a data matrix X, recall that the rows of X represent population samples, and any given row naturally corresponds to p 1 ,p 2 , …, p S as in the definition of qD. Then if qD(X) denotes the column vector whose rows are the diversity values with respect to qD of the corresponding rows of X, we asked if there was any correlation between qD(X) and y. We used Pearson’s correlation coefficient to measure the strength of such a relationship for a number of values of q and several different taxa. Consider Fig 2, below. PPT PowerPoint slide PowerPoint slide PNG larger image larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 2. The images A, B, and C show how the correlation between qD(X) and y depends on the choice of q and the dataset X. The image D shows how diversity changes with ADD for the ear, nose and joint datasets (q = 0.4). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167370.g002 Panels A, B, and C in Fig 2 show Pearson’s r as a function of q for the species, phylum, and order datasets, respectively. Each contains three curves, corresponding to whether X contains data taken only from nose swabs, only from ear swabs, or a combination of both (joint). For most datasets, diversity decreased as ADD increases for the microbial communities found in the ear swabs, as is the case with data from both the ear and the nose swabs considered jointly. Using data from the nose swabs alone yields weaker correlations for the most part, and diversity tends to have a positive (increasing) relationship to ADD. Panel D of Fig 2 shows diversity (q = 0.4) as a function of ADD for the species data. Note that for ear-only data, the plot is predominantly decreasing for the first 100 ADD, after which it becomes comparatively constant. The nose-only data, by contrast, yields a curve that is approximately constant for this choice of taxon and q. It should be noted that in computing the diversity of the joint data, if the same organism occurs both in the ear and in the nose, this is counted as two taxa rather than one. The lowest value attained for the correlation coefficient is r = −0.425 for curated, joint ear and nose, family-level data, with an optimal choice of q = 0.226. The highest value is r = 0.35 for noncurated, nose-only, class-level data for an optimal choice of q = 0.50. The p values for these r are p = 0.00033 and p = 0.0033, respectively. Table 2 displays the r coefficients with the lowest p values for each dataset, as well as the associated q values. PPT PowerPoint slide PowerPoint slide PNG larger image larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 2. The most significant correlation found between qD(X) and y for each dataset X, and the optimizing q value. Kingdom data is omitted. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167370.t002

– Despite what you see on all those crime shows, medical examiners don't actually know how long a corpse has been dead, reports LiveScience. Lacking a precise method to determine time of death, pathologists essentially make a good guess. But a new study focused on the necrobiome—the world of organisms involved in decomposition, including bacteria—could change the game for forensic scientists. "By knowing which microbes take over a dead body and how long it takes, forensic scientists might be able to use this technique to determine time of death or other aspects of a crime scene," one expert says in a statement. Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from CUNY say the current "crude" methods for examining a corpse involve a physical inspection for signs of decomposition and for insects present. "These techniques are notoriously unreliable," they explain, because they are skewed by temperature and weather conditions, among other factors. Researchers placed 21 cadavers outdoors in a temperate forest to decompose naturally over several weeks, and then studied their necrobiomes by swabbing bacteria from ears and nostrils. They used the findings over time to build a statistical model that can map time of death to up to 55 "accumulated degree-days," or about two summer days. "When it comes to rates of decay, one day in summer time is like two weeks in winter time," lead author Nathan Lents tells LiveScience. A decomposing body undergoes "wild changes" over time and as the temperature changes, so "accumulated degree-days" offer a way to measure both time and temperature changes simultaneously. Although more research is needed, Lents thinks the team's model "will eventually become the standard method" for pinpointing the time of death in bodies that have been sitting out for a while. (Your microbiome may be keeping you healthy.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.It's a line you'll hear in almost any crime show after someone finds the body — the detective turns to the medical examiner and asks, "Time of death?" But in real life, medical examiners don't have a very precise method for figuring out how long ago someone died. Now, researchers say they could use the bacteria found on the body to provide a more accurate way to pinpoint the time of death, according to a new study. In the study, published today (Dec. 22) in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers examined the "necrobiomes" of 21 cadavers. The necrobiome, or the community of bacteria found on a dead body, changes considerably as time passes after death and the body decomposes, according to the study. [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt and Beyond] Currently, medical examiners estimate the time of death by physically inspecting the body for signs of early-phase decomposition and, in later stages of decomposition, by looking at the insects present on the body, the researchers wrote. But "these techniques are notoriously unreliable," thanks to factors such as temperature, weather conditions and geographic location, the researchers wrote. But "by knowing which microbes take over a dead body and how long it takes, forensic scientists might be able to use [the necrobiome] to determine time of death or other aspects of a crime scene," Robert DeSalle, curator of molecular systematics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said in a statement. DeSalle was not involved in the study. In the study, the researchers took samples of bacteria from the ear and nasal canals of the cadavers, which were at the Anthropological Research Facility at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The cadavers were placed outdoors, in a temperate, deciduous forest, and were left to decompose naturally over the course of several weeks. The researchers sequenced the DNA of the bacteria, and used their findings to construct a model that could predict a body's time of death to up to 55 "accumulated degree-days," which is equal to about two summer days. Accumulated degree-days are a way to measure the passage of time and temperature simultaneously, said senior study author Nathan Lents, a professor of microbiology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York. Because human decomposition is strictly dependent on both time and temperature, scientists cannot consider the passage of time alone, Lents told Live Science. "When it comes to rates of decay, one day in summer time is like two weeks in winter time," he said. The bacterial communities found on a dead body change over time, Lents said. "Think about a decomposing vertebrate as an ecosystem" teeming with various life-forms, Lents said. "The ecosystem is very dynamic because the environment of the decomposing host is in a state of wild changes." For example, cycles of high and low oxygen levels play a role in which bacteria are present, as oxygen is consumed and carbon dioxide builds up in the body. But the body's tissues eventually rupture, and oxygen flows back in, changing the environment again. There are also cycles of high and low nutrient richness, Lents said; nutrient levels may be low until a tissue ruptures and nutrients spill out. Ultimately, "the environment is a feeding frenzy for alternating groups of organisms, setting up a succession of bacteria that proliferate when their time comes," Lents said. [Ear Maggots and Brain Amoeba: 5 Creepy Flesh-Eating Critters] But researchers still have a great deal to learn about this ecosystem, Lents added. The new study is "a very promising proof of concept," Lents said in a statement. Still, the method could be improved by adding more data, from a larger study at multiple locations, and involving bacteria from additional parts of the body, they wrote in the study. Originally published on Live Science. ||||| New York, NY, December 22, 2016 – Currently, when a deceased human is discovered, the forensic techniques for estimating time elapsed since death are not very precise. However, in a new study appearing in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers have turned to analyzing the human microbiome, the bacteria and other microbes that live on and in our bodies, for clues about the postmortem interval of a cadaver. A team led by Professor Nathan H. Lents of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY), sampled bacteria from the ear and nasal canals of 21 cadavers through several weeks of decomposition. They then analyzed the bacterial samples using Next-Generation metagenomic DNA sequencing to determine the identity and abundance of all microbes present. With this very large data set, the researchers used a machine learning approach to scrutinize the bacterial communities and how they change over time as the bodies decomposed. Through iterative testing and tweaking of their computational tools, the investigators built a statistical model that predicts the postmortem interval of unknown samples to within 55 accumulated degree-days, or about two days in summertime. This degree of accuracy holds through several weeks of decomposition, a substantial improvement over presently available methods. "Our approach had the benefit of sampling the same cadavers repeatedly as they decomposed and we think that this really added to the ability of our machine learning approach to see through all of the massive amount of noisy data and detect the underlying patterns," said Dr. Lents. "While we consider this a pilot study, it is a very promising proof-of-concept, and I think that microbiome-based approaches will eventually become the standard method of determining the time since death for bodies that are discovered after some time of decomposition." “This study takes us a step further [than the human microbiome], and tells us about the necrobiome, the collection of microbes on a dead body,” said Dr. Robert DeSalle, Curator of Entomology at the American Museum of Natural History, who was not affiliated with the CUNY study. “By knowing which microbes take over a dead body and how long it takes, forensic scientists might be able to use this technique to determine time of death or other aspects of a crime scene.” With additional research, this microbiome-based method promises a far more definitive method to establish time since death, which could open and close avenues of investigation in homicide cases, shed light upon possible suspects, and corroborate or disprove alibis. To read the full study published in PLOS ONE, click here. About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations. In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu. MEDIA COVERAGE Scientific American December 22, 2016 "Necrobiome" Reveals a Corpse's Time of Death ||||| Research on the human microbiome, the microbiota that live in, on, and around the human person, has revolutionized our understanding of the complex interactions between microbial life and human health and disease. The microbiome may also provide a valuable tool in forensic death investigations by helping to reveal the postmortem interval (PMI) of a decedent that is discovered after an unknown amount of time since death. Current methods of estimating PMI for cadavers discovered in uncontrolled, unstudied environments have substantial limitations, some of which may be overcome through the use of microbial indicators. In this project, we sampled the microbiomes of decomposing human cadavers, focusing on the skin microbiota found in the nasal and ear canals. We then developed several models of statistical regression to establish an algorithm for predicting the PMI of microbial samples. We found that the complete data set, rather than a curated list of indicator species, was preferred for training the regressor. We further found that genus and family, rather than species, are the most informative taxonomic levels. Finally, we developed a k-nearest- neighbor regressor, tuned with the entire data set from all nasal and ear samples, that predicts the PMI of unknown samples with an average error of ±55 accumulated degree days (ADD). This study outlines a machine learning approach for the use of necrobiome data in the prediction of the PMI and thereby provides a successful proof-of- concept that skin microbiota is a promising tool in forensic death investigations. Funding: Reagents, supplies, and sequencing was made by possible by a grant to NHL from the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program (67672-00-45) and the Seed Funding Program from the John Jay College Office for the Advancement of Research. Student stipends to DT, SG, ZK, and JP were provided by the PRISM program at John Jay College, funded by the Title V and HSI-STEM programs of the US Department of Education and the New York state CSTEP Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Data Availability: Sequence data are available from the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under accession number SUB2118662. Other data underlying the study’s findings are available within the paper and its Supporting Information file. Copyright: © 2016 Johnson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. In this study, we sampled the bacterial communities in the ear and nasal canals of 17 cadavers, four of them repeatedly, throughout the course of surface decomposition and analyzed those communities with 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Statistical analysis at all taxonomic levels was used in a machine learning approach toward development of a computational model for prediction of the postmortem interval. To that end, we were successful in constructing a k = 4 nearest-neighbor regression model which accurately predicted the true postmortem interval to within 55 accumulated degree days (ADD), or two days at an average temperature of 27.5°C. We were also able to identify the bacterial taxa that are most informative of our predictive model of decomposition. To date, most reports on the microbiome have focused on the communities of the GI tract, as it is the site of the richest diversity of microflora to begin with. However, we propose that that the skin microbiome offers several advantages as a site-of-interest for research into the postmortem microbiome. Specifically, we chose the aural and nasal cavities for our study, which are included as sites of interest in the NIH Human Microbiome Project. [ 13 ] These two niches are each unique environments in the body but are also accessible and non-invasive to sample. Using the ear and nasal cavities would offer distinct advantages during an active criminal investigation of a crime scene, as it would leave the cadaver essentially undisturbed. In the largest and most comprehensive study on the human necrobiome to date, Metcalf, et al. used machine learning methods to characterize how the microbes derived from both the soil and the decomposing human or mouse cadaver assemble into a decomposition ecosystem with a predictable succession of bacterial and fungal organisms. [ 8 ] Using mouse cadavers in laboratory conditions and human cadavers in uncontrolled outdoor conditions, this study found that patterns of microbial succession were surprisingly independent of soil type and seasonal effects. In addition, researchers found many microbial taxa that are active in a similar schedule in both the human and mouse conditions. This implies that the sudden influx of carrion-derived nutrients into the soil initiates a common biological chain of events at the microbial level, regardless of the mammal species from which the carrion derives. This commonality bodes well for the forensic utility of the necrobiome. Recently, Hauther, et al., repeatedly sampled bacteria from the large intestine of 12 cadavers as they decomposed in outdoor environmental conditions. [ 12 ] This study performed quantitative analysis of bacterial communities using the 16S rRNA gene for phylogenetic identifications and identified three specific genera of bacteria that show specific promise as quantitative indicators of the postmortem interval. Other interesting work on the necrobiome has probed how microbial communities in cadaver tissue and the soil merge into one dynamic system. Studies by Finley, et al., and Cobaugh, et al. have reported that cadaver-derived microbes can be detected in the nearby soil for up to a year and possibly much longer. [ 10 , 11 ] Importantly, the detection of microbes in nearby soil appears to follow a steady progression and could prove fruitful for forensic estimation of the postmortem interval, even long after a body has been removed the scene. A study by Pechal, et al. reported on the usefulness of monitoring the succession of bacterial taxa during the course of decomposition of pigs in an uncontrolled environment. [ 7 ] In that study, they were able to build a statistical model using metagenomic sampling that explained nearly 95% of the microbiome changes that occurred through the course of decomposition. This convincingly demonstrated that a data analytics approach can overcome the inevitable noised introduced by sampling from an outdoor environment. An earlier study by the same group described temperate-zone seasonal variations of the swine necrobiome, an important consideration for forensic investigations throughout the global North. [ 8 ] Seasonal variations in the decomposition microbiome of pigs were also reported by Carter, et al., who also reported an important contribution of soil-derived microbes to the decomposition ecosystem of the pig cadavers. [ 9 ] In a 2013 study Metcalf, et al. endeavored to discover a so-called “microbial clock” to provide estimates of the postmortem interval in mice. [ 6 ] Impressively, the model that they developed was accurate to within three days of error over a period of 48 days of decomposition. It is worth noting, however, that the ambient conditions were held steady during the course of the experiment and insects were excluded in order to reduces sources of environmental variability. The controlled environment is an important first step, but favors construction of a robust predictive model at the expense of attempting to replicate the conditions when the model might actually be used, that is, human decedents discovered after an unknown period of time in uncontrolled environments. Several recent reports have aimed to describe the postmortem human microbiome. Not surprisingly, the various microbial communities that colonize the human person change considerably following the death of the host as the chemical and biological milieu changes in almost every conceivable way. [ 5 ] The primary goal of research into the postmortem microbiome, or necrobiome, is to aid in death investigations by providing a means to reliably estimate the postmortem interval (PMI). Current methods of estimating the PMI of a deceased human person discovered in an uncontrolled environment are quite crude, involving subjective physical inspection of the cadaver for early-phase decomposition and insect colonization in later-phase decomposition. However, these techniques are notoriously unreliable. The use of entomology, in particular, is confounded by temperature, weather conditions, seasonal variation, geographic location, and many other factors, both known and unknown. The high variability of these PMI estimation techniques makes it clear that additional approaches are needed. Microbiome-based estimates may prove particularly useful in cases where insects are absent or delayed, such as indoors, burials, or in colder temperatures. The human body is inhabited by a vast number of microorganisms, which have occupied every conceivable ecological niche. Recent advances in sequencing has resulted in a great deal of research focused on the human microbiome. [ 1 ] In particular, the microbiota of the skin is increasingly the subject of research into inter-personal differences and microbe-host interactions, revealing that microbial communities differ between individuals and between different sites on the body. [ 2 ] Compared to that of the gut and oral cavity, the skin microbiome appears to be more influenced by the host environment. [ 3 ] It is also becoming apparent that skin microbial communities play a role in many diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cancer and chronic inflammatory disease. [ 4 ] While the skin microbiome of living individuals has recieved attention, we know much less about the fate of these microbial communities after host death. These microbes are likely strongly influenced by the decomposition environment, which includes insect colonization and changes in soft tissue chemistry. Because the events of tissue decomposition are equally dependent on time and temperature, we calculated the accumulated degree days (ADD) for each sample, with each 24 hour period postmortem counting as an equivalent to its average temperature in Celsius, as explained in Michaud, et al. [ 14 ] The following assumptions were made in these calculations. First, because cadaver placements at the ARF facility take place between 11:00A.M. and 1:00P.M., and all swabs are taken around that same time, we converted each day into two-half days, halving the average temperature for each day. Secondly, all cadavers were kept at 3°C for all days between the date of death and placement at the facility. Thirdly, if a cadaver was frozen, those days counted as zero toward the cumulative ADD value. Fourthly, average temperature listed for Knoxville, Tennessee, as recorded in Weather Underground ( www.wunderground.com ) was used as a proxy measurement for the average temperature at the ARF facility, which does not track and archive precise local temperature. The barcoded DNA amplicons were pooled together and delivered to the Genome Technology Center at NYU Langone Medical Center for next-generation 16S metagenomic sequencing using the MiSeq platform (Illumina). Compiled sequence libraries were analyzed and phylogentically classified using the BaseSpace program (Illumina). Spreadsheets with absolute numbers of sequence reads for each taxon in each sample were extracted and transformed to relative abundance measures as explained below. Next, 25 μL of the purified amplicon PCR product was barcoded by index PCR using the Nextera XT Index Kit from Illumina, as per provided protocol. Following PCR cleanup (again using the AMPure XL kit), 2 μL of each barcoded PCR product was subjected to agarose gel electrophoresis to verify integrity of each sample through visualization of a 630bp band. Following the amplification step, 2 μL of each sample was run in a 1.5% agarose gel to ensure that the PCR was successful. Only those samples that yielded a clean PCR product at 550bp were included in future steps. PCR clean up was performed using the Agencourt AMPure XP beads kit by Beckman Coulter, following the provided protocol precisely. Final purified DNA was eluted in a volume of 50 μL and [DNA] was determined. Samples with less than 15 ng/μL were concentrated down to ≈ 25 μL using a speedvac before proceeding to the index PCR. Preparation of sample amplification for sequencing was completed by following the 16S Metagenomic Sequencing Library Preparation protocol by Illumina. Briefly, the V3 and V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene were amplified using universal degenerate primers in the provided kit. Procedures were exactly according to protocol with the following exceptions: volumes used were 7.5 μL template DNA, 2.5 μL Amplicon PCR Forward Primer (1 M), 2.5 μL Amplicon PCR Reverse Primer (1μM), and 12.5μL 2x KAPA HiFi HotStart ReadyMix for a total of 25μL. This modification was to increase the DNA concentration used per sample, since some samples were too low to follow the recommended protocol precisely. DNA was extracted using the PowerLyzer PowerSoil DNA Isolation Kit (MoBio Laboratory) precisely according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Final purified DNA was eluted in a final volume of 100 μL. DNA concentration was determined by measuring the absorbance of each sample at 260 nm using the NanoDrop 2000 Spectrophotometer (Thermo Scientific). Only samples harboring at least 1 ng/μL DNA and yielded a clean spectrogram with a peak at 260 nm were included in subsequent amplification steps. During sample collection, aseptic technique was utilized as much as possible. Because the bodies were placed prostrate, the heads are turned, facing one side of the other. For each cadaver, the nostril and ear canal chosen for sampling was that on the side of the face facing away from the ground, preventing or minimizing the sampling of bacteria from the soil and nearby cadavers. Just prior to each sample collection, the extreme tip of a fresh, sterile, Cap-Shure™ swab was briefly dipped into sterile phosphate-buffered saline (obtained 1X from Fisher Scientific). Then, the swab was placed into the nostril or ear canal until the entire cotton swab was inside the canal. The swab was gently pressed against the outside wall before moving the swab in a circular motion for two complete rotations. The swab was then placed back into its collection tube, which was itself placed back into its plastic wrapping, separately, and then into a sterile sample collection bag. Sample bags were kept at -20°C until DNA extraction was performed. All samples were collected from cadavers placed at the Anthropological Research Facility (ARF) at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The use of deceased human subjects at the ARF does not require IRB approval as the bodies were donated for research purposes to the facility. In addition, this research was reviewed and approved by the Internal Review Board of the City University of New York as part of larger project (protocol #514576). The ARF is a preserved temperate deciduous forest with well-drained fine textured clayey soils. All cadavers were placed on the surface of the soil and allowed to decompose naturally. Bodies were placed in a prostrate position, unclothed, and loosely covered to reduce mass scavenging by large animals. A total of 144 sample swabs were taken from a total of 21 cadavers, most as a single collection event for each cadaver. However, four of these cadavers were swabbed repeatedly through the course of decomposition, starting at placement and continuing every 2–3 days until the tissues were too decomposed to access the ear and/or nose. Data from only these four cadavers was used in the early phase of our computational analysis when the models that were best suited for our data were selected, as explained below. Subsequent computational modeling included data from all suitable samples. The RFR regressor is an ensemble method, meaning it employs a voting approach based on a family of simpler regressors. In the case of RFR, the simpler family of regressors consists of decision trees. This model neither has parameters nor is it instance-based. A more lengthy discussion can be found in the references. [ 21 ] The KNR regressor is a simple instance-based approach, which means that no parameters are fit to the data. [ 15 ] Rather, the data itself is stored directly and used to predict the values for new instances. In the KNR case, this happens simply by averaging the known ADD for the k most similar training points for some new (test) instance. The measure of similarity may be Euclidean distance (when the data are regarded as vectors) or something more exotic. Though the KNR regressor does not have parameters, it does have hyperparameters, namely k and specifics of the algorithm used, which might specify the meaning of “similarity” or weight the training vectors in certain ways in an attempt to improve performance. An interesting corollary of the instance-based nature of KNR is that the training accuracy (the accuracy of the predictions the model makes on the training set) is always perfect. Describing each of these regressors in detail is beyond the scope of this report, but a few general remarks may be helpful. The regressors SVR, RR, RFR, LR and BRR all fit a collection of linear coefficients to the data. They differ from one another and from simple linear regression in the objective function and their constraints, which are optimized during the fitting process. All of these regressors include some kind of regularization which is a penalty assigned in the objective function to complicated solutions. [ 15 ] Usually this amounts to penalizing coefficients which, when viewed as a vector, have a large norm with respect to either the L1 or L2 norms (the Manhattan metric and Euclidean metric, respectively). The values that control the degree to which complicated solutions are penalized are known as the hyperparameters for the regressor. [ 15 ] Fitting the hyperparameters to the data is important to avoid overfitting. Note that for the non-curated dataset, we have n > m in all cases except for kingdom and phylum, necessitating some form of regularization to avoid trivial solutions. To analyze the data, several regression techniques were considered. To evaluate the effectiveness of the regressors, we used a machine learning approach, splitting the data randomly into two mutually exclusive groups called a training set and a testing set. The train/test split depends only on m and is the same for every taxon. The training set is selected uniformly at random to comprise 80% of the instances. The testing set is then taken as the remaining 20% of instances. [ 17 ] The regressors we employed in our analysis were the following (as implemented by the scikit-learn project, version 0.17): [ 18 ] Support Vector Regression (SVR) [ 19 ], K-neighbors Regression (KNR) [ 15 ], Ridge Regression (RR) [ 20 ], Lasso Regression (LR) [ 15 ], Elastic Net Regression (ENR), Random Forest Regression (RFR) [ 21 ], and Bayesian Ridge Regression (BRR) [ 20 ]. It is not necessary that q D be computed literally with respect to species. For example the p i can be sample composition percentages at the level of phylum, genus, etc, in which case q D represents diversity at the level of the appropriate taxon. For a fixed q, higher values of q D correspond to higher levels of diversity. Intuitively, when q is small, q D provides a formalization of diversity which emphasizes species richness, whereas when q is large, equal representation of species in the environment (i.e. equitability) becomes more influential. In fact when q = 0, q D is simply the species richnes. Note also that special values of q cause q D to specialize to a number of well known diversity indices. For example, if q = 2, then q D is Simpson’s diversity index , and while q D is undefined for q = 1, it is the case that lim q → 1 q D = exp(H′) where H′ denotes the Shannon index defined by . Here the variable S refers to species richness (the number of species present) and p i is the proportion of the population accounted for by the i th species. This quantity, which depends on a nonnegative free variable q, can be understood as the reciprocal of the weighted power mean (with power q − 1) of the proportions p i of the various species, where the weight of species i is p i . In our discussion of diversity, we will use the following quantity to measure diversity of the microbial communities in each swab: [ 16 ] The exact set of organisms used for each level for both non-curated and curated cases can be found in our supplementary materials ( http://bit.ly/2f4ltDH ). When the data matrix X is built from a spreadsheet, it contains integers for entries, with entry x i,j reflecting the absolute number of instances for organism j detected in sample i. Because this number may depend on, for example, the richness of the swab offered to the analyzer, it is normalized in the following way. For each row i of X, we compute s i = Σ j ≤ n x i,j , and replace with . Note that this form of normalization depends only on the row (i.e. sample), and can be done to new data without information from X. We do not perform column-based normalization (so-called feature normalization) manually, but this may be done in some of the algorithms we use for regression. Consult our code in the supplementary materials for details. The number of rows in each table is 67 for all data, and the number of columns is the number of organisms, as shown. We also provide the logarithm of the number of columns in each dataset, for later reference. A separate pruning was done at each level of the taxonomic hierarchy. The effect is that the curated data set has many fewer columns than the non-curated data, though they have an equal number of rows. The curated data is also higher quality in the sense that the selected taxa have unusually high agreement across cadavers as well as higher magnitude correlation values with respect to ADD and percent composition. Table 1 summarizes the dimensions of our data matrices. For data that came from the four cadavers that were sampled repeatedly throughout decomposition, we also attempted to refine our data matrices into two different types: curated and non-curated. The non-curated data matrices X have one column corresponding to each organism occurring a nonzero number of times in some ear sample, or some nose sample (the same organism is frequently represented twice–once for the ear and once for the nose). The curated data employs a reduced set of organisms (both for ear and for the nose). The pruning of organisms was done manually through visual inspection, considering factors such as the correlation coefficient of the organism with the dependent variable, and the coherence of any correlation across multiple cadavers. To facilitate this process, code was written to plot ADD against percentage composition for each taxon, producing 5243 individual plots. In these images, data was color coded by cadaver, allowing an intuitive judgement to be made regarding the agreement across cadavers, as well as the plausibility of a functional relationship between ADD and percent composition. Fig 1 provides an example of an image of this type. We regard the data as matrices X in which rows correspond to instances–swabs–and columns correspond to features—organisms (or taxa). The symbol X can be regarded as a multidimensional independent variable, for which there is a corresponding dependent vector variable y. If X is m × n then y is a column vector of length m, where row i of X determines (at least partly) the ADD value found in row i of y. There are a number of different possible matrices X, depending on which swabs, which organisms, and which taxonomic levels are considered. For instance, we may consider only nose swabs and restrict our attention to a special subset of organisms at the phylum level, and attempt a regression of y from the resulting matrix X. In another case, X may include both ear and nose swabs, and refer to the data at the class level. We thus consider several different transformations of our data to see which transformation performs best with respect to the problem of determining y from X. The main differences analyzed refer to whether X contains only ear data, only nose data, or both jointly, and whether all organisms are considered, or only a special curated subset, as described below. In addition to species classification, each sequence read was also assigned to its proper kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, and genus. Mathematically, the species measurements may be considered to be the raw data, with data corresponding to higher taxonomic levels understood as transformations of the original data. In the parlance of machine learning, this is a form of feature extraction. Considering the data at higher taxa clusters the species into similar kinds, preserving some amount of information, while reducing the number of independent variables, and possibly increasing the effectiveness of the regression. [ 15 ] The data for this project was produced by collecting a series of bacterial swabs from the ear and nasal canals of cadavers undergoing active decomposition in uncontrolled environmental conditions. Each swab is annotated with a time-since-death measurement that accounts for both temperature and time elapsed in a single variable, accumulated degree days (ADD). The DNA collected in each swab was subjected to quantitative sequencing of the 16S rDNA gene, which allowed detection of individual species and subsequent calculation of its relative abundance in the entire sample. Thus, the raw data consists of percent-abundance of each sequence (representing a bacterial species) and the ADD to which the cadavers were exposed at the time of the swab. In order to study these data as a regression problem, we set the independent variables as the relative abundance of the species (or higher taxa) in each collection swab and the dependent variable as the ADD value for that swab. The aim of our regression analysis was to observe if the dependent variable, ADD, can be determined as a function of the independent variables. 4 Results 4.1 Effect of Decomposition on Microbial Diversity We began the analysis of our data by inquiring if there was a useful relationship between ADD and sample diversity. For a data matrix X, recall that the rows of X represent population samples, and any given row naturally corresponds to p 1 ,p 2 , …, p S as in the definition of qD. Then if qD(X) denotes the column vector whose rows are the diversity values with respect to qD of the corresponding rows of X, we asked if there was any correlation between qD(X) and y. We used Pearson’s correlation coefficient to measure the strength of such a relationship for a number of values of q and several different taxa. Consider Fig 2, below. PPT PowerPoint slide PowerPoint slide PNG larger image larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 2. The images A, B, and C show how the correlation between qD(X) and y depends on the choice of q and the dataset X. The image D shows how diversity changes with ADD for the ear, nose and joint datasets (q = 0.4). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167370.g002 Panels A, B, and C in Fig 2 show Pearson’s r as a function of q for the species, phylum, and order datasets, respectively. Each contains three curves, corresponding to whether X contains data taken only from nose swabs, only from ear swabs, or a combination of both (joint). For most datasets, diversity decreased as ADD increases for the microbial communities found in the ear swabs, as is the case with data from both the ear and the nose swabs considered jointly. Using data from the nose swabs alone yields weaker correlations for the most part, and diversity tends to have a positive (increasing) relationship to ADD. Panel D of Fig 2 shows diversity (q = 0.4) as a function of ADD for the species data. Note that for ear-only data, the plot is predominantly decreasing for the first 100 ADD, after which it becomes comparatively constant. The nose-only data, by contrast, yields a curve that is approximately constant for this choice of taxon and q. It should be noted that in computing the diversity of the joint data, if the same organism occurs both in the ear and in the nose, this is counted as two taxa rather than one. The lowest value attained for the correlation coefficient is r = −0.425 for curated, joint ear and nose, family-level data, with an optimal choice of q = 0.226. The highest value is r = 0.35 for noncurated, nose-only, class-level data for an optimal choice of q = 0.50. The p values for these r are p = 0.00033 and p = 0.0033, respectively. Table 2 displays the r coefficients with the lowest p values for each dataset, as well as the associated q values. PPT PowerPoint slide PowerPoint slide PNG larger image larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 2. The most significant correlation found between qD(X) and y for each dataset X, and the optimizing q value. Kingdom data is omitted. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167370.t002

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Demonstrators at International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Managua, Nicaragua/Image via AP. Vilma Trujillo Garcia died early on Tuesday at a hospital in Nicaraguan capital Managua, after suffering burns over 80 percent of her body. She had been horribly tortured in a “religious” ceremony. The Washington Post reports that an evangelical pastor named Juan Gregorio Rocha Romero claimed to have had a “divine vision” that Garcia, who was 25, needed healing and that he’d received instructions to cure her. Garcia was stripped naked, her hands and feet were tied and she was thrown into the fire. Advertisement The pastor and three others were arrested in conjunction with the attack. Speaking to local media, the pastor said Garcia threw herself into the fire because “she was demonized,” then suggested she actually fell into it as the demon was leaving her body. Garcia was found by her 15-year-old sister in a ravine near a river about 9 hours after the attack, where she was allegedly left by her tormentors. Reports about how Romero knew Garcia vary. CBS News reports that her husband, Reynaldo Peralta Rodriguez, with whom she had two children, said she attacked people with a machete and was subsequently taken into the church and perhaps held captive. Univision, Jezebel’s parent company, spoke with women’s rights advocate Herenia Amaya, as reported by the Washington Post. Amaya is advising the family, and confirmed that the woman had “mental health problems” and was essentially kidnapped. Advertisement Amaya told Univision that many remote locations are controlled by religious sects like Romero’s Assemblies of God (though the organization issued a statement distancing themselves from the pastor). Rodriguez did tell the press that his wife was “not demonized.” He said, “What they did to her was witchcraft.” ||||| MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaraguan officials say a 25-year-old woman died after being thrown into a fire to drive "demons" from her body. The woman, Vilma Trujillo Garcia, suffered burns over 80 percent of her body. Vice President Rosario Murillo called her death "regrettable." Prosecutors say evangelical pastor Juan Gregorio Rocha Romero and four other people have been arrested in her death. Rocha Romero told the newspaper La Prensa that the woman fell into the fire and a demon exited her body. The victims' husband, Reynaldo Peralta Rodriguez, said the mother of two was taken inside a church last week when members thought she was possessed after allegedly trying to attack people with a machete.

– A story out of a remote mining town in Nicaragua whose details are still being confirmed now has a clear and tragic outcome: The mother of two young children is dead, having suffered burns across 80% of her body. The Washington Post reports on the pieces being put together. It seems as though Vilma Trujillo Garcia, a 25-year-old woman, may have been suffering from a mental health crisis a couple weeks ago and possibly threatened people with a machete. Afterward, a pastor arrived at her house and took her to his church to conduct a healing. He allegedly kept her in the church for a week, and tells police: "God has made me a revelation ... that a group of brothers should take the sick woman and tie her up near the fire ... so that the demon will leave the body of the sick and go into the fire." And so it went. Nicaraguan police say the mother was stripped naked, bound, and thrown into the fire. Nine hours later, her teen sister found her in a ravine, and she was taken to a hospital in the capital city of Managua, where she died Tuesday. Evangelical pastor Juan Gregorio Rocha Romero and four others have now been arrested, reports the AP. Rocha Romero counters that Trujillo Garcia "suspended herself and fell in" as the demon left her body; Jezebel picks up a Spanish-language interview with an advocate for the family who says the woman was battling "mental health problems." Trujillo Garcia's husband says his wife wasn't demonized, and that "what they did to her was witchcraft." Nicaraguan VP Rosario Murillo has called the death "a backward situation," while the Assemblies of God church has distanced itself from the pastor. (This exorcist told of a woman vomiting pins.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Demonstrators at International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Managua, Nicaragua/Image via AP. Vilma Trujillo Garcia died early on Tuesday at a hospital in Nicaraguan capital Managua, after suffering burns over 80 percent of her body. She had been horribly tortured in a “religious” ceremony. The Washington Post reports that an evangelical pastor named Juan Gregorio Rocha Romero claimed to have had a “divine vision” that Garcia, who was 25, needed healing and that he’d received instructions to cure her. Garcia was stripped naked, her hands and feet were tied and she was thrown into the fire. Advertisement The pastor and three others were arrested in conjunction with the attack. Speaking to local media, the pastor said Garcia threw herself into the fire because “she was demonized,” then suggested she actually fell into it as the demon was leaving her body. Garcia was found by her 15-year-old sister in a ravine near a river about 9 hours after the attack, where she was allegedly left by her tormentors. Reports about how Romero knew Garcia vary. CBS News reports that her husband, Reynaldo Peralta Rodriguez, with whom she had two children, said she attacked people with a machete and was subsequently taken into the church and perhaps held captive. Univision, Jezebel’s parent company, spoke with women’s rights advocate Herenia Amaya, as reported by the Washington Post. Amaya is advising the family, and confirmed that the woman had “mental health problems” and was essentially kidnapped. Advertisement Amaya told Univision that many remote locations are controlled by religious sects like Romero’s Assemblies of God (though the organization issued a statement distancing themselves from the pastor). Rodriguez did tell the press that his wife was “not demonized.” He said, “What they did to her was witchcraft.” ||||| MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaraguan officials say a 25-year-old woman died after being thrown into a fire to drive "demons" from her body. The woman, Vilma Trujillo Garcia, suffered burns over 80 percent of her body. Vice President Rosario Murillo called her death "regrettable." Prosecutors say evangelical pastor Juan Gregorio Rocha Romero and four other people have been arrested in her death. Rocha Romero told the newspaper La Prensa that the woman fell into the fire and a demon exited her body. The victims' husband, Reynaldo Peralta Rodriguez, said the mother of two was taken inside a church last week when members thought she was possessed after allegedly trying to attack people with a machete.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Is the Large Hadron Collider dangerous? No. Although powerful for an accelerator, the energy reached in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is modest by nature’s standards. Cosmic rays – particles produced by events in outer space – collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere at much greater energies than those of the LHC. These cosmic rays have been bombarding the Earth’s atmosphere as well as other astronomical bodies since these bodies were formed, with no harmful consequences. These planets and stars have stayed intact despite these higher energy collisions over billions of years. Read more about the safety of the LHC here What happened with the LHC in 2015 and what does CERN plan to do in the future? The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) restarted at a collision energy of 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV) in June 2015. Throughout September and October 2015, CERN gradually increased the number of collisions, while remaining at the same energy. In November, as with previous LHC runs, the machine run with lead ions instead of protons until mid-December when it had its winter technical stop. After a successful run in 2016, the most powerful collider in the world was switched back on in spring 2017, followed by a period of tests. After a period of commissioning, the LHC experiments began taking physics data for 2017. Over the coming years, the LHC operators plan to increase the intensity of the beams so that the machine produces a larger number of collisions. This will enable physicists to have a better understanding of fundamental physics. Why is the Higgs boson referred to as the God particle? The Higgs boson is the linchpin of the Standard Model of particle physics but experimental physicists weren’t able to observe it until the arrival of the LHC, nearly 50 years after the particle was first postulated. Leon Lederman coined the term ‘the God particle’ in his popular 1993 book ‘The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question?’ written with Dick Teresi. In their book, Lederman and Teresi claim the nickname originated because the publisher wouldn’t allow them to call it ‘the Goddamn Particle’ – a name that reflected the difficulty in observing the elusive boson. The name caught on through the media attention it attracted but is disliked by both clerics and scientists. Is CERN's aim to prove that God does not exist? No. People from all over the world work together harmoniously at CERN, representing all regions, religions and cultures. CERN exists to understand the mystery of nature for the benefit of humankind. Scientists at CERN use the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles. Particles are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. This process gives the physicists clues about how the particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Why does CERN have a statue of Shiva? The Shiva statue was a gift from India to celebrate its association with CERN, which started in the 1960’s and remains strong today. In the Hindu religion, Lord Shiva practiced Nataraj dance which symbolises Shakti, or life force. This deity was chosen by the Indian government because of a metaphor that was drawn between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the ‘cosmic dance’ of subatomic particles. India is one of CERN’s observer states, along with the USA, Russia and Japan. CERN is a multicultural organisation that welcomes scientists from more than 100 countries and 680 institutions. The Shiva statue is only one of the many statues and art pieces at CERN. What are the shapes in the CERN logo? The shapes in CERN’s current logo represent particle accelerators. The logo in this form dates back to 1968, when a decision was made to change the CERN logo from the original one, seen here. Some 114 new designs were proposed, many of which used CERN’s experiments as inspiration. The final design used the original lettering, surrounded by a schematic of a synchrotron, beam lines and particle tracks. Today’s logo is a simplified version of this. Will CERN open a door to another dimension? CERN will not open a door to another dimension. If the experiments conducted at the LHC demonstrate the existence of certain particles it could help physicists to test various theories about nature and our Universe, such as the presence of extra dimensions. There is more information here. What did Stephen Hawking say about Higgs potential destroying the Universe? Hawking was not discussing the work being done at the LHC. The LHC observes nature at a fundamental level but does not influence it. Measurements of the Higgs boson have allowed us to learn more about the intrinsic nature of the Universe, and it is this that Hawking was discussing. The measured properties of the boson suggest that the Universe is in a quasi-stable equilibrium, though with a lifetime far exceeding anything we can imagine (10100 years). This is explained further in the TEDxCERN talk below: http://tedxcern.web.cern.ch/video/2013/what-higgs-might-mean-fate-universe Why does CERN appear in Google Maps when I type certain keywords? Many of these associations have no grounding in fact, and are a possible result of several users renaming locations on their own maps, keyword searches, or from lots of users creating custom maps, which utilise those search terms. Can the LHC have an influence on weather patterns and natural phenomena? No. The magnets at CERN have an electromagnetic field, which is contained with the magnets themselves and therefore cannot influence the Earth’s magnetic field, nor the weather. The strength of the LHC magnets (8.36 teslas) is comparable to the magnetic field found in PET-MRI scanners (up to 9.4 tesla), which are regularly used for brain scans. Will CERN generate a black hole? The LHC will not generate black holes in the cosmological sense. However, some theories suggest that the formation of tiny 'quantum' black holes may be possible. The observation of such an event would be thrilling in terms of our understanding of the Universe; and would be perfectly safe. More information is available here. I saw a video of a strange ritual at CERN, is it real? No, this video from summer 2016 was a work of fiction showing a contrived scene. CERN does not condone this kind of action, which breaches CERN’s professional guidelines. Those involved were identified and apropriate measures taken. Does the LHC trigger earthquakes? The LHC does not trigger earthquakes. Earthquakes are a natural hazard caused by the movement of tectonic plates. As these rigid plates move towards, apart or past each other they can lock up and build up huge stresses at their boundaries, such as the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or along the Pacific rim. When the plates suddenly slip apart, this stress is relieved, releasing huge amounts of energy and causing an earthquake. Several million earthquakes occur across the Earth each year but most are too small to be detected without monitoring equipment. There is no means by which the LHC could trigger earthquakes, and no correlation between LHC operation and the occurrence of earthquakes. Anecdote: Some high precision instruments at CERN are able to detect earthquakes due to their sensitivity to tiny movements. In the LHC, there are more than 100 Hydrostatic Levelling Sensors that monitor the relative displacements of the magnets that steer beams of particles around the LHC’s 27 km ring. These sensors can detect the waves emitted by earthquakes occurring even very far away after their journey through the Earth. Another tool, the Precision Laser Inclinometer, is used to measure the movements of underground structures that can affect the precise positioning of the LHC’s particle detectors. These are also sensitive enough to detect earthquakes. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– When CERN's Large Hadron Collider is fired up again at the end of April, physicists won't just be testing for unknown particles. They'll also be testing a new FAQ page, and it's an unusual one that distances CERN from demons and Satan. Since the LHC began smashing particles together, conspiracy theorists have suggested physicists were about to open a door to another dimension, allowing apocalyptic forces to reach our planet, reports the Wall Street Journal. An editorial in Michigan's Daily Reporter in September noted CERN "could easily and suddenly, without warning, destroy our universe." A few pointed out that CERN's logo included the 666 sign of the Antichrist. Then there was the group who planned to protest the smashing of particles at CERN. "I guess they more or less see particles as planets with very small 'people' on them," a rep says. "It got to the point where there really needed to be some intervention," says CERN's social media rep. The FAQ page, born in September, not only describes CERN's logo as depicting particle accelerators rather than a sign of Satan, it also clarifies that "CERN will not open a door to another dimension," though physicists can test for particles that may suggest extra dimensions exist. The nice thing is that the page can always be updated, says a rep. For example, it doesn't yet address rumors of "occult symbolism" hidden in a dance opera filmed inside CERN. But it isn't clear if all conspiracy theories can be crushed. CERN seems to inherently draw the "conspiracy subculture," says a political science professor at Syracuse University. "Any time you have forces that are high energy and invisible, they lend themselves to these kinds of interpretations."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Is the Large Hadron Collider dangerous? No. Although powerful for an accelerator, the energy reached in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is modest by nature’s standards. Cosmic rays – particles produced by events in outer space – collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere at much greater energies than those of the LHC. These cosmic rays have been bombarding the Earth’s atmosphere as well as other astronomical bodies since these bodies were formed, with no harmful consequences. These planets and stars have stayed intact despite these higher energy collisions over billions of years. Read more about the safety of the LHC here What happened with the LHC in 2015 and what does CERN plan to do in the future? The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) restarted at a collision energy of 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV) in June 2015. Throughout September and October 2015, CERN gradually increased the number of collisions, while remaining at the same energy. In November, as with previous LHC runs, the machine run with lead ions instead of protons until mid-December when it had its winter technical stop. After a successful run in 2016, the most powerful collider in the world was switched back on in spring 2017, followed by a period of tests. After a period of commissioning, the LHC experiments began taking physics data for 2017. Over the coming years, the LHC operators plan to increase the intensity of the beams so that the machine produces a larger number of collisions. This will enable physicists to have a better understanding of fundamental physics. Why is the Higgs boson referred to as the God particle? The Higgs boson is the linchpin of the Standard Model of particle physics but experimental physicists weren’t able to observe it until the arrival of the LHC, nearly 50 years after the particle was first postulated. Leon Lederman coined the term ‘the God particle’ in his popular 1993 book ‘The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question?’ written with Dick Teresi. In their book, Lederman and Teresi claim the nickname originated because the publisher wouldn’t allow them to call it ‘the Goddamn Particle’ – a name that reflected the difficulty in observing the elusive boson. The name caught on through the media attention it attracted but is disliked by both clerics and scientists. Is CERN's aim to prove that God does not exist? No. People from all over the world work together harmoniously at CERN, representing all regions, religions and cultures. CERN exists to understand the mystery of nature for the benefit of humankind. Scientists at CERN use the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles. Particles are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. This process gives the physicists clues about how the particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Why does CERN have a statue of Shiva? The Shiva statue was a gift from India to celebrate its association with CERN, which started in the 1960’s and remains strong today. In the Hindu religion, Lord Shiva practiced Nataraj dance which symbolises Shakti, or life force. This deity was chosen by the Indian government because of a metaphor that was drawn between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the ‘cosmic dance’ of subatomic particles. India is one of CERN’s observer states, along with the USA, Russia and Japan. CERN is a multicultural organisation that welcomes scientists from more than 100 countries and 680 institutions. The Shiva statue is only one of the many statues and art pieces at CERN. What are the shapes in the CERN logo? The shapes in CERN’s current logo represent particle accelerators. The logo in this form dates back to 1968, when a decision was made to change the CERN logo from the original one, seen here. Some 114 new designs were proposed, many of which used CERN’s experiments as inspiration. The final design used the original lettering, surrounded by a schematic of a synchrotron, beam lines and particle tracks. Today’s logo is a simplified version of this. Will CERN open a door to another dimension? CERN will not open a door to another dimension. If the experiments conducted at the LHC demonstrate the existence of certain particles it could help physicists to test various theories about nature and our Universe, such as the presence of extra dimensions. There is more information here. What did Stephen Hawking say about Higgs potential destroying the Universe? Hawking was not discussing the work being done at the LHC. The LHC observes nature at a fundamental level but does not influence it. Measurements of the Higgs boson have allowed us to learn more about the intrinsic nature of the Universe, and it is this that Hawking was discussing. The measured properties of the boson suggest that the Universe is in a quasi-stable equilibrium, though with a lifetime far exceeding anything we can imagine (10100 years). This is explained further in the TEDxCERN talk below: http://tedxcern.web.cern.ch/video/2013/what-higgs-might-mean-fate-universe Why does CERN appear in Google Maps when I type certain keywords? Many of these associations have no grounding in fact, and are a possible result of several users renaming locations on their own maps, keyword searches, or from lots of users creating custom maps, which utilise those search terms. Can the LHC have an influence on weather patterns and natural phenomena? No. The magnets at CERN have an electromagnetic field, which is contained with the magnets themselves and therefore cannot influence the Earth’s magnetic field, nor the weather. The strength of the LHC magnets (8.36 teslas) is comparable to the magnetic field found in PET-MRI scanners (up to 9.4 tesla), which are regularly used for brain scans. Will CERN generate a black hole? The LHC will not generate black holes in the cosmological sense. However, some theories suggest that the formation of tiny 'quantum' black holes may be possible. The observation of such an event would be thrilling in terms of our understanding of the Universe; and would be perfectly safe. More information is available here. I saw a video of a strange ritual at CERN, is it real? No, this video from summer 2016 was a work of fiction showing a contrived scene. CERN does not condone this kind of action, which breaches CERN’s professional guidelines. Those involved were identified and apropriate measures taken. Does the LHC trigger earthquakes? The LHC does not trigger earthquakes. Earthquakes are a natural hazard caused by the movement of tectonic plates. As these rigid plates move towards, apart or past each other they can lock up and build up huge stresses at their boundaries, such as the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or along the Pacific rim. When the plates suddenly slip apart, this stress is relieved, releasing huge amounts of energy and causing an earthquake. Several million earthquakes occur across the Earth each year but most are too small to be detected without monitoring equipment. There is no means by which the LHC could trigger earthquakes, and no correlation between LHC operation and the occurrence of earthquakes. Anecdote: Some high precision instruments at CERN are able to detect earthquakes due to their sensitivity to tiny movements. In the LHC, there are more than 100 Hydrostatic Levelling Sensors that monitor the relative displacements of the magnets that steer beams of particles around the LHC’s 27 km ring. These sensors can detect the waves emitted by earthquakes occurring even very far away after their journey through the Earth. Another tool, the Precision Laser Inclinometer, is used to measure the movements of underground structures that can affect the precise positioning of the LHC’s particle detectors. These are also sensitive enough to detect earthquakes. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

(CNN) Suad had feared for so long that she would die. A mother in Falluja, Iraq, her city has been at the center of war for more than a dozen years and now it is the epicenter of a battle between ISIS and Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by the United States-led coalition. The coalition's push to take Falluja from ISIS, which began late Sunday, prompted ISIS gunmen to go door to door in the city and yank men, their wives and children from their homes. ISIS "kept moving us from one damaged, deserted house to another," Suad said. She, her husband and her children ran as fast as they could to avoid being shot in the crossfire. "We tried going back to our house, but when we saw lots of other families fleeing we joined them," she said. "I was carrying my 2-year-old daughter, Hana, as I ran barefoot to reach the other families. My husband was behind us all the time trying to catch up with us as he can't run. That's how we left, taking nothing with us, not even our money. I even forgot to take my mobile phone. Hundreds of people like Suad and her family have fled the city and its surroundings since the Falluja offensive began last week. More than 500 families have arrived in displacement camps outside the city, the Norwegian Refugee Council said, including almost 300 since Sunday afternoon alone. All the recent arrivals are from Jumeila on the city's outskirts. "We feel safe here now," Suad said. "My children are getting food, and my husband is getting treatment in (the) hospital. I can't think of anything beyond that. Arriving here safely was what mattered, and it's a big relief." But danger remains. Water shortages in the camps are an increasing concern. "Last night we've had the biggest number of displaced families reaching us so far," said Nasr Muflahi, the Council's country director in Iraq. "Our resources in the camps are now very strained, and with many more expected to flee we might not be able to provide enough drinking water for everyone," Muflahi said. "The priority remains providing safe exits for at least 50,000 civilians believed to be trapped in the center of Falluja. We expect bigger waves of displacement the fiercer the fighting gets." Storm the city Iraqi forces started their operation to retake the ISIS stronghold with the help of Iraqi and coalition air support, Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasoul said on Iraqi state TV. "With God's blessing we have launched the third phase of the operation to storm the center of Falluja city -- by our heroes in the counterterrorism forces, units of the Iraqi army and Anbar police," Rasoul said. "There is heavy air cover for this operation from our heroes in the Iraqi air force and the coalition." JUST WATCHED Why Falluja matters Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Why Falluja matters 01:04 Iraqi forces retook the village of Nuaimiya, just south of Falluja, closing in on the city itself, al-Iraqi TV reported. Earlier Monday, Iraqi military units and supporting militia captured a handful of settlements from ISIS near Falluja, including the town of Saqlawiya, about 10 kilometers (6.5 miles) northwest of the city, and the villages of al-Buaziz, al-Bu Efan and al-Shiha, north and west of Falluja, state-run TV reported. Iraqi government troops, backed by Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and an air campaign by the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, launched the offensive last week to retake the ISIS stronghold, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, first targeting outlying settlements. Capturing Karma, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Falluja on Thursday, brought most of the territory east of the city under government control. More than 5,000 Americans are providing training, advice and assistance to Iraqi forces and flowing equipment to them, United States Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the coalition, said on CNN's "New Day" Monday. Iraq was "invaded by these animals" of ISIS, he said, but the terror group's grip on territory is slipping in both Iraq and Syria, he said. JUST WATCHED Iraqi civilians flee Falluja to get away from fighting Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Iraqi civilians flee Falluja to get away from fighting 02:10 Tens of thousands at risk The U.N. refugee agency has warned that an estimated 50,000 people are at risk, caught in the city turned combat zone as the Iraqi military's bombardment has intensified. "There are reports of a dramatic increase in the number of executions of men and older boys in Falluja (who are) refusing to fight on behalf of extremist forces," said Leila Jane Nassif, the U.N. agency's assistant representative in Iraq. "And many people have been killed or buried alive under the rubble of their homes in the course of ongoing military operations." Hundreds, mostly women and children, fled Falluja on Friday as Iraqi soldiers attacked to drive ISIS from the city, the Iraqi military said. Security forces evacuated about 760 people who escaped from eastern and southeastern Falluja, the military said. "Food is scarce in the city," said Um Ahmed, a 40-year-old living in Falluja with her family. "We have mostly been relying on dates for our meals." The Norwegian Refugee Council reports the residents of Falluja have been faced with food shortages, lack of electricity and hospitals have depleted supplies of medical supplies. "Civilians are trapped inside the city of Falluja as fighting intensifies. With every moment that passes, their need for safe exits becomes more critical. We are working around the clock in the displacement camps to provide water and emergency food rations to people who manage to flee the violence, but getting there in the first place is near impossible for those in the city center," said Nasr Muflahi, Norwegian Refugee Council country director in Iraq. Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces drive their armored vehicle through a street in Falluja, Iraq, on Monday, June 27, after retaking the city from ISIS. A senior Iraqi general announced on state TV that the battle for Falluja is over as Iraqi troops retook the final ISIS holdout in the city. Hide Caption 1 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Supplies are lined up at a camp for displaced civilians on Saturday, June 25. Hide Caption 2 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi security forces evacuate an injured soldier during fighting with ISIS militants on Wednesday, June 15. Hide Caption 3 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqis who have been displaced from their homes peer out of a tent at a camp outside Falluja on Tuesday, June 14. Hide Caption 4 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Smoke rises after airstrikes by U.S.-led coalition warplanes on Sunday, June 12. Hide Caption 5 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A boy sleeps in his mother's arms after fleeing from their home in Falluja on Monday, June 6. Hide Caption 6 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Smoke rises on the front line of fighting between ISIS militants and pro-government Iraqi fighters on Sunday, June 5. Hide Caption 7 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Pro-government forces and Shiite militia fighters fire rockets toward ISIS fighters in Falluja on Saturday, June 4. Hide Caption 8 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi soldiers help civilians from a vehicle outside a camp near Falluja on Friday, June 3. Hide Caption 9 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Internally displaced civilians flee their homes after crossing the Euphrates River outside Falluja on Thursday, June 2. Hide Caption 10 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with ISIS militants in Falluja's Nuaimiya neighborhood on Wednesday, June 1. Hide Caption 11 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Blindfolded men get led to a bus after being detained during the fighting on June 1. Hide Caption 12 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A member of pro-government forces fires at a front line in the Albu Huwa area south of Falluja on June 1. Hide Caption 13 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Grenades and shells lie on the ground in Falluja during fighting between Iraqi forces and ISIS on June 1. Hide Caption 14 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Smoke rises as Iraqi forces face off with ISIS militants on the southern edge of Falluja on Tuesday, May 31. Hide Caption 15 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi forces gather ahead of an operation to retake Falluja on Sunday, May 29. Hide Caption 16 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Pro-Iraqi government fighters carry ammunition in the village of Harariyat on Saturday, May 28. Hide Caption 17 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A police officer places an Iraqi federal police flag next to a Shiite militia flag outside Falluja on May 28. Hide Caption 18 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces engage with ISIS fighters near the village of al-Sejar on Thursday, May 26. Hide Caption 19 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A pro-government fighter rests after battling ISIS near al-Sejar on May 26. Hide Caption 20 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces advance near al-Sejar on May 26. Hide Caption 21 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi security forces surround an ISIS drone that was shot down outside Falluja on May 26. Hide Caption 22 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces take position east of Falluja on Wednesday, May 25. Hide Caption 23 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A pro-government fighter holds position in the village of al-Shahabi, east of Falluja, on Tuesday, May 24. Hide Caption 24 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces join an operation in al-Shahabi on May 24. Hide Caption 25 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Pro-government forces advance toward Falluja on Monday, May 23. Hide Caption 26 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A fighter with the Badr Brigades, a Shiite militia, takes an ISIS flag down outside Falluja on May 23. Hide Caption 27 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A fighter from a Shiite militia takes a combat position outside Falluja on May 23. Hide Caption 28 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi Shiite fighters fire artillery near Falluja on May 23. Hide Caption 29 of 29 Targeting civilians Facing increasing pressure, ISIS has lashed out with attacks on civilians in Iraqi and Syrian cities. Three blasts shook parts of the Iraqi capital Monday morning, according to Iraqi security sources. No group immediately claimed responsibility. A bomb in a market in Baghdad's al-Shaab neighborhood killed seven people and wounded 20 others. A separate explosion in Sadr City killed another two and wounded 10. A suicide car bomber tried to ram into a police station in al-Tarmiya but was stopped from reaching the target. He detonated the bomb, killing himself and causing material damage but no other injuries, sources said. Multiple offensives Farther north, thousands of Kurdish Peshmerga troops are involved in an offensive to retake formerly Kurdish villages near the ISIS-held town of Mosul, Kurdish officials say. The Peshmerga-led ground offensive, backed by coalition air support, was launched early Sunday to recapture villages near Khazir, east of Mosul. The operation includes about 5,500 Peshmerga fighters. The move comes ahead of a joint offensive by Kurdish forces and Iraqi troops to take back Mosul, Kurdish media said. Across the border in Syria, a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces last week pushed into territory north of Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS. Sarmad al-Jilane, an activist with the monitoring group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, confirmed reports that ISIS has let some residents of that city flee to the surrounding countryside or Deir Ezzor as Kurdish and Arab forces pushed forward. ||||| HASSAN SHAMI, Iraq (Reuters) - Servicemen from the U.S.-led coalition were seen near the front line of a new offensive in northern Iraq launched on Sunday by Kurdish peshmerga forces that aims to retake a handful of villages from Islamic State east of their Mosul stronghold. A Reuters correspondent saw the soldiers loading armored vehicles outside the village of Hassan Shami, a few miles east of the frontline. They told people present not to take photographs. They spoke in English but their nationality was not clear. Reuters had earlier reported that they were American but this could not be confirmed officially. Commenting on the ground deployment of coalition soldiers seen near the battle front, Baghdad-based spokesman for then coalition, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, said: “U.S. and coalition forces are conducting advise and assist operations to help Kurdish Peshmerga forces”. He said he could not confirm which country those seen by Reuters were from. “They may be Americans, they may be Canadians or from other nationalities,” he said, when told that some forces were reported to be wearing maple leaf patches, the emblem of Canada. The sighting of the servicemen near the frontline is a measure of the U.S.-led coalition’s deepening involvement on the ground in Iraq as the war against Islamic State approaches its third year. Kurdish Peshmerga forces keep watch in a village east of Mosul, Iraq, May 29, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the early hours of Sunday launched an attack to dislodge Islamic State fighters from villages located about 20 km (13 miles) east of Mosul on the road to the regional capital, Erbil. Fighting appeared heavy. Pick up trucks raced back from the frontline with wounded people in the back, and two of the U.S.-led coalition servicemen helped haul one man onto a stretcher. Gunfire and airstrikes could be heard at a distance, while Apache helicopters flew overhead. One of the villages, Mufti, was captured by mid-day, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement. Mosul, with a pre-war population of about 2 million, is the largest city under control of the militants in both Iraq and Syria. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi at the end of last year expressed hope that the “final victory” in the war on Islamic State would come in 2016 with the capture of Mosul. About 5,500 Peshmergas are taking part in Sunday’s operation, said the Kurdish Region Security council. “This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city,’’ the council said. The Peshmerga have driven the militants back in northern Iraq last year with the help of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition, and are positioned around Mosul in an arc running from northwest of the city to southeast. Slideshow (5 Images) The Iraqi army is also keeping up the pressure on Islamic State in their stronghold of Falluja, 50 kilometers (32 miles) west of Baghdad, in central Iraq. Backed by Shi’ite militias on the ground and airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, the army is about to complete the encirclement of the city in an operation that started on May 23, state TV said Sunday citing military statements. Counter-terrorism forces specialized in urban warfare have taken up positions around Falluja and should begin advancing in inside the city when the encirclement is complete, the TV said. ||||| Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah,... (Associated Press) Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, May 29, 2016. Teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from... (Associated Press) Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, May 29, 2016. Teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from... (Associated Press) Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah,... (Associated Press) BAGHDAD (AP) — Militants unleashed a wave of bombings targeting commercial areas in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 20 people, officials said as Iraqi troops poised to recapture the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, west of Iraq's capital. Shortly after the bombs hit, the extremist Islamic State, which has been behind recent deadly attacks in Baghdad and beyond, claimed responsibility for two of the explosions, both in the Iraqi capital. Such assaults are seen as an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces' attention away from the front lines. The attacks came amid a key Iraqi military operation to dislodge IS militants and retake the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, which has been in IS hands for over two years. The operation was launched a week ago, with Iraqi forces teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition. The deadliest of Monday's attacks took place in the northern, Shiite-dominated Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad where a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint next to a commercial area, killing eight civilians and three soldiers. The explosion also wounded up to 14 people, a police officer said. A suicide car bomber struck an outdoor market in the town of Tarmiyah, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Baghdad, killing four civilians and two policemen, another police officer said, adding that 19 people were wounded in that bombing. And in Baghdad's eastern Shiite Sadr City district, a bomb motorcycle went off at a market, killing three and wounding 10, police said. Medical officials confirmed casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information. In an online statement, IS claimed responsibility for the attacks in Shaab and Sadr City, saying they targeted members of Shiite militias. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by extremists. Fallujah is one of the last major IS strongholds in western Iraq. The extremist group still controls territory in the country's north and west, as well as Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. On Sunday, Iraqi Maj. Dhia Thamir said troops have recaptured 80 percent of the territory around Fallujah since the operation began and are currently battling IS to the northeast as they seek to tighten the siege ahead of a planned final push into the city center. In a televised speech Sunday to parliament, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called on Fallujah residents to either leave the city or stay indoors. Government officials and aid groups estimate that more than 50,000 people remain inside the center of the Sunni majority city. ___ Associated Press writer Murtada Faraj in Baghdad contributed to this report. ||||| Iraqi special forces were on the outskirts of Fallujah, the army said, marking a new phase in efforts to take the city from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and sparking fears for about 50,000 civilians trapped there. Fighting with ISIL was ongoing throughout Iraq on Sunday with battles near Mosul in the north and Heet in western Anbar province, as well as across the border in Syria in the city of Raqqa. In Heet - 140km west of Baghdad - about 40 Iraqi security forces were killed in an ISIL offensive that sent troops, police, and tribal fighters into retreat from the city that was re-taken from the armed group in April, military sources told Al Jazeera. Tens of thousands of soldiers and fighters - made up of military, police and militias, and backed by air power from a US-led coalition - launched an offensive to retake Fallujah last week. The arrival of Iraq's counter-terrorism service (CTS) may signal an all-out assault is imminent. Fallujah: 50,000 Iraqis trapped by assault on ISIL Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the Iraqi army commander in charge of the operation, said on Sunday that several large contingents had now reached two military camps near the city and were ready to strike. "These forces will break into Fallujah in the next few hours to liberate it from Daesh," he said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL, which is also known as ISIS. The counter-terrorism force said it had the city completely surrounded. Iraqi officials claimed gains against ISIL, but there was no way to independently verify that. "There is resistence but we are crushing it very quickly ... We have a momentum from different fronts," said General Abdelamir al-Shimary from Baghdad's Operations Command. Fallujah, 50km west of Baghdad, is one of the two remaining major Iraqi cities still in ISIL hands, the other being Iraq's second-largest city Mosul. The Fallujah operation has come at a human cost, rights groups said, with thousands of civilians trapped between ISIL fighters and the advancing Iraqi army and allied Shia militia. Al Jazeera's Omar al-Saleh, reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq, described the situation in the city as dire. "There is a lack of medicine and food. They are caught in the fighting between ISIL and Iraqi forces," he said. Some 50,000 people were still stuck in the centre of the city on Sunday, struggling with dwindling water and food supplies. The UN said it had reports of people starving to death and others and being killed for refusing to fight for ISIL. "We have dramatic reports of the increase of the number of executions of men and older boys refusing to fight on behalf of ISIL," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Our teams are doing all they can to assist the few families who managed to escape the dire situation in #Fallujah pic.twitter.com/rDjZSZKCZo — NRC (@NRC_Norway) May 28, 2016 About a thousand ISIL fighters still in the city were accused of using civilians as human shields, but UNHCR also said Iraqi forces had blocked supply routes, preventing civilians from getting out. Hundreds of families were able to flee on Friday with the help of government forces, but the majority remain trapped, aid groups said. "We are receiving hundreds of displaced Iraqis from the outskirts of Fallujah who are totally exhausted, afraid and hungry," Nasr Muflahi, country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said. "Thousands more remain trapped in the centre of Fallujah, cut off from aid and any form of protection." Fallujah, a predominantly Sunni city, fell out of government control even before ISIL swept through Iraq's heartland in June 2014, and is one of the group's most iconic strongholds. Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces - including the Hashed al-Shaabi umbrella group dominated by Shia militias - began an operation on May 22 to retake it. Peshmerga move on Mosul Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced on Sunday an offensive by Peshmerga forces that captured two ISIL-held towns about 25km from Mosul. About 5,500 fighters were involved, backed by international coalition warplanes. Peshmerga forces retook al-Muftiyah and Jim Kour towns after heavy clashes in the early hours of Sunday, sources told Al Jazeera. Fierce fighting was ongoing as Peshmerga soldiers advanced towards the town of al-Khazir, 35km east of Mosul. "This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city," the KRG said in a statement. Iraqis fleeing ISIL-held Mosul seek refuge in Syria In a separate development in neighbouring Syria, heavy fighting continued with ISIL sweeping through Aleppo province in a devastating offensive, cutting off the main road between the towns of Mare and Azaz. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep in Turkey, said the situation was serious. "Thousands of people have fled the fierce fighting. But many have nowhere to go," he said. More than 160,000 civilians have been trapped in Syria by the fighting, which also forced the evacuation of one of the few remaining hospitals in the area run by the international medical organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that US-led coalition warplanes had targeted ISIL positions north of ISIL's de facto capital Raqqa, reportedly killing as many as 45 ISIL fighters. Arab, Kurdish and US military forces have been closing in territory around Raqqa over the past week.

– Monday is going to be another bloody day in Fallujah—possibly the bloodiest yet. Before dawn, the Iraqi military launched a final offensive to recapture the city from ISIS, which has held it for more than two years. "With God's blessing we have launched the third phase of the operation to storm the center of Fallujah city," a military spokesman said on state TV, per CNN. "There is heavy air cover for this operation from our heroes in the Iraqi air force and the coalition." Al Jazeera reports that around 50,000 civilians are believed to be trapped between the advancing Iraqi military and allied militias on one side, and an estimated 1,000 ISIS fighters on the other, who are believed to be using civilians as human shields. The United Nations has warned that there has been a "dramatic increase" in the number of men and boys executed in Fallujah for refusing to fight for ISIS. As the operation, which began a week ago, entered its final phase, militants launched a wave of bombings in the Baghdad area, killing at least 20 people in what is believed to be an attempt to distract security forces, the AP reports. In northern Iraq, Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched a fresh offensive Sunday to recapture villages near the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, reports Reuters, whose correspondent encountered English-speaking coalition troops loading armored vehicles near the frontline but was unable to determine their nationality.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.(CNN) Suad had feared for so long that she would die. A mother in Falluja, Iraq, her city has been at the center of war for more than a dozen years and now it is the epicenter of a battle between ISIS and Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by the United States-led coalition. The coalition's push to take Falluja from ISIS, which began late Sunday, prompted ISIS gunmen to go door to door in the city and yank men, their wives and children from their homes. ISIS "kept moving us from one damaged, deserted house to another," Suad said. She, her husband and her children ran as fast as they could to avoid being shot in the crossfire. "We tried going back to our house, but when we saw lots of other families fleeing we joined them," she said. "I was carrying my 2-year-old daughter, Hana, as I ran barefoot to reach the other families. My husband was behind us all the time trying to catch up with us as he can't run. That's how we left, taking nothing with us, not even our money. I even forgot to take my mobile phone. Hundreds of people like Suad and her family have fled the city and its surroundings since the Falluja offensive began last week. More than 500 families have arrived in displacement camps outside the city, the Norwegian Refugee Council said, including almost 300 since Sunday afternoon alone. All the recent arrivals are from Jumeila on the city's outskirts. "We feel safe here now," Suad said. "My children are getting food, and my husband is getting treatment in (the) hospital. I can't think of anything beyond that. Arriving here safely was what mattered, and it's a big relief." But danger remains. Water shortages in the camps are an increasing concern. "Last night we've had the biggest number of displaced families reaching us so far," said Nasr Muflahi, the Council's country director in Iraq. "Our resources in the camps are now very strained, and with many more expected to flee we might not be able to provide enough drinking water for everyone," Muflahi said. "The priority remains providing safe exits for at least 50,000 civilians believed to be trapped in the center of Falluja. We expect bigger waves of displacement the fiercer the fighting gets." Storm the city Iraqi forces started their operation to retake the ISIS stronghold with the help of Iraqi and coalition air support, Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasoul said on Iraqi state TV. "With God's blessing we have launched the third phase of the operation to storm the center of Falluja city -- by our heroes in the counterterrorism forces, units of the Iraqi army and Anbar police," Rasoul said. "There is heavy air cover for this operation from our heroes in the Iraqi air force and the coalition." JUST WATCHED Why Falluja matters Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Why Falluja matters 01:04 Iraqi forces retook the village of Nuaimiya, just south of Falluja, closing in on the city itself, al-Iraqi TV reported. Earlier Monday, Iraqi military units and supporting militia captured a handful of settlements from ISIS near Falluja, including the town of Saqlawiya, about 10 kilometers (6.5 miles) northwest of the city, and the villages of al-Buaziz, al-Bu Efan and al-Shiha, north and west of Falluja, state-run TV reported. Iraqi government troops, backed by Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and an air campaign by the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, launched the offensive last week to retake the ISIS stronghold, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, first targeting outlying settlements. Capturing Karma, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Falluja on Thursday, brought most of the territory east of the city under government control. More than 5,000 Americans are providing training, advice and assistance to Iraqi forces and flowing equipment to them, United States Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the coalition, said on CNN's "New Day" Monday. Iraq was "invaded by these animals" of ISIS, he said, but the terror group's grip on territory is slipping in both Iraq and Syria, he said. JUST WATCHED Iraqi civilians flee Falluja to get away from fighting Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Iraqi civilians flee Falluja to get away from fighting 02:10 Tens of thousands at risk The U.N. refugee agency has warned that an estimated 50,000 people are at risk, caught in the city turned combat zone as the Iraqi military's bombardment has intensified. "There are reports of a dramatic increase in the number of executions of men and older boys in Falluja (who are) refusing to fight on behalf of extremist forces," said Leila Jane Nassif, the U.N. agency's assistant representative in Iraq. "And many people have been killed or buried alive under the rubble of their homes in the course of ongoing military operations." Hundreds, mostly women and children, fled Falluja on Friday as Iraqi soldiers attacked to drive ISIS from the city, the Iraqi military said. Security forces evacuated about 760 people who escaped from eastern and southeastern Falluja, the military said. "Food is scarce in the city," said Um Ahmed, a 40-year-old living in Falluja with her family. "We have mostly been relying on dates for our meals." The Norwegian Refugee Council reports the residents of Falluja have been faced with food shortages, lack of electricity and hospitals have depleted supplies of medical supplies. "Civilians are trapped inside the city of Falluja as fighting intensifies. With every moment that passes, their need for safe exits becomes more critical. We are working around the clock in the displacement camps to provide water and emergency food rations to people who manage to flee the violence, but getting there in the first place is near impossible for those in the city center," said Nasr Muflahi, Norwegian Refugee Council country director in Iraq. Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces drive their armored vehicle through a street in Falluja, Iraq, on Monday, June 27, after retaking the city from ISIS. A senior Iraqi general announced on state TV that the battle for Falluja is over as Iraqi troops retook the final ISIS holdout in the city. Hide Caption 1 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Supplies are lined up at a camp for displaced civilians on Saturday, June 25. Hide Caption 2 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi security forces evacuate an injured soldier during fighting with ISIS militants on Wednesday, June 15. Hide Caption 3 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqis who have been displaced from their homes peer out of a tent at a camp outside Falluja on Tuesday, June 14. Hide Caption 4 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Smoke rises after airstrikes by U.S.-led coalition warplanes on Sunday, June 12. Hide Caption 5 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A boy sleeps in his mother's arms after fleeing from their home in Falluja on Monday, June 6. Hide Caption 6 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Smoke rises on the front line of fighting between ISIS militants and pro-government Iraqi fighters on Sunday, June 5. Hide Caption 7 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Pro-government forces and Shiite militia fighters fire rockets toward ISIS fighters in Falluja on Saturday, June 4. Hide Caption 8 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi soldiers help civilians from a vehicle outside a camp near Falluja on Friday, June 3. Hide Caption 9 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Internally displaced civilians flee their homes after crossing the Euphrates River outside Falluja on Thursday, June 2. Hide Caption 10 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with ISIS militants in Falluja's Nuaimiya neighborhood on Wednesday, June 1. Hide Caption 11 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Blindfolded men get led to a bus after being detained during the fighting on June 1. Hide Caption 12 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A member of pro-government forces fires at a front line in the Albu Huwa area south of Falluja on June 1. Hide Caption 13 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Grenades and shells lie on the ground in Falluja during fighting between Iraqi forces and ISIS on June 1. Hide Caption 14 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Smoke rises as Iraqi forces face off with ISIS militants on the southern edge of Falluja on Tuesday, May 31. Hide Caption 15 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi forces gather ahead of an operation to retake Falluja on Sunday, May 29. Hide Caption 16 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Pro-Iraqi government fighters carry ammunition in the village of Harariyat on Saturday, May 28. Hide Caption 17 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A police officer places an Iraqi federal police flag next to a Shiite militia flag outside Falluja on May 28. Hide Caption 18 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces engage with ISIS fighters near the village of al-Sejar on Thursday, May 26. Hide Caption 19 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A pro-government fighter rests after battling ISIS near al-Sejar on May 26. Hide Caption 20 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces advance near al-Sejar on May 26. Hide Caption 21 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi security forces surround an ISIS drone that was shot down outside Falluja on May 26. Hide Caption 22 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces take position east of Falluja on Wednesday, May 25. Hide Caption 23 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A pro-government fighter holds position in the village of al-Shahabi, east of Falluja, on Tuesday, May 24. Hide Caption 24 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi government forces join an operation in al-Shahabi on May 24. Hide Caption 25 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Pro-government forces advance toward Falluja on Monday, May 23. Hide Caption 26 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A fighter with the Badr Brigades, a Shiite militia, takes an ISIS flag down outside Falluja on May 23. Hide Caption 27 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja A fighter from a Shiite militia takes a combat position outside Falluja on May 23. Hide Caption 28 of 29 Photos: The battle for Falluja Iraqi Shiite fighters fire artillery near Falluja on May 23. Hide Caption 29 of 29 Targeting civilians Facing increasing pressure, ISIS has lashed out with attacks on civilians in Iraqi and Syrian cities. Three blasts shook parts of the Iraqi capital Monday morning, according to Iraqi security sources. No group immediately claimed responsibility. A bomb in a market in Baghdad's al-Shaab neighborhood killed seven people and wounded 20 others. A separate explosion in Sadr City killed another two and wounded 10. A suicide car bomber tried to ram into a police station in al-Tarmiya but was stopped from reaching the target. He detonated the bomb, killing himself and causing material damage but no other injuries, sources said. Multiple offensives Farther north, thousands of Kurdish Peshmerga troops are involved in an offensive to retake formerly Kurdish villages near the ISIS-held town of Mosul, Kurdish officials say. The Peshmerga-led ground offensive, backed by coalition air support, was launched early Sunday to recapture villages near Khazir, east of Mosul. The operation includes about 5,500 Peshmerga fighters. The move comes ahead of a joint offensive by Kurdish forces and Iraqi troops to take back Mosul, Kurdish media said. Across the border in Syria, a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces last week pushed into territory north of Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS. Sarmad al-Jilane, an activist with the monitoring group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, confirmed reports that ISIS has let some residents of that city flee to the surrounding countryside or Deir Ezzor as Kurdish and Arab forces pushed forward. ||||| HASSAN SHAMI, Iraq (Reuters) - Servicemen from the U.S.-led coalition were seen near the front line of a new offensive in northern Iraq launched on Sunday by Kurdish peshmerga forces that aims to retake a handful of villages from Islamic State east of their Mosul stronghold. A Reuters correspondent saw the soldiers loading armored vehicles outside the village of Hassan Shami, a few miles east of the frontline. They told people present not to take photographs. They spoke in English but their nationality was not clear. Reuters had earlier reported that they were American but this could not be confirmed officially. Commenting on the ground deployment of coalition soldiers seen near the battle front, Baghdad-based spokesman for then coalition, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, said: “U.S. and coalition forces are conducting advise and assist operations to help Kurdish Peshmerga forces”. He said he could not confirm which country those seen by Reuters were from. “They may be Americans, they may be Canadians or from other nationalities,” he said, when told that some forces were reported to be wearing maple leaf patches, the emblem of Canada. The sighting of the servicemen near the frontline is a measure of the U.S.-led coalition’s deepening involvement on the ground in Iraq as the war against Islamic State approaches its third year. Kurdish Peshmerga forces keep watch in a village east of Mosul, Iraq, May 29, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the early hours of Sunday launched an attack to dislodge Islamic State fighters from villages located about 20 km (13 miles) east of Mosul on the road to the regional capital, Erbil. Fighting appeared heavy. Pick up trucks raced back from the frontline with wounded people in the back, and two of the U.S.-led coalition servicemen helped haul one man onto a stretcher. Gunfire and airstrikes could be heard at a distance, while Apache helicopters flew overhead. One of the villages, Mufti, was captured by mid-day, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement. Mosul, with a pre-war population of about 2 million, is the largest city under control of the militants in both Iraq and Syria. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi at the end of last year expressed hope that the “final victory” in the war on Islamic State would come in 2016 with the capture of Mosul. About 5,500 Peshmergas are taking part in Sunday’s operation, said the Kurdish Region Security council. “This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city,’’ the council said. The Peshmerga have driven the militants back in northern Iraq last year with the help of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition, and are positioned around Mosul in an arc running from northwest of the city to southeast. Slideshow (5 Images) The Iraqi army is also keeping up the pressure on Islamic State in their stronghold of Falluja, 50 kilometers (32 miles) west of Baghdad, in central Iraq. Backed by Shi’ite militias on the ground and airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, the army is about to complete the encirclement of the city in an operation that started on May 23, state TV said Sunday citing military statements. Counter-terrorism forces specialized in urban warfare have taken up positions around Falluja and should begin advancing in inside the city when the encirclement is complete, the TV said. ||||| Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah,... (Associated Press) Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, May 29, 2016. Teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from... (Associated Press) Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, May 29, 2016. Teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from... (Associated Press) Iraqi security forces, with allied Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces and Sunni tribal fighters, gather ahead of an operation aimed at re-taking the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, outside Fallujah,... (Associated Press) BAGHDAD (AP) — Militants unleashed a wave of bombings targeting commercial areas in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 20 people, officials said as Iraqi troops poised to recapture the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, west of Iraq's capital. Shortly after the bombs hit, the extremist Islamic State, which has been behind recent deadly attacks in Baghdad and beyond, claimed responsibility for two of the explosions, both in the Iraqi capital. Such assaults are seen as an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces' attention away from the front lines. The attacks came amid a key Iraqi military operation to dislodge IS militants and retake the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, which has been in IS hands for over two years. The operation was launched a week ago, with Iraqi forces teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition. The deadliest of Monday's attacks took place in the northern, Shiite-dominated Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad where a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint next to a commercial area, killing eight civilians and three soldiers. The explosion also wounded up to 14 people, a police officer said. A suicide car bomber struck an outdoor market in the town of Tarmiyah, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Baghdad, killing four civilians and two policemen, another police officer said, adding that 19 people were wounded in that bombing. And in Baghdad's eastern Shiite Sadr City district, a bomb motorcycle went off at a market, killing three and wounding 10, police said. Medical officials confirmed casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information. In an online statement, IS claimed responsibility for the attacks in Shaab and Sadr City, saying they targeted members of Shiite militias. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by extremists. Fallujah is one of the last major IS strongholds in western Iraq. The extremist group still controls territory in the country's north and west, as well as Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. On Sunday, Iraqi Maj. Dhia Thamir said troops have recaptured 80 percent of the territory around Fallujah since the operation began and are currently battling IS to the northeast as they seek to tighten the siege ahead of a planned final push into the city center. In a televised speech Sunday to parliament, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called on Fallujah residents to either leave the city or stay indoors. Government officials and aid groups estimate that more than 50,000 people remain inside the center of the Sunni majority city. ___ Associated Press writer Murtada Faraj in Baghdad contributed to this report. ||||| Iraqi special forces were on the outskirts of Fallujah, the army said, marking a new phase in efforts to take the city from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and sparking fears for about 50,000 civilians trapped there. Fighting with ISIL was ongoing throughout Iraq on Sunday with battles near Mosul in the north and Heet in western Anbar province, as well as across the border in Syria in the city of Raqqa. In Heet - 140km west of Baghdad - about 40 Iraqi security forces were killed in an ISIL offensive that sent troops, police, and tribal fighters into retreat from the city that was re-taken from the armed group in April, military sources told Al Jazeera. Tens of thousands of soldiers and fighters - made up of military, police and militias, and backed by air power from a US-led coalition - launched an offensive to retake Fallujah last week. The arrival of Iraq's counter-terrorism service (CTS) may signal an all-out assault is imminent. Fallujah: 50,000 Iraqis trapped by assault on ISIL Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the Iraqi army commander in charge of the operation, said on Sunday that several large contingents had now reached two military camps near the city and were ready to strike. "These forces will break into Fallujah in the next few hours to liberate it from Daesh," he said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL, which is also known as ISIS. The counter-terrorism force said it had the city completely surrounded. Iraqi officials claimed gains against ISIL, but there was no way to independently verify that. "There is resistence but we are crushing it very quickly ... We have a momentum from different fronts," said General Abdelamir al-Shimary from Baghdad's Operations Command. Fallujah, 50km west of Baghdad, is one of the two remaining major Iraqi cities still in ISIL hands, the other being Iraq's second-largest city Mosul. The Fallujah operation has come at a human cost, rights groups said, with thousands of civilians trapped between ISIL fighters and the advancing Iraqi army and allied Shia militia. Al Jazeera's Omar al-Saleh, reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq, described the situation in the city as dire. "There is a lack of medicine and food. They are caught in the fighting between ISIL and Iraqi forces," he said. Some 50,000 people were still stuck in the centre of the city on Sunday, struggling with dwindling water and food supplies. The UN said it had reports of people starving to death and others and being killed for refusing to fight for ISIL. "We have dramatic reports of the increase of the number of executions of men and older boys refusing to fight on behalf of ISIL," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Our teams are doing all they can to assist the few families who managed to escape the dire situation in #Fallujah pic.twitter.com/rDjZSZKCZo — NRC (@NRC_Norway) May 28, 2016 About a thousand ISIL fighters still in the city were accused of using civilians as human shields, but UNHCR also said Iraqi forces had blocked supply routes, preventing civilians from getting out. Hundreds of families were able to flee on Friday with the help of government forces, but the majority remain trapped, aid groups said. "We are receiving hundreds of displaced Iraqis from the outskirts of Fallujah who are totally exhausted, afraid and hungry," Nasr Muflahi, country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said. "Thousands more remain trapped in the centre of Fallujah, cut off from aid and any form of protection." Fallujah, a predominantly Sunni city, fell out of government control even before ISIL swept through Iraq's heartland in June 2014, and is one of the group's most iconic strongholds. Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces - including the Hashed al-Shaabi umbrella group dominated by Shia militias - began an operation on May 22 to retake it. Peshmerga move on Mosul Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced on Sunday an offensive by Peshmerga forces that captured two ISIL-held towns about 25km from Mosul. About 5,500 fighters were involved, backed by international coalition warplanes. Peshmerga forces retook al-Muftiyah and Jim Kour towns after heavy clashes in the early hours of Sunday, sources told Al Jazeera. Fierce fighting was ongoing as Peshmerga soldiers advanced towards the town of al-Khazir, 35km east of Mosul. "This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city," the KRG said in a statement. Iraqis fleeing ISIL-held Mosul seek refuge in Syria In a separate development in neighbouring Syria, heavy fighting continued with ISIL sweeping through Aleppo province in a devastating offensive, cutting off the main road between the towns of Mare and Azaz. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep in Turkey, said the situation was serious. "Thousands of people have fled the fierce fighting. But many have nowhere to go," he said. More than 160,000 civilians have been trapped in Syria by the fighting, which also forced the evacuation of one of the few remaining hospitals in the area run by the international medical organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that US-led coalition warplanes had targeted ISIL positions north of ISIL's de facto capital Raqqa, reportedly killing as many as 45 ISIL fighters. Arab, Kurdish and US military forces have been closing in territory around Raqqa over the past week.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

By peering into the hydrocarbon haze of Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has made the first off-world detection of a molecule called propylene, one of the most important starting products of the modern plastic industry. Propylene, also known as propene, is one of the simplest organic compounds, made from a chain of three carbons. On Earth, it is a byproduct of oil refining and other fossil fuel extraction processes. Humans use it as a raw material in creating many of the products in our world, including films, storage containers, and car bumpers. The molecule is also created naturally by some tree species and given off as a combustion product in forest fires. Cassini detected propylene using its infrared spectrometer. Finding the molecule wasn’t too surprising — Titan is full of many different hydrocarbons including methane and propane — but spotting propylene has thus far eluded scientists. Previous missions had found other organic molecules with a three-carbon backbone, yet propylene was missing. Since it’s the lightest and simplest of this chemical family, its non-existence on Titan was perplexing. Researchers used Cassini’s data to sift through the hydrocarbon noise and finally extract propylene’s relatively weak signal. Their results appear today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The finding highlights the alien chemistry of Saturn’s giant moon. Titan is a weird and wet world much like our own, except that hydrocarbon rain falls into ethane seas instead of water. Scientists have long wanted to explore such bodies with a boat-like probe but are thwarted by NASA’s plunging budget and the expense of mounting such an expedition. Still, sales of propylene on Earth are estimated at $90 billion annually. But private industry probably won’t fly to Titan to suck out its hydrocarbon riches any time soon. Such a scheme would probably run afoul of international treaties, which call for protecting the environment of other worlds. Fossil fuels are also likely to remain relatively cheap, plentiful, and easy enough to access for many years that space-based extraction of them will remain laughable. ||||| PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, a chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other consumer products, on Saturn's moon Titan. This is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than Earth. A small amount of propylene was identified in Titan's lower atmosphere by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS). This instrument measures the infrared light, or heat radiation, emitted from Saturn and its moons in much the same way our hands feel the warmth of a fire. Propylene is the first molecule to be discovered on Titan using CIRS. By isolating the same signal at various altitudes within the lower atmosphere, researchers identified the chemical with a high degree of confidence. Details are presented in a paper in the Sept. 30 edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the paper. "That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom -- that's polypropylene." CIRS can identify a particular gas glowing in the lower layers of the atmosphere from its unique thermal fingerprint. The challenge is to isolate this one signature from the signals of all other gases around it. The detection of the chemical fills in a mysterious gap in Titan observations that dates back to NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft and the first-ever close flyby of this moon in 1980. Voyager identified many of the gases in Titan's hazy brownish atmosphere as hydrocarbons, the chemicals that primarily make up petroleum and other fossil fuels on Earth. On Titan, hydrocarbons form after sunlight breaks apart methane, the second-most plentiful gas in that atmosphere. The newly freed fragments can link up to form chains with two, three or more carbons. The family of chemicals with two carbons includes the flammable gas ethane. Propane, a common fuel for portable stoves, belongs to the three-carbon family. Previously, Voyager found propane, the heaviest member of the three-carbon family, and propyne, one of the lightest members. But the middle chemicals, one of which is propylene, were missing. As researchers continued to discover more and more chemicals in Titan's atmosphere using ground- and space-based instruments, propylene was one that remained elusive. It was finally found as a result of more detailed analysis of the CIRS data. "This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene's weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals," said Michael Flasar, Goddard scientist and principal investigator for CIRS. "This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan's atmosphere." Cassini's mass spectrometer, a device that looks at the composition of Titan's atmosphere, had hinted earlier that propylene might be present in the upper atmosphere. However, a positive identification had not been made. "I am always excited when scientists discover a molecule that has never been observed before in an atmosphere," said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan's atmosphere." The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The CIRS team is based at Goddard. For more information about the Cassini mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . News Media Contact Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, [email protected] Brown 202-358-1726NASA Headquarters, [email protected] Neal-Jones/Elizabeth ZubritskyGoddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.301-286-0039/[email protected] / [email protected] ||||| Image caption Conditions at Titan make for some interesting atmospheric chemistry The Cassini probe has detected propene, or propylene, on Saturn's moon Titan. On Earth, this molecule, which comprises three carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms, is a constituent of many plastics. It is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than our home world, says the US space agency (Nasa). The discovery, made by Cassini's infrared spectrometer, is reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a Nasa planetary scientist from the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center. A classic example would be the plastic boxes used to store food in kitchens worldwide. Titan is dominated by hydrocarbons - principally methane, which after nitrogen is the most common component of the atmosphere. Sunlight drives reactions that break apart the methane, allowing the fragments to join up and form even bigger molecules. Other common species seen at the moon as a result are propane, which on Earth is used in portable cooking equipment, and ethane, which is the raw material for another ubiquitous plastic - polyethylene. But the likes of methane, propene, propane and ethane are dwarfed by some truly colossal hydrocarbons that have been detected in Titan's atmosphere. When the effects of ultraviolet light are combined with the bombardment from particles driven in Saturn's magnetic field, it becomes possible to cook up some very exotic chemistry. Cassini's plasma spectrometer has seen evidence for hydrocarbons with an atomic mass thousands of times heavier than a single hydrogen atom. ||||| • Plastic is pretty much a metaphor for unnatural—a plastic smile, plastic surgery, fake plastic trees. Even when the Curiosity rover discovered plastic on Mars last year, that turned out to be fake, too. In an authenticity-obsessed world, plastic has gotten a bad rap (or is that wrap?). Plastic is made up of organic molecules—organic meaning there’s carbon in them, not that it was raised cruelty-free under fair trade conditions. If your non-chemistry-class definition of organic requires that a plant or animal be involved, know that the petrochemicals which provide the base stock for what we commonly consider plastic is made up of the carcasses of ancient micro-organisms. Cassini’s discovery carries with it a handful of firsts, including the first definitive discovery of plastics outside of Earth, and the first molecule that Cassini’s hard-working “composite infrared spectrometer” has discovered on Titan. Anyway, while the things we might recognize as plastic are generally synthetic, there are naturally occurring polymers (all plastics are polymers, but not all polymers are plastics)—cellulose, rubber, amber, and shellac. And there are even a few naturally occurring plastics, like animal horns and tortoiseshell. But while pedants will be happy with these distinctions, none pass muster as, you know, plastic. It’s perhaps a Potter Stewart-ian distinction, but, well, I’m not buying Tide packaged in turtles. But now science has discovered plastic … in space. And blessedly, it’s not pollution from Earth (we’re not counting space junk). Using its on-board spectrometer, the Cassini spacecraft has discovered propylene in the lower atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. And propylene (A.K.A. propene or methylethylene) is by anyone’s definition plastic. As Conor Nixon, the lead author on a paper describing this find, explained in a release, “This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene. That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom — that’s polypropylene.” Heck, here on Earth, even some trees release propylene naturally. Cassini’s discovery carries with it a handful of firsts, including the first definitive discovery of plastics outside of Earth, and the first molecule that Cassini’s hard-working “composite infrared spectrometer” has discovered on Titan. But this first doesn’t carry with it indication of something intelligent synthesizing plastics on Titan. Based on chemical analyses dating back to Voyager 1’s flyby in the 1980s, scientists have known that Titan’s atmosphere is a hodge-podge of hydrocarbons—JPL’s Scott Edginton described it as a “chemical zoo.” Propylene was actually something scientists expected to find since its chemical kissing cousins were already known to be present. Things like amino acids, the building blocks of life as we know it, have been found floating through the cosmos, possibly as interstellar ride-sharers. It’s all somewhat reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe universe, where planets of mattresses and ballpoints cavort naturally: “Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe such as, for instance, the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere.”

– Earth and Saturn now have something in common: plastic. NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected the molecule propylene on Saturn's moon Titan, and propylene is one of the basic ingredients of modern plastic here on Earth, reports the BBC. It's the first extraterrestrial plastic ingredient ever found, reports NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which uses this quote from one of its scientists to help mere mortals grasp the discovery: "This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene. That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom—that's polypropylene." So is this a stunning discovery? Far from it, explains Pacific Standard. Propylene is a hydrocarbon, and scientists have long known that Titan is teeming with other hydrocarbons such as methane and propane. "Propylene was actually something scientists expected to find since its chemical kissing cousins were already known to be present," writes Michael Todd. And, sorry, entrepreneurs, Wired shoots a hole in your ambitious plan to zip over to Saturn to harvest the stuff. Not only would that probably violate international treaties set up to protect other worlds, but "fossil fuels are also likely to remain relatively cheap, plentiful, and easy enough to access for many years that space-based extraction of them will remain laughable," writes Adam Mann. (For a more Earth-bound NASA development, click to see its image of newborn island off Pakistan.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.By peering into the hydrocarbon haze of Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has made the first off-world detection of a molecule called propylene, one of the most important starting products of the modern plastic industry. Propylene, also known as propene, is one of the simplest organic compounds, made from a chain of three carbons. On Earth, it is a byproduct of oil refining and other fossil fuel extraction processes. Humans use it as a raw material in creating many of the products in our world, including films, storage containers, and car bumpers. The molecule is also created naturally by some tree species and given off as a combustion product in forest fires. Cassini detected propylene using its infrared spectrometer. Finding the molecule wasn’t too surprising — Titan is full of many different hydrocarbons including methane and propane — but spotting propylene has thus far eluded scientists. Previous missions had found other organic molecules with a three-carbon backbone, yet propylene was missing. Since it’s the lightest and simplest of this chemical family, its non-existence on Titan was perplexing. Researchers used Cassini’s data to sift through the hydrocarbon noise and finally extract propylene’s relatively weak signal. Their results appear today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The finding highlights the alien chemistry of Saturn’s giant moon. Titan is a weird and wet world much like our own, except that hydrocarbon rain falls into ethane seas instead of water. Scientists have long wanted to explore such bodies with a boat-like probe but are thwarted by NASA’s plunging budget and the expense of mounting such an expedition. Still, sales of propylene on Earth are estimated at $90 billion annually. But private industry probably won’t fly to Titan to suck out its hydrocarbon riches any time soon. Such a scheme would probably run afoul of international treaties, which call for protecting the environment of other worlds. Fossil fuels are also likely to remain relatively cheap, plentiful, and easy enough to access for many years that space-based extraction of them will remain laughable. ||||| PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, a chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other consumer products, on Saturn's moon Titan. This is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than Earth. A small amount of propylene was identified in Titan's lower atmosphere by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS). This instrument measures the infrared light, or heat radiation, emitted from Saturn and its moons in much the same way our hands feel the warmth of a fire. Propylene is the first molecule to be discovered on Titan using CIRS. By isolating the same signal at various altitudes within the lower atmosphere, researchers identified the chemical with a high degree of confidence. Details are presented in a paper in the Sept. 30 edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the paper. "That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom -- that's polypropylene." CIRS can identify a particular gas glowing in the lower layers of the atmosphere from its unique thermal fingerprint. The challenge is to isolate this one signature from the signals of all other gases around it. The detection of the chemical fills in a mysterious gap in Titan observations that dates back to NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft and the first-ever close flyby of this moon in 1980. Voyager identified many of the gases in Titan's hazy brownish atmosphere as hydrocarbons, the chemicals that primarily make up petroleum and other fossil fuels on Earth. On Titan, hydrocarbons form after sunlight breaks apart methane, the second-most plentiful gas in that atmosphere. The newly freed fragments can link up to form chains with two, three or more carbons. The family of chemicals with two carbons includes the flammable gas ethane. Propane, a common fuel for portable stoves, belongs to the three-carbon family. Previously, Voyager found propane, the heaviest member of the three-carbon family, and propyne, one of the lightest members. But the middle chemicals, one of which is propylene, were missing. As researchers continued to discover more and more chemicals in Titan's atmosphere using ground- and space-based instruments, propylene was one that remained elusive. It was finally found as a result of more detailed analysis of the CIRS data. "This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene's weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals," said Michael Flasar, Goddard scientist and principal investigator for CIRS. "This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan's atmosphere." Cassini's mass spectrometer, a device that looks at the composition of Titan's atmosphere, had hinted earlier that propylene might be present in the upper atmosphere. However, a positive identification had not been made. "I am always excited when scientists discover a molecule that has never been observed before in an atmosphere," said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan's atmosphere." The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The CIRS team is based at Goddard. For more information about the Cassini mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . News Media Contact Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, [email protected] Brown 202-358-1726NASA Headquarters, [email protected] Neal-Jones/Elizabeth ZubritskyGoddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.301-286-0039/[email protected] / [email protected] ||||| Image caption Conditions at Titan make for some interesting atmospheric chemistry The Cassini probe has detected propene, or propylene, on Saturn's moon Titan. On Earth, this molecule, which comprises three carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms, is a constituent of many plastics. It is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than our home world, says the US space agency (Nasa). The discovery, made by Cassini's infrared spectrometer, is reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a Nasa planetary scientist from the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center. A classic example would be the plastic boxes used to store food in kitchens worldwide. Titan is dominated by hydrocarbons - principally methane, which after nitrogen is the most common component of the atmosphere. Sunlight drives reactions that break apart the methane, allowing the fragments to join up and form even bigger molecules. Other common species seen at the moon as a result are propane, which on Earth is used in portable cooking equipment, and ethane, which is the raw material for another ubiquitous plastic - polyethylene. But the likes of methane, propene, propane and ethane are dwarfed by some truly colossal hydrocarbons that have been detected in Titan's atmosphere. When the effects of ultraviolet light are combined with the bombardment from particles driven in Saturn's magnetic field, it becomes possible to cook up some very exotic chemistry. Cassini's plasma spectrometer has seen evidence for hydrocarbons with an atomic mass thousands of times heavier than a single hydrogen atom. ||||| • Plastic is pretty much a metaphor for unnatural—a plastic smile, plastic surgery, fake plastic trees. Even when the Curiosity rover discovered plastic on Mars last year, that turned out to be fake, too. In an authenticity-obsessed world, plastic has gotten a bad rap (or is that wrap?). Plastic is made up of organic molecules—organic meaning there’s carbon in them, not that it was raised cruelty-free under fair trade conditions. If your non-chemistry-class definition of organic requires that a plant or animal be involved, know that the petrochemicals which provide the base stock for what we commonly consider plastic is made up of the carcasses of ancient micro-organisms. Cassini’s discovery carries with it a handful of firsts, including the first definitive discovery of plastics outside of Earth, and the first molecule that Cassini’s hard-working “composite infrared spectrometer” has discovered on Titan. Anyway, while the things we might recognize as plastic are generally synthetic, there are naturally occurring polymers (all plastics are polymers, but not all polymers are plastics)—cellulose, rubber, amber, and shellac. And there are even a few naturally occurring plastics, like animal horns and tortoiseshell. But while pedants will be happy with these distinctions, none pass muster as, you know, plastic. It’s perhaps a Potter Stewart-ian distinction, but, well, I’m not buying Tide packaged in turtles. But now science has discovered plastic … in space. And blessedly, it’s not pollution from Earth (we’re not counting space junk). Using its on-board spectrometer, the Cassini spacecraft has discovered propylene in the lower atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. And propylene (A.K.A. propene or methylethylene) is by anyone’s definition plastic. As Conor Nixon, the lead author on a paper describing this find, explained in a release, “This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene. That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom — that’s polypropylene.” Heck, here on Earth, even some trees release propylene naturally. Cassini’s discovery carries with it a handful of firsts, including the first definitive discovery of plastics outside of Earth, and the first molecule that Cassini’s hard-working “composite infrared spectrometer” has discovered on Titan. But this first doesn’t carry with it indication of something intelligent synthesizing plastics on Titan. Based on chemical analyses dating back to Voyager 1’s flyby in the 1980s, scientists have known that Titan’s atmosphere is a hodge-podge of hydrocarbons—JPL’s Scott Edginton described it as a “chemical zoo.” Propylene was actually something scientists expected to find since its chemical kissing cousins were already known to be present. Things like amino acids, the building blocks of life as we know it, have been found floating through the cosmos, possibly as interstellar ride-sharers. It’s all somewhat reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe universe, where planets of mattresses and ballpoints cavort naturally: “Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe such as, for instance, the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere.”

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

(CNN) The 13 children of David and Louise Turpin, the California couple accused of holding their children captive and torturing 12 of them, are now enjoying freedom in three separate homes in Riverside County, authorities said on Monday. Word of their new homes follows a statement from Corona Regional Medical Center CEO Mark Uffer announcing that the Turpin siblings had been released from the hospital. Six of the children are minors and seven are adults. The adult children had been recovering at Corona Regional for the past two months, and it was hard to see them go, Uffer said. "There were some tears flowing, both for the staff and the Turpin children," he said. "They said they loved us, they were going to miss us, they hoped to see us soon." "We're hopeful they can now learn a lot of life skills, from shopping for groceries to cooking," he said. "For all the things that have allegedly been done to them, they still have the capacity to love and trust people who have been good to them. Their spirit has not been crushed." Read More ||||| The seven adult children of alleged child abusers David and Louise Turpin have been released from the Corona Regional Medical Center and are now living together in a home in rural California, according to their lawyer. Lawyer Jack Osborn told ABC News exclusively the seven oldest Turpin siblings were released on Thursday and quietly transported to their new home, where they will be reunited with their family dogs and able to make decisions for themselves. They will each have their own rooms with their own closets. The adult children, ABC News reports, were taken by Osborn to their new home. The location of the home is being kept secret. “The adult siblings want to be known as survivors, not victims,” Osborn told ABC News. Many locals who have been following the case have taken to affectionately calling the Turpin children “The Magnificent 13.” David-Louis Turpin/Facebook • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. He said the siblings are excited to move on from the past and make their own way in the world. “They’re joyful, warm, considerate,” Osborn told ABC News. “It’s not all about them. They want to hear what’s going on with you and me and my family,” he said. “It’s just really fun. It’s fun to be around them. Of course, they’re really full of joy about their life and the things they get to experience right now.” From left: David and Louise Turpin Riverside County Sheriff's Department (2) Much of their first day outside of the Corona Regional Medical Center was spent outdoors, Osborn said. The siblings picked citrus and later, made themselves Mexican food and ice cream sundaes, which the lawyer told ABC News were all firsts for them. Osborn said that his clients are receiving occupational, physical, and psychological therapy and catching up on all the movies they’ve missed over the years. He said they love the Star Wars films. Osborn told ABC News none of the adult siblings have ever driven a car, though they’ve all been of legal driving age for some time. He added that the boys are excited at the prospect of operating a car. • For more compelling true crime coverage, follow our Crime magazine on Flipboard. He also said the siblings are unaware of how much media attention their case has attracted. Osborn said the Turpin children want to lead normal lives and are interested in pursuing careers. “Some asked whether they could be nurses without having to give injections or seeing much blood,” he said, adding his clients “want to be independent” and “want to do things for themselves and they want to start having independent lives where they’re responsible for themselves. That’s the goal and that’s what everyone is working toward.” Mother Has No Remorse: Relatives David, 56, and Louise Turpin, 49, face numerous criminal charges in the alleged abuse of their 13 children, who ranged in age from 2 to 29 at the time of the parents’ arrest. The charges include torture, false imprisonment and abuse. Only the youngest child appears to have been somewhat spared from the alleged abuse, according to prosecutors. Authorities entered the house to find an allegedly horrendous scene of malnutrition and squalor, with some of the children shackled to their beds. Prosecutors allege the Turpins denied their children food — while eating healthy amounts themselves — and only allowed them to take one shower a year. The Turpins were arrested after their 17-year-old daughter escaped from their Perris, California, house on Jan. 14. The teen dialed 911 using a disconnected cell phone, and allegedly told authorities she and her 12 siblings were being abused by their parents. The Turpins are currently being held on a $9 million bond each and face life in prison if convicted of the crimes against their children. They have pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Relatives allege David understands the seriousness of the allegations but that Louise seems in denial, showing zero remorse. ||||| After what is described as a lifetime of imprisonment in a cramped, squalid home near Riverside, California, seven of the 13 siblings who were allegedly held captive by their parents got their first taste of freedom last week, ABC News has exclusively learned. Interested in California Captivity Case? Add California Captivity Case as an interest to stay up to date on the latest California Captivity Case news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest The newly freed siblings -- who are now adults -- were discretely whisked away Thursday from the Corona Regional Medical Center, where they had been nursed back to health after police rescued them in January. After being described as on the brink of starvation, the survivors were taught the basics about a world police say they never quite experienced. But now, the young adults, ages 18 to 29, were taken by their attorney and public guardian from the carefully controlled ward of the hospital to an undisclosed rural house they now call home. David Allen Turpin/Facebook ABC News has interviewed several people who’ve spent time with the siblings -- whose lives until recently had been lived in near-complete isolation. Their native intelligence, coupled with their naiveté and complete lack of guile, makes them utterly charming, say those who’ve interacted with them. Their lawyer, Jack Osborn, who specializes in clients with special needs, described it as their birth into the real world. “The adult siblings want to be known as survivors, not victims,” said Osborn. It’s the reason he said they don’t dwell on their anger, but on the long process of recovery ahead. David Allen Turpin/Facebook “They're joyful, warm, considerate. It's not all about them. They want to hear what's going on with you and me and my family," he said. "It's just really fun. It's fun to be around them. Of course, they're really full of joy about their life and the things they get to experience right now." Gina Ferazzi, Pool via Getty Images David and Louise Turpin, the parents of the children, are accused of abusing them, including shackling and starving them routinely, authorities said. The victims weren't released from their chains even to go to the bathroom, prosecutors have charged. Riverside County Sheriffs Department All the children except for the youngest, a toddler, were severely malnourished, prosecutors said. The eldest victim -- a 29-year-old woman -- weighed only 82 pounds when rescued, according to authorities. ABC News has learned through several sources with access to the siblings and interviews with police and social services that what little food the siblings ate was predominately frozen food at home. Frederic J. Brown, Pool via AP The parents were arrested in January after the couple's 17-year-old daughter scrambled out of their home's front window, called 911, and showed police pictures of her siblings in shackles, said the District Attorney Mike Hestrin. That 17-year-old had somehow accessed the internet in the weeks before her harrowing escape. ABC News has discovered that she had accounts on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube -- where she performed what she called original songs with titles like “Where is the Key?” David and Louise Turpin each face dozens of counts of torture, false imprisonment and child endangerment. Prosecutors say they would punish infractions like washing above the wrist with punishments like being hogtied or being shackled to a bed, sometimes for months at a time. Now, the seven siblings who are free have enjoyed getting relative privacy for the first time in their lives -– including receiving their own bedding and having their own closet space, Osborn said. In their first 24 hours since their release from the hospital, the older siblings picked citrus for the first time. They also made their first ice cream sundaes and prepared Mexican food, apparently all firsts, Osborn added. “They pretty much love any food that is fresh. They love fruit, pasta and soup,” said Osborn. Mark Uffer, the chief executive officer of the Corona Regional Medical Center, where some of the siblings were being treated, confirmed to ABC News in a statement that the Turpin siblings had been discharged from their facilities. Uffer added that they "wish these brave siblings continued strength as they take the next steps in their journey." Beyond tasting new food, the siblings spend their time doing various kinds of occupational, physical and psychological therapy. They also watch movies. A lot of them. Osborn believes they didn’t have much access to movies despite their parents’ trove of thousands of DVDs. The siblings' favorite movies so far have been anything associated with the "Star Wars" series. While several of them have been of driving age for about a decade, their lawyer says none has ever driven a car. Trips in a vehicle at all seemed to be a rarity, Osborn said. The prospect of driving a car one day was, in fact, so novel that the boys joked that they’d need to wear football helmets for safety. Meanwhile, the siblings are aware of their parents’ legal jeopardy, but have no idea how much interest their story has drawn, Osborn said. He added that they all hope to lead normal lives, with spouses and careers, including being nurses and doctors. “Some asked whether they could be nurses without having to give injections or seeing much blood,” he said, smiling. His clients, he said, “want to be independent." "They want to do things for themselves and they want to start having independent lives where they're responsible for themselves," he added. "That's the goal and that's what everyone is working toward.” ABC News' Duan Perrin contributed to this report

– The six youngest Turpin children, part of the group of 13 allegedly held captive and, in the case of all but the youngest, tortured for years by their parents, are out of the hospital and in foster homes. Their seven older siblings are living together in a rural home with the family dogs, People reports. A statement from California's Corona Regional Medical Center announced the siblings' release from the hospital, and a source close to the investigation tells CNN the younger children are in two different Riverside County homes because no one home could accommodate all six. But they are in touch frequently, the source says: "The children all talk regularly via Skype. They are all happy to be in another place." The older siblings were released from the hospital last week and are living together in a home under state care, ABC News reports. They "want to be known as survivors, not victims," their lawyer says. "They're joyful, warm, considerate. It's not all about them. They want to hear what's going on with you and me and my family. It's just really fun. It's fun to be around them. Of course, they're really full of joy about their life and the things they get to experience right now." David and Louise Turpin, whose children ranged in age from 2 to 29 when the parents were arrested in January, have pleaded not guilty to more than 40 charges including torture, false imprisonment, abuse of a dependent adult, and child abuse.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.(CNN) The 13 children of David and Louise Turpin, the California couple accused of holding their children captive and torturing 12 of them, are now enjoying freedom in three separate homes in Riverside County, authorities said on Monday. Word of their new homes follows a statement from Corona Regional Medical Center CEO Mark Uffer announcing that the Turpin siblings had been released from the hospital. Six of the children are minors and seven are adults. The adult children had been recovering at Corona Regional for the past two months, and it was hard to see them go, Uffer said. "There were some tears flowing, both for the staff and the Turpin children," he said. "They said they loved us, they were going to miss us, they hoped to see us soon." "We're hopeful they can now learn a lot of life skills, from shopping for groceries to cooking," he said. "For all the things that have allegedly been done to them, they still have the capacity to love and trust people who have been good to them. Their spirit has not been crushed." Read More ||||| The seven adult children of alleged child abusers David and Louise Turpin have been released from the Corona Regional Medical Center and are now living together in a home in rural California, according to their lawyer. Lawyer Jack Osborn told ABC News exclusively the seven oldest Turpin siblings were released on Thursday and quietly transported to their new home, where they will be reunited with their family dogs and able to make decisions for themselves. They will each have their own rooms with their own closets. The adult children, ABC News reports, were taken by Osborn to their new home. The location of the home is being kept secret. “The adult siblings want to be known as survivors, not victims,” Osborn told ABC News. Many locals who have been following the case have taken to affectionately calling the Turpin children “The Magnificent 13.” David-Louis Turpin/Facebook • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. He said the siblings are excited to move on from the past and make their own way in the world. “They’re joyful, warm, considerate,” Osborn told ABC News. “It’s not all about them. They want to hear what’s going on with you and me and my family,” he said. “It’s just really fun. It’s fun to be around them. Of course, they’re really full of joy about their life and the things they get to experience right now.” From left: David and Louise Turpin Riverside County Sheriff's Department (2) Much of their first day outside of the Corona Regional Medical Center was spent outdoors, Osborn said. The siblings picked citrus and later, made themselves Mexican food and ice cream sundaes, which the lawyer told ABC News were all firsts for them. Osborn said that his clients are receiving occupational, physical, and psychological therapy and catching up on all the movies they’ve missed over the years. He said they love the Star Wars films. Osborn told ABC News none of the adult siblings have ever driven a car, though they’ve all been of legal driving age for some time. He added that the boys are excited at the prospect of operating a car. • For more compelling true crime coverage, follow our Crime magazine on Flipboard. He also said the siblings are unaware of how much media attention their case has attracted. Osborn said the Turpin children want to lead normal lives and are interested in pursuing careers. “Some asked whether they could be nurses without having to give injections or seeing much blood,” he said, adding his clients “want to be independent” and “want to do things for themselves and they want to start having independent lives where they’re responsible for themselves. That’s the goal and that’s what everyone is working toward.” Mother Has No Remorse: Relatives David, 56, and Louise Turpin, 49, face numerous criminal charges in the alleged abuse of their 13 children, who ranged in age from 2 to 29 at the time of the parents’ arrest. The charges include torture, false imprisonment and abuse. Only the youngest child appears to have been somewhat spared from the alleged abuse, according to prosecutors. Authorities entered the house to find an allegedly horrendous scene of malnutrition and squalor, with some of the children shackled to their beds. Prosecutors allege the Turpins denied their children food — while eating healthy amounts themselves — and only allowed them to take one shower a year. The Turpins were arrested after their 17-year-old daughter escaped from their Perris, California, house on Jan. 14. The teen dialed 911 using a disconnected cell phone, and allegedly told authorities she and her 12 siblings were being abused by their parents. The Turpins are currently being held on a $9 million bond each and face life in prison if convicted of the crimes against their children. They have pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Relatives allege David understands the seriousness of the allegations but that Louise seems in denial, showing zero remorse. ||||| After what is described as a lifetime of imprisonment in a cramped, squalid home near Riverside, California, seven of the 13 siblings who were allegedly held captive by their parents got their first taste of freedom last week, ABC News has exclusively learned. Interested in California Captivity Case? Add California Captivity Case as an interest to stay up to date on the latest California Captivity Case news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest The newly freed siblings -- who are now adults -- were discretely whisked away Thursday from the Corona Regional Medical Center, where they had been nursed back to health after police rescued them in January. After being described as on the brink of starvation, the survivors were taught the basics about a world police say they never quite experienced. But now, the young adults, ages 18 to 29, were taken by their attorney and public guardian from the carefully controlled ward of the hospital to an undisclosed rural house they now call home. David Allen Turpin/Facebook ABC News has interviewed several people who’ve spent time with the siblings -- whose lives until recently had been lived in near-complete isolation. Their native intelligence, coupled with their naiveté and complete lack of guile, makes them utterly charming, say those who’ve interacted with them. Their lawyer, Jack Osborn, who specializes in clients with special needs, described it as their birth into the real world. “The adult siblings want to be known as survivors, not victims,” said Osborn. It’s the reason he said they don’t dwell on their anger, but on the long process of recovery ahead. David Allen Turpin/Facebook “They're joyful, warm, considerate. It's not all about them. They want to hear what's going on with you and me and my family," he said. "It's just really fun. It's fun to be around them. Of course, they're really full of joy about their life and the things they get to experience right now." Gina Ferazzi, Pool via Getty Images David and Louise Turpin, the parents of the children, are accused of abusing them, including shackling and starving them routinely, authorities said. The victims weren't released from their chains even to go to the bathroom, prosecutors have charged. Riverside County Sheriffs Department All the children except for the youngest, a toddler, were severely malnourished, prosecutors said. The eldest victim -- a 29-year-old woman -- weighed only 82 pounds when rescued, according to authorities. ABC News has learned through several sources with access to the siblings and interviews with police and social services that what little food the siblings ate was predominately frozen food at home. Frederic J. Brown, Pool via AP The parents were arrested in January after the couple's 17-year-old daughter scrambled out of their home's front window, called 911, and showed police pictures of her siblings in shackles, said the District Attorney Mike Hestrin. That 17-year-old had somehow accessed the internet in the weeks before her harrowing escape. ABC News has discovered that she had accounts on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube -- where she performed what she called original songs with titles like “Where is the Key?” David and Louise Turpin each face dozens of counts of torture, false imprisonment and child endangerment. Prosecutors say they would punish infractions like washing above the wrist with punishments like being hogtied or being shackled to a bed, sometimes for months at a time. Now, the seven siblings who are free have enjoyed getting relative privacy for the first time in their lives -– including receiving their own bedding and having their own closet space, Osborn said. In their first 24 hours since their release from the hospital, the older siblings picked citrus for the first time. They also made their first ice cream sundaes and prepared Mexican food, apparently all firsts, Osborn added. “They pretty much love any food that is fresh. They love fruit, pasta and soup,” said Osborn. Mark Uffer, the chief executive officer of the Corona Regional Medical Center, where some of the siblings were being treated, confirmed to ABC News in a statement that the Turpin siblings had been discharged from their facilities. Uffer added that they "wish these brave siblings continued strength as they take the next steps in their journey." Beyond tasting new food, the siblings spend their time doing various kinds of occupational, physical and psychological therapy. They also watch movies. A lot of them. Osborn believes they didn’t have much access to movies despite their parents’ trove of thousands of DVDs. The siblings' favorite movies so far have been anything associated with the "Star Wars" series. While several of them have been of driving age for about a decade, their lawyer says none has ever driven a car. Trips in a vehicle at all seemed to be a rarity, Osborn said. The prospect of driving a car one day was, in fact, so novel that the boys joked that they’d need to wear football helmets for safety. Meanwhile, the siblings are aware of their parents’ legal jeopardy, but have no idea how much interest their story has drawn, Osborn said. He added that they all hope to lead normal lives, with spouses and careers, including being nurses and doctors. “Some asked whether they could be nurses without having to give injections or seeing much blood,” he said, smiling. His clients, he said, “want to be independent." "They want to do things for themselves and they want to start having independent lives where they're responsible for themselves," he added. "That's the goal and that's what everyone is working toward.” ABC News' Duan Perrin contributed to this report

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A 19-year-old girl who has been missing for 10 years has been found with open wounds, burn marks, scars, and broken bones by police investigating the allegedbasement dungeon and kidnapping ring in Philadelphia. Beatrice Weston, who was taken at the age of 8 by accused dungeon ring-leader Linda Weston, is now in a Philadelphia hospital recovering from the ongoing cruelty and torture by her captors, according to Philadelphia police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers. Linda Weston is the girl's aunt, and police said she took her niece after a family feud with her sister, Vicki Weston. The girl was found two days after police uncovered a basement dungeon in which four mentally handicapped adults were held against their will. Police have arrested and charged Linda Weston, 51, her daughter Jean McIntosh, 32, Weston's boyfriend Thomas Gregory, 47, and Eddie Wright, 49, with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and other related charges. Police pleaded with media to let the girl heal in privacy at the hospital. "This girl was beaten, tortured, absolutely the worst thing you can see one person do to another," said Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. Evers said Wednesday after finding the girl that he would be happy to see the four prosecuted wherever the punishments would be the harshest. "We're going to prepare to prosecute this here or, without hyperbole, wherever the prisons are going to be the worst. Federal prisons might be too nice," he said. "I've never seen anything like this before on a living person, that kind of cruelty over and over again. No penalty is too harsh to the people that did this, absolutely no penalty," Evers said. The lieutenant said the girl's torture in the "house of horrors" included signs of a spoon being heated and then burned into her skin. She had fractured bones that healed over incorrectly, and bones in her ankles showed the effects of being shot repeatedly with something like a pellet gun, he said. There are open wounds on her head, which she had covered with a hood when police found her. She had scars over her face, arms, and legs, he said. Police found Beatrice Weston among a group of 10 children and teens who were located Tuesday after Florida police tipped off Philadelphia cops that there may be more victims and that Weston had been living with at least seven children in her last home in West Palm Beach, Fla.. One of the individuals found was Weston, and another was McIntosh, whom police arrested. Two other adult males were initially taken into custody and then released. Police also took six children into protective custody, two of whom were the children of a mentally handicapped couple who were held captive by Weston for years, police said. The children, ages 2 and 5, were severely malnourished. Evers noted that the 2-year-old girl looked like a 6-month-old baby when she was found. Police are trying to identify the rest of the group, including three other young adults and four other children. Weston and Gregory's son, Thomas Gregory, Jr., was not among those taken into custody and has not been arrested in connection with the crimes. Benita Rodriguez, a 15-year-old girl from Florida who traveled to Philadelphia to be with Thomas Gregory, Jr., was also found by police on Monday. The girl told her mother during a phone call that once she arrived in Philadelphia, Weston would not let her contact anyone back home, according to ABC News affiliate WPBF. "Once (the victims) were out there in Philadelphia, she was not allowed to be outside," Rodriguez's mother, Juana Rodriguez, told WPBF. Dungeon Case Finds Two Girls Who Have Been Missing A task force is working around the clock to try and locate as many as 50 possible victims of the alleged fraud and kidnapping ring that is said to have spanned a number of states including Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and now Pennsylvania. Police identified the four Philadelphia victims as Derwin McLemire, 41, of North Carolina; Herbert Knowles, 40 of Virginia; and Tamara Breeden, 29, and Edwin Sanabria, 31, both of Philadelphia. Detectives also found dozens of identification cards, power-of-attorney forms and other documents. Philadelphia police formed a task force to investigate the case as authorities try to find as many as 50 more possible fraud victims, Officer Jillian Russell said. The four defendants are believed to have moved from Texas to Florida to Philadelphia with the kidnapped individuals, fleeing each place when authorities began to close in on them, according to Florida authorities. A spokesman for West Palm Beach said that the city had shut off the water supply to the group's home multiple times, but Weston or other individuals in the home had stolen water meters and illegally turned their water back on. The group was eventually evicted from their home in West Palm Beach, Fla.., according to WPBF. Gregory Thomas was also arrested twice while living in West Palm Beach, once for burglary and once for grand larceny. He was convicted only of the burglary. ||||| When Philadelphia police liberated four mentally disabled adults Saturday from the Tacony "dungeon" that became their last stop on a cross-country odyssey of alleged abuse, 19-year-old Beatrice Weston was upstairs. In a locked closet. Police said Wednesday that Weston, 19, the niece of the accused mastermind of a kidnapping and social security fraud scheme, remained tucked in an apartment closet at 4724 Longshore Avenue Saturday while police tried to sort out what they found downstairs. There, officers were trying to determine how four intellectually disabled adults ended up locked in a subbasement, one of them chained to a boiler. Beatrice Weston was later moved from the closet to another location, avoiding detection. Police found her in Frankford on Wednesday and took her into protective custody, investigators said. Since that time, police have taken into protective custody eight children who apparently were under the care of Linda Ann Weston, who is being held by police on kidnapping and assault charges, along with two other men. Police are also interviewing at least three other teenagers with ties to the group. Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey Wednesday described horrific abuse suffered by Beatrice Weston, Linda Weston's niece. Ramsey said he had never seen such signs of abuse on a living person, with signs of pellet gun wounds and burns from a heated spoon. Beatrice Weston has been reported missing since she was 8, said Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman. Beatrice Weston was part of some kind of feud between Linda Ann Weston and Beatrice's mother, Vicky Weston, Evers said. Police believe two of the eight children taken in by police, a boy and girl ages 5 and 2, were born to Tamara Breeden, one of the four people found locked in the Tacony basement. The children's father is one of the other victims, police said. Mayor Nutter described the case as an "an incredibly tangled web of horror." Police described a tense scramble to find and identify the children traveling with Linda Ann Weston after police in West Palm Beach, Fla., alerted them that she had children in her care. Weston left West Palm Beach suddenly in early October and arrived in Philadelphia around Oct. 3, police said. She was accompanied by two men who were arrested with her on Saturday - Gregory Thomas, described as Linda Ann Weston's boyfriend, and Eddie Wright, a self-described "reverend." Contact staff writer Allison Steele at 215-854-2641 or [email protected]. ||||| Eight children and teens linked to the accused Philadelphia basement captors were in protective custody on Wednesday, including a teen so badly abused that "it makes you want to cry," the city's police commissioner said. Four accused captors are charged with kidnapping four mentally handicapped adults, each with the capacity of a 10-year-old child, found in a basement dungeon in what authorities said was a scheme to steal their Social Security disability checks. The four adults were discovered malnourished and imprisoned in the filthy basement room over the weekend. One was chained to a furnace. Authorities said two of those held had been captive for roughly 11 years. Police said they also had eight children and teens in protective custody, the youngest a 2-year-old, and were working to determine the nature of their relationships with both the suspects and captives. One of the teens, Beatrice Weston, 19, is a niece of suspect Linda Ann Weston and had been beaten and tortured, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. She had been reported missing in 2009. The dank sub-basement room in Philadelphia where the four weak and malnourished mentally disabled adults were found. "It is remarkable that she is alive," Ramsey said, adding that she was covered in burn marks and suffered pellet gun wounds on her ankles. "It is absolutely one of the worst things you can see," he said. "It makes you want to cry when you see it." Police said that in addition to the eight children and teens, two other young people had also briefly been in custody before being released. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said he was not certain the word "horrific" was adequate to describe the situation. "This is sheer madness," Nutter told a news conference, adding the case was an "incredibly tangled web of horror." Linda Ann Weston, 51, of North Philadelphia; Gregory Thomas, 47, also of North Philadelphia; and Eddie Wright, 50, described as homeless, have all been arrested in the case, along with Jean McIntosh, 32, who is Weston's daughter and was arrested on Wednesday. Weston remains jailed on $2.5 million bail, along with Thomas, whom she described as her boyfriend, and Wright. More than 30 years ago, Weston was convicted of starving to death a 25-year-old man in her apartment in North Philadelphia and served eight years in prison, authorities said. Police in Virginia confirmed they investigated the 2008 death of a woman living with Weston, who's accused of being the ringleader in the Philadelphia basement case and who cleared out of the Norfolk home hours after calling police about the death. A Virginia death certificate said 39-year-old Maxine Lee died of meningitis but also suffered from a wasting disease. The suspects in the current case were charged with a lengthy list of crimes, including kidnapping, conspiracy, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and assault. The four captives were discovered by a landlord during a check of the two-story apartment house in the working-class Tacony neighborhood. Police identified them as Derwin McLemire, 41, of North Carolina; Herbert Knowles, 40, of Virginia; and Tamara Breeden, 29, and Edwin Sanabria, 31, both of Philadelphia. Police say there may be as many as 50 victims in multiple states in the case. The case could be among the first of its kind prosecuted as a federal hate crime, according to a law-enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is named for two victims of notorious hate-based killings and expands earlier federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation or disability, among other things. The law has been used sparingly since its passage. The first to go to trial was the case of Frankie Mayberry, of Arkansas, who was convicted in May of attacking a car last year with five Hispanic men inside it. Police believe Weston had been stealing the Philadelphia victims' Social Security disability checks, perhaps as part of a much larger fraud scheme. They found dozens of other Social Security and identification cards, along with power of attorney documents, in a search of McIntosh's apartment, where Weston had been staying. Weston was legally disqualified from cashing the victims' government disability checks because of her criminal past. But she apparently did anyway, enabled in part by a lack of accountability and follow-through by government agencies and police. The Social Security Protection Act of 2004 generally bars people who have been imprisoned for more than a year from becoming representative payees, those who cash someone else's check. Yet a 2010 report by Social Security's watchdog found that staff members do not perform background checks to determine if payees have criminal records. The report from the Social Security Administration's Office of the Inspector General said that people who apply to become payees are supposed to answer a question on whether they've ever been convicted of an offense and imprisoned for more than a year. But the report noted that the agency recognizes that self-reporting of such information "is not always reliable." The inspector general said that in the cases it reviewed, about 6 percent of non-relative payees had been imprisoned for longer than a year and "may pose a risk to the beneficiaries they serve." A Social Security spokesman declined to provide details of the agency's investigation into Weston but said the agency recently strengthened oversight of payees.

– Police rescued eight children from a Philadelphia home where four mentally disabled adults were found chained in a cellar. The kids ranged in age from a 2-year-old to a 19-year-old girl, who had been snatched 10 years ago and tortured so horribly it "makes you want to cry," said the police commissioner. Beatrice Weston, who was locked in a closet when police discovered the adults in the cellar, was taken from her mother's home at the age of 8 by her aunt, Linda Weston, following a family feud, said investigators. The girl had pellet-gun scars, burn marks, open wounds on her head, and badly healed broken bones, reports ABC News. "This girl was beaten, tortured, absolutely the worst thing you can see one person do to another," said Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. "I've never seen anything like this, that kind of cruelty over and over again. No penalty is too harsh for the people who did this." Two of the younger children, who were severely malnourished, are believed to be the son and daughter of two of the imprisoned adults, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Linda Weston, 51, her boyfriend, a second man, and Weston's adult daughter have been charged with a long list of crimes. Police believe they may have victimized as many as 50 people in a plot to steal their Social Security checks. Mayor Michael Nutter called the situation in Weston's apartment building "sheer madness," adding that the case is an "incredibly tangled web of horror."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.A 19-year-old girl who has been missing for 10 years has been found with open wounds, burn marks, scars, and broken bones by police investigating the allegedbasement dungeon and kidnapping ring in Philadelphia. Beatrice Weston, who was taken at the age of 8 by accused dungeon ring-leader Linda Weston, is now in a Philadelphia hospital recovering from the ongoing cruelty and torture by her captors, according to Philadelphia police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers. Linda Weston is the girl's aunt, and police said she took her niece after a family feud with her sister, Vicki Weston. The girl was found two days after police uncovered a basement dungeon in which four mentally handicapped adults were held against their will. Police have arrested and charged Linda Weston, 51, her daughter Jean McIntosh, 32, Weston's boyfriend Thomas Gregory, 47, and Eddie Wright, 49, with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and other related charges. Police pleaded with media to let the girl heal in privacy at the hospital. "This girl was beaten, tortured, absolutely the worst thing you can see one person do to another," said Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. Evers said Wednesday after finding the girl that he would be happy to see the four prosecuted wherever the punishments would be the harshest. "We're going to prepare to prosecute this here or, without hyperbole, wherever the prisons are going to be the worst. Federal prisons might be too nice," he said. "I've never seen anything like this before on a living person, that kind of cruelty over and over again. No penalty is too harsh to the people that did this, absolutely no penalty," Evers said. The lieutenant said the girl's torture in the "house of horrors" included signs of a spoon being heated and then burned into her skin. She had fractured bones that healed over incorrectly, and bones in her ankles showed the effects of being shot repeatedly with something like a pellet gun, he said. There are open wounds on her head, which she had covered with a hood when police found her. She had scars over her face, arms, and legs, he said. Police found Beatrice Weston among a group of 10 children and teens who were located Tuesday after Florida police tipped off Philadelphia cops that there may be more victims and that Weston had been living with at least seven children in her last home in West Palm Beach, Fla.. One of the individuals found was Weston, and another was McIntosh, whom police arrested. Two other adult males were initially taken into custody and then released. Police also took six children into protective custody, two of whom were the children of a mentally handicapped couple who were held captive by Weston for years, police said. The children, ages 2 and 5, were severely malnourished. Evers noted that the 2-year-old girl looked like a 6-month-old baby when she was found. Police are trying to identify the rest of the group, including three other young adults and four other children. Weston and Gregory's son, Thomas Gregory, Jr., was not among those taken into custody and has not been arrested in connection with the crimes. Benita Rodriguez, a 15-year-old girl from Florida who traveled to Philadelphia to be with Thomas Gregory, Jr., was also found by police on Monday. The girl told her mother during a phone call that once she arrived in Philadelphia, Weston would not let her contact anyone back home, according to ABC News affiliate WPBF. "Once (the victims) were out there in Philadelphia, she was not allowed to be outside," Rodriguez's mother, Juana Rodriguez, told WPBF. Dungeon Case Finds Two Girls Who Have Been Missing A task force is working around the clock to try and locate as many as 50 possible victims of the alleged fraud and kidnapping ring that is said to have spanned a number of states including Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and now Pennsylvania. Police identified the four Philadelphia victims as Derwin McLemire, 41, of North Carolina; Herbert Knowles, 40 of Virginia; and Tamara Breeden, 29, and Edwin Sanabria, 31, both of Philadelphia. Detectives also found dozens of identification cards, power-of-attorney forms and other documents. Philadelphia police formed a task force to investigate the case as authorities try to find as many as 50 more possible fraud victims, Officer Jillian Russell said. The four defendants are believed to have moved from Texas to Florida to Philadelphia with the kidnapped individuals, fleeing each place when authorities began to close in on them, according to Florida authorities. A spokesman for West Palm Beach said that the city had shut off the water supply to the group's home multiple times, but Weston or other individuals in the home had stolen water meters and illegally turned their water back on. The group was eventually evicted from their home in West Palm Beach, Fla.., according to WPBF. Gregory Thomas was also arrested twice while living in West Palm Beach, once for burglary and once for grand larceny. He was convicted only of the burglary. ||||| When Philadelphia police liberated four mentally disabled adults Saturday from the Tacony "dungeon" that became their last stop on a cross-country odyssey of alleged abuse, 19-year-old Beatrice Weston was upstairs. In a locked closet. Police said Wednesday that Weston, 19, the niece of the accused mastermind of a kidnapping and social security fraud scheme, remained tucked in an apartment closet at 4724 Longshore Avenue Saturday while police tried to sort out what they found downstairs. There, officers were trying to determine how four intellectually disabled adults ended up locked in a subbasement, one of them chained to a boiler. Beatrice Weston was later moved from the closet to another location, avoiding detection. Police found her in Frankford on Wednesday and took her into protective custody, investigators said. Since that time, police have taken into protective custody eight children who apparently were under the care of Linda Ann Weston, who is being held by police on kidnapping and assault charges, along with two other men. Police are also interviewing at least three other teenagers with ties to the group. Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey Wednesday described horrific abuse suffered by Beatrice Weston, Linda Weston's niece. Ramsey said he had never seen such signs of abuse on a living person, with signs of pellet gun wounds and burns from a heated spoon. Beatrice Weston has been reported missing since she was 8, said Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman. Beatrice Weston was part of some kind of feud between Linda Ann Weston and Beatrice's mother, Vicky Weston, Evers said. Police believe two of the eight children taken in by police, a boy and girl ages 5 and 2, were born to Tamara Breeden, one of the four people found locked in the Tacony basement. The children's father is one of the other victims, police said. Mayor Nutter described the case as an "an incredibly tangled web of horror." Police described a tense scramble to find and identify the children traveling with Linda Ann Weston after police in West Palm Beach, Fla., alerted them that she had children in her care. Weston left West Palm Beach suddenly in early October and arrived in Philadelphia around Oct. 3, police said. She was accompanied by two men who were arrested with her on Saturday - Gregory Thomas, described as Linda Ann Weston's boyfriend, and Eddie Wright, a self-described "reverend." Contact staff writer Allison Steele at 215-854-2641 or [email protected]. ||||| Eight children and teens linked to the accused Philadelphia basement captors were in protective custody on Wednesday, including a teen so badly abused that "it makes you want to cry," the city's police commissioner said. Four accused captors are charged with kidnapping four mentally handicapped adults, each with the capacity of a 10-year-old child, found in a basement dungeon in what authorities said was a scheme to steal their Social Security disability checks. The four adults were discovered malnourished and imprisoned in the filthy basement room over the weekend. One was chained to a furnace. Authorities said two of those held had been captive for roughly 11 years. Police said they also had eight children and teens in protective custody, the youngest a 2-year-old, and were working to determine the nature of their relationships with both the suspects and captives. One of the teens, Beatrice Weston, 19, is a niece of suspect Linda Ann Weston and had been beaten and tortured, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. She had been reported missing in 2009. The dank sub-basement room in Philadelphia where the four weak and malnourished mentally disabled adults were found. "It is remarkable that she is alive," Ramsey said, adding that she was covered in burn marks and suffered pellet gun wounds on her ankles. "It is absolutely one of the worst things you can see," he said. "It makes you want to cry when you see it." Police said that in addition to the eight children and teens, two other young people had also briefly been in custody before being released. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said he was not certain the word "horrific" was adequate to describe the situation. "This is sheer madness," Nutter told a news conference, adding the case was an "incredibly tangled web of horror." Linda Ann Weston, 51, of North Philadelphia; Gregory Thomas, 47, also of North Philadelphia; and Eddie Wright, 50, described as homeless, have all been arrested in the case, along with Jean McIntosh, 32, who is Weston's daughter and was arrested on Wednesday. Weston remains jailed on $2.5 million bail, along with Thomas, whom she described as her boyfriend, and Wright. More than 30 years ago, Weston was convicted of starving to death a 25-year-old man in her apartment in North Philadelphia and served eight years in prison, authorities said. Police in Virginia confirmed they investigated the 2008 death of a woman living with Weston, who's accused of being the ringleader in the Philadelphia basement case and who cleared out of the Norfolk home hours after calling police about the death. A Virginia death certificate said 39-year-old Maxine Lee died of meningitis but also suffered from a wasting disease. The suspects in the current case were charged with a lengthy list of crimes, including kidnapping, conspiracy, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and assault. The four captives were discovered by a landlord during a check of the two-story apartment house in the working-class Tacony neighborhood. Police identified them as Derwin McLemire, 41, of North Carolina; Herbert Knowles, 40, of Virginia; and Tamara Breeden, 29, and Edwin Sanabria, 31, both of Philadelphia. Police say there may be as many as 50 victims in multiple states in the case. The case could be among the first of its kind prosecuted as a federal hate crime, according to a law-enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is named for two victims of notorious hate-based killings and expands earlier federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation or disability, among other things. The law has been used sparingly since its passage. The first to go to trial was the case of Frankie Mayberry, of Arkansas, who was convicted in May of attacking a car last year with five Hispanic men inside it. Police believe Weston had been stealing the Philadelphia victims' Social Security disability checks, perhaps as part of a much larger fraud scheme. They found dozens of other Social Security and identification cards, along with power of attorney documents, in a search of McIntosh's apartment, where Weston had been staying. Weston was legally disqualified from cashing the victims' government disability checks because of her criminal past. But she apparently did anyway, enabled in part by a lack of accountability and follow-through by government agencies and police. The Social Security Protection Act of 2004 generally bars people who have been imprisoned for more than a year from becoming representative payees, those who cash someone else's check. Yet a 2010 report by Social Security's watchdog found that staff members do not perform background checks to determine if payees have criminal records. The report from the Social Security Administration's Office of the Inspector General said that people who apply to become payees are supposed to answer a question on whether they've ever been convicted of an offense and imprisoned for more than a year. But the report noted that the agency recognizes that self-reporting of such information "is not always reliable." The inspector general said that in the cases it reviewed, about 6 percent of non-relative payees had been imprisoned for longer than a year and "may pose a risk to the beneficiaries they serve." A Social Security spokesman declined to provide details of the agency's investigation into Weston but said the agency recently strengthened oversight of payees.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Thom Yorke performs during Pathway to Paris at Le Trianon on Dec. 4, 2015 in Paris. The couple's 2015 breakup heavily influenced Radiohead's 'A Moon Shaped Pool' album. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s former partner, Rachel Owen, died Sunday (Dec. 18) at 48 following a battle with cancer. A celebrated scholar and artist, Owen was a retained lecturer in Italian at the University of Oxford's Pembroke College. She continued to teach as her health declined during the past year. Owen was an expert in medieval Italian literature and a renowned artist and printmaker. One of her last works, a series of prints inspired by the cantos of Dante’s first book of The Divine Comedy, will be exhibited at Pembroke’s JCR Art Gallery. While Owen and Yorke were together for 23 years, she lived a private life and was rarely seen in public with the singer. The couple had two children together -- a son, Noah, and a daughter, Agnes, age 15 and 12. Their August 2015 separation heavily influenced Radiohead’s latest album, A Moon Shaped Pool. ||||| It is with great sadness that the College marks the death of Dr Rachel Owen, who was a Retained Lecturer in Italian here at Pembroke. Dr Owen was an internationally renowned artist – mixing photography and printmaking – and at the same time a scholar in medieval Italian literature. As Retained Lecturer, she used to teach Dante’s Divine Comedy to Pembroke’s finalists in Italian. Dr Owen’s parallel passion for art and literature was already established in her university years at Exeter, where she studied Italian and Fine Art. She then moved to Royal Holloway, London, where she completed a PhD on the illustrations of the early manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Each year, her Pembroke students enjoyed the pleasure and the privilege of a guided tour through the manuscripts of the Divine Comedy held at the Bodleian Library. Despite her declining health from cancer in the last year, she asked to continue to teach, which she did right until the end of last Michaelmas term. She was 48 years old and leaves behind a son, Noah, and a daughter, Agnes, aged 15 and 12. One of her latest artistic productions was a series of prints inspired by the Cantos of Dante’s first book of the Divine Comedy. The prints will be exhibited at Pembroke’s JCR Art Gallery during Trinity term. Rachel Owen, died on Sunday 18th December. ||||| Rachel Owen, artist, Oxford University lecturer and the former long-term partner of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, died on Sunday. She was 48 and had suffered from cancer. Owen and Yorke split last year after a 23-year-long relationship, and he announced the news in a statement. The pair have two children, Noah, who is 15, and Agnes, who is 12. This year, Yorke made reference to their split in Radiohead's most recent album, A Moon Shaped Pool. The pair met as art students at Exeter University. Owen was an artist and a printmaker but worked at Oxford University, where she was a Retained Lecturer in Italian at Pembroke College. Pembroke College announced her death in an obituary posted online on Monday. Owen had a PhD on the illustrations of the early manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The work inspired one of her last artistic projects, a series of prints that will be exhibited at Pembroke’s JCR Art Gallery next Spring. Owen continued to teach into her last months despite her ailing health. Yorke and Owen led a very private life, and were rarely seen together in public. However, fans believe that the lyrics and video for Daydreaming, a single from A Moon Shaped Pool, made reference to the impact of the end of their relationship on Yorke. The repeated phrase "half of my life" is believed to refer to the time the then-47-year-old had spent with Owen. ||||| "Daydreaming" lyrics RADIOHEAD LYRICS Dreamers They never learn They never learn Beyond the point Of no return Of no return And it's too late The damage is done The damage is done This goes Beyond me Beyond you The white room By window Where the sun goes Through We are Just happy to serve Just happy to serve You efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH Visit www.azlyrics.com for these lyrics. Thanks to Tyler for correcting these lyrics. ||||| Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Vaites, produciuse un problema na conexión co servidor. Queres tentalo de novo? Incluír o chío pai Incluír multimedia Ao inserires contido de Twitter no teu sitio web ou na túa aplicación, aceptas o Acordo de programadores e a Normativa de programadores. Previsualizar

– Rachel Owen, the former longtime partner of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, died Sunday following a battle with cancer. She was 48. Owen and Yorke—parents to two children, aged 12 and 15—met as art students at Exeter University before starting a 23-year relationship that ended in August 2015, reports the Telegraph. Fans believe the breakup inspired Radiohead's latest album A Moon Shaped Pool, and especially the single "Daydreaming," with lyrics stating, "And it's too late, the damage is done ... This goes beyond me, beyond you." Owen—who tended to stay out of the spotlight—was an artist, printmaker, and lecturer at Oxford University's Pembroke College, where she specialized in medieval Italian literature, reports Billboard. Owen, who also completed a PhD on illustrations in early versions of Dante's Divine Comedy, continued to teach despite her health struggles. Prints she created with inspiration from the Divine Comedy will be displayed at the college next year, according to an obituary. Yorke has been silent on Twitter in the days since her death.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Thom Yorke performs during Pathway to Paris at Le Trianon on Dec. 4, 2015 in Paris. The couple's 2015 breakup heavily influenced Radiohead's 'A Moon Shaped Pool' album. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s former partner, Rachel Owen, died Sunday (Dec. 18) at 48 following a battle with cancer. A celebrated scholar and artist, Owen was a retained lecturer in Italian at the University of Oxford's Pembroke College. She continued to teach as her health declined during the past year. Owen was an expert in medieval Italian literature and a renowned artist and printmaker. One of her last works, a series of prints inspired by the cantos of Dante’s first book of The Divine Comedy, will be exhibited at Pembroke’s JCR Art Gallery. While Owen and Yorke were together for 23 years, she lived a private life and was rarely seen in public with the singer. The couple had two children together -- a son, Noah, and a daughter, Agnes, age 15 and 12. Their August 2015 separation heavily influenced Radiohead’s latest album, A Moon Shaped Pool. ||||| It is with great sadness that the College marks the death of Dr Rachel Owen, who was a Retained Lecturer in Italian here at Pembroke. Dr Owen was an internationally renowned artist – mixing photography and printmaking – and at the same time a scholar in medieval Italian literature. As Retained Lecturer, she used to teach Dante’s Divine Comedy to Pembroke’s finalists in Italian. Dr Owen’s parallel passion for art and literature was already established in her university years at Exeter, where she studied Italian and Fine Art. She then moved to Royal Holloway, London, where she completed a PhD on the illustrations of the early manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Each year, her Pembroke students enjoyed the pleasure and the privilege of a guided tour through the manuscripts of the Divine Comedy held at the Bodleian Library. Despite her declining health from cancer in the last year, she asked to continue to teach, which she did right until the end of last Michaelmas term. She was 48 years old and leaves behind a son, Noah, and a daughter, Agnes, aged 15 and 12. One of her latest artistic productions was a series of prints inspired by the Cantos of Dante’s first book of the Divine Comedy. The prints will be exhibited at Pembroke’s JCR Art Gallery during Trinity term. Rachel Owen, died on Sunday 18th December. ||||| Rachel Owen, artist, Oxford University lecturer and the former long-term partner of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, died on Sunday. She was 48 and had suffered from cancer. Owen and Yorke split last year after a 23-year-long relationship, and he announced the news in a statement. The pair have two children, Noah, who is 15, and Agnes, who is 12. This year, Yorke made reference to their split in Radiohead's most recent album, A Moon Shaped Pool. The pair met as art students at Exeter University. Owen was an artist and a printmaker but worked at Oxford University, where she was a Retained Lecturer in Italian at Pembroke College. Pembroke College announced her death in an obituary posted online on Monday. Owen had a PhD on the illustrations of the early manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The work inspired one of her last artistic projects, a series of prints that will be exhibited at Pembroke’s JCR Art Gallery next Spring. Owen continued to teach into her last months despite her ailing health. Yorke and Owen led a very private life, and were rarely seen together in public. However, fans believe that the lyrics and video for Daydreaming, a single from A Moon Shaped Pool, made reference to the impact of the end of their relationship on Yorke. The repeated phrase "half of my life" is believed to refer to the time the then-47-year-old had spent with Owen. ||||| "Daydreaming" lyrics RADIOHEAD LYRICS Dreamers They never learn They never learn Beyond the point Of no return Of no return And it's too late The damage is done The damage is done This goes Beyond me Beyond you The white room By window Where the sun goes Through We are Just happy to serve Just happy to serve You efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH efil ym fo flaH Visit www.azlyrics.com for these lyrics. Thanks to Tyler for correcting these lyrics. ||||| Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Saber máis Vaites, produciuse un problema na conexión co servidor. Queres tentalo de novo? Incluír o chío pai Incluír multimedia Ao inserires contido de Twitter no teu sitio web ou na túa aplicación, aceptas o Acordo de programadores e a Normativa de programadores. Previsualizar

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Description A previously well 30-year-old woman re-presented to the emergency department complaining of worsening central abdominal pain initially colicky at first presentation 2 days earlier. She was tachycardic at 105 and other vital signs were normal. Her abdomen was peritonitic. At initial presentation, she was thought to have biliary colic, even though ultrasound and hepatobiliary iminodiacetic acid scans were normal. She did not have plain abdominal films. Laboratory studies were normal. CT of the abdomen revealed a metallic wire-shaped foreign body at the mesenteric root of a small bowel volvulus (figure 1). The patient underwent an emergency laparotomy which discovered mid–small bowel ischaemia from a band adhesion related to the perforation of a 7 cm piece of orthodontic wire (figure 2). The wire penetrated through the small bowel and the small bowel mesentery and to another loop of the mid–small bowel. This had formed an axis around which the volvulus developed. Adhesiolysis was performed but no bowel resected. The patient had not worn orthodontic braces for 10 years and did not recall ingesting the wire or having her braces wire go missing. View larger version: Download as PowerPoint Slide Figure 1 CT image (coronal) of orthodontic wire at the root of the small bowel volvulus. View larger version: Download as PowerPoint Slide Figure 2 Intraoperative photograph of the orthodontic wire embedded in the small bowel mesentery after the ischaemic bowel was released. Most inert ingested objects, if they pass the cricopharyngeal sphincter, will pass spontaneously.1 The most common site for perforation or obstruction is the ileocaecal valve.1 The case we describe here is therefore novel in the decade delay in presentation and the clinical sequelae. ||||| Ordinarily, when we eat something harmful, we get sick fairly quickly, or the item passes through our bowels in a normal fashion. Neither happened in this woman's case. But the woman hadn’t had surgery. Still, a CT scan—a type of x-ray—did reveal that an object was behind the woman’s woes. A thin metallic wire was poking at her intestines. The woman hadn’t recently had surgery which ruled out the likelihood that a surgeon had accidentally left something behind—something that happens surprisingly often. A 2013 inquiry, by the healthcare nonprofit The Joint Commission found that over a seven-year period in the United States, surgeons left behind 770 objects—ranging from gauze and towels to broken parts of instrument—in patients. Objects left behind can often cause a range of health issues and even death. “Then we looked at kidney function and liver function as well to tell if there was some kind of larger problem affecting other organs” Dr. Talia Shepherd told Popular Science. Shepherd was one of the physicians handling the woman’s case and wrote about the experience in a case study recently published in the journal BMJ Case Reports Blood tests that look for inflammatory markers in white blood cells—the cells of the immune system—were normal. This suggested that her woes weren’t caused by an infection. When a thirty-year-old woman turned up to the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, in Western Australia complaining about an incredible amount of stomach pain, the cause of her suffering initially eluded the physicians trying to treat her. The area circled in blue highlights the braces wire they saw on the CT scan. “We were all a bit dumfounded,” says Shepherd. “It wasn't what I was expecting to find at all.” “The other thing that we see not infrequently are fish bones,” added Shepherd. “So, people swallow fish bones and then perforate through the bowel and I thought possible that's what it was. But looking at the density on the CT scan the radiologist said it was something metallic.” Ten years earlier, the patient had worn braces. And somehow—it’s not clear how—she swallowed one of the wires used to straighten her teeth. The filament clocked in at just under three inches. This isn’t the weirdest thing Dr. Shepherd has seen someone swallow, “In terms of objects that people have swallowed, I've seen some pretty weird things,” she says, “But we'll it to leave to people's imaginations.” A quick google search turns up cases of people swallowing a Sponge Bob Square Pants keychain, an LED light and so on. But what makes this case so strange is that the item stuck around for so long without causing any problems. “The case is so unique is because normally if you swallow something like that it presents earlier,” says Shepherd. The digestive tract, from your mouth all the way to your bowels has plenty of twists and turns where that braces wire could have gotten stuck and started causing problems. There were plenty of opportunities along that particular digestive path during the decade that the patient carried the wire inside of her body. “People normally present much earlier,” says Shepherd, “kind of right after they’ve swallowed it or when it’s in the stomach really, because that’s obviously where it has a high risk of causing a perforation.” But it didn’t. Instead it just sat somewhere in her digestive system silently for a decade, until one day it shifted, leaving her with an intense pain, eventually bringing her to the hospital and Shepherd. The doctors surgically removed the wire and now, says Shepherd, “She's totally well and kind of taken it in her stride and moving on with her life. She recovered well.” ||||| Most people who get their braces off are happy to forget about their years of dental "train tracks." But one woman in Australia had her braces come back to haunt her when doctors discovered a piece of dental wire tearing through her abdomen, according to a new report. The wire had been in her digestive tract for 10 years before she started showing symptoms, the report said. The woman, who was 30 when the report was written, went to the emergency room after experiencing worsening abdominal pain for two days. At first, doctors thought the pain might be due to a gallstone, but a computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a wire-shaped object in her small intestine. The woman underwent emergency surgery, and doctors found a 2.8-inch-long (7 centimeters) piece of orthodontic wire in her intestine. The wire had pierced through several parts of her small intestine, which caused the intestine to twist around itself, the report said. [11 Weird Things People Have Swallowed] The woman said it had been a decade since she had worn braces, and she didn't remember ever swallowing a piece of wire or having a wire go missing, the report said. The wire was removed, and the woman recovered completely with no further complications. The report shows that doctors should consider "foreign body ingestion" as a possible cause of abdominal pain if the patient does not have a medical or surgical history that might explain the pain, the authors said. The report was published today (Aug. 7) in the journal BMJ Case Reports.. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Wire from dental braces worn 10 years ago removed from woman's bowel in emergency surgery Posted Surgeons have removed a piece of orthodontic wire from a Perth woman's abdomen, 10 years after she stopped wearing braces and who had no memory of ever swallowing it. WARNING: This story contains surgical images The 30-year-old went to the emergency department at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Nedlands several months ago complaining of severe abdominal pain. A CT scan revealed the seven-centimetre piece of wire had punctured her small bowel in several places. The case was published in BMJ Case Studies this week. General surgery registrar Talia Shepherd told ABC Radio Perth that when the woman came to the hospital complaining of upper abdominal cramping, it was attributed to her gall bladder and she was sent home after pain abated. "But she presented two days later with very severe abdominal pain that led us to put her into a CT scanner straight away and then take her to theatre based on what we found," Dr Shepherd said. "We saw that in the middle quite a large loop of dilated, unhappy bowel with this foreign body that could possibly have been a fish bone, because that is what we see more commonly. "The woman could not remember swallowing anything recently. "She was so unwell that we had to take her to theatre straight away to extract whatever it was, and it turned out to be a seven-centimetre piece of orthodontic wire from braces she had 10 years earlier. "When we extracted it we could still see the actual indent of the braces on the wire." After the surgery the woman said she had no recollection of swallowing a wire or that a piece of her braces had ever been missing. "That's what makes the case so unusual," Dr Shepherd said. "She certainly cannot give us any further information about how the wire got down there." Thankfully, after 10 years in her abdomen, the wire has not done any lasting damage. "She is now well and carrying on with her life," Dr Shepherd said. Topics: offbeat, medical-procedures, dental, human-interest, perth-6000

– If you've worn braces, you know it's a pain when orthopedic wires poke into your gums. As an Australian woman can attest, it's no fun when they pierce the small intestine, either. Doctors initially cited a gallbladder issue when the 30-year-old arrived at a hospital in Western Australia complaining of stomach pain. But when she returned two days later with worsening pain, a CT scan revealed "something metallic" was poking into "quite a large loop of dilated, unhappy bowel," Dr. Talia Shepherd tells ABC Radio Perth and Popular Science. "Something metallic" turned out to be a nearly 3-inch-long wire from the patient's braces, which had been removed a decade earlier. "We were all a bit dumbfounded," says Shepherd. "It wasn't what I was expecting to find at all." The woman "did not recall ingesting the wire or having her braces wire go missing," reads a description of the "unique" case in BMJ Case Reports. Shepherd describes the case as especially rare given that the wire must have been lodged in the digestive system for years. Normally, an item presents itself in the stomach soon after it's been swallowed because that's where "it has a high risk of causing a perforation," Shepherd says. In this case, doctors found the wire had punctured several spots in the small intestine, causing it to twist into what is known medically as a volvulus, reports Live Science. The wire was removed in an emergency surgery and the woman has since recovered, Shepherd says. (A 10-year-old girl swallowed part of a fidget spinner.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Description A previously well 30-year-old woman re-presented to the emergency department complaining of worsening central abdominal pain initially colicky at first presentation 2 days earlier. She was tachycardic at 105 and other vital signs were normal. Her abdomen was peritonitic. At initial presentation, she was thought to have biliary colic, even though ultrasound and hepatobiliary iminodiacetic acid scans were normal. She did not have plain abdominal films. Laboratory studies were normal. CT of the abdomen revealed a metallic wire-shaped foreign body at the mesenteric root of a small bowel volvulus (figure 1). The patient underwent an emergency laparotomy which discovered mid–small bowel ischaemia from a band adhesion related to the perforation of a 7 cm piece of orthodontic wire (figure 2). The wire penetrated through the small bowel and the small bowel mesentery and to another loop of the mid–small bowel. This had formed an axis around which the volvulus developed. Adhesiolysis was performed but no bowel resected. The patient had not worn orthodontic braces for 10 years and did not recall ingesting the wire or having her braces wire go missing. View larger version: Download as PowerPoint Slide Figure 1 CT image (coronal) of orthodontic wire at the root of the small bowel volvulus. View larger version: Download as PowerPoint Slide Figure 2 Intraoperative photograph of the orthodontic wire embedded in the small bowel mesentery after the ischaemic bowel was released. Most inert ingested objects, if they pass the cricopharyngeal sphincter, will pass spontaneously.1 The most common site for perforation or obstruction is the ileocaecal valve.1 The case we describe here is therefore novel in the decade delay in presentation and the clinical sequelae. ||||| Ordinarily, when we eat something harmful, we get sick fairly quickly, or the item passes through our bowels in a normal fashion. Neither happened in this woman's case. But the woman hadn’t had surgery. Still, a CT scan—a type of x-ray—did reveal that an object was behind the woman’s woes. A thin metallic wire was poking at her intestines. The woman hadn’t recently had surgery which ruled out the likelihood that a surgeon had accidentally left something behind—something that happens surprisingly often. A 2013 inquiry, by the healthcare nonprofit The Joint Commission found that over a seven-year period in the United States, surgeons left behind 770 objects—ranging from gauze and towels to broken parts of instrument—in patients. Objects left behind can often cause a range of health issues and even death. “Then we looked at kidney function and liver function as well to tell if there was some kind of larger problem affecting other organs” Dr. Talia Shepherd told Popular Science. Shepherd was one of the physicians handling the woman’s case and wrote about the experience in a case study recently published in the journal BMJ Case Reports Blood tests that look for inflammatory markers in white blood cells—the cells of the immune system—were normal. This suggested that her woes weren’t caused by an infection. When a thirty-year-old woman turned up to the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, in Western Australia complaining about an incredible amount of stomach pain, the cause of her suffering initially eluded the physicians trying to treat her. The area circled in blue highlights the braces wire they saw on the CT scan. “We were all a bit dumfounded,” says Shepherd. “It wasn't what I was expecting to find at all.” “The other thing that we see not infrequently are fish bones,” added Shepherd. “So, people swallow fish bones and then perforate through the bowel and I thought possible that's what it was. But looking at the density on the CT scan the radiologist said it was something metallic.” Ten years earlier, the patient had worn braces. And somehow—it’s not clear how—she swallowed one of the wires used to straighten her teeth. The filament clocked in at just under three inches. This isn’t the weirdest thing Dr. Shepherd has seen someone swallow, “In terms of objects that people have swallowed, I've seen some pretty weird things,” she says, “But we'll it to leave to people's imaginations.” A quick google search turns up cases of people swallowing a Sponge Bob Square Pants keychain, an LED light and so on. But what makes this case so strange is that the item stuck around for so long without causing any problems. “The case is so unique is because normally if you swallow something like that it presents earlier,” says Shepherd. The digestive tract, from your mouth all the way to your bowels has plenty of twists and turns where that braces wire could have gotten stuck and started causing problems. There were plenty of opportunities along that particular digestive path during the decade that the patient carried the wire inside of her body. “People normally present much earlier,” says Shepherd, “kind of right after they’ve swallowed it or when it’s in the stomach really, because that’s obviously where it has a high risk of causing a perforation.” But it didn’t. Instead it just sat somewhere in her digestive system silently for a decade, until one day it shifted, leaving her with an intense pain, eventually bringing her to the hospital and Shepherd. The doctors surgically removed the wire and now, says Shepherd, “She's totally well and kind of taken it in her stride and moving on with her life. She recovered well.” ||||| Most people who get their braces off are happy to forget about their years of dental "train tracks." But one woman in Australia had her braces come back to haunt her when doctors discovered a piece of dental wire tearing through her abdomen, according to a new report. The wire had been in her digestive tract for 10 years before she started showing symptoms, the report said. The woman, who was 30 when the report was written, went to the emergency room after experiencing worsening abdominal pain for two days. At first, doctors thought the pain might be due to a gallstone, but a computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a wire-shaped object in her small intestine. The woman underwent emergency surgery, and doctors found a 2.8-inch-long (7 centimeters) piece of orthodontic wire in her intestine. The wire had pierced through several parts of her small intestine, which caused the intestine to twist around itself, the report said. [11 Weird Things People Have Swallowed] The woman said it had been a decade since she had worn braces, and she didn't remember ever swallowing a piece of wire or having a wire go missing, the report said. The wire was removed, and the woman recovered completely with no further complications. The report shows that doctors should consider "foreign body ingestion" as a possible cause of abdominal pain if the patient does not have a medical or surgical history that might explain the pain, the authors said. The report was published today (Aug. 7) in the journal BMJ Case Reports.. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Wire from dental braces worn 10 years ago removed from woman's bowel in emergency surgery Posted Surgeons have removed a piece of orthodontic wire from a Perth woman's abdomen, 10 years after she stopped wearing braces and who had no memory of ever swallowing it. WARNING: This story contains surgical images The 30-year-old went to the emergency department at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Nedlands several months ago complaining of severe abdominal pain. A CT scan revealed the seven-centimetre piece of wire had punctured her small bowel in several places. The case was published in BMJ Case Studies this week. General surgery registrar Talia Shepherd told ABC Radio Perth that when the woman came to the hospital complaining of upper abdominal cramping, it was attributed to her gall bladder and she was sent home after pain abated. "But she presented two days later with very severe abdominal pain that led us to put her into a CT scanner straight away and then take her to theatre based on what we found," Dr Shepherd said. "We saw that in the middle quite a large loop of dilated, unhappy bowel with this foreign body that could possibly have been a fish bone, because that is what we see more commonly. "The woman could not remember swallowing anything recently. "She was so unwell that we had to take her to theatre straight away to extract whatever it was, and it turned out to be a seven-centimetre piece of orthodontic wire from braces she had 10 years earlier. "When we extracted it we could still see the actual indent of the braces on the wire." After the surgery the woman said she had no recollection of swallowing a wire or that a piece of her braces had ever been missing. "That's what makes the case so unusual," Dr Shepherd said. "She certainly cannot give us any further information about how the wire got down there." Thankfully, after 10 years in her abdomen, the wire has not done any lasting damage. "She is now well and carrying on with her life," Dr Shepherd said. Topics: offbeat, medical-procedures, dental, human-interest, perth-6000

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Photo: Getty A man is suing a cryonics firm for allegedly not respecting his late father’s wishes—or contract—to have his entire body cryogenically preserved. Instead, the firm severed and stored the man’s head, sending his cremated remains to his son. The firm in question is Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the first and largest business of its kind. The Arizona-based organization cools down recently deceased individuals in the hopes of bringing them back in the future. Laurence Pilgeram, a scientist long involved in the cryonics community, was Alcor’s 135th patient, and is the subject of the aforementioned lawsuit. Advertisement According to a complaint filed against Alcor by Dr. Pilgeram’s son, Kurt Pilgeram, “Alcor has intentionally caused severe emotional distress to Kurt when they cremated his father’s remains and had them shipped to his house in a box without notice. Furthermore, Alcor committed fraud against Kurt when they promised him that his father’s whole body would be preserved and then cut off his head.” The complaint states that Dr. Pilgeram entered into a contract with Alcor in October of 1990, which was approved by the organization in January 1991. Dr. Pilgeram was 67-years-old at the time. According to the complaint, he checked a box in the agreement for “Whole Body Suspension.” Dr. Pilgeram died in April 2015 at the age of 90 after hitting his head during a fall. According to the complaint, Kurt attempted to reach Alcor over the weekend—his father had died on a Friday—but no one answered his call. He was able to reach a senior consultant at the company on Monday, and he claims he told the Alcor employee that his father wanted his entire body preserved, a contractual agreement the employee allegedly promised to abide by. About two weeks later, after no word from Alcor, Kurt received a shipment with his father’s cremated remains, according to the complaint. His father’s head, however, remained stored at Alcor’s facility in Arizona. Advertisement According to the complaint, Alcor reasoned that Dr. Pilgeram’s entire body was not frozen because it was “medically unable to be preserved.” An Alcor spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email that, “At this time Alcor cannot specifically comment about this case but Alcor generally is confident that the legal system will properly run its course, as it has in the past.” Alcor’s services are still very much a niche option for the posthumous handling of an individual’s body. Dr. Pilgeram was only the 135th individual to opt in for the cryogenic preservation of his body with the firm as of 2015. There are now 159 bodies stored at the facility and over 1,000 paying “members,” according to the Telegraph. The organization was founded in 1972 and began preserving bodies in 1982. It’s also not a cheap option. As the complaint states, Dr. Pilgeram took out a life insurance policy intended to pay Alcor $120,000—the cost for preserving his entire body—at the time of his death. Preserving only the head costs $80,000, according to an earlier report from Gizmodo, and a membership costs $525 a year. Dr. Pilgeram was a cryopreservation member of the organization since 1991, according to Alcor. Advertisement The company did not shy away from announcing its business with Dr. Pilgeram. Alcor published a blog post shortly after his death, highlighting his close ties with the community and even stating that the firm did, in fact, sever his head. “Aaron Drake and Steve Graber traveled to California to perform a neuro separation in the mortuary’s prep room and then returned to Arizona for continued cool down which began on April 15, 2015,” the post states. The lawsuit also argues that Alcor is preying on the elderly, persuading them to sign agreements that the complaint states are “largely illusory,” adding that the company exploited Dr. Pilgeram by convincing him to enter an agreement that they didn’t plan on complying with. Although it can be argued that Dr. Pilgeram, a scientist devoted to studying cryogenics, wasn’t unfamiliar with the far-reaching promise of reanimating his body. “Not only is it unlikely that these individuals can ever be resurrected, in this case, as to Mr. Pilgeram, they promised to preserve his entire remains yet failed to do so without justification,” the complaint states. “The current problem is that it’s hard to sell something without a guarantee,” Alcor CEO Max More told Gizmodo in 2016. “We make absolutely no promises about our offering—and in fact, we even provide our clients with a lengthy list of all the things that could go wrong.” Advertisement Kurt is seeking at least one million dollars in damages, according to the complaint, with a court date reportedly set for January. [The Telegraph] ||||| A legal battle is brewing between a US cryogenics facility and the son of one of its clients after the company froze his deceased father’s head instead of his entire body, filings seen by The Daily Telegraph show. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona, is facing a $1million (UK 773,000) lawsuit after Kurt Pilgeram said he was sent a package from Alcor “which purportedly contained his father’s cremated remains, except allegedly for his father’s head” which had been transported to a cooler for preservation. According to legal documents, Mr Pilgeram was “shocked, horrified and extremely distressed” as he knew how important it was for his father, Dr Laurence Pilgeram, to have his...

– If medical science someday gains the ability to bring frozen dead people back to life, scientist Laurence Pilgeram is in for a nasty surprise. According to a lawsuit filed by his son, Kurt Pilgeram, cryogenics company Alcor froze only the elder Pilgeram's head after his death, when he had signed a contract to have his entire body preserved. The lawsuit states that Kurt Pilgeram was "shocked, horrified, and extremely distressed" when Alcor sent him a package purportedly containing the cremated remains of his father's body after the scientist's death in 2015 at age 90, the Telegraph reports. Pilgeram, who studied the effects of aging, signed a contract with the Arizona company in 1990. The lawsuit states that Pilgeram's contract was for "Whole Body Preservation," and the company "committed fraud against Kurt when they promised him that his father’s whole body would be preserved and then cut off his head." The son, who is seeking $1 million in damages, says Alcor told him the body was "medically unable to be preserved." He accuses the company of preying on the elderly and says it is unlikely its customers "can ever be resurrected." Alcor—believed to charge around $200,000 for preserving a body and $80,000 for just the head—would not comment on the specifics of the case to Gizmodo, but said it "generally is confident that the legal system will properly run its course, as it has in the past." (This dying teen won the right to have her body frozen.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Photo: Getty A man is suing a cryonics firm for allegedly not respecting his late father’s wishes—or contract—to have his entire body cryogenically preserved. Instead, the firm severed and stored the man’s head, sending his cremated remains to his son. The firm in question is Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the first and largest business of its kind. The Arizona-based organization cools down recently deceased individuals in the hopes of bringing them back in the future. Laurence Pilgeram, a scientist long involved in the cryonics community, was Alcor’s 135th patient, and is the subject of the aforementioned lawsuit. Advertisement According to a complaint filed against Alcor by Dr. Pilgeram’s son, Kurt Pilgeram, “Alcor has intentionally caused severe emotional distress to Kurt when they cremated his father’s remains and had them shipped to his house in a box without notice. Furthermore, Alcor committed fraud against Kurt when they promised him that his father’s whole body would be preserved and then cut off his head.” The complaint states that Dr. Pilgeram entered into a contract with Alcor in October of 1990, which was approved by the organization in January 1991. Dr. Pilgeram was 67-years-old at the time. According to the complaint, he checked a box in the agreement for “Whole Body Suspension.” Dr. Pilgeram died in April 2015 at the age of 90 after hitting his head during a fall. According to the complaint, Kurt attempted to reach Alcor over the weekend—his father had died on a Friday—but no one answered his call. He was able to reach a senior consultant at the company on Monday, and he claims he told the Alcor employee that his father wanted his entire body preserved, a contractual agreement the employee allegedly promised to abide by. About two weeks later, after no word from Alcor, Kurt received a shipment with his father’s cremated remains, according to the complaint. His father’s head, however, remained stored at Alcor’s facility in Arizona. Advertisement According to the complaint, Alcor reasoned that Dr. Pilgeram’s entire body was not frozen because it was “medically unable to be preserved.” An Alcor spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email that, “At this time Alcor cannot specifically comment about this case but Alcor generally is confident that the legal system will properly run its course, as it has in the past.” Alcor’s services are still very much a niche option for the posthumous handling of an individual’s body. Dr. Pilgeram was only the 135th individual to opt in for the cryogenic preservation of his body with the firm as of 2015. There are now 159 bodies stored at the facility and over 1,000 paying “members,” according to the Telegraph. The organization was founded in 1972 and began preserving bodies in 1982. It’s also not a cheap option. As the complaint states, Dr. Pilgeram took out a life insurance policy intended to pay Alcor $120,000—the cost for preserving his entire body—at the time of his death. Preserving only the head costs $80,000, according to an earlier report from Gizmodo, and a membership costs $525 a year. Dr. Pilgeram was a cryopreservation member of the organization since 1991, according to Alcor. Advertisement The company did not shy away from announcing its business with Dr. Pilgeram. Alcor published a blog post shortly after his death, highlighting his close ties with the community and even stating that the firm did, in fact, sever his head. “Aaron Drake and Steve Graber traveled to California to perform a neuro separation in the mortuary’s prep room and then returned to Arizona for continued cool down which began on April 15, 2015,” the post states. The lawsuit also argues that Alcor is preying on the elderly, persuading them to sign agreements that the complaint states are “largely illusory,” adding that the company exploited Dr. Pilgeram by convincing him to enter an agreement that they didn’t plan on complying with. Although it can be argued that Dr. Pilgeram, a scientist devoted to studying cryogenics, wasn’t unfamiliar with the far-reaching promise of reanimating his body. “Not only is it unlikely that these individuals can ever be resurrected, in this case, as to Mr. Pilgeram, they promised to preserve his entire remains yet failed to do so without justification,” the complaint states. “The current problem is that it’s hard to sell something without a guarantee,” Alcor CEO Max More told Gizmodo in 2016. “We make absolutely no promises about our offering—and in fact, we even provide our clients with a lengthy list of all the things that could go wrong.” Advertisement Kurt is seeking at least one million dollars in damages, according to the complaint, with a court date reportedly set for January. [The Telegraph] ||||| A legal battle is brewing between a US cryogenics facility and the son of one of its clients after the company froze his deceased father’s head instead of his entire body, filings seen by The Daily Telegraph show. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona, is facing a $1million (UK 773,000) lawsuit after Kurt Pilgeram said he was sent a package from Alcor “which purportedly contained his father’s cremated remains, except allegedly for his father’s head” which had been transported to a cooler for preservation. According to legal documents, Mr Pilgeram was “shocked, horrified and extremely distressed” as he knew how important it was for his father, Dr Laurence Pilgeram, to have his...

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Two entrepreneurs Richard Ballard and Steven Dring have set up a 2.5 acre crop farm below the Northern Line, near Clapham North in London. The first test garden, which has been up and running for a few months as part of a commercial project called Growing Underground, backed by television chef Michel Roux junior. The “farm” itself consists of table-height beds of hemp in which salads and herbs are being grown hydroponically. That means nutrient-rich water floods the beds once a day before being slowly drained away, with no soil involved in the process. Above each bed are strips of special low energy LED lights. They use special low energy LED bulbs and an integrated hydroponics system to grow a range of micro-herbs, shoots, miniature vegetables and other delicacies to be sold to restaurants, supermarkets and wholesalers The advantage of being underground is it is insulated, so the temperature can be kept stable and the rent is considerably less than if they used on a normal warehouse in central London. The pair plan to grow a range of herbs, shoots, vegetables to sell to restaurants. ||||| We prioritize sustainable growing practices, and are working towards carbon neutral certification. Our hydroponics system uses 70% less water than traditional open-field farming, and all nutrients are kept within the closed-loop system removing any risk of agricultural run-off. Since we’re limiting food miles and keeping our produce local, our leaves can be in your kitchen within 4 hours of being picked and packed. Currently we are providing to wholesalers, local restaurants, and Londoners through Farmdrop, and you’ll be able to find us in the retail market soon.

– A pair of Londoners have taken up farming in the city—about 100 feet underground. Their business, supported by TV chef Michel Roux Jr., uses a former air raid shelter from World War II as a place to grow vegetables and herbs. The project, called Growing Underground, spreads across about 2.5 acres under the London Underground, the Telegraph reports. The plants are grown under LED lights using hydroponics, which provides nutrients in water, Mashable explains. The company's goal is eco-friendliness: Growing Underground's website says it has "zero effect on the environment." The underground system uses 70% less water than a typical farm, the company says, noting that it doesn't use pesticides—since "there are no pests living this far underground." The carbon-neutral operation is right in the city, so products can go from farm to your plate within eight hours, the firm notes. And the food is available year-round. Growing Underground is currently aiming to raise some $490,000 for its effort via CrowdCube, Mashable notes. (On the other side of the pond, Vermont researchers are trying to revolutionize the way we make maple syrup.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Two entrepreneurs Richard Ballard and Steven Dring have set up a 2.5 acre crop farm below the Northern Line, near Clapham North in London. The first test garden, which has been up and running for a few months as part of a commercial project called Growing Underground, backed by television chef Michel Roux junior. The “farm” itself consists of table-height beds of hemp in which salads and herbs are being grown hydroponically. That means nutrient-rich water floods the beds once a day before being slowly drained away, with no soil involved in the process. Above each bed are strips of special low energy LED lights. They use special low energy LED bulbs and an integrated hydroponics system to grow a range of micro-herbs, shoots, miniature vegetables and other delicacies to be sold to restaurants, supermarkets and wholesalers The advantage of being underground is it is insulated, so the temperature can be kept stable and the rent is considerably less than if they used on a normal warehouse in central London. The pair plan to grow a range of herbs, shoots, vegetables to sell to restaurants. ||||| We prioritize sustainable growing practices, and are working towards carbon neutral certification. Our hydroponics system uses 70% less water than traditional open-field farming, and all nutrients are kept within the closed-loop system removing any risk of agricultural run-off. Since we’re limiting food miles and keeping our produce local, our leaves can be in your kitchen within 4 hours of being picked and packed. Currently we are providing to wholesalers, local restaurants, and Londoners through Farmdrop, and you’ll be able to find us in the retail market soon.

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Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show “what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,” according to Erdely’s notes of the conversation. Renda told Erdely that many assaults take place during parties where “the goal is to get everyone blackout drunk.” She continued, “There may be a much darker side of this” at some fraternities. “One girl I worked with closely alleged she was gang-raped in the fall, before rush, and the men who perpetrated it were young guys who were not yet members of the fraternity, and she remembers one of them saying to another … ‘C’mon man, don’t you want to be a brother?’” Renda added, “And obviously, maybe her memory of it isn’t perfect.” Erdely’s notes set down her reply: “I tell her that it’s totally plausible.” Renda put the writer in touch with a rising junior at UVA who would soon be known to millions of Rolling Stone readers as “Jackie,” a shortened version of her true first name. Erdely said later that when she first encountered Jackie, she felt the student “had this stamp of credibility” because a university employee had connected them. Earlier that summer, Renda had even appeared before a Senate committee and had made reference to Jackie’s allegations during her testimony – another apparent sign of the case’s seriousness. “I’d definitely be interested in sharing my story,” Jackie wrote in an email a few days later. Sign up for CJR 's daily email On July 14, Erdely phoned her. Jackie launched into a vivid account of a monstrous crime. She said, according to Erdely’s notes, that in September 2012, early in her freshman year, a third-year student she knew as a fellow lifeguard at the university’s aquatic center had invited her to “my first fraternity party ever.” After midnight, her date took her upstairs to a darkened bedroom. “I remember looking at the clock and it was 12:52 when we got into the room,” she told Erdely. Her date shut the door behind them. Jackie continued, according to the writer’s notes: My eyes were adjusting to the dark. And I said his name and turned around. … I heard voices and I started to scream and someone pummeled into me and told me to shut up. And that’s when I tripped and fell against the coffee table and it smashed underneath me and this other boy, who was throwing his weight on top of me. Then one of them grabbed my shoulders. … One of them put his hand over my mouth and I bit him – and he straight-up punched me in the face. … One of them said, ‘Grab its motherfucking leg.’ As soon as they said it, I knew they were going to rape me. The rest of Jackie’s account was equally precise and horrifying. The lifeguard coached seven boys as they raped her one by one. Erdely hung up the phone “sickened and shaken,” she said. She remembered being “a bit incredulous” about the vividness of some of the details Jackie offered, such as the broken glass from the smashed table. Yet Jackie had been “confident, she was consistent.” (Jackie declined to respond to questions for this report. Her lawyer said it “is in her best interest to remain silent at this time.” The quotations attributed to Jackie here come from notes Erdely said she typed contemporaneously or from recorded interviews.) [Footnote 1] Between July and October 2014, Erdely said, she interviewed Jackie seven more times. The writer was based in Philadelphia and had been reporting for Rolling Stone since 2008. She specialized in true-crime stories like “The Gangster Princess of Beverly Hills,” about a high-living Korean model and self-styled Samsung heiress accused of transporting 7,000 pounds of marijuana. She had written about pedophile priests and sexual assault in the military. Will Dana, the magazine’s managing editor, considered her “a very thorough and persnickety reporter who’s able to navigate extremely difficult stories with a lot of different points of view.” Jackie proved to be a challenging source. At times, she did not respond to Erdely’s calls, texts and emails. At two points, the reporter feared Jackie might withdraw her cooperation. Also, Jackie refused to provide Erdely the name of the lifeguard who had organized the attack on her. She said she was still afraid of him. That led to tense exchanges between Erdely and Jackie, but the confrontation ended when Rolling Stone’s editors decided to go ahead without knowing the lifeguard’s name or verifying his existence. After that concession, Jackie cooperated fully until publication. It was the worst day of my professional life. Erdely believed firmly that Jackie’s account was reliable. So did her editors and the story’s fact-checker, who spent more than four hours on the telephone with Jackie, reviewing every detail of her experience. “She wasn’t just answering, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she was correcting me,” the checker said. “She was describing the scene for me in a very vivid way. … I did not have doubt.” (Rolling Stone requested that the checker not be named because she did not have decision-making authority.) Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA” on Nov. 19, 2014. It caused a great sensation. “I was shocked to have a story that was going to go viral in this way,” Erdely said. “My phone was ringing off the hook.” The online story ultimately attracted more than 2.7 million views, more than any other feature not about a celebrity that the magazine had ever published. A week after publication, on the day before Thanksgiving, Erdely spoke with Jackie by phone. “She thanked me many times,” Erdely said. Jackie seemed “adrenaline-charged … feeling really good.” Erdely chose this moment to revisit the mystery of the lifeguard who had lured Jackie and overseen her assault. Jackie’s unwillingness to name him continued to bother Erdely. Apparently, the man was still dangerous and at large. “This is not going to be published,” the writer said, as she recalled. “Can you just tell me?” Jackie gave Erdely a name. But as the reporter typed, her fingers stopped. Jackie was unsure how to spell the lifeguard’s last name. Jackie speculated aloud about possible variations. “An alarm bell went off in my head,” Erdely said. How could Jackie not know the exact name of someone she said had carried out such a terrible crime against her – a man she professed to fear deeply? Over the next few days, worried about the integrity of her story, the reporter investigated the name Jackie had provided, but she was unable to confirm that he worked at the pool, was a member of the fraternity Jackie had identified or had other connections to Jackie or her description of her assault. She discussed her concerns with her editors. Her work faced new pressures. The writer Richard Bradley had published early if speculative doubts about the plausibility of Jackie’s account. Writers at Slate had challenged Erdely’s reporting during a podcast interview. She also learned that T. Rees Shapiro, a Washington Post reporter, was preparing a story based on interviews at the University of Virginia that would raise serious doubts about Rolling Stone’s reporting. Late on Dec. 4, Jackie texted Erdely, and the writer called back. It was by now after midnight. “We proceeded to have a conversation that led me to have serious doubts,” Erdely said. She telephoned her principal editor on the story, Sean Woods, and said she had now lost confidence in the accuracy of her published description of Jackie’s assault. Woods, who had been an editor at Rolling Stone since 2004, “was just stunned,” he said. He “raced into the office” to help decide what to do next. Later that day, the magazine published an editor’s note that effectively retracted Rolling Stone’s reporting on Jackie’s allegations of gang rape at the University of Virginia. “It was the worst day of my professional life,” Woods said. Failure and Its Consequences Rolling Stone’s repudiation of the main narrative in “A Rape on Campus” is a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking. The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine’s editors to reconsider publishing Jackie’s narrative so prominently, if at all. The published story glossed over the gaps in the magazine’s reporting by using pseudonyms and by failing to state where important information had come from. In late March, after a four-month investigation, the Charlottesville, Va., police department said that it had “exhausted all investigative leads” and had concluded, “There is no substantive basis to support the account alleged in the Rolling Stone article.” [Footnote 2] The story’s blowup comes as another shock to journalism’s credibility amid head-swiveling change in the media industry. The particulars of Rolling Stone’s failure make clear the need for a revitalized consensus in newsrooms old and new about what best journalistic practices entail, at an operating-manual-level of detail. As at other once-robust print magazines and newspapers, Rolling Stone’s editorial staff has shrunk in recent years as print advertising revenue has fallen and shifted online. The magazine’s full-time editorial ranks, not including art or photo staff, have contracted by about 25 percent since 2008. Yet Rolling Stone continues to invest in professional fact-checkers and to fund time-consuming investigations like Erdely’s. The magazine’s records and interviews with participants show that the failure of “A Rape on Campus” was not due to a lack of resources. The problem was methodology, compounded by an environment where several journalists with decades of collective experience failed to surface and debate problems about their reporting or to heed the questions they did receive from a fact-checking colleague. Erdely and her editors had hoped their investigation would sound an alarm about campus sexual assault and would challenge Virginia and other universities to do better. Instead, the magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations. (Social scientists analyzing crime records report that the rate of false rape allegations is 2 to 8 percent.) At the University of Virginia, “It’s going to be more difficult now to engage some people … because they have a preconceived notion that women lie about sexual assault,” said Alex Pinkleton, a UVA student and rape survivor who was one of Erdely’s sources. There has been other collateral damage. “It’s completely tarnished our reputation,” said Stephen Scipione, the chapter president of Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity Jackie named as the site of her alleged assault. “It’s completely destroyed a semester of our lives, specifically mine. It’s put us in the worst position possible in our community here, in front of our peers and in the classroom.” The university has also suffered. Rolling Stone’s account linked UVA’s fraternity culture to a horrendous crime and portrayed the administration as neglectful. Some UVA administrators whose actions in and around Jackie’s case were described in the story were depicted unflatteringly and, they say, falsely. Allen W. Groves, the University dean of students, and Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean of students, separately wrote to the authors of this report that the story’s account of their actions was inaccurate. [Footnote 3] In retrospect, Dana, the managing editor, who has worked at Rolling Stone since 1996, said the story’s breakdown reflected both an “individual failure” and “procedural failure, an institutional failure. … Every single person at every level of this thing had opportunities to pull the strings a little harder, to question things a little more deeply, and that was not done.” Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana (left) and Reporter Sabrina Erdely (Twitter and LinkedIn) Yet the editors and Erdely have concluded that their main fault was to be too accommodating of Jackie because she described herself as the survivor of a terrible sexual assault. Social scientists, psychologists and trauma specialists who support rape survivors have impressed upon journalists the need to respect the autonomy of victims, to avoid re-traumatizing them and to understand that rape survivors are as reliable in their testimony as other crime victims. These insights clearly influenced Erdely, Woods and Dana. “Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting,” Woods said. “We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice.” Erdely added: “If this story was going to be about Jackie, I can’t think of many things that we would have been able to do differently. … Maybe the discussion should not have been so much about how to accommodate her but should have been about whether she would be in this story at all.” Erdely’s reporting led her to other, adjudicated cases of rape at the university that could have illustrated her narrative, although none was as shocking and dramatic as Jackie’s. Yet the explanation that Rolling Stone failed because it deferred to a victim cannot adequately account for what went wrong. Erdely’s reporting records and interviews with participants make clear that the magazine did not pursue important reporting paths even when Jackie had made no request that they refrain. The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error but had little or nothing to do with protecting Jackie’s position. It would be unfortunate if Rolling Stone’s failure were to deter journalists from taking on high-risk investigations of rape in which powerful individuals or institutions may wish to avoid scrutiny but where the facts may be underdeveloped. There is clearly a need for a more considered understanding and debate among journalists and others about the best practices for reporting on rape survivors, as well as on sexual assault allegations that have not been adjudicated. This report will suggest ways forward. It will also seek to clarify, however, why Rolling Stone’s failure with “A Rape on Campus” need not have happened, even accounting for the magazine’s sensitivity to Jackie’s position. That is mainly a story about reporting and editing. ‘How Else Do You Suggest I Find It Out?’ By the time Rolling Stone’s editors assigned an article on campus sexual assault to Erdely in the spring of 2014, high-profile rape cases at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Vanderbilt and Florida State had been in the headlines for months. The Office of Civil Rights at the federal Department of Education was leaning on colleges to reassess and improve their policies. Across the country, college administrators had to adjust to stricter federal oversight as well as to a new generation of student activists, including women who declared openly that they had been raped at school and had not received justice. There were numerous reports of campus assault that had been mishandled by universities. At Columbia, an aggrieved student dragged a mattress around campus to call attention to her account of assault and injustice. The facts in these cases were sometimes disputed, but they had generated a wave of campus activism. “My original idea,” Dana said, was “to look at one of these cases and have the story be more about the process of what happens when an assault is reported and the sort of issues it brings up.” Jackie’s story seemed a powerful candidate for such a narrative. Yet once she heard the story, Erdely struggled to decide how much she could independently verify the details Jackie provided without jeopardizing Jackie’s cooperation. In the end, the reporter relied heavily on Jackie for help in getting access to corroborating evidence and interviews. Erdely asked Jackie for introductions to friends and family. She asked for text messages to confirm parts of Jackie’s account, for records from Jackie’s employment at the aquatic center and for health records. She even asked to examine the bloodstained red dress Jackie said she had worn on the night she said she was attacked. Jackie gave the reporter some help. She provided emails from a pool supervisor as evidence of her employment there. She introduced Erdely to Rachel Soltis, a freshman-year suitemate. Soltis confirmed that in January 2013, four months after the alleged attack, Jackie had told her that she had been gang-raped. Yet Jackie could also be hard to pin down. Other interviews Jackie said she would facilitate never materialized. “I felt frustrated, but I didn’t think she didn’t want to produce” corroboration, Erdely said. Eventually, Jackie told Erdely that her mother had thrown away the red dress. She also said that her mother would be willing to talk to Erdely, but the reporter said that when she called and left messages several times, the mother did not respond. There were a number of ways that Erdely might have reported further, on her own, to verify what Jackie had told her. Jackie told the writer that one of her rapists had been part of a small discussion group in her anthropology class. Erdely might have tried to verify independently that there was such a group and to identify the young man Jackie described. She might have examined Phi Kappa Psi’s social media for members she could interview and for evidence of a party on the night Jackie described. Erdely might have looked for students who worked at the aquatic center and sought out clues about the lifeguard Jackie had described. Any one of these and other similar reporting paths might have led to discoveries that would have caused Rolling Stone to reconsider its plans. But three failures of reporting effort stand out. They involve basic, even routine journalistic practice – not special investigative effort. And if these reporting pathways had been followed, Rolling Stone very likely would have avoided trouble. Three friends and a ‘shit show’ During their first interview, Jackie told Erdely that after she escaped the fraternity where seven men, egged on by her date, had raped her, she called three friends for help. She described the two young men and one woman – now former friends, she told Erdely – as Ryan, Alex and Kathryn. She gave first names only, according to Erdely’s notes. She said they met her in the early hours of Sept. 29, 2012, on the campus grounds. Jackie said she was “crying and crying” at first and that all she could communicate was that “something bad” had happened. She said her friends understood that she had been sexually assaulted. (In interviews for this report, Ryan and Alex said that Jackie told them that she had been forced to perform oral sex on multiple men.) In Jackie’s account to Erdely, Ryan urged her to go to the university women’s center or a hospital for treatment. But Alex and Kathryn worried that if she reported a rape, their social lives would be affected. “She’s going to be the girl who cried ‘rape’ and we’ll never be allowed into any frat party again,” Jackie recalled Kathryn saying. Jackie spoke of Ryan sympathetically, but the scene she painted for Rolling Stone’s writer was unflattering to all three former friends. Journalistic practice – and basic fairness – require that if a reporter intends to publish derogatory information about anyone, he or she should seek that person’s side of the story. Erdely said that while visiting UVA, she did ask Alex Pinkleton, a student and assault survivor, for help in identifying or contacting the three. (Pinkleton was not the “Alex” to whom Jackie referred in her account.) But Pinkleton said she would need to ask Jackie for permission to assist the writer. Erdely did not follow up with her. It should have been possible for Erdely to identify the trio independently. Facebook friend listings might have shown the names. Or, Erdely could have asked other current students, besides Pinkleton, to help. Instead, Erdely relied on Jackie. On July 29, she asked Jackie for help in speaking to Ryan, “about corroborating that night, just a second voice?” Jackie answered, according to the writer’s notes, that while “Ryan may be awkward, I don’t understand why he wouldn’t.” But Jackie did not respond to follow-up messages Erdely left. On Sept. 11, Erdely traveled to Charlottesville and met Jackie in person for the first time, at a restaurant near the UVA campus. With her digital recorder running, the reporter again asked about speaking to Ryan. “I did talk to Ryan,” Jackie disclosed. She said she had bumped into him and had asked if he would be interested in talking to Rolling Stone. Jackie went on to quote Ryan’s incredulous reaction: “No! … I’m in a fraternity here, Jackie, I don’t want the Greek system to go down, and it seems like that’s what you want to happen. … I don’t want to be a part of whatever little shit show you’re running.” “Ryan is obviously out,” Erdely told Jackie a little later. Yet Jackie never requested – then or later – that Rolling Stone refrain from contacting Ryan, Kathryn or Alex independently. “I wouldn’t say it was an obligation” to Jackie, Erdely said later. She worried, instead, that if “I work round Jackie, am I going to drive her from the process?” Jackie could be hard to get hold of, which made Erdely worry that her cooperation remained tentative. Yet Jackie never said that she would withdraw if Erdely sought out Ryan or conducted other independent reporting. “They were always on my list of people” to track down, Erdely said of the three. However, she grew busy reporting on UVA’s response to Jackie’s case, she said. She doesn’t remember having a distinct conversation about this issue with Woods, her editor. “We just kind of agreed. … We just gotta leave it alone.” Woods, however, recalled more than one conversation with Erdely about this. When Erdely said she had exhausted all the avenues for finding the friends, he said he agreed to let it go. If Erdely had reached Ryan Duffin – his true name – he would have said that he had never told Jackie that he would not participate in Rolling Stone’s “shit show,” Duffin said in an interview for this report. The entire conversation with Ryan that Jackie described to Erdely “never happened,” he said. Jackie had never tried to contact him about cooperating with Rolling Stone. He hadn’t seen Jackie or communicated with her since the previous April, he said. If Erdely had learned Ryan’s account that Jackie had fabricated their conversation, she would have changed course immediately, to research other UVA rape cases free of such contradictions, she said later. If Erdely had called Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock – their true names – to check their sides of Jackie’s account of Sept. 28 and 29, they would have denied saying any of the words Jackie attributed to them (as Ryan would have as well). They would have described for Erdely a history of communications with Jackie that would have left the reporter with many new questions. For example, the friends said that Jackie told them that her date on Sept. 28 was not a lifeguard but a student in her chemistry class named Haven Monahan. (The Charlottesville police said in March they could not identify a UVA student or any other person named Haven Monahan.) All three friends would have spoken to Erdely, they said, if they had been contacted. The episode reaffirms a truism of reporting: Checking derogatory information with subjects is a matter of fairness, but it can also produce surprising new facts. ‘Can you comment?’ Throughout her reporting, Erdely told Jackie and others that she wanted to publish the name of the fraternity where Jackie said she had been raped. Erdely felt Jackie “was secure” about the name of the fraternity: Phi Kappa Psi. Last October, as she was finishing her story, Erdely emailed Stephen Scipione, Phi Kappa Psi’s local chapter president. “I’ve become aware of allegations of gang rape that have been made against the UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi,” Erdely wrote. “Can you comment on those allegations?” It was a decidedly truncated version of the facts that Erdely believed she had in hand. She did not reveal Jackie’s account of the date of the attack. She did not reveal that Jackie said Phi Kappa Psi had hosted a “date function” that night, that prospective pledges were present or that the man who allegedly orchestrated the attack was a Phi Kappa Psi member who was also a lifeguard at the university aquatic center. Jackie had made no request that she refrain from providing such details to the fraternity. The university’s administration had recently informed Phi Kappa Psi that it had received an account of a sexual assault at the fraternity that had reportedly taken place in September 2012. Erdely knew that the fraternity had received a briefing from UVA but did not know its specific contents. In fact, in this briefing, Scipione said in a recent interview, UVA provided a mid-September date as the night of the assault – not Sept. 28. And the briefing did not contain the details that Jackie had provided Erdely. The university said only that according to the account it had received, a freshman woman had been drinking at a party, had gone upstairs and had been forced to have oral sex with multiple men. On Oct. 15, Scipione replied to Erdely’s request for comment. He had learned, he wrote to her by email, “that an individual who remains unidentified had supposedly reported to someone who supposedly reported to the University that during a party there was a sexual assault.” He added, “Even though this allegation is fourth hand and there are no details and no named accuser, the leadership and fraternity as a whole have taken this very seriously.” Erdely next telephoned Shawn Collinsworth, then Phi Kappa Psi’s national executive director. Collinsworth volunteered a summary of what UVA had passed on to the fraternity’s leaders: that there were allegations of “gang rape during Phi Psi parties” and that one assault “took place in September 2012.” Erdely asked him, according to her notes, “Can you comment?” If Erdely had provided Scipione and Collinsworth the full details she possessed instead of asking simply for “comment,” the fraternity might have investigated the facts she presented. After Rolling Stone published, Phi Kappa Psi said it did just that. Scipione said in an interview that a review of the fraternity’s social media archives and bank records showed that the fraternity had held no date function or other party on the night Jackie said she was raped. A comparison of fraternity membership rolls with aquatic center employment records showed that it had no members who worked as lifeguards, Scipione added. Erdely said Scipione had seemed “really vague,” so she focused on getting a reply from Collinsworth. “I felt that I gave him a full opportunity to respond,” she said. “I felt very strongly that he already knew what the allegations were because they’d been told by UVA.” As it turned out, however, the version of the attack provided to Phi Kappa Psi was quite different from and less detailed than the one Jackie had provided to Erdely. Scipione said that Rolling Stone did not provide the detailed information the fraternity required to respond properly to the allegations. “It was complete bullshit,” he said. “They weren’t telling me what they were going to write about. They weren’t telling me any dates or details.” Collinsworth said that he was also not provided the details of the attack that ultimately appeared in Rolling Stone. There are cases where reporters may choose to withhold some details of what they plan to write while seeking verification for fear that the subject might “front run” by rushing out a favorably spun version pre-emptively. There are sophisticated journalistic subjects in politics and business that sometimes burn reporters in this way. Even so, it is risky for a journalist to withhold detailed derogatory information from any subject before publication. Here, there was no apparent need to fear “front-running” by Phi Kappa Psi. Even if Rolling Stone did not trust Phi Kappa Psi’s motivations, if it had given the fraternity a chance to review the allegations in detail, the factual discrepancies the fraternity would likely have reported might have led Erdely and her editors to try to verify Jackie’s account more thoroughly. The mystery of “Drew” In her interviews, Jackie freely used a first name – but no last name – of the lifeguard she said had orchestrated her rape. On Sept. 16, for the first time, Erdely raised the possibility of tracking this man down. “Any idea what he’s up to now?” Erdely asked, according to her notes. “No, I just know he’s graduated. I’ve blocked him on Facebook,” Jackie replied. “One of my friends looked him up – she wanted to see him so she could recognize and kill him,” Jackie said, laughing. “I couldn’t even look at his Facebook page.” “How would you feel if I reached out to him for a comment?” Erdely asked, the notes record. “I’m not sure I would be comfortable with that.” That exchange inaugurated a six-week struggle between Erdely and Jackie. For a while, it seemed to Erdely as if the stalemate might lead Jackie to withdraw from cooperation altogether. On Oct. 20, Erdely asked again for the man’s last name. “I’m not going to use his name in the article, but I have to do my due diligence anyway,” Erdely told Jackie, according to the writer’s notes. “I imagine he’s going to say nothing, but it’s something I need to do.” “I don’t want to give his last name,” Jackie replied. “I don’t even want to get him involved in this. … He completely terrifies me. I’ve never been so scared of a person in my entire life, and I’ve never wanted to tell anybody his last name. … I guess part of me was thinking that he’d never even know about the article.” “Of course he’s going to know about the article,” Erdely said. “He’s going to read it. He probably knows about the article already.” Jackie sounded shocked, according to Erdely’s notes. “I don’t want to be the one to give you the name,” Jackie said. “How else do you suggest I find it out?” “I guess you could ask Phi Psi for their list,” Jackie suggested. After this conversation, Jackie stopped responding to Erdely’s calls and messages. “There was a point in which she disappeared for about two weeks,” Erdely said, “and we became very concerned” about Jackie’s well-being. “Her behavior seemed consistent with a victim of trauma.” Yet Jackie made no demand that Rolling Stone not try to identify the lifeguard independently. She even suggested a way to do so – by checking the fraternity’s roster. Nor did she condition her participation in the story on Erdely agreeing not to try to identify the lifeguard. Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting. We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice. Erdely did try to identify the man on her own. She asked Jackie’s friends if they could help. They demurred. She searched online to see if the clues she had would produce a full name. This turned up nothing definitive. “She was very aggressive about contacting” the lifeguard, said Pinkleton, one of the students Erdely asked for assistance. With the benefit of hindsight, to succeed, Erdely probably would have had to persuade students to access the aquatic center’s employment records, to find possible name matches. That might have taken time and luck. By October’s end, with the story scheduled for closing in just two weeks, Jackie was still refusing to answer Erdely’s texts and voicemails. Finally, on Nov. 3, after consulting with her editors, Erdely left a message for Jackie proposing to her a “solution” that would allow Rolling Stone to avoid contacting the lifeguard after all. The magazine would use a pseudonym; “Drew” was eventually chosen. After Erdely left this capitulating voicemail, Jackie called back quickly. According to Erdely, she now chatted freely about the lifeguard, still without using his last name. From that point on, through the story’s publication, Jackie cooperated. In December, Jackie told The Washington Post in an interview that after several interviews with Erdely, she had asked to be removed from the story, but that Erdely had refused. Jackie told the Post she later agreed to participate on condition that she be allowed to fact-check parts of her story. Erdely said in an interview for this report that she was completely surprised by Jackie’s statements to the Post and that Jackie never told her she wanted to withdraw from the story. There is no evidence of such an exchange between Jackie and Erdely in the materials Erdely submitted to Rolling Stone. There was, in fact, an aquatic center lifeguard who had worked at the pool at the same time as Jackie and had the first name she had used freely with Erdely. He was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi, however. The police interviewed him and examined his personal records. They found no evidence to link him to Jackie’s assault. If Rolling Stone had located him and heard his response to Jackie’s allegations, including the verifiable fact that he did not belong to Phi Kappa Psi, this might have led Erdely to reconsider her focus on that case. In any event, Rolling Stone stopped looking for him. ‘What Are They Hiding?’ “A Rape on Campus” had ambitions beyond recounting one woman’s assault. It was intended as an investigation of how colleges deal with sexual violence. The assignment was timely. The systems colleges have put in place to deal with sexual misconduct have come under intense scrutiny. These systems are works in progress, entangled in changing and sometimes contradictory federal rules that seek at once to keep students safe, hold perpetrators to account and protect every student’s privacy. The legal issues date to 1977, when five female students sued Yale University, arguing that they had been sexually harassed. The students invoked Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law that bans gender discrimination in education. They lost their case, but their argument – that sexual harassment and violence on campus threatened women’s access to education – prevailed over time. By the mid-1980s, hundreds of colleges had adopted procedures to manage sexual misconduct, from stalking to rape. If universities failed to do so adequately, they could lose federal funding. In late 2009, the Center for Public Integrity began to publish a series of articles that helped inspire even stricter federal guidelines. The articles bared problems with the first generation of campus response: botched investigations by untrained staff members; adjudication processes shrouded in secrecy; and sanctions so lacking that they sometimes allowed rapists, including repeat offenders, to remain on campus while their victims fled school. The Obama administration took up the cause. It pressured colleges to adopt more rigorous systems, and it required a lower threshold of guilt to convict a student before school tribunals. The new pressure caused confusion, however, and, in some cases, charges of injustice. Last October, a group of Harvard Law School professors wrote that its university’s revised sexual misconduct policy was “jettisoning balance and fairness in the rush to appease certain federal administrative officials.” Erdely’s choice of the University of Virginia as a case study was well timed. The week she visited campus, an 18-year-old UVA sophomore went missing and was later found to have been abducted and killed. The university had by then endured a number of highly visible sexual assault cases. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights had placed the school, along with 54 others, under a broad compliance review. “The overarching point of the article,” Erdely wrote in response to questions from The Washington Post last December, was not Jackie, but “the culture that greeted her and so many other UVA women I interviewed, who came forward with allegations, only to be met with indifference.” Erdely saw her reporting about UVA as an examination, she said in an interview for this report, of “the way colleges handle these types of things.” Jackie “was just the most dramatic example.” ‘A chilling effect’ After she heard Jackie’s shocking story, Erdely zeroed in on the obligation of universities under federal law to issue timely warnings when there is a “serious or continuing” threat to student safety. Erdely understood from Jackie that eight months after the alleged assault, she had reported to UVA about being gang-raped at the Phi Kappa Psi house on campus grounds, in what appeared to be a hazing ritual. The university, Rolling Stone reported in its published story, was remiss in not warning its students about this apparently predatory fraternity. According to the Charlottesville police, Jackie did meet with assistant dean of students Nicole Eramo on May 20, 2013. During that meeting, Jackie described her assault differently than she did later for Erdely, the police said, declining to provide details. According to members of the UVA community knowledgeable about the case, who asked not to be identified in order to speak about confidential university matters, Jackie recounted to Eramo the same story she had told her friends on the night of Sept. 28: She was forced to have oral sex with several men while at a fraternity party. Jackie did not name the fraternity where the assault occurred or provide names or details about her attackers, the sources said. No mention was made of hazing. (Citing student privacy and ongoing investigations, the UVA administration, through its communications office, declined to answer questions about the case.) Over the years, the Department of Education has issued guidelines that stress victim confidentiality and autonomy. This means survivors decide whether to report and what assistance they would like. “If she did not identify any individual or Greek organization by name, the university was very, very limited in what it can do,” said S. Daniel Carter, a campus safety advocate and director of the nonprofit 32 National Campus Safety Initiative. As Rolling Stone reported, at their May 2013 meeting, Eramo presented Jackie her options: reporting the assault to the police or to the university’s Sexual Misconduct Board. The dean also offered counseling and other services. She checked with Jackie in succeeding weeks to see whether she wanted to take action. She introduced Jackie to One Less, a student group made up of sexual assault survivors and their advocates. The university did not issue a warning at this point because Jackie did not file a formal complaint and her account did not include the names of assailants or a specific fraternity, according to the UVA sources. It also made no mention of hazing. I guess maybe I was surprised that nobody said, ‘Why haven’t you called them?’ But nobody did, and I wasn’t going to press that issue. Between that time and April 2014, the university received no further information about Jackie’s case, according to the police and UVA sources. On April 21, 2014, Jackie again met with Eramo, according to the police. She told the dean that she was now coming under pressure for her visible activism on campus with assault prevention groups such as Take Back the Night, according to the UVA sources. Three weeks earlier, she said, she had been hit in the face by a bottle thrown by hecklers outside a Charlottesville bar. She also added a new piece of information to her earlier account of the gang rape she had endured. She named Phi Kappa Psi as the fraternity where the assault had taken place, the police said later. Moreover, she mentioned to Eramo two other students who she said had been raped at that fraternity. But she did not reveal the names of these women or any details about their assaults. When there is credible information about multiple acts of sexual violence by the same perpetrator that may put students at risk, Department of Education guidelines indicate the university should take action even when no formal complaint has been filed. The school should also consider whether to issue a public safety warning. Once more, the University of Virginia did not issue a warning. Whether the administration should have done so, given the information it then possessed, is a question under review by the University of Virginia’s governing Board of Visitors, aided by fact-finding and analysis by the law firm O’Melveny & Myers. (On March 30, UVA updated its sexual assault policy to include more clearly defined procedures for assessing threats and issuing timely warnings.) The day after her meeting with the dean, Jackie met with Charlottesville and UVA police in a meeting arranged by Eramo. Jackie reported both the bottle-throwing incident and her assault at the Phi Kappa Psi house. The police later said that she declined to provide details about the gang rape because “[s]he feared retaliation from the fraternity if she followed through with a criminal investigation.” The police also said they found significant discrepancies in Jackie’s account of the day she said she was struck by the bottle. That summer, Erdely began interviewing multiple UVA assault survivors. University officials still hoped that Jackie and the two other victims she had mentioned would file formal charges, the UVA sources said. Erdely knew this: On July 14, Emily Renda, who had graduated in May and taken a job in the university’s student affairs office, told the reporter that it might be unwise for Rolling Stone to name Phi Kappa Psi in its story because “there are two other women who have not come forward fully yet, and we are trying to persuade them to get punitive action against the fraternity.” Renda wrote later in an email for this report that she had tried to dissuade the writer “because of due process concerns and the way in which publicly accusing a fraternity might both prevent any future justice, but also infringe on their rights.” Renda’s warning to Erdely – a notice from a UVA employee that Phi Kappa Psi was under university scrutiny over allegations made by Jackie and two others – added to the impression that UVA regarded Jackie’s narrative as reliable. As it turned out, however, all of the information that the reporter, Renda and UVA possessed about the two other reported victims, in addition to Jackie, came only from Jackie. One of the women filed an anonymous report through the UVA online system – Jackie told Erdely she was there when the student pressed the “send” button – but neither of the women has been heard from since. ‘I’m afraid it may look like we’re trying to hide something’ In early September, Erdely asked to interview Eramo. The request created a dilemma for UVA. Universities must comply with a scaffold of federal laws that limit what they can make public about their students. The most important of these is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which protects student privacy and can make it difficult for university staff members to release records or answer questions about any enrollee. Eramo was willing to talk if she wasn’t asked about specific cases, but about hypothetical situations, as Erdely had cleverly suggested as a way around student privacy limitations. “Since [Erdely] was referred to me by the students she interviewed, I’m afraid it may look like we are trying to hide something for me not to speak with her,” Eramo said in an email to the UVA communications staff, recently released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The communications office endorsed the interview, but Vice President for Student Life Patricia Lampkin vetoed the idea. “This is not reflective of Nicole,” she wrote in an email, “but of the issue and how reporters turn the issue.” Asked to clarify that statement for this review, Lampkin said she felt that given FERPA restrictions, there was nothing Eramo could say in an interview that would give Erdely “a full and balanced view of the situation.” The distrust was mutual. “I had actually gone to campus thinking that they were going to be very helpful,” Erdely said. Now she felt she was being stonewalled. Among other things, she said Jackie and Alex Pinkleton told her that after Rolling Stone started asking questions on campus, UVA administrators contacted Phi Kappa Psi for the first time about the allegations of sexual assault at the fraternity house. To Erdely, UVA looked as if it was in damage control mode. “So I think that instead of being skeptical of Jackie,” she said, “I became skeptical of UVA. … What are they hiding and why are they acting this way?” It is true that UVA did not get in touch with Phi Kappa Psi until Erdely showed up on campus. University sources offered an explanation. They said that administrators had contemplated suspending the fraternity’s charter, but that would mean no university oversight over Phi Kappa Psi. They had also put off contacting the fraternity in the summer in the hope that Jackie and the other alleged victims would file charges. That hadn’t happened, so they decided to act, even before Erdely started asking questions, these sources said. (At the time of the writing of this report, the university had released no documentary evidence to support the decision-making sequence these sources described.) In any event, there was reason for Rolling Stone to be skeptical. UVA’s history of managing sexual misconduct is checkered, as Erdely illustrated in other cases she reported on. On Oct. 2, Erdely interviewed UVA President Teresa Sullivan. The reporter asked probing questions that revealed the gap between the number of assault cases that the university reported publicly and the cases that had been brought to the university’s attention internally. Erdely described the light sanctions imposed on students found guilty of sexual misconduct. She asked about allegations of gang rapes at Phi Kappa Psi. Sullivan said that a fraternity was under investigation but declined to comment further about specific cases. Following the recent announcement by the Charlottesville police that they could find no basis for Rolling Stone’s account of Jackie’s assault, Sullivan issued a statement. “The investigation confirms what federal privacy law prohibited the university from sharing last fall: That the university provided support and care to a student in need, including assistance in reporting potential criminal conduct to law enforcement,” she said. Erdely concluded that UVA had not done enough. “Having presumably judged there to be no threat,” she wrote in her published story, UVA “took no action to warn the campus that an allegation of gang rape had been made against an active fraternity.” Overall, she wrote, “rapes are kept quiet” at UVA in part because of “an administration that critics say is less concerned with protecting students than it is with protecting its own reputation from scandal.” During the six months she worked on the story, Erdely concentrated her reporting on the perspectives of victims of sexual violence at the University of Virginia and other campuses. She was moved by their experiences and their diverse frustrations. Her access to the perspectives of UVA administrators was much more limited, in part because some of them were not permitted to speak with her but also because Erdely came to see them as obstacles to her reporting. In the view of some of Erdely’s sources, the portrait she created was unfair and mistaken. “The university’s response is not, ‘We don’t care,’” said Pinkleton, Jackie’s confidante and a member of One Less. “When I reported my own assault, they immediately started giving me resources.” For her part, Eramo rejects the article’s suggestion that UVA places its own reputation above protecting students. In an email provided by her lawyers, the dean wrote that the article falsely attributes to her statements she never made (to Jackie or otherwise) and that it “trivializes the complexities of providing trauma-informed support to survivors and the real difficulties inherent in balancing respect for the wishes of survivors while also providing for the safety of our communities.” “UVA does have plenty of room to grow in regard to prevention and response, as most if not all, colleges do,” said Sara Surface, a junior who co-chairs UVA’s Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition. She added, “The administrators and staff that work directly with and advocate for survivors are not more interested in the college’s reputation over the well-being of its students.” The Editing: ‘I Wish Somebody Had Pushed Me Harder’ Sean Woods, Erdely’s primary editor, might have prevented the effective retraction of Jackie’s account by pressing his writer to close the gaps in her reporting. He started his career in music journalism but had been editing complex reported features at Rolling Stone for years. Investigative reporters working on difficult, emotive or contentious stories often have blind spots. It is up to their editors to insist on more phone calls, more travel, more time, until the reporting is complete. Woods did not do enough. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner said he typically reads about half of the stories in each issue before publication. He read a draft of Erdely’s narrative and found Jackie’s case “extremely strong, powerful, provocative. … I thought we had something really good there.” But Wenner leaves the detailed editorial supervision to managing editor Will Dana, who has been at the magazine for almost two decades. Dana might have looked more deeply into the story drafts he read, spotted the reporting gaps and insisted that they be fixed. He did not. “It’s on me,” Dana said. “I’m responsible.” In hindsight, the most consequential decision Rolling Stone made was to accept that Erdely had not contacted the three friends who spoke with Jackie on the night she said she was raped. That was the reporting path, if taken, that would have almost certainly led the magazine’s editors to change plans. Erdely said that as she was preparing to write her first draft, she talked with Woods about the three friends. “Sean advised me that for now we should just put this aside,” she said. “He actually suggested that I change their names for now.” Woods said that he intended this decision to be temporary, pending further reporting and review. Erdely used pseudonyms in her first draft: “Randall,” “Cindy” and “Andrew.” She relied solely on Jackie’s information and wrote vividly about how the three friends had reacted after finding Jackie shaken and weeping in the first hours of Sept. 29: The group looked at each other in a panic. They all knew about Jackie’s date that evening at Phi Kappa Psi, the house looming behind them. “We have got to get her to the hospital,” Randall declared. The other two friends, however, weren’t convinced. “Is that such a good idea?” countered Cindy. … “Her reputation will be shot for the next four years.” Andrew seconded the opinion. … The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape, while Jackie stood behind them, mute in her bloody dress. Erdely inserted a note in her draft, in bold type: “she says – all her POV” – to indicate to her editors that the dialogue had come only from Jackie. “In retrospect, I wish somebody had pushed me harder” about reaching out to the three for their versions, Erdely said. “I guess maybe I was surprised that nobody said, ‘Why haven’t you called them?’ But nobody did, and I wasn’t going to press that issue.” Of course, just because an editor does not ask a reporter to check derogatory information with a subject, that does not absolve the reporter of responsibility. Woods remembered the sequence differently. After he read the first draft, he said, “I asked Sabrina to go reach” the three friends. “She said she couldn’t. … I did repeatedly ask, ‘Can we reach these people? Can we?’ And I was told no.” He accepted this because “I felt we had enough.” The documentary evidence provided by Rolling Stone sheds no light on whose recollection — Erdely’s or Wood’s – is correct. Woods said he ultimately approved pseudonyms because he didn’t want to embarrass the three students by having Jackie’s account of their self-involved patter out there for all their friends and classmates to see. “I wanted to protect them,” he said. For his part, Dana said he did not recall talking with Woods or Erdely about the three friends at all. ‘We need to verify this’ None of the editors discussed with Erdely whether Phi Kappa Psi or UVA, while being asked for “comment,” had been given enough detail about Jackie’s narrative to point out holes or contradictions. Erdely never raised the subject with her editors. As to “Drew,” the lifeguard, Dana said he was not even aware that Rolling Stone did not know the man’s full name and had not confirmed his existence. Nor was he told that “we’d made any kind of agreement with Jackie to not try to track this person down.” As noted, there was no such explicit compact between Erdely and Jackie, according to Erdely’s records. Jackie requested Erdely not to contact the lifeguard, but there was no agreement. “Can you call the pool? Can you call the frat? Can you look at yearbooks?” Woods recalled asking Erdely after he read the first draft. “If you’ve got to go around Jackie, fine, but we need to verify this,” meaning Drew’s identity. He remembered having this discussion “at least three times.” But when Jackie became unresponsive to Erdely in late October, Woods and Dana gave in. They authorized Erdely to tell Jackie they would stop trying to find the lifeguard. Woods resolved the issue as he had done earlier with the three friends: by using a pseudonym in the story. ‘I had a faith’ It is not possible in journalism to reach every source a reporter or editor might wish. A solution is to be transparent with readers about what is known or unknown at the time of publication. There is a tension in magazine and narrative editing between crafting a readable story – a story that flows – and providing clear attribution of quotations and facts. It can be clunky and disruptive to write “she said” over and over. There should be room in magazine journalism for diverse narrative voicing – if the underlying reporting is solid. But the most egregious failures of transparency in “A Rape on Campus” cannot be chalked up to writing style. They obfuscated important problems with the story’s reporting. Rolling Stone’s editors did not make clear to readers that Erdely and her editors did not know “Drew’s” true name, had not talked to him and had been unable to verify that he existed. That was fundamental to readers’ understanding. In one draft of the story, Erdely did include a disclosure. She wrote that Jackie “refuses to divulge [Drew’s] full name to RS,” because she is “gripped by fears she can barely articulate.” Woods cut that passage as he was editing. He “debated adding it back in” but “ultimately chose not to.” Woods allowed the “shit show” quote from “Randall” into the story without making it clear that Erdely had not gotten it from him but from Jackie. “I made that call,” Woods said. Not only did this mislead readers about the quote’s origins, it also compounded the false impression that Rolling Stone knew who “Randall” was and had sought his and the other friends’ side of the story. The editors invested Rolling Stone’s reputation in a single source. “Sabrina’s a writer I’ve worked with for so long, have so much faith in, that I really trusted her judgment in finding Jackie credible,” Woods said. “I asked her a lot about that, and she always said she found her completely credible.” Woods and Erdely knew Jackie had spoken about her assault with other activists on campus, with at least one suitemate and to UVA. They could not imagine that Jackie would invent such a story. Woods said he and Erdely “both came to the decision that this person was telling the truth.” They saw her as a “whistle blower” who was fighting indifference and inertia at the university. The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones – is a well-established finding of social science. It seems to have been a factor here. Erdely believed the university was obstructing justice. She felt she had been blocked. Like many other universities, UVA had a flawed record of managing sexual assault cases. Jackie’s experience seemed to confirm this larger pattern. Her story seemed well established on campus, repeated and accepted. “If I had been informed ahead of time of one problem or discrepancy with her overall story, we would have acted upon that very aggressively,” Dana said. “There were plenty of other stories we could have told in this piece.” If anyone had raised doubts about how verifiable Jackie’s narrative was, her case could have been summarized “in a paragraph deep in the story.” No such doubts came to his attention, he said. As to the apparent gaps in reporting, attribution and verification that had accumulated in the story’s drafts, Dana said, “I had a faith that as it went through the fact-checking that all this was going to be straightened out.” Fact-Checking: ‘Above My Pay Grade’ At Rolling Stone, every story is assigned to a fact-checker. At newspapers, wire services and in broadcast newsrooms, there is no job description quite like that of a magazine fact-checker. At newspapers, frontline reporters and editors are responsible for stories’ accuracy and completeness. Magazine fact-checking departments typically employ younger reporters or college graduates. Their job is to review a writer’s story after it has been drafted, to double-check details like dates and physical descriptions. They also look at issues such as attribution and whether story subjects who have been depicted unfavorably have had their say. Typically, checkers will speak with the writer’s sources, sometimes including confidential sources, to verify facts within quotations and other details. To be effective, checkers must be empowered to challenge the decisions of writers and editors who may be much more senior and experienced. In this case, the fact-checker assigned to “A Rape on Campus” had been checking stories as a freelancer for about three years, and had been on staff for one and a half years. She relied heavily on Jackie, as Erdely had done. She said she was “also aware of the fact that UVA believed this story to be true.” That was a misunderstanding. What Rolling Stone knew at the time of publication was that Jackie had given a version of her account to UVA and other student activists. A university employee, Renda, had made reference to that account in congressional testimony. UVA had placed Phi Kappa Psi under scrutiny. None of this meant that the university had reached a conclusion about Jackie’s narrative. The checker did not provide the school with the details of Jackie’s account to Erdely of her assault at Phi Kappa Psi. The editors invested Rolling Stone’s reputation in a single source. The checker did try to improve the story’s reporting and attribution of quotations concerning the three friends. She marked on a draft that Ryan – “Randall” under pseudonym – had not been interviewed, and that his “shit show” quote had originated with Jackie. “Put this on Jackie?” the checker wrote. “Any way we can confirm with him?” She said she talked about this problem of clarity with Woods and Erdely. “I pushed. … They came to the conclusion that they were comfortable” with not making it clear to readers that they had never contacted Ryan. She did not raise her concerns with her boss, Coco McPherson, who heads the checking department. “I have instructed members of my staff to come to me when they have problems or are concerned or feel that they need some muscle,” McPherson said. “That did not happen.” Asked if there was anything she should have been notified about, McPherson answered: “The obvious answers are the three friends. These decisions not to reach out to these people were made by editors above my pay grade.” McPherson read the final draft. This was a provocative, complex story heavily reliant on a single source. She said later that she had faith in everyone involved and didn’t see the need to raise any issues with the editors. She was the department head ultimately responsible for fact-checking. Natalie Krodel, an in-house lawyer for Wenner Media, conducted a legal review of the story before publication. Krodel had been on staff for several years and typically handled about half of Rolling Stone’s pre-publication reviews, sharing the work with general counsel Dana Rosen. [Footnote 4] It is not clear what questions the lawyer may have raised about the draft. Erdely and the editors involved declined to answer questions about the specifics of the legal review, citing instructions from the magazine’s outside counsel, Elizabeth McNamara, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine. McNamara said Rolling Stone would not answer questions about the legal review of “A Rape on Campus” in order to protect attorney-client privilege. The Editor’s Note: ‘I Was Pretty Freaked Out’ On Dec. 5, following Erdely’s early-morning declaration that she had lost confidence in her sourcing, Rolling Stone posted an editor’s note on its website that effectively withdrew the magazine’s reporting on Jackie’s case. The note was composed and published hastily. The editors had heard that The Washington Post intended to publish a story that same day calling the magazine’s reporting into question. They had also heard that Phi Kappa Psi would release a statement disputing some of Rolling Stone’s account. Dana said there was no time to conduct a “forensic investigation” into the story’s issues. He wrote the editor’s note “very quickly” and “under a lot of pressure.” He posted it at about noon, under his signature. “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” it read. That language deflected blame from the magazine to its subject and it attracted yet more criticism. Dana said he rued his initial wording. “I was pretty freaked out,” he said. “I regretted using that phrase pretty quickly.” Early that evening, he changed course in a series of tweets. “That failure is on us – not on her,” he wrote. A revised editor’s note, using similar language, appeared the next day. Yet the final version still strained to defend Rolling Stone’s performance. It said that Jackie’s friends and student activists at UVA “strongly supported her account.” That implied that these friends had direct knowledge of the reported rape. In fact, the students supported Jackie as a survivor, friend and fellow campus reformer. They had heard her story, but they could not independently confirm it. Looking Forward For Rolling Stone: An Exceptional Lapse or a Failure of Policy? The collapse of “A Rape on Campus” does not involve the kinds of fabrication by reporters that have occurred in some other infamous cases of journalistic meltdown. In 2003, The New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned after editors concluded that he had invented stories from whole cloth. In February, NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams after he admitted that he told tall tales about his wartime reporting in Iraq. There is no evidence in Erdely’s materials or from interviews with her subjects that she invented facts; the problem was that she relied on what Jackie told her without vetting its accuracy. “It’s been an extraordinarily painful and humbling experience,” Woods said. “I’ve learned that even the most trusted and experienced people – including, and maybe especially, myself – can make grave errors in judgment.” Yet Rolling Stone’s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems. “It’s not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don’t think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things,” Dana said. “We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.” Coco McPherson, the fact-checking chief, said, “I one hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed. I think decisions were made around those because of the subject matter.” Yet better and clearer policies about reporting practices, pseudonyms and attribution might well have prevented the magazine’s errors. The checking department should have been more assertive about questioning editorial decisions that the story’s checker justifiably doubted. Dana said he was not told of reporting holes like the failure to contact the three friends or the decision to use misleading attributions to obscure that fact. Stronger policy and clearer staff understanding in at least three areas might have changed the final outcome: Pseudonyms. Dana, Woods and McPherson said using pseudonyms at Rolling Stone is a “case by case” issue that requires no special convening or review. Pseudonyms are inherently undesirable in journalism. They introduce fiction and ask readers to trust that this is the only instance in which a publication is inventing details at its discretion. Their use in this case was a crutch – it allowed the magazine to evade coming to terms with reporting gaps. Rolling Stone should consider banning them. If its editors believe pseudonyms are an indispensable tool for its forms of narrative writing, the magazine should consider using them much more rarely and only after robust discussion about alternatives, with dissent encouraged. Checking Derogatory Information. Erdely and Woods made the fateful agreement not to check with the three friends. If the fact-checking department had understood that such a practice was unacceptable, the outcome would almost certainly have changed. Confronting Subjects With Details. When Erdely sought “comment,” she missed the opportunity to hear challenging, detailed rebuttals from Phi Kappa Psi before publication. The fact-checker relied only on Erdely’s communications with the fraternity and did not independently confirm with Phi Kappa Psi the account Rolling Stone intended to publish about Jackie’s assault. If both the reporter and checker had understood that by policy they should routinely share specific, derogatory details with the subjects of their reporting, Rolling Stone might have veered in a different direction. For Journalists: Reporting on Campus Rape Rolling Stone is not the first news organization to be sharply criticized for its reporting on rape. Of all crimes, rape is perhaps the toughest to cover. The common difficulties that reporters confront – including scarce evidence and conflicting accounts – can be magnified in a college setting. Reporting on a case that has not been investigated and adjudicated, as Rolling Stone did, can be even more challenging. There are several areas that require care and should be the subject of continuing deliberation among journalists: Balancing sensitivity to victims and the demands of verification. Over the years, trauma counselors and survivor support groups have helped journalists understand the shame attached to rape and the powerlessness and self-blame that can overwhelm victims, particularly young ones. Because questioning a victim’s account can be traumatic, counselors have cautioned journalists to allow survivors some control over their own stories. This is good advice. Yet it does survivors no good if reporters documenting their cases avoid rigorous practices of verification. That may only subject the victim to greater scrutiny and skepticism. Problems arise when the terms of the compact between survivor and journalist are not spelled out. Kristen Lombardi, who spent a year and a half reporting the Center for Public Integrity’s series on campus sexual assault, said she made it explicit to the women she interviewed that the reporting process required her to obtain documents, collect evidence and talk to as many people involved in the case as possible, including the accused. She prefaced her interviews by assuring the women that she believed in them but that it was in their best interest to make sure there were no questions about the veracity of their accounts. She also allowed victims some control, including determining the time, place and pace of their interviews. If a woman was not ready for such a process, Lombardi said, she was prepared to walk away. Corroborating survivor accounts. Walt Bogdanich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times who has spent the past two years reporting on campus rape, said he tries to track down every available shred of corroborating evidence – hospital records, 911 calls, text messages or emails that have been sent immediately after the assault. In some cases, it can be possible to obtain video, either from security cameras or from cellphones. Many assaults take place or begin in semipublic places such as bars, parties or fraternity houses. “Campus sexual violence probably has more witnesses, bystanders, etc. than violence in other contexts,” said Elana Newman, a University of Tulsa psychology professor who has advised journalists on trauma. “It might be useful for journalists to think about all the early signals and signs” and people who saw or ignored them early on, she said. Every rape case has multiple narratives, Newman said. “If there are inconsistencies, explain those inconsistencies.” Reporters should also bear in mind that trauma can impair a victim’s memory and that this can be a cause of fragmentary and contradictory accounts. Victims often interact with administrators, counselors and residence hall staff members. “I’ve always found that the people most willing to talk are these front-line staff,” said Lombardi, who said she phoned or visited potential sources at home and talked to them on background because of their concerns about student privacy. FERPA restrictions are severe, yet the law allows students to access their own school records. Students at public universities can also sign privacy waivers that would allow reporters to obtain their records, including case files and reports. Moreover, there’s a FERPA exception: In sexual assault cases that have reached final disposition and a student has been found responsible, campus authorities can release the name of the student, the violation committed and any sanction imposed. (The Student Press Law Center provides good advice on navigating FERPA.) Holding institutions to account. Given the difficulties, journalists are rarely in a position to prove guilt or innocence in rape. “The real value of what we do as journalists is analyzing the response of the institutions to the accusation,” Bogdanich said. This approach can also make it easier to persuade both victims and perpetrators to talk. Lombardi said the women she interviewed were willing to help because the story was about how the system worked or didn’t work. The accused, on the other hand, was often open to talking about perceived failings of the adjudication process. To succeed at such reporting, it is necessary to gain a deep understanding of the tangle of rules and guidelines on campus sexual assault. There’s Title IX, the Clery Act and the Violence Against Women Act. There are directives from the Office of Civil Rights and recommendations from the White House. Congress and state legislatures are proposing new laws. The responsibilities that universities have in preventing campus sexual assault – and the standards of performance they should be held to – are important matters of public interest. Rolling Stone was right to take them on. The pattern of its failure draws a map of how to do better. Footnotes 1. Rolling Stone provided a 405-page record of Erdely’s interviews and research notes as well as access to original audio recordings. Erdely turned this record over to Rolling Stone before she or the magazine believed there were any problems with the story. Erdely said she typed notes contemporaneously on a laptop during phone and in-person interviews. In some cases, she taped interviews and meetings and transcribed them later. We compared transcripts Erdely submitted of her recorded interviews with Jackie with the audio files and found the transcripts to be accurate. Erdely’s typed notes of interviews contain her own questions or remarks, sometimes placed in brackets, as well as those of her interview subject. Erdely said that she sometimes typed her own questions or remarks contemporaneously but that other times she typed them after the interview was over, summarizing the questions she had asked or the comments she had made. 2. Rolling Stone’s retraction of its reporting about Jackie concerned the story it printed. The retraction cannot be understood as evidence about what actually happened to Jackie on the night of Sept. 28, 2012. If Jackie was attacked and, if so, by whom, cannot be established definitively from the evidence available. Jackie’s phone records from September 2012 would provide strong evidence about what might have befallen her. But the Charlottesville police said the company they asked to produce Jackie’s phone records no longer had her records from 2012. After interviewing about 70 people and obtaining access to some university and fraternity records, the Charlottesville police could say only that they found no evidence of the gang rape Rolling Stone described. This finding, said Police Chief Timothy Longo, “doesn’t mean that something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie” that night. 3. In a letter, Groves objected to Rolling Stone’s portrayal of his actions during a University of Virginia Board of Visitors meeting last September. A video of the meeting is available on a UVA website. Groves wrote that Erdely “did not disclose the significant details that I had offered into the scope” of a Department of Education compliance review of UVA. Groves’s full letter is here. In the email sent through her lawyer, Eramo wrote, Rolling Stone “made numerous false statements and misleading implications about the manner in which I conducted my job as the Chair of University of Virginia’s Sexual Misconduct Board, including allegations about specific student cases. Although the law prohibits me from commenting on those specific cases in order to protect the privacy of the students who I counsel, I can say that the account of my actions in Rolling Stone is false and misleading. The article trivializes the complexities of providing trauma-informed support to survivors and the real difficulties inherent in balancing respect for the wishes of survivors while also providing for the safety of our communities. As a general matter, I do not — and have never — allowed the possibility of a media story to influence the way I have counseled students or the decisions I have made in my position. And contrary to the quote attributed to me in Rolling Stone, I have never called the University of Virginia “the rape school,” nor have I ever suggested — either professionally or privately — that parents would not “want to send their daughter” to UVA. As a UVA alumna, and as someone who has lived in the Charlottesville community for over 20 years, I have a deep and profound love for this University and the students who study here.” 4. Last December, Rosen left Wenner Media for ALM Media, where she is general counsel. Rosen said her departure had no connection with “A Rape on Campus” and that she had played no part in reviewing the story before publication. She said she began talking with ALM in September, before Erdely’s story was filed, about the position she ultimately accepted. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Sheila Coronel, Steve Coll, and Derek Kravitz wrote this report. Sheila Coronel is Dean of Academic Affairs at the Columbia Journalism School and director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Steve Coll is the Dean of Columbia Journalism School, and Derek Kravitz is a postgraduate research scholar at Columbia Journalism School. ||||| Sabrina Rubin Erdely, center, enters the federal courthouse in Charlottesville, on Oct. 17. Erdely, author of “A Rape on Campus,” a discredited Rolling Stone article detailing an alleged rape at the University of Virginia, is being sued by Nicole Eramo, a U-Va. administrator included in the story. (Ryan M. Kelly/AP) — “Jackie,” the University of Virginia student who described a brutal gang rape in a Rolling Stone magazine article, said that she felt pressured to cooperate with the article’s reporter and expressed concerns about the article’s veracity to friends and school administrators in the days before it was published. Jurors heard from Jackie in a recorded deposition played in a federal courtroom here Monday, her first public remarks since shortly after Rolling Stone published her now-discredited allegations of a fraternity gang rape nearly two years ago. Jackie had issued a statement at the time the Rolling Stone article was published in November 2014 and spoke to The Washington Post in a series of interviews in the weeks that followed. [‘She didn’t have credibility anymore’: The moment Rolling Stone’s U-Va. rape story unraveled] At issue in the defamation case against Rolling Stone is whether the magazine and the article’s reporter intentionally smeared Nicole Eramo, then a U-Va. associate dean who was in charge of the school’s sexual assault prevention programs. Eramo argues that Rolling Stone inaccurately portrayed her as indifferent to sexual assault, that it knew that elements of its article weren’t true and that the material the reporter gathered was made to fit into a predetermined narrative about how schools mishandle sexual assault cases. ABC News interviewed Nicole Eramo, the former University of Virginia administrator who is suing Rolling Stone magazine over a November 2014 story about a sexual assault. That story was discredited. (ABC News and 20/20) By the time Jackie spoke with reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, she was a U-Va. junior and had for two years told friends and members of the U-Va. community that she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity party. She had also gone to Eramo seeking help. Erdely testified last week that she believed Jackie’s detailed account of the ordeal. Jackie said during the taped deposition that she stands by the account she gave Rolling Stone and The Post in 2014 and believed it was true at the time. But she also testified that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and has memory loss and can no longer recall specific details. In the taped testimony, Jackie said she felt pressured to cooperate with the reporter and told friends that she no longer wanted to be included in it after learning that her alleged gang-rape would be central to the narrative. “When Sabrina told me my experience was going to be the focal point in the article, I was uncomfortable with that,” Jackie said. “I was feeling scared and overwhelmed and unsure of what to do.” At times in Jackie’s recorded testimony, she contradicted her own story. Jackie at one point said that she believed the Rolling Stone article was not entirely accurate and that “I feel like my interpretation was different than what was written.” She said she remembered reading the story and “thinking I probably would not have written it that way.” She later said that the portrayal of her alleged assault in Rolling Stone was correct. “I stand by the account I gave Rolling Stone and I believed it to be true at the time,” Jackie said. When asked if she still believed it was true, she said: “I believed it was true but some details of my assault — I have PTSD and it’s foggy.” When speaking with The Post in 2014, Jackie provided thorough details about the setting, scene and circumstances of her alleged assault. But in her recorded deposition, provided under oath, Jackie chose her words carefully and spoke deliberately. On multiple occasions she said in the recorded testimony that she no longer remembers aspects of her attack, its aftermath and conversations she had with Erdely and the magazine’s fact checker. In the testimony played to the court, Jackie spoke in measured tones and did not address the veracity of her claims of being gang-raped. The court has not released her full name or shown jurors her image. The Post generally does not identify people who say they were sexually assaulted and has an agreement with Jackie not to identify her by her full name; though her narrative has been debunked, Jackie has maintained that she was sexually assaulted. When confronted in the deposition about allegedly concocting evidence about her allegations — such as fabricating text messages from other women who she said also had been sexually assaulted at the same fraternity — she wouldn’t deny it. “I just don’t remember any of this,” Jackie said. “It’s all very foggy. I don’t know. I don’t know.” She was asked about a specific detail described in Rolling Stone: “Did you tell Ms. Erdely that you left the Phi Kappa Psi house at 3 a.m. splattered in blood?” Jackie replied: “I don’t remember.” The account of Jackie’s rape included the detail that she had been attacked on broken glass. Three of Jackie’s friends who met up with her that night told The Post that Jackie did not appear to have visible injuries at the time, one of several discrepancies with the published account. Jackie also testified that she had messaged friends asking them not to reveal the name of her ringleader of the alleged assault, comparing Erdely’s efforts to determine his identity to a “witch hunt.” Jackie said that she expressed doubts about the story ahead of its publication. In a meeting with Erdely, Jackie told the journalist that she cared deeply about Eramo and worried that her “job security” would be at stake after the article was published. [Rolling Stone reporter said she believed ‘Jackie,’ felt ‘scared for her’] She told friends that Erdely had misrepresented her in the article and “skewed” some of her quotes out of context. She also stopped talking to the journalist for two weeks as the article neared publication. “I felt like I was getting pressured from a lot of different people to do something I did not want to do,” Jackie said. Jackie also went to U-Va. administrators before the article was published to express concerns because she believed it would include “some unflattering facts or unflattering facets of Dean Eramo and I wanted to change that,” Jackie said in the recording. “So many students would be lost without her.” The article portrayed Eramo and the university’s administration as indifferent to reports of sexual assault, something that Eramo has said denigrated her life’s work, drew hate mail and threats, and affected her career. In the recording, Jackie said that she “felt bad” about the way Eramo, friends and others were portrayed as callous in the article. “I wouldn’t use the word indifferent at all,” Jackie said. “I believe she cared very much.” Yet Jackie testified that she believed Erdely “had done her best to recount what I’d told her.” In the days after the magazine story was published, it quickly became an Internet sensation, attracting millions of readers to the Rolling Stone website. After the article went online, Jackie wrote messages to friends saying that she believed the magazine had misrepresented her account of what had happened. “I felt like everything was out of control,” Jackie said. The article was retracted after a Charlottesville police investigation and a probe by the Columbia Journalism School found significant inconsistencies. Police concluded that the assault described in Rolling Stone did not occur. “Jackie’s’ testimony and the testimony over the last several days have shown that neither Sabrina Rubin Erdely nor Rolling Stone published statements about Eramo with actual malice, the burden Plaintiff must meet to support her lawsuit,” Rolling Stone said in a statement after court had adjourned.

– The woman at the center of a now-retracted 2014 Rolling Stone article about campus rape is not retracting the account she gave to the reporter, the Washington Post reports. Jackie, as she's called to protect her identity, says in her first public statements in nearly two years that she stands by the story she told to Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely about being sexually assaulted by a group of fraternity men. After the article was published, local police investigated the account and found that the rape Jackie described in the article did not take place. A Columbia School of Journalism investigation excoriated everyone involved with the article at Rolling Stone for irresponsible reporting. The disastrous article has landed Erdely and Rolling Stone in court this week, facing allegations they defamed former UVa administrator Nicole Eramo. Buzzfeed News reports that the first week of the case has largely focused on inaccuracies in the article, which is where Jackie comes in. She sent a taped deposition to the court saying she felt pressured to participate in the Rolling Stone article but that she stands by the gist of her account as told to Erdely, though she did contradict herself at certain points, saying that before the article's publication she had concerns that it was "not entirely accurate." She was also considerably cagier about the details, claiming she has PTSD and, though she believed her story to be true at the time, she can't remember now whether certain details are true.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show “what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,” according to Erdely’s notes of the conversation. Renda told Erdely that many assaults take place during parties where “the goal is to get everyone blackout drunk.” She continued, “There may be a much darker side of this” at some fraternities. “One girl I worked with closely alleged she was gang-raped in the fall, before rush, and the men who perpetrated it were young guys who were not yet members of the fraternity, and she remembers one of them saying to another … ‘C’mon man, don’t you want to be a brother?’” Renda added, “And obviously, maybe her memory of it isn’t perfect.” Erdely’s notes set down her reply: “I tell her that it’s totally plausible.” Renda put the writer in touch with a rising junior at UVA who would soon be known to millions of Rolling Stone readers as “Jackie,” a shortened version of her true first name. Erdely said later that when she first encountered Jackie, she felt the student “had this stamp of credibility” because a university employee had connected them. Earlier that summer, Renda had even appeared before a Senate committee and had made reference to Jackie’s allegations during her testimony – another apparent sign of the case’s seriousness. “I’d definitely be interested in sharing my story,” Jackie wrote in an email a few days later. Sign up for CJR 's daily email On July 14, Erdely phoned her. Jackie launched into a vivid account of a monstrous crime. She said, according to Erdely’s notes, that in September 2012, early in her freshman year, a third-year student she knew as a fellow lifeguard at the university’s aquatic center had invited her to “my first fraternity party ever.” After midnight, her date took her upstairs to a darkened bedroom. “I remember looking at the clock and it was 12:52 when we got into the room,” she told Erdely. Her date shut the door behind them. Jackie continued, according to the writer’s notes: My eyes were adjusting to the dark. And I said his name and turned around. … I heard voices and I started to scream and someone pummeled into me and told me to shut up. And that’s when I tripped and fell against the coffee table and it smashed underneath me and this other boy, who was throwing his weight on top of me. Then one of them grabbed my shoulders. … One of them put his hand over my mouth and I bit him – and he straight-up punched me in the face. … One of them said, ‘Grab its motherfucking leg.’ As soon as they said it, I knew they were going to rape me. The rest of Jackie’s account was equally precise and horrifying. The lifeguard coached seven boys as they raped her one by one. Erdely hung up the phone “sickened and shaken,” she said. She remembered being “a bit incredulous” about the vividness of some of the details Jackie offered, such as the broken glass from the smashed table. Yet Jackie had been “confident, she was consistent.” (Jackie declined to respond to questions for this report. Her lawyer said it “is in her best interest to remain silent at this time.” The quotations attributed to Jackie here come from notes Erdely said she typed contemporaneously or from recorded interviews.) [Footnote 1] Between July and October 2014, Erdely said, she interviewed Jackie seven more times. The writer was based in Philadelphia and had been reporting for Rolling Stone since 2008. She specialized in true-crime stories like “The Gangster Princess of Beverly Hills,” about a high-living Korean model and self-styled Samsung heiress accused of transporting 7,000 pounds of marijuana. She had written about pedophile priests and sexual assault in the military. Will Dana, the magazine’s managing editor, considered her “a very thorough and persnickety reporter who’s able to navigate extremely difficult stories with a lot of different points of view.” Jackie proved to be a challenging source. At times, she did not respond to Erdely’s calls, texts and emails. At two points, the reporter feared Jackie might withdraw her cooperation. Also, Jackie refused to provide Erdely the name of the lifeguard who had organized the attack on her. She said she was still afraid of him. That led to tense exchanges between Erdely and Jackie, but the confrontation ended when Rolling Stone’s editors decided to go ahead without knowing the lifeguard’s name or verifying his existence. After that concession, Jackie cooperated fully until publication. It was the worst day of my professional life. Erdely believed firmly that Jackie’s account was reliable. So did her editors and the story’s fact-checker, who spent more than four hours on the telephone with Jackie, reviewing every detail of her experience. “She wasn’t just answering, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she was correcting me,” the checker said. “She was describing the scene for me in a very vivid way. … I did not have doubt.” (Rolling Stone requested that the checker not be named because she did not have decision-making authority.) Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA” on Nov. 19, 2014. It caused a great sensation. “I was shocked to have a story that was going to go viral in this way,” Erdely said. “My phone was ringing off the hook.” The online story ultimately attracted more than 2.7 million views, more than any other feature not about a celebrity that the magazine had ever published. A week after publication, on the day before Thanksgiving, Erdely spoke with Jackie by phone. “She thanked me many times,” Erdely said. Jackie seemed “adrenaline-charged … feeling really good.” Erdely chose this moment to revisit the mystery of the lifeguard who had lured Jackie and overseen her assault. Jackie’s unwillingness to name him continued to bother Erdely. Apparently, the man was still dangerous and at large. “This is not going to be published,” the writer said, as she recalled. “Can you just tell me?” Jackie gave Erdely a name. But as the reporter typed, her fingers stopped. Jackie was unsure how to spell the lifeguard’s last name. Jackie speculated aloud about possible variations. “An alarm bell went off in my head,” Erdely said. How could Jackie not know the exact name of someone she said had carried out such a terrible crime against her – a man she professed to fear deeply? Over the next few days, worried about the integrity of her story, the reporter investigated the name Jackie had provided, but she was unable to confirm that he worked at the pool, was a member of the fraternity Jackie had identified or had other connections to Jackie or her description of her assault. She discussed her concerns with her editors. Her work faced new pressures. The writer Richard Bradley had published early if speculative doubts about the plausibility of Jackie’s account. Writers at Slate had challenged Erdely’s reporting during a podcast interview. She also learned that T. Rees Shapiro, a Washington Post reporter, was preparing a story based on interviews at the University of Virginia that would raise serious doubts about Rolling Stone’s reporting. Late on Dec. 4, Jackie texted Erdely, and the writer called back. It was by now after midnight. “We proceeded to have a conversation that led me to have serious doubts,” Erdely said. She telephoned her principal editor on the story, Sean Woods, and said she had now lost confidence in the accuracy of her published description of Jackie’s assault. Woods, who had been an editor at Rolling Stone since 2004, “was just stunned,” he said. He “raced into the office” to help decide what to do next. Later that day, the magazine published an editor’s note that effectively retracted Rolling Stone’s reporting on Jackie’s allegations of gang rape at the University of Virginia. “It was the worst day of my professional life,” Woods said. Failure and Its Consequences Rolling Stone’s repudiation of the main narrative in “A Rape on Campus” is a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking. The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine’s editors to reconsider publishing Jackie’s narrative so prominently, if at all. The published story glossed over the gaps in the magazine’s reporting by using pseudonyms and by failing to state where important information had come from. In late March, after a four-month investigation, the Charlottesville, Va., police department said that it had “exhausted all investigative leads” and had concluded, “There is no substantive basis to support the account alleged in the Rolling Stone article.” [Footnote 2] The story’s blowup comes as another shock to journalism’s credibility amid head-swiveling change in the media industry. The particulars of Rolling Stone’s failure make clear the need for a revitalized consensus in newsrooms old and new about what best journalistic practices entail, at an operating-manual-level of detail. As at other once-robust print magazines and newspapers, Rolling Stone’s editorial staff has shrunk in recent years as print advertising revenue has fallen and shifted online. The magazine’s full-time editorial ranks, not including art or photo staff, have contracted by about 25 percent since 2008. Yet Rolling Stone continues to invest in professional fact-checkers and to fund time-consuming investigations like Erdely’s. The magazine’s records and interviews with participants show that the failure of “A Rape on Campus” was not due to a lack of resources. The problem was methodology, compounded by an environment where several journalists with decades of collective experience failed to surface and debate problems about their reporting or to heed the questions they did receive from a fact-checking colleague. Erdely and her editors had hoped their investigation would sound an alarm about campus sexual assault and would challenge Virginia and other universities to do better. Instead, the magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations. (Social scientists analyzing crime records report that the rate of false rape allegations is 2 to 8 percent.) At the University of Virginia, “It’s going to be more difficult now to engage some people … because they have a preconceived notion that women lie about sexual assault,” said Alex Pinkleton, a UVA student and rape survivor who was one of Erdely’s sources. There has been other collateral damage. “It’s completely tarnished our reputation,” said Stephen Scipione, the chapter president of Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity Jackie named as the site of her alleged assault. “It’s completely destroyed a semester of our lives, specifically mine. It’s put us in the worst position possible in our community here, in front of our peers and in the classroom.” The university has also suffered. Rolling Stone’s account linked UVA’s fraternity culture to a horrendous crime and portrayed the administration as neglectful. Some UVA administrators whose actions in and around Jackie’s case were described in the story were depicted unflatteringly and, they say, falsely. Allen W. Groves, the University dean of students, and Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean of students, separately wrote to the authors of this report that the story’s account of their actions was inaccurate. [Footnote 3] In retrospect, Dana, the managing editor, who has worked at Rolling Stone since 1996, said the story’s breakdown reflected both an “individual failure” and “procedural failure, an institutional failure. … Every single person at every level of this thing had opportunities to pull the strings a little harder, to question things a little more deeply, and that was not done.” Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana (left) and Reporter Sabrina Erdely (Twitter and LinkedIn) Yet the editors and Erdely have concluded that their main fault was to be too accommodating of Jackie because she described herself as the survivor of a terrible sexual assault. Social scientists, psychologists and trauma specialists who support rape survivors have impressed upon journalists the need to respect the autonomy of victims, to avoid re-traumatizing them and to understand that rape survivors are as reliable in their testimony as other crime victims. These insights clearly influenced Erdely, Woods and Dana. “Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting,” Woods said. “We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice.” Erdely added: “If this story was going to be about Jackie, I can’t think of many things that we would have been able to do differently. … Maybe the discussion should not have been so much about how to accommodate her but should have been about whether she would be in this story at all.” Erdely’s reporting led her to other, adjudicated cases of rape at the university that could have illustrated her narrative, although none was as shocking and dramatic as Jackie’s. Yet the explanation that Rolling Stone failed because it deferred to a victim cannot adequately account for what went wrong. Erdely’s reporting records and interviews with participants make clear that the magazine did not pursue important reporting paths even when Jackie had made no request that they refrain. The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error but had little or nothing to do with protecting Jackie’s position. It would be unfortunate if Rolling Stone’s failure were to deter journalists from taking on high-risk investigations of rape in which powerful individuals or institutions may wish to avoid scrutiny but where the facts may be underdeveloped. There is clearly a need for a more considered understanding and debate among journalists and others about the best practices for reporting on rape survivors, as well as on sexual assault allegations that have not been adjudicated. This report will suggest ways forward. It will also seek to clarify, however, why Rolling Stone’s failure with “A Rape on Campus” need not have happened, even accounting for the magazine’s sensitivity to Jackie’s position. That is mainly a story about reporting and editing. ‘How Else Do You Suggest I Find It Out?’ By the time Rolling Stone’s editors assigned an article on campus sexual assault to Erdely in the spring of 2014, high-profile rape cases at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Vanderbilt and Florida State had been in the headlines for months. The Office of Civil Rights at the federal Department of Education was leaning on colleges to reassess and improve their policies. Across the country, college administrators had to adjust to stricter federal oversight as well as to a new generation of student activists, including women who declared openly that they had been raped at school and had not received justice. There were numerous reports of campus assault that had been mishandled by universities. At Columbia, an aggrieved student dragged a mattress around campus to call attention to her account of assault and injustice. The facts in these cases were sometimes disputed, but they had generated a wave of campus activism. “My original idea,” Dana said, was “to look at one of these cases and have the story be more about the process of what happens when an assault is reported and the sort of issues it brings up.” Jackie’s story seemed a powerful candidate for such a narrative. Yet once she heard the story, Erdely struggled to decide how much she could independently verify the details Jackie provided without jeopardizing Jackie’s cooperation. In the end, the reporter relied heavily on Jackie for help in getting access to corroborating evidence and interviews. Erdely asked Jackie for introductions to friends and family. She asked for text messages to confirm parts of Jackie’s account, for records from Jackie’s employment at the aquatic center and for health records. She even asked to examine the bloodstained red dress Jackie said she had worn on the night she said she was attacked. Jackie gave the reporter some help. She provided emails from a pool supervisor as evidence of her employment there. She introduced Erdely to Rachel Soltis, a freshman-year suitemate. Soltis confirmed that in January 2013, four months after the alleged attack, Jackie had told her that she had been gang-raped. Yet Jackie could also be hard to pin down. Other interviews Jackie said she would facilitate never materialized. “I felt frustrated, but I didn’t think she didn’t want to produce” corroboration, Erdely said. Eventually, Jackie told Erdely that her mother had thrown away the red dress. She also said that her mother would be willing to talk to Erdely, but the reporter said that when she called and left messages several times, the mother did not respond. There were a number of ways that Erdely might have reported further, on her own, to verify what Jackie had told her. Jackie told the writer that one of her rapists had been part of a small discussion group in her anthropology class. Erdely might have tried to verify independently that there was such a group and to identify the young man Jackie described. She might have examined Phi Kappa Psi’s social media for members she could interview and for evidence of a party on the night Jackie described. Erdely might have looked for students who worked at the aquatic center and sought out clues about the lifeguard Jackie had described. Any one of these and other similar reporting paths might have led to discoveries that would have caused Rolling Stone to reconsider its plans. But three failures of reporting effort stand out. They involve basic, even routine journalistic practice – not special investigative effort. And if these reporting pathways had been followed, Rolling Stone very likely would have avoided trouble. Three friends and a ‘shit show’ During their first interview, Jackie told Erdely that after she escaped the fraternity where seven men, egged on by her date, had raped her, she called three friends for help. She described the two young men and one woman – now former friends, she told Erdely – as Ryan, Alex and Kathryn. She gave first names only, according to Erdely’s notes. She said they met her in the early hours of Sept. 29, 2012, on the campus grounds. Jackie said she was “crying and crying” at first and that all she could communicate was that “something bad” had happened. She said her friends understood that she had been sexually assaulted. (In interviews for this report, Ryan and Alex said that Jackie told them that she had been forced to perform oral sex on multiple men.) In Jackie’s account to Erdely, Ryan urged her to go to the university women’s center or a hospital for treatment. But Alex and Kathryn worried that if she reported a rape, their social lives would be affected. “She’s going to be the girl who cried ‘rape’ and we’ll never be allowed into any frat party again,” Jackie recalled Kathryn saying. Jackie spoke of Ryan sympathetically, but the scene she painted for Rolling Stone’s writer was unflattering to all three former friends. Journalistic practice – and basic fairness – require that if a reporter intends to publish derogatory information about anyone, he or she should seek that person’s side of the story. Erdely said that while visiting UVA, she did ask Alex Pinkleton, a student and assault survivor, for help in identifying or contacting the three. (Pinkleton was not the “Alex” to whom Jackie referred in her account.) But Pinkleton said she would need to ask Jackie for permission to assist the writer. Erdely did not follow up with her. It should have been possible for Erdely to identify the trio independently. Facebook friend listings might have shown the names. Or, Erdely could have asked other current students, besides Pinkleton, to help. Instead, Erdely relied on Jackie. On July 29, she asked Jackie for help in speaking to Ryan, “about corroborating that night, just a second voice?” Jackie answered, according to the writer’s notes, that while “Ryan may be awkward, I don’t understand why he wouldn’t.” But Jackie did not respond to follow-up messages Erdely left. On Sept. 11, Erdely traveled to Charlottesville and met Jackie in person for the first time, at a restaurant near the UVA campus. With her digital recorder running, the reporter again asked about speaking to Ryan. “I did talk to Ryan,” Jackie disclosed. She said she had bumped into him and had asked if he would be interested in talking to Rolling Stone. Jackie went on to quote Ryan’s incredulous reaction: “No! … I’m in a fraternity here, Jackie, I don’t want the Greek system to go down, and it seems like that’s what you want to happen. … I don’t want to be a part of whatever little shit show you’re running.” “Ryan is obviously out,” Erdely told Jackie a little later. Yet Jackie never requested – then or later – that Rolling Stone refrain from contacting Ryan, Kathryn or Alex independently. “I wouldn’t say it was an obligation” to Jackie, Erdely said later. She worried, instead, that if “I work round Jackie, am I going to drive her from the process?” Jackie could be hard to get hold of, which made Erdely worry that her cooperation remained tentative. Yet Jackie never said that she would withdraw if Erdely sought out Ryan or conducted other independent reporting. “They were always on my list of people” to track down, Erdely said of the three. However, she grew busy reporting on UVA’s response to Jackie’s case, she said. She doesn’t remember having a distinct conversation about this issue with Woods, her editor. “We just kind of agreed. … We just gotta leave it alone.” Woods, however, recalled more than one conversation with Erdely about this. When Erdely said she had exhausted all the avenues for finding the friends, he said he agreed to let it go. If Erdely had reached Ryan Duffin – his true name – he would have said that he had never told Jackie that he would not participate in Rolling Stone’s “shit show,” Duffin said in an interview for this report. The entire conversation with Ryan that Jackie described to Erdely “never happened,” he said. Jackie had never tried to contact him about cooperating with Rolling Stone. He hadn’t seen Jackie or communicated with her since the previous April, he said. If Erdely had learned Ryan’s account that Jackie had fabricated their conversation, she would have changed course immediately, to research other UVA rape cases free of such contradictions, she said later. If Erdely had called Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock – their true names – to check their sides of Jackie’s account of Sept. 28 and 29, they would have denied saying any of the words Jackie attributed to them (as Ryan would have as well). They would have described for Erdely a history of communications with Jackie that would have left the reporter with many new questions. For example, the friends said that Jackie told them that her date on Sept. 28 was not a lifeguard but a student in her chemistry class named Haven Monahan. (The Charlottesville police said in March they could not identify a UVA student or any other person named Haven Monahan.) All three friends would have spoken to Erdely, they said, if they had been contacted. The episode reaffirms a truism of reporting: Checking derogatory information with subjects is a matter of fairness, but it can also produce surprising new facts. ‘Can you comment?’ Throughout her reporting, Erdely told Jackie and others that she wanted to publish the name of the fraternity where Jackie said she had been raped. Erdely felt Jackie “was secure” about the name of the fraternity: Phi Kappa Psi. Last October, as she was finishing her story, Erdely emailed Stephen Scipione, Phi Kappa Psi’s local chapter president. “I’ve become aware of allegations of gang rape that have been made against the UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi,” Erdely wrote. “Can you comment on those allegations?” It was a decidedly truncated version of the facts that Erdely believed she had in hand. She did not reveal Jackie’s account of the date of the attack. She did not reveal that Jackie said Phi Kappa Psi had hosted a “date function” that night, that prospective pledges were present or that the man who allegedly orchestrated the attack was a Phi Kappa Psi member who was also a lifeguard at the university aquatic center. Jackie had made no request that she refrain from providing such details to the fraternity. The university’s administration had recently informed Phi Kappa Psi that it had received an account of a sexual assault at the fraternity that had reportedly taken place in September 2012. Erdely knew that the fraternity had received a briefing from UVA but did not know its specific contents. In fact, in this briefing, Scipione said in a recent interview, UVA provided a mid-September date as the night of the assault – not Sept. 28. And the briefing did not contain the details that Jackie had provided Erdely. The university said only that according to the account it had received, a freshman woman had been drinking at a party, had gone upstairs and had been forced to have oral sex with multiple men. On Oct. 15, Scipione replied to Erdely’s request for comment. He had learned, he wrote to her by email, “that an individual who remains unidentified had supposedly reported to someone who supposedly reported to the University that during a party there was a sexual assault.” He added, “Even though this allegation is fourth hand and there are no details and no named accuser, the leadership and fraternity as a whole have taken this very seriously.” Erdely next telephoned Shawn Collinsworth, then Phi Kappa Psi’s national executive director. Collinsworth volunteered a summary of what UVA had passed on to the fraternity’s leaders: that there were allegations of “gang rape during Phi Psi parties” and that one assault “took place in September 2012.” Erdely asked him, according to her notes, “Can you comment?” If Erdely had provided Scipione and Collinsworth the full details she possessed instead of asking simply for “comment,” the fraternity might have investigated the facts she presented. After Rolling Stone published, Phi Kappa Psi said it did just that. Scipione said in an interview that a review of the fraternity’s social media archives and bank records showed that the fraternity had held no date function or other party on the night Jackie said she was raped. A comparison of fraternity membership rolls with aquatic center employment records showed that it had no members who worked as lifeguards, Scipione added. Erdely said Scipione had seemed “really vague,” so she focused on getting a reply from Collinsworth. “I felt that I gave him a full opportunity to respond,” she said. “I felt very strongly that he already knew what the allegations were because they’d been told by UVA.” As it turned out, however, the version of the attack provided to Phi Kappa Psi was quite different from and less detailed than the one Jackie had provided to Erdely. Scipione said that Rolling Stone did not provide the detailed information the fraternity required to respond properly to the allegations. “It was complete bullshit,” he said. “They weren’t telling me what they were going to write about. They weren’t telling me any dates or details.” Collinsworth said that he was also not provided the details of the attack that ultimately appeared in Rolling Stone. There are cases where reporters may choose to withhold some details of what they plan to write while seeking verification for fear that the subject might “front run” by rushing out a favorably spun version pre-emptively. There are sophisticated journalistic subjects in politics and business that sometimes burn reporters in this way. Even so, it is risky for a journalist to withhold detailed derogatory information from any subject before publication. Here, there was no apparent need to fear “front-running” by Phi Kappa Psi. Even if Rolling Stone did not trust Phi Kappa Psi’s motivations, if it had given the fraternity a chance to review the allegations in detail, the factual discrepancies the fraternity would likely have reported might have led Erdely and her editors to try to verify Jackie’s account more thoroughly. The mystery of “Drew” In her interviews, Jackie freely used a first name – but no last name – of the lifeguard she said had orchestrated her rape. On Sept. 16, for the first time, Erdely raised the possibility of tracking this man down. “Any idea what he’s up to now?” Erdely asked, according to her notes. “No, I just know he’s graduated. I’ve blocked him on Facebook,” Jackie replied. “One of my friends looked him up – she wanted to see him so she could recognize and kill him,” Jackie said, laughing. “I couldn’t even look at his Facebook page.” “How would you feel if I reached out to him for a comment?” Erdely asked, the notes record. “I’m not sure I would be comfortable with that.” That exchange inaugurated a six-week struggle between Erdely and Jackie. For a while, it seemed to Erdely as if the stalemate might lead Jackie to withdraw from cooperation altogether. On Oct. 20, Erdely asked again for the man’s last name. “I’m not going to use his name in the article, but I have to do my due diligence anyway,” Erdely told Jackie, according to the writer’s notes. “I imagine he’s going to say nothing, but it’s something I need to do.” “I don’t want to give his last name,” Jackie replied. “I don’t even want to get him involved in this. … He completely terrifies me. I’ve never been so scared of a person in my entire life, and I’ve never wanted to tell anybody his last name. … I guess part of me was thinking that he’d never even know about the article.” “Of course he’s going to know about the article,” Erdely said. “He’s going to read it. He probably knows about the article already.” Jackie sounded shocked, according to Erdely’s notes. “I don’t want to be the one to give you the name,” Jackie said. “How else do you suggest I find it out?” “I guess you could ask Phi Psi for their list,” Jackie suggested. After this conversation, Jackie stopped responding to Erdely’s calls and messages. “There was a point in which she disappeared for about two weeks,” Erdely said, “and we became very concerned” about Jackie’s well-being. “Her behavior seemed consistent with a victim of trauma.” Yet Jackie made no demand that Rolling Stone not try to identify the lifeguard independently. She even suggested a way to do so – by checking the fraternity’s roster. Nor did she condition her participation in the story on Erdely agreeing not to try to identify the lifeguard. Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting. We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice. Erdely did try to identify the man on her own. She asked Jackie’s friends if they could help. They demurred. She searched online to see if the clues she had would produce a full name. This turned up nothing definitive. “She was very aggressive about contacting” the lifeguard, said Pinkleton, one of the students Erdely asked for assistance. With the benefit of hindsight, to succeed, Erdely probably would have had to persuade students to access the aquatic center’s employment records, to find possible name matches. That might have taken time and luck. By October’s end, with the story scheduled for closing in just two weeks, Jackie was still refusing to answer Erdely’s texts and voicemails. Finally, on Nov. 3, after consulting with her editors, Erdely left a message for Jackie proposing to her a “solution” that would allow Rolling Stone to avoid contacting the lifeguard after all. The magazine would use a pseudonym; “Drew” was eventually chosen. After Erdely left this capitulating voicemail, Jackie called back quickly. According to Erdely, she now chatted freely about the lifeguard, still without using his last name. From that point on, through the story’s publication, Jackie cooperated. In December, Jackie told The Washington Post in an interview that after several interviews with Erdely, she had asked to be removed from the story, but that Erdely had refused. Jackie told the Post she later agreed to participate on condition that she be allowed to fact-check parts of her story. Erdely said in an interview for this report that she was completely surprised by Jackie’s statements to the Post and that Jackie never told her she wanted to withdraw from the story. There is no evidence of such an exchange between Jackie and Erdely in the materials Erdely submitted to Rolling Stone. There was, in fact, an aquatic center lifeguard who had worked at the pool at the same time as Jackie and had the first name she had used freely with Erdely. He was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi, however. The police interviewed him and examined his personal records. They found no evidence to link him to Jackie’s assault. If Rolling Stone had located him and heard his response to Jackie’s allegations, including the verifiable fact that he did not belong to Phi Kappa Psi, this might have led Erdely to reconsider her focus on that case. In any event, Rolling Stone stopped looking for him. ‘What Are They Hiding?’ “A Rape on Campus” had ambitions beyond recounting one woman’s assault. It was intended as an investigation of how colleges deal with sexual violence. The assignment was timely. The systems colleges have put in place to deal with sexual misconduct have come under intense scrutiny. These systems are works in progress, entangled in changing and sometimes contradictory federal rules that seek at once to keep students safe, hold perpetrators to account and protect every student’s privacy. The legal issues date to 1977, when five female students sued Yale University, arguing that they had been sexually harassed. The students invoked Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law that bans gender discrimination in education. They lost their case, but their argument – that sexual harassment and violence on campus threatened women’s access to education – prevailed over time. By the mid-1980s, hundreds of colleges had adopted procedures to manage sexual misconduct, from stalking to rape. If universities failed to do so adequately, they could lose federal funding. In late 2009, the Center for Public Integrity began to publish a series of articles that helped inspire even stricter federal guidelines. The articles bared problems with the first generation of campus response: botched investigations by untrained staff members; adjudication processes shrouded in secrecy; and sanctions so lacking that they sometimes allowed rapists, including repeat offenders, to remain on campus while their victims fled school. The Obama administration took up the cause. It pressured colleges to adopt more rigorous systems, and it required a lower threshold of guilt to convict a student before school tribunals. The new pressure caused confusion, however, and, in some cases, charges of injustice. Last October, a group of Harvard Law School professors wrote that its university’s revised sexual misconduct policy was “jettisoning balance and fairness in the rush to appease certain federal administrative officials.” Erdely’s choice of the University of Virginia as a case study was well timed. The week she visited campus, an 18-year-old UVA sophomore went missing and was later found to have been abducted and killed. The university had by then endured a number of highly visible sexual assault cases. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights had placed the school, along with 54 others, under a broad compliance review. “The overarching point of the article,” Erdely wrote in response to questions from The Washington Post last December, was not Jackie, but “the culture that greeted her and so many other UVA women I interviewed, who came forward with allegations, only to be met with indifference.” Erdely saw her reporting about UVA as an examination, she said in an interview for this report, of “the way colleges handle these types of things.” Jackie “was just the most dramatic example.” ‘A chilling effect’ After she heard Jackie’s shocking story, Erdely zeroed in on the obligation of universities under federal law to issue timely warnings when there is a “serious or continuing” threat to student safety. Erdely understood from Jackie that eight months after the alleged assault, she had reported to UVA about being gang-raped at the Phi Kappa Psi house on campus grounds, in what appeared to be a hazing ritual. The university, Rolling Stone reported in its published story, was remiss in not warning its students about this apparently predatory fraternity. According to the Charlottesville police, Jackie did meet with assistant dean of students Nicole Eramo on May 20, 2013. During that meeting, Jackie described her assault differently than she did later for Erdely, the police said, declining to provide details. According to members of the UVA community knowledgeable about the case, who asked not to be identified in order to speak about confidential university matters, Jackie recounted to Eramo the same story she had told her friends on the night of Sept. 28: She was forced to have oral sex with several men while at a fraternity party. Jackie did not name the fraternity where the assault occurred or provide names or details about her attackers, the sources said. No mention was made of hazing. (Citing student privacy and ongoing investigations, the UVA administration, through its communications office, declined to answer questions about the case.) Over the years, the Department of Education has issued guidelines that stress victim confidentiality and autonomy. This means survivors decide whether to report and what assistance they would like. “If she did not identify any individual or Greek organization by name, the university was very, very limited in what it can do,” said S. Daniel Carter, a campus safety advocate and director of the nonprofit 32 National Campus Safety Initiative. As Rolling Stone reported, at their May 2013 meeting, Eramo presented Jackie her options: reporting the assault to the police or to the university’s Sexual Misconduct Board. The dean also offered counseling and other services. She checked with Jackie in succeeding weeks to see whether she wanted to take action. She introduced Jackie to One Less, a student group made up of sexual assault survivors and their advocates. The university did not issue a warning at this point because Jackie did not file a formal complaint and her account did not include the names of assailants or a specific fraternity, according to the UVA sources. It also made no mention of hazing. I guess maybe I was surprised that nobody said, ‘Why haven’t you called them?’ But nobody did, and I wasn’t going to press that issue. Between that time and April 2014, the university received no further information about Jackie’s case, according to the police and UVA sources. On April 21, 2014, Jackie again met with Eramo, according to the police. She told the dean that she was now coming under pressure for her visible activism on campus with assault prevention groups such as Take Back the Night, according to the UVA sources. Three weeks earlier, she said, she had been hit in the face by a bottle thrown by hecklers outside a Charlottesville bar. She also added a new piece of information to her earlier account of the gang rape she had endured. She named Phi Kappa Psi as the fraternity where the assault had taken place, the police said later. Moreover, she mentioned to Eramo two other students who she said had been raped at that fraternity. But she did not reveal the names of these women or any details about their assaults. When there is credible information about multiple acts of sexual violence by the same perpetrator that may put students at risk, Department of Education guidelines indicate the university should take action even when no formal complaint has been filed. The school should also consider whether to issue a public safety warning. Once more, the University of Virginia did not issue a warning. Whether the administration should have done so, given the information it then possessed, is a question under review by the University of Virginia’s governing Board of Visitors, aided by fact-finding and analysis by the law firm O’Melveny & Myers. (On March 30, UVA updated its sexual assault policy to include more clearly defined procedures for assessing threats and issuing timely warnings.) The day after her meeting with the dean, Jackie met with Charlottesville and UVA police in a meeting arranged by Eramo. Jackie reported both the bottle-throwing incident and her assault at the Phi Kappa Psi house. The police later said that she declined to provide details about the gang rape because “[s]he feared retaliation from the fraternity if she followed through with a criminal investigation.” The police also said they found significant discrepancies in Jackie’s account of the day she said she was struck by the bottle. That summer, Erdely began interviewing multiple UVA assault survivors. University officials still hoped that Jackie and the two other victims she had mentioned would file formal charges, the UVA sources said. Erdely knew this: On July 14, Emily Renda, who had graduated in May and taken a job in the university’s student affairs office, told the reporter that it might be unwise for Rolling Stone to name Phi Kappa Psi in its story because “there are two other women who have not come forward fully yet, and we are trying to persuade them to get punitive action against the fraternity.” Renda wrote later in an email for this report that she had tried to dissuade the writer “because of due process concerns and the way in which publicly accusing a fraternity might both prevent any future justice, but also infringe on their rights.” Renda’s warning to Erdely – a notice from a UVA employee that Phi Kappa Psi was under university scrutiny over allegations made by Jackie and two others – added to the impression that UVA regarded Jackie’s narrative as reliable. As it turned out, however, all of the information that the reporter, Renda and UVA possessed about the two other reported victims, in addition to Jackie, came only from Jackie. One of the women filed an anonymous report through the UVA online system – Jackie told Erdely she was there when the student pressed the “send” button – but neither of the women has been heard from since. ‘I’m afraid it may look like we’re trying to hide something’ In early September, Erdely asked to interview Eramo. The request created a dilemma for UVA. Universities must comply with a scaffold of federal laws that limit what they can make public about their students. The most important of these is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which protects student privacy and can make it difficult for university staff members to release records or answer questions about any enrollee. Eramo was willing to talk if she wasn’t asked about specific cases, but about hypothetical situations, as Erdely had cleverly suggested as a way around student privacy limitations. “Since [Erdely] was referred to me by the students she interviewed, I’m afraid it may look like we are trying to hide something for me not to speak with her,” Eramo said in an email to the UVA communications staff, recently released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The communications office endorsed the interview, but Vice President for Student Life Patricia Lampkin vetoed the idea. “This is not reflective of Nicole,” she wrote in an email, “but of the issue and how reporters turn the issue.” Asked to clarify that statement for this review, Lampkin said she felt that given FERPA restrictions, there was nothing Eramo could say in an interview that would give Erdely “a full and balanced view of the situation.” The distrust was mutual. “I had actually gone to campus thinking that they were going to be very helpful,” Erdely said. Now she felt she was being stonewalled. Among other things, she said Jackie and Alex Pinkleton told her that after Rolling Stone started asking questions on campus, UVA administrators contacted Phi Kappa Psi for the first time about the allegations of sexual assault at the fraternity house. To Erdely, UVA looked as if it was in damage control mode. “So I think that instead of being skeptical of Jackie,” she said, “I became skeptical of UVA. … What are they hiding and why are they acting this way?” It is true that UVA did not get in touch with Phi Kappa Psi until Erdely showed up on campus. University sources offered an explanation. They said that administrators had contemplated suspending the fraternity’s charter, but that would mean no university oversight over Phi Kappa Psi. They had also put off contacting the fraternity in the summer in the hope that Jackie and the other alleged victims would file charges. That hadn’t happened, so they decided to act, even before Erdely started asking questions, these sources said. (At the time of the writing of this report, the university had released no documentary evidence to support the decision-making sequence these sources described.) In any event, there was reason for Rolling Stone to be skeptical. UVA’s history of managing sexual misconduct is checkered, as Erdely illustrated in other cases she reported on. On Oct. 2, Erdely interviewed UVA President Teresa Sullivan. The reporter asked probing questions that revealed the gap between the number of assault cases that the university reported publicly and the cases that had been brought to the university’s attention internally. Erdely described the light sanctions imposed on students found guilty of sexual misconduct. She asked about allegations of gang rapes at Phi Kappa Psi. Sullivan said that a fraternity was under investigation but declined to comment further about specific cases. Following the recent announcement by the Charlottesville police that they could find no basis for Rolling Stone’s account of Jackie’s assault, Sullivan issued a statement. “The investigation confirms what federal privacy law prohibited the university from sharing last fall: That the university provided support and care to a student in need, including assistance in reporting potential criminal conduct to law enforcement,” she said. Erdely concluded that UVA had not done enough. “Having presumably judged there to be no threat,” she wrote in her published story, UVA “took no action to warn the campus that an allegation of gang rape had been made against an active fraternity.” Overall, she wrote, “rapes are kept quiet” at UVA in part because of “an administration that critics say is less concerned with protecting students than it is with protecting its own reputation from scandal.” During the six months she worked on the story, Erdely concentrated her reporting on the perspectives of victims of sexual violence at the University of Virginia and other campuses. She was moved by their experiences and their diverse frustrations. Her access to the perspectives of UVA administrators was much more limited, in part because some of them were not permitted to speak with her but also because Erdely came to see them as obstacles to her reporting. In the view of some of Erdely’s sources, the portrait she created was unfair and mistaken. “The university’s response is not, ‘We don’t care,’” said Pinkleton, Jackie’s confidante and a member of One Less. “When I reported my own assault, they immediately started giving me resources.” For her part, Eramo rejects the article’s suggestion that UVA places its own reputation above protecting students. In an email provided by her lawyers, the dean wrote that the article falsely attributes to her statements she never made (to Jackie or otherwise) and that it “trivializes the complexities of providing trauma-informed support to survivors and the real difficulties inherent in balancing respect for the wishes of survivors while also providing for the safety of our communities.” “UVA does have plenty of room to grow in regard to prevention and response, as most if not all, colleges do,” said Sara Surface, a junior who co-chairs UVA’s Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition. She added, “The administrators and staff that work directly with and advocate for survivors are not more interested in the college’s reputation over the well-being of its students.” The Editing: ‘I Wish Somebody Had Pushed Me Harder’ Sean Woods, Erdely’s primary editor, might have prevented the effective retraction of Jackie’s account by pressing his writer to close the gaps in her reporting. He started his career in music journalism but had been editing complex reported features at Rolling Stone for years. Investigative reporters working on difficult, emotive or contentious stories often have blind spots. It is up to their editors to insist on more phone calls, more travel, more time, until the reporting is complete. Woods did not do enough. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner said he typically reads about half of the stories in each issue before publication. He read a draft of Erdely’s narrative and found Jackie’s case “extremely strong, powerful, provocative. … I thought we had something really good there.” But Wenner leaves the detailed editorial supervision to managing editor Will Dana, who has been at the magazine for almost two decades. Dana might have looked more deeply into the story drafts he read, spotted the reporting gaps and insisted that they be fixed. He did not. “It’s on me,” Dana said. “I’m responsible.” In hindsight, the most consequential decision Rolling Stone made was to accept that Erdely had not contacted the three friends who spoke with Jackie on the night she said she was raped. That was the reporting path, if taken, that would have almost certainly led the magazine’s editors to change plans. Erdely said that as she was preparing to write her first draft, she talked with Woods about the three friends. “Sean advised me that for now we should just put this aside,” she said. “He actually suggested that I change their names for now.” Woods said that he intended this decision to be temporary, pending further reporting and review. Erdely used pseudonyms in her first draft: “Randall,” “Cindy” and “Andrew.” She relied solely on Jackie’s information and wrote vividly about how the three friends had reacted after finding Jackie shaken and weeping in the first hours of Sept. 29: The group looked at each other in a panic. They all knew about Jackie’s date that evening at Phi Kappa Psi, the house looming behind them. “We have got to get her to the hospital,” Randall declared. The other two friends, however, weren’t convinced. “Is that such a good idea?” countered Cindy. … “Her reputation will be shot for the next four years.” Andrew seconded the opinion. … The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape, while Jackie stood behind them, mute in her bloody dress. Erdely inserted a note in her draft, in bold type: “she says – all her POV” – to indicate to her editors that the dialogue had come only from Jackie. “In retrospect, I wish somebody had pushed me harder” about reaching out to the three for their versions, Erdely said. “I guess maybe I was surprised that nobody said, ‘Why haven’t you called them?’ But nobody did, and I wasn’t going to press that issue.” Of course, just because an editor does not ask a reporter to check derogatory information with a subject, that does not absolve the reporter of responsibility. Woods remembered the sequence differently. After he read the first draft, he said, “I asked Sabrina to go reach” the three friends. “She said she couldn’t. … I did repeatedly ask, ‘Can we reach these people? Can we?’ And I was told no.” He accepted this because “I felt we had enough.” The documentary evidence provided by Rolling Stone sheds no light on whose recollection — Erdely’s or Wood’s – is correct. Woods said he ultimately approved pseudonyms because he didn’t want to embarrass the three students by having Jackie’s account of their self-involved patter out there for all their friends and classmates to see. “I wanted to protect them,” he said. For his part, Dana said he did not recall talking with Woods or Erdely about the three friends at all. ‘We need to verify this’ None of the editors discussed with Erdely whether Phi Kappa Psi or UVA, while being asked for “comment,” had been given enough detail about Jackie’s narrative to point out holes or contradictions. Erdely never raised the subject with her editors. As to “Drew,” the lifeguard, Dana said he was not even aware that Rolling Stone did not know the man’s full name and had not confirmed his existence. Nor was he told that “we’d made any kind of agreement with Jackie to not try to track this person down.” As noted, there was no such explicit compact between Erdely and Jackie, according to Erdely’s records. Jackie requested Erdely not to contact the lifeguard, but there was no agreement. “Can you call the pool? Can you call the frat? Can you look at yearbooks?” Woods recalled asking Erdely after he read the first draft. “If you’ve got to go around Jackie, fine, but we need to verify this,” meaning Drew’s identity. He remembered having this discussion “at least three times.” But when Jackie became unresponsive to Erdely in late October, Woods and Dana gave in. They authorized Erdely to tell Jackie they would stop trying to find the lifeguard. Woods resolved the issue as he had done earlier with the three friends: by using a pseudonym in the story. ‘I had a faith’ It is not possible in journalism to reach every source a reporter or editor might wish. A solution is to be transparent with readers about what is known or unknown at the time of publication. There is a tension in magazine and narrative editing between crafting a readable story – a story that flows – and providing clear attribution of quotations and facts. It can be clunky and disruptive to write “she said” over and over. There should be room in magazine journalism for diverse narrative voicing – if the underlying reporting is solid. But the most egregious failures of transparency in “A Rape on Campus” cannot be chalked up to writing style. They obfuscated important problems with the story’s reporting. Rolling Stone’s editors did not make clear to readers that Erdely and her editors did not know “Drew’s” true name, had not talked to him and had been unable to verify that he existed. That was fundamental to readers’ understanding. In one draft of the story, Erdely did include a disclosure. She wrote that Jackie “refuses to divulge [Drew’s] full name to RS,” because she is “gripped by fears she can barely articulate.” Woods cut that passage as he was editing. He “debated adding it back in” but “ultimately chose not to.” Woods allowed the “shit show” quote from “Randall” into the story without making it clear that Erdely had not gotten it from him but from Jackie. “I made that call,” Woods said. Not only did this mislead readers about the quote’s origins, it also compounded the false impression that Rolling Stone knew who “Randall” was and had sought his and the other friends’ side of the story. The editors invested Rolling Stone’s reputation in a single source. “Sabrina’s a writer I’ve worked with for so long, have so much faith in, that I really trusted her judgment in finding Jackie credible,” Woods said. “I asked her a lot about that, and she always said she found her completely credible.” Woods and Erdely knew Jackie had spoken about her assault with other activists on campus, with at least one suitemate and to UVA. They could not imagine that Jackie would invent such a story. Woods said he and Erdely “both came to the decision that this person was telling the truth.” They saw her as a “whistle blower” who was fighting indifference and inertia at the university. The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones – is a well-established finding of social science. It seems to have been a factor here. Erdely believed the university was obstructing justice. She felt she had been blocked. Like many other universities, UVA had a flawed record of managing sexual assault cases. Jackie’s experience seemed to confirm this larger pattern. Her story seemed well established on campus, repeated and accepted. “If I had been informed ahead of time of one problem or discrepancy with her overall story, we would have acted upon that very aggressively,” Dana said. “There were plenty of other stories we could have told in this piece.” If anyone had raised doubts about how verifiable Jackie’s narrative was, her case could have been summarized “in a paragraph deep in the story.” No such doubts came to his attention, he said. As to the apparent gaps in reporting, attribution and verification that had accumulated in the story’s drafts, Dana said, “I had a faith that as it went through the fact-checking that all this was going to be straightened out.” Fact-Checking: ‘Above My Pay Grade’ At Rolling Stone, every story is assigned to a fact-checker. At newspapers, wire services and in broadcast newsrooms, there is no job description quite like that of a magazine fact-checker. At newspapers, frontline reporters and editors are responsible for stories’ accuracy and completeness. Magazine fact-checking departments typically employ younger reporters or college graduates. Their job is to review a writer’s story after it has been drafted, to double-check details like dates and physical descriptions. They also look at issues such as attribution and whether story subjects who have been depicted unfavorably have had their say. Typically, checkers will speak with the writer’s sources, sometimes including confidential sources, to verify facts within quotations and other details. To be effective, checkers must be empowered to challenge the decisions of writers and editors who may be much more senior and experienced. In this case, the fact-checker assigned to “A Rape on Campus” had been checking stories as a freelancer for about three years, and had been on staff for one and a half years. She relied heavily on Jackie, as Erdely had done. She said she was “also aware of the fact that UVA believed this story to be true.” That was a misunderstanding. What Rolling Stone knew at the time of publication was that Jackie had given a version of her account to UVA and other student activists. A university employee, Renda, had made reference to that account in congressional testimony. UVA had placed Phi Kappa Psi under scrutiny. None of this meant that the university had reached a conclusion about Jackie’s narrative. The checker did not provide the school with the details of Jackie’s account to Erdely of her assault at Phi Kappa Psi. The editors invested Rolling Stone’s reputation in a single source. The checker did try to improve the story’s reporting and attribution of quotations concerning the three friends. She marked on a draft that Ryan – “Randall” under pseudonym – had not been interviewed, and that his “shit show” quote had originated with Jackie. “Put this on Jackie?” the checker wrote. “Any way we can confirm with him?” She said she talked about this problem of clarity with Woods and Erdely. “I pushed. … They came to the conclusion that they were comfortable” with not making it clear to readers that they had never contacted Ryan. She did not raise her concerns with her boss, Coco McPherson, who heads the checking department. “I have instructed members of my staff to come to me when they have problems or are concerned or feel that they need some muscle,” McPherson said. “That did not happen.” Asked if there was anything she should have been notified about, McPherson answered: “The obvious answers are the three friends. These decisions not to reach out to these people were made by editors above my pay grade.” McPherson read the final draft. This was a provocative, complex story heavily reliant on a single source. She said later that she had faith in everyone involved and didn’t see the need to raise any issues with the editors. She was the department head ultimately responsible for fact-checking. Natalie Krodel, an in-house lawyer for Wenner Media, conducted a legal review of the story before publication. Krodel had been on staff for several years and typically handled about half of Rolling Stone’s pre-publication reviews, sharing the work with general counsel Dana Rosen. [Footnote 4] It is not clear what questions the lawyer may have raised about the draft. Erdely and the editors involved declined to answer questions about the specifics of the legal review, citing instructions from the magazine’s outside counsel, Elizabeth McNamara, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine. McNamara said Rolling Stone would not answer questions about the legal review of “A Rape on Campus” in order to protect attorney-client privilege. The Editor’s Note: ‘I Was Pretty Freaked Out’ On Dec. 5, following Erdely’s early-morning declaration that she had lost confidence in her sourcing, Rolling Stone posted an editor’s note on its website that effectively withdrew the magazine’s reporting on Jackie’s case. The note was composed and published hastily. The editors had heard that The Washington Post intended to publish a story that same day calling the magazine’s reporting into question. They had also heard that Phi Kappa Psi would release a statement disputing some of Rolling Stone’s account. Dana said there was no time to conduct a “forensic investigation” into the story’s issues. He wrote the editor’s note “very quickly” and “under a lot of pressure.” He posted it at about noon, under his signature. “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” it read. That language deflected blame from the magazine to its subject and it attracted yet more criticism. Dana said he rued his initial wording. “I was pretty freaked out,” he said. “I regretted using that phrase pretty quickly.” Early that evening, he changed course in a series of tweets. “That failure is on us – not on her,” he wrote. A revised editor’s note, using similar language, appeared the next day. Yet the final version still strained to defend Rolling Stone’s performance. It said that Jackie’s friends and student activists at UVA “strongly supported her account.” That implied that these friends had direct knowledge of the reported rape. In fact, the students supported Jackie as a survivor, friend and fellow campus reformer. They had heard her story, but they could not independently confirm it. Looking Forward For Rolling Stone: An Exceptional Lapse or a Failure of Policy? The collapse of “A Rape on Campus” does not involve the kinds of fabrication by reporters that have occurred in some other infamous cases of journalistic meltdown. In 2003, The New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned after editors concluded that he had invented stories from whole cloth. In February, NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams after he admitted that he told tall tales about his wartime reporting in Iraq. There is no evidence in Erdely’s materials or from interviews with her subjects that she invented facts; the problem was that she relied on what Jackie told her without vetting its accuracy. “It’s been an extraordinarily painful and humbling experience,” Woods said. “I’ve learned that even the most trusted and experienced people – including, and maybe especially, myself – can make grave errors in judgment.” Yet Rolling Stone’s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems. “It’s not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don’t think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things,” Dana said. “We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.” Coco McPherson, the fact-checking chief, said, “I one hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed. I think decisions were made around those because of the subject matter.” Yet better and clearer policies about reporting practices, pseudonyms and attribution might well have prevented the magazine’s errors. The checking department should have been more assertive about questioning editorial decisions that the story’s checker justifiably doubted. Dana said he was not told of reporting holes like the failure to contact the three friends or the decision to use misleading attributions to obscure that fact. Stronger policy and clearer staff understanding in at least three areas might have changed the final outcome: Pseudonyms. Dana, Woods and McPherson said using pseudonyms at Rolling Stone is a “case by case” issue that requires no special convening or review. Pseudonyms are inherently undesirable in journalism. They introduce fiction and ask readers to trust that this is the only instance in which a publication is inventing details at its discretion. Their use in this case was a crutch – it allowed the magazine to evade coming to terms with reporting gaps. Rolling Stone should consider banning them. If its editors believe pseudonyms are an indispensable tool for its forms of narrative writing, the magazine should consider using them much more rarely and only after robust discussion about alternatives, with dissent encouraged. Checking Derogatory Information. Erdely and Woods made the fateful agreement not to check with the three friends. If the fact-checking department had understood that such a practice was unacceptable, the outcome would almost certainly have changed. Confronting Subjects With Details. When Erdely sought “comment,” she missed the opportunity to hear challenging, detailed rebuttals from Phi Kappa Psi before publication. The fact-checker relied only on Erdely’s communications with the fraternity and did not independently confirm with Phi Kappa Psi the account Rolling Stone intended to publish about Jackie’s assault. If both the reporter and checker had understood that by policy they should routinely share specific, derogatory details with the subjects of their reporting, Rolling Stone might have veered in a different direction. For Journalists: Reporting on Campus Rape Rolling Stone is not the first news organization to be sharply criticized for its reporting on rape. Of all crimes, rape is perhaps the toughest to cover. The common difficulties that reporters confront – including scarce evidence and conflicting accounts – can be magnified in a college setting. Reporting on a case that has not been investigated and adjudicated, as Rolling Stone did, can be even more challenging. There are several areas that require care and should be the subject of continuing deliberation among journalists: Balancing sensitivity to victims and the demands of verification. Over the years, trauma counselors and survivor support groups have helped journalists understand the shame attached to rape and the powerlessness and self-blame that can overwhelm victims, particularly young ones. Because questioning a victim’s account can be traumatic, counselors have cautioned journalists to allow survivors some control over their own stories. This is good advice. Yet it does survivors no good if reporters documenting their cases avoid rigorous practices of verification. That may only subject the victim to greater scrutiny and skepticism. Problems arise when the terms of the compact between survivor and journalist are not spelled out. Kristen Lombardi, who spent a year and a half reporting the Center for Public Integrity’s series on campus sexual assault, said she made it explicit to the women she interviewed that the reporting process required her to obtain documents, collect evidence and talk to as many people involved in the case as possible, including the accused. She prefaced her interviews by assuring the women that she believed in them but that it was in their best interest to make sure there were no questions about the veracity of their accounts. She also allowed victims some control, including determining the time, place and pace of their interviews. If a woman was not ready for such a process, Lombardi said, she was prepared to walk away. Corroborating survivor accounts. Walt Bogdanich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times who has spent the past two years reporting on campus rape, said he tries to track down every available shred of corroborating evidence – hospital records, 911 calls, text messages or emails that have been sent immediately after the assault. In some cases, it can be possible to obtain video, either from security cameras or from cellphones. Many assaults take place or begin in semipublic places such as bars, parties or fraternity houses. “Campus sexual violence probably has more witnesses, bystanders, etc. than violence in other contexts,” said Elana Newman, a University of Tulsa psychology professor who has advised journalists on trauma. “It might be useful for journalists to think about all the early signals and signs” and people who saw or ignored them early on, she said. Every rape case has multiple narratives, Newman said. “If there are inconsistencies, explain those inconsistencies.” Reporters should also bear in mind that trauma can impair a victim’s memory and that this can be a cause of fragmentary and contradictory accounts. Victims often interact with administrators, counselors and residence hall staff members. “I’ve always found that the people most willing to talk are these front-line staff,” said Lombardi, who said she phoned or visited potential sources at home and talked to them on background because of their concerns about student privacy. FERPA restrictions are severe, yet the law allows students to access their own school records. Students at public universities can also sign privacy waivers that would allow reporters to obtain their records, including case files and reports. Moreover, there’s a FERPA exception: In sexual assault cases that have reached final disposition and a student has been found responsible, campus authorities can release the name of the student, the violation committed and any sanction imposed. (The Student Press Law Center provides good advice on navigating FERPA.) Holding institutions to account. Given the difficulties, journalists are rarely in a position to prove guilt or innocence in rape. “The real value of what we do as journalists is analyzing the response of the institutions to the accusation,” Bogdanich said. This approach can also make it easier to persuade both victims and perpetrators to talk. Lombardi said the women she interviewed were willing to help because the story was about how the system worked or didn’t work. The accused, on the other hand, was often open to talking about perceived failings of the adjudication process. To succeed at such reporting, it is necessary to gain a deep understanding of the tangle of rules and guidelines on campus sexual assault. There’s Title IX, the Clery Act and the Violence Against Women Act. There are directives from the Office of Civil Rights and recommendations from the White House. Congress and state legislatures are proposing new laws. The responsibilities that universities have in preventing campus sexual assault – and the standards of performance they should be held to – are important matters of public interest. Rolling Stone was right to take them on. The pattern of its failure draws a map of how to do better. Footnotes 1. Rolling Stone provided a 405-page record of Erdely’s interviews and research notes as well as access to original audio recordings. Erdely turned this record over to Rolling Stone before she or the magazine believed there were any problems with the story. Erdely said she typed notes contemporaneously on a laptop during phone and in-person interviews. In some cases, she taped interviews and meetings and transcribed them later. We compared transcripts Erdely submitted of her recorded interviews with Jackie with the audio files and found the transcripts to be accurate. Erdely’s typed notes of interviews contain her own questions or remarks, sometimes placed in brackets, as well as those of her interview subject. Erdely said that she sometimes typed her own questions or remarks contemporaneously but that other times she typed them after the interview was over, summarizing the questions she had asked or the comments she had made. 2. Rolling Stone’s retraction of its reporting about Jackie concerned the story it printed. The retraction cannot be understood as evidence about what actually happened to Jackie on the night of Sept. 28, 2012. If Jackie was attacked and, if so, by whom, cannot be established definitively from the evidence available. Jackie’s phone records from September 2012 would provide strong evidence about what might have befallen her. But the Charlottesville police said the company they asked to produce Jackie’s phone records no longer had her records from 2012. After interviewing about 70 people and obtaining access to some university and fraternity records, the Charlottesville police could say only that they found no evidence of the gang rape Rolling Stone described. This finding, said Police Chief Timothy Longo, “doesn’t mean that something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie” that night. 3. In a letter, Groves objected to Rolling Stone’s portrayal of his actions during a University of Virginia Board of Visitors meeting last September. A video of the meeting is available on a UVA website. Groves wrote that Erdely “did not disclose the significant details that I had offered into the scope” of a Department of Education compliance review of UVA. Groves’s full letter is here. In the email sent through her lawyer, Eramo wrote, Rolling Stone “made numerous false statements and misleading implications about the manner in which I conducted my job as the Chair of University of Virginia’s Sexual Misconduct Board, including allegations about specific student cases. Although the law prohibits me from commenting on those specific cases in order to protect the privacy of the students who I counsel, I can say that the account of my actions in Rolling Stone is false and misleading. The article trivializes the complexities of providing trauma-informed support to survivors and the real difficulties inherent in balancing respect for the wishes of survivors while also providing for the safety of our communities. As a general matter, I do not — and have never — allowed the possibility of a media story to influence the way I have counseled students or the decisions I have made in my position. And contrary to the quote attributed to me in Rolling Stone, I have never called the University of Virginia “the rape school,” nor have I ever suggested — either professionally or privately — that parents would not “want to send their daughter” to UVA. As a UVA alumna, and as someone who has lived in the Charlottesville community for over 20 years, I have a deep and profound love for this University and the students who study here.” 4. Last December, Rosen left Wenner Media for ALM Media, where she is general counsel. Rosen said her departure had no connection with “A Rape on Campus” and that she had played no part in reviewing the story before publication. She said she began talking with ALM in September, before Erdely’s story was filed, about the position she ultimately accepted. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Sheila Coronel, Steve Coll, and Derek Kravitz wrote this report. Sheila Coronel is Dean of Academic Affairs at the Columbia Journalism School and director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Steve Coll is the Dean of Columbia Journalism School, and Derek Kravitz is a postgraduate research scholar at Columbia Journalism School. ||||| Sabrina Rubin Erdely, center, enters the federal courthouse in Charlottesville, on Oct. 17. Erdely, author of “A Rape on Campus,” a discredited Rolling Stone article detailing an alleged rape at the University of Virginia, is being sued by Nicole Eramo, a U-Va. administrator included in the story. (Ryan M. Kelly/AP) — “Jackie,” the University of Virginia student who described a brutal gang rape in a Rolling Stone magazine article, said that she felt pressured to cooperate with the article’s reporter and expressed concerns about the article’s veracity to friends and school administrators in the days before it was published. Jurors heard from Jackie in a recorded deposition played in a federal courtroom here Monday, her first public remarks since shortly after Rolling Stone published her now-discredited allegations of a fraternity gang rape nearly two years ago. Jackie had issued a statement at the time the Rolling Stone article was published in November 2014 and spoke to The Washington Post in a series of interviews in the weeks that followed. [‘She didn’t have credibility anymore’: The moment Rolling Stone’s U-Va. rape story unraveled] At issue in the defamation case against Rolling Stone is whether the magazine and the article’s reporter intentionally smeared Nicole Eramo, then a U-Va. associate dean who was in charge of the school’s sexual assault prevention programs. Eramo argues that Rolling Stone inaccurately portrayed her as indifferent to sexual assault, that it knew that elements of its article weren’t true and that the material the reporter gathered was made to fit into a predetermined narrative about how schools mishandle sexual assault cases. ABC News interviewed Nicole Eramo, the former University of Virginia administrator who is suing Rolling Stone magazine over a November 2014 story about a sexual assault. That story was discredited. (ABC News and 20/20) By the time Jackie spoke with reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, she was a U-Va. junior and had for two years told friends and members of the U-Va. community that she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity party. She had also gone to Eramo seeking help. Erdely testified last week that she believed Jackie’s detailed account of the ordeal. Jackie said during the taped deposition that she stands by the account she gave Rolling Stone and The Post in 2014 and believed it was true at the time. But she also testified that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and has memory loss and can no longer recall specific details. In the taped testimony, Jackie said she felt pressured to cooperate with the reporter and told friends that she no longer wanted to be included in it after learning that her alleged gang-rape would be central to the narrative. “When Sabrina told me my experience was going to be the focal point in the article, I was uncomfortable with that,” Jackie said. “I was feeling scared and overwhelmed and unsure of what to do.” At times in Jackie’s recorded testimony, she contradicted her own story. Jackie at one point said that she believed the Rolling Stone article was not entirely accurate and that “I feel like my interpretation was different than what was written.” She said she remembered reading the story and “thinking I probably would not have written it that way.” She later said that the portrayal of her alleged assault in Rolling Stone was correct. “I stand by the account I gave Rolling Stone and I believed it to be true at the time,” Jackie said. When asked if she still believed it was true, she said: “I believed it was true but some details of my assault — I have PTSD and it’s foggy.” When speaking with The Post in 2014, Jackie provided thorough details about the setting, scene and circumstances of her alleged assault. But in her recorded deposition, provided under oath, Jackie chose her words carefully and spoke deliberately. On multiple occasions she said in the recorded testimony that she no longer remembers aspects of her attack, its aftermath and conversations she had with Erdely and the magazine’s fact checker. In the testimony played to the court, Jackie spoke in measured tones and did not address the veracity of her claims of being gang-raped. The court has not released her full name or shown jurors her image. The Post generally does not identify people who say they were sexually assaulted and has an agreement with Jackie not to identify her by her full name; though her narrative has been debunked, Jackie has maintained that she was sexually assaulted. When confronted in the deposition about allegedly concocting evidence about her allegations — such as fabricating text messages from other women who she said also had been sexually assaulted at the same fraternity — she wouldn’t deny it. “I just don’t remember any of this,” Jackie said. “It’s all very foggy. I don’t know. I don’t know.” She was asked about a specific detail described in Rolling Stone: “Did you tell Ms. Erdely that you left the Phi Kappa Psi house at 3 a.m. splattered in blood?” Jackie replied: “I don’t remember.” The account of Jackie’s rape included the detail that she had been attacked on broken glass. Three of Jackie’s friends who met up with her that night told The Post that Jackie did not appear to have visible injuries at the time, one of several discrepancies with the published account. Jackie also testified that she had messaged friends asking them not to reveal the name of her ringleader of the alleged assault, comparing Erdely’s efforts to determine his identity to a “witch hunt.” Jackie said that she expressed doubts about the story ahead of its publication. In a meeting with Erdely, Jackie told the journalist that she cared deeply about Eramo and worried that her “job security” would be at stake after the article was published. [Rolling Stone reporter said she believed ‘Jackie,’ felt ‘scared for her’] She told friends that Erdely had misrepresented her in the article and “skewed” some of her quotes out of context. She also stopped talking to the journalist for two weeks as the article neared publication. “I felt like I was getting pressured from a lot of different people to do something I did not want to do,” Jackie said. Jackie also went to U-Va. administrators before the article was published to express concerns because she believed it would include “some unflattering facts or unflattering facets of Dean Eramo and I wanted to change that,” Jackie said in the recording. “So many students would be lost without her.” The article portrayed Eramo and the university’s administration as indifferent to reports of sexual assault, something that Eramo has said denigrated her life’s work, drew hate mail and threats, and affected her career. In the recording, Jackie said that she “felt bad” about the way Eramo, friends and others were portrayed as callous in the article. “I wouldn’t use the word indifferent at all,” Jackie said. “I believe she cared very much.” Yet Jackie testified that she believed Erdely “had done her best to recount what I’d told her.” In the days after the magazine story was published, it quickly became an Internet sensation, attracting millions of readers to the Rolling Stone website. After the article went online, Jackie wrote messages to friends saying that she believed the magazine had misrepresented her account of what had happened. “I felt like everything was out of control,” Jackie said. The article was retracted after a Charlottesville police investigation and a probe by the Columbia Journalism School found significant inconsistencies. Police concluded that the assault described in Rolling Stone did not occur. “Jackie’s’ testimony and the testimony over the last several days have shown that neither Sabrina Rubin Erdely nor Rolling Stone published statements about Eramo with actual malice, the burden Plaintiff must meet to support her lawsuit,” Rolling Stone said in a statement after court had adjourned.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

WOODLAND – The Woodland Town Council rejected a proposal to rezone a section of land north of town to M2 (manufacturing) from RA (residential/agricultural), essentially denying approval of a solar farm. Newly sworn in councilman Cecil Harkey voted against the motion to reject rezoning the land, while council members David Cooper, Ron Lane, and Pat Liverman voted to approve it following public comments against the rezoning. The Planning Board had recommended the property be rezoned to allow Strata Solar Company to build a solar farm off U.S. highway 258. Three other solar farms were previously accepted by the town council, with one now in the process of installing solar panels. The solar farm companies are seeking placement around Woodland because it has an electrical substation nearby where the solar power generated by the panels can be added to the electrical grid. Strata’s proposal would have competed encircling the Woodland substation. Later in the meeting, the Town Council voted for a complete moratorium on solar farms. During the public comment period preceding the rezoning vote, citizens expressed distrust and fear of the solar panels. Jean Barnes said she represented many citizens who rejected any more solar farms coming to the Woodland area and presented a petition to the council. Barnes asked that any future solar farm requests be placed on a referendum so the citizens can make the decision. Mary Hobbs has been living in Woodland for 50 years and said she has watched it slowly becoming a ghost town with no job opportunities for young people. She said her home is surrounded by solar farms and is no longer worth its value because of those facilities. She added that the only people profiting are the landowners who sell their land, the solar companies, and the electric companies. The next speakers were Bobby and Jane Mann. Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the natural vegetation that makes the community beautiful. She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the vegetation from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where vegetation is brown and dead because it did not receive enough sunlight. She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer. “I want to know what’s going to happen,” she said. “I want information. Enough is enough. I don’t see the profit for the town. “People come with hidden agendas,” she said. “Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn’t sign any paper.” Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms. “You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.” He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland. Strata then addressed the council and audience. Several company representatives, to include Beth Trahos, Sam Judd and Brent Niemann, spoke about solar farms. They changed the plan to increase setback from the road and said the solar farm would be have substantial amounts of vegetation. Trahos said solar farms are proven to be safe and exist next to homes. She said there are no negative impacts on property values statewide. “A solar farm is a wonderful use for a property like this,” Trahos said. The town would not benefit, from a tax base standpoint, from the solar farms because they are not located within the town limits, but only in the extraterritorial sections. The only funding the town would get is approximately $7,000 per year for specialized training for the Woodland Fire Department in the event of an electrical malfunction at the solar plant. Niemann said the only sunlight the panels use to generate power is that which hits them directly. “The panels don’t draw additional sunlight,” Niemann noted. The power generated would go directly into the electrical grid and would not reduce Woodland’s power bills. “There are no toxic materials on site,” Niemann said. “This is a tried and true technology.” Mayor Kenneth Manual called for the vote, which was 3-1 against rezoning the land (the mayor only votes in case of a tie). The council later voted for a moratorium on future solar farms. ||||| World leaders in Paris may have lauded the future of renewable energy, but in small-town America, all that solar hocus-pocus is still viewed with a healthy dose of slack-jawed cynicism. The good burghers of Woodland, North Carolina, have successfully torpedoed plans for a solar farm, arguing the panels would suck up all the sun's energy, cause cancer and drive young people out of town. Local councillors initially voted to reject a rezoning application that would have allowed the Strata Solar Company to build the farm near a highway north of Woodland, the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reported. But then they went further, supporting a complete moratorium on new solar farms, after residents made their opposition crystal clear. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link No more for Woodland: Solar panels in South Carolina. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Jane Mann, a retired science teacher, reportedly told the council meeting she was concerned the panels would prevent photosynthesis and so stop the growth of nearby plants. She said she had seen areas near solar panels where the plants were brown and dead due to lack of sunlight - a claim rejected by Brent Niemann, a representative of the Strata Solar Company. Advertisement "The panels don't draw additional sunlight," he said. But Ms Mann went on to question the higher number of cancer deaths in the area and said it could not be proved that solar panels did not cause cancer, the newspaper said. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Former treasurer Joe Hockey described wind turbines near Lake George as "utterly offensive". "I want information. Enough is enough. I don't see the profit for the town," she said. "People come with hidden agendas. Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn't sign any paper." The Woodland area is popular with solar companies because it has an electrical substation that can be used to connect the electricity to the power grid, the newspaper reported. But complainants to the council only forecast pain, not gain. Bobby Mann, understood to be Mrs Mann's husband, said other communities had withered after solar farms were installed. "You're killing your town," he said. "All the young people are going to move out." Another resident, Mary Hobbs, reportedly told councillors the value of her land had decreased because it was surrounded by solar farms. (The council had previously approved three.) Councillors ultimately voted 3-1 against the proposed rezoning. Australia is, of course, no stranger to the full breadth of arguments deployed against renewable energy. Deposed prime minister Tony Abbott once disparaged wind turbines as noisy, ugly and "visually awful", while former treasurer Joe Hockey called them "utterly offensive". Speaking after the conclusion of the weekend's landmark climate deal in Paris, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the most important element of the talks was transformation to a clean energy future. "The business community of the entire world is receiving a message about countries now moving towards clean, alternative, renewable energy and trying to reduce their carbon footprint," he said. ||||| The town of Woodland, North Carolina is in the spotlight this week after rejecting a proposal to rezone a section of land just outside its borders for the use of a solar farm. Three solar farms have already been approved in the area, but the local residents are seemingly not impressed. The council defeated the motion for the rezoning of an area on US Highway 258 for an additional solar farm after a public comment period, where members of the town could give their opinions. A retired science teacher, Jane Mann, said she was concerned about the rising risk of cancer deaths in the area (despite reports showing that cancer rates in North Carolina have fallen over the 2008 to 2012 period) saying that no one could tell her that solar panels were not causing the cancer. She was also concerned that photosynthesis would slow due to the solar panels, stopping the plants from growing in the solar farm fields. "I want to know what's going to happen. I want information. Enough is enough. I don't see the profit for the town," Mann said at the meeting, according to The Roanoke-Chowan News Herald. "People come with hidden agendas. Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn't sign any paper," she added. Bobby Mann (it's not clear if he's related to Jane), said that he was worried that local communities would dry up. "You're killing your town," he said. "All the young people are going to move out." He also argued that solar farms would suck up all the energy from the Sun, and new businesses would not come to Woodland. The area just outside Woodland is a popular spot for solar farm developers, because it has an electrical substation, which means the panels can be hooked up to the national grid. While contruction has started on one of the three farms that have already been approved for the area, it's unlikely this forth one will get the go-ahead. Unfortunately, this dislike of solar is not new. The New York Times reported in 2011 that when Oradell, New Jersey began putting up solar panels on power poles, many residents were unhappy. "I hate them," Eric Olsen told The New York Times. "It's just an eyesore." Other residents were also reported as calling the panels "ugly" or "hideous", and said they were worried about their property value declining because of it. However, these panels pushed New Jersey closer to their renewable energy target, which is one of the highest in the US. As of earlier this year, New Jersey also approved a bill that requires the state to get at least 80 percent of all its energy from renewable sources by 2050. And not all New Jersey residents have been against these changes, with some seeing the panels as a badge of pride representing their switch to clean energy. Hopefully, with increased exposure and better education, we can outline the positives of having solar panels installed in both big cities and country towns. We don't want another fiasco like this Wind Turbine Syndrome travesty.

– The town of Woodland, North Carolina, is taking a drubbing online after its town council not only shot down a proposed solar farm but put a moratorium on future similar projects. It wasn't the mere rejection, however, that's drawing ridicule but some of the comments made by local residents during the comment period as rounded up by the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. The big one: A man voiced concern that "solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland," in the words of the newspaper. "You’re killing your town," he told planning officials. "All the young people are going to move out." A retired science teacher also worried that solar farms would interfere with photosynthesis and result in dead plants around town, and might even cause cancer. "I want to know what's going to happen," she said. "I want information." A representative from the company that floated the proposal assured everyone that solar panels make use only of the sunlight that hits them directly and "don’t draw additional sunlight," but the nays still won the day. (The News-Herald notes that the town council had previously given the green light to three other solar farms.) The story is now generating not-so-flattering headlines all over. A post at Science Alert begins, "Wow" and hopes that "increased exposure and better education" about solar power will help. Ars Technica, meanwhile, looks at satellite images to question one resident's contention that solar farms were becoming a nuisance in the area, while newspapers in the the UK and as far away as Australia are joining in to snigger at the idea of solar panels sucking up all the sun's energy. (Long solar-powered flights are possible, but self-hypnosis helps as a pilot.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.WOODLAND – The Woodland Town Council rejected a proposal to rezone a section of land north of town to M2 (manufacturing) from RA (residential/agricultural), essentially denying approval of a solar farm. Newly sworn in councilman Cecil Harkey voted against the motion to reject rezoning the land, while council members David Cooper, Ron Lane, and Pat Liverman voted to approve it following public comments against the rezoning. The Planning Board had recommended the property be rezoned to allow Strata Solar Company to build a solar farm off U.S. highway 258. Three other solar farms were previously accepted by the town council, with one now in the process of installing solar panels. The solar farm companies are seeking placement around Woodland because it has an electrical substation nearby where the solar power generated by the panels can be added to the electrical grid. Strata’s proposal would have competed encircling the Woodland substation. Later in the meeting, the Town Council voted for a complete moratorium on solar farms. During the public comment period preceding the rezoning vote, citizens expressed distrust and fear of the solar panels. Jean Barnes said she represented many citizens who rejected any more solar farms coming to the Woodland area and presented a petition to the council. Barnes asked that any future solar farm requests be placed on a referendum so the citizens can make the decision. Mary Hobbs has been living in Woodland for 50 years and said she has watched it slowly becoming a ghost town with no job opportunities for young people. She said her home is surrounded by solar farms and is no longer worth its value because of those facilities. She added that the only people profiting are the landowners who sell their land, the solar companies, and the electric companies. The next speakers were Bobby and Jane Mann. Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the natural vegetation that makes the community beautiful. She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the vegetation from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where vegetation is brown and dead because it did not receive enough sunlight. She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer. “I want to know what’s going to happen,” she said. “I want information. Enough is enough. I don’t see the profit for the town. “People come with hidden agendas,” she said. “Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn’t sign any paper.” Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms. “You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.” He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland. Strata then addressed the council and audience. Several company representatives, to include Beth Trahos, Sam Judd and Brent Niemann, spoke about solar farms. They changed the plan to increase setback from the road and said the solar farm would be have substantial amounts of vegetation. Trahos said solar farms are proven to be safe and exist next to homes. She said there are no negative impacts on property values statewide. “A solar farm is a wonderful use for a property like this,” Trahos said. The town would not benefit, from a tax base standpoint, from the solar farms because they are not located within the town limits, but only in the extraterritorial sections. The only funding the town would get is approximately $7,000 per year for specialized training for the Woodland Fire Department in the event of an electrical malfunction at the solar plant. Niemann said the only sunlight the panels use to generate power is that which hits them directly. “The panels don’t draw additional sunlight,” Niemann noted. The power generated would go directly into the electrical grid and would not reduce Woodland’s power bills. “There are no toxic materials on site,” Niemann said. “This is a tried and true technology.” Mayor Kenneth Manual called for the vote, which was 3-1 against rezoning the land (the mayor only votes in case of a tie). The council later voted for a moratorium on future solar farms. ||||| World leaders in Paris may have lauded the future of renewable energy, but in small-town America, all that solar hocus-pocus is still viewed with a healthy dose of slack-jawed cynicism. The good burghers of Woodland, North Carolina, have successfully torpedoed plans for a solar farm, arguing the panels would suck up all the sun's energy, cause cancer and drive young people out of town. Local councillors initially voted to reject a rezoning application that would have allowed the Strata Solar Company to build the farm near a highway north of Woodland, the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reported. But then they went further, supporting a complete moratorium on new solar farms, after residents made their opposition crystal clear. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link No more for Woodland: Solar panels in South Carolina. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Jane Mann, a retired science teacher, reportedly told the council meeting she was concerned the panels would prevent photosynthesis and so stop the growth of nearby plants. She said she had seen areas near solar panels where the plants were brown and dead due to lack of sunlight - a claim rejected by Brent Niemann, a representative of the Strata Solar Company. Advertisement "The panels don't draw additional sunlight," he said. But Ms Mann went on to question the higher number of cancer deaths in the area and said it could not be proved that solar panels did not cause cancer, the newspaper said. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Former treasurer Joe Hockey described wind turbines near Lake George as "utterly offensive". "I want information. Enough is enough. I don't see the profit for the town," she said. "People come with hidden agendas. Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn't sign any paper." The Woodland area is popular with solar companies because it has an electrical substation that can be used to connect the electricity to the power grid, the newspaper reported. But complainants to the council only forecast pain, not gain. Bobby Mann, understood to be Mrs Mann's husband, said other communities had withered after solar farms were installed. "You're killing your town," he said. "All the young people are going to move out." Another resident, Mary Hobbs, reportedly told councillors the value of her land had decreased because it was surrounded by solar farms. (The council had previously approved three.) Councillors ultimately voted 3-1 against the proposed rezoning. Australia is, of course, no stranger to the full breadth of arguments deployed against renewable energy. Deposed prime minister Tony Abbott once disparaged wind turbines as noisy, ugly and "visually awful", while former treasurer Joe Hockey called them "utterly offensive". Speaking after the conclusion of the weekend's landmark climate deal in Paris, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the most important element of the talks was transformation to a clean energy future. "The business community of the entire world is receiving a message about countries now moving towards clean, alternative, renewable energy and trying to reduce their carbon footprint," he said. ||||| The town of Woodland, North Carolina is in the spotlight this week after rejecting a proposal to rezone a section of land just outside its borders for the use of a solar farm. Three solar farms have already been approved in the area, but the local residents are seemingly not impressed. The council defeated the motion for the rezoning of an area on US Highway 258 for an additional solar farm after a public comment period, where members of the town could give their opinions. A retired science teacher, Jane Mann, said she was concerned about the rising risk of cancer deaths in the area (despite reports showing that cancer rates in North Carolina have fallen over the 2008 to 2012 period) saying that no one could tell her that solar panels were not causing the cancer. She was also concerned that photosynthesis would slow due to the solar panels, stopping the plants from growing in the solar farm fields. "I want to know what's going to happen. I want information. Enough is enough. I don't see the profit for the town," Mann said at the meeting, according to The Roanoke-Chowan News Herald. "People come with hidden agendas. Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn't sign any paper," she added. Bobby Mann (it's not clear if he's related to Jane), said that he was worried that local communities would dry up. "You're killing your town," he said. "All the young people are going to move out." He also argued that solar farms would suck up all the energy from the Sun, and new businesses would not come to Woodland. The area just outside Woodland is a popular spot for solar farm developers, because it has an electrical substation, which means the panels can be hooked up to the national grid. While contruction has started on one of the three farms that have already been approved for the area, it's unlikely this forth one will get the go-ahead. Unfortunately, this dislike of solar is not new. The New York Times reported in 2011 that when Oradell, New Jersey began putting up solar panels on power poles, many residents were unhappy. "I hate them," Eric Olsen told The New York Times. "It's just an eyesore." Other residents were also reported as calling the panels "ugly" or "hideous", and said they were worried about their property value declining because of it. However, these panels pushed New Jersey closer to their renewable energy target, which is one of the highest in the US. As of earlier this year, New Jersey also approved a bill that requires the state to get at least 80 percent of all its energy from renewable sources by 2050. And not all New Jersey residents have been against these changes, with some seeing the panels as a badge of pride representing their switch to clean energy. Hopefully, with increased exposure and better education, we can outline the positives of having solar panels installed in both big cities and country towns. We don't want another fiasco like this Wind Turbine Syndrome travesty.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Donald Trump said that the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he makes lewd remarks to co-host Billy Bush was “illegal,” telling Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that he was considering legal action. The leak of the tape earlier this month was a bombshell in the campaign, forcing him to make a rare videotaped apology and to address it at the second presidential debate. Earlier on Thursday, Trump told the Catholic network EWTN that the microphones that captured the conversation “should never have been on.” On “The O’Reilly Factor” later on Thursday, Trump said that the recording “was certainly illegal.” It’s unclear whether he was referring to the release of the tape — which was leaked to The Washington Post — or the fact that he was being recorded. Trump and Bush were having a conversation aboard a bus as the cameras rolled outside, capturing their arrival at the NBC sound stages where “Days of Our Lives” is filmed. Trump was to record a cameo. As the bus rolled along, Trump and Bush’s conversation can be heard, with the audio so clear that they were obviously speaking while wearing mics or with mics nearby. Trump, however, called the bus a “private dressing room.” Related LAPD Arrests Suspect in Donald Trump’s Walk of Fame Star Vandalism Donald Trump Accuses ‘SNL’ of ‘Hit Job,’ Bashes Alec Baldwin’s Performance TheA question is whether Trump gave his consent to the recording — even by implication, given that he was wearing one. California state law makes it illegal to record a conversation without consent. But the law makes an exception to circumstances “in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.” Trump told O’Reilly that “you’re going to see after the election if he takes legal action.” He said that the remarks “shouldn’t have been said,” but that they were “locker room talk.” In his conversation, Trump boasted of how he approaches women. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” “Whatever you want,” Bush said. “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything,” Trump said. Bush was ousted from his role on NBC’s “Today” in the wake of the furor over the tape. ||||| Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Donald TrumpVoting early, Rubio implies he cast ballot for Trump Arizona Dems sue GOP, Trump camp on voter intimidation US officials see no link between Trump and Russia: report MORE on Thursday lashed out at NBC over a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape released earlier this month in which he makes lewd comments about women, saying the tape was “illegal” and suggesting that he may sue the network after the election. ADVERTISEMENT “Oh, absolutely,” he said in an interview on Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor” when asked if he believes it was illegal for NBC to release the tape, according to an advance excerpts. “You know that was a private dressing room — yeah that was certainly illegal, no question about it.” The tape, which was reported by The Washington Post before NBC published it, shows Trump bragging that his celebrity lets him get away with groping and kissing women without consent and saying that he made sexual advances on a married woman. In the interview Thursday, Trump was also asked if he would be taking legal action against NBC. “Well, you’ll see, you’ll see — you’re going to see after the election, but I will tell you first of all, it shouldn’t have been said, but it was locker room talk and yeah, I mean you know we’re gonna find out soon enough, I will tell you,” Trump responded. The business mogul has promised a number of lawsuits for after the election, vowing to take on the growing number of women who have accused him of sexual misconduct after the release of the tape. He's even said that he will sue The New York Times after the race is over for publishing two of the women's accounts of being groped by Trump, which he has denied.

– Donald Trump appears to be lining up another post-election lawsuit: On Fox's O’Reilly Factor Thursday, he slammed NBC for releasing video of his crude 2005 conversation with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush and suggested he might sue, the Hill reports. He called the bus where most of the conversation took place a "private dressing room" and said the recording was "absolutely illegal." "It was locker room talk, the microphone was not supposed to be on—not that I make that as an excuse for myself, but certainly it was an illegal act," he said. Asked whether he would sue over the release of the recording, which was a major blow to his campaign, Trump said: "You'll see—you’re going to see after the election but I will tell you first of all, it shouldn't have been said but it was locker room talk and yeah, I mean you know we're gonna find out soon enough." Variety notes that it is illegal for a conversation to be recorded without consent in California, except in circumstances "in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded." (Trump has also threatened to sue the New York Times over a story alleging that he groped two women.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Donald Trump said that the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he makes lewd remarks to co-host Billy Bush was “illegal,” telling Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that he was considering legal action. The leak of the tape earlier this month was a bombshell in the campaign, forcing him to make a rare videotaped apology and to address it at the second presidential debate. Earlier on Thursday, Trump told the Catholic network EWTN that the microphones that captured the conversation “should never have been on.” On “The O’Reilly Factor” later on Thursday, Trump said that the recording “was certainly illegal.” It’s unclear whether he was referring to the release of the tape — which was leaked to The Washington Post — or the fact that he was being recorded. Trump and Bush were having a conversation aboard a bus as the cameras rolled outside, capturing their arrival at the NBC sound stages where “Days of Our Lives” is filmed. Trump was to record a cameo. As the bus rolled along, Trump and Bush’s conversation can be heard, with the audio so clear that they were obviously speaking while wearing mics or with mics nearby. Trump, however, called the bus a “private dressing room.” Related LAPD Arrests Suspect in Donald Trump’s Walk of Fame Star Vandalism Donald Trump Accuses ‘SNL’ of ‘Hit Job,’ Bashes Alec Baldwin’s Performance TheA question is whether Trump gave his consent to the recording — even by implication, given that he was wearing one. California state law makes it illegal to record a conversation without consent. But the law makes an exception to circumstances “in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.” Trump told O’Reilly that “you’re going to see after the election if he takes legal action.” He said that the remarks “shouldn’t have been said,” but that they were “locker room talk.” In his conversation, Trump boasted of how he approaches women. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” “Whatever you want,” Bush said. “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything,” Trump said. Bush was ousted from his role on NBC’s “Today” in the wake of the furor over the tape. ||||| Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Donald TrumpVoting early, Rubio implies he cast ballot for Trump Arizona Dems sue GOP, Trump camp on voter intimidation US officials see no link between Trump and Russia: report MORE on Thursday lashed out at NBC over a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape released earlier this month in which he makes lewd comments about women, saying the tape was “illegal” and suggesting that he may sue the network after the election. ADVERTISEMENT “Oh, absolutely,” he said in an interview on Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor” when asked if he believes it was illegal for NBC to release the tape, according to an advance excerpts. “You know that was a private dressing room — yeah that was certainly illegal, no question about it.” The tape, which was reported by The Washington Post before NBC published it, shows Trump bragging that his celebrity lets him get away with groping and kissing women without consent and saying that he made sexual advances on a married woman. In the interview Thursday, Trump was also asked if he would be taking legal action against NBC. “Well, you’ll see, you’ll see — you’re going to see after the election, but I will tell you first of all, it shouldn’t have been said, but it was locker room talk and yeah, I mean you know we’re gonna find out soon enough, I will tell you,” Trump responded. The business mogul has promised a number of lawsuits for after the election, vowing to take on the growing number of women who have accused him of sexual misconduct after the release of the tape. He's even said that he will sue The New York Times after the race is over for publishing two of the women's accounts of being groped by Trump, which he has denied.

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

More Dark Sky Conservation Initiatives FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 3, 2013 Contacts: Chad Moore, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 970-267-7212 Nate Ament, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 435-719-2349 Starry Starry Night: A cooperative effort to celebrate, promote and preserve the star-filled night skies of the Southwest’s Colorado Plateau Starry Starry Night: A cooperative effort to celebrate, promote and preserve the star-filled night skies of the Southwest’s Colorado Plateau MOAB, Utah – In a collaborative effort to “celebrate starry skies” across the Colorado Plateau of the American Southwest, a voluntary cooperative is organizing to promote the preservation, enjoyment and tourism potential of stargazing and astronomy in the vast region. The Colorado Plateau Dark Skies Cooperative is focused on the topographic heart of the high desert, forest and canyon country where the Four Corners states meet. The 130,000-square-mile Colorado Plateau, contains substantial parts of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Its combination of high elevation, excellent air quality, low population density and frequent cloud-free weather afford world-class viewing and enjoyment of naturally dark, star-filled skies. In daylight, the region’s striking scenery has long attracted millions of visitors annually to national and state parks, national forests, tribal lands, and other public lands. Now, their after-dark appeal is a rapidly growing phenomenon, too. Where the “drive-through” nature of some daytime tourist visits can be fleeting, stargazing fosters overnight stays that can pump more dollars into local economies. In much of the developed world, the experience of a dark sky in one’s own back yard is disappearing or gone. On the Colorado Plateau, the exceptional unfettered view of the Milky Way, planets, meteors and galaxies has become a major reason for many to visit from across the U.S. and around the world. In support of this cooperative initiative, the National Park Service (NPS) has hired a full-time Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative Coordinator, Nate Ament, with an office in Moab, UT. Nate joined the cooperative with a diverse background of environmental education, resource management, and restoration coordination across the western U.S. He has spent most of his life on the plateau, exploring its wonders and working toward their preservation. Nate will work with the NPS’s own parks and with other land management agencies, interested communities, groups, businesses, and individuals to support local projects and promote civic engagement with the dark skies message. “We commend the members of the Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative,” said W. Scott Kardel, managing director of the International Dark Sky Association. “Their work will help preserve valuable resources on the ground and in the sky while keeping the stars brightly shining over the plateau for generations to come.” Dark Sky Cooperative members invite community discussion about what form initial local efforts might take – public meetings, lighting demonstration projects, night-skies festivals, dark-sky monitoring and the like. (A list of online resources is below.) Although labeled for the Colorado Plateau, the region’s dark skies have no formal boundary. The initiative intends to support and encourage all who voluntarily seek to protect, enhance and appreciate the plateau’s night-sky resource as a recreational, economic and educational treasure. Other dark sky benefits include cultural heritage, improved habitat for nocturnal wildlife, energy conservation and greenhouse gas reduction, preservation of rural character, promotion of astronomy and the inspiration of youth with an interest in science. Colorado Plateau communities such as Flagstaff, AZ and Springdale, UT already have adopted dark sky ordinances that foster the use of lighting that does not harm the night viewing environment. Some communities, businesses, individuals and government agencies also are retrofitting light fixtures to reverse past practices that may have unnecessarily dimmed clear night views. In federal and state public lands alone, the Colorado Plateau’s dark sky resource is enormous and rich. The plateau contains at least 27 national parks and monuments, five national forests, many Bureau of Land Management (BLM) areas, and several state parks of the Four Corners states. In 2007, Natural Bridges National Monument in southeastern Utah was named the world’s first-ever “Dark Sky Park” by the International Dark-Sky Association. In many of the national parks, stargazing programs are the most popular ranger-led activity, day or night. A number of of them have annual night-sky festivals, as do some plateau communities. On September 6-7, 2013, Wayne County, UT will hold its fourth annual Heritage Starfest. Nor is this a new activity. People have been drawn to view the Colorado Plateau night skies for millennia, from prehistoric ancestors of pueblo Indian peoples to astronomers, vacationers and dreamers today. Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah, which averages 305 cloudless nights a year, has hosted stargazing programs continuously since 1969. In 2012, the park reported approximately 52,000 night-sky related visits and $2 million in associated benefits to local economies. “The public knows that the dark skies of the Colorado Plateau are both a celestial treasure and a celestial refuge,” said Chad Moore, Night Skies Team leader for the Park Service, one of the partners working to organize the cooperative. “We are happy to partner in this effort so that residents and visitors alike will see this ‘dark harbor’ as something worth protecting now and for the future.” There are numerous online resources for further information, including: The International Dark-Sky Association website (http://www.darksky.org/) Local government dark-skies activities in Colorado Plateau communities: -- Flagstaff, AZ (http://www.flagstaffdarkskies.org/) -- Springdale, UT (http://www.springdaletown.com/uploads/fb/pdf/generalplan_pdf/07-Environmental-Resources2010-clean.pdf ) The National Park Service Night Sky website (http://www.nature.nps.gov/night/ ) For additional information about the Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative, news media can contact: Nate Ament, Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Coordinator, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , (435) 719-2349. and Chad Moore, National Park Service Night Skies Team Leader, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , (970) 267-7212. -- end – ||||| Share This Story Tweet Share Share Pin Email When she's trying to explain the idea of light pollution, Laura Williams often shows people a picture taken from the South Rim during a blackout at Grand Canyon National Park. It's mostly black, with some stars in the sky and a few car headlights, but then, there's this orange glow creeping from the south. It's not coming from Sedona or Flagstaff, but from the Valley. The Greater Phoenix area casts a nighttime arc of light over most of Arizona, extending more than 200 miles in each direction. "People have a hard time believing it," said Williams, Grand Canyon National Park's night-skies inventory coordinator. "They don't realize how bright Phoenix is or how far light travels." Williams is creating a system to identify unnecessary fixtures and too-bright bulbs so they can be replaced. The idea is that increased darkness will mean Canyon visitors can better see the celestial bodies that make up our universe, and have an easier time considering their places in it. But light from Phoenix car lots, Glendale billboards and Mesa strip malls floods the skies to the north, well past Flagstaff's Lowell Observatory, and well past Kitt Peak Observatory on the Tohono O'odham Reservation southwest of Tucson. The glow washes out the skies from California's Joshua Tree National Park to the western edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico. For those living in cities, it can be hard to fathom why the word galaxy comes from the Greek for "milk." CLOSE Arizona Republic columnist Ed Montini and reporter Megan Finnerty discuss how Phoenix's sky-glow can be seen all the way at the Grand Canyon. It can be hard to appreciate that even above the white-glowing intersection at Central Avenue and Camelback Road in Phoenix — the Valley's midpoint — the Milky Way is above, shining brightly enough to cast shadows on Earth. It can be hard to imagine that in truly dark spaces, people would run out of wishes before they'd run out of shooting stars. Light pollution doesn't just bleach the night sky. It squanders electricity, does little to curb crime, disrupts life for animals including sea turtles, bats and migratory birds, and has been linked to everything from insomnia to breast cancer in humans. "The whole issue isn't about not having light. It's how do we use light more responsibly and thoughtfully," said Paul Bogard, author of 2013's "The End of Night." "The night is beautiful, amazing and filled with wonder," Bogard said. "What's the value of ... standing under the galaxy and wondering who you are and what your life is about? Losing it has an enormous cost to our souls and spirits." Scientists estimate that in about 10 years, America will have only three dark patches of land where people will be able to clearly see the Milky Way and where they'll be able to do high-quality astronomy and nocturnal wilderness research. Those areas are southeastern Oregon and western Idaho; northeastern Nevada and western Utah; and northern Arizona and southeastern Utah — the better part of the Colorado Plateau. The light-sprawls of the greater Las Vegas and Phoenix areas imperil dark skies in both the Colorado Plateau and northeastern Nevada and western Utah. The Oregon-Idaho patch is not near large cities. "Phoenix is in a unique position because it's such a large metro area so close to so many dark places," said Nathan Ament, coordinator of the Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative for the National Park Service. "Your light affects people's experience in national parks and nocturnal wildlife environments," Ament said. "You can't just say, 'It's my backyard and I'll do what I want.' It's a shared resource." The fact that two big cities can make a darkness difference is an anomaly. In the planet's brightest places, Europe, Japan, South Korea and the U.S.east of the Mississippi, light pollution looks like a mostly unbroken glow. It wouldn't matter if Paris forfeited its title as the City of Light, if Milan, Madrid and Oslo didn't tone it down, too. This map shows light pollution using false coloring to illustrate the intensity of light that spreads from cities and towns. The white and red areas are the brightest. The gray and blue areas are the darkest. This image illustrates an especially sensitive measure of light pollution and is not meant to imply that all colored areas are very bright. Rather, all colored areas are brighter than they would be without light pollution. This map shows light pollution using false coloring to illustrate the intensity of light that spreads from cities and towns. The white and red areas are the brightest. The gray and blue areas are the darkest. This image illustrates an especially sensitive measure of light pollution and is not meant to imply that all colored areas are very bright. Rather, all colored areas are brighter than they would be without light pollution. Williams, Ament and others within the National Park Service are part of a 15-year-old movement, born in Western national parks, to inspire individuals to protect the skyskape. During ranger talks, team members recommend putting landscape and architectural up-lighting on timers, putting security lights on motion sensors and making sure lights shine downward and only where needed. They talk about saving energy and money, and how easy it is to find the right bulbs and fixtures at, say, Home Depot. Ament said rangers prefer to educate visitors about smart lighting, rather than lobbying municipalities to rewrite lighting codes. "In the West, it seems to work a lot better for people to make decisions for themselves than if city or state or federal government tells them to," he said. Astronomy at stake Beyond conservation, there's the economic argument. Arizona is home to three of the five largest telescopes in the continental U.S. And the bulk of America's telescopes are concentrated in the West. Many of them sit in Southern California and on or at the edges of the Colorado Plateau: around Flagstaff, Tucson and western New Mexico. Astronomy, space and planetary-science fields bring Arizona $252.8 million annually. They attract about 200,800 visitors and employ about 3,300 directly and indirectly, according to a 2008 study by the University of Arizona, the most recent available. Dark skies-friendly lighting checklist: 1. Is the light necessary? 2. Is it on only when needed, or should it be on a timer or a sensor? 3. Is it fully shielded, meaning, does the light point only down, not out and up? 4. Does it give off the minimum amount of light necessary or could you do dental surgery on the steps? 5. Is it the right color? Amber bulbs create the least skyglow, which is why Tucson’s streetlights are that color. 6. Is the bulb energy efficient? The future of this industry depends on darkness. That's why Tucson, among other Arizona cities, implemented dark-skies-friendly lighting codes decades ago. Tucson hasn't gotten brighter in 30 years even though the population has increased 59 percent since 1980, said Katy Garmany, an associate scientist at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory outside Tucson, which just completed a study of Tucson's skyglow. But scientists at the National Observatory on Kitt Peak estimate that if the Valley continues to brighten, they've got about 10 years left, said Garmany. Then astronomers will have to travel to Hawaii or Chile to do certain research, such as trying to spot planets outside our solar system. "It keeps getting brighter and brighter," Garmany said. "It's just really hard to do the cutting-edge stuff, and you have to go ... where it's darker. (Scientists) have ways of eliminating extra scattered light in the sky, but there's only so much they can do." Creating dark skies John C. Barentine is the dark-skies places program manager for the Tucson-based International Dark-Sky Association. He leads the team that designates places as having the kind of low but adequate lighting sufficient to preserve the nightscape. Flagstaff was the first International Dark Skies Community in 2001. Barentine's team has designated only seven other communities and 25 parks and reserves globally. Sedona was added to the list earlier this year. Barentine grew up in Phoenix and remembers the first time he saw the Milky Way. "To say it was shocking would be an understatement," he said. "I was 10 or 11 years old. We were up in Flagstaff to play in the snow. I remember going outside … and I was floored. I was absolutely floored." Now, he spends his days helping communities create lighting codes so kids don't have to ride in the car for 90 minutes to be filled with awe at the night sky. A saguaro is illuminated by headlights from passing cars on Interstate 17 against the northern horizon on a recent moonless night south of Black Canyon City. (Photo: Rob Schumacher/The Republic) He goes to town halls and city planning meetings to talk about how putting lights on timers and sensors, adding shields to the tops of lights and choosing amber bulbs or lower wattages can all reduce skyglow without impacting ground visibility. Barentine sighs when he talks about Phoenix, but said the city's lighting codes "aren't bad." The city has site codes, which were last updated 11 years ago, and street-lighting codes, which were last updated two years ago. The site codes don't apply to lights older than 1985, although there aren't many still in use. But if a building is new, the lights must conform to updated codes, which call for the kinds of lights Barentine recommends. But issues remain. Asphalt is more reflective than dirt or grass, and lighting codes don't address ground glare. Horizontal lighting, a main cause of skyglow, is common here: Think of strip-mall signs lit from within. Common white and blue lights, even LEDs, glare more than other colors. And enforcement is an issue. "We don't have the right equipment, time or staffing to do that," said Tim Boling, the deputy director of neighborhood services for Phoenix. “(Scientists) have ways of eliminating extra scattered light in the sky, but there's only so much they can do.” Katy Garmany Last year, Boling's staff closed 70,000 complaint cases, and he estimates only three or four were related to lighting violations. In Flagstaff, which adopted dark-skies codes in 1989, all outdoor lighting is low and amber-colored, even at the hospital and jail. But people can see easily because nothing is significantly brighter than anything else. And safety isn't an issue. Research across several disciplines has shown that more light doesn't necessarily make buildings or streets safer. Here's why: The human eye adjusts to the brightest thing in the landscape. This is why in starlight, if a woman waits 15 to 45 minutes, she can see her way along a path, or find dropped change on the ground. But introduce a set of headlights, an iPhone screen or a luminous watch face, and all of her dark-adaption gets blown out. It's why in dark rooms, humans are blinded by camera flashes. It's why at El Tovar Lodge on the South Rim, visitors on the light-filled front steps can't see elk 20 feet away. It's why a gas-station canopy makes everything around it seem dim, causing neighboring businesses to add lights proportionally. In some cases, diminishing nighttime lighting can improve visibility. Reflectors, like on the edges of highway lanes, or limited guide lights, like on runways, work better than adding floodlights because the key to visibility is contrast, not overall brightness. To preserve the work done at Lowell, an acre can have only 50,000 lumens in parts of Flagstaff. (A lumen is a measurement of how much light a bulb puts out. A 40-watt incandescent bulb puts out 450 lumens; a 100-watt one puts out 1,600 lumens.) In contrast, in parts of Maricopa County, a single sign can give off 40,000 lumens. Barentine's association recommends a sign not exceed 3,000 lumens. In Phoenix, there are no lumen limits at all. In the Valley, the brightest things are gas stations, billboards and car lots, all using wattage to attract attention, Barentine said. The golden glow from the lights of the Phoenix metro area can be seen from the Mogollon Rim on Labor Day. (Photo: Pat Shannahan/The Republic) Thirty-two municipalities make up the Valley, and since Phoenix is constricted from substantial growth by the surrounding municipalities, it will take all of them working together to limit skyglow, said Alan Stephenson, the director of Phoenix's planning and development department. It's not on people's short lists, though. "When we talk to downtown residents, they're more concerned about street lights being broken, or safety, when it comes to light," said Stephenson. People aren't against dark-skies-friendly lighting codes, though. They just don't think about light pollution, said Christian B. Luginbuhl, an astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory in Flagstaff. "They're focused on their day-to-day jobs and whether the traffic is bad or whether they can buy the things they need for their families," said Luginbuhl. "They don't notice that the stars are gone. And if they do, they think, 'Well, that's what it's like to live in a city.' “(People are) focused on their day-to-day jobs. They don't notice that the stars are gone.” Christian Luginbuhl "But it doesn't have to be that way, and they can demand more." Special interests derail efforts Once, there was a movement to demand more. In 2009, the Maricopa Association of Governments formed the Dark Skies Stakeholders Group to study ways to protect the state's astronomy industry from Maricopa County's glow. CLOSE While you were enjoying your Labor Day weekend, the world kept turning. Watch the Milky Way move across the sky in a two-hour-long time lapse on the Mogollon Rim. Pat Shannahan/The Republic Typically, the association coordinates the policies that make it easy to live in cities that border each other, setting standards and best practices for things like air quality and solid-waste management. The group was composed of 96 people, scientists, city engineers, transportation-safety experts, town planners and representatives from banking, retail and signage organizations. They worked from January 2009 to April 2011, examining light-use studies from around the world, interviewing experts about best practices and weighing concerns from stakeholders and the public in meetings. They drafted an 87-page public document that called for limiting lighting throughout Maricopa County to 150,000 lumens per acre, or three times most of Flagstaff's limit. When the plan was presented for approval to an internal MAG board, members who had not previously attended meetings raised concerns about safety, liability and diminished commerce. Those members included the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Arizona Food Marketing Alliance, Arizona Retailers Association, Arizona Sign Association and International Sign Association, and the Arizona Bankers Association. According to the meeting's minutes, only one association representative presented a case study. None of the others produced supporting data. "They withheld their participation until the end, and then they tried to create a train wreck," said group member Luginbuhl. "They said it would cost people money and hinder commerce, and it derailed the entire thing." Luginbuhl had seen this before. In the late 1980s, he'd been instrumental in designing Flagstaff's lighting codes to protect the views from Lowell Observatory. He watched the same groups bring up the same issues. But at a crucial public meeting in 1989, the deputy county attorney spoke up, saying liability was not going to be a problem. The planning and zoning commission sided with the scientists who said visibility would not be a problem, commerce would continue, and people would stay safe. Flagstaff passed stricter lighting codes. Since then, neither Flagstaff nor any of the other International Dark Skies Communities has turned into a commerce-free, crime-filled Gotham. The retail centers, banks and gas stations have remained easy for people to find and patronize, even at night. The Maricopa Association of Governments has not addressed the issue since. Celebrating dark skies "By day, the Canyon makes you feel small," said park ranger Marker Marshall. "By night, the sky does too." “By day, the Canyon makes you feel small. By night, the sky does too. ” Marker Marshall It was late June, a week without a moon, and Marshall was hosting a ranger talk called "Starry Starry Night: A Tour of the Universe As Seen Over the Grand Canyon" as part of the 24th Annual Grand Canyon Star Party. The auditorium was at capacity, with 233 people ready to learn how to use a sky map and discern a planet from a star. Kids clutched workbooks, eager to earn the Junior Ranger Night Explorer patch, deep blue and featuring Ursa Major. Marshall wore tiny gold earrings shaped like Saturn. She said things like "Deneb is 54,000 times as luminous as our sun, putting out more energy in 10 minutes than our sun does all year. The light that we can see now left Deneb in 403 A.D., around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire." Marshall grew up in New York City and remembers the night sky as orange. But one night when she was 7 and visiting her grandparents in rural Canada, they watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on TV. "And it was amazing. But then we went outside and went out to look at the moon, and it was amazing all over again," Marshall said. Marshall earned a biology degree at Smith College and soon got a ranger job at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, where she memorized a new constellation each night. There, at the start of her dark-skies programs, she'd just turn off the lights and the sudden appearance of so many stars would make people clap and exclaim. Astronomer Tyler Nordgren has created posters like this one to promote night sky viewing. Astronomer Tyler Nordgren has created posters like this one to promote night sky viewing. Later, she spent three years taking 96 astronomy classes as part of the Great Courses lifelong-learning program. The Whirlpool Galaxy is her favorite. "It's so pretty." Just outside the auditorium, professional and amateur astronomers had set up 51 telescopes, each trained on a different celestial body. More than 100 astronomy volunteers trek to the Canyon each year for the star party, mostly from Tucson. They bring telescopes and years of formal and informal expertise. Mostly retirees, they coach people on how to peer through the lenses at Mars or Vega, and how to track their eyes along a green laser up to the collection of stars that looked to Ptolemy like a swan or a queen on her throne. Just after 9 p.m., more than 1,000 people in hoodies and jeans wandered among the telescopes. The lot filled with shouts of "Wow!" and "Mom, come see this!" And, more breathless, "I had no idea." Erich and Karen Shofstall drove from Livermore, Calif., with their two daughters to look at the stars. Kate, 10, said the drive took "forever." "We can explore and learn and see some cool stars and some of the planets," said Erich. "It's really educational. I think the kids like it." "We've seen Mars and Jupiter and Saturn," Kate said. "How 'bout those nebulas?" asked Erich. "Yeah, we've seen those, too," Kate said, taking the universe in stride. "We get so many people who realize they've seen their first planet, first shooting star," Marshall said. "It's so special. "People need the sense of beauty and perspective and awe that we get from our exposure to the universe in a dark night sky. It's part of every culture, part of being human — to contemplate what's above us." Across the parking lot, a retired plastic surgeon from Boston led a constellation tour, which is to say, he stood in one place and pointed up with a laser. "All that stuff you see is not clouds," he said. "It's perfectly clear tonight. It's the Milky Way." A collective gasp rose from his small audience. ON THE BEAT Megan Finnerty is a reporter on the Page One team. She is the founder and host of the Arizona Storytellers Project. She loves the Grand Canyon. She has been with The Arizona Republic since 2002. How to reach her [email protected] Phone: 602-444-8770 Twitter: @MeganMFinnerty

– Even in the vastness of the American West, the glow from cities has become so bright that places with truly dark skies at night are becoming an endangered species. In the continental US, experts predict that in a decade, there will be just three areas where the sky will be dark enough to see the Milky Way clearly, the Arizona Republic reports. One area covers part of eastern Oregon and western Idaho, another includes parts of Nevada and western Utah, a third takes in parts of northern Arizona and southern Utah—and the latter two are in danger from the bright lights of Las Vegas and Phoenix, which can be seen for more than 200 miles. Light pollution not only hinders astronomy, it can disrupt ecosystems and people's sleeping patterns, warns the International Dark-Sky Association. The Tucson-based organization has been trying for years to preserve the West's dark spots, encouraging cities to adopt dark-sky-friendly lighting codes. This month, the group launched a campaign to preserve and promote the dark skies over the Colorado Plateau, stressing its value as a "celestial treasure and a celestial refuge" that has attracted visitors for centuries. "People need the sense of beauty and perspective and awe that we get from our exposure to the universe in a dark night sky," Grand Canyon ranger Marker Marshall tells the Republic. "It's part of every culture, part of being human—to contemplate what's above us." (Click to read about how the full moon messes with your sleep.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.More Dark Sky Conservation Initiatives FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 3, 2013 Contacts: Chad Moore, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 970-267-7212 Nate Ament, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 435-719-2349 Starry Starry Night: A cooperative effort to celebrate, promote and preserve the star-filled night skies of the Southwest’s Colorado Plateau Starry Starry Night: A cooperative effort to celebrate, promote and preserve the star-filled night skies of the Southwest’s Colorado Plateau MOAB, Utah – In a collaborative effort to “celebrate starry skies” across the Colorado Plateau of the American Southwest, a voluntary cooperative is organizing to promote the preservation, enjoyment and tourism potential of stargazing and astronomy in the vast region. The Colorado Plateau Dark Skies Cooperative is focused on the topographic heart of the high desert, forest and canyon country where the Four Corners states meet. The 130,000-square-mile Colorado Plateau, contains substantial parts of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Its combination of high elevation, excellent air quality, low population density and frequent cloud-free weather afford world-class viewing and enjoyment of naturally dark, star-filled skies. In daylight, the region’s striking scenery has long attracted millions of visitors annually to national and state parks, national forests, tribal lands, and other public lands. Now, their after-dark appeal is a rapidly growing phenomenon, too. Where the “drive-through” nature of some daytime tourist visits can be fleeting, stargazing fosters overnight stays that can pump more dollars into local economies. In much of the developed world, the experience of a dark sky in one’s own back yard is disappearing or gone. On the Colorado Plateau, the exceptional unfettered view of the Milky Way, planets, meteors and galaxies has become a major reason for many to visit from across the U.S. and around the world. In support of this cooperative initiative, the National Park Service (NPS) has hired a full-time Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative Coordinator, Nate Ament, with an office in Moab, UT. Nate joined the cooperative with a diverse background of environmental education, resource management, and restoration coordination across the western U.S. He has spent most of his life on the plateau, exploring its wonders and working toward their preservation. Nate will work with the NPS’s own parks and with other land management agencies, interested communities, groups, businesses, and individuals to support local projects and promote civic engagement with the dark skies message. “We commend the members of the Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative,” said W. Scott Kardel, managing director of the International Dark Sky Association. “Their work will help preserve valuable resources on the ground and in the sky while keeping the stars brightly shining over the plateau for generations to come.” Dark Sky Cooperative members invite community discussion about what form initial local efforts might take – public meetings, lighting demonstration projects, night-skies festivals, dark-sky monitoring and the like. (A list of online resources is below.) Although labeled for the Colorado Plateau, the region’s dark skies have no formal boundary. The initiative intends to support and encourage all who voluntarily seek to protect, enhance and appreciate the plateau’s night-sky resource as a recreational, economic and educational treasure. Other dark sky benefits include cultural heritage, improved habitat for nocturnal wildlife, energy conservation and greenhouse gas reduction, preservation of rural character, promotion of astronomy and the inspiration of youth with an interest in science. Colorado Plateau communities such as Flagstaff, AZ and Springdale, UT already have adopted dark sky ordinances that foster the use of lighting that does not harm the night viewing environment. Some communities, businesses, individuals and government agencies also are retrofitting light fixtures to reverse past practices that may have unnecessarily dimmed clear night views. In federal and state public lands alone, the Colorado Plateau’s dark sky resource is enormous and rich. The plateau contains at least 27 national parks and monuments, five national forests, many Bureau of Land Management (BLM) areas, and several state parks of the Four Corners states. In 2007, Natural Bridges National Monument in southeastern Utah was named the world’s first-ever “Dark Sky Park” by the International Dark-Sky Association. In many of the national parks, stargazing programs are the most popular ranger-led activity, day or night. A number of of them have annual night-sky festivals, as do some plateau communities. On September 6-7, 2013, Wayne County, UT will hold its fourth annual Heritage Starfest. Nor is this a new activity. People have been drawn to view the Colorado Plateau night skies for millennia, from prehistoric ancestors of pueblo Indian peoples to astronomers, vacationers and dreamers today. Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah, which averages 305 cloudless nights a year, has hosted stargazing programs continuously since 1969. In 2012, the park reported approximately 52,000 night-sky related visits and $2 million in associated benefits to local economies. “The public knows that the dark skies of the Colorado Plateau are both a celestial treasure and a celestial refuge,” said Chad Moore, Night Skies Team leader for the Park Service, one of the partners working to organize the cooperative. “We are happy to partner in this effort so that residents and visitors alike will see this ‘dark harbor’ as something worth protecting now and for the future.” There are numerous online resources for further information, including: The International Dark-Sky Association website (http://www.darksky.org/) Local government dark-skies activities in Colorado Plateau communities: -- Flagstaff, AZ (http://www.flagstaffdarkskies.org/) -- Springdale, UT (http://www.springdaletown.com/uploads/fb/pdf/generalplan_pdf/07-Environmental-Resources2010-clean.pdf ) The National Park Service Night Sky website (http://www.nature.nps.gov/night/ ) For additional information about the Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative, news media can contact: Nate Ament, Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Coordinator, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , (435) 719-2349. and Chad Moore, National Park Service Night Skies Team Leader, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , (970) 267-7212. -- end – ||||| Share This Story Tweet Share Share Pin Email When she's trying to explain the idea of light pollution, Laura Williams often shows people a picture taken from the South Rim during a blackout at Grand Canyon National Park. It's mostly black, with some stars in the sky and a few car headlights, but then, there's this orange glow creeping from the south. It's not coming from Sedona or Flagstaff, but from the Valley. The Greater Phoenix area casts a nighttime arc of light over most of Arizona, extending more than 200 miles in each direction. "People have a hard time believing it," said Williams, Grand Canyon National Park's night-skies inventory coordinator. "They don't realize how bright Phoenix is or how far light travels." Williams is creating a system to identify unnecessary fixtures and too-bright bulbs so they can be replaced. The idea is that increased darkness will mean Canyon visitors can better see the celestial bodies that make up our universe, and have an easier time considering their places in it. But light from Phoenix car lots, Glendale billboards and Mesa strip malls floods the skies to the north, well past Flagstaff's Lowell Observatory, and well past Kitt Peak Observatory on the Tohono O'odham Reservation southwest of Tucson. The glow washes out the skies from California's Joshua Tree National Park to the western edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico. For those living in cities, it can be hard to fathom why the word galaxy comes from the Greek for "milk." CLOSE Arizona Republic columnist Ed Montini and reporter Megan Finnerty discuss how Phoenix's sky-glow can be seen all the way at the Grand Canyon. It can be hard to appreciate that even above the white-glowing intersection at Central Avenue and Camelback Road in Phoenix — the Valley's midpoint — the Milky Way is above, shining brightly enough to cast shadows on Earth. It can be hard to imagine that in truly dark spaces, people would run out of wishes before they'd run out of shooting stars. Light pollution doesn't just bleach the night sky. It squanders electricity, does little to curb crime, disrupts life for animals including sea turtles, bats and migratory birds, and has been linked to everything from insomnia to breast cancer in humans. "The whole issue isn't about not having light. It's how do we use light more responsibly and thoughtfully," said Paul Bogard, author of 2013's "The End of Night." "The night is beautiful, amazing and filled with wonder," Bogard said. "What's the value of ... standing under the galaxy and wondering who you are and what your life is about? Losing it has an enormous cost to our souls and spirits." Scientists estimate that in about 10 years, America will have only three dark patches of land where people will be able to clearly see the Milky Way and where they'll be able to do high-quality astronomy and nocturnal wilderness research. Those areas are southeastern Oregon and western Idaho; northeastern Nevada and western Utah; and northern Arizona and southeastern Utah — the better part of the Colorado Plateau. The light-sprawls of the greater Las Vegas and Phoenix areas imperil dark skies in both the Colorado Plateau and northeastern Nevada and western Utah. The Oregon-Idaho patch is not near large cities. "Phoenix is in a unique position because it's such a large metro area so close to so many dark places," said Nathan Ament, coordinator of the Colorado Plateau Dark Sky Cooperative for the National Park Service. "Your light affects people's experience in national parks and nocturnal wildlife environments," Ament said. "You can't just say, 'It's my backyard and I'll do what I want.' It's a shared resource." The fact that two big cities can make a darkness difference is an anomaly. In the planet's brightest places, Europe, Japan, South Korea and the U.S.east of the Mississippi, light pollution looks like a mostly unbroken glow. It wouldn't matter if Paris forfeited its title as the City of Light, if Milan, Madrid and Oslo didn't tone it down, too. This map shows light pollution using false coloring to illustrate the intensity of light that spreads from cities and towns. The white and red areas are the brightest. The gray and blue areas are the darkest. This image illustrates an especially sensitive measure of light pollution and is not meant to imply that all colored areas are very bright. Rather, all colored areas are brighter than they would be without light pollution. This map shows light pollution using false coloring to illustrate the intensity of light that spreads from cities and towns. The white and red areas are the brightest. The gray and blue areas are the darkest. This image illustrates an especially sensitive measure of light pollution and is not meant to imply that all colored areas are very bright. Rather, all colored areas are brighter than they would be without light pollution. Williams, Ament and others within the National Park Service are part of a 15-year-old movement, born in Western national parks, to inspire individuals to protect the skyskape. During ranger talks, team members recommend putting landscape and architectural up-lighting on timers, putting security lights on motion sensors and making sure lights shine downward and only where needed. They talk about saving energy and money, and how easy it is to find the right bulbs and fixtures at, say, Home Depot. Ament said rangers prefer to educate visitors about smart lighting, rather than lobbying municipalities to rewrite lighting codes. "In the West, it seems to work a lot better for people to make decisions for themselves than if city or state or federal government tells them to," he said. Astronomy at stake Beyond conservation, there's the economic argument. Arizona is home to three of the five largest telescopes in the continental U.S. And the bulk of America's telescopes are concentrated in the West. Many of them sit in Southern California and on or at the edges of the Colorado Plateau: around Flagstaff, Tucson and western New Mexico. Astronomy, space and planetary-science fields bring Arizona $252.8 million annually. They attract about 200,800 visitors and employ about 3,300 directly and indirectly, according to a 2008 study by the University of Arizona, the most recent available. Dark skies-friendly lighting checklist: 1. Is the light necessary? 2. Is it on only when needed, or should it be on a timer or a sensor? 3. Is it fully shielded, meaning, does the light point only down, not out and up? 4. Does it give off the minimum amount of light necessary or could you do dental surgery on the steps? 5. Is it the right color? Amber bulbs create the least skyglow, which is why Tucson’s streetlights are that color. 6. Is the bulb energy efficient? The future of this industry depends on darkness. That's why Tucson, among other Arizona cities, implemented dark-skies-friendly lighting codes decades ago. Tucson hasn't gotten brighter in 30 years even though the population has increased 59 percent since 1980, said Katy Garmany, an associate scientist at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory outside Tucson, which just completed a study of Tucson's skyglow. But scientists at the National Observatory on Kitt Peak estimate that if the Valley continues to brighten, they've got about 10 years left, said Garmany. Then astronomers will have to travel to Hawaii or Chile to do certain research, such as trying to spot planets outside our solar system. "It keeps getting brighter and brighter," Garmany said. "It's just really hard to do the cutting-edge stuff, and you have to go ... where it's darker. (Scientists) have ways of eliminating extra scattered light in the sky, but there's only so much they can do." Creating dark skies John C. Barentine is the dark-skies places program manager for the Tucson-based International Dark-Sky Association. He leads the team that designates places as having the kind of low but adequate lighting sufficient to preserve the nightscape. Flagstaff was the first International Dark Skies Community in 2001. Barentine's team has designated only seven other communities and 25 parks and reserves globally. Sedona was added to the list earlier this year. Barentine grew up in Phoenix and remembers the first time he saw the Milky Way. "To say it was shocking would be an understatement," he said. "I was 10 or 11 years old. We were up in Flagstaff to play in the snow. I remember going outside … and I was floored. I was absolutely floored." Now, he spends his days helping communities create lighting codes so kids don't have to ride in the car for 90 minutes to be filled with awe at the night sky. A saguaro is illuminated by headlights from passing cars on Interstate 17 against the northern horizon on a recent moonless night south of Black Canyon City. (Photo: Rob Schumacher/The Republic) He goes to town halls and city planning meetings to talk about how putting lights on timers and sensors, adding shields to the tops of lights and choosing amber bulbs or lower wattages can all reduce skyglow without impacting ground visibility. Barentine sighs when he talks about Phoenix, but said the city's lighting codes "aren't bad." The city has site codes, which were last updated 11 years ago, and street-lighting codes, which were last updated two years ago. The site codes don't apply to lights older than 1985, although there aren't many still in use. But if a building is new, the lights must conform to updated codes, which call for the kinds of lights Barentine recommends. But issues remain. Asphalt is more reflective than dirt or grass, and lighting codes don't address ground glare. Horizontal lighting, a main cause of skyglow, is common here: Think of strip-mall signs lit from within. Common white and blue lights, even LEDs, glare more than other colors. And enforcement is an issue. "We don't have the right equipment, time or staffing to do that," said Tim Boling, the deputy director of neighborhood services for Phoenix. “(Scientists) have ways of eliminating extra scattered light in the sky, but there's only so much they can do.” Katy Garmany Last year, Boling's staff closed 70,000 complaint cases, and he estimates only three or four were related to lighting violations. In Flagstaff, which adopted dark-skies codes in 1989, all outdoor lighting is low and amber-colored, even at the hospital and jail. But people can see easily because nothing is significantly brighter than anything else. And safety isn't an issue. Research across several disciplines has shown that more light doesn't necessarily make buildings or streets safer. Here's why: The human eye adjusts to the brightest thing in the landscape. This is why in starlight, if a woman waits 15 to 45 minutes, she can see her way along a path, or find dropped change on the ground. But introduce a set of headlights, an iPhone screen or a luminous watch face, and all of her dark-adaption gets blown out. It's why in dark rooms, humans are blinded by camera flashes. It's why at El Tovar Lodge on the South Rim, visitors on the light-filled front steps can't see elk 20 feet away. It's why a gas-station canopy makes everything around it seem dim, causing neighboring businesses to add lights proportionally. In some cases, diminishing nighttime lighting can improve visibility. Reflectors, like on the edges of highway lanes, or limited guide lights, like on runways, work better than adding floodlights because the key to visibility is contrast, not overall brightness. To preserve the work done at Lowell, an acre can have only 50,000 lumens in parts of Flagstaff. (A lumen is a measurement of how much light a bulb puts out. A 40-watt incandescent bulb puts out 450 lumens; a 100-watt one puts out 1,600 lumens.) In contrast, in parts of Maricopa County, a single sign can give off 40,000 lumens. Barentine's association recommends a sign not exceed 3,000 lumens. In Phoenix, there are no lumen limits at all. In the Valley, the brightest things are gas stations, billboards and car lots, all using wattage to attract attention, Barentine said. The golden glow from the lights of the Phoenix metro area can be seen from the Mogollon Rim on Labor Day. (Photo: Pat Shannahan/The Republic) Thirty-two municipalities make up the Valley, and since Phoenix is constricted from substantial growth by the surrounding municipalities, it will take all of them working together to limit skyglow, said Alan Stephenson, the director of Phoenix's planning and development department. It's not on people's short lists, though. "When we talk to downtown residents, they're more concerned about street lights being broken, or safety, when it comes to light," said Stephenson. People aren't against dark-skies-friendly lighting codes, though. They just don't think about light pollution, said Christian B. Luginbuhl, an astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory in Flagstaff. "They're focused on their day-to-day jobs and whether the traffic is bad or whether they can buy the things they need for their families," said Luginbuhl. "They don't notice that the stars are gone. And if they do, they think, 'Well, that's what it's like to live in a city.' “(People are) focused on their day-to-day jobs. They don't notice that the stars are gone.” Christian Luginbuhl "But it doesn't have to be that way, and they can demand more." Special interests derail efforts Once, there was a movement to demand more. In 2009, the Maricopa Association of Governments formed the Dark Skies Stakeholders Group to study ways to protect the state's astronomy industry from Maricopa County's glow. CLOSE While you were enjoying your Labor Day weekend, the world kept turning. Watch the Milky Way move across the sky in a two-hour-long time lapse on the Mogollon Rim. Pat Shannahan/The Republic Typically, the association coordinates the policies that make it easy to live in cities that border each other, setting standards and best practices for things like air quality and solid-waste management. The group was composed of 96 people, scientists, city engineers, transportation-safety experts, town planners and representatives from banking, retail and signage organizations. They worked from January 2009 to April 2011, examining light-use studies from around the world, interviewing experts about best practices and weighing concerns from stakeholders and the public in meetings. They drafted an 87-page public document that called for limiting lighting throughout Maricopa County to 150,000 lumens per acre, or three times most of Flagstaff's limit. When the plan was presented for approval to an internal MAG board, members who had not previously attended meetings raised concerns about safety, liability and diminished commerce. Those members included the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Arizona Food Marketing Alliance, Arizona Retailers Association, Arizona Sign Association and International Sign Association, and the Arizona Bankers Association. According to the meeting's minutes, only one association representative presented a case study. None of the others produced supporting data. "They withheld their participation until the end, and then they tried to create a train wreck," said group member Luginbuhl. "They said it would cost people money and hinder commerce, and it derailed the entire thing." Luginbuhl had seen this before. In the late 1980s, he'd been instrumental in designing Flagstaff's lighting codes to protect the views from Lowell Observatory. He watched the same groups bring up the same issues. But at a crucial public meeting in 1989, the deputy county attorney spoke up, saying liability was not going to be a problem. The planning and zoning commission sided with the scientists who said visibility would not be a problem, commerce would continue, and people would stay safe. Flagstaff passed stricter lighting codes. Since then, neither Flagstaff nor any of the other International Dark Skies Communities has turned into a commerce-free, crime-filled Gotham. The retail centers, banks and gas stations have remained easy for people to find and patronize, even at night. The Maricopa Association of Governments has not addressed the issue since. Celebrating dark skies "By day, the Canyon makes you feel small," said park ranger Marker Marshall. "By night, the sky does too." “By day, the Canyon makes you feel small. By night, the sky does too. ” Marker Marshall It was late June, a week without a moon, and Marshall was hosting a ranger talk called "Starry Starry Night: A Tour of the Universe As Seen Over the Grand Canyon" as part of the 24th Annual Grand Canyon Star Party. The auditorium was at capacity, with 233 people ready to learn how to use a sky map and discern a planet from a star. Kids clutched workbooks, eager to earn the Junior Ranger Night Explorer patch, deep blue and featuring Ursa Major. Marshall wore tiny gold earrings shaped like Saturn. She said things like "Deneb is 54,000 times as luminous as our sun, putting out more energy in 10 minutes than our sun does all year. The light that we can see now left Deneb in 403 A.D., around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire." Marshall grew up in New York City and remembers the night sky as orange. But one night when she was 7 and visiting her grandparents in rural Canada, they watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on TV. "And it was amazing. But then we went outside and went out to look at the moon, and it was amazing all over again," Marshall said. Marshall earned a biology degree at Smith College and soon got a ranger job at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, where she memorized a new constellation each night. There, at the start of her dark-skies programs, she'd just turn off the lights and the sudden appearance of so many stars would make people clap and exclaim. Astronomer Tyler Nordgren has created posters like this one to promote night sky viewing. Astronomer Tyler Nordgren has created posters like this one to promote night sky viewing. Later, she spent three years taking 96 astronomy classes as part of the Great Courses lifelong-learning program. The Whirlpool Galaxy is her favorite. "It's so pretty." Just outside the auditorium, professional and amateur astronomers had set up 51 telescopes, each trained on a different celestial body. More than 100 astronomy volunteers trek to the Canyon each year for the star party, mostly from Tucson. They bring telescopes and years of formal and informal expertise. Mostly retirees, they coach people on how to peer through the lenses at Mars or Vega, and how to track their eyes along a green laser up to the collection of stars that looked to Ptolemy like a swan or a queen on her throne. Just after 9 p.m., more than 1,000 people in hoodies and jeans wandered among the telescopes. The lot filled with shouts of "Wow!" and "Mom, come see this!" And, more breathless, "I had no idea." Erich and Karen Shofstall drove from Livermore, Calif., with their two daughters to look at the stars. Kate, 10, said the drive took "forever." "We can explore and learn and see some cool stars and some of the planets," said Erich. "It's really educational. I think the kids like it." "We've seen Mars and Jupiter and Saturn," Kate said. "How 'bout those nebulas?" asked Erich. "Yeah, we've seen those, too," Kate said, taking the universe in stride. "We get so many people who realize they've seen their first planet, first shooting star," Marshall said. "It's so special. "People need the sense of beauty and perspective and awe that we get from our exposure to the universe in a dark night sky. It's part of every culture, part of being human — to contemplate what's above us." Across the parking lot, a retired plastic surgeon from Boston led a constellation tour, which is to say, he stood in one place and pointed up with a laser. "All that stuff you see is not clouds," he said. "It's perfectly clear tonight. It's the Milky Way." A collective gasp rose from his small audience. ON THE BEAT Megan Finnerty is a reporter on the Page One team. She is the founder and host of the Arizona Storytellers Project. She loves the Grand Canyon. She has been with The Arizona Republic since 2002. How to reach her [email protected] Phone: 602-444-8770 Twitter: @MeganMFinnerty

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White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on an assertion by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that requests from diplomats in Libya for added security prior to the September 11, 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, were denied. "I'm not going to get into a situation under review by the State Department and the FBI," Carney said. Earlier today, chairman of the committee Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chair of the subcommittee on national security, homeland defense, and foreign operations, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asserting that "multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 (2012) attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these requests by officials in Washington." The two congressmen also listed thirteen incidents leading up to the attack - ranging from I.E.D. and RPG attacks to a "posting on a pro-Gaddafi Facebook page" publicizing early morning runs taken by the late Ambassador Chris Stevens and his security detail around Tripoli. "Was State Department headquarters in Washington aware of all the above incidents?" they asked Secretary Clinton, requesting written responses by October 8. "If not, why not?" "If so, what measures did the State Department take to match the level of security provided to the U.S. Mission in Libya to the level of threat?" they asked. The two also asked for details of "any requests made by Embassy Tripoli to State Department headquarters for additional security, whether in general or in light of specific attacks" detailed in the letter. Carney said that "embassy security is a matter that is in the purview of the State Department," and noted that "Secretary Clinton instituted an accountability review that is underway as we speak" while the investigation of the attack itself is being conducted by the FBI. The press secretary said that "from the moment our facility was attacked" the president has been focused on providing security to all diplomatic posts "and bringing the killers to justice." About the list of security issues, Carney said it was a "known fact that Libya is in transition" and that in the eastern part of Libya in particular there are militant groups and "a great number of armed individuals and militias." Carney made his comments in an off-camera gaggle in Las Vegas, Nevada. President Obama is in nearby Henderson, Nevada, preparing for his fist debate with Mitt Romney, to be held Wednesday night. -Jake Tapper ||||| This crawl of online resources of the 115th US Congress was performed on behalf of The United States National Archives & Records

– The White House response to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi keeps generating headlines. Today, Republicans Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz laid out about a dozen incidents they say occurred prior to the Sept. 11 attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. In their letter to Hillary Clinton, they assert "the US mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi," but all were denied by officials in Washington. Asked about it today, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "I'm not going to get into a situation under review by the State Department and the FBI," reports ABC News. Eli Lake of the Daily Beast first reported the letter, which includes allegations that: Two former consulate security guards threw explosive devices over the facility's fence in April, an event previously unreported, says Politico. The letter also notes that an explosive device detonated in June. Militants posted Stevens' morning jogging route in Tripoli on Facebook, along with a photo of him. The ambassador reportedly stopped his runs for a week, then resumed them. (This might explain why Stevens suspected he was on an al-Qaeda hit list, though he was also an "old-school diplomat" who bristled at the notion of too much security, a State Department official tells the Daily Beast.) “Was State Department headquarters in Washington aware of all the above incidents?” ask Issa and Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee. “If not, why not?” (The nation's intelligence chief has defended the shifting US explanations of the Benghazi assault, from spontaneous violence to planned attack, and Republicans are pouncing on reports of weak security.)

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on an assertion by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that requests from diplomats in Libya for added security prior to the September 11, 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, were denied. "I'm not going to get into a situation under review by the State Department and the FBI," Carney said. Earlier today, chairman of the committee Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chair of the subcommittee on national security, homeland defense, and foreign operations, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asserting that "multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 (2012) attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these requests by officials in Washington." The two congressmen also listed thirteen incidents leading up to the attack - ranging from I.E.D. and RPG attacks to a "posting on a pro-Gaddafi Facebook page" publicizing early morning runs taken by the late Ambassador Chris Stevens and his security detail around Tripoli. "Was State Department headquarters in Washington aware of all the above incidents?" they asked Secretary Clinton, requesting written responses by October 8. "If not, why not?" "If so, what measures did the State Department take to match the level of security provided to the U.S. Mission in Libya to the level of threat?" they asked. The two also asked for details of "any requests made by Embassy Tripoli to State Department headquarters for additional security, whether in general or in light of specific attacks" detailed in the letter. Carney said that "embassy security is a matter that is in the purview of the State Department," and noted that "Secretary Clinton instituted an accountability review that is underway as we speak" while the investigation of the attack itself is being conducted by the FBI. The press secretary said that "from the moment our facility was attacked" the president has been focused on providing security to all diplomatic posts "and bringing the killers to justice." About the list of security issues, Carney said it was a "known fact that Libya is in transition" and that in the eastern part of Libya in particular there are militant groups and "a great number of armed individuals and militias." Carney made his comments in an off-camera gaggle in Las Vegas, Nevada. President Obama is in nearby Henderson, Nevada, preparing for his fist debate with Mitt Romney, to be held Wednesday night. -Jake Tapper ||||| This crawl of online resources of the 115th US Congress was performed on behalf of The United States National Archives & Records

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

Newt is a political opportunist. What Newt is doing is he's trying to get out and be more flamboyant and more charismatic, if you will, and more controversial than Sarah Palin, who is his primary challenger, if he gets into Iowa and New Hampshire. She will take all his oxygen and a lot of his support. If she doesn't run, he wants to move into that opening, Joe, in my judgment, in the Republican primaries, and how do you get more attention than Sarah Palin, who's very good at this, is to go two steps further. I mean, I think bringing the Nazis into the argument is always absurd in American politics, because there is no valid comparison there. And secondly, you know, you bring that in, and that's all we start talking about. So I think Newt went too far with that comment. but I know why he's doing it. ||||| Did you know that the First Amendment gives every American the right to a nationally-syndicated radio show? I sure didn't! But I learned that it's true on Wednesday, when former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin told me. Sometimes it feels like you can't go five minutes without learning something from Sarah Palin, Assistant Professor of Folksy Wisdom at Half-Understood University. (Past lectures have focused on contemporary feminism and etymology.) Today we were treated to some wisdom on the constitution when Doc Palin decided to weigh in on the troubling plight of conservative radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger. See, "Dr. Laura," as she is affectionately known, recently decided to resign after being widely condemned for a radio broadcast where she used "the n-word," several times, just because. Sarah Palin, like all real Americans, was outraged, and took to her native mode of communication, the Twitter, to express her emotions: Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")Thu Aug 19 00:44:12 via Twitter for BlackBerry® Sarah Palin SarahPalinUSA I know what you're thinking: How were Dr. Laura's First Amendment rights violated? Isn't she just receiving heavy criticism for her casual use of an offensive racial slur on the radio? And isn't that criticism in fact a beautiful example of the First Amendment, which is designed to, as Supreme Court Justice William Douglas put it, "invite dispute" and "create dissatisfaction"? These questions arise from a mistaken reading of the First Amendment, unfortunately shared by most constitutional scholars, whereby a person's rights to freedom of speech are not violated by vigorous criticism or public condemnation. As Professor Palin implies, a correct reading of the First Amendment endows every American with the right to host a radio show, and to use the n-word without ever being criticized, and when Dr. Laura was criticized by disgusting "activists" and decided to resign, it was an abhorrent example of congress making laws to abridge the freedom of speech, and basically means that the U.S. is now under Sharia law. Dr. Laura must be so proud to have a constitutional scholar with Palin's reputation weighing in on her case. In fact, the "Socrates of Alaska" has encouraging words for her: Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice,America!Thu Aug 19 00:44:53 via Twitter for BlackBerry® Sarah Palin SarahPalinUSA Indeed! Dr. Laura is far more "powerful and effective w/out the shackles" of a "nationally-syndicated radio show subject to commercial pressure and public criticism." She will be loudest voice in her own living room! Shout that n-word, Dr. Laura! Shout it loud, and shout it proud! I'm so thankful for her voice! Click to view ||||| Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in arguing against the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site on Monday, noted that "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington." Since then, Gingrich has been under fire for equating Muslims with Nazis. Is he right on the law? No. The overriding principle in free speech law is that any restriction on, say, putting up a sign should be viewpoint-neutral. In other words, the government can't silence a speaker based on the content of his message without a really, really good reason. (There are a handful of exceptions, like obscenity and defamation, but none of them apply here.) If a well-funded group of anti-Semites wanted to set up a reading room where young Nazis could gather to contemplate Mein Kampf and sip ice-cold Fanta, Uncle Sam couldn't stop them, even if their plot were located two blocks from the Holocaust museum. Gingrich seems to be making the same argument that the village of Skokie, Ill., made in 1978, when a small group of Nazis sought to hold a rally in a city park. At the time, Skokie had the largest Jewish population per capita in America and was home to about 1,000 Holocaust survivors. After a series of attempts by the town to prevent the protest, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Nazis had the right to march. Even though the rally never actually happened, the decision is now considered a landmark in First Amendment law. Advertisement The government does have some limited powers to regulate expression. Reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of speech are constitutional, so long as they don't discriminate based on viewpoint. Buildings and signs are subject to zoning laws, for example. The District of Columbia could probably pass an ordinance limiting the size of signs in the southwest quadrant of the city, or they might cap the volume of protests after a certain hour. They might even get away with banning demonstrations in front of museums because of traffic concerns. But those restrictions would have to apply to everyone, not just Nazis. There is one complication here. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and all the adjacent buildings, are on government property. While the law can't discriminate against private speakers based on their views, the government has its own free speech rights. Uncle Sam can say almost anything he wants on public property and may adopt the views of some people and reject those of others. So, on a very technical level, Gingrich is right that we'll never see a permanent Nazi sign erected next to the Holocaust museum, since the government would be unlikely to allow it. (None of this applies to the proposed mosque in New York, which is to be built on private land.) The issue of distasteful speech in particularly sensitive areas happens to be pending before the Supreme Court right now. In Snyder v. Phelps, the court will decide whether protesters can be held liable for hurling epithets at the family of a fallen soldier during his funeral. Most First Amendment scholars believe the justices will side with the protesters, because they have previously decided that preventing feelings of offense isn't a good enough reason to limit speech. Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer . Explainer thanks Jack Balkin of Yale Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky of UC-Irvine's School of Law, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, and Eugene Volokh of UCLA's School of Law. Like Slate and the Explainer on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Like This Story More from Slate More from the Web

– What is up with politicians misrepresenting the First Amendment this week? First Newt Gingrich, arguing against the Ground Zero Mosque, claimed Nazis "don't have the right" to put a sign next to the Holocaust museum. Then Sarah Palin tweeted that N-word-spewing Dr. Laura’s “1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence.” Sorry, but neither of you understand the First Amendment, say two columnists: Nazis do, in fact, have the right to put up that hypothetical sign, because “the government can’t silence a speaker based on the content of his message without a really, really good reason,” writes Brian Palmer on Slate. Yes, the government can make “reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of speech,” but not the viewpoint. As for Palin, well, “a person's rights to freedom of speech are not violated by vigorous criticism or public condemnation,” Max Read points out in a snarky Gawker post. But Palin seems to believe that “the First Amendment endows every American with the right to host a radio show, and to use the N-word without ever being criticized.”

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.Newt is a political opportunist. What Newt is doing is he's trying to get out and be more flamboyant and more charismatic, if you will, and more controversial than Sarah Palin, who is his primary challenger, if he gets into Iowa and New Hampshire. She will take all his oxygen and a lot of his support. If she doesn't run, he wants to move into that opening, Joe, in my judgment, in the Republican primaries, and how do you get more attention than Sarah Palin, who's very good at this, is to go two steps further. I mean, I think bringing the Nazis into the argument is always absurd in American politics, because there is no valid comparison there. And secondly, you know, you bring that in, and that's all we start talking about. So I think Newt went too far with that comment. but I know why he's doing it. ||||| Did you know that the First Amendment gives every American the right to a nationally-syndicated radio show? I sure didn't! But I learned that it's true on Wednesday, when former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin told me. Sometimes it feels like you can't go five minutes without learning something from Sarah Palin, Assistant Professor of Folksy Wisdom at Half-Understood University. (Past lectures have focused on contemporary feminism and etymology.) Today we were treated to some wisdom on the constitution when Doc Palin decided to weigh in on the troubling plight of conservative radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger. See, "Dr. Laura," as she is affectionately known, recently decided to resign after being widely condemned for a radio broadcast where she used "the n-word," several times, just because. Sarah Palin, like all real Americans, was outraged, and took to her native mode of communication, the Twitter, to express her emotions: Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")Thu Aug 19 00:44:12 via Twitter for BlackBerry® Sarah Palin SarahPalinUSA I know what you're thinking: How were Dr. Laura's First Amendment rights violated? Isn't she just receiving heavy criticism for her casual use of an offensive racial slur on the radio? And isn't that criticism in fact a beautiful example of the First Amendment, which is designed to, as Supreme Court Justice William Douglas put it, "invite dispute" and "create dissatisfaction"? These questions arise from a mistaken reading of the First Amendment, unfortunately shared by most constitutional scholars, whereby a person's rights to freedom of speech are not violated by vigorous criticism or public condemnation. As Professor Palin implies, a correct reading of the First Amendment endows every American with the right to host a radio show, and to use the n-word without ever being criticized, and when Dr. Laura was criticized by disgusting "activists" and decided to resign, it was an abhorrent example of congress making laws to abridge the freedom of speech, and basically means that the U.S. is now under Sharia law. Dr. Laura must be so proud to have a constitutional scholar with Palin's reputation weighing in on her case. In fact, the "Socrates of Alaska" has encouraging words for her: Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice,America!Thu Aug 19 00:44:53 via Twitter for BlackBerry® Sarah Palin SarahPalinUSA Indeed! Dr. Laura is far more "powerful and effective w/out the shackles" of a "nationally-syndicated radio show subject to commercial pressure and public criticism." She will be loudest voice in her own living room! Shout that n-word, Dr. Laura! Shout it loud, and shout it proud! I'm so thankful for her voice! Click to view ||||| Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in arguing against the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site on Monday, noted that "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington." Since then, Gingrich has been under fire for equating Muslims with Nazis. Is he right on the law? No. The overriding principle in free speech law is that any restriction on, say, putting up a sign should be viewpoint-neutral. In other words, the government can't silence a speaker based on the content of his message without a really, really good reason. (There are a handful of exceptions, like obscenity and defamation, but none of them apply here.) If a well-funded group of anti-Semites wanted to set up a reading room where young Nazis could gather to contemplate Mein Kampf and sip ice-cold Fanta, Uncle Sam couldn't stop them, even if their plot were located two blocks from the Holocaust museum. Gingrich seems to be making the same argument that the village of Skokie, Ill., made in 1978, when a small group of Nazis sought to hold a rally in a city park. At the time, Skokie had the largest Jewish population per capita in America and was home to about 1,000 Holocaust survivors. After a series of attempts by the town to prevent the protest, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Nazis had the right to march. Even though the rally never actually happened, the decision is now considered a landmark in First Amendment law. Advertisement The government does have some limited powers to regulate expression. Reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of speech are constitutional, so long as they don't discriminate based on viewpoint. Buildings and signs are subject to zoning laws, for example. The District of Columbia could probably pass an ordinance limiting the size of signs in the southwest quadrant of the city, or they might cap the volume of protests after a certain hour. They might even get away with banning demonstrations in front of museums because of traffic concerns. But those restrictions would have to apply to everyone, not just Nazis. There is one complication here. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and all the adjacent buildings, are on government property. While the law can't discriminate against private speakers based on their views, the government has its own free speech rights. Uncle Sam can say almost anything he wants on public property and may adopt the views of some people and reject those of others. So, on a very technical level, Gingrich is right that we'll never see a permanent Nazi sign erected next to the Holocaust museum, since the government would be unlikely to allow it. (None of this applies to the proposed mosque in New York, which is to be built on private land.) The issue of distasteful speech in particularly sensitive areas happens to be pending before the Supreme Court right now. In Snyder v. Phelps, the court will decide whether protesters can be held liable for hurling epithets at the family of a fallen soldier during his funeral. Most First Amendment scholars believe the justices will side with the protesters, because they have previously decided that preventing feelings of offense isn't a good enough reason to limit speech. Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer . Explainer thanks Jack Balkin of Yale Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky of UC-Irvine's School of Law, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, and Eugene Volokh of UCLA's School of Law. Like Slate and the Explainer on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Like This Story More from Slate More from the Web

According to the context, please answer with the summary and highlights.

With Something’s Gotta Give and the new It’s Complicated, writer-director Nancy Meyers has cornered the market on poorly titled dramedies about revitalized older women finding love after menopause. Both films are shrewdly and even cynically calculated to some extent, aggravated further by Meyers’ habit of backing away from thorny dramatic situations with broad, pandering stabs at crowd-pleasing humor. (It’s Complicated should really be It’s Far Less Complicated Than It Initially Appears To Be, but that wouldn’t solve her title problems.) But say this for Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin: They’re professionals, and their relaxed chemistry and good humor together carries the film surprisingly far, doing a lot to confirm Meyers’ wish-fulfillment fantasies about life beginning after 50. Leaning on the natural, effortless ebullience of her performances in Defending Your Life, Mamma Mia!, and A Prairie Home Companion, Streep is immensely appealing as a divorced bakery owner and chef who’s about to be an empty-nester. Alec Baldwin plays her ex-husband, who left her 10 years earlier for a much younger woman (Lake Bell) and fully realizes that he’s a walking cliché. The exes already share a genial relationship, but between Baldwin’s frustration with his current wife and Streep’s pangs of loneliness, old feelings are quickly rekindled. But when Steve Martin’s divorced, unattached architect competes for her affections, too, the situation gets problematical. Or tricky. Or convoluted. Or some such synonym. Though Meyers soft-pedals the betrayal part of their affair—the scene where Martin discovers the truth is so misconceived, it nearly ruins the film—Streep and Baldwin get the illicit thrill of it just right. There’s something old and something new in their time together, a sense of falling into familiar rhythms while also discovering each other for the first time. Baldwin, importing his devilish grin from 30 Rock, proves very persuasive, and Streep, as a sensualist by trade, can’t help but be persuaded. Her milquetoast relationship with Martin is less convincing, because what she gains in comfort, she loses in spark. It’s Complicated is the sort of “mature” character piece the French do regularly and better (and without the need for quotation marks around “mature”), but the cast at least helps relieve some of the tidiness that belies the title. ||||| I'm trading in stereotypes, of course. But compared to Nancy Meyers, I fear my characterization has the delicacy of Chekhov. "It's Complicated" gives us Meryl Streep as Jane, a successful 60-ish cafe owner and mother who, some 10 years earlier, was dumped by her husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), for a willowy swimsuit-model-type named Agness (played by Lake Bell). The divorce was rough, but in recent years, Jane has been doing just fine. Her children are grown. (They're played by Zoe Kazan, Hunter Parrish and Caitlin Fitzgerald, with "The Office's" John Krasinksi hovering on the sidelines as the way-too-nice future son-in-law.) Her business is thriving. And she's just about to put an addition onto her already Architecture Digest-caliber house, maybe because, in Hollywood terms, that's what real women do to prove they've fully gotten over being dumped for a younger woman. That sound you hear now and then in the post-middle-age romantic comedy "It's Complicated" — something like the creaky cracking of a large frozen land mass whose surface has begun to melt just the tiniest bit — is the sound of Nancy Meyers having a sudden realization: Men are people, too. At least sometimes, if they happen to catch you in the right mood, maybe if they've just given you a good time in bed. The rest of the time, they're the Enemy, particularly if you're over 40 and still smarting over the cruel revelation that younger women exist. And that some (though not all) older men want them, perhaps more than they want you. Time to put on your mail-order art-to-wear kimono, pour another glass of chardonnay, and get together with your equally bitter girlfriends, all of whom have much to say about how much they hate everything with a penis, although once in a while — logic be damned — it would be kind of nice to touch one again. And then Jake and Jane, while attending their son's graduation festivities, get drunk together, share a few laughs and fall into bed. Jake begins to realize how much he's missed his ex-wife; Jane starts wondering if perhaps she gave up on the marriage too soon. The two begin a clandestine affair that challenges how they think about each other as fellow grown-ups, and how they think about themselves. Or at least, that's the idea "It's Complicated" gets at in its best moments. (I'll have to get to Steve Martin's character, as the emasculated nice-guy architect Adam, later.) Every few years Meyers graces us with another missive from romantic-comedy hell, and often (though not always) these movies end up being huge hits: In the 2000 film "What Women Want," we were invited to howl with laughter at the sight of Mel Gibson suffering the indignity of having to wear pantyhose. In the 2003 effort "Something's Gotta Give," wrinkly poonhound Jack Nicholson got thrown for a loop by a very sexy Diane Keaton (who gave a marvelous performance that saved the movie). Meyers' last picture, "The Holiday" (2006), was based on a potentially pleasing premise — lonely singles Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz swap homes for the holidays and in the process find nice boyfriends — but didn't shoot through the box-office roof as Meyers' previous pictures had. Meyers writes these comedies not so much in the English language as in a broad semaphore that's based largely on the idea of women as lonely, put-upon creatures who suffer because men can never, ever understand them. Long gone are the days of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch or even the early (and wonderful) Woody Allen. Those directors, although they were men, didn't make comedies from a strictly male point of view (whatever that might be). In their movies, the sexes were doomed to misunderstand and misread one another; if they got together, it was by luck and a streak of go-for-broke insanity. Both parties, male and female, risked rejection and heartache. But times have changed, and so have the terms of romantic-comedy filmmaking. Meyers is relatively rare in that she's a woman who specializes in the genre, which supposedly makes her specially keyed in to a woman's point of view. And watching "It's Complicated" I felt, for the first time, that Meyers was willing to go just a little bit beyond her usual two-dimensional male-bashing — that for once, she was recognizing that marriages, and the families they create (whether that's a family of just husband and wife or one that includes children) are more enduring and valuable things than we care to admit, particularly after a marriage disintegrates. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own longing for thematic subtlety onto Meyers' generally ham-fisted methods, but I don't think so: There are moments in "It's Complicated" — tied, particularly, to Baldwin's performance and to some of the writing Meyers has done for him — where I think Meyers is grappling with some very real and very complicated feelings, instead of just delivering her usual cheap vision What (She Thinks) the Audience Wants. She does have some skilled actors to work with here. Streep is always wonderful in comedy, and if she's maybe a little too gung-ho about channeling Meyers' pulsing "poor little old me" vibe, she does at times elevate the material. It doesn't hurt that Streep is simply beautiful to look at. She and Baldwin are like movie-star versions of real people — prettier, most likely, than you and me, but still safely in the realm of the believable, with realistically imperfect skin and bodies that suggest an enjoyment of food or the experience of having borne children. Streep's timing is pinpoint perfect, even when the dialogue she's been given is offensive or stupid. And in places, Meyers has actually given her good dialogue to work with: In one scene, after Jane and Jake have tentatively reconnected, she lounges in the bath — on this particular occasion she's refused to have sex with him, despite his pleading — while he sits with his back against the tub, rambling about nothing much at all. She's sensed he isn't happy, for obvious reasons, and she asks him plainly what's going on at home — not as a way of belittling him, but in the way any of us might reach out to someone we truly cared about. But elsewhere Streep is saddled with the usual Meyers crap: In the movie's opening scene, she looks on with superiority as Lake Bell's character struts around in a midriff-baring outfit. In later scenes, Jane gets together with her girlfriends (played by Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson and Alexandra Wentworth) to bitch about how unworthy men are to spend time in the company of goddesses like them, though goddesses like these make Macbeth's three witches look like real keepers. Jane's self-pity is written right into her character's DNA, and it has a screechy self-righteousness. Her unhappiness is everyone else's fault. Near the end of the picture, after she and Jake have come to a decision about their possible future, he says, "I'm sorry," and she asks how far back that "I'm sorry" goes. When he lays his soul bare, she can't resist stabbing it with her ever-present hot poker. There is one really nice guy in "It's Complicated," one who hasn't cheated or hasn't — yet — made any woman feel bad about herself, and he's played by Steve Martin. The casting is unfortunate: I think Martin's Adam is supposed to be handsome and sweet, but Martin's skin is stretched so tight that he resembles a creepy snowman with two black coals for eyes. Maybe the old Steve Martin is somewhere inside there, but who wants to chip away the plaster to find out? And now I'm about to lay one last horrible piece of news on those of you who may have at one point seen a Nancy Meyers' movie and sworn, "Never again." Alec Baldwin is off-the-charts superb. That's probably no surprise to anyone who's been watching him on "30 Rock" these past few seasons. In places he seems to be sending up the whole movie with his sexy, ever-so-slightly sleazy demeanor, though in the end, he's the movie's most believably human, and most sympathetic, character. At one point, after he and Jane have had sex, he rises from the bed to put his clothes on, standing before her in tight black shorts, his belly hanging unapologetically over the waistband. He pats this Buddha-like girth, drawing attention to it instead of hastening to cover it up, and in that moment he's sexier than Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr. and James Franco all rolled into one. I can already hear the chorus: Older men can afford to be more comfortable with their bodies! Society doesn't judge them as it judges women! And there is some truth to that refrain, as there is to most refrains. Streep's Jane is understandably nervous about showing Jake her older, softer body — she explains, shyly, that the last time he saw it, she was still in her 40s. That's not a self-pitying remark, simply an honest one. But Jane doesn't get as naked, literally or figuratively, as Jake does in "It's Complicated." In Nancy Meyers' world, the man — especially the cheating husband — will always be the Other, the villain who's worthy only of women's scorn, not their understanding. That said, I'm grateful to Meyers for giving us the sight of Baldwin in his underwear, for acknowledging even in some small way that guys have insecurities too, even if they don't air them as vocally as women do. It's a drag that "It's Complicated" isn't nearly complicated enough, but at least Meyers has dropped something a bit more subtle than her usual anvil. This one is more like a mere tire iron, but at least we've got Baldwin: He's the pixie dust that chases away the ensuing headache. ||||| It's Complicated Directed and written by Nancy Meyers Starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin Classification: 14A It's Complicated is really very simple. Once again, just as she did in Something's Gotta Give , writer-director Nancy Meyers has given a middle-aged, single woman everything her heart desires: rewarding career, terrific children, fabulous house, supportive friends, financial independence and two successful men competing for her sexual favours. And the problem is? Well, a woman already empowered to the nth degree struggles comically to reach the nirvana of n + 1 – that's the complication. This is wish-fulfilment fantasy, where the laughs lie in sorting out an embarrassment of riches. In short, Meyers makes crowd-pleasers. And if you're a dues-paying member of the crowd, you'll certainly be pleased. If not, don't bother complaining, because all the stuff that seems annoyingly contrived is a calculated part of the populist appeal. To carp about it is like dumping on a Walmart greeter – somebody's just doing his happy-face job. No doubt, Meyers does her job pretty well. She's a clever contriver, adept at adding a patina of apparent relevance, even a veneer of feminism, to situations that are otherwise bogus and artificial. With that in mind, meet Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) and prepare to go through her heart's-desire checklist. Yes, she's got the satisfying job; she's got three kids all grown-up and wonderfully loving; oops, she's only got a near-perfect house, although a planned renovation of the kitchen will soon fix that tiny flaw; she's definitely got a nest of close friends, and don't worry if you don't find the girl-talk hilarious – laughing uproariously, they're their own best audience. Now bring on the adoring guys, with this twist – one of them is her ex-hubby Jake (Alec Baldwin). Ten years ago, the bastard left her for the inevitable trophy bride, but the trophy has dulled since. Now he wants back in the familiar fold of Jane's familiar folds. Tipsy one night, she tumbles, has sex with him, then runs to her shrink for validation, frets about whether her motives are merely vengeful or more loftily self-fulfilling, then tumbles again. Postcoitally, arising from between the sheets, Jane is shyly reluctant to display her naked wares. Alas, Jake has no such compunction, nor does Meyers, about showing his mounds of hairy flab – visually, it's enough to give double standards a bad name. Adoring guy No. 2 is Adam the architect (Steve Martin), the brains behind her new “dream kitchen.” Well, Adam and his brains may lack Jake's brawny charm, but he gets to deliver The Line, the bon -est of mots that, in movies past, would always be spoken by lovely Miss May to lucky Mr. December. But here that clever Meyers puts The Line into a man's mouth, when Adam says to his mature Eve: “Your age is one of my favourite things about you.” With that wish fulfilled, Jane rewards his good heart with a time-honoured trip to his demanding stomach – damned if she doesn't bake him up a feed of chocolate croissants. The love triangle complete, there remains only the teensy task of filling the rest of the rom-com's gaping two hours. No problem. Jake is the brunt of a Flomax joke at his piddling expense; the girls are reconvened for another session of hilarious talk; then Meyers really gets down to contrived business with one of her big set-piece scenes where, attending their son's college graduation party, it's the oldsters who get high on some dynamite weed. Lest the crowd miss its laugh-out-loud cue, Jane points us in the right direction when she exclaims, “Wow! Fun isn't overrated, is it?” Thanks for the reminder. Streep issues it with the same giggly breathlessness that marks her approach to most everything here. This time out, her talents enslaved by the material, La Streep is content to narrow the performance to the role – both are forgettably small. By contrast, Baldwin just bulls his way through the piece, and the strategy proves not only wise but winning. His take on Jake, an unapologetic old rogue as insouciant as his bladder, is the one shard of honesty in the picture. Reduced to playing the straight man, Martin simply disappears behind his squinty eyes, conceding that, when deprived of his usual mannered shtick, he's got nothing left to offer. I lie. Occasionally, his expression almost seems sour, as if his face can't quite disguise what his mind is thinking – perhaps the dark thought that, sometimes, fun is overrated. ||||| Enlarge By Melinda Sue Gordon, Universal Pictures See Jane flirt: Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep play exes in the Nancy Meyers middle-aged rom-com. ABOUT THE MOVIE ABOUT THE MOVIE It's Complicated * * (out of four) Stars: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Lake Bell, John Krasinski Director: Nancy Meyers Distributor: Universal Pictures Rating: R for some drug content and sexuality Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes Opens Friday nationwide What Women Want, appears to have taken that title as her mantra. Everything about her movies falls under the category of wish fulfillment, specifically pertaining to middle-aged women. Nancy Meyers , director of 1990's, appears to have taken that title as her mantra. Everything about her movies falls under the category of wish fulfillment, specifically pertaining to middle-aged women. She does occasionally deliver up some clever lines, but It's Complicated is vacuous overall, although attractively packaged. MORE: A sit-down with Streep, Martin and Baldwin Meyers' last films — 2006's The Holiday and 2003's Something's Got to Give — focus on thriving career women living in gorgeous homes, sans romance. This particular brand of rom-com has become Meyers' stock in trade. TRAILER: Watch a clip Meryl Streep stars as Jane, a divorced fiftysomething with a successful Santa Barbara bakery/restaurant. She lives in a stunning Mediterranean-style house, has three loving grown children and a circle of caring friends. Alec Baldwin plays ex-husband Jake, an attorney who zips around in a shiny black Porsche and is married to the much younger Agnes (Lake Bell). We learn that Jake left Jane a decade earlier, but his new union is faltering. Sure, Agnes looks like a supermodel, but she lacks the grace of the charming, wise and nurturing Jane. As anyone who has seen the billboards or ads knows, the former spouses wind up together between the sheets. Jane is conflicted about their trysts and also is drawn to Adam (Steve Martin), a genial, divorced architect. The film makes a few incisive observations about divorce and midlife sexuality, peppered with mildly dark humor. But it stops short of being revelatory and lacks clever banter. With sharp comic talents like Streep, Baldwin and Martin, you would expect something funnier, edgier and smarter. Streep acts flustered, Baldwin's dialogue are variations of "hubba hubba" and Martin is the quintessential nice guy. There is some silly fun, such as a scene in which Jane and Jake meet at a hotel for a liaison and are spotted by their daughter's fiancé (John Krazinski). But most of the movie is predictable. Meyers uses musical montages and shoots the principals doubling over in laughter in place of crafting witty dialogue. Escapism has its place at the movies, but something this slick is like a lavishly wrapped but empty Christmas present. 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– Some critics see Nancy Meyers' latest as somewhat more reasoned and subtle than her usual fare. But It's Complicated is still a formulaic flick—with a scene-stealing turn by Alec Baldwin. A few takes: The flick " isn't nearly complicated enough, but at least Meyers has dropped something a bit more subtle than her usual anvil," writes Stephanie Zacharek for Salon. "This one is more like a mere tire iron, but at least we've got Baldwin: He's the pixie dust that chases away the ensuing headache." Claudia Puig isn't buying it. Meyers "shoots the principals doubling over in laughter in place of crafting witty dialogue," she writes in USA Today. "Escapism has its place at the movies, but something this slick is like a lavishly wrapped but empty Christmas present." Nothing special here, Scott Tobias writes for the Onion AV Club. It's "the sort of 'mature' character piece the French do regularly and better (and without the need for quotation marks around 'mature'), but the cast at least helps relieve some of the tidiness." It's Complicated is so uncomplicated that the central love triangle is tied up lickety-split, Rick Groen of the Globe and Mail writes, leaving "only the teensy task of filling the rest of the rom-com's gaping two hours." Thank goodness for Baldwin: "His take on Jake, an unapologetic old rogue as insouciant as his bladder, is the one shard of honesty in the picture."

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.With Something’s Gotta Give and the new It’s Complicated, writer-director Nancy Meyers has cornered the market on poorly titled dramedies about revitalized older women finding love after menopause. Both films are shrewdly and even cynically calculated to some extent, aggravated further by Meyers’ habit of backing away from thorny dramatic situations with broad, pandering stabs at crowd-pleasing humor. (It’s Complicated should really be It’s Far Less Complicated Than It Initially Appears To Be, but that wouldn’t solve her title problems.) But say this for Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin: They’re professionals, and their relaxed chemistry and good humor together carries the film surprisingly far, doing a lot to confirm Meyers’ wish-fulfillment fantasies about life beginning after 50. Leaning on the natural, effortless ebullience of her performances in Defending Your Life, Mamma Mia!, and A Prairie Home Companion, Streep is immensely appealing as a divorced bakery owner and chef who’s about to be an empty-nester. Alec Baldwin plays her ex-husband, who left her 10 years earlier for a much younger woman (Lake Bell) and fully realizes that he’s a walking cliché. The exes already share a genial relationship, but between Baldwin’s frustration with his current wife and Streep’s pangs of loneliness, old feelings are quickly rekindled. But when Steve Martin’s divorced, unattached architect competes for her affections, too, the situation gets problematical. Or tricky. Or convoluted. Or some such synonym. Though Meyers soft-pedals the betrayal part of their affair—the scene where Martin discovers the truth is so misconceived, it nearly ruins the film—Streep and Baldwin get the illicit thrill of it just right. There’s something old and something new in their time together, a sense of falling into familiar rhythms while also discovering each other for the first time. Baldwin, importing his devilish grin from 30 Rock, proves very persuasive, and Streep, as a sensualist by trade, can’t help but be persuaded. Her milquetoast relationship with Martin is less convincing, because what she gains in comfort, she loses in spark. It’s Complicated is the sort of “mature” character piece the French do regularly and better (and without the need for quotation marks around “mature”), but the cast at least helps relieve some of the tidiness that belies the title. ||||| I'm trading in stereotypes, of course. But compared to Nancy Meyers, I fear my characterization has the delicacy of Chekhov. "It's Complicated" gives us Meryl Streep as Jane, a successful 60-ish cafe owner and mother who, some 10 years earlier, was dumped by her husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), for a willowy swimsuit-model-type named Agness (played by Lake Bell). The divorce was rough, but in recent years, Jane has been doing just fine. Her children are grown. (They're played by Zoe Kazan, Hunter Parrish and Caitlin Fitzgerald, with "The Office's" John Krasinksi hovering on the sidelines as the way-too-nice future son-in-law.) Her business is thriving. And she's just about to put an addition onto her already Architecture Digest-caliber house, maybe because, in Hollywood terms, that's what real women do to prove they've fully gotten over being dumped for a younger woman. That sound you hear now and then in the post-middle-age romantic comedy "It's Complicated" — something like the creaky cracking of a large frozen land mass whose surface has begun to melt just the tiniest bit — is the sound of Nancy Meyers having a sudden realization: Men are people, too. At least sometimes, if they happen to catch you in the right mood, maybe if they've just given you a good time in bed. The rest of the time, they're the Enemy, particularly if you're over 40 and still smarting over the cruel revelation that younger women exist. And that some (though not all) older men want them, perhaps more than they want you. Time to put on your mail-order art-to-wear kimono, pour another glass of chardonnay, and get together with your equally bitter girlfriends, all of whom have much to say about how much they hate everything with a penis, although once in a while — logic be damned — it would be kind of nice to touch one again. And then Jake and Jane, while attending their son's graduation festivities, get drunk together, share a few laughs and fall into bed. Jake begins to realize how much he's missed his ex-wife; Jane starts wondering if perhaps she gave up on the marriage too soon. The two begin a clandestine affair that challenges how they think about each other as fellow grown-ups, and how they think about themselves. Or at least, that's the idea "It's Complicated" gets at in its best moments. (I'll have to get to Steve Martin's character, as the emasculated nice-guy architect Adam, later.) Every few years Meyers graces us with another missive from romantic-comedy hell, and often (though not always) these movies end up being huge hits: In the 2000 film "What Women Want," we were invited to howl with laughter at the sight of Mel Gibson suffering the indignity of having to wear pantyhose. In the 2003 effort "Something's Gotta Give," wrinkly poonhound Jack Nicholson got thrown for a loop by a very sexy Diane Keaton (who gave a marvelous performance that saved the movie). Meyers' last picture, "The Holiday" (2006), was based on a potentially pleasing premise — lonely singles Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz swap homes for the holidays and in the process find nice boyfriends — but didn't shoot through the box-office roof as Meyers' previous pictures had. Meyers writes these comedies not so much in the English language as in a broad semaphore that's based largely on the idea of women as lonely, put-upon creatures who suffer because men can never, ever understand them. Long gone are the days of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch or even the early (and wonderful) Woody Allen. Those directors, although they were men, didn't make comedies from a strictly male point of view (whatever that might be). In their movies, the sexes were doomed to misunderstand and misread one another; if they got together, it was by luck and a streak of go-for-broke insanity. Both parties, male and female, risked rejection and heartache. But times have changed, and so have the terms of romantic-comedy filmmaking. Meyers is relatively rare in that she's a woman who specializes in the genre, which supposedly makes her specially keyed in to a woman's point of view. And watching "It's Complicated" I felt, for the first time, that Meyers was willing to go just a little bit beyond her usual two-dimensional male-bashing — that for once, she was recognizing that marriages, and the families they create (whether that's a family of just husband and wife or one that includes children) are more enduring and valuable things than we care to admit, particularly after a marriage disintegrates. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own longing for thematic subtlety onto Meyers' generally ham-fisted methods, but I don't think so: There are moments in "It's Complicated" — tied, particularly, to Baldwin's performance and to some of the writing Meyers has done for him — where I think Meyers is grappling with some very real and very complicated feelings, instead of just delivering her usual cheap vision What (She Thinks) the Audience Wants. She does have some skilled actors to work with here. Streep is always wonderful in comedy, and if she's maybe a little too gung-ho about channeling Meyers' pulsing "poor little old me" vibe, she does at times elevate the material. It doesn't hurt that Streep is simply beautiful to look at. She and Baldwin are like movie-star versions of real people — prettier, most likely, than you and me, but still safely in the realm of the believable, with realistically imperfect skin and bodies that suggest an enjoyment of food or the experience of having borne children. Streep's timing is pinpoint perfect, even when the dialogue she's been given is offensive or stupid. And in places, Meyers has actually given her good dialogue to work with: In one scene, after Jane and Jake have tentatively reconnected, she lounges in the bath — on this particular occasion she's refused to have sex with him, despite his pleading — while he sits with his back against the tub, rambling about nothing much at all. She's sensed he isn't happy, for obvious reasons, and she asks him plainly what's going on at home — not as a way of belittling him, but in the way any of us might reach out to someone we truly cared about. But elsewhere Streep is saddled with the usual Meyers crap: In the movie's opening scene, she looks on with superiority as Lake Bell's character struts around in a midriff-baring outfit. In later scenes, Jane gets together with her girlfriends (played by Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson and Alexandra Wentworth) to bitch about how unworthy men are to spend time in the company of goddesses like them, though goddesses like these make Macbeth's three witches look like real keepers. Jane's self-pity is written right into her character's DNA, and it has a screechy self-righteousness. Her unhappiness is everyone else's fault. Near the end of the picture, after she and Jake have come to a decision about their possible future, he says, "I'm sorry," and she asks how far back that "I'm sorry" goes. When he lays his soul bare, she can't resist stabbing it with her ever-present hot poker. There is one really nice guy in "It's Complicated," one who hasn't cheated or hasn't — yet — made any woman feel bad about herself, and he's played by Steve Martin. The casting is unfortunate: I think Martin's Adam is supposed to be handsome and sweet, but Martin's skin is stretched so tight that he resembles a creepy snowman with two black coals for eyes. Maybe the old Steve Martin is somewhere inside there, but who wants to chip away the plaster to find out? And now I'm about to lay one last horrible piece of news on those of you who may have at one point seen a Nancy Meyers' movie and sworn, "Never again." Alec Baldwin is off-the-charts superb. That's probably no surprise to anyone who's been watching him on "30 Rock" these past few seasons. In places he seems to be sending up the whole movie with his sexy, ever-so-slightly sleazy demeanor, though in the end, he's the movie's most believably human, and most sympathetic, character. At one point, after he and Jane have had sex, he rises from the bed to put his clothes on, standing before her in tight black shorts, his belly hanging unapologetically over the waistband. He pats this Buddha-like girth, drawing attention to it instead of hastening to cover it up, and in that moment he's sexier than Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr. and James Franco all rolled into one. I can already hear the chorus: Older men can afford to be more comfortable with their bodies! Society doesn't judge them as it judges women! And there is some truth to that refrain, as there is to most refrains. Streep's Jane is understandably nervous about showing Jake her older, softer body — she explains, shyly, that the last time he saw it, she was still in her 40s. That's not a self-pitying remark, simply an honest one. But Jane doesn't get as naked, literally or figuratively, as Jake does in "It's Complicated." In Nancy Meyers' world, the man — especially the cheating husband — will always be the Other, the villain who's worthy only of women's scorn, not their understanding. That said, I'm grateful to Meyers for giving us the sight of Baldwin in his underwear, for acknowledging even in some small way that guys have insecurities too, even if they don't air them as vocally as women do. It's a drag that "It's Complicated" isn't nearly complicated enough, but at least Meyers has dropped something a bit more subtle than her usual anvil. This one is more like a mere tire iron, but at least we've got Baldwin: He's the pixie dust that chases away the ensuing headache. ||||| It's Complicated Directed and written by Nancy Meyers Starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin Classification: 14A It's Complicated is really very simple. Once again, just as she did in Something's Gotta Give , writer-director Nancy Meyers has given a middle-aged, single woman everything her heart desires: rewarding career, terrific children, fabulous house, supportive friends, financial independence and two successful men competing for her sexual favours. And the problem is? Well, a woman already empowered to the nth degree struggles comically to reach the nirvana of n + 1 – that's the complication. This is wish-fulfilment fantasy, where the laughs lie in sorting out an embarrassment of riches. In short, Meyers makes crowd-pleasers. And if you're a dues-paying member of the crowd, you'll certainly be pleased. If not, don't bother complaining, because all the stuff that seems annoyingly contrived is a calculated part of the populist appeal. To carp about it is like dumping on a Walmart greeter – somebody's just doing his happy-face job. No doubt, Meyers does her job pretty well. She's a clever contriver, adept at adding a patina of apparent relevance, even a veneer of feminism, to situations that are otherwise bogus and artificial. With that in mind, meet Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) and prepare to go through her heart's-desire checklist. Yes, she's got the satisfying job; she's got three kids all grown-up and wonderfully loving; oops, she's only got a near-perfect house, although a planned renovation of the kitchen will soon fix that tiny flaw; she's definitely got a nest of close friends, and don't worry if you don't find the girl-talk hilarious – laughing uproariously, they're their own best audience. Now bring on the adoring guys, with this twist – one of them is her ex-hubby Jake (Alec Baldwin). Ten years ago, the bastard left her for the inevitable trophy bride, but the trophy has dulled since. Now he wants back in the familiar fold of Jane's familiar folds. Tipsy one night, she tumbles, has sex with him, then runs to her shrink for validation, frets about whether her motives are merely vengeful or more loftily self-fulfilling, then tumbles again. Postcoitally, arising from between the sheets, Jane is shyly reluctant to display her naked wares. Alas, Jake has no such compunction, nor does Meyers, about showing his mounds of hairy flab – visually, it's enough to give double standards a bad name. Adoring guy No. 2 is Adam the architect (Steve Martin), the brains behind her new “dream kitchen.” Well, Adam and his brains may lack Jake's brawny charm, but he gets to deliver The Line, the bon -est of mots that, in movies past, would always be spoken by lovely Miss May to lucky Mr. December. But here that clever Meyers puts The Line into a man's mouth, when Adam says to his mature Eve: “Your age is one of my favourite things about you.” With that wish fulfilled, Jane rewards his good heart with a time-honoured trip to his demanding stomach – damned if she doesn't bake him up a feed of chocolate croissants. The love triangle complete, there remains only the teensy task of filling the rest of the rom-com's gaping two hours. No problem. Jake is the brunt of a Flomax joke at his piddling expense; the girls are reconvened for another session of hilarious talk; then Meyers really gets down to contrived business with one of her big set-piece scenes where, attending their son's college graduation party, it's the oldsters who get high on some dynamite weed. Lest the crowd miss its laugh-out-loud cue, Jane points us in the right direction when she exclaims, “Wow! Fun isn't overrated, is it?” Thanks for the reminder. Streep issues it with the same giggly breathlessness that marks her approach to most everything here. This time out, her talents enslaved by the material, La Streep is content to narrow the performance to the role – both are forgettably small. By contrast, Baldwin just bulls his way through the piece, and the strategy proves not only wise but winning. His take on Jake, an unapologetic old rogue as insouciant as his bladder, is the one shard of honesty in the picture. Reduced to playing the straight man, Martin simply disappears behind his squinty eyes, conceding that, when deprived of his usual mannered shtick, he's got nothing left to offer. I lie. Occasionally, his expression almost seems sour, as if his face can't quite disguise what his mind is thinking – perhaps the dark thought that, sometimes, fun is overrated. ||||| Enlarge By Melinda Sue Gordon, Universal Pictures See Jane flirt: Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep play exes in the Nancy Meyers middle-aged rom-com. ABOUT THE MOVIE ABOUT THE MOVIE It's Complicated * * (out of four) Stars: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Lake Bell, John Krasinski Director: Nancy Meyers Distributor: Universal Pictures Rating: R for some drug content and sexuality Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes Opens Friday nationwide What Women Want, appears to have taken that title as her mantra. Everything about her movies falls under the category of wish fulfillment, specifically pertaining to middle-aged women. Nancy Meyers , director of 1990's, appears to have taken that title as her mantra. Everything about her movies falls under the category of wish fulfillment, specifically pertaining to middle-aged women. She does occasionally deliver up some clever lines, but It's Complicated is vacuous overall, although attractively packaged. MORE: A sit-down with Streep, Martin and Baldwin Meyers' last films — 2006's The Holiday and 2003's Something's Got to Give — focus on thriving career women living in gorgeous homes, sans romance. This particular brand of rom-com has become Meyers' stock in trade. TRAILER: Watch a clip Meryl Streep stars as Jane, a divorced fiftysomething with a successful Santa Barbara bakery/restaurant. She lives in a stunning Mediterranean-style house, has three loving grown children and a circle of caring friends. Alec Baldwin plays ex-husband Jake, an attorney who zips around in a shiny black Porsche and is married to the much younger Agnes (Lake Bell). We learn that Jake left Jane a decade earlier, but his new union is faltering. Sure, Agnes looks like a supermodel, but she lacks the grace of the charming, wise and nurturing Jane. As anyone who has seen the billboards or ads knows, the former spouses wind up together between the sheets. Jane is conflicted about their trysts and also is drawn to Adam (Steve Martin), a genial, divorced architect. The film makes a few incisive observations about divorce and midlife sexuality, peppered with mildly dark humor. But it stops short of being revelatory and lacks clever banter. With sharp comic talents like Streep, Baldwin and Martin, you would expect something funnier, edgier and smarter. Streep acts flustered, Baldwin's dialogue are variations of "hubba hubba" and Martin is the quintessential nice guy. There is some silly fun, such as a scene in which Jane and Jake meet at a hotel for a liaison and are spotted by their daughter's fiancé (John Krazinski). But most of the movie is predictable. Meyers uses musical montages and shoots the principals doubling over in laughter in place of crafting witty dialogue. Escapism has its place at the movies, but something this slick is like a lavishly wrapped but empty Christmas present. 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WASHINGTON | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has decided that "party til you puke" may not be the best message for the embattled Gulf state of Bahrain. U.S. rock musician Andrew W.K., a self-proclaimed "king of partying," said on his website that the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain had invited him as a "cultural ambassador" to visit elementary schools, a university and music venues. The State Department on Monday said someone in Bahrain had approached the embassy about possible co-sponsorship of the trip but U.S. diplomats had second thoughts after reviewing W.K's catalogue, which includes songs such as "Party Til You Puke," "Girls Own Juice" and "Party Hard." "That was initially approved and then when more senior management at the embassy took a look at this, the conclusion was that this was not an appropriate use of U.S. government funds," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Monday in response to a question. "The conclusion was when they looked at the body of his work that we didn't need to be part of this invitation," Nuland said. "There may have been some preliminary conversations with him but he is not going to be going to Bahrain on the U.S. government's dime." The rocker's website announcement was updated with a red banner headline reading "Cancelled by the U.S. State Dept." Bahrain, a close U.S. ally in the culturally conservative Middle East, has been rocked by political unrest following last year's government crackdown on pro-democracy protests. The State Department regularly sponsors artistic and sports groups on trips to promote cultural ties. The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain last month sponsored a hip hop program with visiting U.S. dancers and artists, according to its website. (Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Jim Loney) ||||| Michael N. Todaro/FilmMagic/Getty Images Singer, rocker, free-form motivational speaker, and general party dude Andrew W.K. caused a stir in the music world by claiming the U.S. State Department had made him a cultural ambassador to the Middle East. Unfortunately for rockers and partiers worldwide, it won't be happening. W.K., whose given name is Andrew Wilkes-Krier, posted to his website announcing the State Department had invited him to travel to Bahrain in December to "promot[e] partying and world peace": The US Department of State in partnership with the US Embassy in Manama, Bahrain, has invited Andrew to visit the Middle East to promote partying and positive power. In the tradition of the American Jazz Ambassadors who traveled the world in the mid 20th century as examples of American culture and spirit, Andrew has been invited by the State Department to travel to the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain and share his music and partying with the people there. Andrew will begin his journey sometime in December, 2012 and will visit elementary schools, the University of Bahrain, music venues, and more, all while promoting partying and world peace. Andrew says: "This is a tremendous invitation. I'm very thankful to the Department of State for giving me the opportunity to visit a place I've never been before. And I feel very privileged and humbled by the chance to represent the United States of America and show the good people of Bahrain the power of positive partying. I can hardly wait for this adventure!" But a State Department spokeswoman on Monday called the plans a "mistake." "We had a Bahraini entity that approached the embassy about co-sponsoring a visit by this guy, who I take it is pretty popular there in Bahrain. That was initially approved, and then when more senior management at the embassy took a look at this, the conclusion was that this was not an appropriate use of U.S. government funds," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at a briefing. "I think the conclusion was when they looked at the body of his work that we didn't need to be part of this invitation," Nuland said. "There may have been some preliminary conversations with him. But he is not going to be going to Bahrain on the U.S. government's dime." Andrew W.K. made a name for himself with the 2001 album "I Get Wet," which featured metal-inspired pop-rock songs almost exclusively about partying. W.K. later hosted a show on MTV2 in which he received letters from troubled fans and attempted to help with their problems. He currently hosts the Cartoon Network show "Destroy Build Destroy." Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com W.K. has made a career of promoting the idea of partying, explaining it as a life ethos in free-form motivational speeches, where he stresses positive thinking and self-empowerment through partying and rock music. The singer isn't taking the State Department rebuke so well. He posted an update to his website on Monday, including a promotional flyer for his Bahrain appearance bearing red, block letters reading "CANCELED BY THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT." Read Andrew W.K.'s update: BREAKING NEWS: After a year of planning and development, the US State Department has unexpectedly canceled their plans for Andrew's trip to the Middle East this week, after changing their minds and deciding that it was "a mistake and not appropriate." More information and a statement from Andrew, coming soon. The singer also tweeted: "They can cancel our party in the Middle East, but they can never cancel the party in our hearts. #StayPositiveStayParty."

– Some stuffed shirts at the State Department have decided that a rocker who sings about partying until you puke might not be an appropriate American cultural ambassador to a troubled Middle Eastern nation. "King of partying" Andrew WK says a government-sponsored trip for him to visit elementary schools, a university, and music venues in Bahrain has been cancelled, Reuters reports. A State Department spokeswoman says the visit was initially approved but was nixed by senior management who decided it wasn't a good use of US funds. "The conclusion was when they looked at the body of his work that we didn't need to be part of this invitation," the spokeswoman says. "There may have been some preliminary conversations with him but he is not going to be going to Bahrain on the US government's dime." The rocker, whose hits include "Party Til You Puke" and "Party Hard," is staying positive despite the rejection, reports ABC. "They can cancel our party in the Middle East, but they can never cancel the party in our hearts," he tweeted.

You are a helpful assistant named xDAN-Agent,excellent in reading and summary. Heres the context you need to read and summary.WASHINGTON | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has decided that "party til you puke" may not be the best message for the embattled Gulf state of Bahrain. U.S. rock musician Andrew W.K., a self-proclaimed "king of partying," said on his website that the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain had invited him as a "cultural ambassador" to visit elementary schools, a university and music venues. The State Department on Monday said someone in Bahrain had approached the embassy about possible co-sponsorship of the trip but U.S. diplomats had second thoughts after reviewing W.K's catalogue, which includes songs such as "Party Til You Puke," "Girls Own Juice" and "Party Hard." "That was initially approved and then when more senior management at the embassy took a look at this, the conclusion was that this was not an appropriate use of U.S. government funds," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Monday in response to a question. "The conclusion was when they looked at the body of his work that we didn't need to be part of this invitation," Nuland said. "There may have been some preliminary conversations with him but he is not going to be going to Bahrain on the U.S. government's dime." The rocker's website announcement was updated with a red banner headline reading "Cancelled by the U.S. State Dept." Bahrain, a close U.S. ally in the culturally conservative Middle East, has been rocked by political unrest following last year's government crackdown on pro-democracy protests. The State Department regularly sponsors artistic and sports groups on trips to promote cultural ties. The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain last month sponsored a hip hop program with visiting U.S. dancers and artists, according to its website. (Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Jim Loney) ||||| Michael N. Todaro/FilmMagic/Getty Images Singer, rocker, free-form motivational speaker, and general party dude Andrew W.K. caused a stir in the music world by claiming the U.S. State Department had made him a cultural ambassador to the Middle East. Unfortunately for rockers and partiers worldwide, it won't be happening. W.K., whose given name is Andrew Wilkes-Krier, posted to his website announcing the State Department had invited him to travel to Bahrain in December to "promot[e] partying and world peace": The US Department of State in partnership with the US Embassy in Manama, Bahrain, has invited Andrew to visit the Middle East to promote partying and positive power. In the tradition of the American Jazz Ambassadors who traveled the world in the mid 20th century as examples of American culture and spirit, Andrew has been invited by the State Department to travel to the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain and share his music and partying with the people there. Andrew will begin his journey sometime in December, 2012 and will visit elementary schools, the University of Bahrain, music venues, and more, all while promoting partying and world peace. Andrew says: "This is a tremendous invitation. I'm very thankful to the Department of State for giving me the opportunity to visit a place I've never been before. And I feel very privileged and humbled by the chance to represent the United States of America and show the good people of Bahrain the power of positive partying. I can hardly wait for this adventure!" But a State Department spokeswoman on Monday called the plans a "mistake." "We had a Bahraini entity that approached the embassy about co-sponsoring a visit by this guy, who I take it is pretty popular there in Bahrain. That was initially approved, and then when more senior management at the embassy took a look at this, the conclusion was that this was not an appropriate use of U.S. government funds," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at a briefing. "I think the conclusion was when they looked at the body of his work that we didn't need to be part of this invitation," Nuland said. "There may have been some preliminary conversations with him. But he is not going to be going to Bahrain on the U.S. government's dime." Andrew W.K. made a name for himself with the 2001 album "I Get Wet," which featured metal-inspired pop-rock songs almost exclusively about partying. W.K. later hosted a show on MTV2 in which he received letters from troubled fans and attempted to help with their problems. He currently hosts the Cartoon Network show "Destroy Build Destroy." Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com W.K. has made a career of promoting the idea of partying, explaining it as a life ethos in free-form motivational speeches, where he stresses positive thinking and self-empowerment through partying and rock music. The singer isn't taking the State Department rebuke so well. He posted an update to his website on Monday, including a promotional flyer for his Bahrain appearance bearing red, block letters reading "CANCELED BY THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT." Read Andrew W.K.'s update: BREAKING NEWS: After a year of planning and development, the US State Department has unexpectedly canceled their plans for Andrew's trip to the Middle East this week, after changing their minds and deciding that it was "a mistake and not appropriate." More information and a statement from Andrew, coming soon. The singer also tweeted: "They can cancel our party in the Middle East, but they can never cancel the party in our hearts. #StayPositiveStayParty."

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