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The mayors of Ottawa and Gatineau say they plan to lobby candidates to ensure local issues become important in the federal election campaign. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Gatineau Mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin annnounced Wednesday they have joined forces to create a three-point strategy to bring key issues to the table for local candidates. This is the first time the two cities' mayors have come together in such a joint effort, they said. The two plan to hold a debate at each city hall — in Ottawa on Oct. 5 and in Gatineau on a yet to be announced date. The mayors also plan to send information on local priorities to each candidate running in their cities. Pedneaud-Jobin has said he sent this information already, while Watson said he would meet with candidates in person to speak about transit, infrastructure and affordable housing, among other issues. The mayors also plan to send short questionnaires before the end of August to federal party leaders and local candidates on the priorities of Ottawa and Gatineau The responses will be published simultaneously online before the end of September, according to the mayors.

The mayors of Ottawa and Gatineau, Que., say they will team up to lobby federal election candidates running locally, as well as party leaders, on top priorities for the national capital region.

VAMOSSZABADI, Hungary/NICKELSDORF, Austria On a warm morning in late August, two dozen migrants carrying stuffed plastic bags and backpacks boarded a bus outside a refugee center in Vamosszabadi, a village in northwest Hungary. Escorted by police on what was meant to be a short shopping trip organized by the Hungarian immigration office, the men, women and children should have spent a few hours shopping in the nearby city of Gyor before returning to their makeshift homes. Half of the group, however, slipped away to a park where they were met by a man. He led them through an underpass to the railway station and they jumped on a train headed for the Austrian capital, Vienna. Their whereabouts now is unclear. One year after the border between Hungary and Austria became a focal point of a mass influx of refugees to Europe, many of them heading for Germany, officials in both countries say the situation is largely under control. But, as the events witnessed by Reuters show, migrants continue to make their way into Hungary and across the border into Austria from areas of the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa hit by conflict and poverty. The situation has left many Hungarians and Austrians on edge and could shape the outcome of two votes on Oct. 2, when Austria elects a president and Hungary decides whether to accept mandatory European Union quotas for resettling migrants. "Clearly this is a polarizing issue that has stoked a lot of fears," said Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil. Like many people in Austria, a country of 8.5 million that has taken in about 110,000 asylum seekers since last summer, he sees a risk that the migrant crisis could worsen again. Although there is little evidence of it happening, he believes Austria could become the destination for migrants making their way from Africa through Italy. "That must be stopped," Doskozil said. Such concerns could work in favor of far-right candidate Norbert Hofer in Austria's election runoff. The first ballot, narrowly won by former Greens party leader Alexander Van der Bellen, was annulled because of technical irregularities. Similar fears could also help Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban persuade voters to reject the EU quota system following an aggressive government campaign in which billboards have been erected linking migrants to assaults and terrorism. Election of a far-right president in Austria and rejection of the quota plan in Hungary would be likely to damage the unity of the EU, which is already struggling to articulate a common vision after Britain's vote on June 23 to leave the bloc. Few communities have felt the impact of the migrants influx more than Nickelsdorf, a town of 1,800 in the eastern border region of Burgenland surrounded by sunflower and corn fields. It was near Nickelsdorf that the corpses of 71 refugees were found in an abandoned truck, shortly before Austria and Germany threw open their borders to migrants on Sept. 4 last year. Burgenland is a traditional stronghold of Chancellor Christian Kern's Social Democrats. But two thirds of voters there backed the eurosceptic Freedom Party's (FPO) Hofer in the presidential run-off in May that was annulled. "The Freedom Party promotes a very restrictive immigration policy and the people who live here in Nickelsdorf, who were confronted with this wave of 300,000 people a year ago, do not want it to happen again," Gerhard Zapfl, Nickelsdorf's SPO mayor, told Reuters. "The pressure valve is the election." Carmen Imnitzer, a 46-year-old housewife who helped distribute food and clothes to migrants, says she would never vote for the Freedom Party. But she describes the influx as a "big shock" for the town. "A lot of people are scared. They view everything that is foreign, everything they don't understand, as scary," she said. Debate has been clouded by an EU deal with Turkey granting Turks visa-free travel to the bloc, she added. Kern has accused the FPO of fanning fears about minorities and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said politicians are using the refugee crisis for political gain. Many migrants also arrived last year in Vamosszabadi, 65 km (40 miles) from Nickelsdorf, on the other side of the border. A refugee camp in the village designed for about 200 people housed nearly 800 migrants at one point in 2015, and many more were camping outside. Hungarian officials say many migrants disappear within days and the authorities lose track of them. Livia Vajda, the mayor of Vamosszabadi, said the camp had tarnished Vamosszabadi's image and should be closed. "This is an open reception center, people can move freely in and out, they can do anything they want and we live here next to them and we don't know who they are," she said. Orban opposes the EU quota plan and hopes the Oct. 2 referendum will strengthen his hand in dealings on the migrant issue with the EU and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The U.N. refugee agency has condemned Hungary's refugee practices but criticism of the referendum and Orban's stance on refugees has largely been limited in Hungary to small opposition and rights groups. Merkel and then-Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann suspended EU migration rules last year to allow in thousands of refugees who reached those countries via Hungary. Faymann quit in May after losing his party's support, partly because of his handling of the crisis. Merkel has also faced problems and her Christian Democrats lost a regional election on Sunday to an anti-immigrant party. (Additional reporting by Gergely Szakacs and Alastair Macdonald, Writing by Noah Barkin, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

On a warm morning in late August, two dozen migrants carrying stuffed plastic bags and backpacks boarded a bus outside a refugee center in Vamosszabadi, a village in northwest Hungary.

On Aug. 15, 2014, Islamic State fighters who had surrounded her small Iraqi town for days ordered Nadia Murad and other Yazidis to walk to the local school, where men were to head upstairs, women downstairs. A sight along the way terrified the 20-year-old even more: backhoes at work. She’d seen videos of Islamic State fighters filling mass graves. One of her eight brothers said no, that couldn’t happen. The militant extremists weren’t about to kill a whole village of people. Later that sweltering day, the militants shot dead five of her brothers and her mother, along with hundreds of other Yazidis. Murad and other young women were soon sent to religious courts to be registered by a photo and number as property of fighters who could then do with the women as they wished. On Monday, Murad’s eyes were downcast, her voice soft, her memory fractured as she spoke in Washington, one of the many cities around the globe where she has traveled as part of a desperate Yazidi campaign for help. Murad is so traumatized she cannot remember how long she was held captive before escaping. Four days after Secretary of State John F. Kerry declared Islamic State crimes against religious minorities to be acts of genocide, the push is on for justice. Murad’s D.C. tour — which included stops at offices of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department — was part of an effort to shed light on the meaning of the word genocide. If the Obama administration agrees that the ancient Kurdish minority and other groups — including Shiite Muslims and Christians — are victims of genocide, what will be done? Advocates such as Murad are seeking a broad variety of actions: the documentation of war crimes evidence such as mass graves, the rescue of young Yazidi men and women still held by the Islamic State as fighters and sex slaves, and the granting of refu­gee status in the United States to persecuted religious minorities. The State Department on Monday said it is already helping to provide security around mass graves and is training security forces. But Murad and experts at the Holocaust Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide say much more must be done. Murad’s presence was a dark reminder that Yazidis and other religious minorities in Iraq had been begging for help for years, to no avail — including before and during the 2014 massacres in Sinjar. “No one even tried,” Murad said Monday through a translator, describing to a group of a few dozen genocide experts and journalists how the disabled, elderly and men were killed. “If they’d tried and failed, fine, but no one even tried.” Naomi Kikoler of the Holocaust Museum’s genocide prevention center, which hosted the talk, said international and Iraqi leaders knew for a decade that atrocities against religious minorities could occur. “This is a moment when we should feel deeply ashamed,” she said. Late last year, Congress ordered the State Department to outline a plan regarding attacks in the Middle East against religious and ethnic groups. In a report filed Thursday, the department said it “supports a number of initiatives focused on the documentation of atrocities, which aim to lay the groundwork for future accountability for atrocities committed in Syria.” It mentioned funding the Syria Justice and Accountability Center, an organization that investigates and documents abuses, the report said. In Iraq, however, despite $3 million in funding, efforts are hampered by funding and security problems and by the lack of an invitation by the central government in Baghdad, the report said. Murad comes from the northern Iraqi town of Kocho. Multiple communities of religious minorities who lived in that region, including Shabak, Turkmen and Christians, began coming under increasing pressure from Sunni extremists in recent years. The 1,700 people who lived in the town in 2014, she said, were all Yazidis, mostly farmers. On Aug. 3, 2014, when the Sunni extremist Islamic State invaded the region, “We weren’t given choices — it was convert or die,” she said. Yazidis are a Kurdish religious minority whose faith has roots in Zoroastrianism, Islam and other faiths. A report by the Holocaust Museum last year found that Yazidis were singled out by the Islamic State for extinction. Staring at the floor of the conference room Monday as she spoke in a soft voice, Murad described how the stifling August heat prevented many from escaping into the mountains. Her voice remained flat as she described a disabled woman being burned alive, one of many hundreds of people from her town who were killed. “All that time we were in touch with the United States, the United Kingdom, others, to try and rescue us, but no one did anything. Even until the last minute we had hoped someone would come, but nobody did,” she said through an interpreter. The interpreter, Abid Shamdeen, who is also Yazidi, had worked for the U.S. Army in Iraq and in 2014 was living in Nebraska while his family remained in Iraq. He described how Yazidis saw the Iraqi forces who were supposed to protect them flee when the Islamic State fighters arrived. The young man began to choke on tears as he spoke. “They didn’t even leave their weapons for us behind — they left people behind,” Shamdeen said, Murad to his right and Kikoler to his left at a table at the front of a sterile conference room. “I wish this world was a little more fair.” Some Western Christian groups have been speaking out over the past decade about violence and persecution Christians in the Middle East are experiencing — a movement that gained significant volume with the rise of the Islamic State. Shamdeen, whose Yazidi community in Nebraska is the country’s largest, told The Washington Post he was “very disappointed” that Christians only recently seemed to take up the causes of other religious minorities. “We were barely mentioned, even though we were the main ones.” Correction: This article has been updated to correct the last sentence, a quote from interpreter Abid Shamdeen. Michelle Boorstein is the Post’s religion reporter, where she reports on the busy marketplace of American religion.

A woman who witnessed Islamic State massacres and was held captive tells her story in Washington.

Don’t underestimate the beauty of North Carolina in the summertime. Whitewater Falls is a diamond in the rough and worth a visit. The Falls are located near Sapphire, NC just north of the South Carolina border in the Nantahala National Forest. One of the tallest waterfalls east of the Rocky Mountains, it tops out at 411 feet and is well worth a stop. And anybody can get there to see it. Viewing spots are easily accessible from nearby parking areas, so you don't have to hike deep into the forest to get a look. Adventure seekers can check out the nearby Foothills Trail. It’s downriver in South Carolina past the base of Corbin Creek Falls It's an intermediate trail and hard to follow in places so be careful. But if you make the trip, don’t just drink in the sight of the falling waters, check out everything you can in the Nantahala National Forest. It’s a huge, historic tourism hot spot. Established in 1920, the sprawling forest encompasses more than 531,148 acres. It’s nestled in the mountains, valleys and rolling hills of western North Carolina and is far from flat. The elevations range from sea level to 5,800 feet in some spots. The forest is divided into three parts: the Cheoah, the Tusquitee and the Nantahala. The Cheoah district is in Robbinsville, NC, the Tusquitee stretches in to Murphy, NC and the Nantahala is in Franklin, NC. The names are said to come from the Cherokee language. "Nantahala" means: "land of the noon day sun," a fitting name for the Nantahala Gorge, where the sun only reaches to the valley floor at midday. If you’re not a hiker, don’t worry. There are a lot of other recreational activities. Every year 8.6 million people visit these forests and they’re never bored -- with more than 600 miles of trails you hike, bike, enjoy the scenery or go horse-back riding. Have fun and be safe! Click here for more from FoxNews.com Travel

Don’t underestimate the beauty of North Carolina in the summertime. Whitewater Falls is a diamond in the rough and it’s worth a visit. The Falls are located near Sapphire, NC just north of the South Carolina border in the Nantahala National Forest.

A National Football League team. "I often think about how different things might be here if they had stayed in town," she said. On Sunday, the Green Bay Packers play the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, and renewed attention will be paid to how the NFL has been such a large factor in putting its smallest member town, Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the map. For generations of Americans, the name Green Bay has equated to big league, because of the Packers and the NFL. But in the early and struggling days of the NFL, when no one knew that the league would turn into the sports, entertainment and marketing giant it is today, it was not such a rarity for smaller towns to have a team. For four years in the 1930s, the Portsmouth Spartans were full-fledged members of the NFL. The team departed -- it moved to Michigan, where it was renamed the Detroit Lions -- but the stadium remained, and still stands, in a city that sometimes wonders how the course of its fortunes might have varied had it, like Green Bay, managed to stay in the game. "I played in that stadium," said Portsmouth Mayor David Malone. "After the NFL team left town, the stadium was used for high school football, and it still is. I played safety and wide receiver for Portsmouth High School in the 1970s, but even by then, the Spartans had been gone for a long time, and people didn't talk about them much. We know that something like that will never happen again -- a National Football League team in a small town like ours."

"Sometimes I'll drive by the old stadium," Lisa Carver said, "and it kind of feels like a dream. You can almost hear the cheers from the crowds, even though the place is empty."Carver is the

My print column this week welcomes Jeb Bush back into the fray–and wonders why intelligent politicians like Bush and President Obama keep getting snared by small, tawdry tactical issues. One clarification: Bush talks about social mobility rather than inequality. This is an important distinction. I don’t think there ever could, or should, be income equality in a free market society. But there should be open pathways toward success from the bottom end of the spectrum–and toward failure from the top. Bush has spent a lot of his time working in the field of education. He also said on Morning Joe that we need to be willing to spend the requisite money so that poor children gets as good an education as wealthier kids do. This is very encouraging talk from a Republican. Bush has, in the past, also been candid about the social problems that lead to intergenerational poverty. Our growing income inequality has three components: 1.The rich are getting richer. There is the so-called “Michael Jordan” effect, which has made it inevitable that stars be lavished with stratospheric salaries even when–in the case of more than a few corporate leaders–they’re not very successful. And the wealthy have been able to use their power to create a tax code and government subsidies that coddle them. (And, if they’re big enough, bailouts if they really screw up). 2. The middle class is waning. This is the most serious problem, the most difficult to crack. The great industrial labor jobs of the past are gone. Manufacturing is coming back, but it will require fewer workers, often with greater skills. The middle-management white collar jobs of the past are gone, too–computers have taken over many of those functions. Democracy requires a strong, informed middle class. How are we going to rebuild ours? 3. The poor are getting poorer. This is part of the equation that the left seems unable to acknowledge: there is a culture of poverty. As the liberal Brookings Institution has pointed out, if you graduate from high school, wait until marriage to have children and hold a regular job, the chances of your living in poverty are 2%. This cuts across all ethnic groups–the rate of out-of-wedlock births among whites is sky-rocketing. (And yes, it has been harder to find work in this recession, which is one reason why we need an aggressive infrastructure program to provide more jobs.) In 1992, Bill Clinton ran on a tri-partite slogan: Opportunity. Responsibility. Community. The brilliant prescience of those values resonates–indeed, they seem even more crucial now. They represent the best way to transcend the silly, nonessential debates of the moment, a way to transcend the ancient, and now less relevant, political categories–liberal and conservative–that have strait-jacketed our ability to think in new, creative ways. I remain optimistic that we can find a new, moderate consensus that will lift us out of the current petty, boring and unproductive public policy rut.

There are three components to America's growing income inequality.

When you're faced with a crisis, it's important to stay calm. It's what Samsung has been doing while recalling up to 2.5 million defective Galaxy Note7 phones prone to catching on fire. But it's time for Samsung to fess up — nerdy technical details and all — on what exactly was wrong with the phones. It's no joke when faulty Note7s are exploding, but when their replacements are as well, and on planes? How is anybody supposed to trust Samsung to make a safe product ever again? It starts with transparency. I'm no public relations expert, but I do know that there's nothing that assuages public fear and all of the facts that are blown out of proportion by news media outlets and social media better than the truth. You don't cover up the issue and you don't just quietly pray that it goes away if you attack it quickly enough. Problems don't just disappear like that. Consumer safety is at stake and customers who are deciding if they should stick with your brand need reassurance. Explaining the truth, even if Samsung doesn't think most people will understand it, would show the company has full control of the situation and has done a thorough investigation into the heart of the problem. It would put Samsung in a position of power compared to one that's been weakened. While it's widely believed the Note7 was recalled because of faulty batteries produced by Samsung SDI, a battery supplier division within Samsung, the company has not confirmed the reports, nor has it explained in detail what is the real reason its batteries are combusting. This is the most detailed explanation we have from Samsung UK: Q. What is the issue? A: Based on our investigation, we learned that there was an issue with the battery cell. An overheating of the battery cell occurred when the anode-to-cathode came into contact which is a very rare manufacturing process error. Q. Several Korean media articles identify Samsung SDI as the supplier of battery that is experiencing the issue? Can you confirm this? A: In order to meet market demands, we are working with multiple suppliers. Unfortunately we will not be able to confirm this as we work with several suppliers. We are currently working with all of them to protect our customers’ safety first and foremost. A source close to Samsung told Mashable the company didn't want to divert attention from the recall and make it about battery suppliers, and instead wanted to focus on getting affected Note7 phones returned or exchanged as quickly as possible. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's hazard description for the recall only provides the following statement: The lithium-ion battery in the Galaxy Note7 smartphones can overheat and catch fire, posing a serious burn hazard to consumers. So the batteries are overheating and could blow up because why? Lithium-ion batteries are in tons of devices and they all come with safety warnings reminding consumers to store and operate them in optimal temperatures to prevent overheating. The majority of exploding Note7 reports seem to support the overheating claims. Like that guy's car that was incinerated while his Note7 was charging inside under the hot Florida sun. To prevent any chances of overheating, the Federal Aviation Administration has urged all flyers with unsafe Note7s to keep them powered off during flights. But "overheating" isn't saying much. Phones overheat when you're playing intensive games with 3D graphics. The fact is any device with a lithium-ion battery can explode. If it's a case of a manufacturing problem from a specific battery supplier, then why are replacement "safe" devices, which reportedly contain batteries from China's Amperex Technology Limited, also catching on fire? Going by these exploding replacement Note7 reports, it seems they're not actually being overheated. That would imply there's some other kind of problem that's causing Note7s to explode. In South Korea, there were several reports of replacement Note7s suffering from overheating and quick battery drains. Those devices didn't explode and Samsung said they were an unrelated manufacturing error. How many manufacturing errors can there be? What are the precautions Samsung is really taking when building replacement Note7s to protect consumers? These are questions Samsung needs to answer and fast if the company wants to save its reputation as a phone maker. There won't be many people lining up to buy a Galaxy S8 or Note8 next year if the company doesn't come clean on how it's overcoming the battery or manufacturing issues. Trust can be repaired, but only if you tell the truth.

Consumers deserve to know all the technical details.

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times Jasmine King posed so a friend could take her photo at the new firing range, Machine Gun Vegas, located just off the Las Vegas Strip. More Photos » LAS VEGAS — For Vegas die-hards bored with the $750 tasting menu at Guy Savoy, the $250 Elton John tickets at Caesars or the $200,000 baccarat bet at the Bellagio, this city is serving up a new way to find high-priced thrills. Machine Guns Vegas — an upscale indoor shooting range complete with skimpily dressed gun-toting hostesses — opened last week a half-mile from the Strip with an armory of weapons and a promise to fulfill the desires of anyone wanting to fire off an Uzi or a vintage Thompson submachine gun. With its provocative mix of violent fantasy (think blowing holes through an Osama bin Laden target with an AK-47) and sexual allure, it is the latest example of how the extravagances and excesses that have defined Las Vegas are moving beyond the gambling table. “O.K., the Uzi is down right now — sorry!” Melissa Krause, a hostess dressed in a skin-tight black outfit and black boots, with a fake pistol attached to her hip, told a father and son who had driven three hours from Victorville, Calif. “Is there something else you wanted to choose?” No matter. Before long, the son, Chris Neveu, 20, was standing between two range masters, a man and a woman, feet planted to the ground, eyes protected by goggles and ears by headphones. Hot shells clattered around his feet as his father, Paul, took pictures. “They have a lot of weapons you wouldn’t be able to find back where I’m from,” Chris said as he repaired to the V.I.P. lounge, where the walls are adorned with machine guns. “Such as the — well, you can see them all around the room: the M-4, the M-16, the M-249 — a lot of exotic weapons.” In the main lounge, Barry Burmaster, 54, of Williamsburg, Md., was giddy after he and three friends, in town for a convention, compared a stack of bullet-riddled targets. “Twenty years ago, I’d spend $400 at the strip clubs,” he said. “Now, I just come here to shoot.” This latest addition to Las Vegas entertainment is in a low-slung building, set among dusty fields and next to an Adult Superstore. Marked off by a few small signs, and with the main entrance at back, it recalls an after-hours club in Lower Manhattan. It has views of two towering buildings whose outsize names — Wynn and Trump — suggest a Las Vegas extravagance that by comparison seems almost quaintly outdated. Las Vegas in general, and the Strip in particular, is no stranger to violence: Last year, there was a series of stabbings on the street, most of them involving people moving from casino to casino. But the owners of Machine Guns Vegas said that they would carefully screen customers and that their clientele would be made up of people who enjoy the sport of shooting. This is certainly not the first shooting range here. Interest in guns is high in Nevada, particularly among tourists from countries that ban weapons. “From England, from Japan,” said Jasmine King, a former go-go dancer who now works as a hostess at Machine Guns Vegas. The Gun Store, another local destination for weapons enthusiasts, was teeming with customers the other day. But unlike Machine Guns Vegas, the Gun Store is as much about selling guns and weapons paraphernalia as it is a shooting range. It is out of the way, more than three miles from the Strip, past the city’s airport, with a check-in counter more reminiscent of the rental concession at a roller-skating rink than a swank nightclub. There are no hostesses in black. The aspirations of Machine Guns Vegas are, well, different. “We want it to have a Melrose boutique feel to it,” said Genghis Cohen, referring to the upscale stretch of quirky shops along Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Mr. Cohen, a nightclub impresario, is a managing partner of Machine Guns Vegas. “It would be like a boutique style of guns,” he said as he led a tour of his latest venture. “We will have artwork on the walls.” “This is our V.I.P. area,” he said. “Look — a cappuccino machine, nice big leather couches. Let’s say you’re the vice president of the Palazzo or the Wynn,” he continued, referring to two of the city’s fanciest resorts. “You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s lunch break. I’m going to grab a sandwich and go shoot my gun for half an hour.’ ”

An upscale indoor shooting range — complete with gun-toting hostesses — has an array of machine guns, from AK-47s to M-4s, for anyone looking for a different Vegas experience.

The next time a friend or co-worker says he's headed to Napa on vacation to do a little wine tasting, don't get jealous. Go somewhere better. Visited by well over 3 million tourists a year, Napa can be a hassle, with crowded tasting rooms, near-standstill traffic on Highway 29 and a paucity of dinner reservations (call the French Laundry two months in advance, to the day, but you'll probably get a busy tone). To be sure, Napa practically invented high-quality wine tourism. But wineries in other regions around the world have followed its lead and stepped up their game, offering a personal touch, not to mention high-quality hotels, restaurants and tasting rooms that provide connections to their regions' history and lifestyle. Oh, and they have some great-tasting wines, too. In Depth: 10 Great International Wine Destinations Weekend Wines: Visit A Winery The challenge is deciding among the many attractive options, from Chile to South Africa to Australia. Each, says George Taber, author of the forthcoming book In Search of Bacchus: Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism, offers a unique experience. To research his book, Taber spent eight months on the road and visited 12 different countries. Along the way, he discovered that some regions offer great luxury and service, while others are worth visiting for the peace, quiet and spectacular views. When it comes to the full package,Taber says there are few better places than Castello Banfi in Tuscany. The estate, started by American wine importer John Mariani, is housed in a spectacular castle, with two restaurants, a tasting room and a fun, informative cellar tour. It's a similar experience, minus the pretty views, at Chateau Lynch-Bages in Bordeaux. This is the world's most heralded wine region, yet it's notoriously short on good experiences for tourists. Fancy-looking chateaus, yes; welcoming tasting rooms, tours, pretty views, nice hotels and friendly, warm restaurants, not so much. But the owners of Lynch-Bages have built a tourist-friendly destination on the grounds of the wine estate, including a hotel, more than one restaurant, stores, a tasting class and art exhibits. When it comes to tranquil atmosphere and stunning scenery, two destinations top Taber's list: Quinta do Portal in Portugal's Douro Valley and Peter Jakob Kühn in Germany's Rheingau. Both offer incredible views and some of the best wines in their respective regions, says Taber. By contrast, Felton Road in New Zealand's Central Otago region, is not particularly pretty. The drive from Queenstown through the Gibbston Valley to this isolated spot offers nice views of the mountains along twisting, winding roads, but the scenery once you get to Felton Road is a bit raw, says Taber (I can attest, having spent a month living a couple miles away at a nearby vineyard; it's dry and light on vegetation.). However, the pinot noirs from this part of the world--and from Felton Road in particular--have begun to turn the heads of critics and consumers alike over the past few years, as they appreciate the wines' balance of herbal, fruity and acidic flavors. "There's nothing sexy about it, just the wines," says Taber of Felton Road. In Depth: 10 Great International Wine Destinations Weekend Wines: Visit A Winery

California isn't the only spot offering fine wines and friendly tasting rooms.

(CNN) -- Dozens of people were found slain execution-style in bloody Syria Tuesday, yet another grisly act that opposition activists blame squarely on the government. The corpses were of at least 81 men who were apparently executed. Residents found them in the Queiq River in the town of Bustan Al-Qasr, near Aleppo city, opposition activists said, and they were pulled from the river. An opposition video -- the authenticity of which couldn't be verified -- showed a long row of men sprawled on the muddy river bank with head wounds. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and some of the bodies showed signs of torture. Abu Faris, an opposition spokesman in the Aleppo countryside, said the names of 20 of the victims were confirmed by families, who said their relatives were arrested and detained by Air Force Intelligence in Aleppo. The agency is regarded as one of the government's most important and notorious units. It was the latest report of mass deaths in the Syrian civil war, an all-out battle between President Bashar al-Assad's government and insurgents. The Syrian unrest started nearly two years ago when the government cracked down on civilians peacefully protesting government policies. The conflict morphed into a civil war. Today, it is one of the bloodiest conflicts on the planet, claiming, the United Nations says, more than 60,000 deaths. "The regime adds another massacre to its record while the entire Arab world and the international community keep watching the Syrian misery in silence and complete hypocrisy," the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. In the opposition video, men can be heard shouting "this is unbelievable" and "some were children, children for God's sake." One middle-aged man can be heard saying, "Tell the world these were not soldiers. They were not fighters. They are human beings. How come they know what the law of gravity is but they don't know anything about human rights." The opposition groups in Syria have regularly reported massacres by government forces and their allies. Some of the more notorious such reports include incidents in Taftanaz, Houla, Homs, Hama, Tremseh, Daraya, and Halfaya. Bombings in Aleppo and Damascus have resulted in many deaths. The mass displacement of Syrians, if it continues, may go down as one of the worst in recent history The number of refugees registered with the United Nations jumped by 110,000 in January, bringing the total to just shy of 585,000. If the masses of refugees awaiting registration are included, the number burgeons to 708,477, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said. Read more: Fleeing violence in nighttime trek to Jordan "It's an unrelenting flow," UNHCR spokeswoman Sybella Wilkes said in Geneva, Switzerland. In just the first hour of her workday Tuesday, the number of refugees surged by 4,000 people. And when Syrians arrive in neighboring countries, they're extremely needy, Wilkes said, because they wait a very long time before fleeing. "The last thing that Syrians wanted to do was leave their country," she said, adding that it's not unusual for families to be displaced internally six times before finally deciding to leave their home country. By contrast, Iraqi refugees escaping that country during the U.S.-led invasion fled more quickly, and as a result, often still had some money in their pockets and were in better physical shape. Syrian refugees turn up with health conditions that, for lack of treatment, require urgent attention, Wilkes said. More women arrive who are about to give birth, she said. Recently, one woman lost a child at a U.N. station shortly after delivery because she had not received basic prenatal care. Teen refugee: Prince Charming is dead The flow of refugees accelerated markedly in the second half of 2012, Wilkes said. To put the speed of the current exodus into perspective: Syria has a population of just over 22,000,000. A year ago, the United Nations had registered fewer than 20,000 refugees. Six months ago, the total number rose to 120,000. By December, the number had climbed to 471,000. And now, 585,000. Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon are harboring the most Syrians, with more than 150,000 each. "We have in Jordan day shifts and night shifts" to register new refugees, Wilkes said. "In Lebanon, we have double shifts." President Barack Obama has approved $155 million in humanitarian aid for people in Syria and refugees fleeing the violence. That brings the aid toll to $365 million, making the United States the largest single donor of humanitarian assistance to Syria. "I want to speak directly to the people of Syria," Obama said in a statement Tuesday. "This new aid will mean more warm clothing for children and medicine for the elderly; flour and wheat for your families and blankets, boots and stoves for those huddled in damaged buildings. It will mean health care for victims of sexual violence and field hospitals for the wounded. Even as we work to end the violence against you, this aid will help address some of the immediate needs you face each day." Obama says the U.S. government has imposed sanctions against Syria, worked to isolate the regime, and backed the opposition. The United States and other nations have refrained from intervening militarily in the civil war. "American aid means food and clean water for millions of Syrians. American aid means medicine and treatment for hundreds of thousands of patients in Damascus, Daraa and Homs. It means immunizations for one million Syrian children. American aid means winter supplies for more than half a million people in Aleppo, Homs and Deir Ezzor. And we're working with allies and partners so that this aid reaches those in need," Obama said. CNN's Joe Sterling, Ben Brumfield, Salma Abdelaziz and Saad Abedine reported from Atlanta. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh contributed to this report from Beirut, Lebanon.

Dozens of people were found slain execution-style in Syria Tuesday, yet another act that opposition activists blame on the government.

An alleged ex-bikie accused of firing a gun on a busy Sydney motorway has been refused bail. Domenico Settineri was allegedly sprung with a loaded gun and 0.58g of methamphetamine when his car was spotted in the breakdown lane of the M4 Motorway at Homebush about 7.30am on Friday. Officers searched the 43-year-old's vehicle, uncovering two spent casings and a live .22 calibre round. They say another 48 rounds of ammunition were also found during their search. Settineri is accused of discharging the firearm on the M4 at Blacktown shortly before his arrest and possessing the unauthorised black pistol in a public place without keeping it safe. He is also charged with possessing and using the methamphetamine. Settineri failed in his bid for release when he appeared via videolink at Parramatta Local Court on Saturday. The magistrate said he had serious concerns about the nature of the alleged offences and there was nothing to indicate Settineri's remand was unjustified. The 43-year-old will face Burwood Local Court on November 9.

A Sydney man accused of firing a gun on a busy motorway has been refused bail.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called for a “red card” system to stop radical preachers entering Australia. “I say to people who want to come to this country from overseas to peddle their extremist ideology: don’t bother applying. Don’t try to come,” Mr Abbott said today. Radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir is in the Abbott government’s sights. Mr Abbott believes it is planning a lecture by a controversial foreign preacher. "We will henceforth have a new system in place which will ensure preachers of hate can't come to Australia," he said. While the Prime Minister tries to keep extremists out, the Foreign Minister is stopping others from leaving, revoking the passports of wannabe jihadists. "I've been cancelling them on a virtual daily basis," Julie Bishop said. But amid the Government's attempts to stamp out extremism, moderate Muslims say they've become collateral damage. They say there has been an increase in physical attacks and violence against Islamic women. "They simply don't feel safe anymore," Muslim Legal Network representative Lydia Shelley said. "We've had even prams with children in it kicked." Meanwhile in Iraq, Australian Super Hornets are carrying out armed missions nightly against ISIL, Defence chiefs revealing the enemy was spotted during the first flight. The jets pursued the target into an urban area but didn't fire for fear of hitting civilians. “It exceeded our expectations of collateral damage so they discontinued the attack at that point,” Vice Admiral David Johnston said. Australian special forces troops are still waiting final legal clearance from the Iraqi Government. It is expected the commandos' mission will start in the coming days. Do you have any news photos or videos?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called for a “red card” system to stop radical preachers entering Australia.

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Anaheim police have opened fire on a burglary suspect, days after officer-involved shootings killed two people and sparked violent protests. Sgt. Bob Dunn says it's unclear whether anyone was hit in Friday morning's confrontation, but no one has showed up at a hospital. Dunn says officers responding to a burglar alarm at about 3:15 a.m. at a community clubhouse saw appliances in the street and a man leaving the building. An officer chased him, and another checked out a nearby car that suddenly took off, heading toward the first officer. Dunn says the second officer opened fire but the driver escaped. Dunn says the man being chased on foot was later found hiding near some train tracks. Dunn says the man is a paroled burglar and was treated for a police dog bite.

Anaheim police have opened fire on a burglary suspect, days after officer-involved shootings killed two people and sparked violent protests.

"I found myself understanding exactly where Kanye was coming from." Photograph: John Sciulli/Getty Images for Giuseppe Zanott Here's what's memorable from Kanye West's recent BBC interview: lots of yelling about leather pants, boasts about being the biggest rock star in the world and screaming names of random fashion designers. These are the headlines. These antics are the sticking point of Kanye's "rant"; natural fodder for Jimmy Kimmel and the late night talk show ilk to pinpoint for satire. Of course a lot of what Kanye said is ridiculous and over-the-top enough for jokes, but as I watched him talk, I found myself understanding exactly where he was coming from. West is a man frustrated with the glass ceiling, a feeling not unfamiliar for subjugated people in the US and Europe. His anger comes from the fact he's reached worldwide superstardom the right way. Sure, he's known for the outrageous, but unlike so many celebrities Kanye's never been arrested, accused of cheating or known to have anything remotely close to a drug issue. He's reached superstardom just through making great music, great marketing and the occasional publicity stunt here and there. But Kanye isn't dangerous. Compared to, say, Lindsay Lohan, West is the model of good boy super celebrity. Yet, West explains the frustration of still being denied access to a certain level of respect and acceptance in the fashion community. He's denied the respect he feels he's earned in trying to transcend barriers and garner a new social status. His frustration and disgust are palpable ... and relatable. As a person of color, I've been told repeatedly to "stay in my lane". From something as simple as being followed around my neighborhood by police to my profession, where I've been told to stick to writing about "black stuff" and leave the "real news" to white writers. The black guy is qualified to reach a certain apex. When he wants to surpass that manufactured step, he's reaching too high. West's discussion of the "glass ceiling" is a prevalent and all too real experience for minorities; the idea that he as a black man is good enough to entertain but when he tries to get a seat at the table of a higher social status, he's constantly denied access. Too often, African Americans face a glass ceiling where they're told "good job" for playing their roles, but when they attempt to excel to new levels they've stepped out of line. Despite the idea we live in a "post-racial" society, racial discrimination in the workplace is as high as ever. It's as difficult as ever to enter corporate America as a minority. Despite stereotypes to the contrary, more minority males are in fact attending college. Still, the stigma of negativity follows people of color wherever they go. It's quite possible that Kanye West could just be a terrible designer and the fashion industry doesn't want to work with a subpar fashion artist. I don't want to suppose the only reason West isn't allowed to reach higher levels of the industry totem pole is due to his race, but that doesn't mean a glass ceiling is non-existent. Barriers to excellence based on race or class are an obstacle that's been around for centuries, so it's difficult to see exclusion not at least being partially due to race or class. The good thing about the glass ceiling is the fact it's made of glass. Breaking through isn't impossible. But there is a saying that in order for minorities to succeed they have to work twice as hard to achieve half as much. And while success is certainly possible and achievable, there is a definite sense of frustration that comes from the feeling of lower returns on work that's just as excellent as white counterparts. The frustration is real and justified based on a history of mistreatment. So next time a person of color or lower class expresses these frustrations, they may not be unfounded. Even if it seems like they're just yelling about leather pants.

David Dennis: In order for minorities to succeed, often they have to work twice as hard to achieve half as much. Kanye West is sick of it

Goodyear's next fleet of airships will look similar to this one emblazoned… (Goodyear) The 33-acre grassy airfield in Carson doesn't appear much bigger than a postage stamp when pilot Jon Conrad begins steering the 12,840-pound Goodyear blimp in for a landing. "It looks a little different from this vantage point, doesn't it?" he says with a chuckle. "That doesn't seem like much room when you're landing an aircraft that's comparable to a Boeing 747." The tight squeeze will get a little tighter in the coming years with this month's announcement that Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. will once again replace its helium-filled fleet of three silver, blue, and gold blimps with bigger, faster ones. The Akron, Ohio, company said it would work with German manufacturer ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik to build three airships costing about $21 million each. Beginning in 2014, Goodyear will begin to swap out the three blimps, now based in Akron, Pompano Beach, Fla., and Carson. The plump Goodyear blimps have been a regular sight in Southern California since before World War II, when the U.S. Navy used them to keep an eye on the Pacific coast in case of an attack. Rarely is there a high-profile occasion in the region without it buzzing overhead. "Some people would say that it isn't a complete Rose Bowl event without the Goodyear blimp," Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard said. "It floats across the sky in a way that everybody enjoys. And it's slow enough that when you call your friends and family to take a look, it will still be there." But if the current Goodyear blimp grabs attention, the new airships will be even more eye-catching. At 246 feet, the replacements are 54 feet longer and can hit a top speed of 73 mph — compared with the current airships' 54 mph. They will have three propeller engines attached above the gondola, unlike the two noisy engines that currently flank the rear of the gondola. Because they will have rigid skeletons, in this case made of aluminum and carbon-fiber, they will technically be zeppelins and not blimps. But rest easy; the airship will still be called the Goodyear blimp. It will carry 12 passengers — six more than today's blimps — and include state-of-the art avionics and flight control systems. They're typically replaced every 10 to 15 years. The current blimp in Carson was built in 2001. "It's like I'm getting a new car," said Conrad, 41, a onetime helicopter crop duster from Nebraska who's now Goodyear's head pilot at the airfield. "I'll enjoy showing it off." Showing off the airship is the whole point.

The 33-acre grassy airfield in Carson doesn't appear much bigger than a postage stamp when pilot Jon Conrad begins steering the 12,840-pound Goodyear blimp in for a landing."It looks a little

Thousands of postal workers in New York and at all 36 Washington, D.C., post offices are being offered the antibiotic Cipro because of positive anthrax tests at postal facilities. It has been confirmed that two postal workers in Washington, D.C., died of inhalational anthrax. Two others are currently known to have the disease and a third case is suspected in a postal worker from Trenton, N.J. On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease said that the treatment of even thousands of people who are at clear risk for developing anthrax is not a problem and that he is not concerned about antibiotic resistance in the postal worker population. Yet, the more people who take antibiotics, the greater the odds that other bacteria — such as those that cause pneumonia, food poisoning, and blood infections — will have a chance to develop antibiotic resistance. These resistant organisms are very difficult and sometimes impossible to treat. While the chance of contracting anthrax remains very small for the average person, recent events have placed postal workers in select cities in a much higher risk category. "That risk may now justify the use of prophylaxis for the entire exposed group because no one can any longer be sure who in the postal worker group is at highest risk," says Dr. Dale Gerding, professor and associate chairman of medicine at Northwestern University Medical School. The benefit of treating such a large group of people, perhaps soon reaching into the tens of thousands, may outweigh the risks of antibiotic resistance and side effects. "I think that resistance is going to be an issue," says Dr. Stephen Jay, chair of the department of public health at Indiana University School of Medicine. "But you have to weigh the potential risk of drug-resistant organisms on the one hand and failure to treat anthrax on the other. We're between a rock and a hard place." The decision to increase the treatment range to include those who are at high risk of exposure but have not yet been tested is not an easy one to make. Considering the government's current approach, it seems likely that if another large exposure event occurs, the treatment response will be similar. Consider a hypothetical situation with an office building that has 20,000 employees and anthrax spores are detected. Will all 20,000 employees receive antibiotics? "It depends on the chance that they are in contact with anthrax spores," says Dr. Stuart Levy, director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University. "Is everyone really at risk?" Because anthrax is not transmissible between people, physical exposure to the spores is required. That goes a long way in determining who should be treated and limiting the inevitable development of drug resistance that goes hand in hand with widespread antibiotic use. "We should only do what we need," says Levy. ABCNEWS' Lynne Adrine contributed to this report

Prescribing antibiotics to large numbers of high risk people may increase the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, but it is a risk many are willing to take.

An LGBTQ shelter for young adults between the ages of 21-30, the first of its kind, will be opening in the Bronx in December. According to a statement released by the New York City Department of Homeless Services, the shelter will provide multiple services geared specifically toward issues facing young LGBTQ adults, including group counseling, HIV and transgender care (through a partnership with Callen Lorde) and on-site psychiatric care. "LGBTQ young people, particularly LGBTQ communities of color, are more vulnerable to becoming homeless and need our support," Department of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks said in a press statement. "Today's announcement further demonstrates our commitment to generating innovative solutions and moving beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to homeless services. We thank Council Member Torres for his leadership and for standing up on behalf of homeless New Yorkers." Councilman Ritchie Torres, the first openly gay legislator to be elected to public office in the Bronx, played an instrumental part in the creation of the shelter by offering his district as the location. "It's the first of its kind, and I believe it will set a precedent for the rest of the city to follow," Councilman Torres told NBC OUT. Mitchell Netburn, the president and CEO of Project Renewal, the organization that will be running the shelter, echoed Councilman Torres' hope that the new shelter will provide a model for future shelters that could be implemented not just in New York City, but also across the country. "Shelters provide a lot more than just a bed and three meals a day. The goal of any shelter is to get those receiving services into permanent housing, and that's a message that starts day one of someone's stay. It's also a message tailored to each client. For some, the first step to achieving that goal is to find a job, while for others, that means addressing underlying issues such as mental health, bankruptcy or citizenship," Netburn told NBC OUT. Netburn, who previously worked for the Department of Homeless Services, said the need for LGBTQ homeless shelters has been unmet for "decades" and that this shelter would help specifically address the lack of space for LGBTQ people who have aged out of the youth shelter system and may not have access to LGBTQ-focused shelters. Councilman Torres cited high rates of homelessness across the LGBTQ community as another reason why a such a shelter is necessary. RELATED: New Rule Expands Transgender People's Access to Homeless Shelters "Housing instability has cascading consequences that could not only lead to suicide, but to a whole host of social pathologies. Many in financial crisis could turn to sex work, which leads to a higher exposure to STDs. It is hardly a coincidence that LGBT youth face higher rates of suicide when they're also at higher risk of homelessness. What is distinctive about LGBT youth is that so many of them have been driven out by their family or loved ones as a result of institutionalized homophobia," Councilman Torres said. "Many members of the LGBT community have often been ostracized from their homes, sometimes while quite young, and have not necessarily had the types of services we will provide at this new shelter available to them," Netburn added. "The great thing is that we can provide this type of care in one location, especially considering how long it could take to access care in NYC. We can also assure that everyone providing these services is sensitive to the LGBT community." The Bronx shelter is projected to be opened by the end of the month.

An LGBTQ shelter for young adults between the ages of 21-30 will be opening in the Bronx in December.

I am in Madrid, Spain, right now in the last training camp before the Olympics. Things are going great! I am extremely focused and determined. My training has been amazing, and it seems as if all of the hard work that I have done is paying off. I was a little worried a couple of months ago that I wouldn't get to the point where I am right now. I felt like I was so far away from my goals. Now I feel like there are only two weeks left until they are achieved. Everything seems to be falling into place. I am happy, positive and motivated, my routines are consistent, and my confidence and trust in myself are on the rise. I am at the exact point in my preparation that I had planned. I am going to be my best at the Olympics. Three things that I have been paying close attention to are my focus, relaxation and aggressiveness. I am trying to simulate competition as much as possible, and these things have been my guide. I am focusing when I need to be focused. I am getting so deep into my own mind that I'm able to convince myself that I can hit my routine, no matter what. I am staying relaxed before and during the routine, and I am almost letting my body go through the motions without even thinking about them. I am also being aggressive during my routine, but not overly aggressive. My aggression is almost more like a fight during the routine. I need to be aggressive on the little details, such as keeping my legs together when I catch my release move or when I am sticking my dismounts. I am finding that this combination of three actions has really helped me during my training and competition simulation. Training here in Spain has been hard, but it has also been very beneficial. The entire men's gymnastic team is here, and we are all working so well together. The whole Olympic trials process was stressful and tough, but we really do have our best team here. I think that some of the guys who were in the trials were disappointed when they didn't make the team, but I would like to thank them for pushing us and making this team better. Any of the 12 senior team members could have easily been a part of this team, but unfortunately, only six could be. We wouldn't even be close to the point we are at right now if it wasn't for the depth of the entire national team. So thank you, guys! I was extremely honoured and proud to be voted team captain by my fellow Olympic teammates. I take this responsibility very seriously, and I only want the best for everyone. My job is to mediate and to motivate. I think that every guy on this team is a great gymnast and also a great person. I really believe that this team is going to make history and achieve something spectacular. Everyone has fire in their eyes right now, and I can envision a very memorable and remarkable Olympic Games for all of us. We are leaving for Greece on Sat., Aug. 7. I can't even describe my anticipation and excitement. I know what to expect after experiencing Sydney in 2000, and I have a feeling that this Olympics will be even better. I am looking forward to experiencing the games with a full team. I am looking forward to receiving our Roots Clothing package. I love getting free stuff! I am looking forward to meeting many other athletes, and I am also looking forward to seeing all of the history that Athens possesses. Most of all, though, I am looking forward to the competition and having the great opportunity of making my biggest dreams come true.

Diaries from Canada's top Olympic athletes.

By MICHAEL FALCONE (@michaelpfalcone) and AMY WALTER (@amyewalter) If confrontation is the sincerest form of flattery in presidential politics, Newt Gingrich has got to be feeling pretty good about himself this morning. Buoyed by stronger poll numbers and accompanying press attention, he’s clearly getting under the skin of his rivals for the Republican nomination. Look no further than Mitt Romney’s interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier yesterday in which Romney called Gingrich “a lifelong politician.” “Speaker Gingrich is a good man. He and I have very different backgrounds. He spent his last 30 or 40 years in Washington. I spent my career in the private sector. I think that’s what the country needs right now,” Romney said. “No problem with Newt Gingrich. A good man — but a very different person than I am based on our life experiences.” Romney could have left out the “lifelong politician” part, but his decision to take a swipe (it seems that nothing ever happens randomly in the Romney campaign) is another sign that Gingrich represents the biggest threat to the former Massachusetts governor heading into the final month-long stretch before Iowa. And while Romney’s going after Gingrich to keep him at bay, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is latching onto the former House Speaker to try to catch some of his draft, picking a fight with Gingrich over immigration policy. “All these conversations that people — whether it’s Newt or whatever — who say ‘let’s do x y and z’… I think you’re wasting your time until you secure the border,” Perry said in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday. Immigration aside, if Gingrich’s GOP opponents really want to hit his soft spot, his deep ties to Washington are it. As The New York Times reported today, while Gingrich “is adamant that he is not a lobbyist … in the eight years since he started his health care consultancy, he has made millions of dollars while helping companies promote their services and gain access to state and federal officials.” http://nyti.ms/uPG5HQ The question now: Will Perry and Romney start to increase their attacks on the former House Speaker, or will they simply hope the weight of the media scrutiny and Newt’s track record of self-destruction will ultimately pull Gingrich down? In the meantime, Gingrich is also benefiting from the misfortunes of the Herman Cain campaign, which is slowly but surely collapsing under the pressure of an Atlanta woman’s allegation of a 13-year affair with the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO. Several prominent Cain supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire are contemplating switching their allegiance to Gingrich — a couple already have. The dynamic creates a late-game opening for Gingrich who has been traveling between the key early primary states all week. Today, Gingrich hosts a town hall meeting in Greenville, S.C. before heading to Council Bluffs, Iowa to participate in a “Slice the Deficit” pizza party. And at his first campaign stop today, Gingrich showed that he’s ready and willing to take Romney on, turning his “lifetime politician” back at him. “I’m a lifetime citizen,” Gingrich told his South Carolina audience this morning. CAIN ACCUSER, GINGER WHITE, TALKS TO GEORGE STEPHANOPOULUS. Ginger White, who alleges a 13-year affair with presidential candidate Herman Cain, appeared exclusively on “Good Morning America” today, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that she “can’t make this stuff up.” Cain sent out a fundraising appeal last night calling White a “troubled Atlanta businesswoman.” White responded today: “It’s very disappointing that he would call me troubled,” she said. “I’m not here to say anything negative about Mr. Cain, I’m only here to state the truth and what’s happened in the past.” She added that her relationship was “on and off” for the last 13 or 14 years. “This was not a consistent love affair that went on every day for the last 14 years.” White said she has received gifts and money for the last two-and-a-half years, but that “this was not sex for cash.” WATCH: http://abcn.ws/vOAtOA MEANWHILE, THE CAIN TRAIN, KEEPS ON CHUGGING. A dispatch from ABC Political Director Amy Walter: Although Herman Cain told his senior staff Tuesday morning that he was “reassessing” his campaign’s viability in light of an accusation by an Atlanta woman of a 13-year extra-marital affair, Cain’s campaign manager, Mark Block, said in an interview tonight that there is “no way he’s dropping out.” Block said the term “reassessment” was meant to imply a “strategic reassessment” and “not a reassessment of withdrawing” from the race. Cain, said Block, will outline the specifics of that strategic reassessment during a campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio tomorrow. In Ohio, Block said, Cain “will lay out his way forward.” When pressed on whether Cain, under any circumstances, would drop out, Block replied that just two things would push him out: “Mrs. Cain, and if we show up to do events and no one is there.” RICK PERRY WEIGHS IN: Perry made his first comments on the latest allegations against Herman Cain this morning, saying the businessman needs to address them head on. “He needs to address these allegations. That’s the bottom line,” Perry said in an interview on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday morning. “He needs to address the allegations, and if they’re true he has to address that with the people of this country.” http://abcn.ws/uK1O4N And, on “Good Morning America,” ABC’s John Berman looks at whether the champion of 9-9-9 might be getting ready deep-six his candidacy. WATCH: http://abcn.ws/ufkfc3 WORST CAMPAIGN EVER? “Herman Cain is in the midst of “reassessing” whether to continue his 2012 bid, but its legacy is already settled: His campaign will go down as one of the most hapless and bumbling operations in modern presidential politics, setting a new standard for how to turn damaging press coverage into something far worse,” writes Politico’s Jonathan Martin in a no-holds-barred assessment of Cain’s presidential bid. “The botched responses to allegations of marital infidelity, sexual impropriety and his own gaffes — not to mention the puzzling strategic decisions — have, in the eyes of many veteran strategists, reached record levels of ineptitude. It’s an operation that has repeatedly contradicted its own candidate, leveled baseless charges, and put Cain in difficult political spots with little apparent forethought.” http://politi.co/uOZaCK WHITE HOUSE WATCH: OBAMA ON THE ROAD IN PENNSYLVANIA. President Obama’s choice of Scranton, Pa., to talk taxes today isn’t just coincidence: it’s a strategic backdrop for a pre-election pitch aimed largely at white working-class voters in critical swing states, notes ABC’s Devin Dwyer. In a speech at Scranton High School — a setting identical to one used last week in Manchester, N.H. — Obama will plug his plan to extend and expand a payroll tax cut for workers and impose a new payroll tax cut for small businesses. He’ll also likely underscore Republican opposition, which has included GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney. Obama’s campaign strategists say the goal is to articulate in real, tangible terms what’s at stake for the middle class in the 2012 campaign, and how the differences between candidates could mean a hit to their pocketbooks. If the existing payroll tax cuts are allowed to expire at the end of December, the average middle class family earning $50,000 a year would face an effective tax hike of $1,000, the White House says. In Scranton, where the median income is $34,700 according to the Census Bureau, an individual earning that amount would owe an additional $696 to the government in 2012. http://abcn.ws/u4HF5U GOP COUNTER-PROGRAMMING. The Republican National Committee has unveiled a new web ad titled “Failed Promises: Scranton” ahead of President Obama’s visit today. According to the RNC, the spot “highlights President Obama’s dismal economic record in the state: unemployment up 19 percent, 37,900 manufacturing jobs lost in the state and 189,000 more Pennsylvanians living in poverty.” WATCH: http://bit.ly/sGQCyt CAN NEWT SHED HIS BAGGAGE? Newt Gingrich is giving his opponents a run for their money, but some are questioning whether social conservatives — a group Gingrich desperately needs to win the candidacy — can overlook his oft-controversial political and personal baggage. Gingrich’s Washington insider label may not be that easy to shake off. The former House speaker has spent more than 20 years in Congress, and the last decade building up small business enterprises with close ties to politicians. His personal life has taken just as much heat as his political record. ABC’s Huma Khan takes a look at elements of Gingrich’s past that continue to haunt him, including his work for Freddie Mac, his marital problems, his views on immigration, global warming, abortion and child labor. http://abcn.ws/rJ63Oh ROMNEY EXAGGERATES ACCESSIBILITY CLAIM. ABC’s Emily Friedman reports from Florida: Hounded by reporters wanting their questions answered yesterday on the ropeline after an event in Tampa, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney refused to engage, telling the reporters, “Guys, we have press avails or press conferences almost every day and that’s when I answer the questions.” Not quite. Romney’s last press conference was nearly a week ago, on November 23 in Des Moines, Iowa, where he took just four questions before an aide yelled “last question!” The one before that? November 19 in New Hampshire. And a full week before that Romney held a press conference in Mauldin, S.C, on November 11. And in October, he held just three press availabilities total. Yesterday, Romney went on to explain why he doesn’t like to take questions on the rope line — despite having done so earlier in the day at a Miami event. “When I’m meeting people it’s not a good time to answer questions that are important and require good attention and a thorough answer,” said Romney. http://abcn.ws/s7CRN2 RICK PERRY DISMISSES RUMORS OF A CAMPAIGN SHAKEUP. ABC’s Arlette Saenz reports: Texas Governor Rick Perry called the reports of a shakeup of his campaign staff “scuttlebutt,” and said campaign manager Rob Johnson and chief strategist Dave Carney remain in their respective roles.”News to me, news to me. I talked to both of them within, as a matter of fact the last 24 hours, so if they have, news to me,” Perry told reporters when asked if the two had been demoted or were leaving the campaign.” I would suggest to you that’s just scuttlebutt, highly technical Aggie term.” Perry said he was not aware of reports that Joe Allbaugh might assume some of Carney’s duties, but he also did not deny it, saying only that he’s working on being the “best candidate” and not focusing on the distribution of duties within his campaign. http://abcn.ws/uoOutA UP NEXT FOR THE NEW DEMOCRATS. “With a tax reform debate looming and House seats to compete for in suburban districts throughout the country, members of the New Democrat Coalition say their stock is rising,” Roll Call’s Jessica Brady reports. “Like the once-mighty Blue Dog Coalition, the New Democrats have had a diminished role in the minority, with a smaller membership and few legislative opportunities to flex their influence on stock issues such as trade and innovation. But unlike the predominantly rural and Southern Blue Dog membership, New Democrats from urban and suburban districts contend that their numbers will only increase after the 2012 elections. ‘Many of the seats that we’re going to be competitive in and we’re going to win back, I think, are seats that appeal to the New Dem Coalition’s message,’ Rep. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), chairman of the group, said in a recent interview. ‘And I have no doubt many of those folks will seek to become New Dems.’” http://bit.ly/t8wijz WHAT EARMARK BAN? “Members of the House and the Senate attempted to pack hundreds of special spending provisions into at least 10 bills in the summer and fall, less than a year after congressional leaders declared a moratorium on earmarks, congressional records show,” the Washington Post’s Kimberly Kindy reports. “The moratorium, announced last November in the House and in February in the Senate, is a verbal commitment by the Republican leadership to prohibit lawmakers from directing federal funds to handpicked projects and groups in their districts. Lawmakers have tried to get around the moratorium by promising to allow other groups to compete for the funds. But the legislative language is so narrowly tailored that critics consider the practice to be earmarking by another name. The efforts to resurrect spending on pet projects reveal the tenuous nature of current reform efforts. Two senators have publicly called out their colleagues and will introduce legislation Wednesday that would ban earmarking with the force of law.” http://wapo.st/vDuUTn @HotlineReid: Rep. Aaron Schock reportedly asking donors if he should run for Illinois governor. Next up in 2014 #HotlineSort @llerer: With his numbers on the rise, Newt builds a more aggressive campaign — but is it too late? My take from S.C. ow.ly/7JH9q #2012 @mpoindc: “Building a Better Mitt Romney-bot” RT @TimAlbrechtIA: A new DRAPER article!! nyti.ms/u1CuL4 @DavidMDrucker: RT @jimacostacnn Cained out? CNN/ORC POLL 2nd Choice for Nominee Among Cain Voters: Gingrich 38% Romney 25% Perry 10% Bachmann 9% Paul 6% @Chris_Moody: Remember the massive crowds for Newt in Florida? Wasn’t a fluke. He’s dominating the state in a new poll: yhoo.it/sV0GKb * Newt Gingrich begins his day in Greenville, South Carolina where he’ll host a town hall. Then, Gingrich travels to Council Bluffs, Iowa where he’ll participate in a “Slice the Deficit” Pizza Party. * Herman Cain heads out on bus tour across Ohio, making stops in West Chester, Dayton and Columbus. Later in the day he travels in Manchester, NH where he plans to hold a press conference. * Rick Perry will speak at two events in New Hampshire including one at the State House in Concord. * Michelle Bachmann campaigns in Iowa which includes a stop at the University of Northern Iowa. * Mitt Romney has no scheduled events, but his son Josh Romney will meet with volunteers in Des Moines, Iowa. * Jon Huntsman will address the New Hampshire State Legislature at the State House in Concord. * Ron Paul hosts a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Check out The Note’s Futures Calendar: http://abcn.ws/ZI9gV * Get The Note delivered to your inbox every day. * For breaking political news and analysis check out The Note blog: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/and ABCNews.com/Politics: http://abcnews.com/politics

By MICHAEL FALCONE (@michaelpfalcone) and AMY WALTER (@amyewalter) If confrontation is the sincerest form of flattery in presidential politics, Newt Gingrich has got to be feeling pretty good about himself this morning. Buoyed by stronger poll numbers and accompanying press attention, he’s clearly getting under the skin of his rivals for the Republican nomination. Look no further than Mitt Romney’s interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier yesterday in which Romney called Gingrich “a lifelong politician.” “Speaker Gingrich is a good man.  He and I have very different backgrounds.  He spent his last 30 or 40 years in Washington.  I spent…

By KATHLEEN BELEWAPRIL 15, 2014 EVANSTON, Ill. — WHEN Frazier Glenn Miller shot and killed three people in Overland Park, Kan., on Sunday, he did so as a soldier of the white power movement: a groundswell that united Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other fringe elements after the Vietnam War, crested with the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, and remains a diminished but potent threat today. Mr. Miller, the 73-year-old man charged in the killings, had been outspoken about his hatred of Jews, blacks, Communists and immigrants, but it would be a mistake to dismiss him as a crazed outlier. The shootings were consistent with his three decades of participation in organized hate groups. His violence was framed by a clear worldview. You can’t predict whether any one person will commit violence, but it would be hard to think of someone more befitting of law enforcement scrutiny than Mr. Miller (who also goes by the name Frazier Glenn Cross). I’ve been studying the white radical right since 2006. In my review of tens of thousands of pages of once classified federal records, as well as newly available archives of Klan and neo-Nazi publications, Mr. Miller appears as a central figure of the white power movement. The number of Vietnam veterans in that movement was small — a tiny proportion of those who served — but Vietnam veterans forged the first links between Klansmen and Nazis since World War II. They were central in leading Klan and neo-Nazi groups past the anti-civil rights backlash of the 1960s and toward paramilitary violence. The white power movement they forged had strongholds not only in the South, but also in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, California and Pennsylvania. Its members carried weapons like those they had used in Vietnam, and used boot-camp rhetoric to frame their pursuit of domestic enemies. They condoned violence against innocent people and, eventually, the state itself. Before his 1979 discharge for distributing racist literature, Mr. Miller served for 20 years in the Army, including two tours in Vietnam and service as a Green Beret. Later that year he took part (but was not charged) in a deadly shooting of Communist protesters in Greensboro, N.C. In 1980, Mr. Miller formed a Klan-affiliated organization in North Carolina that eventually was known as the White Patriot Party. He outfitted members in camouflage fatigues. He paraded his neo-Nazis, in uniform and bearing arms, up and down streets. They patrolled schools and polling places, supposedly to protect whites from harassment. F.B.I. documents show that they also burned crosses. By 1986, Mr. Miller’s group claimed 2,500 members in five southern states. The archives also show that Mr. Miller received large sums of money from The Order, a white power group in the Pacific Northwest, to buy land and weapons to put his followers through paramilitary training. Mr. Miller’s group paid $50,000 for weapons and matériel stolen from the armory at Fort Bragg, N.C., including anti-tank rockets, mines and plastic explosives. He targeted active-duty troops for recruitment and hired them to conduct training exercises. Mr. Miller’s downfall came after the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of black North Carolinians; as part of a settlement in 1985, he agreed to stop operating a paramilitary organization. In 1987, a federal judge found that Mr. Miller had violated the agreement, and barred him from contacting others in the white power movement. Outraged, and anticipating criminal charges regarding the stolen military weapons, Mr. Miller briefly went underground. He would write in a self-published autobiography, “Since they wouldn’t allow me to fight them legally above ground, then I’d resort to the only means left, armed revolution.” He was later caught with a small arsenal, but he began cooperating with prosecutors, testifying against other white supremacists in exchange for a reduced sentence. He was released in 1990, after serving three years. In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a nine-page report detailing the threat of domestic terrorism by the white power movement. This short document outlined no specific threats, but rather a set of historical factors that had predicted white-supremacist activity in the past — like economic pressure, opposition to immigration and gun-control legislation — and a new factor, the election of a black president. The report singled out one factor that has fueled every surge in Ku Klux Klan membership in American history, from the 1860s to the present: war. The return of veterans from combat appears to correlate more closely with Klan membership than any other historical factor. “Military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists carrying out violent attacks,” the report warned. The agency was “concerned that right-wing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.” The report raised intense blowback from the American Legion, Fox News and conservative members of Congress. They demanded an apology and denounced the idea that any veteran could commit an act of domestic terrorism. The department shelved the report, removing it from its website. The threat, however, proved real. Mr. Miller obviously represents an extreme, both in his politics and in his violence. A vast majority of veterans are neither violent nor mentally ill. When they turn violent, they often harm themselves, by committing suicide. But it would be irresponsible to overlook the high rates of combat trauma among the 2.4 million Americans who have served in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the full impact of which has not yet materialized. Veterans of those conflicts represent just 10 percent of those getting mental health services through the Department of Veterans Affairs, where the overwhelming majority of those in treatment are still Vietnam veterans. During Mr. Miller’s long membership in the white power movement, its leaders have robbed armored cars, engaged in counterfeiting and the large-scale theft of military weapons, and carried out or planned killings. The bombing by Timothy J. McVeigh, an Army veteran, of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 people, was only the most dramatic of these crimes. When we interpret shootings like the one on Sunday as acts of mad, lone-wolf gunmen, we fail to see white power as an organized — and deadly — social movement. That Mr. Miller was able to carry out an act of domestic terror at two locations despite his history of violent behavior should alarm anyone concerned about public safety. Would he have received greater scrutiny had he been a Muslim, a foreigner, not white, not a veteran? The answer is clear, and alarming. Kathleen Belew, a postdoctoral fellow in history at Northwestern University, is at work on a book on Vietnam veterans and the radical right. A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 16, 2014, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Veterans and White Supremacy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

The Kansas shooter had a long history of hate. Why wasn’t he stopped?

Bre Blair stars as Jessie West on NBC's gripping new drama "Game of Silence." Blair is a multitalented actress with television credits, including appearances on "The Flash," "Legit," "NCIS: Los Angeles," "Prime Suspect" and "Benched." Recently, she appeared in the feature film "Last Vegas," starring opposite Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline. Showcasing her talents, Blair also likes to dedicate some of her time to the theater. She recently shared the stage with Melanie Griffith in "No Way Around but Through" from playwright Scott Caan. Blair currently resides in Santa Monica, California.

Meet Jessie West from Game of Silence on NBC.com.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Herman Cain, the presidential hopeful, appeared Wednesday in Washington at a Congressional Health Care Caucus discussion. WASHINGTON — A defiant Herman Cain accused Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican rival, of orchestrating a smear campaign to destroy his presidential candidacy, as additional accusations emerged Wednesday that Mr. Cain made unwanted sexual overtures to women while he led the National Restaurant Association more than a decade ago. As he sought to contain the fallout that consumed his campaign for a third day, Mr. Cain shifted his blame from the news media to the Perry campaign. He accused a top political adviser to Mr. Perry of leaking details of one allegation, saying the adviser learned of it while working for Mr. Cain’s failed bid for the Senate in 2004. A spokesman for Mr. Perry called the suggestion “reckless and false,” and denied that the campaign was the source of the disclosures that have roiled the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Cain took aim at his rival after The Associated Press reported that a third woman had come forward with an allegation of sexual harassment at the restaurant association in the 1990s. “We now know and have been able to trace it back to the Perry campaign that stirred this up, in order to discredit me and slow us down,” Mr. Cain told supporters by phone Wednesday evening. The events left the Republican presidential race mired in claims and counterclaims brought about by the sexual harassment allegations, with Mr. Cain blaming Mr. Perry, whose campaign in turn raised the possibility that Mitt Romney’s campaign could be behind the disclosure of the allegations. A spokeswoman for Mr. Romney replied simply, “Not true.” While Mr. Cain’s accusations briefly turned the attention away from him, interviews with more than a dozen people over the last three days paint a picture of his 1996-99 tenure at the National Restaurant Association that is at odds with his insistence that he never harassed anyone. Several people who worked at the association said they knew of episodes that women said had made them uncomfortable dealing with Mr. Cain. One of the two women whose accusations of sexual harassment led to a paid severance agreement has decided against speaking publicly about her side of the story, her lawyer said Wednesday. The lawyer, Joel P. Bennett, said he would instead ask the restaurant association on Thursday to allow him to release a statement on his client’s behalf that would make it clear, without violating a confidentiality agreement she signed, that her version of events is different from the account that Mr. Cain has offered. Mr. Bennett said the statement would not go into minute details of her experience with Mr. Cain. “It’s unpleasant and it’s sensational and she does not want to do that,” he said in an interview. He added, “She has a life to live and a career, and she doesn’t want to become another Anita Hill.” Chris Wilson, who worked as a pollster at the association, recalled in an interview that an incident involving a woman at a suburban Washington restaurant had made several observers uncomfortable. He would not say what Mr. Cain said to the woman or whether she responded at the time. He did not provide any other details. “If she comes out and talks about it, like I said, it’ll probably be the end of his campaign,” Mr. Wilson said in an earlier radio interview on KTOK in Oklahoma, where he lives. “It was only a matter of time, because so many people were aware of what took place, so many people were aware of her situation — the fact she left. Everybody knew, with the campaign, that this would eventually come up.” Mr. Wilson, who is a partner at a Republican polling firm, is supporting Mr. Perry and is working for Make Us Great Again, the “super PAC” run by one of Mr. Perry’s former top aides. In the 1990s, he worked for Tony Fabrizio, a leading Republican pollster who is a senior adviser to Mr. Perry’s campaign. But in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Wilson denied having provided any information to Politico.com, which first reported the harassment allegations on Sunday. “I had nothing to do with leaking this in any way,” he said, “and I’ve never discussed or shared this story with any of my clients — period.” The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the third woman had considered filing a workplace complaint against Mr. Cain over incidents that she said included an invitation to his apartment. Susan Saulny contributed reporting from Washington, and Mike McIntire from New York.

Herman Cain accused an adviser to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican rival, of leaking details of a sexual harassment allegation, saying the adviser worked for Mr. Cain in 2004.

Currently, it is voluntary for companies to file for approval from the regulator but the number of applications has tumbled from 263 ten years ago to just nine last year. “Some unscrupulous sponsors may well be calculating that they are better off risking a protracted anti-avoidance battle than coming to an immediate pension settlement,” MPs said. Last week the Pensions Regulator reached a landmark £255m pension settlement with threadmaker Coats Group, a move that prompted experts to suggest the deal could be used as a template for talks with Sir Philip. Lesley Titcomb, chief executive of The Pensions Regulator, welcomed the committee’s report’s recognition of the “robust and proportionate regulation” and said that she would continue discussions with the Government about the regulator’s powers. Dame Barbara Judge, chairman of the Institute of Directors , commented: “What happened to the BHS pensioners was an outrage and the Committee is right to look at significant changes to the regulatory landscape.” “ I have said for a long time that the Pensions Regulator needs more power to protect pensioners during the early stages of takeovers in order to avoid similar cases to BHS being repeated. We hope the Government takes this recommendation seriously.”

The collapse of BHS has prompted MPs to urge the Government to introduce a 'nuclear deterrent' for employers that might wish to avoid their pension liabilities.

Michel Platini, the Uefa president provisionally banned over a £1.35m “disloyal payment” from his Fifa counterpart Sepp Blatter, has failed in his bid to have his interim suspension lifted. The Frenchman had hoped to be able to attend Saturday’s Euro 2016 draw in Paris after applying to the court of arbitration for sport against his original 90-day provisional ban. But the Cas ruled that the decision by Fifa’s ethics committee should stand before a final ruling next week on the facts of the case. The Cas did, however, caution Fifa against extending the provisional suspension beyond the current 90 days. Under its rules, the ethics committee could have added an extra 45 days to the ban, but the Cas panel said this would have been unfair to Platini. In the event, the argument is moot because the ethics committee has promised to deliver its verdict before Christmas. Platini’s lawyer, Thibaud d’Alès, said his client was satisfied with the ruling. “Michel Platini notes with satisfaction that Cas partially granted his request when it demanded that Fifa not extend his ban. In substance, he is confident that his case is solid.” Platini stayed away from Friday’s Uefa executive committee meeting as per the terms of his ban, with the Euro 2016 president, Jacques Lambert, dismissing rumours that Platini had been seen in the hotel where it was taking place. Lambert, who stood down from Fifa’s ethics committee because of his friendship with Platini, said he was dissappointed that the appeal had not been granted. “Michel Platini has lost a battle today but he has not lost the war. For as long as the war is not lost we still harbour hopes,” he said. Gianni Infantino, the Uefa general secretary who put himself forward as a candidate for the Fifa presidency after Platini was suspended, called for a swift end to the proceedings and said Uefa continued to support Platini’s right to a “fair process” and the opportunity to clear his name. Platini and Blatter, who is also suspended for 90 days, will attend a hearing next week in front of the Fifa ethics committee judge, Hans-Joachim Eckert, who will rule on whether the lifetime bans requested against both men by the investigatory chamber should be applied. The interim 90-day suspensions were announced in September after Swiss police opened a criminal investigation against Blatter and questioned Platini as a “person between a witness and a suspect” over a £1.35m payment in 2011. Both parties said they had a gentleman’s agreement to pay the money as part of a deal over the remuneration Platini would receive to work as an adviser to the Fifa president between 1998 and 2002. Platini’s lawyers had hoped that a document they unearthed showing that a salary of SFr1m a year was rumoured to have been agreed at the time would help his case. But the case made by the investigatory chamber is understood to argue that Blatter and Platini struck a corrupt bargain and that the £1.35m payment was made in return for something. It was made shortly before the Uefa congress in Paris in 2011, at a time when Blatter was seeking Platini’s support for the Fifa presidency in the face of a challenge from the Qatari Mohamed bin Hammam. Platini and Blatter have accepted there was no written contract for the payment, said to relate to work undertaken by the Frenchman as a special adviser to Blatter between 1998 and 2002, but have denied wrongdoing. Platini has claimed Blatter told him at the time that Fifa could not afford to pay him, despite the governing body making £78m over that four-year cycle, and did not want to break its wage structure. Related: United States hopes Qatar will cooperate with World Cup bidding investigation Both Blatter and Platini have said they believed their verbal contract was legal under Swiss law. However, Swiss law places a five-year time limit on such payments. The fact that the payments did not feature in Fifa’s accounts is believed to form part of the case against them. In addition to the alleged corruption, the charges are based on four other potential breaches: mismanagement, conflict of interest, false accounting and non-cooperation with the ethics committee. The Swiss attorney general is investigating whether the £1.35m constitutes what is termed under the country’s law a “disloyal payment”. The fate of the two men who were once the most powerful in world football has become part of the wider corruption crisis swirling around Fifa in a year when several senior executives have been arrested or suspended. The ethics committee will meet next week in Zurich, with a decision expected to be announced any time from 19 December onwards. Even if both men escape a life ban, they are expected to be handed hefty suspensions of six to seven years. While both men would have the last recourse of a further appeal to the Fifa appeals committee and then Cas, a lengthy ban would almost certainly signal the end of Platini’s hopes of re-entering the race to succeed Blatter. And it would also bring the curtain down in ignominious fashion on Blatter’s 41 years at Fifa, denying him of the chance to leave in the manner of his choosing at February’s extraordinary congress.

Suspended Uefa president Michel Platini’s attempt to have his 90-day ban from Fifa overturned has been rejected by the court of arbitration for sport

Desperate times call for desperate measures. This helps explain why nominal gross domestic product — that is, total GDP without inflation stripped out – has wound up at the center of a debate over how, and whether, the Federal Reserve can do more to stimulate the U.S. economy and lower the nation’s current 9.1% unemployment rate. The problem boils down to the Fed’s current dual – or in fact, triple – mandate from Congress. Here is the entire wording of the Fed’s mandate, which falls under Section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. It is this last part which is at the heart of today’s policy debate. In theory, and in the long run, it should be consistent for the Fed to conduct monetary policy in a way that promotes a healthy economy marked by maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. But that is little help at a time like now, when the Fed is roughly meeting the latter two objectives but falling well short on the first; that is, on reaching anything close to “maximum” or full employment, typically defined as something like an unemployment rate of 5% (though many think today, for various reasons including demographic ones, this rate is now closer to 7%). This kind of dual mandate is pretty unique in central banking. Elsewhere, in Europe and Canada, for example, central banks have a single mandate to promote price stability; that is, to keep the consumer-price level growing at about a 1-2% pace per year, as many have interpreted this mandate. This approach is favored by inflation and deficit hawks who fear the Fed would otherwise monetize government deficits and run the risk of hyperinflation. Until recently the most vocal opponents of the Fed came from this camp, and there are plenty of economists and Fed officials who would prefer this type of single mandate. (Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, for one, who earlier this year said “it would not break my heart to have a single mandate” focused solely on inflation and suggested it was up to Congress now to change the wording of the Federal Reserve Act as such.) Lately, though, as the economic recovery continues to disappoint and unemployment remains stubbornly high, a different group has come to the fore. This camp says that if the Fed is falling short on its “maximum employment” mandate, then it ought to be – it is, in fact, required to be – far more aggressive in stimulating the economy to try and get there. Consider Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, who in a speech earlier this month said “given how badly we are doing on our employment mandate, we need to be willing to take a risk on inflation going modestly higher in the short run.” He would prefer the Fed to commit to “keep short-term rates at zero until either the unemployment rate goes below 7 percent or the outlook for inflation over the medium term goes above 3 percent.” Trouble is, this essentially leaves the Fed in the same, difficult position as it is in today. Hence calls, which are growing ever louder, for an entirely new, different kind of target: nominal GDP. This is something Scott Sumner, an economist at Bentley University whose views have gained prominence through his blog, TheMoneyIllusion, has been pushing for two decades. His support base among academics lately has been growing. And perhaps most significant, since it suggests the Fed might actually be open to such an idea, is that Goldman Sachs economists have just endorsed the idea as well. The version which Goldman puts forth, building on the ideas of Sumner and others, is that the Fed ought to aim for a specific level of NGDP which would put the economy back on the trend it was prior to the recession; to close, in other words, the current gap between the economy today and where econometric models suggest the economy should be. This is no small gap; Goldman estimates the shortfall, as of the second quarter, is roughly 10%. To most quickly close this gap, Goldman estimates the Fed would need to roughly double its balance sheet to $5 trillion and keep interest rates at zero through at least 2016. The beauty of the NGDP target, as proponents see it, is that it doesn’t differentiate between inflation and real GDP. So it doesn’t matter whether the gap is closed by three parts inflation and one part real GDP or one part inflation and three parts real GDP. The point is that the gap gets closed, because the Fed is able to be as aggressive as it needs to be, and the economy avoids a prolonged slump and chronically high unemployment a la the Great Depression. And by targeting NGDP, or a stated goal for the total size of the economy, instead of a 3% or 5% inflation rate, the Fed is better able to avoid the backlash that might otherwise undermine its ability to achieve said objective. But would this really work? Now that NGDP is getting serious attention, this question becomes all the more important. Below, a (very abbreviated) round-up of the debate. Best to get up to speed as much as possible now, as it is only likely to gain momentum from here. Further reading on NGDP targeting: –Karl Smith, “NGDP Targeting in Real Life” –Interfluidity: “The Moral Case for NGDP Targeting” (with links to many others, including Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, on this issue) –Bill Woolsey, emphasizing the monetarist position that underlies an NGDP target. –Heard on the Street: Inflated Expectations for Economic Fix (and Sumner’s response here.) –Free Exchange: Understanding NGDP Targeting UPDATE: Australia’s central bank has a dual mandate similar to the U.S. An earlier of this version of this post suggested that Australia has a single mandate.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. This helps explain why nominal gross domestic product -- that is, total GDP without inflation stripped out -- has wound up at the center of a debate over how, and whether, the Fed can do more to stimulate the U.S. economy and lower the nation’s current 9.1% unemployment rate.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - News Corp's (NWSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Rupert Murdoch left the door open on Monday to a joint bid with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to buy Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research), a day ahead of Yahoo's quarterly financial report. In response to a reporter's question about his interest in pursuing a bid with Microsoft for Yahoo, he said "Depends on the deal." Murdoch also repeated earlier remarks about not having the financial fire power to top Microsoft's bid. "I certainly can't afford to bid against Microsoft (for Yahoo)," he told attendees at a speech he gave at the Atlantic Council, an international affairs group. The 77-year-old media mogul said Google is gaining influence in the advertising world. "Is Google really going to get control of the advertising world, and should Microsoft be supported in their attempt to try and stop that?" he asked. Yahoo is expected to report its first quarter results on Tuesday. Strong results could force Microsoft to raise its estimated $43 billion offer, some analysts have said. Separately, sources have said Yahoo is pursuing a deal to merge with Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) AOL Internet division. Yahoo is also set to complete tests this week with Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on whether Google should run a piece of Yahoo's Web search ad sales. Yahoo faces a Saturday deadline to respond to Microsoft, after which Microsoft has said it would launch a proxy battle to unseat Yahoo's board. (Reporting by Peter Kaplan; Editing by Tim Dobbyn.)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - News Corp's <NWSa.N> Rupert Murdoch left the door open on Monday to a joint bid with Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O> to buy Yahoo Inc <YHOO.O>, a day ahead of Yahoo's quarterly

The 2008 sub-prime mortgage crash looked a lot like the apocalyptic end of something in many American cities, but to Theaster Gates it was a new beginning. Gates, these days director of arts and public life at the University of Chicago, whom ArtReview likes to call “the poster boy for socially engaged art”, was then a somewhat overlooked potter and frustrated town planner. He used the opportunity afforded by the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy a bungalow in the derelict South Side of Chicago for $16,000, then about as much as he could afford. Gates, 34 at the time, set about making the clapboard bungalow his new artistic medium. He gutted it, “repurposed” the scrap to make shelves for 14,000 art books plundered from a closed-down bookstore, and covered the exterior with vertical strips of weathered wood. He created a “soul food kitchen”, and a room to hold a floor-to-ceiling collection of photographic slides rescued from the skip. He called the bungalow the Archive House, and opened it to the neighbourhood. So far it sounds like any number of community projects. But Gates wasn’t finished there. He used leftover scrap wood to build shoe-shine stands – referencing a history of black poverty and labour – and sold them for thousands of dollars at an art fair in Miami. With the proceeds, Gates bought another property on Dorchester Avenue, the same street as the first. He reimagined it in the same way, bought all the records from a defunct, once famous local record store, Dr Wax, housed them there, and called it the Listening Room. By now he was on a roll. Over the seven years since, Gates has used the same principle – buying and stripping out properties in his neighbourhood, a mile or two south of the university but a different world entirely, remaking some of the scrap as art, selling it, and buying more property to create community spaces and houses for local artists and others. In 2011 he made a series of beautiful textured canvases covered in spectrums or coils of reclaimed fire hoses, called them In the Event of a Race Riot. One set recently sold at Christie’s for £250,000. Always channelling the money back into the “Dorchester Projects”, he is inexorably remodelling his entire neighbourhood which had previously been hollowed out for two or three decades by poverty and crime. Gates now employs and houses 60 “artists and makers”, and his practice is expanding to other cities in the American rust belt – St Louis, Missouri; Akron, Ohio; Gary, Indiana. His ambition is growing too. Two years ago he saved from demolition a bank building, with classical portico and marble interior, the last civic building standing on Stony Island Avenue, the main drag two blocks from his home. The bank was flooded out and long-abandoned. Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor, and Gates’s most reliable patron, sold it to him for a dollar, on the basis that the artist would raise the money to renovate it. To this end Gates has created bonds from the marble tiles of the bank’s former urinals – readymades, indeed – inscribed, “In art we trust”. He has sold 100 of them for $5,000 each to get the renovation started. In the kind of neat reversal he lives for, he plans to sell more of his urinal bonds to collectors at the forthcoming Basel art fair. “I’m hoping Swiss bankers will bail out my flooded South Side bank in the name of art,” he says, with a broad grin. Related: Nuts, bolts and art: the man who turned a hardware store into hard cash Gates is telling me some of this in the self-renovated shell of a corner house in which he lives alone, on Dorchester Avenue, over the road from the Listening Room (the ground floor is another venue, the Black Cinema House). He is an energising presence, precise in his movements, comfortable in his skin. In conversation he slides easily between registers, from knowing bursts of street slang to situationist theory – references to “French cats like Guy Debord” – always thoughtful but never quite in earnest. His voice is rich in cadence; occasionally he will burst into song. When I ask him about The Wire at one point, he suggests he is more of a Downton Abbey obsessive. If he were a superhero, he intones in a sudden surprising tenor, he would be the Unknown Craftsman, “You know! Mask and cape, making anony-mous artistic inter-ventions, chang-ing the cit-y for-eeever.” Gates is 41. This week he has new work – painting and pottery – filling the hangar-like White Cube gallery in Bermondsey in south London. He is planning another large-scale show at the Venice Biennale, which may include his playful Zen-gospel band, the Black Monks of Mississippi, among other things (at 13, Gates was director of his church’s gospel youth choir). Earlier this year he was awarded the prestigious Artes Mundi prize in Cardiff and shared the £40,000 with his fellow nominees. He has not always been the “darling of the international art world”. He grew up in the tough West Side of Chicago, at a time of increasing dislocation in the city. He was the youngest of nine children and the only boy. His sisters now mostly work in public service but when younger they all dabbled, he has said, in “Black Pantherism”. His late mother was a schoolteacher and had him read widely from an early age, a habit that won him a place at a smart North Side school and the sense of “walking in two worlds since fifth grade”. His father was a roofer and Gates worked in holidays as his labourer. He always had an idea roughly where he wanted to get to – he has a degree in urban planning, and an unusual joint masters in religion, ceramics and city design – but it took him a while to get here. The people with the most entrepreneurial spirit also had the least consciousness about the needs of a place “I knew immediately after graduating that the kind of tactical planning I wanted to do I wouldn’t be able to do through a traditional city department,” he says – though he was a “bow-tie wearer” in city hall for a while. “I realised it was actually developers who changed cities. It bugged me that the people with the most agency, the most entrepreneurial spirit, were also the people with the least consciousness about the needs of a place. I went after having more agency…” Artists have long been a useful tool for developers; since the 80s the conventional way of “waking up” destitute urban areas has been to rent out cheap studio space to art students and watch the creativity and the café culture follow, before the loft apartments are sold on to the bonus-rich with authentic artisanal grit priced in. Gates wanted to change that cynical paradigm – “What if you said culture was the end point?” he says. “Then you might get what the city planners are always talking about: the spectacle of diversity. That’s the part that gets me super-excited. But in order to get there one has to have expectations in excess of dollar returns for shareholders.” Through TED talks and keynote speeches at the World Economic Forum, Gates has lately been spreading this gospel to great effect. At the end of this year he will stage his first UK project in Bristol, details of which will be announced in June. “Most of the city mayors who want to talk to me have big problems and they see culture as a means to an end,” he says. “So they come to me and they say, ‘You seem to be doing this pretty well, Theaster, what’s your trick? What’s your secret sauce?’” That is where the conversation starts. Gates tells them to have faith in their city’s artists, give them a real seat at the table when their city is being shaped. The problems are the same in post-industrial western cities everywhere, he says. They boil down to the fact that “we can save 80 cents on the dollar doing this or that in Vietnam”. The problem in the South Side of Chicago “is the same as it is in Liverpool, or wherever, it is: what do working people do now the industry has gone?” Partly, Gates suggests, through his practice, the first “strategy of hope” lies in a philosophy of pride in things done well, made well, but also in the principle or metaphor of always, always finding use for what seems discarded or broken or abandoned, make do and mend at the scale of the object and also at the scale of the city. “I couldn’t find work coming out of graduate school and I was a mason’s tender. I mixed mortar and would run bricks back and forth. It was back-breaking work, but I needed to do something just to feel good. Then I started making pots a lot and that was expensive to do, no money. But it was like this need to be making busy, being purposeful. Around here, in the absence of certain kinds of jobs or when brothers don’t finish school, then keeping busy creates all kinds of new devices.” If you walk along Dorchester Avenue it looks, as Gates says, like a decent street “but sometimes bad things happen. I have to say to my friends, violent things sometimes happen in this neighbourhood, and all the cleaning and sweeping in the world is not going to change the fact that among certain groups of young men and women here, rage is an entirely sensible reaction to their world. I get that. It is not always pretty, it is not always square.” Gates says there has been no hostility to his efforts to revitalise some formerly “no-go area” blocks. “Well,” he qualifies, “the windows of my studio have been shot out four times by kids – you know, target practice. But I think part of that is a desire to know what is happening on the inside and there being no obvious way to ask. Part of me wants to just catch these brothers to invite them in. In general I’m a co-worker with my neighbours here. And though maybe they don’t have the platform of the Observer to talk about it, they have stuck with this place through many more dire moments than me. My hat’s off to them. They got on with it. They had no leveraging mechanism but they stayed here, and most tried to do the right things.” You have the sense talking to Gates that the “sensible reaction” of rage, of the kind that was demonstrated last week in Baltimore, was closer to the surface in him as a younger man. Has he mellowed? “There was more anger and more jubilance,” he says. “Everything was more. But it was clear pretty early on for me that a certain kind of frustration was going to get in the way of doing any proper work. My first show at White Cube was called My Labor Is My Protest. In my body I felt for a long time that the best political act, the best faith act, is always an act, an action.” A lot of Gates’s work references the civil rights movement, and the lost hope it embodies. How conscious is he of an effort to reconnect with those values? “It is true that when I am interacting with close friends, cats who use complicated phrases like ‘self-determination’, ‘community assets’, ‘funding circles’, all those things that are about aggregating thought and money for the collective good, we hearken back to days when those things meant something to many more people in this community. Those values are still present in more recent immigrant communities. When you have nothing, when you come from nothing, then you lean on people and you let them lean on you. This gross individualism that middle classness taught us to believe in, it was really an erosive ideology against all that.” Some of his “reaggregating” efforts have to do with simply being on the ground in this place, making a long-term commitment. “I’m interested in, ‘What happens when you stay?’” Gates says. But it is also about an attitude to objects, an attitude to making them and remaking them. “It is a way of life like: sweeping matters, shovelling matters, it matters that it is done well,” Gates says. He holds up one of the fine tea bowls he has made, from which we are drinking. “How you centre a pot matters. The willingness to elevate super-modest things is either in you or not. I think that is born in me.” Did he see those qualities in his father, the roofer? “I think I got it from both of them. You know my mum committed her life to raising nine children. My dad, for him it was just going to work but they were of a generation where if you were going to do something you should do it good. I’d say right now there is less of that per capita.” As a kid, watching the margins of his neighbourhood being partly destroyed by gang violence (it was city policy to demolish larger civic buildings that had become crack dens) he suggests: “There was so much outside my control that I thought: all right, I can keep my bedroom clean, I can take out the garbage, I can look really presentable.” He paid his way through college cutting his friends’ hair. “I liked it because I always thought inside this little head under my hands is this vast possibility. With clippers and comb, there I went. That felt like the cultivation of a mindset, a skill set – and I wanted my girls and my guys to look good.” He makes it sound almost a religious ritual. “Well, yes. But better not to talk about that. There is always a part beyond what man owes man. It’s like: some decisions, most decisions I make, are not the right smart market decisions, but they are important to me.” Lately, along with a determined return to his potter’s wheel, Gates has been making – the headline act of the White Cube show – large-scale “tar paintings”, which are as they sound, canvases coated with whorls and geometries of viscous black. He made some of them with his father, now 80, who bequeathed him his tar kettle. “I could make another kind of work,” he says. “But how about I just really lean into my dad’s tar kettle?” He believes art, if it matters, has to have roots in autobiography. “This is the thing about the art market. If a young kid isn’t invited to know what they have inside them, and how to unlock that, then what they have is just devices. And you pretty quickly run out of devices. I had a life before all this. The lights were off for me, I was out in the shed, but that was a really useful way into this world.” He revels in his current access to galleries and museums, and is amused by some of the excess of the prospect of a Venice show, for example. Doesn’t it sometimes just seem completely absurd, that conceptual, bankrolled world? “Of course, but some people know how to ride the crest of absurdity and put things on your mind.” He is not so interested in that kind of strategy though. He is, he says, after more of a “low-tide feel” than riding the latest wave. “My dad gave me good advice. He said: ‘If this is about roofing, you should really treat it like a roof.’ It was like: should we use galvanised nails or copper ones? We have to add the gravel stop. And what is art if not the elevation of a certain set of skills? Tar is not unlike clay, which is where I started. What could be more humble than clay? No ironies. No crest of absurdity.” What did his dad make of the paintings? “He was into his tar pieces. He was way into them. He got it. You know, I used to sign things, and there came a time when I stopped. It was more about making the pot right. I had this big argument with White Cube because I didn’t want to sign anything.” And you realised that what they are really selling is your signature? He laughs. “They are like: ‘Hey man, you got to sign this stuff!’ And I’m like: ‘No, I’m the unknown craftsman!’” They reached a compromise. Gates put his name to some things and not others. We go for a drive around the neighbourhood and he takes me inside his vast, half-restored bank. “It was pretty rough. It was filled with shit. People came by after we had cleared it out and said: ‘Wow! This is so distressed!’ But it was actually distressed. Today as far as the banks are concerned this is my living room. I had to put myself on the line here.” He walks the floors, runs though his plans. “There will be a bar here, a little speakeasy. Performance space, galleries…” In the vault downstairs with its flood-damaged safety deposit boxes, its great submarine metal door smashed open, it looks as if Butch and Sundance have just ransacked the place. All of this was below water. Gates will leave much of it intact behind glass, create a music venue. “It is not just about this community,” he says. “I am invested in illustrating the possible. So that other people might think: ‘OK, that works.’ People with more means, other artists in other places.” Upstairs he has installed wooden cabinets from a demolished department store. In them he will file the album collection of Frankie Knuckles, the legendary house DJ who died last year. In the drawers below will be the collection of a man named Ed Williams who trawled around thrift stores across the country on a mission to take derogatory black miniatures out of circulation: “mammies, jolly nigger babes, little watermelon-eating sambos, all the stuff that was very popular among whites over 70, 80 years”. Williams collected 6,500 objects, which Gates now has care of. “We will have those in these drawers here, butting up against the collection donated by Johnson Publishing [based in Chicago] of Jet and Ebony magazines that were made to shift the way the world saw black people.” They will, he says, be a resource for anyone trying to grapple with meaning, from the local community to material studies PhD students. Does he ever doubt that the refashioned artistic purposes will be clear? Worry that it might just look like Urban Outfitters? “All the time. Constantly. The thing is, it doesn’t have to make complete sense. It doesn’t have to follow a developer logic. It’s just: I can make some meaning with this. A couple of years ago I did this project that was: ‘To make the thing that makes the thing’. I was interested in the idea that I could make a pot – or I could make a pottery. I started making wheels and kilns. I wanted to make bricks. And if I could do that then hundreds of people could do it, maybe thousands of people and we could build cities…” He takes me to his latest project, a three-acre site with a disused power station at its centre. He has piled up all the limestone from a church that was pulled down by a developer. “It will be a green space with a large sculptural work running through it,” he says. “We call it the monastery. These materials were around and we could get them. We will find out what works here.” Is there no real limit to the scale of his projects? “That’s the thing. I mean it feels like a philosophy more than a commitment to a set of things. And philosophy can exist at any scale.” What if people here feel it is not for them? “Well, every day we are in conversation with our neighbours. Some people are excited about it, others are maybe just glad something is happening to all the waste land. And others just assume I am a front for some corporation.” Gates’s studio and workshop is in a disused Anheuser-Busch distribution plant that he restored with his team of makers. There is a wood shop and a metal shop. He recently did a deal for the entire contents of a hardware store that was closing down – the old cabinets full of tools and nails and drill bits line the walls. (“When my guys saw all this stuff they got real horny.”) One warehouse space houses some of his major works, some firehose pieces, his remade scrap-wood market carts and trolleys, everything carefully thought out, honestly built, including the room itself. “I have three great wood guys on my team. They are incredibly sensitive in the way they handle materials,” Gates says. “They don’t like making things that are half-assed.” Walking round the workshop, with its emphasis on the handmade – its implicit refusal of the new digital world order – it feels like a very modern medieval guild. Like something William Morris would have approved of. Does Gates see it in those terms? “I think, as William Morris realised, as new power structures emerged, some things were being lost for ever. I am into that. I’d rather have a communal cinematheque than Netflix, so I’ll make one. The people I work with, they love each other now. They are like family. All of the scales are exciting for me, from wanting to make a pot to getting 60 people to make something well. It’s the same feeling. We believe in the things we make.” Gates shows me one of his exquisitely engraved $5,000 urinal-tile bank bonds, destined for Basel bankers, material evidence of the transforming power of art. “People are already trading them up. They are functioning like a real bond,” he says. We end up standing in front of a pair of his tar paintings, the matt and gloss patches of black catching the light in surprising ways. “When you are working with tar there is a kind of consistency of movement that has to happen or it doesn’t spread evenly,” Gates says. It is, in this sense, he suggests, like a ritual dance or calligraphy, or sword fencing, or any of those habitual Zen Buddhist practices. “I used to love the moment when we had just about finished the roof and we had to figure out how to get from whatever spot we were in to the hatch to get off. You had to mop yourself into a corner and out of it, get all your supplies down, get your last bucket of tar up…” That was presumably second nature to his old man? “Yes. And he would tell me rules, which are what you have before it becomes second nature. And that is the same as painting. You move paint around a canvas by certain inherited rules until it becomes second nature and you make your own rules. I never painted. I was much more interested in building in three dimensions, the practical. This is the closest I have come.” The two pieces illustrate the before and after of his father’s long career. The second of them involves a technique he was too old to master that allowed roofers to guarantee a new roof for longer, and put him out of business. When Gates was making them, he was reflecting not only on his father’s tar kettle but also on the abstract painting of Jasper Johns and others, art considered the high-water mark of American modernism. “For me,” he says, “that kind of painting always involved an idea of whiteness. Of art as individuality. The self-made. The artist representing an autonomy, without reference to the world. I think that is bullshit. I don’t think there is a black aesthetic necessarily, but I was born into an ideological framework that believed in collective endeavour. I didn’t get here by myself, self-made. Biography and geography matter…” That in the art world, as in the real world, there is no such thing as abstraction? “Or rather the thing that we see as abstract is really the by-product of a set of ideas about power that are way more complicated.” Gates smiles. “Of course, if a person doesn’t want to read all that into this tar they don’t have to. They can say: ‘Look it is four lines, black on black. And all the other stuff isn’t there.’” He stands back, has another look at the work. “But it always is.” Theaster Gates: Freedom of Assembly is at White Cube Bermondsey, London SE1, until 5 July

When artist Theaster Gates transformed a house on Chicago’s derelict South Side into an artwork open to the community, it was just the beginning. Meet the ‘poster boy for socially engaged art’

“Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937,” at the Neue Galerie, opens with a quietly devastating compare-and-contrast. The walls of the narrow hallway leading onto the first gallery are covered with facing photomurals. The image in one dates from 1938. It shows the exterior of the Haus der Kunst (House of the Arts) in Berlin where the traveling antimodernist exhibition called “Entartete Kunst” — “Degenerate Art” — has opened. The line of visitors waiting to get in stretches down the street. The photo on the opposite wall is from 1944. It shows Carpatho-Ukrainian Jews newly arrived at the railroad station at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They are densely crowded together along the length of a platform that runs far into the distance and out of sight. The message is clear: The event in the first picture led or contributed to that in the second. The show itself is one of the few in an American museum in the past two decades to address, on a large scale, the Nazis’ selective demonizing of art, how that helped foment an atmosphere of permissible hatred and forged a link between aesthetics and human disaster. Silent footage of the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich, taken in 1937 by the American filmmaker Julien Bryan. The excerpt, part of a longer film, is featured in a new show at the Neue Galerie. The basic facts of the narrative are familiar. Among Hitler’s grand plans upon coming to power as chancellor in 1933 was to purify German culture, to promote the Apollonian “classical” and eradicate the uncontrollably Dionysian “primitive,” a category that included, along with the mentally and physically deformed, avant-garde modernism, Bolshevism, and Jewish culture. Hitler’s views on art were far from original; they had clear roots in 19th-century German sociology. Nor were they, at first, systematic. He was into big, divalike, Riefenstahlian gestures, but with no clear official philosophy. The problem was, of course, that while his speculative thinking was limited, his search-and-destroy powers were not. One of his first moves as chancellor was to commission the building of a museum in Munich to showcase his version of an aesthetic ideal. He inaugurated it in 1937 with the first annual “Great German Art Exhibition,” which he more or less handpicked. Most of the art was locked into uplift-intensive academic styles of an earlier time. Even Hitler seemed disappointed with the results. A day after the museum’s debut, a second, hastily assembled government-sponsored exhibition opened nearby. Titled “Entartete Kunst,” it was made up of work in vanguard modernist styles: Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Dada, abstraction. The whole thing was pitched as a freak show, meant to demonstrate the threat the new art posed on everything German. Jews were implicated in the attack, even though only six of the 112 artists were Jewish. The first room of the Neue Galerie exhibition gives an instant sense of the contrasting aesthetics and complicit politics of the two Munich shows through a side-by-side hanging of two large triptych paintings: Adolf Ziegler’s “The Four Elements,” from 1937, and Max Beckmann’s “Departure,” done from 1932 to 1935. In Ziegler’s painting, the subject is obvious: Four blond academic female nudes decorously display themselves along with traditional symbols. Beckmann’s Expressionist picture is all mystery: Scenes of human torture fill the side panels, while at the center a cluster of stylized, possibly allegorical figures stand, as if waiting to push off, in a small boat. Hitler loved Ziegler’s art. He chose “The Four Elements” for the big Munich show, then hung it over the fireplace in his home. Working through his minister of propaganda, the wily Joseph Goebbels, he also gave Ziegler the go-ahead to do a purge of modernist art from state-owned museums, a campaign that produced the “Degenerate Art” show but continued well beyond it. Eventually, some 20,000 pieces — Beckmann’s triptych among them — were confiscated, to be sold, hoarded or destroyed. So the two triptychs broadly define the official view of good and bad (evil) art in the Nazi era. And they divide the Neue Galerie room into two corresponding zones. The “Four Elements” side is dominated by the life-size sculpture of a neo-Classical nude by Richard Scheibe, and two sculpted portrait heads of Ziegler by August Waterbeck, now forgotten. On the Beckmann side on the room is a small, violently twisting 1910 bronze Expressionist figure by Ernst Barlach titled “The Berserker,” and a 1911 still life of African sculpture by Emil Nolde that was in the “Degenerate Art” show. But nothing is simple; paradoxes abound. Scheibe, after an early brush with censorship, worked steadily throughout the Nazi era without ever joining the party. An approved sculptural style seems to have been enough. At the same time, the much-touted Ziegler, who put Hitler’s aesthetic biases into catastrophic action, fell out of favor, was sent to Dachau, then finally allowed to retire. Goebbels, who took over from Ziegler as degenerate-art prosecutor, started out as a big fan of modernism. There was even a moment early on when Expressionism was a candidate for becoming the official national art style. That ended when Hitler decided otherwise, and successful artists like Barlach and Nolde, whom Goebbels admired, fell into “degenerate” disgrace. Nolde’s story, too, has its twists. Because of his disgrace, he emerged from World War II as something of a hero, an artist who, forbidden by the Nazis to pursue a career, had painted small, brilliant watercolors in private — some are on view here — and kept a kind of creative resistance alive. But Nolde wasn’t resistant to Nazism. He had always embraced it and spent the war years trying to get back into the party’s good graces. You’ll find all these complex stories related in detail in the engrossing catalog edited by the show’s curator, Olaf Peters, an art historian and Neue Galerie board member. But the exhibition itself works in very broad narrative strokes that gain impact through the astonishing work used to illustrate them. A gallery devoted to art in Dresden takes us back a step in time, to the years just before and after World War I, when the city was home to a group of artists who called themselves Die Brücke, the Bridge. One of their goals was to translate great German art of the past — Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach — into the language of present. In the process, they virtually invented Expressionism. In the 1920s, they had success; you get a sense of this in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s 1925-26 painted portrait of himself and three Brücke colleagues, Otto Mueller, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, looking nattily dressed and self-confidently blasé. But under the Nazis, they were pariahs. Kirchner’s group portrait ended up in “Entartete Kunst” in 1937, as did all but one of the dozen Brücke paintings in the Dresden room. A year later, Kirchner, in exile in Switzerland, put a bullet through his head. Harassment of Bauhaus artists began even earlier. In 1931, the National Socialist party, Hitler’s party, forced the school out of Dessau. It reopened to improvised quarters in Berlin, but closed there two years later. The clean-lined, functionalist Bauhaus style wasn’t “degenerate” exactly, but the school’s international — read, foreign — outlook was nearly as threatening. In the end, cosmopolitanism is what saved it. Most Bauhaus members felt comfortable enough in the wider world to leave Germany behind, and did. What they left was inconceivable destruction, to lives and art alike. You get some grip on numbers in the show’s concluding gallery on the first floor, where a fat ledger book is on display filled with typed lists of “degenerate art” officially confiscated, mostly in 1937 and 1938, from German museums. Compiled in 1941-42 by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda — Goebbels’s department — the ledger is on loan from Victoria and Albert Gallery in London. An X beside an entry indicates a work known to have been destroyed; empty frames hanging high on the wall in the Neue Galerie symbolize work still missing. But it’s the art in the room called “The Fate of Works, the Fate of Artists” that your eyes go to, and particularly to a group of self-portraits. There’s Max Beckmann, in 1938, dressed in a red robe striped like a prison uniform and grimly eyeing a trumpet he holds in his hand as if wondering whether to sound it. And Kirchner, in 1937, sitting in a sun-flooded room with a little cat, staring straight forward, half his face left unfinished — or half obliterated. Context means a lot in the way you see art. You can’t know how specifically personal these portraits are, how they connect to history, until you know that Beckmann was painting his in exile in Amsterdam the year after hundreds of his works had been impounded by the Nazis. Kirchner, painting in Switzerland, would be dead within a year. Nor can you know that Oskar Kokoschka, who depicts himself in 1937 as a lantern-jawed palooka, is a hero until you read the nose-thumbing solidarity-affirming title he gave to his likeness: “Self-Portrait as a Degenerate Artist.” You don’t even realize Felix Nussbaum has painted his until you look closely at his multifigure 1944 picture “The Damned,” and recognize his face, familiar from other paintings by him, in a crowd. Nussbaum, a German Jew, wasn’t in the 1937 “Entartete Art” show. Three years earlier, sensing menace in the air, he had left Germany for Belgium. There, in 1940, he was arrested as a “hostile alien” and put in a detention camp so nightmarish that he begged to be sent back to Germany. But he escaped en route and spent the next several years in hiding, on the move, living with friends here and there, and continuing to paint. “The Damned” is a carefully composed, exquisitely painted horror story. A dozen gaunt, exhausted people crowd together in the foreground, shut in by high stone walls. A woman screams; another weeps; everyone else looks dazed except Nussbaum, who pulls his coat collar up and looks out of the picture furtively and appraisingly. A procession of skull-faced pallbearers carrying empty coffins enters the scene from behind. In 1944, the year he finished the painting, Nussbaum was found hiding in an attic by Nazi soldiers, arrested and send to Auschwitz where he was killed, age 39. The photomural of Auschwitz that opens the show was shot in the same year. Nussbaum could have — I’m guessing — arrived at the train station in the picture. He could have stood on that platform. And — because everything connects, always — he could have been a figure in a similarly horizon-piercing crowd. “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937” continues through June 30 at the Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th Street; (212) 628-6200, neuegalerie.org; A version of this review appears in print on March 14, 2014, on page C21 of the New York edition with the headline: First, They Came for the Art. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937,” a show at the Neue Galerie, is one of the few in an American museum in the past two decades to address the Nazi’s selective demonizing of art.

Police in New Zealand used a stone to smash the window of a car that tumbled into the water at an Auckland wharf Tuesday, dragging the trapped motorist out of the sinking vehicle and lifting her to safety. Police later estimated the 63-year-old, whose name wasn’t released, was within a minute or so of drowning, they told the New Zealand Herald. The horrified driver was was trapped inside of a BMW after the car jumped the parking lot wall and landed in the Waitemata Harbour about 3 p.m. local time, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Joined by several bystanders who witnessed the horrifying plunge, Officers Paul Watts and Simon Russell sprang into action to save the woman's life, according to the North Shore Times. Erwin Kampos, who had been fishing nearby, was trying to balance the car as the terrified woman tried to keep her head above water in the backseat, pressing her face against the rear window. The cops dove into the drink and one of them tried, unsuccessfully, to break the window with his baton. Another bystander, local reporter Simon Maude, handed Watts a large rock, which the officer used to shatter the car’s glass. “At that time the car actually started to move very fast into the water. I was trying to hold the car, slowing it down from entering the water,” Russell told the New Zealand Herald. The group then hoisted the horrified driver and carried her to safety. The car was completely submerged within a minute of the rescue, the officers said. Investigators are still trying to determine the circumstances of the accident, 9 News reported.

A woman whose car tumbled into the water in New Zealand walked away safely after local police smashed open her rear window.

06/30/2015 AT 04:55 PM EDT , a diabetes patient and outspoken advocate for those living with the disease, has a serious problem with CrossFit's sense of humor. that read "Open Diabetes," along with the caption "Make sure you pour some out for your dead homies," Jonas lashed out at what he found to be an ignorant depiction of a nuanced condition, urging the company to "understand the difference" between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. This is not cool. Please know and understand the difference between type one and type diabetes before making https://t.co/HtptOe8KMa Ignorant comments. Sensitivity to all diseases, and proper education on the cause and day to day battle is important https://t.co/HtptOe8KMa , has type 1. Typically diagnosed in children, it's a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin, leading to high blood glucose levels. Unlike type 2 diabetes, which can be caused by a poor diet, type 1 is not the result of unhealthy habits. "It's really shaped who I am as a person," Jonas told . "It has an effect on my creative life, the way I approach writing songs and doing all that." In a series of defensive Tweets, CrossFit stood by its original message – and faulted Jonas for his assumption that the company didn't "grasp the difference" between type 1 and type 2. Anyone can get T2 diabetes, even those with T1. Stop assuming we don't grasp the difference and help us raise awareness. @nickjonas The fitness company also reposted user @GreenPlusAnE's Tweet showing an old picture of Jonas (and his brothers) at an event for Coke. Were you being "sensitive" to type 2 diabetics when you accepted Coke $$ and promoted Soda? @nickjonas pic.twitter.com/8J6c4tl0GH Jonas then re-Tweeted a message from @willpower4x, who appreciated the pop star drawing attention to the fact that sufferers of type 1 diabetes do not have a choice. @CrossFit @CrossFitCEO my son didn't drink coke@ 3y/o when diagnosed w/ type 1.Wasn't his choice.Thanks for calling this out @nickjonas CrossFit could not immediately be reached for comment.

The pop star, a longtime advocate for people with diabetes, urged "sensitivity to all diseases"

Four days before the Colts play the favored Patriots in the AFC title game, Indianapolis linebacker Josh McNary has been charged with one felony count of rape, one felony count of criminal confinement and one count of battery, according to a charging document filed in Marion (Ind.) Superior Criminal Court Wednesday. The NFL said that the McNary matter “is under review,” while the Colts and the NFL Players Association declined comment. In an affidavit for probable cause attached to the charging document, Indianapolis Metro Police detective Derek Cress said that two officers were dispatched to an Indianapolis residence on Dec. 1 at 5:52 in the morning “in reference to a rape report.” The officers spoke to a “white female age 29,” who advised the officers that “she was sexually assaulted by an unknown male approximately one hour earlier at an unknown location,” according to the affidavit. “She had accompanied co-workers to some downtown bars and later arrived at an unknown apartment with an unknown black male. She had a physical fight with the male before being sexually assaulted. She took the male’s cellular telephone and left the apartment,” reads the affidavit. “She returned to her residence and later contacted the police for a report.” The alleged victim told authorities that she began “feeling very, very drunk” the morning of Dec. 1, and that she “began talking with a black male, whom she believed was the same male who sexually assaulted her later that morning,” according to the affidavit. The alleged victim also said she did not recall leaving the last bar, but realized “she was at the male’s apartment” in Indianapolis. “She described being ‘fine for a while.’ However, the male became ‘upset.’ He attempted to kiss her neck and she ‘freaked out,’” reads the affidavit. “She pushed the male away from her because she was ‘not ok with that.’ “(Alleged victim) advised the male had vaginal sexual intercourse with her in the bed,” the affidavit continues. “She didn’t believe he was using any form of protection and did not remember seeing a condom on his penis. She believed this is when she ‘scratched’ and ‘fought’ with him. She stated, ‘He scared me, intimidated me, and scared me.’” Detective Cress said that the alleged victim agreed to a sexual assault examination later in the morning of Dec. 1, and that she “also explained how she physically assaulted the male suspect with her fingernails and took his cellular telephone from the residence.” The affidavit also states that Cress was able to track the cell phone taken by the alleged victim back to McNary. The NFL has been under fire since the season began regarding its perceived soft stance on players - including stars such as Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy - who have been accused of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. The criticism sparked the league to hire outside consultants to advise NFL officials on how to investigate and discipline players accused of wrongdoing and to amend policies addressing domestic violence and other violent crimes. Former FBI director Robert Mueller also conducted an investigation into the league’s handling of the Rice case and released a report last week that concluded the NFL could have done more in its investigation of the former Ravens running back. McNary's attorney, Ed Schrager, issued a statement Thursday morning: "The charges and affidavit publicly disseminated on Wednesday afternoon are not evidence of wrong doing but simply one side's story," Schrager said. "Joshua has full and confidence in the American way, including its justice system, which he pledged to protect and defend as a West Point graduate and lieutenant in the United States Army." McNary, 26, played college football at West Point. His final season with the Black Knights was in 2010. He has played in 20 games over the last two seasons and finished the 2014 regular season with 28 tackles.

Josh McNary, a second-year linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts, has been charged with rape.

Published March 14, 2012 | FoxNews.com The hugely popular erotic novel “50 Shades of Grey” is quickly becoming universal water cooler conversation for women from all walks of life. Everyone from so-called “mommy bloggers” to hardcore feminists is hailing the tome as a triumph for women, in spite of the book’s strong themes of female submission at the hands of a high-powered man. They also say men who feel differently should butt out. If you haven’t heard about “50 Shades of Grey” yet, you likely will soon. The independently published erotic novel is plunging into the mainstream this week after being acquired by Vintage Books for a seven-figure sum. Written by a little-known London author named E.L. James, it relies heavily on “BDSM” -- bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism. Vintage Books, part of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, just released a new e-edition of the book and plans to do a 750,000-copy print run as soon as possible. The book, which began as fan fiction of the “Twilight” series, has been called “mommy porn” and “Twilight for adults.” It has more than 16,000 reader reviews on the social networking site GoodReads and has sold out in bookstores nationwide. It has blown up due to word of mouth, Facebook sharing and its popularity on women-centric blogs. According to the website GuruMommy.com every woman in Armonk, N.Y., is reading the book, and some are so obsessed that they are forgetting to pick up their kids at school. More than that, "when you put the book down, you will actually want to have sex with your husband. Like, a lot," writes Linda Meadows, the “Gurumommy,” a Los Angeles mom of three. Stacy Geisinger, a 51-year-old married mother of one from Bedford, N.Y., who raved about the book on her website, StacyKnows.com, explained to Fox411 why she found the book appealing. “I found it empowering! There was nothing forced,” Geisinger said. “Although many are focused on the erotic nature of the book -- and it's hard not to be -- I found the story in itself to be very romantic.” The plot of “50 Shades of Grey” centers on a young and naïve college student named Anastasia Steele who is seduced by a rich and powerful entrepreneur named Christian Grey. Grey persuades Steele to sign a contract that allows him complete control over her life, in and out of the bedroom. Yet despite the fact that Steele becomes completely submissive to a very dominant man, feminists aren’t up in arms. In fact, this is where the mommy bloggers and the feminist bloggers agree. Many traditionally feminist-minded writers are hailing the book for encouraging women to explore their sexuality. A reviewer on the feminist-friendly website Jezebel wrote: “Our consensus: the book is pretty ridiculous — for every lashing there's an ‘OMG!’ — but if it's making more women feel comfortable discussing their sexuality, we're all for it.” Jill Filipovic, a blogger with Feministe.com and a contributor to the feminist anthology “Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape,” told Fox411.com that because the book depicts a consensual relationship (Steele does sign that contract), she is unconcerned. “I would say that there's nothing wrong with BDSM when it's fully consensual on both ends, both partners have relatively equal bargaining power, both partners feel comfortable setting boundaries, and boundaries are communicated and respected,” Filipovic wrote in an email. “I suspect it's getting extra press because of the BDSM angle (which freaks a lot of people out).” While women are applauding the book, some men are expressing concern over whether women should be insulted by a plot dominated by a man who tells a woman when to sleep, eat, work out and even how to groom herself. Television host Dr. Drew Pinsky recently called the book a “rape fantasy” on his HLN show. Women writers laughed off Pinsky’s remarks, saying there is absolutely no reason for men to weigh in on this issue at all, and certainly no reason for them to use the term rape. “Why is Dr. Drew speaking on behalf of the fantasies and desires of women, let alone women he hasn't even met?” Jessica Wakeman of the women’s blog The Frisky told Fox411. “He and every other man should not be telling women what arousal is acceptable and what is not. That's pretty irresponsible. No one should be concerned about a consensual relationship between a submissive and a dominant. The realm of fantasy is just that — fantasy. “In this book,” Wakeman continued, “the protagonist may be naive and young, but those qualities alone don't mean she isn't following her sexual desires in the bedroom. BDSM relationships could not be farther from domestic and sexual abuse: people who practice it follow the rules that everything they do will be safe, sane and consensual." Journalist and author Paul LaRosa blogged that he thinks the success of the book proves that women want to be dominated by men. “Is it possible that so many women dream of becoming the submissive partner of a dominant male partner which, after all, is the central plot of the book?” LaRosa posited. Rachel Kramer Bussel, a former sex columnist and the editor of the Best Bondage Erotica 2012, explained to us that enjoying the fantasy of a dominant sexual relationship does not mean that a woman wants to be dominated by men in all aspects of her life. “There's nothing wrong with a man being dominant and it doesn’t mean he's misogynist, any more than a woman wanting to be submissive in the bedroom means she wants to be submissive outside the bedroom. It's about consensually playing with power and eroticizing it in a safe environment,” Kramer Bussel told Fox411. “The success of ‘50 Shades’ shows that women are becoming more comfortable reading erotica and openly claiming that reading.” This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. © 2012 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. All market data delayed 20 minutes.

Erotic novel '50 Shades of Grey' unites gals, unnerves some guys

On the cellblocks, it is a foregone conclusion that the disciplinary system is rigged. The uniformed staff is given almost total control over the process. Corrections officers make the charges — issuing “tickets,” in prison parlance — and hearing officers, typically sergeants, lieutenants or captains, determine guilt and decide punishment. Inmates almost always lose. At disciplinary hearings, inmates won only about 4 percent of the cases in 2015, according to the department. The Times analyzed 59,354 disciplinary cases from last year. Systemwide, black inmates were 30 percent more likely to get a disciplinary ticket than white inmates. And they were 65 percent more likely to be sent to solitary confinement, where they are held in a cell 23 hours a day. Last year, black inmates got 1,144 tickets that resulted in 180 or more days in isolation; white inmates received 226 tickets that had similarly long sentences. Department officials said there were marked improvements in the past few years, thanks to a settlement the state had signed with the New York Civil Liberties Union that brought in a federal expert to oversee efforts aimed at reducing the use of solitary confinement. Between April 2014 and October of this year, the share of solitary prisoners who were African-American had decreased to 57 percent, from 64 percent, said Mr. Mailey, the department spokesman. Taylor Pendergrass, the lead New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer in the settlement, said the department was “off to an encouraging start.” “It will be a major undertaking to unwind decades-long practices and transform the culture of this large organization all the way down to the staff working in the cellblocks,” Mr. Pendergrass said. There has been resistance from the rank and file. In a statement, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents guards, said the settlement with the civil liberties union had made the prisons more dangerous. “The disciplinary system has been weakened in our prisons,” the association said. “Especially given the heavy gang presence and overwhelming increases in violent incidents, appropriate disciplinary measures are needed to maintain order and to protect other inmates, as well as staff.” Solitary confinement is only one piece of the disciplinary process that had a disparity, The Times found, and it is unclear whether the settlement will affect other elements of the system. Some of the starkest evidence of bias involves infractions that are vaguely defined and give officers the greatest discretion. Disobeying a direct order by an officer can be as minor as moving too slowly when a guard yells, “Get out of the shower.” It is one of the most subjective prison offenses. For every 100 black prisoners, guards issued 56 violations for disobeying orders, compared with 32 for every 100 whites, according to the analysis. For smoking and drug offenses, which require physical evidence, white inmates, who make up about a quarter of the prison population, were issued about a third of the tickets. In New York State prisons last year, black inmates were disciplined at a higher rate for violating prison rules, and they were punished more harshly than whites. State officials said reforms they put in place as a result of a lawsuit settlement reduced the disparity in solitary confinement, but it is unclear how the changes will affect other aspects of the system. INMATE POPULATION AND SHARE OF Disobeying orders is the most common violation inmates are punished for in the state prison system. It also is one of the most subjective — officers do not need to produce physical evidence to give an inmate a disciplinary ticket. In prisons throughout the state, blacks are punished for disobeying orders disproportionately to their numbers. A rare exception is Sing Sing, one of the few prisons where black guards are in the majority. WITH “DISOBEYING ORDERS” VIOLATION, 2015 INMATE POPULATION AND SHARE OF DISCIPLINARY PUNISHMENTS, 2015 of longer than 180 days Disobeying orders is the most common violation inmates are punished for in the state prison system. It also is one of the most subjective — officers do not need to produce physical evidence to give an inmate a disciplinary ticket. In prisons throughout the state, blacks are punished for disobeying orders disproportionately to their numbers. A rare exception is Sing Sing, one of the few prisons where black guards are in the majority. INMATES CHARGED WITH “DISOBEYING ORDERS” VIOLATION, 2015 Inmates have the right to appeal to an outside court and be represented by a lawyer — if they can find one willing to take their case; they almost never do. Of the tens of thousands of inmates who got disciplinary tickets in 2014 and 2015, about 280 were represented by Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, which is financed by the state. If an inmate is lucky enough to have Prisoners’ Legal Services take his case, his odds improve greatly. About two-thirds of the organization’s clients won their appeals — but by then, many had completed their solitary sentence. Ibrahim Gyang said in an interview that at one of his disciplinary hearings, an officer called as a witness had to reread the ticket because he could not remember the case. And Mr. Gyang still lost. It is not just that blacks fare worse: Whites are more likely to get a break. Both white and black prisoners mention the escape of two murderers from Clinton last year as a prime example of white guards’ tendency to be more trustful of white inmates. The murderers, Richard W. Matt and David Sweat, both white, got the tools they needed to cut through walls and piping because of friendships they had developed with an officer and a civilian employee, both white. “A major reason for allowing those inmates to have the latitude that they had was because they had white privilege,” said Joseph Williams, who worked for the corrections department for 47 years and was one of its few black prison superintendents. “We know if he had been black he would have never been given that wide a latitude.” Markus Barber, a black inmate at Green Haven Correctional Facility, called it “the complexion for the connection.” On Oct. 23, 2014, at Clinton, John Richard was stopped by Officer Brian Poupore, who took issue with his tinted glasses even though he has vision problems and had a medical permit to wear them, according to department records. “Monkeys don’t wear glasses,” a sergeant said, according to Mr. Richard, who is serving a life sentence for murder. When Mr. Richard refused to remove them, he said, Officer Poupore and several other guards jumped him. In their internal reports, the officers said Mr. Richard punched them several times and had to be subdued. After the encounter, Officer Poupore had a minor injury, according to the medical report, while the other officers had none. The medical report said Mr. Richard had bruises all over his body, including his face, under his ear and on his back. He had trouble walking, the report said. His glasses were broken. He was found guilty of assault and spent the next six months in solitary confinement. Assault on prison workers may seem like a straightforward infraction, but a closer look reveals a disturbing pattern. There were 1,028 such violations issued in the state system last year. Black men received 61 percent of them, while white men received 9 percent. Under department rules, officers have considerable leeway over what constitutes an assault. An inmate need not cause an injury or even touch an officer. About 20,000 uniformed officers work in the state’s prisons. During the first half of the year, 2,007 of them were involved in assault cases, according to department data, but 98 percent of them had no injuries or only minor ones, which can be as vague as “aches/pain.” Eight officers suffered serious injuries, defined as a broken bone or a puncture wound. The Times reviewed 215 reports of assaults on staff from the first quarter of 2015, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request. The department redacted the officers’ names but not the inmates’. It also redacted most information about injuries, but in several cases, The Times was able to obtain medical records through the prisoners. Among those reports, the cases of three black inmates — Darius Horton, Paul Sellers and Justin Shaw — followed the same pattern: All were involved in seemingly trivial disagreements with guards that led to minor altercations. And while it is hard to know who was responsible for escalating the episodes, the officers were not injured and remained on duty, while the inmates were punished with long stints in isolation. Mr. Sellers was returning from dinner at Five Points Correctional Facility when he was stopped by an officer for taking “a loaf of state bread” back to his cell, according to the guard’s report. “Surrender the bread,” the officer ordered. Mr. Sellers refused and grabbed the shirt of the officer, who punched him in the face. He was sent to solitary for 166 days. Mr. Shaw was stopped at Washington Correctional Facility because he was “attempting to conceal contraband,” according to the officer’s report. When challenged, “the inmate produced a stack of waffles,” the report said. Mr. Shaw was accused of then grabbing the officer’s arm and given a 180-day lockup. Mr. Horton was caught by Officer Michael Stamp at Groveland carrying a bowl of hot water from the microwave for coffee after the common room had closed. The officer ordered Mr. Horton to leave it, he refused and they got into a shouting match and bumped shoulders, according to the report. The guard claimed that Mr. Horton then punched him. In an interview, Mr. Horton denied this, saying he was jumped by Officer Stamp and six other guards. Two of the officers had minor injuries; the other five were unharmed. Mr. Horton was sentenced to 270 days in isolation. How much race figured in these three encounters — if it did at all — is hard to know. The guard in Mr. Sellers’s case was Hispanic; in the other two cases, the guards were white. Mr. Shaw said the officer might have just been having a bad day. “I don’t like to say everything is race,” he said. For Mr. Horton, there was no doubt that race was at play when, as he told it, he was handcuffed and beaten by seven officers, all of them white. “They took me out there and beat me like I got caught drinking at the whites-only fountain,” he said. The corrections officers’ union encourages members to report even the slightest physical contact as an assault. As the union negotiates a new contract, billboards in the Albany area have shown officers with neck braces, strapped to stretchers. Assaults on staff members have increased in recent years. There were 895 cases recorded in 2015, some involving more than one inmate, compared with 577 in 2010, according to department data. More recently, assaults on staff were down by 16 percent between January and October of this year, compared with the same period last year, the department said. Union officials did not comment on the racial disparities in discipline that The Times found. “While facing record high levels of violence and one of the most dangerous work environments in the country, corrections officers conduct themselves with professionalism and integrity to keep our prisons secure and our communities safe,” the union said in a statement.

A New York Times investigation draws on nearly 60,000 disciplinary cases from state prisons and interviews with inmates to explore the system’s inequities and the ripple effect they can have.

The US has been seeking Snowden's extradition to face felony charges for leaking details of US surveillance programmes. Photograph: Tanya Lokshina/AP The US has told the Russian government that it will not seek the death penalty for Edward Snowden should he be extradited, in an attempt to prevent Moscow from granting asylum to the former National Security Agency contractor. In a letter sent this week, US attorney general Eric Holder told his Russian counterpart that the charges faced by Snowden do not carry the death penalty. Holder added that the US "would not seek the death penalty even if Mr Snowden were charged with additional, death penalty-eligible crimes". Holder said he had sent the letter, addressed to Alexander Vladimirovich, Russia's minister of justice, in response to reports that Snowden had applied for temporary asylum in Russia "on the grounds that if he were returned to the United States, he would be tortured and would face the death penalty". "These claims are entirely without merit," Holder said. In addition to his assurance that Snowden would not face capital punishment, the attorney general wrote: "Torture is unlawful in the United States." In the letter, released by the US Department of Justice on Friday, Holder added: "We believe that these assurances eliminate these asserted grounds for Mr Snowden's claim that he should be treated as a refugee or granted asylum, temporary or otherwise." The US has been seeking Snowden's extradition to face felony charges for leaking details of NSA surveillance programmes. There were authoritative reports on Wednesday that authorities in Moscow had granted Snowden permission to stay in Russia temporarily, but when Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, arrived to meet his client at Sheremetyevo airport, he said the papers were not yet ready. Kucherena, who has close links to the Kremlin, said Snowden would stay in the airport's transit zone, where he has been in limbo since arriving from Hong Kong on 23 June, for the near future. The letter from Holder, and the apparent glitch in Snowden's asylum application, suggest that Snowden's fate is far from secure. But a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin insisted Russia has not budged from its refusal to extradite Snowden. Asked by a reporter on Friday whether the government's position had changed, Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that "Russia has never extradited anyone and never will." Putin has previously insisted Russia will not extradite Snowden to the US. There is no US-Russia extradition treaty. Putin's statement still leaves the Russian authorities room for manoeuvre, however, as Snowden is not technically on Russian soil. Peskov said that Putin is not involved in reviewing Snowden's application or involved in discussions about the whistleblower's future with the US, though he said the Russian security service, the FSB, had been in touch with the FBI. Speaking on Wednesday, Snowden's lawyer said he was hoped to settle in Russia. "[Snowden] wants to find work in Russia, travel and somehow create a life for himself," Kucherena told the television station Rossiya 24. He said Snowden had already begun learning Russian. There is support among some Russian politicians for Snowden to be allowed to stay in the country. The speaker of the Russian parliament, Sergei Naryshkin, has said Snowden should be granted asylum to protect him from the death penalty. The letter from Holder was designed to allay those fears and negate the grounds for which Snowden as allegedly applied for asylum in Russia. The attorney general said that if Snowden returned to the US he would "promptly be brought before a civilian court" and would receive "all the protections that United States law provides". "Any questioning of Mr Snowden could be conducted only with his consent: his participation would be entirely voluntary, and his legal counsel would be present should he wish it," Holder said. He added that despite Snowden's passport being revoked he "remains a US citizen" and said the US would facilitate a direct return to the country. Germany's president, who helped expose the workings of East Germany's Stasi secret police, waded into the row on Friday. President Joachim Gauck, whose role is largely symbolic, said whistleblowers such as Snowden deserved respect for defending freedom. "The fear that our telephones or mails are recorded and stored by foreign intelligence services is a constraint on the feeling of freedom and then the danger grows that freedom itself is damaged," Gauck said.

Reports this week claimed Snowden had applied for asylum in Russia because he feared torture if he was returned to US

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Dorgan, Bennet on shutdown Scott Brown reveals he was abused as a child Wisconsin protests swell to 25,000 Palin: Obama faith, citizenship question 'distracting' Reid: Won't stand for GOP threats Boehner: 'We're going to cut spending' Medicare fraud bust nets 111 doctors, nurses White House opposes Bahrain violence Riot police storm Bahrain protest camp Mullen: Second F-35 engine doesn't make much sense Chris Christie: Time to take on 'big issues' Sen. Kerry says resolution near in Pakistan spat Sen. Scott Brown recalls childhood abuse Dallas official tells citizens 'go to hell' John Wall on MVP and Rookie Challenge record Gonzaga shows off depth, rolls past Panthers Alabama man charged in Auburn tree poisoning Stephen Strasburg returns to the diamond Girl wrestler wins after boy won't face her Man arrested for poisoning Auburn's oaks Post Now, Feb. 17: Picking up eggs, milk and a date Washington Post Live: The Banks situation How I Do It: Sam Anas DeMatha's BeeJay Anya sounds off Boys' Basketball: No. 7 DeMatha vs. No. 4 Gonzaga Post Sports Live: Daytona 500 preview Post Sports Live: Pivotal road trip for Capitals Post Now, February 16: Rockin' at Reagan National In a battle of Top 20 Prince George's County girls' teams, Bowie toppled Wise, 47-39 In a battle of Top 5 girls' basketball teams, St. John's tops Good Counsel, 74-69 Gilbert Arenas on trash talking with Wizards Nick Young Behind the scenes: The Westminster Dog Show Post Sports Live: Big week for Hoyas, Patriots, Terps Post Sports Live, Feb. 15 Sports Illustrated swimsuit models make media rounds Howard provides spark in return to lineup Early sights and sounds of Nationals spring training Police halt protests in Algeria Raw video: Violent clashes in Yemen Raw video: Rally supports Bahrain govt. Raw video: Clashes in Jordan Waves of change throughout Mideast Mourners vent fury at monarchy in Bahrain Egyptians celebrate Mubarak's fall in Cairo Bahrain locked down after five protesters killed Violent clashes in Middle East protests Washington Post report from Manama, Bahrain Magic with goldfish stokes anger Royal wedding watch: Invitations sent, Prince Harry's date Violent clashes erupt during Yemen protest Mubarak's final moments in Cairo Riot police storm Bahrain protest camp Ronald McDonald decapitated by food activists Somali pirate sentanced to more than 33 years Sen. Kerry says resolution near in Pakistan spat Protests spread across Arab world Iranian leaders push to suppress protests Police clash with Mexico teachers U.S. anti-drug agents shot in Mexico Naked burglar nabs sausage, takes shower Rep. Speier tells House she had abortion Alabama man charged in Auburn tree poisoning Post Now, February 18: Northern lights in D.C.? Wisconsin governor on protests and cuts Mourners vent fury at monarchy in Bahrain Egyptians celebrate Mubarak's fall in Cairo Bahrain locked down after five protesters killed Bill Cosby honored by Navy Scott Brown reveals he was abused as a child Man arrested for poisoning Auburn's oaks Australian washed overboard survives 5-mile swim Magic with goldfish stokes anger Post Now, Feb. 17: Picking up eggs, milk and a date Royal wedding watch: Invitations sent, Prince Harry's date Violent clashes erupt during Yemen protest Mubarak's final moments in Cairo Sharks swarm off Florida coast Riot police storm Bahrain protest camp Fashion Week: Diane von Furstenberg © 2011 The Associated Press

Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen tells the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. can't afford to spend more than $4 billion on an alternative engine for the Pentagon's next-generation fighter jet. (Feb. 16)

The Concorde jet airliner had a top speed of 1,350 mph. It was decommissioned in 2003 after being deemed to dangerous and expensive to continue to operate. There are no plans to replace it. So why not build a car that can go 2,000 mph, instead? That’s what one California man is trying to do in a garage located on the edge of the Mojave desert. Think of it as the hottest hot rod in history. Waldo Stakes has been chasing land speed records for three decades, and now he wants the big one: World’s Fastest Car. A general contractor by trade, Stakes has spent his free time over the past couple of years working on a 50-foot long wheeled missile called the Sonic Wind LSRV (Land Speed Record Vehicle.) His efforts, to date, have been chronicled in a number of technical publications, including Aerospace Testing magazine and Popular Mechanics. The vehicle uses parts taken from an $8 million rocket engine that once powered the famous X-15 to a top speed of 4,519 mph in 1967, still the fastest manned aircraft that doesn’t go into orbit, as far as the public knows. He says it was purchased as surplus for $1,500 in the mid-1980s. Read: Craig Breedlove Going for 800 MPH Land Speed Record in 2013 Stakes has designed his engine to run on a mix of methanol and liquid oxygen stored in tanks scrounged from Redstone and Corporal nuclear missiles, and claims that it will produce 60,000 pounds of thrust. That’s several thousand more than the one in the X-15 did. With it, Stakes estimates the Sonic Wind will be able to accelerate at a rate of more than 100 mph per second and easily break the current land speed record of 763 mph set by British fighter pilot Andy Green in 1997 at the controls of the jet-powered ThrustSSC. But he has his sights set higher than that. He says his car could theoretically hit Mach 3, more than 2,200 mph. Crazy talk? Not according to Stakes. The key is harnessing the shockwave created when a vehicle is traveling at supersonic speeds to stabilize the car, and minimizing the gyroscopic forces produced by its wheels. With the help of a friend’s computational fluid dynamics modeling program, Stakes has come up with a unique design that features seven small, lightweight titanium wheels at the front of the car and a pair of large fixed triangular hubs at the rear with thin rims that rotate around them. A moveable airfoil and an undercar tunnel creates low pressure area beneath the car, while its bodywork and canted wings force the atmospheric shockwave to radiate out, creating virtual pontoons that work like the ones on an outrigger canoe. Stakes says the danger zone lies in the 560-760 mph range as you approach the sound barrier, but beyond that things smooth out, which should allow even a ground vehicle to achieve much higher speeds. He points to near Mach 9 rocket sled runs carried out by the government at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico as proof. A rendering of what the finished product will look like appears sleek and delicate compared to some other land speed efforts, like the multimillion-dollar British Bloodhound SSC team that is hoping to break the 1,000 mph barrier with Andy Green once again in the cockpit. Read: Rocket Car on Track for 1,000 MPH Record Run While Stakes plans to shake down the car himself, he hasn’t yet said who the driver for the record runs will be, but it definitely will not be Green. He tells FoxNews.com that he wants the Sonic Wind to set an all-American record and that there will be a woman on board when it does. He’s currently deciding which of two female F-18 pilots from the Navy has the right stuff for the job. If she or she is successful, it will mark the first time that the land speed record is held by a woman. Stakes figures it’ll still be a couple of years before he’ll be ready to roll his underfunded project onto the Bonneville Salt Flats and light it up, but he’s confident that he will make it there. In fact, he expects to go even further than that. While he says the 10 to 12 mile-long Bonneville Speedway is long enough to break the current record, he has his eyes on a stretch of salt on the other side of the mountains that border the track for a shot at 1,000 mph. After that, he wants to head south. Not of the border, but the equator. Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the largest salt flat in the world, and the only place on the planet Stakes thinks is big enough for a Mach 3 run. It’s never been used for a land speed record attempt before, but no one has ever tried to go that fast before. Click here for more from FoxNews.com Autos

The ultimate hot rod.

03/12/2015 AT 08:35 AM EDT Kate, in a cream coat by British maternity line , was welcomed to the historic Ealing Studios in West London by the show's creator, Lord She was presented with a posy by 4-year-old Zac Barker, who, along with twin brother Oliver, plays Lady Mary's son George. In the hair and makeup department, Kate, 33, also met housekeeper Mrs. Hughes, played by Phyllis Logan, as she was made up by artist Nic Collins. Also there? Robert James Collier, who plays the mean-spirited under-butler Thomas. He joked: "You've come just at the right time, Phyllis is about to have her Botox put in." Princess Kate on the set of Downton Abbey Justin Tallis / AFP / Getty After her tour of the trailers, she headed to the Servants' Hall and Kitchen, where she met many of the show's actors including was missing from the joyous occasion as she was ill and couldn't attend. Tuesday, when she went to an art gallery. Friday will see her joining , 32, and the rest of the senior members of the Royal Family paying tribute to those who served in Afghanistan, while next week the couple are heading to see the Irish Guards on St. Patrick's Day before visiting the Brookhill Children's Centre in Woolwich to learn more about the Home-Start charity and its support for children and families.

In the latest of her royal outings, Kate paid a visit to the set of the hit series

Romney says the debt could grow to more than $20 trillion if Obama is reelected. WESTERVILLE, Ohio — As a fresh wave of polling shows Mitt Romney’s chances slipping in this crucial battleground state, the GOP nominee began a sprint across the state Wednesday with a message to voters that the nation cannot endure a second term for President Obama. “I don’t believe we can afford four more years like the last four years and the reason I believe that after the debates and after the campaigns, and after all the ads are over, the people of Ohio are going to say loud and clear on Nov. 6 we can’t afford four more years, we must do better,” he told about 2,000 cheering supporters crowded into a high school gym and an overflow room. “This election comes down to a very dramatic choice in my opinion.” But polling shows that Ohioans are increasingly breaking for Obama. A CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac poll, released Wednesday, showed the president up by 10 points here. The state is crucial to Romney’s bid for the White House. ( The campaign says their internal polling shows a closer race.) The state's important status was demonstrated Wednesday by visits from by Romney and Obama. Romney started the morning in this Columbus suburb, which supported Obama in 2008 and President Bush in 2004. He will then head to a business roundtable in a Cleveland suburb before an evening rally in Toledo. Obama plans to court young voters at two college campuses. PHOTOS: Mitt Romney on the campaign trail Romney’s chances in Ohio are in part complicated by the state’s economy, which is recovering faster than the nation, a point Gov. John Kasich alluded to as he introduced the GOP nominee. “I hope you all know that Ohio’s coming back. From 48th in job creation to No. 4. No. 1 in the Midwest. From 89 cents in a rainy day fund to a half a million dollars and we have grown 123,000 jobs in the state of Ohio. Our families are going back to work,” Kasich said. “But every day I have to face the headwinds that come from Washington.” As he has in other states where the local economy is rosier than the nation’s, Romney emphasized the burgeoning federal debt as a billboard displayed the tally growing throughout the rally. Romney noted that when Obama took office the debt was more than $10 trillion; when Romney launched his campaign, it was $15 trillion; and now it’s over $16 trillion. He predicted that if Obama is reelected, the nation’s debt will grow to nearly $20 trillion. “Those debts get passed on to our kids,” he said. “It’s not just bad for the economy, it’s not just bad for our job creation it will-- in my opinion it is immoral for us to pass on obligations like that to the next generation.” As his campaign has struggled to regain footing in the presidential race, advisors announced earlier this week that he would focus on trade and energy policy on the stump. But Romney glossed over those issues Wednesday morning, instead focusing on debt, taxes and the struggles of the middle class. Romney said his “heart aches” from the struggles of people he’s met on the campaign trail. “There are so many people in our country that are hurting right now. I want to help them. I know what it takes to get an economy going again and creating jobs. I know that a lot of folks that have jobs that wonder how they can make ends meet till the end of the month, how they can put food on the table for their family,” he said, noting that incomes are declining while costs are increasing for electricity, fuel and healthcare. “The difference between me and President Obama is I know what to do and I will do what it takes to get this economy going.” He pledged to cut and simplify income taxes, with a caveat. “By the way, don’t be expecting a huge cut in taxes because I’m also going to lower deductions and exemptions,” he said. “But by bringing rates down we’ll be able to let small businesses keep more of their money so they can hire more people. My priority is jobs and I’ll make it happen.” Romney campaigned with Jack Nicklaus, a beloved native son who is regarded as the most accomplished golfer of all time. Nicklaus compared the nation’s current struggles with a time he struggled with his golf game. “At the start of the 1970 season, I had gone almost three years without winning a major championship. I lived on talent but I wasn’t the golfer I could be,” he said, adding that his father’s death prompted reflection and introspection. “I reinvented myself, worked harder than I had ever worked, and the result was some of the most successful years of my careers. I believe our country, I believe our country is at that point today. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. We have to look at problems at hand and change them.” Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

WESTERVILLE, Ohio &mdash; As a fresh wave of polling shows Mitt Romney &rsquo;s chances slipping in this crucial battleground state, the GOP nominee began a sprint across the state Wednesday with a message to voters that the nation cannot endure a second term for President Obama .

One reason American politics is so polarized is that President Obama has been so cavalier about his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws he dislikes. On Monday the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to one of his worst abuses, his 2014 order that rewrites U.S. immigration law. In United States v. Texas, 26 states sued to block Mr. Obama’s executive diktat that awards legal status, work permits and other government benefits to some 4.3 million illegal immigrants, with no consent from Congress. A federal judge...

The Supreme Court turns to Obama’s lawless immigration order, the Wall Street Journal writes in an editorial.

Instead, almost 75 per cent of UK web users prefer online advertising in exchange for free or lower content costs. Additionally 48 per cent of UK consumers are willing to allow their personal profile data to be tracked, although concerns over online privacy and security remain. Tudor Aw, head of technology at KPMG Europe, said: “UK consumers still haven’t come around to the idea of paying for digital content and are clear that they will move to other sites if pay walls are put up… "Although consumers are resistant to paying for content, they are becoming more accepting of viewing advertising and for their profile information to be tracked. This continues a trend we have seen in previous years and again acts as a pointer as to whether a pay or ad-funded model will eventually succeed." Seventy-four per cent of UK consumers are willing to recive adverts on their PC in exchange for free content and 56 per cent feel the same way about mobile advertising. However, despite a growing familiarity with online profile tracking, leading to more targeted adverts, almost 90 per cent of conumers globally said there were more concerned about privacy and online security than they were 18 months ago. Aw added: "At first sight, these concerns over privacy might seem to conflict with our findings that consumers are more willing to have their profile information tracked, but there seems to be a clear distinction in consumers’ minds between uncontrolled use of personal information, and properly regulated use. “They do see the value in allowing service providers to have access to the information necessary for more tailored services, but they are only prepared to do this if the risks are controlled and, crucially, if there is some value in it for them. “

UK web users are the least likely to part with cash for online content, according to KPMG&rsquo;s annual 'Consumers and Convergence' global survey.

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with other officials Monday at a school in Howard Beach, Queens. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg swept into the Rockaways on Tuesday with technocratic precision, his tinted-windowed sport utility vehicle pulling to a stop outside a freshly cleaned storefront on Beach 20th Street at 12:28 p.m., two minutes before his briefing for the news media was scheduled to begin. Cameras, reporters and a podium were already assembled inside. In seconds, the mayor, with a small army of deputies and bodyguards, traversed the 20 feet of open sidewalk between his vehicle and the building, disappearing from view as a few startled residents of this wounded part of Queens looked on. Less than an hour later, Mr. Bloomberg was gone, off to meet with city workers on Staten Island. There would be no tour of the storm-ravaged Queens neighborhood, no stops at buildings still lacking power and heat. At a library a block away, where a charity was handing out used coats, residents who had waited in line for hours said they had no idea that the mayor was nearby. “If he came out here, people would have a stronger impulse to say, ‘Yes, he’s been doing something,’ ” said Stainton Stewart, whose power was restored on Monday, two weeks after the storm. “He hasn’t even dropped by to see what’s going on.” If the early days of Hurricane Sandy played to Mr. Bloomberg’s strengths — infrastructure expertise, no-nonsense crisis management — the extended and halting recovery has laid bare his limitations. After nearly 12 years of overseeing the nation’s largest municipality, he remains deeply uncomfortable with the role of consoling and soothing his city. He is rarely seen at public meeting with storm victims, and when he does interact with them, there are no tears or hugs. While President Obama, touring the region on Thursday, embraced residents on Staten Island, Mr. Bloomberg hung back. He is more at ease in formal news briefings, where he ticks off facts about food-distribution centers and corporate donations. Asked on Tuesday to reflect on the scenes he had witnessed in the Rockaways, the mayor demurred. “We’re just going to deal with it,” he said. Mr. Bloomberg has not been absent: since the storm hit, he has made more than a dozen visits — unannounced to the press — to hard-hit areas in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, where he spoke with displaced residents. By design, the trips are kept private. Videos, edited at City Hall, are sometimes posted on a YouTube page, although often without sound, so the mayor’s conversations with residents cannot be heard. Aides said the mayor considered it crass to expose suffering residents to scrutiny. “His interactions with people who live in these neighborhoods are not designed for the press,” Howard Wolfson, the deputy mayor primarily responsible for fortifying Mr. Bloomberg’s legacy, said. His aides said the mayor would ultimately be judged on how the city rebounds, not on empathy, although they are keenly aware that Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who urged New Yorkers to take in a Broadway show in the wake of a blizzard in 2010, is always at risk of falling into caricature — perhaps never more so than now, as he confronts a staggering crisis at the end of his final term. “The people in this city didn’t elect Mike Bloomberg three times to give him a hug,” Mr. Wolfson said. “His focus is helping people restore their lives. That’s what he believes government is there to do.” And local members of the City Council said they were appreciative of the efforts by an administration that, they said, has been more responsive than it was during the blizzard. Still, if Gov. Chris Christie’s bear hugs and emotional odes to the Jersey Shore are now an indelible image of the hurricane, Mr. Bloomberg’s visual moment, so far, has been his unwelcome reception in the Rockaways after the storm, where residents, filmed by a camera crew, angrily demanded to know when the city would be helping them. (The mayor was quickly led away.) The encounter did not sit well at City Hall, and Mr. Bloomberg’s public appearances now keep him mostly insulated from angry eruptions or unplanned interactions. This week, at briefings in two of the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods, he appeared moments before his events and departed immediately afterward. The mayor announced last week that he would ride the subway to work, signaling that the city was returning to normal. Aboard the train, he kept his head down, silently reading The Financial Times; an inquiring reporter said she was shooed away by his security detail.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg does go to storm-ravaged communities, but he does not stay long with residents, a sign that the halting recovery has laid bare his discomfort with the role of soothing his city.

Investors looking for a little yield don't have the panoply of juicy choices that presented themselves at the bear market bottom in March of 2009, but there are still pockets of decent payouts to be had. Check out the so-called "Dogs of the Dow" for ideas. These are the stocks with the highest yields in the Dow Jones Industrial Average: Verizon and AT&T both yield 6.7%; Pfizer is good for 4.9% and Merck throws off 4.2%. The resurrection in stocks since March of 2009 corresponded with a momentous junk-bond rally, too, prompting investors take a more skeptical view of high-yield corporate debt. Real estate investments are still offering fat yields and several funds package a portfolio of investments together into a single vehicle. Exchange traded funds like the iShares Cohen & Steers Real Estate (ICF) gets the job done with a 4.1% yield, but you can get higher yields in some closed-end funds. Jack Columbo, editor of the Forbes/ISA Closed-End Fund & ETF Report, has an idea for income investors. He just added the closed-end DWS RREEF World Real Estate & Tactical Strategies Fund (DRP) to his newsletter’s model portfolio this month. Here is what he had to say: "The consequences for the Greek debt crisis not only affect Greece, but the common currency of Europe. The dollar’s strength will reduce inflationary pressures for a time, however, we still think the ultimate outcome will be worldwide inflation, since this is the only solution to oppressive debt levels. "The DWS RREEF World Real Estate & Tactical Strategies Fund (nyse: DRP) provides exposure to the global real estate market. The fund is trading at $14.33 at a 12.9% discount to net asset value. It yields 6.9%. "The fund invests in real estate related common and preferred stocks. The fund’s investment goal is high current income and capital appreciation. The largest holding is in U.S. Treasuries at 42% with the rest is in common stock and most of those holdings outside of the United States." Fat Yields! Interest rates are low but high yields are abundant if you know where to look. Click here for instant access to the Forbes/ISA Closed-End Fund & ETF Report. Click here to sign up to receive the Stock of the Week next Monday morning.

A closed-end fund with a fat yield looks good to go.

“Sea When Absent,” the just-released third album by the chaotic pop outfit A Sunny Day in Glasgow, is noisy and joyful and full of hooks — maximalist music that peals out of speakers, a sound so large that it’s equally appropriate for rainy-day brooding and top-down carefree summer days. Guitar squalls and meticulously realized vocal melodies crash together on “Sea,” and the results are often joyous — thanks to the band’s unwillingness to hew to a single definition of the ever-slippery term “pop.” In the capable hands and sharp minds of ASDiG, hooky, immediately accessible music can be as informed by the silky R&B of Ciara as it is the distortion-heavy maelstroms of the Cocteau Twins. “It’s difficult to say what ‘pop’ might be, and I think it’s very difficult to explicitly state what might make a great pop song, because it’s so many things and not always the same thing,” says Sydney-based ASDiG founder Ben Daniels by e-mail, on the eve of the band’s summer tour to promote Sea. “But melody is important to me.” For all the noise made on “Sea” — and make no mistake, it is an album full of cacophony — Daniels’s assertion is borne out by tracks like the “In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing),” which uses fuzzed-out guitars and electronics to propel soaring vocals, and the languorous “The Body, It Bends,” which hitches shimmering guitars to a loping bassline and plaintive vocals. Then there’s the late-night-worthy meditation “Crushin’,” on which whisper-soft, dreamy vocals punctuated by twinkling keyboards give way to a triumphant, squawking guitar solo before returning as the central focus. “[Vocalist] Jen [Goma]’s melodies on that one made me think of Prince,” says Daniels, “and the lyrics she wrote suggested Smokey Robinson’s ‘Crusin’,’ which I love so much. The title for me, while conveying what we wanted to about that song, was also kind of an homage to Smokey’s song. For some reason when I heard Jen sing, ‘Hey, come on back to me,’ it really just reminded me of ‘Baby, let’s cruise.’ Nowhere near as smooth, obviously.” With Daniels based in Sydney and the band’s other members — Goma, Josh Meakim, Annie Fredrickson, Adam Herndon, and Ryan Newmyer — split between Philadelphia and Brooklyn, N.Y., much of the brainstorming for “Sea” occurred virtually. After working out some demos beginning in late 2011, the band fleshed out the album’s details while scattered around the world. “Jen and Annie started trying out melodies and e-mailing me their ideas, and then I would have ideas and write them back,” recalls Daniels. “Then Ryan, Josh, and Adam were going into the studio to add parts, and I was recording stuff in my apartment and sending that to them. We got together again in January 2013 and took a lot of ideas back into the studio together, and then mostly had it done. “Ha,” he adds. “I suppose that is a long way of saying that e-mail is where a lot of the ideas exchange happened.” Despite the physical disconnect between the members, “Sea” sounds very much the product of a band. Songs take unexpected twists; the vocals of Goma and Fredrickson bubble into the mix just as quickly as they might drop out of it, with the occasional electronic glitch adding just enough of an off-kilter feeling to command the ear. “Sea” was the first album by the band to be recorded in a proper studio by an outside producer (Jeff Ziegler helmed the album at Uniform Recording Studio in Philadelphia), although its bedroom origins are still evident. “I was hoping that this process would bring more clarity to the record and a more ‘high fidelity’ sound,” says Daniels. “It didn’t entirely work out that way — in the end I had to mix it on my not-amazing gear as opposed to the amazing gear in the studio. But the process was definitely another learning experience, and I think that that is something I need with each album.” That stretching will be on display when the band plays Great Scott on Thursday — the band’s big bang will come out of three singers (Meakim also sings, and Daniels is quick to note that he “truly has a beautiful voice”), two guitars, two synths, and two samplers, as well as a bass and a drum kit. “We have to tweak songs like crazy [when we take them on tour], but that is also part of the fun,” says Daniels. “We talk a lot about how we think we can make something work, and then we practice it a lot. It’s mostly just hard work and a little technology.” A willingness to work hard and maybe end up somewhere unfamiliar is part of what makes ASDiG one of the most compelling bands in the rock world — their sound has a lot of parts, but it’s uniquely theirs. “I guess I like a pop song where the singer couldn’t be someone else, and that is something that the listener picks up,” says Daniels. “[A singer like that is a] person who has thought about their limitations and what is interesting about those limitations, what they can push. I feel like that’s how we all get somewhere cool.”

Maura Johnston profiles buzzy alt-rock band A Sunny Day in Glasgow, performing at Great Scott on Thursday in support of a catchy new album, “Sea When Absent.”

CONCORD, N.H. – A Purple Heart awarded to a soldier from New Hampshire killed in World War II's Battle of the Bulge has brought together two branches of a family that never knew of the other's existence. Eugene Victor Call was a 32-year-old U.S. Army technician when he was killed on March 2, 1945, near Kapellen, Germany. Recently, the Vermont group Purple Hearts Reunited got a call from Rick Daigle in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Daigle's wife had died, and among her possessions were Call's Purple Heart and other medals. Her mother was once married to Call. Daigle wanted the medals returned to family. The search led to a namesake great-nephew in Newport, New Hampshire, and to grandchildren in California. Ceremonies honoring Call are planned in New Hampshire on Monday and California on Thursday.

A Purple Heart awarded to a soldier from New Hampshire killed in World War II's Battle of the Bulge has brought together two branches of a family that never knew of the other's existence.

The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty said on Monday that it had removed Mr. Rapfogel, 58, from his positions as executive director and chief executive officer after an investigation by an outside counsel, Dechert L.L.P. His conduct is now being investigated by the state’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, as part of a new anticorruption task force. Mr. Schneiderman and Mr. DiNapoli would not say what their concerns were, and the Met Council said in a statement only that it had retained a lawyer to investigate “financial irregularities and apparent misconduct in connection with the organization’s insurance policies.” Two people briefed on the investigation said the lawyers were concerned that Mr. Rapfogel might have been overpaying the council’s insurer, Century Coverage Corporation of Valley Stream, N.Y., and then directing the insurer to make political contributions to his favored candidates. The insurance company’s employees have given almost $120,000 to various candidates since the late 1990s, including $26,175 to several candidates in 2013. In a statement released by his lawyer, Mr. Rapfogel apologized for unspecified “mistakes” and said, “I will do everything possible to make amends.” “After 21 years at the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, I deeply regret the mistakes I have made that have led to my departure from the organization,” he said. “I apologize to our dedicated officers and board, our incredible staff and those who depend on Met Council. I let them all down.” Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer representing Joseph Ross, the insurance company’s chief executive, said only, “Mr. Ross is aware of the investigation and intends to address the issues raised in a responsible fashion.” Mr. Rapfogel has been a well-respected figure in New York’s Jewish community and in its political world. He was an aide to Mayor Edward I. Koch and to the city comptroller Harrison J. Goldin; before the council, he worked as executive director of the Institute for Public Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and of the local branch of the American Jewish Congress. His wife, Judy, a power in her own right, is the longtime chief of staff to the State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. Mr. Rapfogel’s importance is on display annually when he hosts a legislative breakfast, on the morning of the Israel Day Parade, that typically draws many of the city’s top political leaders, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Senator Charles E. Schumer and, this year, most of the leading candidates running for mayor. The council, which provides a variety of services, including legal and immigration aid, food pantries, housing, home care and domestic violence counseling, reported receiving contributions and grants of $24.4 million, including $11.5 million in government grants, in 2011. The organization has four contracts with the city, with a total value of $13 million. The Metropolitan Council has also been a major recipient of financing from the Legislature and from the City Council. In the last six years, the Council has given the organization more than $10 million worth of what are known as member items; in the last five years, it received $3 million from the Assembly. In 2011, the council paid Mr. Rapfogel $340,089 in direct compensation, plus $77,202 in “other compensation,” according to a tax document filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Rapfogel’s lawyer, Paul Shechtman, said his client’s conduct was not known to Mr. Silver. “Whatever Willie did, his wife and Speaker Silver knew nothing about it,” Mr. Shechtman said. Mr. Silver issued a statement saying he was “stunned and deeply saddened by this news.” Century Coverage has given money to at least four of the Democratic mayoral candidates — Bill de Blasio, Christine C. Quinn, William C. Thompson Jr. and Anthony D. Weiner. Ms. Quinn, who was the biggest beneficiary of the insurance company’s largess, said through a spokesman on Monday that she was “outraged, and frankly stunned,” by the allegations. “In a desire to ensure that no questionable contributions related to this matter are part of our campaign fund-raising, we have decided to return any and all donations that are associated with Century Coverage Corp.,” the spokesman, Mike Morey, said. Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Weiner also plan to return contributions Century made to their campaigns, according to their spokesmen. Jesse McKinley and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

The state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, is investigating allegations of financial malfeasance involving William E. Rapfogel, the president of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.

Kelly Rowland Beyonce's New Haircut Ain't THAT Shocking crushed it when she decided to chop off all of her hair -- 'cause when it comes to style, B can do NO WRONG ... so says her "Beyonce can have a STRAND of hair on her head and still be fine," Kelly told TMZ as she was leaving Madeo in L.A. last night. But it's not like Beyonce women's hair fashion when she decided to hack off her locks -- 'cause as Kelly tells us, "We have been rocking short haircuts since the beginning of time." In fact, Kelly had a pretty short 'do way before Beyonce did -- and looked great -- but even Kelly admits it wasn't original of an idea at the time. NOTE: Poll results are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those users who chose to participate. Poll results are not reflected in real time. Question is ... who rocked it better? Get TMZ Breaking News alerts to your inbox

Beyonce Carter crushed it when she decided to chop off all of her hair -- 'cause when it comes to style, B can do NO WRONG ... so says her Destiny's Child…

Although the inside of the iPhone 4S contains some major differences from its predecessor, the exterior of the iPhone 4S looks exactly like the iPhone 4. As Mashable’s Amy-Mae Elliott pointed out last week, that means most iPhone 4 cases will work just fine with the iPhone 4S. Still, in the run-up to Friday’s launch date, we’re seeing a lot of conflicting information about what cases and accessories will and won’t work with the new iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S does have a few minor design changes from original iPhone 4. Notably, the mute switch and the two volume buttons have moved ever-so-slightly to accommodate a new antenna. Eagle-eyed iPhone fans will recognize these changes from the launch of the Verizon iPhone back in February. Although most iPhone 4 cases will still work with the Verizon iPhone 4/iPhone 4S, cases that were designed to specifically mold to the side button layouts may be slightly off. The good news is that over the course of the last eight months, the vast majority of case makers have updated their molds to account for the new design. Most simply have an elongated rectangle on the side of the case to account for the buttons. A few have gone as far as to create specific button holes in cases for Verizon iPhones. What this means is that if you purchased a case for your iPhone 4 within the last six to eight months, chances are, that case will fit the iPhone 4S. For users who got a case or bumper when Apple launched the iPhone 4 in June 2010, the situation is slightly more complicated and you might want to bring your case with you when standing in line to get the new phone. Still, the cases sold alongside the iPhone 4S in Apple Store in the U.S. and across the world should be fully compatible with the iPhone 4S. And for the super-paranoid, we’ve already put together a list of some iPhone 4S-friendly cases. A cute concept makes for a unique case. There's a phone icon version available too. We can't pretend to be fly fishing experts, but we know a striking iPhone case when we see one. If you don't take your iPhone too seriously, "Robotector" protection might be just the ticket. If you're looking for something different, Jon Eicher has you covered -- or more accurately, your iPhone covered -- in military grade aluminium. This bold case makes a real statement. This case's naughty-but-nice look is perfect for anyone who likes to stand out from the crowd. We've seen a few camera-themed cases for the iPhone, but this Fresh Fiber look caught our eye. Understated and simple, Kenzo's cool pouches will appeal to minimalists. There's something suave about the real leather Sena Vista. We love the retro looks and fold-out foot functionality. With various "$%#@!" symbols around the edge, this flexible case is unusual and fun. Give your iPhone a trendy 'stache with one of Yummy Pocket's excellent Etsy creations. Aged to perfection, the BookBook case and wallet will lend your iPhone a certain gravitas. Not just a cassette-shaped case, but also a stand, the "Tuned Up" offers two-for-one fun. Crafty types can create their own case with the Neostitch blank canvas. With storage space for three credit cards accessed via a thumb release mechanism, this case will allow you to leave your wallet at home. If you think we're including this option because of the cute kitty, you're only half-right. The case is pretty sweet too.

Don't believe the FUD about needing a new case for your iPhone 4S. The case you have for the iPhone 4 will most likely work just fine.

06/03/2014 at 12:15 PM EDT Derick Dillard and Jill Duggar She thought she was just going for a stroll after a lunch date. But what Jill Duggar, 22, know was that her boyfriend, Derick Dillard, had been planning a that included a serenade by country singer , who had written a song about their relationship. The romantic moment will be featured on the season finale of TLC's hit reality show , airing Tuesday (9 p.m. ET). In a sneak peek of the episode, Jill – the second daughter of Jim Bob, 48, and Michelle, 47 – and Dillard, who were , listened as musicians hiding in the park came in to join the performance. "Last minute, I was going over what I was going to say in my head," Dillard says in the clip. "I was trying to play it cool." But Jill may have suspected something big was about to happen: "I ... am like on the alert, basically, like, 'What's going on?' " she says. Dillard and Duggar began courting after Jill's sister Jessa, 20, , 18. The two are currently planning a wedding – and saving their first kiss for their wedding day.

Fiancé Derick Dillard, engaged to a Duggar daughter, planed an elaborate surprise with country singer Walker Hayes

Voters won't cast ballots for governor until 2014, but the early sniping in what has become a nonstop campaign for Illinois' top office threatens efforts to stabilize the state's worsening financial situation this year. Among Democrats, Gov. Pat Quinn has raised the specter of a conflict of interest between House Speaker Michael Madigan and daughter Attorney General Lisa Madigan should she decide to run for governor. That move could heighten the tension between Quinn, who has low approval ratings, and the speaker, whose help the governor needs to fix the state. On the Republican side, a wide-open primary for governor beckons, including at least two state senators in the mix. The long-out-of-power GOP has little reason hand Democrats any political victories or take risks that alienate special interests ahead of next year's election. In the meantime, the state's financial picture grows more precarious as lawmakers await the governor's State of the State speech next week. On Wednesday, Quinn pulled back on selling $500 million worth of construction project bonds. His administration cited a recent credit downgrade that cemented Illinois' worst-in-the-nation ranking. "I think the people of Illinois have had plenty of politics and campaigning, almost perpetual campaigning, in the past, and that didn't do us much good. I think if we're going to have good government, you need people in government, mainly, especially, this governor, Pat Quinn, to go forward with the policies that people want," Quinn said Wednesday. "And that means honesty and integrity in government at all times, it means a strong focus on job creation and development and it also means straightening out all the fiscal challenges that the state has. And I am going to continue to do that." If there is movement on issues, it's more likely to occur on the social side during the spring session. Increased ranks of Democrats could advance a measure to legalize gay marriage and once again approve a gambling expansion that could get Chicago a casino. And Democrats now have such overwhelming control of the House and Senate that they could approve a plan to borrow money to pay the state's $9 billion balance of unpaid bills without Republican votes. But efforts to tighten restrictions on guns — an issue that involves geography more than party ideology — remain in question, particularly with a federal appellate court directive to legalize the concealed carrying of firearms by June. As Illinois' top agenda items remain unresolved, the jockeying for the March 2014 primaries continues unabated. With the prospect of a Lisa Madigan challenge swirling last week, Quinn told WBBM-Ch. 2 that "you have to deal with the House if you're governor every single day and I think it's important that no members have conflicts of interests, especially as we recover from my two predecessors" who have gone to jail. Since then, Quinn has been less inclined to poke the bear. The governor used a homespun tale, quoting advice from his father saying "don't take an aspirin until you get a headache," to sidestep questions from reporters about the state attorney general. At the same time, Quinn has been praising Democratic Senate President John Cullerton's efforts to reach a compromise on a public pension system reform bill. Cullerton, who has long had a close association with Madigan, downplayed concerns that the politics of a budding governor's race in each party would bollix efforts for pension reform. "I will pass this as quickly as possible," Cullerton told the City Club of Chicago of his latest pension proposal in the Senate. "The delay is not having enough votes, not my willingness to not pass it as soon as possible." Cullerton said the governor's race "should be all about these (economic) issues." As an example, he has said the candidates for governor should discuss whether the state's 67 percent income tax rate increase enacted in 2011 should be rolled back as scheduled in 2015. "You should ask these candidates what their plan is," he said. Lisa Madigan has indicated an interest in the 2014 governor's race, but discussion of a potential bid has been coupled with the status of her father, arguably Illinois' most powerful politician. He is the state's longest-serving speaker and also the state Democratic chairman. As attorney general, Lisa Madigan has been able to display some political distance from her father, but the gap closes in the relationship between the governor's office and the House speaker, where Michael Madigan has the power to dictate what legislation is considered. If Lisa Madigan ran, her father potentially could work to frustrate a Quinn agenda while furthering hers. Also eyeing a Democratic primary challenge to Quinn is former White House chief of staff Bill Daley, a brother of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Bill Daley has said that one reason he gave up on potential bids for governor in the past was the powerful status of his brother as mayor. Although both have powerful political names — particularly in Democratic politics — questions abound over how general election voters would consider the candidacy of a Daley or a Madigan, particularly after Michael Madigan's nearly four decades in the speaker's chair dictating public policy in a troubled state. Republicans, out of the governor's office since George Ryan departed in 2002 amid scandal, already have a fairly active campaign for the office including the GOP nominee from 2010, state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington, who lost to Quinn, and state Sen. Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale, who narrowly lost the last primary to Brady. Also considering bids are state Treasurer Dan Rutherford, U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock of Peoria and Chicago businessman Bruce Rauner. So far, none of the potential candidates on either side has offered a detailed fiscal prescription for the state. For his part, the governor has had difficulty sticking to a plan. The Republicans fell further into the minority in the General Assembly as a result of a Democrat-led redistricting plan in last year's elections that gave Democrats veto-proof majorities. But those margins don't ensure automatic passage of bills on controversial issues, and Democrats want Republicans to provide votes for a pension reform plan. Instead, Republicans may try to use the state's deteriorating financial condition under longtime Democratic governance as a blame-game election strategy. In addition, a new law requires that candidates for governor pick their lieutenant governor running mates in advance of the March 2014 primary so they run as a team. That could make prospective lieutenant governor candidates want to avoid casting controversial votes that could end their prospects for advancement. Charles Wheeler, a former longtime Statehouse reporter who teaches at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said he expects Madigan and Cullerton will try to move enough legislation to allow their members to look as though they got something done when they face re-election next year. Perhaps not a "grand solution to pensions," Wheeler said, but maybe approving borrowing to pay the backlog of bills. That move, Wheeler said, would help local companies owed money by the state and would be a way for members to show they got something to help their constituents. Meanwhile, the posturing and head fakes are expected to be a growing part of Illinois' political landscape as the spring session unfolds. "Politicians will be politicians, and there will be verbal exchanges amongst them and competition amongst them," said state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago. "But there are some things that have to be put before politics, and the fiscal state of our state is one of them." Tribune reporter Monique Garcia contributed.

Voters won't cast ballots for governor until 2014, but the early sniping in what has become a nonstop campaign for Illinois' top office threatens efforts to stabilize the state's worsening financial situation this year.

Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack in “Serendipity.” We know the movie formula by heart: boy meets girl, boy and girl spend one magical night together, but don’t exchange contact info. Boy starts Internet campaign to find girl who stole his heart and… Girl gets creeped out and boy looks a little bit like a stalker. Maybe that last part is outside the usual rules of the genre. One man recently found out that life isn’t a romcom after his search for a one-night sweetheart turned sour. Reese McKee, a 25-year-old New Zealander, met “Katie” from Washington D.C. on New Year’s Eve when he saw her crying on the side of the road in Hong Kong. Katie had been separated from her group, but in typical romcom fashion they spent the evening together “playing in traffic” and “dancing all night.” When they were eventually separated at dawn (the romcom notes keep coming), the two said a quick goodbye with McKee saying Katie’s final words to him were: “Find me.” All McKee had to go on was that Katie was from Washington D.C., and he had managed to steal a single snapped image of her. Fast forward to almost a year later when McKee launched an online campaign to find his mysterious one-night wonder only to have it not quite go according to plan. McKee’s efforts were widely covered by media around the world, and the Katie in question was “found.” Unfortunately, Serendipity this ain’t. After being inundated by strangers on McKee’s behalf, she was reportedly compelled to close all of our her social media accounts. As many fans as this story generated for its big romantic gesture, it also had its share of people a little bothered by what they perceived as McKee’s stalker-like enthusiasm. If I were writing this as a romcom: girl would reject boy, but then hundreds of girls would start to pursue boy after falling in love with his over-the-top romantic gesture. Boy would feel stalked and paranoid and then… Boy would know how girl feels. Richard Linklater and the stars of the Sunrise Trilogy could not be reached for comment.

We know the movie formula by heart: boy meets girl, boy and girl spend one magical night together, but don't exchange contact info. Boy starts Internet campaign to find girl who stole his heart and...

The Euro 2016 soccer tournament has been marred by unruly fan behavior, with English and Russian fans in deep trouble for a series of violent acts after those two teams' 1-1 draw Saturday. But thanks to the efforts of a group of Irish and Swedish fans, it's clear that not all European soccer fans turn their passion into mischief. The two teams faced off against one another in the opening match of the tournament's group stage, but the emotions surrounding the match were restrained to strictly good vibes. As this video, courtesy of the YouTube channel "LIVE Football," shows, fans of the opposing teams joined together pre-game to sing the famous ABBA song "Dancing Queen." Sports have the ability to bring people together as easily as they can incite conflict, and Ireland and Sweden deserve credit for displaying this on the big stage. In an ending perhaps fitting to the pre-game festivities, Ireland and Sweden proceeded to tie their match 1-1, putting both teams at one point after their opening matches. The two teams are currently tied for second place – the last automatic qualifying spot for the knockout stage of the tournament – behind Italy (1-0-0) in Group E. More On Sweden: -- 'Odd Man Rush' ... When Harvard Hockey Kid Meets Mike Danton In Sweden -- Henrik Stenson Of Sweden Hears Amusing Cheer At U.S. Open -- Henrik Lundqvist Talks Style, Fashion Mistakes From Younger Days In Sweden Euro 2016, Fans, friendship, Ireland, Singing, Soccer, Sweden

In a Euro 2016 tournament marred by controversy, fans of Ireland and Sweden put their differences aside, coming together to sing before a match.

Updated Jan 4, 2014 11:59 PM ET Kevin Love, Nikola Pekovic and the Minnesota Timberwolves were ganging up on Kevin Durant, and a rare three-game losing streak for the Oklahoma City Thunder was just over the horizon. Durant's sidekick was on the bench in street clothes, leaving him on an island again. Frustrated from a poor start, Durant came out swinging in the fourth quarter and knocked the Timberwolves out with a fury. Barking at and mean-mugging the feisty Wolves, Durant scored 23 of his season-high 48 points in the fourth quarter and hit the winner with 4 seconds to play to rally the Thunder from 13 points down to a 115-111 victory on Saturday night. "I just hear a lot of stuff and I just wanted to come through for my team in the fourth quarter," Durant said, an apparent shot at some trash talk he heard from the Wolves' bench. Durant went 7 for 11 from the field and hit four 3-pointers in the final quarter to help the Thunder rebound from two straight losses at home. Love played the entire second half and finished with 30 points, 14 rebounds and five assists for the Wolves. But he missed four free throws in the final 27 seconds to let this one slip away. The last three came when he was fouled on a 3-pointer with 2.2 seconds to go and the Wolves down two. After Durant hit a step-back jumper from 18 feet right over Dante Cunningham's outstretched arm to give the Thunder a 113-111 lead, Love was fouled on a 3-pointer by Kendrick Perkins. Perhaps a little gassed from the work load, Love missed the first two free throws and his on-purpose miss on the third one didn't hit the rim, giving Oklahoma City the ball. "I was more upset about the first one I missed," Love said. "I left it short. I think they were flat and short. There was no real air under them. Just missed them." Durant knocked down two more free throws, and the two stars embraced after the final horn, a thrilling duel just finished. Durant and Love each got off to slow starts for the game, combining to shoot 8 for 24 in the first half. But they gave everyone their money's worth in the fourth quarter. The Thunder trailed 90-77 in the fourth before Durant, who also had seven rebounds and seven assists, went off. The Thunder had let two fourth quarter leads slip away at home this week thanks to opposing defenses swarming Durant and forcing other players to beat them. Durant sure got involved Saturday, scoring six of Oklahoma City's first seven buckets in the fourth to get the Thunder going. "I was hanging my head a little bit in the first half and my teammates got on me about it," Durant said. "So I just wanted to keep my head high no matter what and stay aggressive and I was able to hit a few." The last four shots of that flurry were 3s, and he struck a pose and stared at the Wolves' bench after the final one cut Minnesota's lead to 97-96 with 7 minutes to play. The two superstars traded haymakers the rest of the way. In one stirring sequence, Love hit a layup, Durant drilled a 3 and Love hit one of his own for a 97-93 Wolves lead with just over seven minutes to play. Durant came right back with yet another 3 and again woofed at the Wolves' bench. Love tied it on a hook shot over Serge Ibaka and then scored on a drive to the hoop that tied it again, at 111, with 27 seconds to play. But he missed the free throw that came with the foul, opening the door for Durant's cold-blooded response. "The special ones can have a poor shooting night and come down at the end of the game and make four or five to win the game," Thunder coach Scott Brooks said. "That's how they're wired because they're great players. He loves to inspire his teammates with his play." Derek Fisher scored 13 points, and Ibaka had 12 points for Oklahoma City, which outscored Minnesota's bench 40-5. Pekovic had 31 points and 11 rebounds, and Ricky Rubio had 13 points, 10 assists and five steals, but missed six of his final seven shots. "I'll take K-Love in that situation no matter what," Wolves forward Corey Brewer said. "He missed them tonight. Next time he'll make them." NOTES: Kevin Martin had 17 points and six rebounds for Minnesota. Oklahoma City committed 22 turnovers, but scored 24 points off 15 miscues by Minnesota. ... Timberwolves first-round draft choice Shabazz Muhammad will start a four-game stint with Iowa in the NBA Development League on Sunday.

Kevin Durant scored 23 of his season-high 48 points in the fourth quarter and hit the winner with 4 seconds to play to rally the Oklahoma City Thunder from 13 points down in a 115-111 victory over the...

Held at a swank downtown restaurant, the lunchtime event commemorated the publication of the trade magazine's Women In Music Power Players list, which acknowledges leading female executives. Two additional awards were presented to artists, for Woman of the Year Award and Rising Star. Respective winners Swift and Minaj were the main attraction, of course. Arriving on the red carpet in a matching belted dress and tan heels, her hair wore down with bangs, Swift — who turns 22 on Dec. 3 — gushed that it was "magical" to receive the honor. "I get to wear this beautiful dress and go to this wonderful event. It's an amazing way to end what's really been an incredible year." Swift added that she's a huge Minaj fan: "She's one of my favorite artists to come along in the past couple of years, and Super Bass is my favorite song of the year." Katie Couric and Robin Roberts, there to conduct short post-lunch interviews with the pop stars — Couric spoke with Swift, Roberts with Minaj — expressed their admiration for their subjects. Couric, also in a red dress — she would quip on stage that she and Swift had planned their outfits together — had brought her 15-year-old daughter along. "She's very musical," Couric noted of her daughter. "I took her out of school — I didn't even send a doctor's note. I love the way Taylor comports herself. I'd like my daughters to emulate her. She's gracious and sweet and well-mannered, but also in control." Roberts, sporting a short-sleeved gray sweater dress, said that Minaj's music "makes me feel good. It makes me move, makes me smile. She's so wonderfully irreverent, and so talented." Minaj, up for four Grammy Awards in February, looked characteristcally sassy in a curve-hugging black-and-white gown and a wig of long blond curls. When asked by Roberts if she had ever had any doubts that she would succeed, Minaj said, "There's always a little ounce of doubt in everything. I've had a lot of doors closed in my face. I'm no different than any other struggling artist; I just tried one last time." The hip-pop diva returned Swift's flattery, noting that the country-pop troubadour had helped her by tweeting that she liked Super Bass: "I saw her last week and I told her, this is something you really had a hand in." Minaj also thanked her wig designer, makeup artist and pastor, all of whom were there, and even seemed to get a bit choked up when accepting her award. On her next album, Minaj promised, she's going to be even less self-conscious: "I'm just going to have fun, from the beginning to the end." When it was Swift's turn, Couric asked how she stayed grounded and focused on music. "I never feel entitled to play another sold-out show or to win another award," Swift responded. "The women in this room know that you really have to work for everything you get." Asked about her influences, Swift noted that Shania Twain, Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks were favorites during "formative years of me daydreaming in my bedroom." Her current hit list ranges from "older music, from the '60s" to Foster the People, "anything that sounds authethic." Couric mentioned she'd gleaned that Swift wanted to act in a film at some point. "I really do," Swift said. "I want to surprise people in good ways. My favorite moments in my favorite artists' careers are when they make a departure." She has no plans to abandon music, though: "I want my writing to evolve, and I want to collaborate with other artists and continue to make music that I'm proud of."

Nicki Minaj was also honored at Friday's Women in Music awards luncheon in New York City.

The Postal Service on Friday reported a second-quarter loss of $1.9 billion, despite increasing its revenue by $379 million and growing its shipping-and-package business by 8 percent compared to the same period last year. The latest display of red ink prompted more calls for Congress to pass postal reforms to help fix the agency’s persistent financial problems. Friday’s numbers marked the 20th time in the last 22 quarters in which the USPS has sustained a loss. The Postal Service lost $5 billion last year while reporting its first revenue gain since 2008. The agency has not made a profit since 2006. USPS Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett said during a news conference that the agency desperately needs legislation that would allow “a smarter delivery schedule, greater control over our personnel and benefit costs and more flexibility in pricing and products.” But postal unions worry about potential cuts in service that lawmakers have proposed in the past, including eliminating Saturday letter delivery. The National Association of Letter Carriers said Friday that the USPS numbers are moving in the right direction, noting that its bedrock first-class mail revenue rose by $2 million compared to the same quarter last year, and that shipping-and-package revenue increased by $252 million, helping the agency report an operating profit of more than $260 million. “Given these positive trends, it would be irresponsible to degrade services to the public, which would drive away mail — and revenue — and stop the postal turnaround in its tracks,” NALC president Fredric Rolando said in a statement. The labor leader also renewed calls for eliminating a 2006 congressional mandate that requires the Postal Service to prefund retiree health benefits to the tune of about $5.7 billion per year. The USPS has defaulted on the last three annual payments and expects to do so again this year. The NALC views that expense as the biggest factor for the repeated net losses. USPS officials have called for a restructuring of the prefunding requirement, but Corbett downplayed the notion that such a plan would balance the agency’s books. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “Our liabilities exceed our assets by $42 billion, and we have a need for more than $10 billion to invest in new delivery vehicles, package sortation equipment and other deferred investments.” The uptick in revenue from first-class mail occurred despite a 4.1 percent drop in volume compared to the second quarter of 2013. A postage rate increase that the Postal Service implemented in January helped drive the revenue gain. The agency increased its postal rates by 3 cents for first-class letters and other mail, representing the largest rise in 11 years. Postal regulators approved the higher rate for only about 24 months, determining that the USPS needed the extra revenue to recover recession-related losses. Shipping-and-package volume climbed by 8 percent, improving the Postal Service’s standing in a competitive field that includes well-established heavyweights such as the United Parcel Service and Fed Ex. The agency is increasingly relying on its shipping-and-package business to help improve its financial situation. Several lawmakers used Friday’s report to justify their calls for Congress to pass postal legislation. “As I’ve said time and again, Congress and the administration need to come to agreement on comprehensive legislation that reforms, right-sizes and modernizes this American institution,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who has teamed up with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on a bill to overhaul the USPS. The bipartisan plan would restructure the prefunding requirement, in addition to allowing the Postal Service to phase out Saturday and some to-the-door mail delivery if those moves are necessary to make ends meet. Carper said the legislation would “make the changes that the Postal Service needs to thrive into the future.” Follow Josh Hicks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Connect by e-mail at josh.hicks(at)washpost.com. Visit The Federal Eye, and The Fed Page for more federal news. Submit news tips and suggestions to [email protected].

The numbers mark the 20th time the agency has lost money in the last 22 quarters, prompting calls for legislative reform.

At Nexus Partners’ weekly videoconference last week, we compared the U.S. investment climate to India’s, given that we are a venture capital firm that operates both in Silicon Valley and Bombay. My colleagues in our Menlo Park office in California observed that Silicon Valley venture capitalists were primarily investing in cloud computing, specialized e-commerce, ways to optimize online advertising, social gaming and the use of social media in the business environment. When we compared that to our transaction pipeline in India — apart from a smattering of Internet, mobile, and software providers — there were companies in financial services, light manufacturing, logistics, education, power equipment and energy efficiency. The swift realization we came to was that, while the U.S. VC industry is seeking to maximize sophisticated consumer experiences (I suppose cloud computing also is about productivity), we in India largely see opportunities in the fundamentals. In both places, investors are searching for 25% to 30% annual returns. But what are the factors that influence these different approaches?

Startup questions and answers with a panel of experts from India

A century ago, Broadway actors spoke of a “Ziegfeld Curse,” because so many of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s famous showgirls came to tragic ends. In the generations since the impresario’s death in 1932, New Yorkers might be forgiven for thinking that there is also a curse on anything to do with Ziegfeld’s memory. His lavish theater on Sixth Avenue was demolished in 1966, and now the owners of the Ziegfeld Theater, the world’s largest single screen cinema, built near the site of the original, have considered closing it, according to the Hollywood Reporter. But the Ziegfeld Club, the subject of an article in this Sunday’s Metropolitan section, remains, as do other relics connected to the famous “Follies” impresario. The great survivor of old Times Square is the New Amsterdam Theater. This 1903 Art Nouveau jewel box, once known as “the House Beautiful” and “the Diamond of 42nd Street” was where the “Ziegfeld Follies” were staged from 1913 to 1927, as well as the much racier “Midnight Frolic” in the nightclub-style Roof Garden. There, Ziegfeld built a glass-floored runway so gentlemen like Diamond Jim Brady and William Randolph Hearst could look up the Girls’ skirts as they strolled overhead. When the theater was renovated by the Walt Disney Company in the 1990s, the Roof Garden became offices; the glass runway was recreated but with “clouded” glass to change its original purpose. Next door is the Liberty Theater, a majestic Art Deco relic abandoned in the 1930s and renovated in the 1990s, that is now serving as the setting for an immersive theater production called “Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic.” Audience members have to weave past tourists on the gaudiest stretch of 42nd Street to the Liberty Diner, which is sandwiched between an Applebee’s and a Dave and Buster’s. But once inside, attendants in vintage tuxedos and silk gowns usher guests toward a red curtain in the back wall, which opens onto the stunning Liberty Theater. The play hinges on the fate of Olive Thomas, a winner of “The Most Beautiful Girl in New York” competition who joined the Follies and married a playboy actor, Jack Pickford. Mystery still lingers around her sensational death from drinking mercury in Paris: New Yorkers debated whether she was murdered by her husband, committed suicide or drank the solution by accident, as the French police finally decided. Actors insist that Olive’s ghost still haunts the New Amsterdam Theater, where she once performed. When the theater reopened after renovations in 1997, a security guard resigned after seeing a woman in lingerie wandering the stage clutching a green bottle, and cast members still touch a portrait of Olive as they leave the stage door every night. Many actors lived at the Hotel des Artistes on West 67th Street near Central Park, and the celebrity photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston kept his studio there. Johnston took hundreds of portraits of the Ziegfeld Girls in various states of undress, creating the first supermodels and pinups. The cafe-restaurant, which catered to the building’s residents, most of whom had no kitchens, is now The Leopard at des Artistes. Although heavily renovated, nine original murals of naked nymphettes, “Fantasy Scenes with Naked Beauties” by Howard Chandler Christy, still overlook the rooms. Perhaps the most poignant relic of all sits outside a grand brownstone at 52 East 80th Street — the carved stone head of a Greek goddess that once graced the facade of the original Ziegfeld Theater. Opened in 1927 with funding by the newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, this Art Deco classic on Sixth Avenue was torn down despite widespread protests, to make way for an office tower — an act of urban vandalism considered by some to be on a par with the destruction of Pennsylvania Station. According to Broadway lore, the producer Jerome Hammer jokingly asked a friend who was working on the new building for one of the goddesses. To his surprise, some months later a crane lowered the statue in front of his house. It remains there today, noticed only by few history-loving passers-by — sitting, symbolically enough, right next to the trash cans.

Curse or no curse, the Ziegfeld Club, the subject of an article in this Sunday’s Metropolitan section, still remains in the city, as do other relics connected to the famous “Follies” impresario.

THE NEW National Intelligence Estimate on Iran contains some unambiguously good news: that Tehran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003, and that it is responsive to the sort of international pressure applied by the United States and other Western governments. Iran's "decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs," says the public summary released Monday. That sounds like an endorsement of the diplomatic strategy pursued by the Bush administration since 2005, which has been aimed at forcing Iran to choose between the nuclear program and normal economic and security relations with the outside world. It strengthens the view, which we have previously endorsed, that this administration should not have to resort to military action to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. But there is bad news, too, which seems likely to be overlooked by those who have been resisting sanctions and other pressure on the mullahs all along, such as Russia, China and some members of the European Union. While U.S. intelligence agencies have "high confidence" that covert work on a bomb was suspended "for at least several years" after 2003, there is only "moderate confidence" that Tehran has not restarted the military program. Iran's massive overt investment in uranium enrichment meanwhile proceeds in defiance of binding U.N. resolutions, even though Tehran has no legitimate use for enriched uranium. The U.S. estimate of when Iran might produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb -- sometime between late 2009 and the middle of the next decade -- hasn't changed. "Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons," says the summary's second sentence. Yet within hours of the report's release, European diplomats and some U.S officials were saying that it could kill an arduous American effort to win support for a third U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran for failing to suspend uranium enrichment. It could also hinder separate U.S.-French efforts to create a new sanctions coalition outside the United Nations. In other words, the new report may have the effect of neutering the very strategy of pressure that it says might be effective if "intensified." President Bush yesterday vowed to continue pushing for international sanctions. But Democrats and some Republicans are arguing that now is the time for the Bush administration to begin a broad dialogue with Iran -- and drop a precondition that the regime first suspend uranium enrichment. It's an odd time to recommend such a concession: The latest European Union talks with Iran last week were a disaster, in which a new hard-line envoy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad withdrew the previous, inadequate Iranian compromise proposals. Were the Bush administration to abandon its insistence on a suspension of enrichment, Mr. Ahmadinejad would declare victory over the relative moderates in Iran who have recently criticized his uncompromising stance. That's not to say the United States should never attempt to negotiate directly with Iran about its nuclear program. But before doing so, the administration should have some indication that the Iranian regime is prepared to comply with binding U.N. resolutions and seriously address other U.S. concerns. A report by U.S. intelligence agencies is an unsatisfying substitute for a signal that has yet to come from Tehran.

THE NEW National Intelligence Estimate on Iran contains some unambiguously good news: that Tehran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003, and that it is responsive to the sort of international pressure applied by the United States and other Western governments. Iran's "decisions are guid...

Not so bad, according to some of the readers who wrote to me to share their Senior Week memories. “My boss at the hardware store I worked at in the ’80s told me stories of how he and his buddies used to blow up lifeguard shacks in the ’60s. With dynamite. Blew up. Sky-high,” dead-panned Mark Bond, who lives in the District. Recent high school graduates from Pottsville, Pa., on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, Md. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) He said I probably didn’t get out much as a kid. Absolutely, Mr. Bond, and you’ll swear that to my mom, okay? Others remembered their own senior weeks as drunken, memorable rites of passage that all of today’s parents remember (but won’t tell about) and now dread. “I was a Senior Week partaker more than 10 years ago, and let me say, it was no different then,” wrote one commenter, llclarityll. “The kids who go to Senior Week and obliterate themselves night after night and make seriously questionable choices or endanger themselves or others are more than likely the same kids who will be hardcore binge drinkers making the same terrible decisions in college.” One week of partying probably won’t destroy the life of someone who’s just cutting loose, argued mcqueen0831. “I graduated in ’99 and went to beach week. I partied so hard I forgot where I was the next day. I had fun that week, came back home, got a part time job and enrolled in college in the fall. Graduated, got a job and moved on with my life.” Maybe it’s the age, the time in life, the release after months of SAT prep classes, essays, tests, years and years of piano lessons. Who could blame stressed-out seniors for a little Bongzilla action? Or maybe it’s the place, something about Ocean City that turns otherwise civil and reasonable people into total wankers? That’s the theory of DigitalMan08: “Teens are one thing but Ocean City has a way of bringing out the worst in some adults, too. I’m a native Marylander that has traveled the world and nowhere have I seen the sort of behavior that occurs in OC. The drinking, power-boating, steroid taking types are out there everywhere waiting for you to look at them the wrong way. I struggle to find the reason for it too. Is it the people of the DC-Baltimore area? Who knows, but I have never seen grown adults act like belligerent high schoolers anywhere on Earth like OC.” So what are your craziest Senior Week memories? Would you let your kids go?

Did you blow up a lifeguard shack? Forget your room number? How was your high school beach week?

President Barack Obama, right, and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney discuss a point during the third presidential debate at Lynn University, Monday, Oct. 22, 2012, in Boca Raton, Fla. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) After Monday’s presidential debate, public opinion polls still have Republican nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama in a very close race to win four years in the White House. But you don’t have to wait until Nov. 6 to know who the likely winner of this year’s election will be. On Monday night, as Romney and Obama were duking it out over foreign policy issues, vast amounts of cash were moving through online betting markets to back the probability that Obama will take the White House again this November. “Obama has 3 percent more chance of winning the election than he did before Monday’s debate,” said Leighton Vaughan Williams, a professor of economics and finance at Nottingham Business School and director of the school’s Betting Research Unit and Political Forecasting Unit. Vaughan Williams has spent 12 years studying how well efficient betting markets -- also known as prediction markets -- forecast the outcomes of U.S. elections, starting with the Bush vs. Gore election in 2000. His research has demonstrated that when millions of dollars are wagered on events such as elections, the odds offered by betting websites tend to be far more accurate real-time forecasters of election outcomes than political pundits or public opinion poll. Vaughan Williams has watched closely this fall as millions of dollars have moved through Internet betting markets such as Betfair.com or Intrade.com to wager on one candidate or another winning the White House this November. Obama was always the market’s favorite, he said, but money has flowed toward Romney at key moments in the race. Obama’s lackluster performance in the first presidential debate increased Romney's odds of winning the election, and just before the vice-presidential debate, on Oct. 11, Obama’s chance of winning was down to 62 percent from a post-convention high of around 80 percent, Vaughan Williams said. Obama had enjoyed boosts from moments such as President Bill Clinton’s well-received Democratic National Convention speech and Romney’s much-criticized comment at a fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans are too dependent on government and see themselves as “victims,” he said. Bookmaker markets allow players to place bets on specific election outcomes. If Betfair.com, for example, showed Obama with a 6 in 10 chance of winning the election, the payoff on a $60 bet would be $40 (a player would risk $60 to win $40, with their initial $60 stake returned). Due to U.S. regulations, many sites such as Betfair.com do not accept bets from the U.S., so most of the wagering is by overseas bettors. Following the third debate, Vaughan Williams put Obama’s chance of winning on Nov. 6 at 68 to 70 percent — up from 65 percent before the debate. He compiles his odds from an average of all the betting websites and bookmakers’ odds he monitors, allowing for possible inaccuracies and market manipulation. Vaughan Williams also takes into account how accurate these betting sites have been in past elections. Vaughan Williams says betting websites offer a far more accurate prediction of electoral outcomes than opinion polls because the average voter doesn’t have any incentive to tell a pollster the truth about their voting habits, but when they are betting their own money they will tend to think hard about the choices they make using the best information available to them. The more money involved, the more efficient and accurate the market, he said. “This is people’s real money,” Vaughan Williams said. “People who know the most bet the most, but people who know only a little tend to bet only a little. So with this very liquid market you can be pretty confident that the market is giving you an accurate insight into what is going on.” Although Americans have bet on elections since 1868, or even earlier, according to Vaughan Williams, the first serious market for betting on elections was the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM), which came to the fore during the 1988 Bush vs. Dukakis presidential election. However, the online futures market, operated by the University of Iowa, is an educational and research project. Betting websites where individuals could bet “real” money on elections came to the fore during the Bush vs. Gore election in 2000. Since then, they have grown to large enterprises where millions of dollars are wagered on national elections, and also local and state voting. The downside of these sites is they are open to manipulation. In the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election, traders reported unusual fluctuations in bets on John McCain to win the election, which appeared to be someone trying to artificially inflate his odds. Thomas Rietz, a finance professor at the University of Iowa who sits on the steering committee for the IEM, notes that, unlike on Intrade.com and Betfair.com, the Iowa market limits individual account sizes to $500. That’s a small enough sum in relation to the money flowing through the market to prevent any one player from moving the market too much in any one direction. He also notes that on IEM, punters bet on a potentially different outcome to the one they bet on when using Intrade.com and Betfair.com — which candidate will win the popular vote, as opposed to which candidate will win the presidency. “We can compare vote shares, and it turns out we’ve been very accurate,” Rietz said. “The average amount of difference from the actual outcome is 1.2 percentage points.” Vaughan Williams says recent figures show London-based Betfair.com has taken in some $15 million on the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The very close presidential race and the media scrutiny surrounding it could mean that some $100 million could potentially be spent on betting in this year’s White House race, he said. Betting sites have proved prophetic outside the U.S. In the British general election of 2010, the first ever U.K. prime ministerial debate thwarted the Conservative Party’s hopes of winning an overall majority in government after good performance in that debate by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and an unexpectedly bad performance by the leader of the Conservatives David Cameron. After the debate, betting websites clearly showed a shift in betting patterns that suggested few believed the Conservative Party would secure an overall majority in that year’s national election. With few events as major as a debate between now and Election Day, Vaughan Williams said online betting sites will likely focus on the early voting returns, especially in key swing states such as Ohio. “There’s just one report due to come out on the Friday before the election, but unless it’s astounding I doubt it will have much impact,” he said. However, any indication of how early voters are behaving will have a major influence on the markets between now and the election, he added, “especially people trading with large sums of money.” NBC's Chuck Todd reports that the third and final debate between President Obama and Governor Romney was a clash in styles, with an aggressive president met by an opponent who seemed to search for areas of agreement. Follow NBCNews.com business on Twitter and Facebook

After Monday’s presidential debate, public opinion polls still have Republican nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama in a very close race to win four years in the White House. But you don’t have to wait until Nov. 6 to know who the likely winner of this …

Warren Beatty has scored a legal victory in his fight with Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co. over the television and movie rights to square-jawed comic-strip crime-stopper Dick Tracy.Both sides had requested summary judgments in the long-running dispute in U.S. District Court. Judge Dean D. Pregerson of the Central District of California on Thursday granted Beatty's motion and rejected Tribune Co.'s.Beatty, who acquired rights to the character from Tribune Co.'s Tribune Media Services in 1985 and made the 1990 movie “Dick Tracy” starring himself and Madonna, filed suit in Los Angeles federal court in 2008 after Tribune Co.'s Tribune Media Services said those rights had reverted back to it."At the present time we are reviewing the judge’s opinion and evaluating our options," a Tribune Co. spokesman said in response to the ruling. Tribune Co. argued that Beatty was required to produce another Tracy television or movie project to retain the rights before a use-it-or-lose-it deadline TMS had established two years earlier. Beatty countered that, after his request to extend the rights to 2013 was denied, he had begun work on a "Tracy" special before the deadline. Turner Classic Movies subsequently scheduled a half-hour movie chat between film critic and Tracy (as played by Beatty) discussing various portrayals of the comic detective for July 2009, but it's the special didn't run on the cable channel. "(Tribune Co.) may be frustrated that (Beatty) has not used his rights to Dick Tracy for more profitable ends," Judge Pregerson wrote in his ruling, noting he saw nothing in the contract between the two requiring such a project to make money. "Obviously, Warren would have preferred to go ahead with (a news 'Tracy') picture, so he produced the special to extend the rights, and the contract very clearly says you can do that," Bert Fields, Beatty's lawyer. told the Chicago Tribune in March 2009. "He sold (the special), even though the contract doesn't require him to do that. The contract doesn't even require him to finish it. He just has to start it."Beatty, whose 74th birthday is set for next week, produced, directed and starred in 1990's "Dick Tracy" for Disney's Touchstone Pictures. Besides Beatty and Madonna, the cast included Al Pacino, Glenne Headly, Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Dick Van Dyke, Mandy Patinkin, Paul Sorvino, James Caan and Charles Durning.Budgeted at $101 million, its gross receipts reportedly exceeded $160 million. The film also earned seven Academy Award nominations, winning Oscars for Best Original Song, Best Makeup and Best Art Direction. Tribune Co., which has operated under Chapter 11 protection since December 2008, would like to have back its unfettered rights to the detective, which it has said are "worth, potentially, millions" to the company and its creditors.Artist Joe Staton and writer Mike Curtis earlier this month made their debut with the nearly 80-year-old daily newspaper comic strip. They replaced artist and writer Dick Locher, who relinquished the role he had held since 1983."Dick Tracy" was launched by Chester Gould in October 1931 and Gould continued to write and draw until his retirement in 1977. Locher worked alongside Gould on "Dick Tracy" from 1957 to 1961. Upon the death of artist Rick Fletcher, a longtime assistant who succeeded Gould, Locher returned and has been shepherding the comic ever since.Both Fletcher and Locher (who for a time was assisted by his son, John, who died in 1986) worked with writer Max Allan Collins, who was replaced in 1992 by the Tribune's Michael Kilian. After Kilian died in 2005, Locher wrote and drew the strip by himself for a little more than three years before Jim Brozman took over the drawing in March 2009. Like Locher, Brozman left with the arrival of Staton and Curtis.

Warren Beatty has scored a legal victory in his fight with Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co. over the television and movie rights to square-jawed comic-strip crime-stopper Dick Tracy. Both sides had requested summary judgments in the long-running dispute in U.S....

Chrysler is not amused that proud folks in Toledo, historical home of Jeep, are riffing on the company's new slogan "Imported from Detroit." According to a report in the Toledo Blade newspaper, Chrysler squashed plans by a local Jeep dealer to sell a 70th-anniversary Jeep T-shirt emblazoned with "Imported from Toledo." Before Chrysler noticed, two other dealers put the Toledo slogan on the sides of a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited that drove out on the ice at a Toledo Walleye hockey game last weekend. Jeep Park in Toledo still makes some models, but others are now made elsewhere, including up the interstate in Detroit. Chrysler spokesman Michael Palese told The Blade that the automaker appreciates the local enthusiasm but does not want those folks in Ohio diluting its "Imported from Detroit" marketing tagline. The slogan has been a home run for Chrysler since it was introduced with Eminem and the Chrysler 200 in a Super Bowl ad (video of the ad below). The company now has it everywhere, including on clothing it sells and 14 stories high on its headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich. According to the Blade, the Monroe Dodge Superstore recently designed and printed up T-shirts to sell for 20 bucks with "Imported from Toledo, and "Jeep 70th Anniversary" above and below a likeness of the Jeep's seven-slot grill. Now they'll be collectors items. Says Monroe owner Ralph Mahalak Jr.: "I want to promote Toledo. I want to promote Jeeps." As part of deal with Chrysler over its trademarked Detroit slogan, he now is giving away the Toledo shirts for taking a test drive in a vehicle. "I love these vehicles, and I love seeing the American auto industry coming back." Guess Chrysler won't be letting the folks across the bridge in Windsor, Ontario, promote local pride in all those minivans they make: "Imported from Canada, but we can see Detroit from here." See photos of: Detroit, Super Bowl, Chrysler LLC, Eminem, Jeep To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to

Chrysler squashes Jeep dealers' 'Imported from Toledo' slogan - Drive On: A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive - USATODAY.com

The State Department has issued a Travel Alert for South Africa, pegged to the coming World Cup, which takes place June 11 to July 11. The May 25 alert is broad. It includes mentions of a heightened risk for terrorist activity (American citizens traveling in South Africa are encouraged to register with the United States mission to receive specific alerts), a general warning on crime and “public disturbances,” and even a note about a shortage of lodging, particularly in the smaller World Cup host cities. There is also a reminder about the so-called yellow fever belt, which covers much of Africa and South America, and the need to carry proof of yellow fever vaccination. Travel Alerts, like a recent one issued for Jamaica after violence broke out in Kingston, are for short-term events. Travel Warnings, the recently redesigned State Department Web site says, “are issued to describe long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable.”

The State Department has issued a travel alert for South Africa, pegged to the coming World Cup.

Trent Harmon, a 25-year-old waiter from Mississippi, won American Idol in the momentous show’s series finale on Thursday night. He beat out La’Porsha Renae in the second part of American Idol two-part finale, which marks the end of the show’s fifteen-season run. Harmon debuted the original track — now his coronation single — “Falling” on the first installment on Wednesday night. He is the last winner of a pop culture phenomenon that produced some of the larger names in pop music, including Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.

He beat La'Porsha Renae in the final installment of the show's 15-season run

Question:You told me to network. I go to networking events and everyone is passing out business cards. I am unemployed and don't have one. What should I do? Answer:First of all, you are not unemployed. You are "between successes" and your full time job right now is looking for your next opportunity. Having said that, there is no reason for you NOT to have a business card. Despite the fact that you might not have a company name, you still have contact information. I will encourage you to go have some cards made (Office Max, Staples etc.) that have your name, address, e-mail, phone number etc. Some of my clients even include their LINKEDIN address and/or a Web site address if you have one. Make it look professional and on a nice heavy cardstock. You don't need any fancy logos or fonts. Just make it a simple "calling card." If you want to make them from your own printer, just be sure to use a nice card stock and not a flimsy one. Vistaprint, a mail-order online printing company, provides them at a reduced price as well. I don't recommend the free ones. And yes, many people today exchange this information electronically through their BlackBerry's, iPhones, etc. However, having an actual printed business card can say a lot about your brand, your image and your professionalism. Go out today and get yours so when you go to your next networking event, you are prepared.

A business card can say a lot about your brand, your image and your professionalism and can help you find a job if you are

There are things I wish I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t know that companies make tiny braces, small enough to hold necks no bigger than a wrist. I wish I didn’t know that when babies are transported in an ambulance, they are stripped of their powdery-smelling clothes and strapped to adult-sized gurneys, naked. I wish I didn’t know that little bodies that are supposed to eat every two hours can go more than 12 hours without a drop of milk and be satiated by a pacifier dipped in sugar water. The day I broke my baby started like every other since his birth three weeks earlier — with me admiring his perfection. His legs were just gaining their chubbiness. His fingers were long and his grip strong. His eyes, color-ambiguous almonds, quickly found me when I spoke. That morning, I took a dozen photos of him wearing a onesie with a typewriter and a phrase I found poetic: “So my story begins . . .” I imagined how the rest of it might go — a good college, a loving partner, his pick of jobs. It didn’t matter that years as a reporter in New York and the Washington area had taught me that we can’t write our children’s stories. That if we could, flower girls would not die in car crashes and little boys would not slip under school buses they thought were leaving them behind — two stories I covered early in my career. That if we could, second graders with big brown eyes would not vanish from homeless shelters — a more recent story. If we could, I’m sure we would all write fairy tales and I would have never ended up on a wet CVS sidewalk, cradling what I valued most. [Would you call 911 on another parent?] My son was not planned but was gifted to me at the perfect time in my life. He came three years after my husband and I experienced three miscarriages in a row, a pile of quiet loss I thought would never diminish until my first son was born in 2012. Then in 2014, I learned we would be expecting another boy. No one was more excited than his big brother and no one more careful than me. I didn’t drink coffee during the pregnancy, even though my doctor said a cup a day was fine. I avoided all soft cheeses, even though I knew I’d be okay if it was pasteurized. I wore ugly, comfortable shoes to work, knowing that I have a penchant for falling. When I was younger my knees would just decide on a whim to fail me and pull me to the ground. Doctors determined I had dislocatable knee caps and through the years I’ve grown to expect that at any time it might feel as if someone took a bat to my knees, sweeping them from underneath me. It happened during a ping pong game once and another time while I was crossing a cobblestone road in Brazil. I don’t know if it was my knees that caused me to fall the day I strapped the baby to my chest in an Ergo carrier, making sure to carefully tuck him into a padded infant insert, but I know they didn’t help me when I needed them most. That morning, my mother and I had planned to walk five minutes to CVS to get my older son some air and a toy. When we left the house, it was sunny and my toddler was happily babbling in his car-shaped wagon. Three minutes later, the sky and the day turned dark. The rain pummeled us. My toddler wailed. My mother pushed him faster. I reached to cover the tiny inch of head peeking out of the carrier and don’t remember seeing the curb or feeling my shoe slip off. My knees hit the pavement first. Then my elbows. Then that tiny inch of head. He cried when we fell. I would later learn this was a good thing, that it meant he hadn’t blacked out. I would also learn that these incidents happen more often than anyone talks about. As I sat holding my son in the hospital waiting for scans to confirm what I feared most — that he had a skull fracture — I was told repeatedly by nurses and doctors that they see this all the time. I assumed they were trying to comfort me when I felt most alone, most inept. But they weren’t. Dr. John Myseros, vice chief of neurosurgery at Children’s National Health System and the doctor who attended to my son, said he personally sees a couple of cases each week. And nationally, according to data he provided when I contacted him recently, more than 600,000 children visit emergency rooms for blunt head trauma, and of those, 95,000 have intracranial injuries and 5,700 will die as a result. Intracranial injury remains the leading cause of traumatic death in childhood. The skull fracture my son experienced — and which most babies experience, according to Myseros — was linear, or a crack in the bone that does not depress into the brain and doesn’t usually require surgery or result in brain damage. In other words, during the most unfortunate day of my life, I was lucky — even if it didn’t feel that way. “The thousands of parents who drop their kids, fall with their kids, turn around for a moment and have their kids fall,” Myseros said, “need to know that it is NOT their fault, unless of course they intentionally injure their child, which sadly does happen.” My son was admitted to the hospital overnight and by morning, Myseros told me he didn’t believe there would be any lasting damage. Today, I have a chubby 7 month old who has hit every developmental milestone and smiles more than he cries — something I am grateful for everyday. I am also grateful for the CVS staff member who, without hesitation, tore open a bag of padding to wrap around his wet body, the neighbor I hadn’t met before he dropped everything to drive us to a hospital where an ambulance would take us to Children’s, and the nurse who didn’t just lend me her charger when my phone died but insisted I keep it because, although she didn’t say it, who knew when I would be going home. While at the hospital, when everything still remained unknown, I took another photo of my son. In this one, he is restrained in braces from his head to his naval, his face scrunched so tightly that one ear is bent. I didn’t look at the screen as I clicked it. I couldn’t. But I took it in hopes that one day — maybe when he’s a screaming toddler fighting with his older brother — that it would serve as a reminder of what I learned that day: While we can’t write our children’s stories, we can enjoy the chapters that aren’t filled with things we wish we didn’t know. Theresa Vargas is a reporter at The Washington Post who is currently on leave, living in Indonesia with her family. Like On Parenting on Facebook for more essays, news and advice. You can sign up here for our newsletter. You might also be interested in: My child and me, figuring out our new life together Why I post pictures of my children breastfeeding What will it take for this mom to go back to work? Theresa Vargas is a reporter for the Post’s local enterprise team.

As I sat holding my son in the hospital waiting for scans to confirm what I feared most — that he had a skull fracture — I was told repeatedly by nurses and doctors that they see this all the time.

A 10-year-old Russian boy, Matvei Tcepliaev, recently made an extraordinary discovery in Jerusalem. Working as a volunteer in the Temple Mount Sifting Project, he found a 3,000-year-old seal—engraved limestone about the size of a thimble, with a hole at one end so it could be hung from a string—from the time of King David. The artifact was nestled in the hundreds of tons of earth and rock that had been illegally excavated from below the Temple Mount in the late 1990s by the Muslim Waqf, a trust that retains authority over...

In The Wall Street Journal, Jerold S. Auerbach writes about a boy’s discovery in Israel that rebuts Palestinian revisionism regarding the Temple Mount.

Treasurer Joe Hockey has urged first home buyers to get “a good job that pays good money” if they want to enter the property market. When asked at a press conference on Tuesday if residential property in Australia’s biggest city was out of the reach of many, Hockey said: “If housing were unaffordable in Sydney, no one would be buying it.” Related: Sydney and parts of Melbourne are 'unequivocally' in a house price bubble “The starting point for first home buyers is to get a good job that pays good money,” he added. The comments were slammed on social media, with many users criticising the treasurer for being simplistic and out of touch with the difficulties Generation Y faces in enter the property market. Mr Hockey, next time you're in hospital getting seen to by a nurse, are you going to insist that s/he gets a job that pays good money? Opposition leader Bill Shorten was scathing of the treasurer’s comments. “What planet is Joe Hockey living on?” Shorten asked. “This isn’t just another Joe Hockey gaffe; this is proof he just doesn’t get the pressures families are facing.” Joe Hockey must be the only person in Australia who doesn’t think housing affordability is an issue. As far as he’s concerned, if Joe Hockey’s doing OK then everyone else is too,” Shorten said. “How are Australians supposed to find the ‘good jobs that pay more’ when unemployment is at its highest levels in more than a decade under his government?” Greens leader Richard Di Natale labelled the treasurer’s comments “fantasy land stuff” from a man charged with the “nation’s purse strings”. “That’s right out there, that sort of language, that’s let them eat cake sort of stuff,” Di Natale told reporters in Melbourne. “Go and get a job that pays more money? We are just going to magic these jobs up out of thin air?” Hockey continued to deny that parts of Australia were experiencing a housing bubble, saying that housing affordability would become easier as supply increased. “I say again in relation to what is reasonably expensive entry costs for first home buyers into housing in Australia, the best response is to build more housing,” he said, adding that there is a greater role for both state and local governments in accelerating the building process. The comments come just days after the treasury secretary, John Fraser, warned that parts of Sydney and Melbourne are experiencing a housing bubble, and the head of the financial systems inquiry, David Murray, said a sharp fall in property prices could be detrimental to the economy. In August, Hockey came under fire for being out of touch after suggesting Australia’s “poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases”. The treasurer admitted on Tuesday that measures to restore integrity in foreign investment would not result in a drop in residential prices. Related: Joe Hockey forces Chinese investor to sell $39m Sydney mansion The Foreign Investment Review Board is investigating nearly 200 cases of suspected unlawful purchases of property. Foreign investors can buy new property in Australia, but must seek approval before purchasing existing residential property. Temporary residents who buy property must sell it when they leave the country. “I am not suggesting this is going to represent thousands and thousands of homes. But what it is going to do is provide reassurance that people are complying with the law when they engage in the purchase of a property,” Hockey said. “We welcome foreign investment in new real estate because it adds to the stock.” A new set penalties for foreign investors who buy existing stock will come into play from 1 December. The government wants members to dob in suspicious foreign property owners via a new telephone hotline. Concerned citizens can call the hotline on 1800 050 377. But Hockey warned against racially profiling investors. “They may look like foreign buyers, but they’re not,” he said, pointing to the fact that some Chinese families have been in Australia longer than his own family.

Asked whether Sydney’s property prices are out of reach for many, the treasurer responded: ‘If housing were unaffordable in Sydney, no one would be buying it’

Missing out on deep sleep can leave you feeling slow-witted and irritable in the morning, but the consequences don't necessarily end there. Over time, too little deep sleep may also take a toll on your heart by contributing to high blood pressure, a new study suggests. Healthy young and middle-aged adults spend about 20% to 25% of their sleeping hours in the stages known as slow-wave sleep (so called because of the brain waves associated with it). This sleep phase is considered restorative and has been shown to be important for memory and mental performance. The new study, which included 784 men over the age of 65, adds to the growing evidence that slow-wave sleep is also essential to our metabolism and heart health. Compared to men who spent at least 17% of their sleep time in the slow-wave phase, those who spent less than 4% in this restful state had 83% higher odds of developing high blood pressure (hypertension) years later, the study found. LIST: 7 Tips for the Best Sleep Ever The research should be considered "exploratory," the authors say, and it doesn't prove a direct link between sleep patterns and hypertension. But it suggests that "an important aspect of successful aging is the preservation of good sleep quality," says Eve Van Cauter, the director of the Sleep, Metabolism and Health Center at the University of Chicago. Older people tend to get less slow-wave sleep as they age, and fighting this natural decline — through healthy sleep habits, for instance — could be an "extraordinarily important strategy" for heading off hypertension, adds Van Cauter, who wasn't involved in the new research. Sleep problems have been linked to high blood pressure before. Sleep apnea, a chronic disorder in which a person wakes up struggling for breath several times during the night, is strongly linked to hypertension, although it's not clear whether the disorder causes high blood pressure or vice versa — or whether the two conditions feed each other. Untangling the relationship has been tricky in part because obesity increases the risk of both high blood pressure and sleep apnea. Obesity could play a role in the link between slow-wave sleep and hypertension as well; in a previous analysis, the authors of the current research found that insufficient slow-wave sleep was related to obesity. LIST: 10 Natural Ways to Lower Blood Pressure In the new study, published today in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, researchers at the University of California–San Diego and Harvard University assessed the sleep quality of the participants using polysomnography, a technique in which electrodes are used to track brain activity. All of the men had normal blood pressure when they underwent the test, which was performed on a single night in their own beds (as opposed to in a sleep lab). When the researchers followed up with the men an average of 3.5 years later, roughly 31% of the study participants had developed hypertension. Once the researchers took age, body mass index, and race into account, they found that time spent in slow-wave sleep was the only measure of sleep quality associated with hypertension risk. Forty-one percent of the men who got the least slow-wave sleep went on to develop hypertension, compared to 26% of the men who got the most slow-wave sleep. LIST: Bedtime Behaviors That Will Help You Sleep Dr. Susan Redline, one of the study authors and a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, says that going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, avoiding alcohol and tobacco before bedtime, and other good "sleep hygiene" can help people sleep longer, and probably more deeply. But, to maximize slow-wave sleep, she adds, "Probably the most important thing is to make sure that there is not a sleep disorder like sleep apnea or periodic leg movement that is causing disruptions." The study had some key limitations. The researchers tracked the men's sleep on a single night, for instance, and they likewise measured blood pressure just once or twice. More research will be needed to address these shortcomings and also to rule out factors besides sleep quality (such as diet or medical conditions) that may independently contribute to hypertension, the study notes. Nor is it clear whether habitual sleep deprivation — an increasingly common problem — has long-term effects on overall sleep quality and slow-wave sleep, Van Cauter says. "It's a possibility," she says. "In the sixties, the average American was reporting sleeping 8.5 hours a night. Now most studies are showing six to seven hours. That's a huge change."

Missing out on deep sleep can leave you feeling slow-witted and irritable in the morning, but the consequences don't necessarily end there. Over time, too little deep sleep may also take a toll on your heart by contributing to high blood pressure, a new study suggests.

Do you remember the time President Obama shook hands with Iranian president Ahmadinejad? If you took part in a recent psychological study, it’s possible that you will. More than 5,000 participants were presented with doctored photographs representing fabricated political events, with around half claiming to have memories for the false scenarios (Obama has, of course, never shaken hands with the Iranian president). Part of a decades-long program of research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, the latest study provides a neat demonstration of how our memories are created in the present rather than being faithful records of the past. (MORE: Does “Stress” Hide Deeper Social Problems?) The popular perception of memory shows a considerable lag with the new scientific consensus. The psychologists Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chabris have conducted two large-scale surveys showing that roughly half of respondents thought that memory works like a video recorder. And although many people do recognize that their memories are fallible, there is much less understanding of precisely how and why they fail us. Memory is a system with many moving parts, and thus many processes that can go wrong. The various ‘sins of memory’ (in Daniel L. Schacter’s phrase) give us the best clues about how this complex mental function works. Psychologist and neuroscientists have taken advantage of these clues to explore the strong links between imagination and memory, to demonstrate how social factors influence our recollections, and to show how memory may actually have evolved to predict the future rather than keep track of the past. There is arguably little evolutionary advantage to being able to recall the past in vivid detail; it is much more useful to be able to use past experience to predict what comes next. (MORE: What Actors Can Teach Us About Memory and Learning) So why are we so attached to our idea of memories as fixed, unchanging possession? There are many reasons, but one is that memories are foundational for our sense of self. This is particularly true for early childhood memories (which the scientists tell us are the most unreliable of all). In her striking description of lying as a small child in her cot at St. Ives, Virginia Woolf noted that this wasn’t just her earliest memory; it was the moment she became the person (and the writer) she was. It is no wonder that we resist the idea that our memories are collages of disparate sources of information, assembled and reassembled long after the event. Bracing as it might be, this new way of thinking about memory does not have to lead to self-doubt. It simply requires that we take our memories with a pinch of salt, and forge new relationships with them. They may be a kind of fiction, but the manner of their making speaks volumes about those who create them. In the Obama-Ahmadinejad study, the researchers found that events were more likely to be falsely recalled if they fit the individual’s political affiliations (conservatives were more likely than liberals to ‘remember’ the Ahmadinejad handshake, for example). Whether the events happened or not, your biases and beliefs shape the kind of memories you form, and thus reveal the kind of person you are. MORE: Why Insults Hurt — And Why They Shouldn’t

New research confirms that memories are created in the present rather than being faithful records of the past

A happily retired Philip Roth is spending his days swimming, watching baseball and nature-spotting, revelling in the fact that "there's more to life than writing and publishing fiction", according to a new interview. Reiterating his bleak view about the future of literature – that "two decades on the size of the audience for the literary novel will be about the size of the group who read Latin poetry" – the 80-year-old Roth told Stanford scholar Cynthia Haven that his disengagement from the world of writing is still very much in evidence. Asked by Haven if he really believes his talent – which has won him the Man Booker International prize and made him a perennial contender for the Nobel – will "let [him] quit" writing, Roth responded: "You better believe me, because I haven't written a word of fiction since 2009." "I have no desire to write fiction," said the Pulitzer prize-winning literary giant. "I did what I did and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date." Instead: "I swim, I follow baseball, look at the scenery, watch a few movies, listen to music, eat well and see friends. In the country I am keen on nature." He is also studying 19-century American history. "My mind is full of then," he said. "Barely time left for a continuing preoccupation with aging, writing, sex and death. By the end of the day I am too fatigued." Haven was interviewing Roth by email ahead of Stanford's book club later this month on his 1979 classic, The Ghost Writer. He told her that he had no desire to be labelled as a Jewish American author, despite the fact that, in her words, "many consider you the preeminent Jewish American writer". "'An American-Jewish writer' is an inaccurate if not also a sentimental description, and entirely misses the point," he responded. "The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. For me, as for Cheever, DeLillo, Erdrich, Oates, Stone, Styron and Updike, the right next word is an American-English word. I flow or I don't flow in American English." Even if he were writing in Hebrew or Yiddish, he would not be a Jewish writer, said Roth: he would be a Hebrew author, or a Yiddish author. "The American republic is 238 years old," he said. "My family has been here 120 years, or for just more than half of America's existence. They arrived during the second term of President Grover Cleveland, only 17 years after the end of Reconstruction. Civil War veterans were in their 50s. Mark Twain was alive. Sarah Orne Jewett was alive. Henry Adams was alive. All were in their prime. Walt Whitman was dead just two years. Babe Ruth hadn't been born. If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion." Roth won't be attending the book club meeting at Stanford on 25 February, and the novelist told Haven that he had never been to a book club, despite their popularity. "I know nothing about book clubs," he said. "From my many years as a university literature teacher I do know that it takes all the rigour one can muster over the course of a semester to get even the best undergraduates to read precisely the fiction at hand, with all their intelligence, without habitual moralising, ingenious interpretation, biographical speculation and, too, to beware of the awful spectre of the steamrolling generalisation. Is such protracted rigour the hallmark of book clubs?" he asked. Roth's final novel, Nemesis, was published in 2010.

'I did what I did and it's done', novelist tells interviewer, explaining that these days he's keener on swimming and watching baseball

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - MARCH 26: Malaysia's Minister of Defence and acting Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein (C) is viewed through a lens as he speaks during a press conference on March 26, 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The search for flight MH370 resumes today after rought winds and high swells prevented crews from searching for debris yesterday. Six countries have joined the search, now considered to be a recovery effort, after authorities have announced that airliner crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean and that there are no survivors. (Photo by Rahman Roslan/Getty Images) Malaysia's Minister of Defence and Acting Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein (L) looks at maps as Director General of Civil Aviation Department (DCA) Azharuddin Abdul Rahman (R) answers questions during a press conference at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang on March 17, 2013. An investigation into the pilots of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 intensified on March 17 after officials confirmed that the last words spoken from the cockpit came after a key signalling system was manually disabled. AFP PHOTO/ MANAN VATSYAYANA (Photo credit should read MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images) US navy captain Mark Matthews (C) speaks with journalists following a media conference involving Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre in Perth on April 9, 2014 on the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Australian ship Ocean Shield detected two more signals on April 8 to match a pair of transmissions picked up earlier in the week that have been analysed as consistent with flight data recorder emissions, Angus Houston said. AFP PHOTO / POOL / Greg WOOD (Photo credit should read GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images) Flight MH370's pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - APRIL 10 : A handout image released by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) in Canberra, Australia, 10 April 2014, shows the search area and Sonobuoy search area where 14 planes and 13 ships are scouring a 57,923 square km area of ocean for the wreckage of flight MH370 on 10 April 2014.Flight MH370 went missing after losing radio contact with Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control after leaving Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8. The Beijing-bound flight carried 239 passengers including 12 flight crew from 14 different countries. (Photo by AMSA/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Ben Pelletier, marine operations engineer for Bluefin Robotics, attempts to retrieve a submarine in Quincy, Mass., Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Bluefin Robotics shipped a version of their submarine to help locate the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, by using its side-scan sonar. (AP Photo/Scott Eisen) A submarine built by Bluefin Robotics is lowered into the water by systems engineer Cheryl Mierzwa in Quincy, Mass., Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Bluefin Robotics shipped a version of their submarine to help locate the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, by using its side-scan sonar. (AP Photo/Scott Eisen) Ben Pelletier, marine operations engineer for Bluefin Robotics, attempts to retrieve a submarine in Quincy, Mass., Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Bluefin Robotics shipped a version of their submarine to help locate the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, by using its side-scan sonar. (AP Photo/Scott Eisen) In this April 9, 2014 photo provided by the Australian Defense Force, a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion flies past Australian Defense vessel Ocean Shield on a mission to drop sonar buoys to assist in the acoustic search of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. The ship searching for the missing Malaysian jet has detected two more underwater signals that may be emanating from the aircraft's black boxes, and the Australian official in charge of the search expressed hope Wednesday that the plane's wreckage will soon be found. (AP Photo/Australian Defense Force, LSIS Bradley Darvill) EDITORIAL USE ONLY This image provided by the Joint Agency Coordination Centre on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, shows a map indicating the locations of signals detected by vessels looking for signs of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. An Australian official overseeing the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane said underwater sounds picked up by equipment on an Australian navy ship are consistent with transmissions from black box recorders on a plane. (AP Photo/Joint Agency Coordination Centre) EDITORIAL USE ONLY Angus Houston (2nd-L), head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre leading the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 speaks at a media conference in Perth on April 9, 2014. Australian ship Ocean Shield detected two more signals on April 8 to match a pair of transmissions picked up earlier in the week that have been analysed as consistent with flight data recorder emissions, Houston said. AFP PHOTO / POOL / Greg WOOD (Photo credit should read GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images) A graphic of the area being searched for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, is displayed during a media conference involving Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre in Perth on April 9, 2014. Australian ship Ocean Shield detected two more signals on April 8 to match a pair of transmissions picked up earlier in the week that have been analysed as consistent with flight data recorder emissions, Houston said. AFP PHOTO / POOL / Greg WOOD (Photo credit should read GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images) In this April 7, 2014 photo provided by the Australian Defense Force Able Seaman Clearance Diver Michael Arnold is towed by a fast response craft from the Australian Defense's ship Ocean Shield as he scans the water for debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Up to 14 planes and as many ships were focusing on a single search area covering 77, 580 square kilometers (29,954 square miles) of ocean, 2,270 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the Australian west coast city of Perth, Australia. (AP Photo/Australian Defense Force, Lt. Ryan Davis) EDITORIAL USE ONLY In this April 7, 2014 photo provided by the Australian Defense Force Able Seaman Clearance Divers Matthew Johnston, right, and Michael Arnold, from the Australian Defense Vessel Ocean Shield, scan the water for debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Up to 14 planes and as many ships were focusing on a single search area covering 77, 580 square kilometers (29,954 square miles) of ocean, 2,270 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the Australian west coast city of Perth, Australia. (AP Photo/Australian Defense Force, Lt. Ryan Davis) EDITORIAL USE ONLY In this April 7, 2014 photo provided by the Australian Defense Force Able Seaman Clearance Diver Matthew Johnston is towed by a fast response craft from Australian Defense's ship Ocean Shield as he scans the water for debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Up to 14 planes and as many ships were focusing on a single search area covering 77, 580 square kilometers (29,954 square miles) of ocean, 2,270 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the Australian west coast city of Perth, Australia. (AP Photo/Australian Defense Force, Lt. Ryan Davis) EDITORIAL USE ONLY In this April 7, 2014 photo provided by the Australian Defense Force Able Seaman Clearance Divers Matthew Johnston, right, and Michael Arnold, from the Australian Defense Vessel Ocean Shield, scan the water for debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Up to 14 planes and as many ships were focusing on a single search area covering 77, 580 square kilometers (29,954 square miles) of ocean, 2,270 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the Australian west coast city of Perth, Australia. (AP Photo/Australian Defense Force, Lt. Ryan Davis) EDITORIAL USE ONLY In this April 7, 2014 photo provided by the Australian Defense Force a fast response craft manned by members from the Australian Defense's ship Ocean Shield is deployed to scan the water for debris of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Up to 14 planes and as many ships were focusing on a single search area covering 77, 580 square kilometers (29,954 square miles) of ocean, 2,270 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the Australian west coast city of Perth, Australia. (AP Photo/Australia Defense Force, LSIS Bradley Darvill) EDITORIAL USE ONLY In this April 7, 2014 photo provided by the Australian Defense Force, a fast response craft manned by members from the Australian Defense's ship Ocean Shield tows Able Seaman Clearance Diver Michael Arnold as they scan the water for debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Up to 14 planes and as many ships were focusing on a single search area covering 77, 580 square kilometers (29,954 square miles) of ocean, 2,270 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the Australian west coast city of Perth, Australia. (AP Photo/Australian Defense Force, LSIS Bradley Darvill) EDITORIAL USE ONLY Diagram shows three types of technology used in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 This image provided by the Joint Agency Coordination Centre on Monday, April 7, 2014, shows a map indicating the locations of search vessels looking for signs of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. An Australian official overseeing the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane said underwater sounds picked up by equipment on an Australian navy ship are consistent with transmissions from black box recorders on a plane. (AP Photo/Joint Agency Coordination Centre) EDITORIAL USE ONLY Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre leading the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, points to a graphic of the search area during a media conference in Perth on April 7, 2014. An Australian navy ship has detected new underwater signals consistent with aircraft black boxes, Houston said on April 7, describing it as the 'most promising lead' so far in the month-old hunt for missing Flight MH370. AFP PHOTO / Greg WOOD (Photo credit should read GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images) FILE - In this Sunday, March 30, 2014 file photo, the Australian navy ship Ocean Shield lies docked at naval base HMAS Stirling while being fitted with a towed pinger locator to aid in her roll in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in Perth, Australia. Crews searching for the jet launched a targeted underwater hunt on Friday, April 4 for the plane's black boxes along a stretch of remote ocean, with just days left before the devices' batteries are expected to run out. The Ocean Shield, which is dragging a towed pinger locator from the U.S. Navy, and the British navy's HMS Echo, which has underwater search gear on board, will converge along a 240-kilometer (150-mile) track in a desolate patch of the southern Indian Ocean, said Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File) Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre leading the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, displays a graphic of the search area during a media conference in Perth on April 7, 2014. An Australian navy ship has detected new underwater signals consistent with aircraft black boxes, Houston said on April 7, describing it as the 'most promising lead' so far in the month-old hunt for missing Flight MH370. AFP PHOTO / Greg WOOD (Photo credit should read GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images) Map shows search areas for missing Malaysia Airlines missing jet.; 3c x 5 inches; 146 mm x 127 mm; A Chinese relative of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 cries during a mass prayer for the missing plane, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, April 6, 2014. The head of the multinational search for the missing Malaysia airlines jet said that electronic pulses reportedly picked up by a Chinese ship are an encouraging sign but stresses they are not yet verified. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin) Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft flies over Perth towards the international airport returning from search operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in Perth, Australia, Sunday, April 6, 2014. Retired Australian Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, the head of the multinational search, confirmed that a Chinese ship had picked up electronic pulsing signals twice in a small patch of the search zone, once on Friday and again on Saturday, but he stressed the signals had not been verified as linked to the missing plane. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith) A Chinese Ilyushin IL-76s aircraft taxies past another parked on the tarmac at Perth International Airport after returning from search operations for wreckage and debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, in Perth, Australia, Monday, April 7, 2014. It’s not a question most governments involved in the hunt for Flight 370 care to answer: How much has the far-flung, month-long search cost? Several Chinese ships and planes have been involved in the search, but China’s foreign ministry did not respond to questions about the expense of the effort. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith) A man places a LED candle after a mass prayer for passengers onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, April 6, 2014. The head of the multinational search for the missing Malaysia airlines jet said that electronic pulses reportedly picked up by a Chinese ship are an encouraging sign but stresses they are not yet verified. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin) PERTH, Australia (AP) - Following four strong underwater signals in the past week, all has gone quiet in the hunt for the missing Malaysian airline, meaning the batteries on the all-important black boxes may have finally died. Despite having no new pings to go on, crews are continuing their search Sunday for debris and any sounds that could still be emanating. They're desperately trying to pinpoint where the Boeing 777 could be amid an enormous patch of deep ocean. No new electronic pings have been heard since April 8, and the batteries powering the locator beacons on the jet's black box recorders may already be dead. They only last about a month, and that window has passed. Once officials are confident no more sounds will be heard, a robotic submersible will be sent down.

Article - Missing plane's black box batteries may have died

Donald Trump’s speech at the tony Plaza Hotel on Friday was interrupted several times by loud protesters, including a Jewish group that likened his policies to fascism. The Republican presidential frontrunner, in his hometown to address the Pennsylvania GOP’s annual Commonwealth Club luncheon at the high-end Manhattan hotel he once owned, was first interrupted by a half-dozen protesters. “Mama, mama tell us why, why our people gotta die? Donald Trump is trying to bring us down, attacking people black and brown,” the mini mob chanted. Security quickly grabbed them and booted them from the ballroom affair, which was closed to the press. Video showed a humiliated woman being thrown on the floor before being tossed out the door. EDITORIAL: MUSLIM-BASHING TRUMP TOO TOXIC FOR ISRAEL TRIP In his speech, Trump repeatedly bashed Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and claimed former Mayor Ed Koch was a supporter of his. But George Arzt, Koch’s former press secretary and close friend, said the late mayor was a huge Hillary Clinton fan so almost certainly would have backed her in the race and thought Trump was “bombastic.” About halfway through Trump’s talk, the demonstration against him began. A few people stood up from their table and started quoting parts of “First They Came,” a poem by Martin Niemoller about the danger of keeping silent when other groups are being persecuted. The haunting poem’s cadence was used in reference to Trump on the Daily News’ front page Wednesday, above a photo of him holding the Statue of Liberty’s head in one hand and a scimatar in the other. MAJORITY OF AMERICANS DISAGREE WITH DONALD TRUMP'S PROPOSAL TO BAR MUSLIMS FROM ENTERING U.S., BUT GOP SUPPORT PLAN The second wave of protesters were with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and included Upper East Side resident Jordan Wouk, 67. “This is dangerous,” Wouk said of Trump’s popularity. “I’m very upset about what I see. It’s creeping fascism from this part of the GOP.” Another protester, Marjory Fine, 62, said she felt compelled to interrupt because Trump’s language reminds her of the Nazis. “What he (Trump) said about ‘make America good again’ ... it sounds like fascism,” she said. She said it particularly bothered her as a Jewish woman whose family escaped the Holocaust by coming to the United States. “If we weren’t allowed to come here as immigrants, we would have been in trouble,” she said. The Donald took all of the protests in stride, saying the demonstrations showed he was “winning,” according to one attendee. He also cracked, “Wow, this is a tougher room than I thought.” TED CRUZ TRIES TO DOWNPLAY COMMENTS QUESTIONING DONALD TRUMP'S 'JUDGMENT,' BUT NOT BEFORE TRUMP FIRES BACK ON TWITTER The protests didn’t sway Trump supporter Marc Scarinji, a Pennsylvania Republican. “He’s the best candidate and the best man to make America great again,” said Scarinji. Meanwhile, the gloves are finally off between Trump and rival Ted Cruz, even if Cruz would rather have kept them on. After the Texas senator got caught on tape criticizing Trump’s “judgment” at a private fund-raiser, the divisive billionaire took aim at the man he said just a few weeks ago could be his vice presidential pick. “Looks like @tedcruz is getting ready to attack. I am leading by so much he must. I hope so, he will fall like all others. Will be easy!” Trump tweeted Friday morning. Cruz rapidly sought to de-escalate. “The Establishment’s only hope: Trump & me in a cage match. Sorry to disappoint — @realDonaldTrump is terrific. #DealWithIt,” he tweeted early Friday afternoon. Cruz has assiduously worked not to offend Trump throughout the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, seeking to keep a detente going and positioning himself to pick up some of the inflammatory mogul’s voters. But in a closed-door meeting, he questioned Trump’s judgment and readiness to be commander-in-chief, after admitting that he’s looked to “bear hug” Trump and Ben Carson during the race. Trump is even stirring up even more controversy in Dubai, where his image and name were removed from a golf course and housing development amid uproar over his comments about banning Muslim travelers from the United States. Protestor Marnie Halasa (l.) holds a sign ahead of Donald Trump’s appearance at the Plaza Hotel. Jordan Wouk (r.) said Trump's platform resembles fascism. The disappearance of Trump’s branding from the multibillion-dollar development on the outskirts of Dubai comes as concerns over his comments grow in the Middle East, a region in which the businessman long has sought money-making opportunities. Some of his deals appear to be in jeopardy, with the company behind the Trump Towers in Istanbul now saying it is assessing its partnership with the Republican. In Dubai, Trump had a deal with Damac Properties to license his name and image for a housing project and two golf courses for an undisclosed sum. A billboard once showing Trump golfing had been at Damac’s Akoya development, as well as an image of Trump’s daughter Ivanka. On Friday, all that remained was the board’s brown background, though another billboard declaring the development “The Beverly Hills of Dubai” still stood nearby. Damac Properties has declined to comment on the removal of Trump’s name and billboard from the property. Back home, the website for Trump Towers, Trump’s glitzy signature skyscraper in Manhattan, went offline for at least an hour Friday after activist hacking group Anonymous denounced the real-estate mogul for his anti-Muslim comments. The website for the 68-story Trump Towers, which Trump often uses for his campaign, was down after a tweet from an account associated with the hacking collective that said: “Trump Towers NY site taken down as statement against racism and hatred.” A spokesman for Trump Towers was not available for comment.

Donald Trump’s speech at the tony Plaza Hotel on Friday was interrupted several times by loud protesters.

FAIRFAX, Va. – Carmela Dela Rosa offered no explanation, but a police officer testified Friday that she readily admitted what she had done: "Yes I did it. I threw the baby off." The baby was Dela Rosa's own granddaughter, 2-year-old Angelyn Ogdoc. The toddler died Nov. 30 after authorities say Dela Rosa threw her off a sixth-story walkway connecting a multideck parking garage to Tysons Corner Center, one of northern Virginia's busiest shopping malls. At a preliminary hearing in Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, patrol officer Anthony Stancampiano testified that he immediately placed Dela Rosa under arrest after she admitted throwing the toddler off the bridge. Stancampiano said Dela Rosa did not give him a reason why. In other testimony, Angelyn's mother tearfully recounted watching as Dela Rosa inexplicably held the toddler over the ledge and released her. The woman said that nothing unusual had happened that day, but that Dela Rosa had tried to commit suicide at least twice in recent months. Dela Rosa is charged with murder. After Friday's hearing, Judge Helen F. Leiner certified the case to a grand jury. Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Morrogh said the grand jury will meet next week, and a trial date could be set shortly thereafter. Morrogh said Dela Rosa's admission and her choice of word "threw" were telling. "She didn't say she tripped or stumbled," Morrogh said. Angelyn's mother and the defendant's daughter, Mary Kathlyn Dela Rosa Ogdoc, testified she had been walking just a few steps in front of the toddler and her mother and turned around to see "my mother's hands come out under my daughter, over the railing." Ogdoc's testimony was at times barely audible through the anguished sobs. Ogdoc ran down the six flights of stairs to her daughter, who lived for several hours after the fall. When she got to the bottom, she looked up at her mother, who watched with no expression as she rested her head on the railing. Ogdoc said the family had gone to the mall to eat at the food court and that nothing unusual happened. Under cross-examination, Ogdoc said she usually tried to keep a close eye on Angelyn when she was with Dela Rosa because of the grandmother's suicide attempts. After Friday's hearing, public defender Dawn Butorac said Dela Rosa's mental problems were well known within the family and that she had been seeing a psychologist for 10 years. Butorac said she believes at this stage that Dela Rosa's mental health problems rise to the level of legal insanity. While Ogdoc wept throughout her testimony and was barely able to spit out the words "my mother" without flashing anger, Dela Rosa sat through the hearing in a green prison jumpsuit, paying close attention but betraying no emotion.

Carmela Dela Rosa offered no explanation, but a police officer testified Friday that she readily admitted what she had done: Yes I did it. I threw the baby off.

Nearly seven years after the financial crisis, banks are still churning out profits and wrestling with regulators. Yet Wall Street, by many important measures, appears to be in the middle of a humbling transformation. Bonuses are shrinking. Revenue growth has stalled. Entire business lines are being cut. And some investors are even asking whether the biggest banks should be broken up — changes that are all largely attributed to a not-so-well-known set of rules regarding capital, a financial metric that captures how much cushion banks might have in the event of a crisis. “We have substantially reduced the amount of risk they can take,” said Timothy Geithner, the former Treasury secretary. "We’ve cut the profitability of banking roughly in half.” At an industry gathering of Wall Street executives last week, the conversation returned again and again to the big changes already underway — and those yet to come — that have hollowed out trading floors and office towers in Manhattan and Connecticut and taken the swagger out of an industry that has long defined New York. Revenue growth at U.S. banks has been flat so far this decade, and the average pay for a Goldman Sachs employee has fallen by 25 percent since 2009. Take Goldman Sachs. It recently reported that the size of its balance sheet — all its loans and holdings — shrank 6 percent since 2010 and 24 percent since 2007, while the pay per employee fell 13 percent since 2010 and 43 percent since 2007. “We have significantly adjusted both compensation levels and fixed expenses,” the chief executive of Goldman, Lloyd C. Blankfein, told the industry conference in Florida. “We have transformed the financial profile of the firm.” The decline of these important measures has been largely overlooked partly because the banks successfully fended off more radical proposed changes after the crisis and have recently beaten back some signature elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank overhaul. And profits at the banks have remained high. JPMorgan Chase recently turned in its largest annual profit ever. The growth in profits, however, has largely been achieved by cutting costs, including salaries and head count. Overall revenue, the most basic indicator of the industry’s health, has stopped growing for the first time in decades, and has even declined at some banks, forcing executives to rethink every line of their business. These changes have been spurred partly by the thicket of new rules and prohibitions demanded by Dodd-Frank. In addition, the economic uncertainty around the world has made it harder for banks to expand, which could change once the economic recovery gains surer footing. But industry executives and regulators alike agree that the broad reshaping of the industry has been driven primarily by the efforts of the Federal Reserve and other regulators to strengthen the amount of capital held by big banks, measures that banks have had less success in lobbying against. In the simplest sense, the rules about capital require banks to effectively spend a portion of a limited financial resource — their capital — every single time they take a risk by making a loan or a trade. The riskier the trade or loan, the more capital the bank has to allocate. Banks can increase their pool of capital by raising more money from investors or holding onto profits, but doing so generally costs money and reduces profits accruing to shareholders, which typically include employees of the bank. The capital rules have had the effect of encouraging banks to focus on parts of their operations in which they are potentially taking fewer risks — like the divisions that manage money for pensions and investors — and de-emphasizing the trading desks. Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, shares his thoughts on breaking up big banks. Some outspoken critics of the banks say that the capital rules do not go far enough and have not changed the day-to-day business at banks. But even many of the industry’s toughest regulators and critics say the capital rules have forced banks to reconsider every business line and have dashed much of the confidence the industry had both before and immediately after the financial crisis. “You are hard-wiring a change into the banking industry,” said Mike Mayo, an outspoken bank analyst who has called for the largest banks to shrink. “When we look back 10 years from now, we are going to say the biggest impact was from capital rules.” Morgan Stanley, which has become Exhibit A for this sort of change, has gone from making nearly 70 percent of its revenue from trading operations before the financial crisis to less than half last year. This is part of a broader shift across the industry. In 2006, before the financial crisis, banks dedicated 41 percent of their assets to trading — a number that fell to 21 percent in 2013, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. In a more concrete sign of the change, several foreign banks that built sprawling trading floors in Connecticut less than a decade ago are now looking to sell the buildings or use them for other purposes. The capital rules have not had nearly as much impact on Main Street banking operations that focus on things like mortgages and small-business lending, encouraging banks to expand in those areas while they shrink their Wall Street divisions. The new requirements on capital and a closely related metric — leverage — have come in several waves and from different sources. The international organization of central banks, based in Basel, Switzerland, put out the so-called Basel III rules in 2011, demanding that the banks reach certain minimum capital levels by 2015, though the date has since been pushed back. Many central banks, including the Fed in the United States, have said that banks in their countries must hold even higher capital levels and need to satisfy the requirements sooner than the dates required by Basel III. Responding to a Goldman Sachs report suggesting the bank would be worth more broken up, Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorgan Chase, said “we will be a port in the next storm. You want me to be a port.” In the last few months, the Fed has indicated that it will also require bigger, more interconnected banks to achieve higher capital levels than smaller ones. Because these new rules are expected to hit JPMorgan Chase particularly hard, some investors and analysts said recently that the bank might need to shrink to bring itself onto a level playing field with competitors. An analyst at Goldman Sachs wrote a report last month that suggested that JPMorgan could be worth more in pieces than it is in its current form. While JPMorgan executives have said that they do not believe they will have to break up, they have acknowledged that they are singularly focused on managing their capital. “We are trying to thread the needle, as you say, about making sure that we are as focused as we can be on maximizing the use of that scarce resource,” the chief financial officer at JPMorgan, Marianne Lake, said in a call with investors last month. Beyond these large-scale changes, the particulars of how the capital requirements are calculated are resonating through every single business line in different ways. Brady W. Dougan, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, one of the world’s biggest Wall Street banks, said considerations of capital were now a part of his everyday management of the bank. “It’s become much more a game of driving the highest returns from the businesses that are most suited to the new environment,” he said. Mr. Dougan is among the many Wall Street executives who say the new capital requirements have gone too far and have unintended consequences. On the other side, critics of the banks like Sheila C. Bair, who was the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, say all the rules have still forced the banks to cut only at the periphery. But Ms. Bair said that the capital rules were forcing the industry to answer hard questions for the first time. “We haven’t had that kind of scrutiny in the past, and I think that is healthy,” Ms. Bair said. “It’s not a bad thing for the banks to have to deal with that sort of discipline.” A version of this article appears in print on February 20, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: New Rules Spur a Humbling Overhaul of Wall St. Banks. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Wall Street is in a transformation, as bonuses shrink, revenue growth stalls and business lines are cut, driven primarily by regulatory efforts.

Ten people set out in kayaks at dawn Saturday and bobbed and splashed down a murky 1.5-mile stretch of the upper Los Angeles River, offering a paddle experience like no other in the city. The L.A. Conservation Corps members were on a reconnaissance mission to confirm that the route through the San Fernando Valley's Sepulveda Basin was clear of potential hazards a week before the start of the 2nd annual Paddle the Los Angeles River program. The scenery was captivating and, for the most part, serene as the flotilla skimmed over lazy currents of water the color of chocolate milk and smelling like old socks in the hardest working wetlands in Los Angeles. The 70-foot channel has for years operated as a flood-control channel, wildlife sanctuary and escape valve for treated waste water befouled with chemicals and trash. Now, the soft-bottom swath of weedy islands, dense brush and willows draped with fast-food wrappers, plastic bags and clothes is one of the newest summer attractions in town. As they maneuvered past discarded shopping carts and tree stumps, egrets and hawks flushed from trees leaning over the section of river that runs between Balboa and Burbank boulevards, about 17 miles northwest of downtown. Blue herons squawked angrily at the intruders. Anglers stared, perhaps wondering how far the riders had traveled. On a bluff, a woman pointed curiously at the vessels, then shouted, "Watch out for the treacherous rapids just up ahead! Just kidding!" An hour into the journey, Pablo Cardosa, the Conservation Corps' program manager, said, "The water's a little lower than I expected. Otherwise, I think we're going to be in pretty good shape this year with our paying customers." Corps' spokesman Mike Mena agreed. "Most folks will be pleased with the peaceful flows and lush greenery." Hope of transforming this portion of the river into a recreation area led to unlikely bedfellows — the city of Los Angeles, the Army Corps of Engineers, the for-profit L.A. River Expeditions and nonprofits including the River Project, Friends of the River, Urban Semillas and the Conservation Corps — to forge the plan allowing paying customers a chance to paddle it under tightly controlled conditions. The first legal trips down the river in seven decades launched last August after the Army Corps issued the license allowing the Conservation Corps to operate the program on weekends. Its 290 tickets sold out in 10 minutes. This year, the program will be handled by two operators — the Conservation Corps and L.A. River Expeditions — and expanded to accommodate 2,000 participants over a nine-week season ending Sept. 29. Trips are being offered by the Conservation Corps on Tuesday through Saturday at a cost of $50 per person for a two-hour excursion, and $25 per person for a one-hour trip. Tickets go on sale Tuesday ( ) will offer trips Sunday and Monday at similar prices. The program is restricted to summer months as a safety precaution. That is because the river recedes in the summer but explodes into dangerous torrents with the first rains of winter.

Ten people set out in kayaks at dawn Saturday and bobbed and splashed down a murky 1.5-mile stretch of the upper Los Angeles River, offering a paddle experience like no other in the city.

A midday advance on the stock market wilted in afternoon trading Friday after the FBI notified Congress that it will investigate new emails linked to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The market had started out on a strong note after the government reported that the economy broke out of a slump in the third quarter and grew at the fastest pace in two years. The early climb was led by industrial, energy and technology companies, which would stand to benefit most from a pickup in economy, but the gains disappeared after the FBI made its announcement at about 1 p.m. Eastern. Clinton has led in recent polls, and the surprise development added new uncertainty just a week and a half before the presidential election. "I think the betting has to be that there's nothing too damning, but we don't know," said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 8.49 points, less than 0.1 percent, at 18,161.19. The index was 80 points higher shortly before the new inquiry was disclosed, then went down as much as 74 points in the minutes that followed. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dipped 6.63 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,126.41. The Nasdaq composite slid 25.87 points, or 0.5 percent, to 5,190.10. Health care companies took the biggest losses by far. Prescription drug distributor McKesson plunged to a three-year low after its revenue fell about $1.5 billion short of estimates. The company slashed its annual outlook because of weaker drug prices, and investors worried that McKesson and its rivals will compete by making bigger cuts in prices. McKesson tumbled $36.39, or 22.7 percent, to $124.11 and competitor AmerisourceBergen lost $10.36, or 13 percent, to $69.14 while Cardinal Health shed $7.30, or 9.8 percent, to $67.50. Drugmakers were pummeled on weak earnings. Amgen, the world's largest biotech drug company, reported solid results for the third quarter and raised its guidance. However the company also disclosed flat sales of the anti-inflammatory medication Enbrel, its top-selling drug. Enbrel will soon face more competition, which could hurt sales. Amgen gave up $15.39, or 9.6 percent, to $145.18. It was the stock's worst one-day loss since October 2000. Drugmaker AbbVie disclosed weak sales and lost $3.86, or 6.3 percent, to $57.60. Health care stocks are the worst performing part of the market this year. They're down 6 percent while the S&P 500 is up 4 percent. Their performance compared to the rest of the market has gotten even worse over the last few months. Earlier, stocks rose after the economy grew faster than expected during the third quarter. The Commerce Department said exports grew and more businesses restocked their shelves. In total, gross domestic product grew 2.9 percent, which was better than economists expected. Growth had slowed down late last year, causing worry among investors. McMillan said he thinks the economy should keep growing at a similar pace for the next few quarters. "We're already seeing business and consumer confidence come back," he said. General Electric and oil and gas drilling services company Baker Hughes rose as they discussed a possible deal. GE said the discussions concern a partnership and that it doesn't intend to buy Baker Hughes outright. Baker Hughes tried to merge with competitor Halliburton two years ago, but the companies walked away from the combination after the federal government sued to block it. GE added 59 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $29.22 and Baker Hughes gained $4.57, or 8.4 percent, to $59.12. Other industrial stocks including United Technologies, which makes products including jet engines and elevators, and manufacturer Honeywell also traded higher. Amazon sank after its profit came up short of analysts' estimates. The company also released a weak outlook. The stock is trading at all-time highs and has surged more than 30 percent over the last 12 months. It fell $42.04, or 5.1 percent, to $776.32. AB InBev cut its annual revenue forecast following weak results from its business in Brazil. The world's largest beer maker fell $4.62, or 3.8 percent, to $116.84. U.S. crude fell $1.02, or 2.1 percent, to $48.70 a barrel in New York. That was its lowest price this month. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 76 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $49.71 a barrel in London. Bond prices edged higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.84 percent from 1.85 percent. The dollar slipped to 104.78 yen from 105.29 yen. The euro rose to $1.0982 from $1.0898. Metals turned higher. The price of gold picked up $7.30 to $1,276.80 an ounce. Silver rose 16 cents to $17.80 an ounce. Copper added 3 cents to $2.19 a pound. In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline lost 2 cents to $1.47 a gallon. Heating oil gave up 3 cents to $1.54 a gallon and natural gas rose 4 cents to $3.11 per 1,000 cubic feet. Overseas, France's CAC 40 rose 0.3 percent and the FTSE 100 in Britain picked up 0.1 percent. Germany's DAX edged down 0.2 percent. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.6 percent and South Korea's Kospi fell 0.2 percent. In Hong Kong the Hang Seng lost 0.8 percent. AP Markets Writer Marley Jay can be reached at http://twitter.com/MarleyJayAP His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/marley-jay

A midday advance on the stock market wilted in afternoon trading Friday after the FBI notified Congress that it will investigate new emails linked to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The market had started out on a strong note after the government reported that the economy...

Robots aren't known for their soft side. They build cars and defuse bombs; they don't, as a rule, make friends or deal with feelings. But a few groups of researchers around the world are working to build robots for an unusual purpose: Making emotional connections with children who often struggle to interact with humans. There's something about machines that really seems to resonate with many kids with autism, says Maja Mataric, co-director of the Robotics Research Lab at . These children often have trouble reading human emotions and social cues — complexities they don't have to worry about when they're around a mechanical being. "Robots are simpler than people," Mataric says. Still, robots may seem like unlikely candidates for a job usually filled by therapists. As Mataric points out, the general public usually thinks of robots as either cold and efficient workers (at their best) or outright evil beings bent on enslaving humanity (at their worst). The researchers at USC have a different vision. "We're trying to create something that's endearing," Mataric says. The result: Bandit, a metallic-colored, child-sized robot that can win the attention — and even empathy — of hard-to-reach kids. Bandit has a pleasant, inviting face with a movable mouth, archable eyebrows and camera eyes that let him "watch" his playmates. He also has proximity sensors to gauge whether kids are backing away or moving in. If they get too close, he can wheel away. With his motor-driven arms, Bandit can automatically mimic the motions of children and lead a game of Simon Says. He can make sad sighs or happy chips, and he blows bubbles with the push of a button. He can also talk in soothing tones, although USC researches are just beginning to use Bandit's speech in their work with children with autism. Bandit, who has been around in various incarnations since 2007, is human-ish but still obviously a machine, which is exactly the look that Mataric and colleagues were aiming for. If he looked too much like a robot, kids wouldn't want to be his friend. And if he looked too human, he would likely make kids with autism feel intimidated and overwhelmed. "It was a balance that we had to find," she says. So far, a few dozen kids with autism spectrum disorders have spent time with Bandit in various small studies. Mataric would like to have more kids visit, but she says it's hard to find children and families who are willing and able to complete a study. Still, she has seen some real signs of progress. With Bandit's encouragement, children have learned how to take turns and initiate play with others. Bandit has even inspired some children to smile socially for the first time, she says. Bandit has an overseas soulmate of sorts in KASPAR, a robot who works with kids with autism in a lab at the University of Hertfordshire in England. With his baseball cap, black hair and child-like face, KASPAR (the name is an acronym for Kinesics and Synchronisation in Personal Assistant Robotics) looks more like an oversized doll than a robot. But he's still a big hit among the autistic. While not every child is interested in KASPAR, "we've had a lot of successes over the years," says senior research fellow Ben Robins, who has been working with the robot for five years. Robins has heard from parents and teachers that kids who always seemed to be locked in their own worlds suddenly showed an interest in other people after spending time with KASPAR. "I can't say for sure that the robot is responsible," he adds. Unlike Bandit, KASPAR doesn't run automatically; a nearby researcher guides his actions with a remote control. Robins acknowledges that the bot isn't as advanced as Bandit or many other robots out there. But that suits him just fine. "I'm working from the standpoint of the children, not the technology," he says. In the years since he first helped design the robot in 2006, Robins says he has removed features to make the robot simpler and easier to play with. "Children need something basic that is both reliable and repetitive. Everything else is already so confusing to them." Robins envisions eventually building 15 or so KASPARs that schools or hospitals could keep for long-term therapy. Likewise, Mataric can picture a time when families could buy a Bandit or similar bot of their own to use at home. For now, both goals are hampered by a lack of funding. Mataric says take-home Bandits could be a reality within five years if a venture capitalist would step up, but so far she isn't exactly swamped with offers. Another challenge is that Mataric, Robins and other researchers lack the resources necessary to run the sort of large-scale clinical trials that could answer some key questions: How long do the benefits of therapy last? How do the social skills learned in the lab translate to the real world? Which children are most likely to benefit? And how can researchers design robots to get the best results with the fewest setbacks? "Rigorous studies have to be conducted," says Zachary Warren, an assistant professor of pediatrics and director of the Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders at in Nashville. "That's how technology proves its worth." Warren has participated in small-scale research projects involving robots and children with autism. In April, he was the lead author of an article in the journal Pediatrics that evaluated a wide range of therapies for young children with autism. While many treatments out there have little scientific merit and no real track record for success, Warren sees real promise in the robotic approach. Machines, he says, may be able to help "bridge the gap" between children with autism and the outside world. But robots aren't for everybody. Some children are profoundly disinterested or even flat-out afraid of the beings, Mataric says. "Some kids aren't going to engage, and that's fine," she says. In other cases, kids engage only too well, Robins says. Children can get very possessive of KASPAR, which defeats the goal of learning to cooperate and take turns. Robins also worries that some children could become overly attached to their robotic friend. "At the end of the day, it's just a machine," Robins says. "The ultimate goal is encouraging interaction with other people."

Robots aren't known for their soft side. They build cars and defuse bombs; they don't, as a rule, make friends or deal with feelings. But a few groups of researchers around the world are working to build robots for an unusual purpose: Making emotional connections with autistic children who often struggle to interact with humans.

Lonnie Johnson was brought up in Mobile, Alabama in the 1960s, when black children were not expected to go far, but such was his talent for engineering that he worked for Nasa, and helped test the first stealth bomber. But as he explains here, the invention that made his fortune was a water pistol - the extremely powerful Super Soaker. I've always liked to tinker with things. It started with my dad. He gave me my first lesson in electricity, explaining that it takes two wires for electric current to flow - one for the electrons to go in, the other for them to come out. And he showed me how to repair irons and lamps and things like that. The kids in the neighbourhood took to calling me "the Professor". We had little projects that we would work on, and I was the ringleader. For example, I put together a working engine out of parts from a scrapyard, and we stuck that engine on one of our go-karts. It had thin wagon wheels instead of tyres, and the hood was just a crate. You controlled the steering with a piece of string. It was not perfect. We had to push the car to get it going, but after that it could sustain itself. And we had a lot of fun with it - though we were stopped by the police, because the vehicle was not exactly street-legal. About three years later I was stopped a second time, when I was cycling around with some sheet metal on the back of my bicycle. I was scared, but the police officer just wanted to know what the heck I was up to. So he escorted me home and I showed him how I was making a robot just like the ones I saw on TV. Nobody had told me that the robots I saw on shows like Lost In Space had actors inside them! This project took almost a whole year, my last year of high school. But finally the robot was finished and we entered him into a fair held by the Junior Engineering Technical Society at the University of Alabama. We were the only black school there. This was 1968, just five years after Governor Wallace had stood in the doorway of the Foster Auditorium to attempt to block the enrolment of two black students - and my high school was in the news a lot because they were integrating us. White people were coming on TV, calling us all kinds of names, and saying they didn't want their kids coming to the school and being exposed to us. It was all just curious to me. I have never really understood why in this country so many people look down on black people. I can't say it weighed on me at the time, though. I was just so excited to have my robot, to know that it worked and that I would have a chance to show it off. The robot was called Linex. He was three-and-a-half-feet (1m) tall, had shoulders that could rotate and two arms with elbows and wrists that swivelled. He could pivot and move around on wheels. His chest contained a propane tank that I'd filled with compressed air to move the limbs. His memory was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I'd linked to a remote-control unit improvised from my sister's walkie-talkie. Linex was controlled by signals transmitted through this unit. When you turned the tape recorder on it recorded different frequencies and tones, like the noises you get when you press the buttons on a telephone. Then it would play back and the robot would follow all the instructions. Well, I'm not sure if it's because the judges at the science fair were from out of town, or if it's because they were from industry, not the university, but in any case they awarded me and Linex first place. Looking back, I am struck by the University of Alabama's lack of curiosity about me. You would have thought they would want to know, "Who is this guy? What kind of grades does he have? Is he qualified to attend school here?" But those overtures were not made to me. Instead, I got an Air Force scholarship and a math scholarship to Tuskegee University, a black school that's famous for the Tuskegee Airmen. During WWII there was an experiment to see if blacks could fly aeroplanes and the Tuskegee Airmen went on to become so successful as a fighter squadron escorting bombers that pilots would request them by name. I received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, then graduated with a masters in nuclear engineering. In one of my first jobs, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, I found myself working on cooling systems for nuclear reactors with an engineer who had graduated from a prestigious New England university. To my surprise I found I just knew how to do things he didn't know how to do. I had been exposed to things he hadn't been exposed to and I was able to solve problems more easily. I was struck by how well Tuskegee had prepared me to be an engineer. I thought, "Here I am going toe-to-toe with an engineer from one of the top schools in the country." In 1975, I was called to active duty in the Air Force, studying US space launches that used nuclear power. I felt it was a big deal to be involved in such an important project - we were providing technical support for launch recommendations that ultimately went to the president. After I presented an analysis that identified a possible failure Nasa had overlooked, I was invited on to the Galileo Mission, the unmanned spacecraft sent to study Jupiter and its moons. I was given responsibility for attaching the nuclear power source to the spacecraft and allocating power to the various systems - the science instruments, the computer, the power control system. A major concern was that in the event of a short circuit, power to the memory would be lost and the spacecraft would be unable to call home. So I devised an isolation circuit that would maintain power to the computer memories even when power was lost. So in 1982 you could say that I had a fun day job working on these spacecraft in Pasadena, California, but all this time I continued to tinker on my own ideas in the evening. At that time I was experimenting with a new type of refrigeration system that would use water as a working fluid instead of ozone-destroying CFCs. One evening, I machined a nozzle and hooked it up to the bathroom sink, where I was performing some experiments. It shot a powerful stream of water across the bathroom sink. That's when I got the idea that a powerful water gun would be fun! But it was months before I did anything about it. I rejoined the Air Force and relocated with my family to a military base in Omaha, Nebraska. I went on to become the first engineer from the Strategic Air Command - which had responsibility for identifying nuclear targets - assigned to test the B-2 Bomber, the Stealth Bomber. After I had settled into my new job and home, I set to work making the parts of the plastic water gun on a little lathe and milling machine in the basement. I really had no idea if the magic I had in mind was going to materialise until all the parts were put together and I was ready to pull the trigger. I gave the plastic gun to my seven-year-old daughter, Aneka, and watched as she used it to play with the other kids on the airbase. They couldn't even get close to her with their little squirt guns. I soon found my prototype water pistol was an excellent ice-breaker at social events. I took it to an Air Force picnic one day and a superior officer, a major, saw it and said, "What is that you got, Johnson?" I said, "This is my water gun, sir." And he said, "It looks really strange - does it work?" So I turned to him and shot him right between the eyes. After that, the picnic was over. Everybody was throwing cups of water, cups of beer and it just turned into a big free-for-all. My initial idea was to manufacture the gun myself. A factory told me it would cost $200,000 to get the first 1,000 guns off the production line. Well, I didn't have $200,000, so I realised I would have to go into a strategic partnership with a toy company. There followed seven years of frustration and false starts. I don't know what it is with me, but I've never been very good at giving up. Then, in February 1989 I was walking the halls of the American International Toy Fair in New York, the world's largest toy fair, when I ran into a company called Larami. At the time, they were knock-off merchants - they would look at what the major toy companies were making, and what had TV advertising, then they would make cheap copies and grab 10% of the market. At the toy fair, the vice president, a guy called Al Davis, told me that the idea of a really high-performance water pistol was interesting. "I can't really review a product here," he told me, "but if you're ever in Philadelphia, where our headquarters are, I'd be happy to talk to you. Drop in and see us." So I said, "Ok, great." But just as I was turning to leave, he called after me and said, "By the way - don't make a special trip." Despite these discouraging words, as soon as I got home I started work on a fresh prototype of the water gun. The new test model was made of plexiglass and PVC piping, and incorporated a new design feature - instead of keeping water inside the gun itself, a two-litre soda bottle sat on the top, and acted as a water reservoir. It was 628mm long. The diameter of the water stream was 2.4mm and could reach more than 12 metres. It took me a couple of weeks to build the model, then I called Larami and said, "It just happens that I'm going to be in your area soon…" I remember sitting in their conference room with the president and vice-president of the company and some marketing people. I opened my suitcase, took the gun out and shot it across the conference room. And they said: "Wow!" I knew that I had captured their imagination. But we had the challenge of commercialisation. This gun was more complicated than the squirt guns that were on the market, and it took a lot of work to bring the price down to $10. Even then, we weren't sure that anyone would pay anywhere near that amount for a water pistol. In 1990, the gun appeared in the toy shops. It was called the Power Drencher. To begin with we didn't do any marketing or TV advertising - but it still sold well. The following year, we rebranded the toy the Super Soaker and did a big push on TV. That was the summer we sold 20 million guns, and I remember just staring at my royalties cheque in disbelief. It seems strange now, but back in 1992, the Super Soaker was quite controversial. There were a few tragic incidents - on one occasion some kids shot someone with a Super Soaker, and he shot back with a real gun. On another occasion, a water fight in Boston escalated into a real gun fight and a teenager was killed. There were also reports of people using them in weird ways, for example filling them with bleach instead of water. The mayor of Boston tried to introduce a voluntary sales ban on the toys. I got a phone call from a reporter from that city, who, in the most serious and grave voice told me, "We've got a report that Super Soakers are being used in drive-by shootings, and we were wondering if you had any comment." I had no idea what to say to him. In the end, I said, "Well… you know… I think we should have more of that." In the back of my mind, I felt that my work on toy guns was probably less harmful than the work I did on real weapons systems. Further generations of Super Soakers followed, and I went on to design the N-Strike range of Nerf dart guns, which used some of the same compressed air technology. Being a toy that sells year-round, I made even more money through Nerf guns than I had with the Super Soaker. I didn't buy a yacht or anything. I've spent the money on something much more interesting - to me, anyway. I have built a scientific facility in Atlanta, Georgia, which has about 30 staff. For more than 20 years I have been interested in battery technology. Batteries typically contain liquid, but we have developed an all-ceramic battery which uses glass as an electrolyte. It can hold three times as much charge as a lithium ion battery and it is stable enough that it can be used in very harsh environments, such as oil wells. It can be bulk-manufactured in a similar way to ceramic plates. We are also working on an engine which is the great, great-grandson of the cooling system I was working on in 1982 when I hit upon the idea of the Super Soaker. The Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter (J-TEC) is a very efficient engine that uses hydrogen to convert heat directly into electricity and it has no moving mechanical parts. When I look at a problem I have an intuition about whether or not it can be solved, but that isn't good enough for most investors. The process of invention requires breakthroughs and you can't predict when those will happen. So it's really only thanks to the Super Soaker and Nerf guns that I have been able to develop the ceramic battery and the J-TEC. At our offices we have a lot of the toys kicking around and every now and then we do play with them. I also take the guns into schools to give talks. Kids need exposure to ideas, and they need to be given an opportunity to experience success. Once you get that feeling, it grows and feeds itself - but some kids have got to overcome their environments and attitudes that have been imposed on them. In spite of the things that have been perpetrated on my race - holding us in bondage under slavery, then making it illegal to educate us and then subjecting us to long-term discrimination and criticism - we succeed anyway, to a very large extent. We just need to realise what we're capable of. More than 170 Super Soaker models were launched, and they have made more than $1bn (£760m). For a while I tried to buy every toy that contained one of my patents, but I couldn't keep up. After I'm finished with all this hard science stuff, I'm looking forward to doing some more straightforward inventing. Stuff where it's easier to make a bit of money. I have a few ideas in mind - not toys, just consumer products that I know will be easy to manufacture and that will sell well. But I hope you don't mind if I keep them to myself for now. As told to @williamkremer. Listen to Lonnie Johnson speaking to Outlook on the BBC World Service. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

Lonnie Johnson had an illustrious career as a nuclear engineer working on the Galileo space programme and the stealth bomber - but he is best known for creating a water pistol

Chelsea Clinton might be biased when it comes to choosing our next Commander-in-Chief, but she admits becoming a parent herself has made it appreciate her own mother even more. “Now, as a mom — I have two little kids, Charlotte who turns 2 later this month, and her baby brother Aiden, who’s 2½ months,” Clinton shared during a co-hosting stint on The View Friday. “I hope my children are as proud of me as I am of my mom someday,” she added. Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter. The mom of two, who is married to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, shares that her daughter Charlotte is just entering nursery school, and admits that her support for her mother goes way past her political and social involvement. “With my husband, there’s no one I trust more than my mom,” Clinton says. “If, God forbid, anything were to happen to Marc and me, my mother would take care of my children. There’s no greater vote of trust and faith and love than that. “So as a daughter, it doesn’t make sense to me,” she adds of how anyone could call her mother untrustworthy. The former first daughter also shared more details about how she and Ivanka Trump still manage to keep a close friendship, despite their opposing campaign involvement. “We were friends long before this election, we will be friends long after this election — our friendship didn’t start in politics and it certainly is not going to end because of politics,” Clinton says. “I have tremendous respect for Ivanka. I love her family. She’s a working mom like I am. We have so much more in common than we have disagreement about.”

Chelsea Clinton and husband Marc Mezvinsky are parents to daughter Charlotte and son Aiden...

Gwen Stefani concertgoers were in for a treat over the weekend. Blake Shelton, 40, brought a bit of country to the stage with his surprise appearance during Stefani’s Sunday night concert at the Forum in L.A. to wrap up her This Is What The Truth Feels Like tour. The country singer walked on stage, casually dressed in jeans, strumming his guitar and playing their duet, “Go Ahead and Break My Heart,” off of his If I’m Honest album. The couple looked adorable together and could not stop smiling as they stared into each other’s eyes while singing, says an onlooker. After the song, Shelton gave Stefani, 47, a huge hug, and the crowd went wild with applause. Earlier in the show, Stefani commented on her tumultuous year saying, “This last record saved my life. Music saved my life.” It’s been almost a year since the two went public with their relationship after meeting on The Voice, where they both worked as coaches. Not only did working on The Voice introduce Stefani to a new romance, but it also introduced her to new music. Though performing a country song may not be what you’d expect from the No Doubt singer, Stefani recently told PEOPLE about performing at Shelton’s concerts: “To be able to get up and cross-pollinate in another world and different audience is super magical.” “Being on The Voice, that really opened me up hearing so many different voices and their interpretations of songs and just different genres of music,” added. “That’s what’s so fun about this life. You just keep growing and experiencing things.” Stefani has been no stranger to Blake Shelton’s stage. She also made a surprise appearance during one of his concert stops to perform the duet. “I’m suddenly in a completely different world and audience and you’re like, ‘These are not my people, you know what I mean?'” Stefani said of her experience joining Shelton on stage. “Yet they’re so warm and sweet.” Stefani took to Instagram Sunday night to thank her fans saying, “Last night was incredible! Thank u L.A.”

The cute couple reunited on stage at The Forum Sunday night for their duet “Go Ahead and Break My Heart”

"I feel like we dodged a bullet with the Romney administration." Amen. Every time I see a clip of that artificial human speaking, I get chills up my spine. But worse is what's indicated by the first line of this post: "Mitt Romney's transition team had plans to inject a heavy dose of corporate America into the federal government." That's just appalling. The virtually unrestrained power of corporate America is at the root of most of our problems already! Like jobs that pay so little, full-time workers have to go on food stamps (See: Wal-Mart.) Like the rising taxes on the middle class (because corporations like GE and AT&T don't pay *any.*) Like pollution and destruction of the environment (See: Koch brothers, Massey Energy). Like the collapse of the economy in 2008 (See: Banks too big to fail, unrestrained greed, Nationwide mortgages, too many more to mention). Like a national media that is essentially owned by five corporations, that demonizes the left while playing stenographer to the right. (See: Washington Post, CNN, most networks -- not to mention the right-wing "entertainment complex." Compare, for example, the skimpy and hostile coverage of any left-wing protest -- like thousands of anti-war protesters during the Iraq War, or the hundreds of thousands during the Occupy movement -- to the blanket, largely approving coverage of any right-wing protest -- like a couple dozen "Tea Partiers" financed by and bused in to Washington by big corporations.) Like a Congress that institutes ALEC-written bills, and ignores the will of the electorate in favor of their corporate sponsors (See: Failure of background-check law). I could go on in this vein, but instead I'd like to remind everyone that our government is supposed to be US. It's supposed to be "We the People." But Reagan turned that idea on its head. He took a fringe idea -- "government isn't the solution, it's the problem" -- and made it a solemn canon on the right, to which the left pays deference. And it's a terrible idea. And it's insulting. WE are supposed to be the government. So when Reagan said "government is the problem," he was saying "the American people are the problem." And the right wing has spent the last 30 years excising the power of common people from their own government. Look at everything Republicans propose, and virtually every idea has at its heart the elimination of our power to have a say in what government does. Or more to the point: Elimination of our power to defend ourselves from corporations. That's the heart of "tort reform," if you've ever wondered what that was and why Republicans are so insistent on it. Further, government isn't supposed to work hand-in-glove with corporations. Government is supposed to be OUR DEFENSE from the power of corporations. Government is the only counter-weight to the enormous power of corporations. Government is supposed to regulate corporations so that they don't run roughshod over us, as they inevitably will. But you'll note that Republicans are four-square against regulation. ANY regulation. Corporations, like the big banks on Wall Street, are supposed to be trusted to regulate themselves. The Republican theology is that "the invisible hand" of the marketplace will regulate corporations. (Which is not at all what Adam Smith was saying, but I digress.) Gee, how well has that worked out? (See: Economic collapse, 1929 and 2008.) No, Mr. Romney, we do not need more corporate influence on government. There's plenty already, and it's already too much. Our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people, not of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. That's what every other government in the history of the world has done, and the inevitable outcome of those systems has been consistent: Fascist feudalism. (See: China.)

Mitt Romney's transition team had plans to inject a heavy dose of corporate America into the federal government, but first they had to adjust to a new email system. Its name? Gmail.

Citroën's Survolt concept has been making its rounds of the European auto shows this year. Journalists and auto industry insiders are assembled in Paris for the media preview of the 2010 Paris Motor Show. The organizers of this year’s show have sought to focus attention on new technologies, with the theme “The Future, Today,” pointing to what many in the industry hope signals the successful commercialization of zero-emission vehicles.

Automakers are displaying new concepts and world-market cars at the auto show in Paris.

The 62-year-old producer died Friday, according to the bureau's inmate data base. Pearlman had been serving a 25-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, for running Ponzi and bank schemes. He was convicted in 2008 of fraud and swindling investors out of more than $300 million. In the mid-1990s he formed the iconic boy bands responsible for hits like "I Want It That Way" and "Quit Playing Games (with my Heart)" from the Backstreet Boys and "Bye Bye Bye," from *NSYNC. An official cause of death was not announced. Pearlman boosted the careers of entertainers who later achieved solo fame, like ex-Backstreet Boy Nick Carter and former *NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Timberlake tweeted Sunday he hoped Pearlman had "found some peace." I hope he found some peace. God bless and RIP, Lou Pearlman. "His passing has touched a lot of people," said Mark NeJame, who represented Pearlman in civil lawsuits for many years. "He literally revolutionized the world of pop music and [he was] a creative genius in that regard -- but [he] had a horrible dark side that eventually overshadowed his talents." Pearlman "had a way of telling people what they wanted to hear," NeJame added. "He was very seductive." Aaron Carter, brother of Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter, tweeted Sunday about Pearlman, "karma is real." #LouPearlman my old manager died in prison... Rip Lou not the best business guy really at all but he did discover me karma is real With Pearlman at the helm, the Backstreet Boys shot to stardom in 1996 and became one of the top-selling boy bands, selling more than 130 million records, according to the band's website. Shortly after the launch of the Backstreet Boys, Pearlman followed up with a second boy band called *NSYNC -- which sold more than 55 million records. *NSYNC's website was down Sunday in the wake of the news of Pearlman's death. Former *NSYNC band members Lance Bass and Chris Kirkpatrick also posted their reactions on Twitter. "He might not have been a stand up businessman," Bass tweeted, "but I wouldn't be doing what I love today [without] his influence. RIP Lou" Kirkpatrick posted that he had "mixed emotions" about the news. Mixed emotions right now, but RIP Lou Pearlman. The Backstreet Boys haven't released an album since 2013, and in recent years members took time to focus on individual projects. The group recorded a song with the country duo Florida Georgia Line that was released Friday. The Backstreet Boys are also working on a new album and there are plans for a short residency for the group in Las Vegas. CNN's Lisa Respers France contributed to this report.

Lou Pearlman, the disgraced star-maker behind 1990s boy bands *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, has died in prison, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

might officially be the most hated man in the Windy City -- because last night, one of Chicago's most storied sports legends turned his back on the guy ... TORCHING Cutler's jersey inside a bar. The video was shot inside Stanley's Kitchen and Tap in Downtown Chicago -- showing Chicago Blackhawks legend lighting Jay's jersey on fire while some hot chick dangles it from her fingers. One source inside the bar tells us Chris lit the jersey then said, Cutler's "nothing but a bitch." FYI -- Cutler has been under heavy fire in Chicago from Bears fans who think he's not just a terrible QB ... but a cancer in the locker room who's bringing down the team. Cutler's performance on Sunday didn't do much to win over his critics -- Jay had a very underwhelming performance in the Bears victory over the Rams ... throwing an interception and ZERO touchdowns. We reached out to Chelios for comment -- so far, no word back.

Chicago Bears QB Jay Cutler might officially be the most hated man in the Windy City -- because last night, one of Chicago's most storied sports legends…

In two recent cases — one involving a black football player who was removed from a US Airways flight because he refused to pull up his pants and the other involving a lesbian actress who was escorted off a Southwest flight after a request to stop kissing her girlfriend escalated into a heated exchange — the incidents were soon posted on the Web, protests held and boycotts threatened. The result is a public debate over whether there is a right to fly. The answer, according to courts and the Department of Transportation, is no. “An airline can refuse to carry a passenger for any reason, so long as it is not discriminatory,” said Bill Mosley, a spokesman for the Transportation Department. He referred to a federal aviation statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry.” Airlines can remove passengers for many reasons, which are spelled out in the fine print on the back of the boarding card and open to interpretation. “We deal with this every day,” said an executive of a major American carrier who asked not to be identified because the airline did not want to go on the record about how it handles these situations. If a passenger “is a security threat or if they are carrying a communicable disease or if they smell bad or if they are being unruly — there are a number of things that would preclude them from being able to fly.” What has changed in recent years is the highly visible nature of some passenger-airline disputes — details of which are sometimes on the Internet while the plane is still at the gate. Kyla Ebbert, a waitress in California, appeared on several national news programs in 2007 after she was told by a flight attendant on Southwest Airlines that her skimpy outfit was potentially offensive to other passengers. Rather than go home, change and take a later flight, she draped a blanket over her legs, then did the rounds of morning talk shows. The path is now well trodden by others who have had a brush with the arbiters of airplane decorum. “Whether it’s a letter to a company or a social media issue, people have agendas they push through for a lot of different reasons,” John McDonald, vice president for communications for US Airways, said in an interview. Mr. McDonald said that was the case after US Airways removed a University of New Mexico football player, Deshon Marman, in June, after he refused to pull up his drooping pajama pants. Video of the exchange was posted on You Tube, prompting a demonstration in San Francisco contending that the airline’s action was racially biased. Publicity over the Marmon case prompted another US Airways passenger, Jill Tarlow, to step forward with her own allegation. Ms. Tarlow said six days before Mr. Marman was removed, she was on a US Airways flight with a man who was dressed in women’s underwear, stockings and a see-through shrug. Ms. Tarlow sent a photo of the man to the airline and posted it on the Internet. Mr. McDonald responded that the man was a frequent traveler on US Airways but said he was not allowed to board the flight until he covered up. Frustration with the seeming arbitrariness of airline decision-making is just one part of the problem, said Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center in California. The other is diminishing respect for the sensitivities of other passengers. “Social media is shining a light on a problem that’s growing and that we haven’t been paying enough attention to,” Ms. Rutledge said. “We as a people have taken to this idea of ‘what I’m entitled to’ without considering how to respect what the other person is entitled to.” Many airlines have found themselves in the spotlight for taking passengers off airplanes, but Southwest Airlines has removed some celebrities, which keeps it in the news. In addition to the short-skirt affair, which resulted in Ms. Ebbert’s appearance in Playboy, the carrier ejected the actress Leisha Hailey last month after a request by a flight attendant for her to stop kissing her girlfriend turned into a profanity-laced exchange. Southwest is known as well for requiring plus-size passengers, like the Hollywood director Kevin Smith, to either buy a second ticket or get off the plane. “One of the complaints we see on a regular basis is from customers who do not have access to their full seat because of the size of the customer next to them,” said Chris Mainz, a spokesman for Southwest. That the war over conflicting standards of courtesy and behavior is being fought on airliners isn’t surprising, Ms. Rutledge said, because people feel a powerlessness boarding an airplane. “The airplane environment is one where people have higher anxiety levels, and prickliness is heightened,” she said. Airline executives agree. “With security and everything else,” Mr. McDonald said, “being on an airplane is very different than hopping in a car or taking a bus.” Mr. Mainz of Southwest said: “Unlike a restaurant or movie theater, you cannot exit an airplane at 30,000 feet, so it is our duty to defuse a potential disruption before an airplane leaves the ground.” With that in mind, the courts have given flight crews wide latitude, even when a review suggests the airline employees erred in removing a passenger. “If you’re going to push the limits, you’re going to run the risk of being denied travel, because it’s all up to the cabin crew or the gate agents,” said Peter A. McLauchlan, a partner with the transportation law firm Gardere Wynne Sewell. “They have a nice laundry list of what could be offensive to other passengers, and airline safety gives them lots of cover.”

In the past, when passengers were removed from flights, only fellow travelers knew; now social media exposes these disputes to a worldwide audience.

Aaron Rodgers can still remember his close encounter of the third kind. The Packers quarterback revealed on Pete Holmes’ “You Made It Weird” podcast, as reported by the Milwaukee Record, he and former Cal teammate Steve Levy spotted a flying saucer while in New Jersey back in 2005. “It was a large orange, left-to-right-moving object. Because of the overcast nature of the night and the snow, you couldn’t make out — it was kind of behind the clouds we were seeing, but it was definitively large, moving from left to right. It was me, Steve [Levy] and his brother that saw it. And it goes out of sight and we look at each other and go: ‘What in the f–k was that?’” Rodgers also recalled that he heard what sounded like fighter jets after the initial sighting. Then his chat with Holmes took a different turn when quizzed by the comedian about whether he masturbates ahead of games. “I want to be calm out there, so I’m never opposed to it,” he said. “You got to be nice and relaxed out there, so whatever is gonna put me in that state, man.” Rodgers’ girlfriend Olivia Munn previously shared that the couple don’t have sex on game day, though they’ve been willing to make some exceptions. “It depends on how late the game is … I try to have sex as much as I can,” Munn said.

Aaron Rodgers can still remember his close encounter of the third kind. The Packers quarterback revealed on Pete Holmes’ “You Made It Weird” podcast, as reported by the Milwaukee …

(CNN) - Personal, historic details of more than 132 million people were released online through the 1940 Census Monday, providing the public with free access to a slice of American history. The National Archives and Records Administration unlocked the records after a mandatory 72-year waiting period and released more than 3.8 million digital images in collaboration with Archives.com. Earlier Census records were made available to the public, but not all of them are searchable online free of charge, said Megan Smolenyak, family history advisor at Archives.com. Monday's release marks the first time researchers, genealogists and history hunters can find detailed records online in one place for free. The 1940 Census was conducted as the Great Depression was winding down and before the country’s entry into World War II, reflecting the economic tumult of the era and the New Deal recovery program of the 1930s. See more LIFE magazine photos of 'test' Census takers preparing for 1940 "The 1940 set is really special because of the time it captures, which was so pivotal in American history," Smolenyak said. "It's not only for people seeking information about their families; for people 72 and older it provides a snapshot into their early lives." In an era when households consisted of multiple generations of families, the records include names, ages and occupations of everyone in the home, she said. The 1940 Census also marked the first time people were asked detailed questions about their homes and whether they had a radio, “flush toilets,” electricity or running water. For now, the site is not searchable by names. Starting a search requires an approximate address from April 1, 1940, to find the right “enumeration district,” or geographic area covered by a census taker. (Address sources could include birth, marriage and death certificates, employment records, scrapbooks, Social Security application information or the 1930 census.) The enumeration district can then be plugged that into a search engine to browse Census records from that area. In an era before mail-order surveys and online questionnaires, census workers went door-to-door to collect information. Questions new to the census included residence five years earlier, income, highest level of school completed and detailed questions on unemployment history, meant to measure the effects of the Great Depression. The records reveal a snapshot of history. Occupations listed as examples for the occupation question included frame spinner, salesman, laborer, rivet heater and music teacher. Examples of industries included cotton mill, retail grocery, farm, shipyard and public school. The 1940 Census counted 5.1 million farmers, compared with 613,000 farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers tallied in the 2010 American Community Survey. In 1940, a supplementary census asked veterans if they served in the World War, Spanish-American War, Philippine Insurrection or Boxer Rebellion. The supplemental schedule also asked about participation in two national insurance plans: Social Security and Railroad Retirement. Monday's release shows more details about the 1940 Census data, which was already searchable online, and shows how much the country's population and demographics have changed. The country's population grew from 132 million in 1940 to about 308 million in 2010. New York was the most populous state in 1940 with 13.5 million people; during the most recent census in 2010, California earned the top spot, with 37.3 million people. New York City, the country's most populous city, had 7.3 million people in 1940, compared with 8.2 million people today. The 1940 Census also found that 89.8% of the population was white and 9.8% was "Negro." Other options for race included Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Hindu and Korean - the 1940 Census didn't collect information on the Hispanic population. The 2010 Census found that 72.4% and 12.6% of the U.S. population was single-race white and black, respectively, and that 4.8% were Asian, 0.9% were American Indian or Alaska Native and 2.9% were two or more races. In 2010, 16.3% of the population identified as Hispanic, which can be any race.

By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN (CNN) -- Personal, historic details of more than 132 million people were released online through the 1940 Census Monday, providing the public with free access to a slice of American history.

It won't be long before the paparazzi photograph a panty-less Brett Favre exiting a luxury vehicle, exposing the Hall of Famer's full monty for the enjoyment of TMZ gawkers. "Britney Favre" — a nickname coined by columnist Bob Wojnowski — is just the latest example of pro sports' joyous descent into the reality-TV show abyss. Commissioner Roger Goodell can rename the 2009 NFL season "The Flavor of Favre." ESPN has run the pilot episode on a constant loop since Favre's last fake retirement in February. Chris Mortensen, Ed Werder and Peter King were the potential brides eventually stiffed by Favre and his handlers, who surprisingly flirted with Jay Glazer in the Episode 1 cliffhanger. The World Wide Leader and Sirius NFL Radio quickly booked confessional-style interviews with Fran Tarkenton to talk about Favre's season-opening shocker — his decision to join the Vikings at the conclusion of training camp. "I really think the whole Brett Favre saga of retiring, unretiring," Tarkenton said on NFL Radio, "it's a circus. It's an absolute circus, and it takes away from all the other things that are going on with the Vikings, with the NFL. We're getting ready for football season and this is a circus and I just have no interest in it." Take those words and whiny attitude for exactly what they are — the ramblings of a 69-year-old man who is loathe to come to grips with what television and money have done to professional sports. It's not Favre's fault. Television and money corrode values and ethics. Sportsmanship, individual sacrifice for the benefit of team and integrity had no chance of survival once television and money took over professional sports. I don't want to make too much of this, but everything you see playing out in the world of American sports is also playing out in our society at large. America has become one massive reality-TV show and all its citizens are vying to be contestants. No one is satisfied being part of a team. We all want to be the star of our own show, free to create the rules as we go. We're not mad at Brett Favre. We're jealous. He skipped the offseason conditioning program and training camp and still signed for $12.5 million, the starting position and the opportunity to embarrass Packers general manager Ted Thompson. Hell hath no fury like a scorned diva quarterback. Favre is spoiled, petulant, narcissistic and irresponsible. He's no different from Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. Wealth and fame ruined Favre at a young age, and now we're fascinated by the flaws they created. We complain that we're tired of hearing about Britney Favre. But we google him and tweet about him incessantly. We click on the stories with his name in the headline. We anxiously anticipate Peter King's next ode to John Madden's favorite quarterback. And when we're not watching "Flavor of Favre," we're a couple of channels over being captivated by (Michael) Vick Doggy Dogg's performance in "I Love Philadelphia." Or maybe we tune in to Plaxico Burress' latest in "Countdown to Lockdown." Seriously, what's happening on the field doesn't matter all that much anymore. It's the story behind the story, the story away from the field or court that captures our imagination. And it's the story the athletes want to tell. Shaq has a reality show on ABC. Terrell Owens is on VH-1. The Bengals are on HBO's "Hard Knocks." Warren Sapp, Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice danced with the stars on ABC. When an athlete can't get a network to pick him up, he takes his reality skills to the Web. Stephon Marbury live streams his life and credibility away. Cowboys tight end Martellus Bennett held the black-on-black racist "Black Olympics" on MartyBTV. The NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball all have their own networks. They're foolishly missing the boat. Why are they allowing the other networks to cash in on the athletes they turned into stars? The networks owned by the leagues need original programming. Maybe if Chad Johnson was provided the opportunity to bojangle for dollars on a reality show, he wouldn't find it necessary to bojangle on Sundays. You think people wouldn't watch Roger Goodell's version of "The Apprentice" or "CourtTV?" His sit-down meetings with Pacman Jones would be must-see TV. John Madden could break out his telestrator and diagram Pacman's make-it-rain technique. How about Josh Hamilton as the star of "MLB Rehab?" Darryl Strawberry could co-star as his accountability partner. Come on, let's quit the charade. Pro sports jumped the shark more than a decade ago. The circus Tarkenton is crying about has been in town for a long, long time. The games are an afterthought. They're vehicles to promote fame and the leverage to negotiate a contract for more money and less responsibility. You blame the players and their agents. I blame the rules makers, the owners, the grown men with billions who should've seen this coming and implemented rules to safeguard the integrity of their games. Too much of the money in pro sports is tied to individual fame, and not nearly enough cash is tied to the win-loss record. When fans care more about winning and losing than the players in the locker room do, it's impossible to deny the foundation of the games have been damaged. The LeBron James reality show will focus all next season on whether he'll dash for New York cash rather than will the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals. We've all been a witness to money and fame's transformation of King James into Drama Queen James, the sore loser, the dunk-video thief. Brett Favre used to be king of the NFL, known for his childlike passion for the game. Now he's Britney Favre. And oops, he's unretired again. You can e-mail Jason at [email protected] or find him on Facebook at facebook.com/jasonwhitlock.

'Flava' Favre is king of new reality TV sports culture

The digital age has long assumed that wired equals smart. Add e-mail and Web to a phone, and it becomes a smartphone. Hook up electric utilities to a sensor network, and you get the much-hyped "smart grid." Inject computers and broadband connections into schools, and you get smart kids. But when it comes to our minds, Nicholas Carr argues that our obsession with connection has a cost. The Internet, Carr argues in his new book The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, is a distraction factory. And it doesn't merely flatten our thinking during the moments we're tweeting or flitting among blogs, he writes. Instead, it may be rewiring our brains, wrecking our attention spans and replacing contemplative consumption of information with a frenetic search for mental fast food. The Shallows updates Marshall McLuhan's thesis that "the medium is the message"--the technology we use to share our thoughts inescapably shapes how we think. Carr's book, which will be released later this month, is sure to draw venom from the Web consultants and new-media professors who have happily heralded the end of the printed word. But he assembles strong scientific and anecdotal evidence that the way brains work has been altered with every new medium introduced, from Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to Lee De Forest's audion, and that the Internet may be the most effective mind-mutating technology of all time. Forbes spoke with Carr about his belief that Internet-connected people are losing their ability to think deeply, what the rise of devices like the iPad and Kindle might mean for that shift, and his defense of President Obama's recent anti-gadget jab. Forbes: Technology is often seen as a kind of virtuous cycle of intelligence, each new idea helping to produce the next one. But you make a case that our ability to concentrate and think deeply has suffered because of the Internet. Are we really becoming less smart? It's true that we're seeing a much faster influx of new technologies. But I don't think that alone tells us everything about the depth of our thinking at an intellectual or a societal level. In The Shallows, I'm looking at a mode of thinking that's been cherished in the past, a more thoughtful, contemplative way of experiencing life and the world. Because of those different kinds of thinking, I'm wary of reducing the question of how smart we are to the flow of technological innovation. So we may be innovating more but thinking less deeply? Right. The human brain is very flexible, and there are many ways to think.

Author Nicholas Carr argues the Internet is robbing us of contemplation.

Big Bank Hank, one-third of the Sugarhill Gang, the unlikely ambassadors who took hip-hop out of Bronx parks and onto the pop charts, died on Tuesday in Englewood, N.J. He was 58. The cause was complications of cancer, said David Mallie, business manager for the two other members of the Sugarhill Gang, Wonder Mike and Master Gee. The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” was not the first commercially released hip-hop single, but it was the one that effectively birthed the genre as a commercial force. The song, which used the break from Chic’s disco smash “Good Times” as a foundation, became a radio staple soon after its release in 1979, reaching No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sugar Hill Records, the group’s label, said it sold two million copies. Big Bank Hank was born Henry Lee Jackson in the Bronx on Jan. 11, 1956, and grew up close to DJ Kool Herc, Coke La Rock and other hip-hop pioneers. He was not originally a rapper by trade. In the late 1970s he was working the door at a Bronx club called the Sparkle, where he met a rapper named Grandmaster Caz. He offered to manage Caz’s group, the Mighty Force MCs, borrowing money from his father to get it a worthy sound system for its live appearances. To pay back the loan, he took a job at Crispy Crust Pizza in Englewood. “He would rap all the time,” Wonder Mike said in an interview on Tuesday. “While he was making the pizzas, while he was slicing them, while he was serving them.” At the pizza shop he met Joey Robinson Jr., a son of Sylvia Robinson, soul singer turned record executive. After seeing a rapper perform at a club, Ms. Robinson had become determined to release a rap record, and she built the Sugarhill Gang from scratch. Mr. Robinson heard Mr. Jackson rapping in the pizza shop and invited him to audition for his mother, who approved of his rapping and his personality. “He was boisterous — he filled the room,” Wonder Mike said. “Ralph Kramden-type stuff.” The Sugarhill Gang was convened on a Friday, and by Monday it was in the studio to record its first song, “Rapper’s Delight,” which was soon released as a single, in the fall of 1979. Until that time, hip-hop was mostly the purview of parties in nightclubs, parks and even apartment-complex rec rooms. Reportedly recorded in a single take, “Rapper’s Delight” — the full version ran more than 14 minutes — immediately shifted the center of gravity from hip-hop as a live form in which D.J.’s and rappers shared billing to one that gave primacy to rappers and their recordings. Within weeks, the Sugarhill Gang was opening for Parliament, the leading funk outfit of the day. Soon it was headlining its own shows. Many contended that “Rapper’s Delight” was not representative of the hip-hop that was pulsing through the Bronx — it was a little too smooth, and the Sugarhill Gang, from New Jersey, wasn’t one of the known crews. Nevertheless, it lit a fire under other record labels and hip-hop crews, and soon it had plenty of commercial competition. The group was also chided for lack of originality; many of Big Bank Hank’s rhymes on “Rapper’s Delight” were taken from one of Grandmaster Caz’s rhyme books. Not having much experience writing lyrics, he had asked his friend for help. His verse on the song began: “Check it out, I’m the C-A-S-AN, the O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y/You see, I go by the code of the doctor of the mix and these reasons I’ll tell you why.” Casanova Fly was a nickname of Grandmaster Caz. The lack of formal credit became a sticking point over the years; to this day, Grandmaster Caz does not receive a writing credit on the song. Despite releasing a handful of records after “Rapper’s Delight,” the Sugarhill Gang never matched its early success and eventually disbanded in the mid-1980s, though it occasionally reunited for performances and released a children’s hip-hop album in 1999. In 2011, “Rapper’s Delight” was named to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. Information on survivors was not immediately available. A version of this article appears in print on November 12, 2014, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Big Bank Hank, 58, an Early Star of Rap. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

Big Bank Hank was one of the three members of the Sugarhill Gang, whose “Rapper’s Delight” put rap on the commercial map.

Maroon 5 may have promised to stay for just “One More Night” in the big hit off their 2012 album Overexposed, but the pop-rock band ended up hanging around a whole lot longer. Billboard announced yesterday that the song had officially tied Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” for most number of weeks in the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 in 2012 so far. Both pop songs have logged nine whole weeks on top—and we’ll find out next week whether “One More Night” passes its predecessor for a definite win. The two music powerhouses aren’t the only tie on the top ten songs list with the longest leads this year. After Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” and fun.’s “We Are Young,” there’s a tie between Taylor Swift‘s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You).” Next is a four-way tie between Flo Rida’s “Whistle,” Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” and Rihanna’s “We Found Love.” The last song on the list is Katy Perry’s “Part of Me.” (The dominance of songs that hold onto the top spot for months at a time means that even some of the most omnipresent tunes—PSY’s “Gangnam Style,” notably, and the extant One Direction oeuvre—will probably never reach the top of the charts.) (MORE: Why Is the ‘Song of the Fall’ Not a Thing?) We called it, not just maybe: back in September we predicted that, based on chart placement alone, “One More Night” would be the next “Call Me Maybe”-level hit of the year. (To be fair, the original prediction was for a song that would last until the first week of December, but we’re calling it early.) Will it happen again, a season of one song to rule them all? And can our totally unscientific music-prediction metric work its magic a second time, predicting which song will be the big hit around Valentine’s Day? Again, we’ll start with the songs in the top 10 that haven’t yet reached the top and that have gained ground in the past week: (MORE: One Direction’s Songwriters: They’re What Make the Boy Band Beautiful) Then we knock out anything that’s been on the charts for more than 10 weeks and might be losing steam, leaving: Rihanna isn’t charting in the digital downloads or on-demand categories, so she’s out of the running. Flo Rida is also still at No. 10, whereas Carly Rae Jepsen was No. 2 in June—plus, while the song is super danceable, it’s pretty hard to sing along with “I Cry”—so his chances are slim. That leaves Ke$ha and Bruno Mars. Which song will you be dancing to at a New Years Party? On earworm-ness alone, the winner is clear. Check back in February to see if we were right:

Both acts have had a single top the charts for nine weeks in 2012. Don't say we didn't warn you

Much remained unclear after the ruling, including whether and when abortion clinics that had already closed because of the admitting-privileges rule would reopen. Ms. Miller of Whole Woman’s Health told reporters earlier this month that a decision in their favor would give abortion providers the ability to consider reopening clinics, but that they would not open again overnight. In May 2013, two months before Gov. Rick Perry signed the bill into law, Texas had 41 facilities providing abortions. In November 2013, after the admitting-privileges requirement was put in place, there were 22. “The rebuilding of that infrastructure is going to take some time,” Ms. Miller had said. “We’ve had to let our leases go in the facilities. We’ve had to sell our buildings. We’ve had to sell the equipment. Our staff has been laid off. Our physicians have gotten new jobs.” Nan Little Kirkpatrick, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, which provides financial assistance to women seeking abortions in the northern half of the state, predicted that some clinics would reopen, especially in the Panhandle region, which currently has none. “I think the odds are actually pretty good for us to get some clinics back,” she said. “One reason we saw providers close was because they couldn’t get staff to stay on, with their jobs completely up in the air. Now that we have some assurance from the Supreme Court, I think it will be easier for providers to attract and keep staff.” Supporters of the law said that it was too early to say what their next steps would be. State Representative Jodie Laubenberg, the Republican who sponsored the bill in the State House and who called the ruling “bad news for women and a sad day for our nation,” declined Monday to say whether she would try to pass another abortion restriction bill when the Legislature meets early next year. “Right now, I’m just dealing with the ruling,” Ms. Laubenberg said. “I can’t even tell you what I’m going to do next session.” Wendy Davis, the former state senator whose filibuster of the bill in 2013 turned her into a national political figure, said Monday that the court’s 5-to-3 ruling made her less concerned about the next moves from anti-abortion activists and lawmakers in Texas. “They pushed back very hard on the idea that focusing on the clinics, and closing clinics down, was going to pass constitutional muster,” Ms. Davis said of the Supreme Court’s majority. “If I were someone in the anti-abortion camp right now, thinking about how to regroup and push back, their options have been severely curtailed, if not completely closed off, by virtue of the court’s decision.” Long before the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas had been experiencing what critics of the law called an “abortion access crisis,” with 19 clinics in a state with 5.4 million women of reproductive age. If that number had been reduced further to nine clinics, abortion-rights advocates said the remaining clinics would not have been able to meet statewide demand, and they predicted an increase in the waiting times to get an appointment and a rise in the number of women who attempt to self-induce abortions using black-market drugs. The reduction in clinics had increased the travel distances for many women, including those in rural and more impoverished parts of Texas. Vicki Saporta, president and chief executive of the National Abortion Federation, said that since the law was passed, the group’s hotline had been flooded with calls from Texas women. “Too many of those women, after hearing how far they would have to travel to access care, simply said, ‘I can’t get there,’” she said in a statement. “Other women have made appointments, hopeful they could find someone to drive them, only to have to cancel at the last minute. We’ve even heard from women forced to spend the night in their car because they couldn’t afford a hotel or another round trip to the clinic.” Lawyers for Texas, as well as state Republican leaders who supported the tightened restrictions, said the law was needed to improve patient safety, reduce errors and misdiagnosis, and prevent less-qualified doctors from treating patients. And they said that abortion providers had exaggerated the travel burdens facing some women and the impact of clinic closures, and that it was not clear that the predicted permanent closures would occur. Abortion providers and other critics of the law said it was a thinly disguised attempt to shut down clinics that had been providing safe, legal abortions. They said the new requirements were costly and medically unnecessary. Major medical organizations like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said the admitting-privileges and surgical-center requirements did not benefit patient safety. In 2013, after the State Senate passed a version of the bill, the Republican lieutenant governor at the time, David Dewhurst, wrote a Twitter post celebrating the bill, known at the time as Senate Bill 5. He wrote: “We fought to pass SB5 thru the Senate last night, & this is why!” Attached was a graphic produced by opponents of the bill that said the legislation would force many clinics to shut their doors. But Texas Republicans denied the claims that the intent of the law was a backdoor ban on abortions. On Monday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who is an outspoken opponent of abortion, called the ruling “a devastating blow” to the protection of women’s health and safety in Texas. “By its ruling, the court held that the ability of abortion clinics to remain open, even under substandard conditions, outweighs the state’s ability to put women’s health and safety first,” Mr. Patrick said in a statement. Manny Fernandez reported from Houston and Abby Goodnough from Washington. David Montgomery contributed reporting from Austin.

The Supreme Court ruling on a restrictive Texas law allows 10 clinics to remain open, while giving abortion providers and advocates their biggest win in a three-year legal fight.

Authorities in El Paso, Colo., have opened an investigation into the decade-old disappearance of two foster children, one of whom appears to have been physically abused while in the care of his parents. “The message is that we want to get this out, and we want to find these boys,” said El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa at a press conference on Thursday night. Edward Dylan Bryant, who would today be 18-years-old, disappeared in 2001, and Austin Bryant, who would be 15, went missing as early as 2003. Authorities say since then, their parents never reported them missing and have falsified records to collect $175,000 from the government to raise the two boys. The boy’s adopted father, Edward Bryant, 58, and mother, Linda, 54, who are separated, were arrested in Texas and currently in jail in Colorado Springs. They have been held on $1 million bail. Each face theft and forgery charges. They have not, however, been charged in the disappearances of Austin and Edward. Calls to an attorney who represented them in a bankruptcy case filed in 2007 did not return a phone message to the Associated Press and their legal representation remains unclear. The boys’ father allegedly told authorities that Edward ran away in 2001 and Austin in 2003, right before the family moved to Texas. The Bryants lived in the Monument area near Colorado Springs between 1999 and 2005 and most recently, they lived in the Dallas area. He allegedly laid blame on his wife for any money received since their disappearance. He denied knowledge of receiving money for the children, but allegedly admitted to police that he signed documentation stating that the children were in his care in order to continue to receive funds from the Colorado Department of Human Services. He also allegedly acknowledged that he and his wife never reported the children missing, according to the affidavit. His wife, Linda, allegedly admitted some criminal culpability for not reporting the missing children. She allegedly acknowledged that she intentionally covered up the fact they were missing to make it impossible for those in position to make a rescue, according to the affidavit. She allegedly offered to take reasonability for all the charges so her husband could keep the five children they still have. Linda denied killing the boys and denied most of the abuse allegations, but allegedly acknowledged delaying food for Edward and Austin, the affidavit said. The police investigation started shortly after Bryan Pennington, a foster child who knew Austin growing up, reported Austin missing on Jan. 22, 2011, after a conversation with another person who knew Austin, according to the affidavit. James Bryant, the boys' adopted brother who was interviewed at Fort Campbell, Ky., agreed to discuss situation with the El Paso Sheriff’s office. James told detectives that there has been significant abuse at home. He said Austin was spanked, restrained by being rolled “like a burrito” and perhaps handcuffed. He also said Austin was denied food two to three times a week as a form of punishment, according to an affidavit. Austin got so hungry, James said, he would eat out of the garbage can, according to the affidavit. He would also be left in the garage days at a time and be forced to run up and down the driveway for several hours. The last time he saw Austin alive was in 2003. He also said his mother asked him for help to find a friend to pose as Austin for an upcoming Department of Human Services visit, according to the affidavit. Pennington, meanwhile, informed investigators that Austin told him that his parents used a taser on him and showed him welts all over his torso, according to the affidavit. The affidavit has little information regarding Edward. James told authorities he doesn’t know anything about his adopted brother, according to the affidavit. He was told Edward was sent to Arizona to care for an ailing relative. State adoption records are sealed, Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Human Services told the Associated Press. An El Paso County Department of Human Services spokesman didn't return phone messages. Maketa stressed that the investigation is ongoing and he hopes to find the boys alive. "We're really asking the country to let us know if you know anything," he said.

Authorities in El Paso, Colo., have opened an investigation into the decade-old disappearance of two foster children, one of whom appears to have been severely physically abused under the care of his parents.

Editor's note: Gary Marcus is a cognitive psychologist and author of the book "Guitar Zero." He is the director of the New York University Center for Language And Music. The idea that learning a new skill - say juggling, cooking, or playing guitar - can be like an addiction is no joke. I should know. As a college professor/scientist, who has written about the dynamics of narcotics and self-control, I have spent the last 3 1/2 years all but addicted to learning to play guitar. Despite lacking anything that might remotely resemble musical talent, I find no day is complete without at least a little bit of time on the guitar. Even listening to music can be a little like a drug. A brain imaging study that came out last year proved what many scientists long suspected: Listening to music can lead the brain to release the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is the brain's universal signal for pleasure, an internal system that tells the brain (sometimes rightly, sometime wrongly) that it is doing the right thing. Drugs elicit dopamine artificially by fooling the brain, while activities like sex and eating elicit dopamine naturally. Listening to music taps into the dopamine system in part because hearing something new is a signal that the brain is learning something, and we have evolved to enjoy acquiring new information. Shortcuts like drugs, however are fleeting. Although narcotics can elicit dopamine fairly directly, over time it takes a bigger and bigger dose to get the same rush, and can lead people to destroy families, risk their health and even lose their lives. Learning new things is a lot safer, and ultimately a lot more satisfying. There is a myth that children (and for that matter adults) don’t really enjoy learning new things, but as every video game maker has realized, the truth is just the opposite. From "Space Invaders" to "Halo," "Grand Theft Auto" and "Zelda," practically every video game is in part about mastering new skills. As video game designers realized long ago, if you can keep a player poised on the knife’s edge of conquering new challenges, neither too easy and too hard but square in what the cognitive psychologist Vygotsky called the Zone of Proximal Development, you can keep gamers engaged for hours. As long as we constantly feel challenged but never overwhelmed, we keep coming back for more and constantly sharpen new skills. The trouble, though, with most video games lies in what they teach, which often stays with the game when the game is complete. A game that makes you good at shooting aliens may have little application in the real world. Learning a more lasting new skill - be it playing guitar or learning to speak a foreign language - can equally harness the brain’s joy of learning new things, but leave you with something of permanent value, in a way that neither drugs nor video games ever could. It leaves you with a sense of fulfillment, which goes back to what pioneering psychologist Abraham Maslow called "self-actualization." As Aristotle realized, there is a difference between the pleasures of the moment (hedonia), and the satisfaction that comes from constantly developing and living one’s life to the fullest (eudaimonia). In recent years, scientists have finally begun to study eudaimonia. Research suggests that the greater sense of purpose and personal growth associated with eudaimonia correlates with lower cortisol levels, better immune function and more efficient sleep. From the strict "Selfish Gene" perspective - in which all that we do is driven by the self-perpetuating interests of our individual genes – hobbies like playing music rarely make sense, especially for mere amateurs. But maybe the art of reinvention and acquiring new skills, even as adults, can give us a sense of a life well-lived. According to a 2009 Gallup Poll, 85% of Americans who don't play a musical instrument wish that they could. Why not start today? As it happens, this week is National Wanna Play Music Week, a perfect time to pick up a new skill that will bring satisfaction throughout life. What stops many people from learning something new is the thought that they are too old, not good enough or just plain busy. If my own experience is any guide, none of these matter much. Taking up an instrument (starting at age 38) has been one of the most challenging but rewarding things I've ever done. So long as your goal is growth rather than stardom, learning something new may just turn out to be one of the most rewarding things you ever do. Your brain will thank you for it. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest stories from CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and the CNN Medical Unit producers. They'll share news and views on health and medical trends - info that will help you take better care of yourself and the people you love.

Editor's note: Gary Marcus is a cognitive psychologist and author of the book "Guitar Zero." He is the director of the New York University Center for Language And Music. The idea that learning a new skill -- say juggling, cooking, or playing guitar -- can be like an addiction is no joke.

Samsung attempted to differentiate itself in the smartphone market with its latest offerings, the Galaxy Note Edge and Galaxy Note 4, but analysts say it isn't enough to frighten Apple. The South Korean technology giant on Tuesday rolled out the 5.6-inch Edge – which features a curved screen that wraps around the edges of the device allowing for a different set of information displays independent from the main screen. It also showed off the 5.7-inch Note 4, which can be paired with a new virtual reality device called the Gear VR. The launch precedes a highly-anticipated Apple event on September 9, when it's widely expected to unveil the iPhone 6 and possibly a wearable device touted as the iWatch. Read MoreSamsung reveals two phones, virtual reality device "Samsung is headed in the right direction introducing new technology like the curved display, but the products itself aren't threatening to Apple," said Tom Kang, managing director, Mobile Devices at Counterpoint Technology. "The Edge doesn't steal the limelight from the iPhone 6, but it will make product engineers at Apple think about moving towards adopting similar technology in the future," he said. Sources have said that Apple will likely unveil larger 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screens for the new iPhones - far larger than the current 4-inch iPhone 5s - the first time the firm has introduced different sized models simultaneously. This is significant, says Kang, as it gives consumers more choice within Apple's product offerings. Despite this, Apple's shares slipped 4.2 percent on Tuesday following the launch of Samsung's new smartphones. Shares of Samsung, meanwhile, gained 2 percent on Wednesday. Read MoreWhy Apple's next iPhone will be bigger than people think Nevertheless, other tech experts agreed the products are no game changer for Samsung. Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at Enderle Group, noted that the Edge's signature feature, a curved display, does not have apps that support the display.

Samsung attempted to differentiate itself in the smartphone market with its latest offerings, but analysts say it isn't enough to frighten Apple.

Editor's note: Eric Liu is the founder of Citizen University and the author of several books, including "A Chinaman's Chance" and "The Gardens of Democracy." He was a White House speechwriter and policy adviser for President Bill Clinton. Follow him on Twitter @ericpliu. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. (CNN) -- This month, a federal judge allowed North Carolina to put into effect new laws that would make it more difficult to vote. Most of the American public didn't notice. The Republicans pushing to restrict voting rights nationwide are betting on such inattention. Emboldened by a recent Supreme Court case limiting the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, GOP legislators have moved swiftly in numerous states to cut early voting and same-day registration, and to require ID cards at the ballot box. Democrats claim these measures will discourage young and nonwhite voters from voting, who tend to vote more often for Democrats. GOP legislators insist they're only worried about voter fraud and the integrity of the electoral system. But there is little evidence of significant fraud. And these legislators don't actually dispute the Democrats' basic claim. Indeed, rigging the rules to dampen turnout among youth and minorities appears to be a key strategy for some Republicans. When people complain about the impact of voting restrictions, they're often dismissed as Democratic mouthpieces. Voting rights, to the average citizen, becomes just another partisan football. This is bad for the country. But it's particularly bad for the GOP. While it may seem that the Republicans who want to restrict voting are winning right now, their strategy in fact threatens to isolate the party in the long term. Republican leaders insist, correctly, that plenty of young, Asian-American, Hispanic, and African-American voters respond positively to a message of smaller government and more economic freedom. But prior to stances on issues, what voters of color and young voters pick up on is a vibe -- an overall sense of whether we are welcome. And the vibe that many in the GOP have been sending lately has been less than welcoming. Consider not just the efforts to invalidate the Voting Rights Act and to restrict access to the ballot, which many Millennials and African-Americans have taken personally, but also the hostility of many Republicans toward undocumented immigrants. Consider too the remarks of people like Alabama congressman Mo Brooks, who declared recently that President Obama and the Democrats are prosecuting a "war on whites." Whipping up the anxieties of older whites may be rational politics -- after all, they are still the likeliest voters -- but it alienates what demographer Paul Taylor calls "the next America." As Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention recently put it, the GOP, having painted itself in a corner, "applied a second coat." I am a Democrat, so I know my comments will be presumed partisan. But I am foremost an American who is quite conscious of what it took for me, the son of Chinese immigrants, to get to vote. A few weeks ago I met John Lewis, icon of the civil rights movement and longtime Georgia congressman. It happened to be the 50th anniversary of the signing of Civil Rights Act into law. I asked him how today's youth should engage, given that the obstacles and challenges are so different from what he experienced as a teenager. His answer was simple: Participate. Vote. This is the moment for a rising Republican to deliver precisely that message to people of color and young voters: Participate. Vote. It's the moment for a leading Republican to argue that his or her party should be on the side of more democracy, not less; more inclusion, not less. If there is actual voter fraud, root it out, this leader should say, but not in a way that seems like a whites-only backroom plot. Sen. Rand Paul has shown signs that he could be such a voice. He's met with constituencies that national Republicans often ignore, like African-American voters and college students. His outreach has seemed in earnest, and he has been a refreshing voice on issues like reform of criminal sentencing. But telling, also, was the quick getaway he made when an undocumented "Dreamer" recently came up to him and another GOP congressman to ask them about immigration reform. Outreach can't be only scripted and packaged, it has to come from readiness to engage. More importantly, it has to emerge from a sincere belief that more participation is better. A party confident about its ideas doesn't work in a cynical way to shrink the electorate. It sees in "the next America" a majority waiting to be made. Rock the Vote has just launched a new nonpartisan campaign to push back against voting restrictions. Celebrities, musicians and students and many progressives have joined. All that's missing are some Republicans to argue -- in a visible, unexpected, Nixon-goes-to-China way -- that rocking the vote is better than rigging it. Are there any? Their party needs them, and so does their country. Read CNNOpinion's new Flipboard magazine. Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Eric Liu says Republicans who want to restrict voting may win now, but the party will suffer in the long term.

The gunman who killed two women in an Indiana supermarket late Wednesday reveled in his bloodlust for at least two years on Facebook. Shawn Walter Bair, 22, stormed Martin’s Supermarket in Elkhart about 10 p.m. and shot a 20-year-old store employee and 44-year-old customer, Sgt. Trent Smith said. “I wouldn't say it was well-planned, but it was obviously thought out,” said Smith. “He was going to the store with a mission.” The younger victim was identified by a friend on Facebook as Krystle Dikes. The customer was identified by police as Rachelle Godfread. "For those who don't know, my mom was shot and killed last night at a grocery store," Joe Godfread, her son, wrote on Facebook. "Rachelle Godfread we love you." RELATED: LANZA'S TWISTED CALL TO RADIO STATION Bair's mayhem ended when two police officers arriving quickly on the scene shot and killed him as he pointed his 40-caliber handgun at a potential third victim. Police have not uncovered a motive, but the gunman’s Facebook provided a window into his demented mind. Bair showed a fascination with serial killers and posted a gruesome photo of his face bloodied by what he said was a bite from a pit bull. “I MAY BE GOING TO HELL BUT ATLEAST I'M GOING HONEST AND YOU KNOW WHAT THATS ALL I'VE EVER BEEN YOU LOOK AT ME AND SEE THIS FREAK I SEE A GOD BECAUSE I EMBRACE MY F----- UP SIDE AND WHEN I'M IN HELL I HOPE YOU PASS THROUGH MY RACK HAVE FUN WITH THAT AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” he wrote in August 2011. Another post that same month was equally insane. RELATED: NORWAY MASS MURDERER HAD FAN IN LANZA “I HOPE YOU ALL BURN IN THE FURTHEST PITS OF HELL I HOPE THE TORTURE LASTS FOREVER AND EVERY SECOND OF EVERY MINUTE YOUR THINKING ABOUT YOUR LOVED ONES. EVERYONE WILL PASS THROUGH TORTURE RACKS MADE OF BONE WITH RAZOR BLADES MADE FROM FIRE I WILL BE PICASSO WITH A FIRE RAZOR BLADE BENEATH MY FINGERS,” he wrote. Other posts featured disturbing artwork of clowns, crime scenes and a poster of notorious serial killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. "There's not a day that goes by, it seems like anymore, where we're not learning of a school shooting or at a business. ... We hope that this would never come to our hometown and here it is," Smith said during a prior press conference at the scene of the crime. Bair lived with his parents. Cops searched the home and broke the news to stunned relatives. “You don’t ever want to think it of your child being involved in something like that,” Smith said at a Thursday press conference. “The initial shock, of someone coming to your door saying your son is dead. And a lot of the initial shock, a lot of the information was withheld from them.” RELATED: 12-YEAR-OLD SCHOOL SHOOTER CHOSE VICTIMS RANDOMLY: COPS Bair made his move Wednesday night, armed and carrying a knife, Smith said. He entered the story around 9:30 p.m. wearing a long heavy overcoat. A security guard who knew Bair became suspicious because he wasn't buying anything. "He took his time. I think he might have been hesitant while he was in the store. But whether he was watching people or picking out people, we'll never know," Smith said. Bair killed his first victim, Dikes, who was restocking the grocery, around 10:05 p.m. She loved dogs and was "the closest friend I've ever had," wrote her friend, Natasha Sellers. Commenters on her page said she did not know the gunman. After killing Dikes Bair stalked 12 aisles of the store and shot Godfread multiple times, Smith said. Surveillance video showed Bair shot at another employee but missed as she made a getaway unharmed. RELATED: ROSWELL TEACHER HAILED HERO FOR DISARMING SCHOOL SHOOTER Two police officers happened to be nearby and were on the scene within three minutes and heard a gunshot as they entered the supermarket, Smith said. When the cops came upon Bair, he was pointing his gun at a store manager who was on his knees as if in prayer. The madman then turned his gun toward the cops, who shot and killed him, ending the carnage as the manager fled for his life. Officials praised the officers for acting quickly and preventing more deaths. “They were professional,” said Smith. “They strategically cleared the store.” It didn’t appear Bair knew his victims, according to reports. Police were still investigating his criminal background. Elkhart is a town of 51,000 that's 15 miles south of South Bend, Ind. RELATED: MAN CHARGED FOR KILLING THREE CHILDREN WITH FLARE GUN Martin’s said the store would be closed Thursday. “The entire Martin’s family is saddened by this tragedy,” company president and CEO Rob Bartels said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families involved and the entire community.” Tony Elkhart told The Elkhart Truth his mother had been working at the deli of the supermarket when the chaos unfolded. He said she called him after being evacuated from the store. “As reality set in, and her being upset, I knew something was wrong,” Tony told the newspaper. “It makes me feel angry, obviously. This world I guess is kind of screwed up right now. You can't even go to the grocery store and be safe.”

A gunman stormed an Indiana supermarket late Wednesday, killing two women before police shot him dead. Police had yet to release the name of the 22-year-old who opened fire in the Martin’s Super Market in Elkhart, Ind. He killed a 20-year-old store employee and a 44-year-old shopper.

But behind the booming laughter and quick wit lies a dark secret. All three women were sexually abused and raped by their dad from their earliest memory until they reached puberty. Vile Kevin Kavanagh would click his fingers at his chosen victim and they would know they could be next in line for his sick abuse. Each girl was abused three times a week for more than a decade. Shockingly, these three unbelievably close women did not share their secret torment with each other until they were in their twenties. It was only when another victim of Kavanagh’s cruel reign of terror stepped forward that the sisters opened up to each other — and their mother — about their years of torture. But rather than let the experiences break them, they brought their terror into the open. Almost a decade after the last time he abused them, they pressed charges. At his trial at Dublin Circuit Court in May 1990 Kavanagh, then 69, was jailed for seven years after pleading guilty to a staggering 94 charges including rape, incest and indecent assault. Secret torment ... June, Joyce and Paula with their vile father, Kevin Kavanagh Kavanagh died in July 1996. It was a year after he was released from prison for good behaviour. The three sisters decided that to conquer their demons they needed to write a memoir. They now hope that the resulting book — Click, Click — will help other victims of child abuse. And they firmly believe that such horrific experiences do not have to ruin your life. Joyce, 55, who works in the community on safety initiatives, has been with her partner for five years and has six kids. She said: “We started writing our memoirs to help with our own healing. Unless you break down the secrecy around sexual abuse you have no hope of ever tackling it. “But when the book launched, the response we got from readers was incredible and many wrote to us and opened up about their own abuse, something they had never shared with anyone. “We really want this book to have an impact on survivors’ lives as we really have to tackle child abuse. “People don’t want to talk about child abuse as it’s an uncomfortable subject — but we need to do something so it becomes comfortable and people can say, ‘Yes, I was abused and this is something I want to move forward from’.” When the girls were being abused by the father of ten in their family home, they could never imagine anything positive could come out of the misery. Healing ... Joyce says writing book helped her overcome her pain Joyce added: “The abuse started at roughly the same age for all of us. My first clear recollection was around the age of six but I know it had been going on long before. “For me it stopped at the age of 17, when I had my first period. For June it stopped at 16 and for Paula it was 18.” Education worker June, 50, who is married with three sons, said: “You couldn’t put a number on how many times we were assaulted. It was a regular occurrence. A gap of three days would have been a long time between attacks.” Joyce said: “June and I had once drunkenly admitted to each other what had happened in our early twenties but we never had a proper conversation. It felt shameful. Our dad was still a part of our lives but we knew he couldn’t be trusted although it was never said out loud. “We always stayed with the kids when he was around and my skin would crawl whenever he came near me. Mum, who has recently passed away, was emotionally unattainable, so we never told her what was happening.” It was in 1989 that the truth about Kavanagh’s sickening child abuse came into the open. Joyce said: “Another victim tried to commit suicide because he had abused her — then the truth was finally out. “My sisters and I admitted that it had happened to us and we told our mother, who was horrified. “We all discussed it — but were all in deep shock. We had our first in-depth conversation about what had happened. Dad disappeared and we found he had signed himself into a psychiatric unit.” June said: “Listening to what happened to our sisters always seemed worse than remembering what happened to ourselves. “Hearing the ordeals of someone you love is horrific. We were all in shock and Mum was in a very bad way.” Abuse ... Joyce and June Kavanagh with their father Communications co-ordinator Paula, 48, who lives with her partner of 15 years, added: “It was very painful hearing my sisters’ memories.” The women, from Dublin, knew it was time their dad was prosecuted for his crimes. Joyce said: “We called the police as we couldn’t bear for him to hurt anyone else. “We knew we finally needed to talk to someone and went to Rape Crisis straight away. Within weeks we were all being counselled.” Sentencing him, the trial judge declared it was the most distressing, disturbing and upsetting case he had ever had to deal with. Seeing their father jailed, the Kavanagh sisters realised they needed to come to terms with what had happened to them and put their experiences into words. Joyce said: “We never got a ‘sorry’ from Dad for what he had done. He just bellowed after being sentenced, ‘Are you all happy now?’ “After the court case, we started to see our father wasn’t as powerful as we had imagined.” June added: “Writing an account was something we all felt driven to do. Our healing wouldn’t have been complete until we went to the depths we did by writing the book. “The writing challenged us to confront what had happened to us. The book took more than a decade to complete.” Joyce said: “We wanted to show the reader how a child is really feeling. It’s hard to read as it’s quite graphic in the descriptions of what happened to us but this element is something we decided was necessary. “We hoped the book would help people who have been abused or people who support the abused.” Support ... Paula hopes the book will help others in the same situation The women admit writing the book was a difficult process but they are proud to have produced something so honest which has helped them towards getting over their experiences. Joyce said: “Finishing the book was an amazing feeling — but it also felt like a loss as writing was a time we could be ourselves all together and talk about our struggles. “You don’t get many opportunities to be open and raw. “The book has brought us very close as sisters. Our other siblings are very proud of us.” Paula said: “I had been to therapy but never really engaged with it. But with the book you had no choice but to get involved. “There was safety and trust between us and when you have been abused you really lack the ability to trust.” June said: “In therapy I had the feeling I’d not got to the root of the problem. “But the book was a really concentrated effort. We would never have got that time or space in a therapy session. “The process of writing the book gave me time to think, ‘I was not responsible for what happened to me’. ” Joyce added: “Now that everything is out in the open we sisters have a wonderful friendship.” The trio hope their honest account will help people going through similar experiences. 'Uplifting' ... June says book helped her to confront her past June said: “This is an uplifting book as it is very important to give people hope. “The book shows you can move forward and not let abuse define your life. People who read the book when it was first published in Ireland have contacted us and told us about their own abuse. They had never told anyone before. “At one point I asked myself what I got out of the book and it has been that it helped me to like myself. “This sounds like a small statement but it’s huge and it transformed my life. “I believe we were meant to do this book. It was destiny.” Paula said: “Readers connecting with us makes us very proud. “We are never going to feel cured of what happened to us. It will always be at the back of our minds. “But we don’t mistrust any more and we lead healthy relationships.” Click, Click, by Joyce, June and Paula Kavanagh with Marian Quinn (Orion, £6.99) is out now. If you want to get in touch with the sisters, email [email protected]. By DEIDRE SANDERS, Sun Agony Aunt JUNE, Joyce and Paula are so brave to share their experiences of abuse. There will be hundreds – maybe thousands – who read their story and realise that they are not as alone as they fear. Child abuse casts a long shadow and so many suffer in silence. Even though these days we know child abuse is distressingly common, it is not something most of us dream of happening to someone we know, let alone our own family. Yet all of us will know victims personally, it’s just that we don’t know we do, because they feel so ashamed of what has happened to them they keep it a dark secret. I am a patron of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood and have backed their work for 20 years. Each time a family brings a secret like this out into the open, it helps so many more find understanding – and helps protect many children. If this is an issue that affects you, contact NAPC (0800 085 3330, napac.org.uk).

EXCLUSIVE: Sisters pen book to help healing after calling the cops on their vile father

Updated Dec 5, 2013 1:55 AM ET As time wound down in the Trail Blazers' victory over the Oklahoma City, LaMarcus Aldridge was showered with shouts of "MVP! MVP!" from the Portland fans. Aldridge had a season-high 38 points and added 13 rebounds in the Blazers' 111-104 win Wednesday night that snapped the Thunder's eight-game winning streak. It was his ninth double-double and 15th game with at least 20 points this season. He made a career-high 17 field goals. "Just surreal. It was humbling to have that moment here," Aldridge said of the crowd's reaction. "I've been here so long and I've had very few of those type of chants here. So that was fun. I thought that made the night complete for me." The victory gives the surprising Blazers a 16-3 record this season, best in the Western Conference and second only to Indiana overall. Portland has won 14 of its last 15 games, a stretch that includes an 11-game winning streak. Nicolas Batum's 3-pointer with 29.9 seconds to go all but sealed it for Portland, which had lost seven straight against Oklahoma City. The Thunder led by as many as 12 points in the first half, but Aldridge led a third-quarter rally and Portland built a 91-84 lead on consecutive 3-pointers from Dorell Wright and Damian Lillard with 7:58 left. Russell Westbrook's 3-pointer pulled the Thunder within 95-94 before Reggie Jackson's two free throws gave them a short-lived lead with 5:34 to go. Aldridge hit a layup and a jumper to make it 105-100 for the Blazers. Durant and Westbrook narrowed it again with consecutive baskets, but Batum's 3-pointer made it 108-104 before Durant missed a 3 on the other end. The Blazers made free throws for the final margin. Durant finished with 33 for the Thunder, who were playing the second game of a back-to-back after defeating Sacramento 97-95 Tuesday night. Westbrook had 21 points. "He was shooting turnarounds from almost the 3-point line over the top of our bigs and knocking them down," Durant said of Aldridge. "That's what great players do, they come through in the clutch and make shots." Batum and Lillard added 14 points apiece for the Blazers, who were coming off a 106-102 victory over Indiana on Monday. Portland is 8-1 at home. Aldridge scored 16 of his points in the third quarter, when the Blazers outscored the Thunder 35-21. "I don't know if I have the words, to be honest," Blazers coach Terry Stotts said of Aldridge's night. "Offensively, obviously he can score. But I liked his toughness, I liked his leadership, I liked his competitive fire. As much as he played very well, it was a lot of the intangibles that I really appreciated from him tonight." Wright's bank jumper evened the game at 27 to start the second quarter. It was close throughout the half, with Portland's Batum on Durant much of the time. Durant took off on a fast break for a dunk and added a free throw to give the Thunder a 55-47 lead, their biggest of the game to that point. Westbrook attempted a 3-pointer and the refs called a foul on Portland's Wesley Matthews, prompting an angry reaction from Stotts, who was given a technical, and the Thunder finished the half on a 9-0 for a 59-48 advantage. Durant led all scorers in the half with 17 points. "They hit a lot of tough 2s on us, shots we can live with," Durant said. "But they made enough to beat us." One bright spot for the Blazers was center Robin Lopez, who had 12 points and five rebounds in the first half. Acquired by the Blazers from New Orleans in a three-team offseason trade, Lopez finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Batum's 3 got the Blazers within 67-64 before Matthews' layup got them within one midway through the third quarter. Batum's pull-up jumper gave Portland a 70-69 lead, and Aldridge added a long jumper. The Blazers clung to the lead until Durant's jumper tied it at 78, but Aldridge answered with a turnaround jumper to cap a 10-point streak for the two-time All-Star. "I've been saying it from the start -- he's the best power forward in the game," Matthews said NOTES: Oklahoma City is 9-0 at home but 4-4 on the road. ... Portland has lost only one game at home this season. ... Oregon State receiver Brandin Cooks and running back Storm Woods were at the game. The Beavers (6-6) are waiting to see if they're headed to a bowl in the postseason. ... Oregon Ducks receiver Josh Huff was also at the game. ... Coming off a six-game home stand, Oklahoma City is playing three games in four nights before heading home to face Indiana on Sunday. ... Lopez has seven double-doubles this season.

LaMarcus Aldridge had a season-high 38 points and added 13 rebounds and the Portland Trail Blazers snapped Oklahoma Citys eight-game winning streak with a 111-104 victory over the Thunder on Wednesday...

Duchess of Cambridge's portrait unveiled Duchess of Cambridge's portrait unveiled Duchess of Cambridge's portrait unveiled Duchess of Cambridge's portrait unveiled Duchess of Cambridge's portrait unveiled Duchess of Cambridge's portrait unveiled What do you think of the Duchess of Cambridge's portrait? Sound off with iReport or have your say in the comments below. London (CNN) -- The first official portrait of Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, has been unveiled at London's National Portrait Gallery -- but has met with a mixed reaction from art critics and the public. Award-winning artist Paul Emsley, who spent three-and-a-half months painting the Duchess's likeness, said he had tried to portray her warmth and personality in the picture. "The Duchess explained that she would like to be portrayed naturally -- her natural self -- as opposed to her official self," he said in a video posted on the gallery's website. "She struck me as enormously open and generous and a very warm person, so after initially feeling it was going to be an unsmiling portrait I think it was the right choice in the end to have her smiling - that is really who she is." Both Catherine, who is expecting her first baby, and her husband Prince William, are said to be pleased with the finished painting, with the Duchess reportedly telling Emsley at a private viewing on Friday that it is "amazing... brilliant." Duchess attends first event since pregnancy However, reaction from art critics and the public has been more mixed, with many taking to social media, including Twitter, to share their thoughts, claiming the picture is unflattering and ages the Duchess beyond her years. Writing in the UK's Guardian newspaper, Charlotte Higgins claimed the painting transformed "a pretty young woman... into something unpleasant from the 'Twilight' franchise." In the Independent, art critic Michael Glover wrote that the portrait was "catastrophic," combining "hamsterish" cheeks and "hair whose featheriness has been borrowed from an advert for shampoo." Emsley, who was born in Glasgow but grew up in South Africa before returning to Britain in 1996, won the prestigious BP Portrait Award in 2007. He has previously painted portraits of Nelson Mandela and author VS Naipaul. Royal waxworks of William and Catherine revealed He created the work from a series of photographs taken during two sittings, at Kensington Palace in London and at his studio in South West England, in May and June last year. "I'm always worried about the sitter -- are they cold, are they hot, are they comfortable -- and photography today is so accurate and so good that it is really so much easier just to take photographs and work from that," he said. Catherine's portrait joins centuries-worth of official paintings and photographs of the British royal family in the NPG's collection. The duchess is a patron of the gallery. NPG director Sandy Nairne said revealing the portrait, which he described as "a captivating contemporary image," was "an exciting moment." In a statement, Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said: "The unveiling of a first official portrait of a royal sitter is always an important and intriguing moment, defining and enshrining their public image in a new way." What do you think of the Duchess of Cambridge's portrait? Sound off with iReport or have your say in the comments below.

The first official portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge has been unveiled in London, but has met with a mixed reaction from art critics.