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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Sacrificial remains of humans and animals, believed to be at least 2,700 years old, have been found in central China's Luoyang city (map), Chinese archaeologists say.
The bones are part of a recently discovered burial complex covering nearly a quarter acre (945 square meters) and containing 14 tombs, a water channel, and 59 pits from the Western Zhou dynasty. (Related: "Ancient Mass Sacrifice, Riches Discovered in China Tomb.")
During the Western Zhou period (1100 B.C. to 771 B.C.), the sacrifices of animals — and sometimes humans — to ancestors or deities were a routine part of Chinese culture. The sacrifices were often made to bless houses, said David Sena, a China historian at the University of Texas at Austin. "In general, there's been a tendency to describe Western Zhou as a more humanistic period, when the practice of human sacrifices" — which were commonplace during the preceding Shang Dynasty — "were waning," Sena said. "But I think the archaeological evidence shows quite clearly that human sacrifices persisted throughout the Zhou period as well."
Many of the sacrifices unearthed at the site would have been intended to bless the foundations of homes, buildings, and tombs, Sena said. "For people of that time, to walk into a building that hadn't been properly consecrated would have been seen as much more dangerous than walking on top of [buried] sacrificial victims," he said.
Animals sacrificed during the Western Zhou period included horses, dogs, pigs, and other types of farm animals. Large, elaborate bronze vessels were often used during the sacrifice ceremonies to "offer meat, grain, ale, and other types of alcohol to ancestors," Sena said. During the Western Zhou period, ancestor worship may have been practiced only by members of the aristocracy. The practice likely spread to other segments of society much later, Sena said. "That's another reason why this period is very important," Sena said. "Even if [ancestor worship] began as purely aristocratic, the ideology behind it really becomes woven into Chinese civilization."
Other artifacts were found at the site, including a broken tortoise shell likely used for psychic practices thousands of years ago. Not much is known about tortoise-shell divination during the Western Zhou period, Sena said, but during the preceding Shang dynasty, the process involved heating the shell and interpreting the cracks that formed. "Holes are bored in the back of the shell to make it easier to crack during the divination process," Sena explained. "Someone then 'reads' the cracks. We don't know how exactly — it may be the shape of the crack or the sound it makes when it's heated," he added. "The diviner would ask a question and the crack provided an answer."
Broken pottery vessels were also unearthed at the sacrificial relic site recently uncovered in modern Luoyang city. Thousands of years ago, during the Western Zhou, the Luoyang area was home to a secondary, eastern capital of China. Regarded by Confucius and other philosophers as a "golden age" of Chinese history, the Western Zhou period ushered in many of the characteristic political and cultural institutions of Chinese civilization, Sena said. For example, the Shangshu, or "book of history," which purportedly records the speeches and deeds of the Zhou dynasty's first kings and which later became a classic, can be traced back to this period.
For more pictures from the site, see the full story at National Geographic News.
<bot>: Sacrificial remains of humans and animals, believed to be at least 2,700 years old, have been found in central China's Luoyang city, Chinese archaeologists say.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010062419id_/http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/06/24/human-sacrifices-ancient-chinese-tombs/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Leave it to showrunner Shonda Rhimes to ignite political debate.
On Thursday night's episode of ABC's Scandal — the mid-season finale — protagonist Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) ended a surprise pregnancy with an abortion. Meanwhile, former First Lady and current Republican Senator Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) led a filibuster on the Senate floor to avoid the passage of a bill that would have put Planned Parenthood under "discretionary spending."
Shondaland shows (including How To Get Away With Murder and Grey's Anatomy) never shy away from controversy. But this particular Scandal plotline hit close to home for many people amid a presidential election season where women's reproductive rights often become a debate topic.
The episode drew in 8.1 million viewers overall, according to Nielsen ratings. The show racked up 211,575 tweets, according to Nielsen TV ratings. Of the tweets, 67,570 — almost 32% — contained "reactions," or tweets with emotions, according to social TV platform Canvs. The company uses tweets, provided by Nielsen, to determine what emotions people have about TV.
An estimated 32% of reactions contained love.
Of these "reactions," 1,672 contained the word abortion.
The hashtag " #standwithpp" garnered 1,251 reactions.
Planned Parenthood sent Mashable a statement commending the episode.
Tonight, the millions of people who tune into Scandal every Thursday night learned that our rights to reproductive health care are under attack," the non-profit said. "Never one to shy away from critical issues, [showrunner] Shonda Rhimes used her platform to tell the world that if Planned Parenthood lost funding for contraception counseling, STI testing, cancer screenings, and safe, legal abortion — millions of people would suffer. And this episode wasn’t the first time one of Rhimes’ characters had an abortion, yet tonight we saw one of our favorite characters make the deeply personal decision that one in three women have made in their lifetime. We applaud Shonda Rhimes tonight — and every Thursday night – for proving that when women are telling our stories, the world will pause and watch. We just hope those in Congress — and throughout the nation — who are steadfast on rolling the clock back on reproductive health care access are taking note.
The organization also tweeted Thursday night using the hashtag "#standwithPP."
Still, not everyone was happy. According to Canvs data, about 13.2% of reaction tweets contained dislike or hate.
Rush Limbaugh was outraged, calling the on screen abortion "genuinely, literally sickening."
Yup, she has an abortion, and it's glorified, it's celebrated, it's heralded," he said on his show. "She has an abortion smiling. It's appealing to Planned Parenthood, it's a tribute to Planned Parenthood, I mean it's just sickening apparently. And she has an abortion, and laying on the table with the actual abortion taking — and camera shots showing you what it would look like as the doctor's making the move from behind her head [hums "Silent Night"] — there's a couple other things added to it, apparently it's just sickening.
Conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center also responded negatively, calling it "sick" in a blog post.
Between the execution of a man that opens the graphic clip below, the talk of 'soft tissue,' saying family destroys you, watching a doctor take his instruments between Olivia's legs, and the hint of a smile on her lips at the end," the organization wrote. "It is a truly vile scene, stomach churning scene.
Publicists at ABC did not immediately respond to comment.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
<bot>: Shonda Rhimes' latest political plotline on "Scandal" stirs debate.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015112119id_/http://mashable.com/2015/11/20/abortion-plot-scandal/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Here’s a digital-age perk of winning a Pulitzer Prize: Apple might be a whole lot nicer to you and your work.
Pulitzer Prize Board, via Associated Press
A sample of Mark Fiore's work cited by the Pulitzer board.
On Monday Mark Fiore became the first online-only cartoonist to win a Pulitzer, for weekly animated videos published on SFGate.com, the Web site of The San Francisco Chronicle. In a subsequent interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, he recalled that Apple had rejected his iPhone application in December since it included cartoons that mocked public figures.
Political cartoons, it turns out, can violate Apple’s license agreement with developers, which states that applications, or “apps,” can be rejected if the content “may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic or defamatory.”
Apple alone determines what is objectionable for its online app store, a practice that has come under close scrutiny. In its message to Mr. Fiore in December, the company cited his cartoon’s allusions to torture and to last year’s White House party crashers as examples.
After Mr. Fiore received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and after he mentioned his app’s rejection in an article published on niemanlab.org on Thursday he was encouraged by Apple to resubmit it. Mr. Fiore did so on Friday morning and is awaiting a response.
When his NewsToons app, which displays his weekly animated cartoons, was developed last year, Mr. Fiore said, he had not heard of “the whole concept of getting rejected for ridiculing public figures.”
“That’s what I do. That’s my life!” he said in a telephone interview on Friday from San Francisco. “That’s a tough one to get around if you’re a political cartoonist.”
His Pulitzer win is notable for at least three reasons. In addition to being the first Pulitzer for online-only work, it is the first awarded solely for animated video, as opposed to traditional cartoon strips or panels. Mr. Fiore is also the first self-syndicated editorial cartoonist to win the prize.
After NewsToons was turned down by Apple in December, Mr. Fiore did not try to submit it again, “mainly because it seemed like it would be so daunting.”
“It’s not like I had a phone number for someone at Apple,” he said, adding that “interestingly enough, I do now.”
An Apple spokeswoman did not comment Friday afternoon, but Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive, apparently responded to a customer who asked about Mr. Fiore’s app. “This was a mistake that’s being fixed,” the e-mail message, which was forwarded by the customer to The New York Times, stated. Mr. Jobs is known to reply to customers from his personal Apple address.
Cases like Mr. Fiore’s have raised questions about Apple’s policies toward apps with news content; Ryan Chittum, a writer for cjr.org, the Columbia Journalism Review Web site, asserted on Thursday that news media groups should withdraw their new iPad applications “unless Apple cedes complete control over the right to publish.”
Mr. Fiore, who noted that he used Apple products to create his cartoons, said he felt a bit guilty that his sudden publicity apparently helped his cause.
“Sure, mine might get approved, but what about someone who hasn’t won a Pulitzer and who is maybe making a better political app than mine?” he asked. “Do you need some media frenzy to get an app approved that has political material?”
<bot>: A rejected iPhone app by the editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore is offered another look.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010041719id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/books/17cartoonist.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: For a teenager who achieved worldwide fame through viral YouTube highlight mixes, Twitter was an appropriate way for Aquille Carr to seemingly announce one of the most important decisions of his young life.
Carr is a 5-foot-6 high school basketball phenom from inner-city Baltimore, Md. He's a senior committed to play college ball next season for Seton Hall University. But in a series of tweets posted to his 20,000 followers late Monday night, Carr seemed to say he'll skip college to turn pro abroad before trying to make it in the NBA:
Carr then retweeted scores of messages from fans wishing him luck overseas and said in a Tuesday morning post: "I promise ill come back in go to school when its all said in done."
So do Carr's tweets and retweets point toward his actual future course? Numerous outlets reported his cryptic tweets as fact, while his coach told The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday that Carr will officially announce his future plans on Saturday following his final high school game.
Carr's tiny stature, high-flying dunks, ankle-breaking crossover dribbles and showman's demeanor made YouTube highlight mixes like this one viral hits:
Created by hard-charging crews of videographers who make a living posting highlights of high school players, Carr's mixes have gained millions of views online. His first video, posted by Hoopmixtape, has been watched nearly 5 million times in two years and led to Carr being profiled by outlets including CNN and GQ.
Internet fame hasn't meant smooth sailing, however. Carr comes from a hardscrabble section of Baltimore, was arrested (and later cleared) for assaulting the 27-year-old mother of his young daughter this summer and has bounced around between a few different high schools.
Following his sophomore season of high school ball in 2011, Carr was rumored to be weighing a professional contract from an Italian team. That deal ended up not happening, but it appears he may now be headed for that overseas pro career. If he does go, Carr won't be the first American high schooler to skip college for foreign money in recent years.
In 2008, Brandon Jennings played professionally in Italy for one year before entering the NBA draft and is now enjoying a successful career for the Milwaukee Bucks. In 2009, Jeremy Tyler skipped his senior year of high school to play two years of overseas pro ball before entering the draft. Unlike Jennings, he's struggled to hack it in the NBA since.
So what might Carr's pro prospects look like if he does skip college? Both Tyler and Jennings were rated much higher than him as high school players.
But Carr has something going for him that neither of them did just a few short years ago — millions and millions of YouTube views and an international celebrity among basketball fans that will help make him an appealing box office attraction for many foreign pro teams.
On Saturday, we should know a lot more.
Would it be smart for Carr to skip college and turn pro overseas? Give us your take in the comments.
Thumbnail image courtesy of CNN via YouTube
<bot>: Tiny high school hoops star Aquille Carr rocketed to fame via YouTube highlight mixes. According to his Twitter, he may skip college to go pro overseas.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013031219id_/http://mashable.com/2013/03/12/aquille-carr-skip-college/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Pizza Rat, you're our spirit animal.
There aren't many words that can describe the wonder of this determined creature, so we'll let this Music Monday playlist of inspirational songs do the talking. It's probably what Pizza Rat listens to every morning. We're pretty sure.
What other songs do you think Pizza Rat listens to? Share it with us in the comments, below, or on Spotify, and we'll add it in.
1. To follow Mashable on Spotify, click here. If a popup window asks you to launch an external application, accept. This just means the browser will open up Spotify.
2. Follow Mashable, or send us music by clicking "Send Music."
3. To send music while browsing tracks within Spotify, follow the MashableHQ account. Then right-click (ctrl + click) on the song you want to send, and click the "Share" option.
4. By default, Spotify pulls up the "Post to Feed" option. Instead, select the "Send to Friend" tab, type in "MashableHQ" and hit the blue "Send" button.
If "MashableHQ" doesn't show up when you're trying to send a track, make sure you're following the account. If you're still having problems sending a song after that, let us know in the comments, below, and we'll help you fix the problem.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
<bot>: We made a Music Monday playlist of all the songs that Pizza Rat definitely-probably-maybe listens to.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015092219id_/http://mashable.com/2015/09/22/pizza-rat-playlist/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: A survey of college freshmen confirms what professors and administrators said they have been sensing, that students are increasingly disengaged and view higher education less as an opportunity to expand their minds and more as a means to increase their incomes.
The annual nationwide poll by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles shows that two suggested goals of education -- ''to be very well off financially'' and ''to develop a meaningful philosophy of life'' -- have switched places in the past three decades.
In the survey taken at the start of the fall semester, 74.9 percent of freshmen chose being well off as an essential goal and 40.8 percent chose developing a philosophy. In 1968, the numbers were reversed, with 40.8 percent selecting financial security and 82.5 percent citing the importance of developing a philosophy.
It is using education more as a means to an end, rather than valuing what is being learned, said Linda J. Sax, director of the survey, first taken 32 years ago, at the Higher Education Research Institute at U.C.L.A.
The trend has long been in the making, with students' strong interest in high incomes rising to a plateau in the mid-1980's. But the desire edged down a bit through the 1990's, rising again slightly with this latest survey.
Professor Sax said the trend took on more significance when added to the fact that incoming students showed unprecedented levels of academic and political disengagement.
The percentage of students who said that during their last year in high school they had been frequently ''bored in class'' hit a record high of 36 percent, compared with 26.4 percent in 1985, the second year the question was asked.
At the same time, a record 34.5 percent said they had ''overslept and missed class,'' compared with a low of 18.8 percent in 1968.
Despite that, a record high of 39.4 percent said they aspired to obtain a master's degree and 49.7 percent said they expected to earn a B average.
Some professors expressed little surprise when told of the seemingly contradictory mix of boredom and ambition.
''Schooling has become more about training and less about transformation,'' said Mark W. Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia who wrote of the growing consumerist view of education by students in the September issue of Harper's magazine.
''You go there to prepare yourself for the future,'' Professor Edmundson said, ''to learn a skill, a capacity that you can convert into dollars later on. And being trained is boring. Being educated is not, but that is going on less and less.''
The disengagement was also reflected in attitudes toward politics.
A record low 26.7 percent of freshmen thought that ''keeping up to date with political affairs'' was a very important or essential life goal, compared with 29.4 percent in 1996 and a high of 57.8 percent in 1966.
Similarly, an all-time low 13.7 percent said they frequently discussed politics, compared with 16.2 percent last year and a high of 29.9 percent in 1968.
Advocating social activism, which declined in the 1980's and then rose again in the early 1990's, again appears to be on the wane.
The percentage of students who said that ''becoming involved in programs to clean up the environment'' was an important life goal declined to 19.4 percent from 33.6 percent in 1992.
Commitment to ''helping to promote racial understanding'' fell to its lowest point in a decade, 31.8 percent, compared with 34.7 percent in 1996 and a high of 42 percent in 1992.
The survey, sponsored by the American Council on Education, included 348,465 students at 665 two- and four-year colleges and universities in the United States. The data were statistically adjusted to be representative of the 1.6 million students entering as first-time full-time freshmen last fall.
The enormous size of the sample means that even shifts of half a percentage point have statistical significance, its authors said.
Alexander W. Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute and founder of the survey, said he thought the growth in materialism, boredom and disengagement stemmed, at least in part, from television watching.
''Kids who started college in the late 60's had much less television,'' Mr. Astin said. ''Today's kids never didn't have it. We tracked freshmen of 1985 for four years to see how much TV they watched during college. The more TV they watched, the more their materialistic tendencies were strengthened.''
Daniel S. Cheever, president of Simmons College in Boston, said the apparent increase in materialism may also have to do with the rise in the cost of college education.
''What my education is going to do for me in getting me a job becomes more important,'' he said.
Lee Bollinger, president of the University of Michigan, took exception to the prevailing view of freshmen.
''I have come to the conclusion that this is a quieter and softer but no less dedicated generation of students toward their education and public affairs,'' he said.
<bot>: A survey of college freshmen confirms what professors and administrators said they have been sensing, that students are increasingly disengaged and view higher education less as an opportunity to expand their minds and more as a means to increase their incomes. The annual nationwide poll by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles shows that two suggested goals of education -- ''to be very well off financially'' and ''to develop a meaningful philosophy of life'' -- have switched places in the past three decades.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160526011500id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1998/01/12/us/college-freshmen-aiming-for-high-marks-in-income.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Dustin Hoffman joined George Stephanopoulos in the “Good Morning America” studio today to talk about ”Quartet,” the new movie he directed. It hits theaters Friday.
Aside from sharing his thoughts on his new role behind the camera, Hoffman also told a funny, and rather shocking, story about his first encounter with Robert De Niro in 1969. And no, it wasn’t on a movie set.
“He says, ‘So you remember in 1969?’ I said, ‘Well, what do you mean, Bob? He says, ‘Well, there was some benefit dinner. Maybe [Eugene] McCarthy was running for president, and you were there.’ And I said, ‘Oh yeah, vaguely, a Second Avenue restaurant? Why are you telling me this?’ He says, ‘I was your waiter.’”
De Niro’s revelation clearly took Hoffman by surprise at the time, and got a good laugh from the “GMA” crew.
Hoffman said he asked De Niro if they actually met that night. De Niro’s reply was simple, said Hoffman. ”‘Yeah,”‘ Hoffman recounted De Niro saying. ”‘The first thing you said to me is ‘How is the flounder?’”
On Dec. 2, De Niro introduced Hoffman at the Kennedy Center Honors, which recognize lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts. Hoffman was one of the recipients.
Although the two men have known each other for years and are “very good friends,” said Hoffman, “when De Niro came out, I was wondering if he was doing it for one of the other honorees.”
<bot>: Dustin Hoffman joined George Stephanopoulos in the “Good Morning America” studio today to talk about ”Quartet,” the new movie he directed. It hits theaters Friday. Aside from sharing his thoughts on his new role behind the camera, Hoffman also told a funny, and rather shocking, story about his first encounter with Robert De Niro in 1969. And no, it wasn’t on a movie set. “He says, ‘So you remember in 1969?’ I said, ‘Well, what do you mean, Bob? He says, ‘Well, there was some benefit dinner. Maybe [Eugene] McCarthy was running for president, and you were there.’ And I said, ‘Oh yeah, vaguely,…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013012319id_/http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2013/01/robert-de-niro-was-dustin-hoffmans-waiter-in-1969/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday reiterated his pledge not to accept super PAC support but stopped short of knocking Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s decision to court allied super PAC donors.
“I understand where she is coming from. [But] I will not have a super PAC,” Sanders, who last month launched a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “...I don't think we're going to outspend Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush or anybody else, but I think we are going to raise the kinds of money that we need to run a strong and winning campaign.”
Although Sanders did not criticize Clinton about her tacit support for an allied super PAC, about which The Washington Post’s Matea Gold reported last week, he nonetheless stressed — without naming names — his belief that the American political system gives outsize influence to millionaires and billionaires. He said a central consideration for Supreme Court nominees should be their position on the Citizens United decision.
[Hillary Clinton cements her support for allied super PAC.]
“Let me say it this way: If elected president, I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice, and that nominee will say that we are going to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United,” he said. “Because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be able to buy politicians.”
Asked about the differences between Clinton and him, Sanders — who described himself as "the most progressive member of the United States Senate" — said he has voiced strong opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Keystone pipeline while Clinton's positions remain unclear. He also knocked Clinton on her oft-criticized 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq.
“In terms of foreign policy, Hillary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq. Not only did I vote against it, I helped lead the effort against what I knew would be a disaster. In terms of climate change, I have helped lead the effort against the Keystone pipeline. I'm not quite sure if Hillary Clinton has come out with a position on that. So those are just some of the areas where we differ.”
Sanders suggested that the “massive dissatisfaction in this country today with the corporate establishment” could give him an edge in the Democratic primary.
"[L]et me say that I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I respect her and I admire her. But I think we're living in a very strange moment in American history," he said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a White House contender in 2016, is known for his stances on budget issues and war. Here's the Vermont senator's take on Obamacare, Social Security and more, in his own words. (Julie Percha/The Washington Post)
Jose A. DelReal covers national politics for The Washington Post.
<bot>: Sanders also hit Clinton on her vote for the Iraq war.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015051019id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/05/10/bernie-sanders-pledges-not-to-accept-super-pac-support/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Most around the world are watching the US election and wondering whether Mitt Romney will win the White House, or if Barack Obama be handed another term. But there is another important story in the US election cycle.
It has to do with the US congress. More specifically, which political party, the Democrats or the Republicans, will control the US senate?
Currently, the lower chamber in congress, the House of Representatives, is firmly in Republican hands. That is not expected to change after November 6. What is less clear is whether the Democrats, who control the senate, will hang on to that majority in the 113th congress.
Get out your pencils and pads, because there’s math involved here. Now, of the 100 seats in the US senate [there are two senators from each of the 50 US states], 33 are up for grabs, and 23 of those seats are held by Democrats. Right now, the Democrats and their independent allies control a narrow majority of 53 seats in the senate.
The Republicans control 47 seats.
There are about a half dozen senate races that are too close to call. That means, it's hard to tell whether they will go Democrat or Republican.
It is the US state of Maine, however, which might be the one senate race that will decide everything.
Why? That’s because in Maine, there are three candidates running – a Democrat, a Republican and an Independent.
Right now, that Independent, Angus King, is refusing to say which party he would align with if he wins the election. Polls show he has a very good chance at victory.
King is a popular former governor of the Canadian border state of Maine. He’s also a former Democrat and supporter of Barack Obama. Most assume he will caucus with the Democrats. But he is keeping his options open.
So, until Mr King makes up his mind, control of the US senate could remain a little foggy. To understand why, well, you need to get your pencils back out, because there's more addition involved.
Now, if President Obama wins the election, Democrats need just 50 Democrats or a Democratic aligned independent like Mr King to keep control of the senate.
The same can be said for the Republicans.
Here's where it gets tricky. According to the US constitution, the vice-president of the US is the presiding officer of the senate.
That means, when the senators are "equally divided" on an issue, the vice-president is called on the cast his (or maybe someday her) vote and break the tie.
So, if one party wins the White House and the other party wins control of the senate, then 51 votes are needed for a senate majority.
Why does it matter? It matters because this election is going to be close. America is polarised and it's anyone's guess how control of the senate will play out. Elections this tight, often take time to call. Instead of hours, we could be looking at days.
The other reason this is big is that the senate is a powerful body of legislators. Terms in the senate last six years and come with a lot more prestige and power to wield the legislative direction of the US.
That’s why it would be nice if Mr King would at least give us a hint of what he’s thinking. It would certainly help simplify the math on what’s bound to be, a very long election night.
<bot>: There is another important story in the US election cycle. It has to do with the US congress.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012110619id_/http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/americas/its-not-just-about-white-house
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: As for the dog ads, he made light of the matter. “For £45,000 I was prepared to sit next to a dog called Henry,” he said.
He made little in public of his famous grandfather, Sigmund, who in 1938 followed other members of his family in migrating to Britain beginning in 1933, the year Hitler came to power — “refugees from the Nazis before the habit caught on,” as Sir Clement, a secular Jew like many in his family, said many years later. He said he remembered his grandfather, who died in London in 1939, mostly as a faltering old man with oral cancer. “He was not, to me, famous,” he said, but rather “a good grandfather in that he didn’t forget my birthdays.”
He had a testy relationship with his older brother Lucian, the artist, now 86, who is regarded by many critics as one of the greatest Realists of the past century. Late in life Sir Clement told The Observer newspaper he had no interest in reconciling with his brother. “I’m not great at forgiving,” he said. “If I decide I don’t like someone, that’s it.”
Clement Raphael Freud was born in Berlin on April 24, 1924. He was educated at St. Paul’s School in London; his first job, as an apprentice hotel cook, helped him later as a noted club owner and cookery writer. His wartime service included an assignment as a liaison officer to the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1946.
After the war he returned to the hotel business in Cannes, France, before opening the Royal Court Theater Club in London in 1952, where he mixed with theater personalities, including John Osborne and other playwrights who made the Royal Court a center of theatrical innovation.
He developed a parallel career as a writer in many newspapers on food, sports and other topics. Stephen Fry, the actor and comedian who appeared alongside Sir Clement in the BBC’s “Just a Minute” show, said that much of the material Sir Clement drew on in his radio appearances and writings came from his days in the demimonde of the Soho theater, restaurant and club district in London. During the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Fry said, Sir Clement “knew all the girls of easy virtue, he knew the pimps, he knew the racetrack tipsters and of course, the restaurateurs.” He added, “His fund of stories about that time was simply remarkable, and he lived a sort of life on the edge.”
Sir Clement was a keen gambler, and he placed a shrewd £1,000 bet on himself, at odds of 33 to 1, to win an uphill battle for the Liberals against the Conservatives in 1973 for the mostly rural Isle of Ely constituency, 70 miles northeast of London. He remained an M.P. until his defeat in 1987. He was knighted for his parliamentary service that year.
But it was as a broadcaster that Sir Clement made his greatest public impact, especially on “Just a Minute.” On The Guardian Web site, guardian.co.uk, on Thursday, Dennis Barker, a broadcasting critic, attributed Sir Clement’s success to his habit, “like an immobile spider,” of patiently eliminating other contestants by allowing them “to tire themselves by talking until they had almost reached the minute, and then challenging them and talking with a stony slowness for the remainder of the time.”
Sir Clement is survived by his wife, Jill, who was born June Flewett and whom he married in 1950, and their five children, including Matthew, a successful public relations executive, and Emma, a well-known broadcaster. Their father doted on their success, writing in The Times of London that what he would leave them in his will would be but a token, “what they tip the milkman at Christmas.”
An obituary on Friday about the British politician and broadcasting personality Clement Freud misstated the year his grandfather Sigmund Freud immigrated to Britain. It was 1938 not 1933, when other relatives began leaving Germany for Britain.
<bot>: Mr. Freud’s eclectic career included stints as a British Army liaison officer at the Nuremberg trials, cookery expert, Liberal member of Parliament, and celebrated radio broadcaster.
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Stephen Curry, the NBA’s MVP a year ago, has been even more dazzling this season. He tops the NBA in scoring, averaging 31.8 points per game, up from 23.8 in 2014-2015. He led the defending champion Golden State Warriors to a 24-0 start — the best in NBA history. Curry’s team, which faces LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in an NBA Finals rematch Christmas Day, could break the record for most regular season wins, 72, which was set by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls during the 1995-1996 season.
For a feature story in the Dec. 28, 2015/Jan 4, 2016 “Year Ahead” issue of TIME – which subscribers can read here — we spoke to Curry bout his appeal to basketball fans, the secrets behind his improved game, and a broad range of other topics.
Are you the best player in the world right now?
In my mind, yes. That’s how I have confidence out there that I can play at a high level every night. I don’t get into debates, arguing with people about why I am versus somebody else. I feel like anybody who’s at the level I’m trying to be at, if you don’t think that when you’re on the floor, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Why do you think you’ve connected with NBA fans?
I don’t know, I guess I play a very creative style of basketball. I have fun out there on the court, smiling, laughing, trying to have good demeanor. And I guess I’m not the most the physically dominating guy. So probably to most fans of mine, they’re pretty surprised what I can do on the court at my size. I call it lack of athleticism. Obviously not a lack of hand-eye coordination. But not being gifted with the 40-inch vertical, or a 4.5 40, or being 6’9″, 260 lbs. That’s my best guess.
I try to be open and approachable and stuff like that, just because I was around the game, with my dad [former NBA sharpshooter Dell Curry], and I knew how it affected people that came in contact with him, and how he made people’s days if you just said “hi” to him.
I think people can relate to you because if you walked into the Y for a weekend pickup game — and you weren’t Stephen Curry — nobody would do a double take. You look like you’d fit in. Is that fair?
If you don’t mind, I’ll use that. I’ll cite you on it. That’s a good way to put in. Some of the stuff I do on the court is what most people think they can do. As opposed to you see a guy like [Warriors teammate] Andre Iguodala take off on a fast break, he rises for a tomahawk dunk. I know I can’t do that. Most people can’t. Shooting the ball is a part of the game. Everybody can shoot in their own way. Not everybody can make. But everybody can shoot.
Your teammate Draymond Green calls you “the face of the NBA.” Do you agree?
I embrace that. I don’t know if that’s a black and white answer. You’ve got to be a winner, and have all the right trajectory as a player and as a team to back that up. Whatever comes out of that is cool. The way I try to represent my family and coaches, I think all are characteristics the league aspires to portray. That’s just who I am. It’s not changing anything about me to fulfill that role.
What was the biggest challenge of your life, and how did you overcome it?
Probably the transition from high school to college. There was a lot of pressure being Dell Curry’s son, growing up in Charlotte, being in ACC country. I was probably really small for an aspiring Division 1 athlete. And I was looked over by pretty much every non low-D1 school. And it was kind of shock. I was a pretty good high school player, so it was kind of a weird dynamic. I really desperately wanted to play ACC basketball. Duke, North Carolina, Maryland, Wake Forest, all those schools, I never even got close to a call. So it was a disappointing moment, in the moment. I had to really trust that everything happens for a reason—that God had a plan for me, other than what I wanted. And to trust that wasn’t an easy decision, it wasn’t an easy mentality.
What kind of work did you do over the summer to improve upon what was an MVP season last year?
Lower body and core strength to handle the beating of an 82-game schedule. Knowing we’re going to be a marked team every night. And then, out of that, it’s being able to create space on the floor. Being more precise and explosive and efficient. Strength and explosion, just being able to move from point A to point B. But also the ball handling it takes to make the moves I need to get into my shot. So a lot of it wasn’t adding stuff to my game. It was kind of taking what I do well and doing it better and more efficiently.
Your trainer, Brandon Payne, says that during your summer workouts you seek to develop “neurocognitive efficiency.” What does that mean?
His terms are more complex than mine. It’s literally being able to suvery what’s going on on the court, and have the muscle memory and ability to make certain moves. Make those reads, make those decisions without having to think about where the ball is and being able to make those decisions quickly.
I’m coming down the floor, I know I have two guys over here, one guy over here, three defenders, one’s in front of you. You have to be able to read that and make a move, and out of that, be able to see what else going on. That’s what we train in a different way. It’s about about letting your mind go free, while still having control of yourself.
What’s an example of a drill you do to accomplish this?
We do one where we start at half court, and there’s two lights. I’m dribbling to the three-point line. The top one tells you what move you have to make, and the bottom light tells you what shot you have to take. So you have to read all of that and make a split decision, coming full speed. Green means between the legs, blue means you have to shoot a three. Yellow means you have to shoot a pull-up two, or red means you have to get to the basket. You’ve got to be able recall right away, and make that move, not knowing what’s going to happen .5 seconds before. Then you’ve got to make the shot. (Laughs) Or else you’re going to have to keep running back and forth. So there’s a little bit of pressure and competition to it.
When most people take a jump shot, they shoot the ball at the peak of their jump. But you shoot the ball as you’re jumping. How important has that method been to your long-range shooting success?
It’s been a part of my mechanics as far as I remember. I would tell anybody who wants to learn how to shoot or play basketball, that’s a fundamental of shooting. You get legs under you, and you’re not fighting yourself at the top. Most guys, when they’re at the top of their shot, gravity takes over eventually. You don’t want to be fighting gravity on the way down.
Your Under Armour sneakers have really taken off this year. Is that success even sweeter because your helping a company build an identity in basketball?
Definitely. That’s a big reason I joined. I had been with Nike since college. And the presentation I had with Under Armour was literally about building a basketball business around me, with that whole underdog mentality that I really aligned with. That’s the part I feel most blessed about. It’s one thing to get to the NBA and be successful in the NBA. But to have your own signature shoe, it still doesn’t make sense. It’s surreal.
What player do you get the most fired up to face?
There’s probably a shortlist of top 10, 15 point guards in the league that I follow day in and day out.
Is Chris Paul No. 1?
Probably, yeah. For a lot of reasons. The whole team aspect, the history between our two teams. But also our history individually. I used to work out with him before my rookie year. We’re both from North Carolina.
Yeah. That’s an interesting dynamic. As you go though the league, you start to try to get to where somebody else is, and try to stay there, and the whole competitive environment. But yeah, there are certain guys that drive you because of their success. He’s one of them, Russ [Westbrook] is one of them. John Wall.
You seem to play with a healthy chip on your shoulder? Is that a fair assessment?
Yeah. It’s not probably what people think. Everybody talks about the players award thing, where James [Harden] was voted MVP by the players union, what the Houston Rockets guys said over the course of the summer, what Doc Rivers said, all that stuff. I hear it but it doesn’t move the needle for me because I’m comfortable. Like the chip is that we’ve retained a pretty high level, the highest level, and we want to stay there. That’s the hard part. That’s the motivation.
You hear it, you react to it, But to be honest, I was as motivated before I heard that stuff. It’s just kind of humorous to me.
What current athlete do you most admire?
[American golfer] Jordan Spieth. His maturity, the way he handles himself, his vision as a 22-year-old is unbelievable. How composed he is, whether he played well or not, is unbelievable.
The NBA is in a good place right now. But both the players and owners can opt out of the collective bargaining agreement by December 2016, which could cause a work stoppage after the 2016-2017 season. You’re on the executive committee of the players’ union. Do you see yourself playing an active role in the negotiations?
I’m very interested in and am going to have a hand in the new direction of the CBA coming up. [The players] have better leverage now. We’re much more organized than we’ve ever been, we’re much more unified, and that’s our biggest leverage point as players. We’re all on the same page as to what we bring to the table. We’re obviously blessed to play a game, and get paid to do it, and the game is in the best shape it’s ever been. [We want] to take adavantage of that, to make sure we get what is fair in the grand scheme of the NBA. Obviously that’s a touchy subject. You just look at the value of teams going up on a year-to-year basis, and you follow that trend, the players should be compensated accordingly. That’s the simple message. We’ll fight for it. Hopefully it won’t be too nasty.
The NBA had lockouts that shortened the 1999 and 2012 seasons. What’s your message to fans who really don’t want to see another one?
Players don’t want to see a lockout either. We want to play. Guys have such a short window, you don’t want to waste time sitting on the sidelines talking about bargaining agreements, things like that. We’re working hard to present out issues and hear the NBA’s issues, what may or may not be right or wrong and work it out hopefully. We will fight for what we feel is right.
Athletes are starting to speak up more about social issues they care about. Is that something you see yourself doing more of?
I’m not afraid to do that at all. I recently tweeted about jail reform, how many people are jailed on petty crimes. It’s interesting. I like to read the reaction. It gets the conversation started, even if I’m not a part of it on the platform.
People are mostly surprised that I even know about it. Even supporters of the cause are surprised I know about the issues. Even if I’m not tweeting about it every hour or going on rants or whatever, people are following that stream and discussing both sides. I think that’s powerful.
What was it like playing golf with President Obama this summer?
He was so approachable and cool. Once we got out there, and we started talking, and there weren’t 25 secret servicemen on every hole, you would not have thought he was President of the United States. We played at like 12:00. So the whole morning, I ironed my clothes, cleaned my clubs, doing all this nonsense. I’m so hyped up and nervous. One of his White House staff comes to pick us up in a 2002 jeep, nothing special about it, just takes us across Martha’s Vineyard to the course. We show up, and there are people actually playing. I thought it was going to be shut down, because the president’s playing. So we get to the driving range, Ray Allen’s there, the president’s not there yet; 10-15 minutes later you see the whole motorcade, they pull up right to the range. We park in the parking lot, they go up right next to the range. And it’s like seven SUVs, and this swat-looking truck in the back. And this is when I started to get nervous. This is the real deal.
Were you more nervous on the course than you were during the NBA Finals?
For sure. I feel comfortable on the court. There, on the first tee, it was the president, my dad, Ray Allen, and 40 people in the clubhouse yelling Obama’s name the whole time. I’m just trying to make sure I get it in the air. I sprayed it a good 40-50 yards right. But we played the breakfast ball rule. I got to re-tee it. I hit a decent one the next time. I birdied the first two holes.
What was it like seeing your 2-year-old daughter Riley become an internet sensation last spring, after she stole the show at your playoff press conferences? (Riley’s now 3; Curry’s wife, Ayesha, gave birth to the couple’s second daughter, Ryan, this summer)
We weren’t ready for it. I’ve been watching the NBA all of my life. I’ve seen post-game press conferences where guys bring their daughters up all the time. And that’s a special moment, to be able to bond with your child after a good game, bad game, whatever. Just because, at the end of day it sucks, but we don’t get to spend as much time as we probably would like with our kids.
So those moments are pretty precious. After the game, you’re just so happy to see your family. That’s how it was, I was walking past the family room. My wife and daughter are sitting there, I say, ‘hi everybody, I’ve got to answer some questions right quick.’ And Riley’s like ‘I want to go with you.’ Yeah, sure, let’s go. I pick her up, take her there, I had no idea how she’d act. I wouldn’t say she surprised us, that’s how she is at home all the time, that personality. But in front of all those people, she just ran with it.
It sunk in when I got home. SportsCenter was on. I’ll never forget this: John Buccigross is on there. He does the three stars of the night thing and Riley was one of them. And I was like, ‘what do you mean?’ Cause I hadn’t seen the playback. So I didn’t know how funny it really was to everybody. She’s telling me to be quiet, it’s too loud, all that stuff. It was pretty funny. She walked by a TV and saw herself and said, ‘aaahhh, Riley!’ And then left, like nothing happened. She didn’t know.
It was very surprising that it took off the way that it did. All the memes and attention she got. Even now, over the summer, anywhere I went, like, anywhere I went, they asked, where’s Riley? I went to the Kids’ Choice Awards in LA. I turned the corner to go down that little orange carpet — ‘Where’s Riley? Where’s Riley?’ She’s not here. Just yelling her name. It’s interesting, We’re trying to keep things as normal as possible for her. It is a challenge.
Did any negatives come out of that whole experience?
I wouldn’t change a thing about how we did it. Not at all. I would want that moment for my family forever. And I’ll look forward to the day when she’s a teenager down the road, and I can say, ‘hey, this is what you did.’ If there is a downside, with social media, everybody knows who she is. I do worry sometimes that when she gets to the age where she can process what’s going on, how she’ll handle it. Hopefully we have the foundation set. You’re a little different, your dad plays in the NBA. But that shouldn’t change who you are. I like our chances of being able to instill that in her.
What is your one big worry in life?
Not losing myself. Not losing my perspective on life. I’m learning you have to be proactive in that regard.
I don’t want to have a pessimistic attitude. But things are really great right now: We’re winning, there so many life additions at home, it all comes at once. Eventually basketball will end. I have a lot of life to live after that. So I guess the only worry is not to just be defined as a basketball player.
If there’s one thing people can expect from you in the coming year, what would it be?
You should expect me to keep getting better.
<bot>: The reigning NBA MVP talks to TIME about basketball, life, and his biggest fear
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Statistical Information provided by STATS © 2017 Fox Sports Interactive Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Use of this website (including any and all parts and components) constitutes your acceptance of these New Terms of Use and New Privacy Policy.
<bot>: Here's a viewer's guide to what you need to know about the referees and their crews who are calling today's games on FOX. The early games are highlighted by the Arizona Cardinals vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the late game has the unbeaten Carolina Panthers meeting the Seattle Seahawks.
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: ISLAMABAD (AP) — U.S. missiles hit a suspected militant hide-out, killing 16 insurgents in a troubled Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border before dawn Saturday, intelligence officials said.
The strike came as the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, was in Pakistan. Mullen was expected to see Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was recently granted a three-year term extension in what some have welcomed as a sign of continuity in Pakistan's battle against Islamist extremists.
The six missiles struck a compound in the Nazai Narai area of South Waziristan. The hide-out was known to be frequented by foreign fighters who were among the dead, two intelligence officials said.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to go on the record, said agents were trying to get more details about the identities and nationalities of the dead.
Army spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.
U.S. missile strikes regularly pound extremist targets in the northwest. South Waziristan has witnessed several major Pakistani military operations since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Washington has relied heavily on its covert missile campaign to take out al-Qaida, Afghan Taliban and their local supporters in North and South Waziristan tribal regions, which are hiding places for insurgents.
The vast majority of strikes have hit targets in North Waziristan — home to several militant networks that attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Although Pakistan publicly condemns the missile strikes, it has secretly helped Washington in previous attacks.
Associated Press writers Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Hussain Afzal in Parachinar contributed to this report.
<bot>: U.S. missiles hit a suspected militant hide-out, killing 16 insurgents in a troubled Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border before dawn Saturday, intelligence officials said. ...
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Argo did well at the box office over the weekend. As someone who thinks we desperately need more intelligent, smartly scripted, adult-oriented thrillers, I take it as encouraging news. But even among Argo’s fans, I can’t be alone in thinking that director Ben Affleck pushed the melodramatic envelope a tad too far in the film’s climactic moments.
Argo was marketed as a Real-Life Rescue Film — the untold story of how American intelligence operatives parachuted into Iran to rescue embassy workers hiding inside the Canadian consulate. As far as premises go, it’s a perfect pressure cooker — as the days tick by, the violence on the streets escalates, and secret agent man Tony Mendez (Affleck) realizes that he’s running out of time to escort these scared diplomats across state lines, using faux identities to navigate airport customs, the stakes increase exponentially. It all builds to a frenzy as a photo of one of the embassy workers matches the reconstructed shredded photo from the dumped consulate files; Iranian troops race to the consulate, then to the airport, and Ben Affleck narrowly escapes execution as the airplane beats the military vehicles in racing down the runway.
(MORE: TIME’s review of Argo)
Affleck had me until the airport. In reality, the Americans made their escape from the country and then the Canadian consulate was abandoned later in the day. But in the film, it’s presented as a single, simultaneous event, meant to suggest that the Iranian authorities caught on earlier, and just nearly missed capturing the hostages in transit. In reality, there was no sprint down the runway, as the army vehicles raced to catch up with a speeding airplane about take flight.
In hindsight, I wish that Argo had been marketed less as a Rescue Film than as a Siege Thriller. For nothing at the airport can match the palpable suspense evoked by the opening sequence, as an angry mob finally escalates from protests to violence, climbing the embassy fence and storming the castle. Masterfully paced and structured, I found this opening siege horrifying in its swiftness and severity — successfully setting up the audience to understand why some staff felt compelled to leave, why some chose to stay, and how an orderly standoff quickly devolved into chaos.
The siege also serves as a nifty plot device, allowing Affleck to bring the audience up to speed on the issues of Iran at that time. We first hear American diplomats pleading with the local police, hopeful that they can quell or push back the mob. But we quickly learn that the police are no longer capable — or willing — to help, and that with each passing hour, this staff finds themselves more isolated. Guns are loaded, and the decision is made to abandon ship — which in this case means destroying documents and dossiers. As soldiers run downstairs, ready to go down shooting, the embassy staff quickly sets to destroying all the work they’ve helped to create. Diplomacy is being shredded and burned, one page at a time.
(MORE: How Did Ben Affleck Go from Armageddon to Argo?)
Staff members who are helping Iranians get American visas realize the situation isn’t just bad for intelligence — but lethal for their guests. They quickly usher out the locals, realizing that new lines of allegiance — and new definitions of “enemy of the state” are being drawn in real-time — and they then make the emotional decision to abandon their post. They slip out the back, as the mob pushes their way upstairs and in a flash sovereign territory becomes ground zero for an international incident.
It’s this opening sequence that lingers with me — the surge of the mob, the eye of the storm, the calm realization that the end is here and the professionalism with which the diplomats set to destroying sensitive materials even as their death may be knocking. With no narration, little explanation and absolutely no hero coming to the rescue, Affleck evokes the isolation and fear, and uses that state of horror to infuse all the scenes in California — with movie producers debating their fictional production — with an added undercurrent of urgency. If Argo is just an average rescue drama, it is an exceptional siege thriller, with an unforgettable opening sequence that puts you right there…in the lion’s den.
<bot>: We wish that Argo had been marketed less as a Rescue Film than as a Siege Thriller
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The million-dollar fashion question, the one I’m asked every day without fail from the third week of August for three months, concerns the date from which it is socially acceptable to wear black opaques. To which the simple answer is that the rule is the same for black tights as for oysters: only when there is an R in the month.
Quick shout out to the fishmongers, who are at this very moment are no doubt mobilising to point out that it’s not that simple: I know. (Something about breeding seasons or refrigeration; whatever.)
Funnily enough, it’s not that simple in fashion, either. In certain fashion circles, the answer to the tights question is: only when there is a Z in the month. That is, never in a month of Sundays. Those New York glossy-magazine women who go barelegged all year round are not an urban myth. I have seen with my own eyes their honey-brown legs rising from Alexander McQueen ankle boots on days in February in Manhattan when my face aches with the cold after five minutes outdoors. They are as mystical as unicorns, but flesh-and-blood creatures nonetheless.
The black-tights question is the million-dollar question because it is not just about what you wear. It is about class, and money, and age. It is about how you order the priorities of how you look and what you get done. It is about your postcode and your mindset, your taxi bill and your holiday schedule. The black-tights question is code for: “Are you one of us? Are you a real, normal person I can talk to about how my shoes are killing me, or are you one of the unicorns, chanting glassy-eyed about how you don’t feel the cold?”
This is why the only acceptable answer is the one I borrowed from the oysters. Zero-tolerance of tights is only not annoying if you are a diehard fashionista, the type that wears strange trouser shapes and weird shoes and goofball jewellery. If you are that type of person, you can get away with a year-round no-tights-rule and it seems a charming eccentricity – but on most women, it reeks of pulling rank.
The black-tights issue is fundamental because it separates fashion as actually lived by actual human beings from fashion as seen on models. Like umbrellas, or a Daunts Books bags bulging with trainers and scarves and Kindles, black tights are omnipresent in the real world when there is an R in the month, but remain largely invisible in fashion editorial. What’s more, in the era of 6am Barry’s Bootcamp and Brazilian waxes, when being really quite freaking hardcore about pain is – for better or worse, discuss – way more feminine than baking cupcakes, your willingness to go barelegged is, literally, a black-and-white marker of the degree to which you are prepared to forgo comfort in order to achieve the right look.
I wear black tights, when it gets really cold. But a tiny part of me dies, the first day I do so.
It is also a matter of cold, hard cash. Or, to put it even more brutally, it’s a bus-stop issue. A bare leg is a luxury that signals you have the funds to pull the ripcord and summon an Uber should the wind chill get too much. It is an age issue, too, because bare legs are a youthful look. This is not simply about whether or not you are too old for bare legs, but by going bare-legged you make it clear that you do not believe yourself to be too old for anything, thank you very much.
And then there’s grooming. Thanks to fake tan, that great social-leveller of our age, having brown legs no longer means you actually go on six holidays a year. But legs that are smooth and tanned enough to be bared do require a certain level of attention, and having the time to devote to this is a luxury in its own right.
Debate about when or whether to wear black tights is, therefore, a matrix by which we ask all kinds of other questions. Which, I suppose, is why such an apparently boring question is so compelling. And, indeed, why I can’t give you a straight answer. I will say, though, that I haven’t worn them yet this season. And that I say that with, if I’m honest, some degree of pride.
<bot>: When – or if – you wear black tights reveals a lot about your status, age, class and self-image. And it signals just how much you are prepared to suffer for your look
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Deborah Manzoori left behind a career as a licensed insolvency practitioner last September to follow her husband, a chartered engineer who designs jet engines, on a two-year placement to India.
But when the 46-year-old Brit landed in Bangalore, India with her husband and 9-year old daughter, she realised that she wasn’t just giving up her job; as a trailing spouse she was also giving up some independence and, potentially, her sense of safety.
The family was advised by her husband’s company to hire a personal chauffeur as driving in Bangalore can be dangerous. “Driving is on the left, but in reality it's on the right, in the centre or anywhere in between and in any direction you please,” Manzoori explained. “In addition Westerners have been attacked at crash sites … and women, in particular, are vulnerable.”
Manzoori said not being able to pop out in the car at any time to go to the shops, the cinema or for any other reason can be frustrating. “We have to wait for the driver and… everything has to be planned in advance.”
She said she has adjusted to her new lifestyle after seven months, “but I still don't like it”.
Many expats who relocate for work to the developing world are given hefty compensation packages to make up for lifestyle differences or difficulties — whether physical, psychological, or financial — that they may encounter during the course of their assignment abroad. Sometimes, a personal restriction is because of a societal sensitivity — particularly for women — in cultures where status is an important consideration, but equality may not be.
Companies often avoid terms such as “hardship allowance,” “danger pay” or “hazard pay” because of perceived negative connotations or legal ramifications. And some critics of the practice question whether putting a figure on danger and discomfort is advisable or even ethical. Yet experts say that to draw top talent to important but difficult or dangerous locales (think compensating for the threat of terrorism in Turkey or even smog in polluted cities such as Beijing), the practice is necessary.
Those who can stomach the potential challenges of a hardship posting often find that they can make up to 40% more money than for a similar job elsewhere, according to Mercer’s 2015 report on hardship assignments. That figure can be even higher in areas of extreme hardship. Mercer found that 73% of companies worldwide have no cap on the amount of money paid as a hardship allowance.
Employees relocating from Europe are the mostly likely to receive a hardship allowance with 90% of companies offering one in most cases, according to the study. Their counterparts in Latin America, meanwhile, are the least likely with just 50% of companies open to the idea.
To draw top talent, the practice is necessary.
“This is where a lot of business opportunities are increasing — they need to incentivise,” said Sebastian Reiche, an associate professor of managing people in organisations at the IESE Business School in Barcelona. These incentives, he added, tackle a variety of concerns and are unique to the conditions of each overseas placement.
Not all danger or hardship allowances are labelled as such, but they aren’t hard to spot.
The Manzooris’ compensation package included help finding accommodation in a gated community, school fees to send their daughter to an international school, and the personal chauffeur. But there was no explicit mention of the gated community or chauffeur being part of a hardship package.
While some intergovernmental agencies and NGOs still use those terms — including the UN and USAID — many private companies simply don’t label the additional allowances as anything other than what they are.
“Global mobility managers may call it whatever they want,” Reiche said, “but it’s essentially a way to make it acceptable that you’ll have certain sacrifices as a part of your work or for you and your family.”
It’s essentially a way to make it acceptable that you’ll have certain sacrifices as a part of your work or for you and your family.
Factors that can lead to additional allowances for expats run the gamut from the economic (like regional instability, lack of public services and sanitation) to the geographical (like extreme weather, pollution and remoteness) or the cultural (like restricted personal freedom and religious tolerance).
Companies may similarly provide additional insurances (beyond health insurance) to address security threats, such as kidnappings, pandemics, terrorism or civil unrest. These may include a kidnap and ransom insurance, war risk insurance or an insurance to cover burglary and other household effects, depending on the particulars of the assignee’s destination.
Slagin Parakatil, who manages the quality of living reports for HR consulting firm Mercer, said the list of concerns is constantly changing.
“In a case like Brazil, where people are concerned by Zika virus, companies will most likely put some policies around that to repatriate women who are pregnant … but we haven’t seen any specific companies increase hardship allowance for this just yet,” he explained. “For the Ebola outbreak in West Africa there was definitely a decrease in the hardship and that affected our recommendations for allowances because it impacted the entire population.”
Allowances for hardship postings don’t just involve traditional on-the-ground incentives like cars and safe housing.
Human resources consultant ECA International found in its report on the benefits for mobile employees that many assignees experiencing adverse living or working conditions – perhaps working in an isolated oil field or near a war zone – are likely to receive an allowance for additional leisure trips to pamper themselves in a less difficult location nearby.
“This type of trip is more common amongst employees in the oil & gas sector … in [countries like] Angola, Algeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria and India where around 40-50% of companies provide these trips,” explained ECA International marketing manager James Davis.
While the average is about one to two additional paid vacations per year, Davis said, it can be as high as a quarterly allowance.
Coca-Cola is reported to offer something called an “environmental hardship allowance” for employees who relocate to China. That hazy label addresses an acute problem in many Chinese cities: smog.
A Coca-Cola spokeswoman was quoted by the Australian Financial Review in a July 2014 article as saying that the company’s “competitive mobility package includes an environmental allowance for postings to China” which the AFR report put at 15% on top an employee's base salary, without citing a source for the figure. The company declined to comment about the policy.
In March 2014 Panasonic, which employs about 70,000 people in China, became the first major company to announce a “lifestyle differential allowance” for expats that included coverage for air pollution.
“We’ve seen some companies in China that did a full increase in pay for the entire year, while others have done more temporary increases for periods when the smog is particularly bad,” said Parakatil of Mercer. Both the full-year increases and the temporary ones (typically allocated proportionally on a monthly basis) can be has high as 15% of an employees base salary, but many more companies simply pay for home installation of air and water purification systems, according to Parakatil. Most companies guard the particulars of such arrangements for fear of embarrassing the Chinese government.
Studies show that expats are increasingly concerned about the link between exposure to high levels of smog and respiratory illnesses like asthma, lung cancer and emphysema. A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing found that nearly half of foreign companies operating in China report air quality concerns as driving senior executives away. Thus environmental hardship allowances have become a vital tool for global corporations to solve their problems recruiting and retaining talent in Chinese (and more recently, Indian) cities.
Davis, though, questions enticing people to take risks by compensating them. ECA International doesn’t advise the use of “danger pay” or similar allowances.
“From an ethical point of view … there is the moral conflict incentivising staff to take dangerous assignments,” he said. “On the legal side of things, by explicitly paying ‘danger money’ you’re acknowledging that you’re [doing this].” That could prove problematic if someone decides to take legal action over an incident.
For many in-demand workers, however, the risks are only worth it if there are tangible rewards.
To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
<bot>: You've been offered a great job in a difficult location. Would extra 'danger money' tempt you to accept?
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160415153237id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/capital/story/20160411-the-secretive-world-of-danger-pay
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Following this week's launch of Apple's iOS 7, we saw plenty of new developments in iPhone applications.
With so much talk about apps, we wondered what it takes to develop for various platforms. The latest video in our Ask a Dev series looks at the differences between developing for iPhone and Android.
In the video, above, Android Engineer Tom Yu explains that the platforms handle navigation differently. He notes that an Android app shouldn't feel like an iOS app, and vice versa.
This installment also discusses near field communication technology, and how small businesses can adopt it.
Our developer experts are from Mutual Mobile, a leading development and design firm that builds mobile strategies for top companies such as Audi, Google and Citigroup. Their team is eager to answer your questions about mobile, so be sure to ping us with your top queries on Twitter with #AskaDev. Also, don't forget to check out our Ask a Dev YouTube channel, and subscribe.
<bot>: Ask a Dev: What's the difference between developing for Android and iOS?
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013092119id_/http://mashable.com/2013/09/21/ask-a-dev-developing-android-ios/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Who on earth would blend a “Bennie and the Jets” groove, trilling harpsichords evoking the Beatles’ “In My Life” and a dance-floor-quaking bass into an exuberant paean to infidelity? Answer: Sway Clarke II. The song, “Secret Garden,” is one of several by the Berlin-by-way-of-Toronto singer-songwriter that have taken off on the Internet (another is a moody cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools”) and propelled the singer (who plays his first American show this evening at Bardot’s School Night in Los Angeles) to next-big-thing status. His combination of storytelling and hooks has earned comparisons to the hitmaking likes of Lorde and Frank Ocean, but a streak of naughty humor, often at the singer’s own expense, is uniquely his own. “That comes out of being Canadian,” he laughs. “There’s a reason why great comedians like Jim Carrey and Mike Myers came from Canada. It’s in our DNA to be self-deprecating and funny.”
That tendency was evident in the first song that got Clarke attention, “I Don’t Need Much.” In it, he says that all he needs is “Some cigarettes and alcohol/iPhone for a few calls/A crew, and a main broad” via a wistful melody that’s as indebted to Coldplay as to new-school R&B. The approach reflects Clarke’s own personal evolution. Ten years ago, he had grown disenchanted with hip-hop’s worldview and began to focus more, he says, on music that valued “songwriting, musicianship and telling a story. OutKast’s ‘Speakerboxxx/The Love Below’ was my saving grace: it was so adventurous, it became a reference point proving I could do something different. And then I started digging into the renaissance of Brit rock. Radiohead, Pulp and Blur changed my life, and made me need to learn guitar. During that period, I wanted to be Liam Gallagher: I was attracted to him because he was gangster, like a rapper.”
One of eight siblings in a pan-Caribbean family (Clarke’s mother is Cuban and his father is a Rastafarian jeweler-turned-farmer from Jamaica), Clarke grew up surrounded by reggae, soul and classic rock like Rod Stewart and Neil Diamond. His professional entree into music came following a chance meeting with the producer Crada on a trip to Mannheim, Germany, after which Crada asked him to co-write and perform on a song by the superstar British rapper Tinie Tempah, “Tears Run Dry.” “My manager will sometimes calls me and say something like, ‘Are you interested in playing 02 Arena with Tinie Tempah to a 15,000-capacity crowd on Sunday?’” says Clarke. “I’ll say, ‘What? How many people? Um, sure!’”
Sway Clarke II plays tonight at Bardot, 1737 Vine St., Hollywood, Calif., itsaschoolnight.com/losangeles
<bot>: The Berlin-based Canadian songwriter, who has taken the Internet by storm, plays his first American show tonight.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014072819id_/http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/sway-clarke-ii-rb-hitmaker-with-a-canadian-sense-of-humor/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: NEW YORK—Jean Stapleton, the stage-trained character actress who played Archie Bunker's far better half, the sweetly naive Edith, in TV's groundbreaking 1970s comedy "All in the Family," has died. She was 90.
Ms. Stapleton died Friday of natural causes at her New York City home surrounded by friends and family, her children said Saturday.
Little known to the public before "All In the Family," she co-starred with Carroll O'Connor in the top-rated CBS sitcom about an unrepentant bigot, the wife he churlishly but fondly called "Dingbat," their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and liberal son-in-law Mike, aka Meathead (Rob Reiner).
Ms. Stapleton received eight Emmy nominations and won three times during her eight-year tenure with "All in the Family." The series was produced by Norman Lear and broke through the timidity of U.S. television with social and political jabs. It ranked as the No. 1-rated program for an unprecedented five years in a row. Mr. Lear would go on to create a run of socially conscious sitcoms.
Ms. Stapleton also earned Emmy nominations for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1982 film "Eleanor, First Lady of the World" and for a guest appearance in 1995 on "Grace Under Fire."
Clockwise from top left: Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers, Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton in an undated still from 'All In The Family.'
Her big-screen films included a pair directed by Nora Ephron: the 1998 Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romance "You've Got Mail" and 1996's "Michael" starring John Travolta. She also turned down the chance to star in another popular sitcom, "Murder, She Wrote," which became a showcase for Angela Lansbury.
The theater was Ms. Stapleton's first love, and she compiled a rich resume, starting in 1941 as a New England stock player and moving to Broadway in the 1950s and '60s. In 1964, she originated the role of Mrs. Strakosh in "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand. Other musicals and plays included "Bells Are Ringing," ''Rhinoceros" and Damn Yankees," in which her performance—and the nasal tone she used in "All in the Family"—attracted Mr. Lear's attention and led to his auditioning her for the role of Archie's wife.
"I wasn't a leading-lady type," she once said. "I knew where I belonged. And actually, I found character work much more interesting than leading ladies." Edith, of the dithery manner, cheerfully high-pitched voice and family loyalty, charmed viewers but was viewed by Ms. Stapleton as "submissive" and, she hoped, removed from reality. In a 1972 New York Times interview, she said she didn't think Edith was a typical American housewife — "at least I hope she's not."
"What Edith represents is the housewife who is still in bondage to the male figure, very submissive and restricted to the home. She is very naive, and she kind of thinks through a mist, and she lacks the education to expand her world. I would hope that most housewives are not like that," said Ms. Stapleton, whose character regularly obeyed her husband's demand to "stifle yourself."
But Edith was honest and compassionate, and "in most situations she says the truth and pricks Archie's inflated ego," she added.
She confounded Archie with her malapropos—"You know what they say, misery is the best company"—and open-hearted acceptance of others, including her beleaguered son-in-law and African-Americans and other minorities that Archie disdained.
As the series progressed, Ms. Stapleton had the chance to offer a deeper take on Edith as the character faced milestones including a breast cancer scare and menopause. She was proud of the show's political edge, citing an episode about a draft dodger who clashes with Archie as a personal favorite.
But Ms. Stapleton worried about typecasting, rejecting any roles, commercials or sketches on variety shows that called for a character similar to Edith. Despite pleas from Mr. Lear not to let Edith die, Ms. Stapleton left the show, re-titled "Archie's Place," in 1980, leaving Archie to carry on as a widower.
"My decision is to go out into the world and do something else. I'm not constituted as an actress to remain in the same role. ...My identity as an actress is in jeopardy if I invested my entire career in Edith Bunker," she said in 1979.
She had no trouble shaking off Edith: "When you finish a role, you're done with it. There's no deep, spooky connection with the parts you play," she said in 2002. But after Mr. O'Connor's 2001 death she got condolence letters from people who thought they were really married. When people spotted her in public and called her "Edith," she would politely remind them that her name was Jean.
Ms. Stapleton proved her own toughness when her husband of 26 years, William Putch, suffered a fatal heart attack in 1983 at age 60 while the couple were touring with a play directed by Mr. Putch.
Ms. Stapleton went on stage in Syracuse, N.Y., that night and continued on with the tour. "That's what he would have wanted," she told People magazine in 1984. "I realized it was a refuge to have that play, rather than to sit and wallow. And it was his show."
Ms. Stapleton was born in New York City to Joseph Murray and his wife, Marie Stapleton Murray, a singer. She attended Hunter College, leaving for a secretarial stint before embarking on acting studies with the American Theatre Wing and others.
Ms. Stapleton had a long working relationship with playwright Horton Foote, starting with one of his first full-length plays in 1944, "People in the Show," and continuing with six other works through the 2000s.
"I was very impressed with her. She has a wonderful sense of character. Her sense of coming to life on stage—I never get tired of watching," Mr. Foote said in 2002. He died in 2009.
Her early TV career included guest appearances on series including "Lux Video Theatre," ''Dr. Kildare" and "The Defenders."
She and Mr. Putch had two children, John and Pamela, who followed their parents into the entertainment industry.
Her post-"All in the Family" career included a one-woman stage show, "Eleanor," in which she portrayed the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ms. Stapleton spent summers working at the Totem Pole Playhouse near Harrisburg, Pa., operated by her husband, William. She made guest appearances on "Murphy Brown" and "Everybody Loves Raymond," and even provided the title character's voice for a children's video game, "Grandma Ollie's Morphabet Soup."
For years, she rarely watched "All In the Family" but had softened by 2000, when she told the Archive of American Television that enough time had passed.
"I can watch totally objectively," she said. "I love it. And I laugh. I think, 'Oh,' and I think, 'Gee, that's good.'"
<bot>: Jean Stapleton, who played Edith Bunker in the groundbreaking 1970s TV comedy All in the Family, died. She was 90.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013060119id_/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578519671381458336.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WASHINGTON—The Food and Drug Administration reversed a decades-old ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood, concluding that modern blood screening makes the ban unnecessary.
The agency said it would allow donations from men if they haven’t had sex with men in more than a year.
“The FDA has carefully examined and considered the...
<bot>: The Food and Drug Administration reversed a decades-old ban on gay men donating blood, concluding that modern scientific screening of blood makes the ban unnecessary.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014122319id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-to-lift-lifetime-ban-on-blood-donations-from-gay-men-1419360922
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Ashburn, VA – Two-time Pro Bowl running back Clinton Portis will retire as a member of the Washington Redskins on Thursday, the team announced.
Portis, a nine-year veteran, hasn't played in the NFL since an injury-plagued 2010 campaign. Portis played in just five games, rushing for 227 yards on 54 carries.
The former second-round pick of the Denver Broncos in the 2002 NFL Draft rushed for 9,923 yards and 75 touchdowns in his career, averaging 4.4 yards per carry.
After posting back-to-back 1500-yard seasons with the Broncos in 2002 and 2003, Portis was traded to the Washington Redskins in exchange for conerback Champ Bailey and a second-round pick in the 2004 draft.
Portis rushed for at least 1,300 yards in four of his first five seasons with the Redskins before nagging injuries eventually ended his career.
Portis helped lead the Miami Hurricanes to a National Championship in 2001. He rushed for 1,200 yards and 10 touchdowns on 220 carries that season, highlighted by a 104 yard, one touchdown performance in a 37-14 Rose Bowl win over the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
<bot>: Two-time Pro Bowl running back Clinton Portis will retire as a member of the Washington Redskins on Thursday, the team announced.Portis, a nine-year veteran, hasn't played in the NFL since an injury-plagued 2010 campaign
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012082119id_/http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/08/21/clinton-portis-to-retire-redskin/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The U.S. Senate has passed a two-week temporary federal spending bill that would avoid a partial government shutdown, at least for now.
The bill, which goes to President Obama, passed the House on Tuesday. It includes $4 billion in cuts from the budget.
Although the bill's passage would mean no partial shutdown Friday, Congress would face another deadline in two weeks.
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<bot>: Senate OKs 2-week spending bill to avoid government shutdown -
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011030219id_/http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/03/senate-oks-2-week-spending-bill-to-avoid-government-shutdown/1
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: As a joint venture between Disney, Fox and NBC Universal, Hulu is best known for its free and extensive library of TV shows and movies. According the the New York Times, the streaming site is about to enter a new area: music videos.
The company has announced a limited deal with EMI to provide users with a HuluHulu channel specifically for EMI artist Norah Jones. Al of Jones’ videos will be on the site, as well as footage from four concerts and several interviews. Jones’ fourth album “The Fall” hit stores earlier this week. EMI plans to add other artists to Hulu over time and also update Jones’ channel. By entering the realm of music, Hulu goes head-to-head against other big players like YouTubeYouTube, MySpaceMySpace and MTV. YouTube in particular has garnered a large library from all major labels – and MTV has what seems like its entire catalog online.
The New York Times article indicates that Hulu is testing the waters with the EMI deal and will look at expanding to other labels depending on how the current lineup performs.
We wonder about Hulu jumping into the music space in such a limited way. While it’s true that Hulu offers a better interface experience than many of its competitors, by offering less content and few “exclusives” will fans start to use Hulu as their destination for music.
What do you think about Hulu offering music videos?
<bot>: As a joint venture between Disney, Fox and NBC Universal, Hulu is best known for its free and extensive library of TV shows and movies. According the the New
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2009122419id_/http://mashable.com/2009/11/18/hulu-music
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1 took on symbolic importance not only for the Communist Party, but also for connoisseurs of China's Internet controls. The thinking by some was that with the last of a series of sensitive anniversaries this year now finally behind us, the guardians of China's Great Firewall might again allow access to some blocked foreign sites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Instead, there has been no indication that the censors will loosen up. Forbes asked well-known Beijing journalist and microblogger Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti, about China's tightening of Internet controls. Anti already has a personal acquaintance with online censorship: His blog was deleted at the end of 2005 by Microsoft, apparently at the behest of Chinese authorities.
Forbes: Facebook and Twitter have been blocked here in China since the unrest this year in Xinjiang, and some Chinese Twitter clones are blocked as well. Why is this the case, and do you see the controls loosening up in the near future?
Anti: Web 2.0 Web sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer the public firsthand information, even faster than a government news agency like Xinhua. In fact, the July 5 Urumqi riots news was spreading first on Twitter hours before the first Xinhua English news piece. The Chinese government believes that the situation in Urumqi and other cities would be out of control if they can't control the information flow. That's the basic logic behind their decision to block Twitter and other Web 2.0 Web sites.
But this wide-scale blocking costs a lot. Discontentment in cyberspace could lead more common Chinese netizens to try to protest if all of their favorite social networking, photo sharing, video and microblogging services are blocked in the long term. And this crazy-wild blocking also harms the investment environment, which now almost makes China a Web 2.0 hell for investors. So China may loosen up the blocking in some sense.
Please elaborate on the threat that you believe Web 2.0 poses to the traditional Chinese media and propaganda system. How is Web 2.0 a game-changer in a way that distinguishes it from previous developments in online and wireless information, such as blogs, bulletin boards and text messaging?
Speed and access matter. In the traditional media era, censors could ban dissenting stories on a daily basis. In the blog era, along with other self-censorship methods within Web sites, the censors could handle the situation on a half-day basis. But in the Twitter era, things happen on a minute-by-minute basis. No effective institution could respond at this speed. Within minutes, bad news could spread around the world through re-tweeting. A quick protest could occur via Web 2.0 tools long before the government notices. Also, cellphones and the public platform of Twitter can make information leaks possible everywhere. Reporting is no longer the privileged right of media reporters. These are nightmares for an authoritarian system.
Many have seen Chinese Internet controls as a game of cat and mouse between the government and Internet users. In reality, only a small percentage of Chinese users are actively trying to get around the Great Firewall with proxies, mirror sites and VPNs. How are those users faring now, and what impact can they have on Chinese society?
China is still a culture of elites. Opinion leaders can influence Internet topics and even the society. Yes sure, only a very small population of Chinese can "climb over the Wall," but among them there are media staff, columnists, activists and those who really want to change something in China. This vivid civil society is shaping China, though slowly.
How do successful Internet companies that have social networking aspects, like Tencent and Sina to name just two, avoid trouble with their services?
They have to accept self-censorship and even sell out their users' information.
If the government sees Web 2.0 as such a threat, how will that affect business development in the Internet space in China, which until now has seen huge successes in not only Tencent and Sina, but also Baidu, Alibaba, Sohu and a number of online game companies?
These successful companies came out of Web 1.0. Censors and governmental scholars are studying how to balance the needs of the authoritarian system and the market. Once they find the way to Censorship 2.0, some clever investors and children of high officials will definitely rush to dig the Web 2.0 gold mine in China.
You, of course, had your own blog deleted by Microsoft in 2005. Now you are a microblogger with more than 7,000 followers. What do you see as your role in the years ahead?
I misjudged last year by underestimating the influence of Twitter. I was wrong. I want to be a good observer on the Chinese Internet, and keep telling the world what exciting things are really happening underneath the superficial Mandarin Internet buzz.
China Embraces The 24-Hour News Cycle
Military Parade Or Trade Show?
<bot>: A Chinese microblogger discusses why the government is vexed by Twitter.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2009101119id_/http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/08/china-internet-facebook-twitter-youtube-technology-beijing-dispatch.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Diane Ackerman on the natural world, the world of human endeavor and connections between the two.
This is the season of the night fiddlers, when you know summer is fraying away. The air brims with their eerie music, although we rarely see the musicians — katydids and crickets playing their marimbas, as they lift their wings high and rub a sharp edge of one wing over a ridge of pegs on the other. It’s as if they’re combing strands of song from their wings.
Katydids rasp a tattletale: Katy did! Katy did! Katy did!! Cicadas, buckling and unbuckling their stomach muscles, yield the sound of someone sharpening scissors. Fall field crickets, the thermometer hounds, add high-pitched tinkling chirps to the jazz, and their call quickens with warm weather, slows again with cool. Carolina crickets (which roost far beyond the Carolinas) furnish a buzzing trill. Grasshoppers sound as if they’re shuffling decks of cards. Snowy tree crickets lend a chirping melody to the ensemble. It’s the ultimate jug band using body parts as instruments.
The males do all the serenading, lustful for females, each of whom waits in the dark loins of the night, listening with ears in rather odd places — on the abdomen or the front legs. A female homes in on a winged dude, lured by his siren song. Then the happy male croons a different courtship tune. But they haven’t much time for dalliance before the first heart-stopping frost. According to folklore’s timetable, frost creeps in 90 days past the katydids’ first song. In my insect-loud yard, I heard the first katydid call about a week early this year, round about the middle of July.
At least I think I did. It’s not always easy to hear the faint and unseen. Or see cellophane-winged aerobats among late summer’s wild chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, and clover-scented milkweed — kingdom of the giant, much-showier monarch butterfly. I’ve learned that I hear faint sounds better with my eyes closed and jaw relaxed into a smile, which gives the brain a rest from the whole seeing-is-believing thing, and eases the tiny sound-smooshing muscles around the ears (whose job is to dampen noises).
Alongside this buzzing-chirping-tinkling-fiddling in the night, and choreographed to it, there’s the sexcapade drama. But I rarely picture thousands of bugs melding in flagrante all over the woods, and tens of thousands, maybe millions, yodeling their lust downtown, up in the forest leaf-parlors, and along sinewy country roads. I was a college student once; I get it.
All of this happens unseen, which is a haunting thought. Even without seeing the crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and katydids, we hear them shrilling in this season and trust that they’re the tiny living gargoyles entomologists claim. The ancients believed the gods were angry when storms crackled and boomed, but they had no foolproof way of checking.
We can see many invisibles in our mind’s eye because enough of our kind have witnessed them firsthand, through microscopes, telescopes or computers, and have shared that knowledge far and wide with people they don’t know. We agree en masse to believe our professionally designated seers — except for the occasional pagan anarchist who thinks scientists are polliwogs without a pond and not to be trusted any farther than you can propel them.
We believe this scratchy little corner of the invisible — an act of faith that suits us just fine. We embrace two-legged beings, and can warm to four-legged beings, too, but for most people six legs is pushing it. Most don’t need multi-eyed, antennaed face time. Anyway, we know we could verify this belief easily enough in books or on the Internet. That allows all of us to share an understanding of nature on several levels, some of them truly ancient, one quite new and changing almost every day: faith, lore, hearsay, story; or by proxy sine nomine — those anonymous souls, the designated witnesses, who behold, listen and chronicle as insect love parties on.
<bot>: As summer wanes, the evening air is alive with the symphonies of a cornucopia of insects.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012092319id_/http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/a-little-night-music/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Dozens of tourists, including a 10-year-old child, were safely rescued Friday after being trapped in cable cars dangling above the slopes of Mont Blanc in the Alps overnight.
The mountain rescue service in the French city of Chamonix said cables that had become entangled Thursday were repaired, and the cable cars were able to resume operation Friday morning.
The travellers were brought to Chamonix and the Italian town of Courmayeur.
A series of cable cars got stuck after the cables tangled at 3,600 metres altitude, prompting a major rescue operation. The interior minister said 65 people were rescued Thursday night, but 45 had to be left there overnight after rescue operations were halted because of rough flight conditions for helicopters and darkness.
Five rescuers stayed overnight in the cable cars and provided blankets, food and water to help weather the chilly mountain night-time conditions.
Those rescued late Thursday were brought down by the use of fixed ropes.
Kathy Cook, an American tourist, was one of them. She was relieved to be one of the passengers whose ordeal was over after nearly 10 hours.
"The cables failed just before 2:30 in the afternoon, and it was just before midnight when they finally belayed out of the gondolas, which was really quite an experience," said Cook. "The helicopter rescue failed because the fog moved in so we had to just wait and then they decided they could just safely belay us to the ground."
When the fog moved in, the helicopter effort was called off, and rescuers concentrated on bringing down people whose cable cars were closest to the ground, Italian rescuer Mario Mochet said. Rescuers on the glacier below helped transfer them to a shelter on the slopes before they were brought further down the mountains.
"The extent of this rescue operation is simply unbelievable," said Col. Frederic Labrunye, commander of the provincial gendarmerie group of Haute-Savoie. "By the volume of people to rescue -we rarely rescue 110 people at the same time in high mountain - and by the environment in which it happens ... in the heart of one of the largest glaciers in Europe, over a distance of five kilometers of cable with 36 cabins."
Helicopters had to delicately fly over the cable, which is risky itself, then lower a rescuer on to an area "not larger than a table," strap on passengers one by one and extract them, he said, describing it as "air surgery."
The cable car, which offers spectacular up-close views of Western Europe's tallest mountains and deep valleys below, connects the Aiguille de Midi peak in France, at 3,842 metres, to Pointe Helbronner in Italy, at 3,462 metres.
<bot>: Dozens of tourists who were trapped in cable cars dangling above the Alps overnight, including a 10-year-old child, have all been safely rescued.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016090819id_/http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/chamonix-stranded-month-blanc-1.3753570
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Hours after campaign finance reports showed Donald Trump lagging far behind Hillary Clinton in fundraising, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee sent his very first fundraising email – while, in true Trump style, promising to make it the “most successful introductory fundraising email in modern political history.”
The email from Trump promises the billionaire businessman will personally match donations dollar-for-dollar over a 48-hour period, up to $2 million.
“Let's make history again, and keep winning, by making this the most successful first fundraising email ever,” Trump writes.
The fundraising blitz comes after his Federal Election Commission filing for May showed him far behind Clinton in the money race.
The reports show donors gave just over $3 million to Trump's campaign in May, while the billionaire businessman lent his effort another $2.2 million. Clinton's campaign raised more than $26 million in May, her report shows.
The biggest difference was in cash on hand.
Trump’s campaign started June with $1.3 million in the bank. Clinton’s started with $42 million.
The figures revived questions Tuesday about how Trump is funding his campaign and about his self-proclaimed wealth. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban zinged him on Twitter, saying if Trump “were fractionally as rich as he says he is, he would write a $200mm check to propel his campaign.”
Trump downplayed the fundraising gap in an interview with Fox News, on the heels of his decision to fire campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
"We want to keep it lean. I'm not looking to spend all this money. She's going to spend more than $1 billion,” he said.
He also announced Tuesday afternoon that he has made several new hires to join his team, including veteran political operative Jim Murphy, former HR executive Lucia Castellano, digital services expert Brad Parscale, and former Bush Administration staffer Kevin Kellems.
“I continue to build a team of great people that will ensure we win in November," Trump said in a statement announcing the hires. "I have received more votes than any Republican in the history of the party and I am confident that, along with my team, we will take our movement to the White House and Make America Great Again.”
The campaign said it also added staff to the communications division, and expects to announce more hires in the department as the campaign continues to grow leading up to the convention in July.
Trump has suggested his tensions with Republican leaders were holding his operation back. He said the Republican National Committee and its chairman, Reince Priebus, "have been terrific," but "it would be nice to have full verbal support from people in office."
On both sides, past Federal Election Commission reports show Trump and Clinton are still off pace when compared with their 2012 counterparts.
In May of 2012, Mitt Romney’s campaign reported raising $23 million and ending the month with $17 million in the bank.
President Obama’s juggernaut raised $39 million and started June with nearly $110 million.
In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain raised $21 million in May, and ended the month with over $31 million on hand. Obama raised $23 million in that period, and had more than $43 million on hand.
The X-factor for Trump is to what extent he dips into his own private wealth. Throughout the primaries, Trump boasted that his campaign was largely self-funded. As he pivoted to the general election, he reassessed and opened the door to raising money from donors – for his campaign as well as for the Republican Party.
Whether he raises from outside sources or pays out of pocket, those expenses must be reported to the FEC.
Fox News’ John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
<bot>: Hours after campaign finance reports showed Donald Trump lagging far behind Hillary Clinton in fundraising, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee sent his very first fundraising email – while, in true Trump style, promising to make it the “most successful introductory fundraising email in modern political history.”
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016062119id_/http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/06/21/trump-sends-1st-fundraising-email-after-reports-show-him-lagging-clinton-in-buck-raking.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: On Wednesday, the administration agreed to seek a swift review of President Obama's health care law by the Supreme Court.
In a new video, Rick Perry's campaign highlights the fact that Mitt Romney boasted about the health care plan in Massachusetts in the original version of his book, "No Apology."
Jackie Calmes on the dysfunction in Washington after the fight over the timing of the President Obama's jobs speech. Also, a look at the health care records of three governors running for president.
Members of the nation's largest nurses' union protest in front of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building and rally at the Capitol.
What's with all this Democratic praise of the Republicans eager to oust Mr. Obama from office? A hint: it's not a sudden outbreak of bipartisanship.
How effective are incentives that prod patients to take pills, lose weight and stop smoking?
How can society deal with the coming flood of Alzheimer's patients?
Is pressure from Tea Party supporters and abortion opponents the reason why Stupak is stepping down?
How likely are the courts to strike down any part of the health legislation?
Will the health bill fundamentally alter the American social safety net?
Government medical programs often pass through more cents on the dollar to the providers of care than private insurers do, an economist writes.
The sectors hardest hit in the 2008-9 downturn were mining, manufacturing and utilities, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Americans pay more for doctors and other health-care services that people in other countries, and whether that is value-for-cost is another matter, an economist writes.
Most malpractice claims do not lead to any payment from doctor to patient, but they still affect medicine. A new paper in The New England Journal of Medicine has details.
All eyes may be on the debt limit in the United States, but a far more crucial issue is the continuing surge in health-care costs, an economist writes.
Yes, the rates are going up -- but it's even worse for large companies.
There's a lot of interest, but it probably won't work, according to several tax and benefit lawyers.
Will the new health care law prompt employers to drop health coverage?
Employers may see an opportunity to shed their insurance burden once 2014 arrives, but the system that's coming is so new and different - and complicated - that it seems foolish to presume this will happen right away.
It turns out Mr. Gingrich has operated at least five companies.
A large study in Canada finds that prescriptions for older patients are often fumbled in the move from one doctor to the next.
Many services that refer families to local assisted living facilities and nursing homes are paid to do so by those businesses.
The elderly are often excluded from important clinical trials, a new study finds.
Patients with primary care doctors are more likely to be discharged to their homes than those cared for by hospitalists, and less likely to be readmitted, a new study finds.
The proportion of minority residents is rising in nursing homes -- and that may not be good news.
<bot>: Another survey of major employers shows that workers may shoulder an even larger burden of health care premiums in 2012.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011100219id_/http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/new-survey-projects-higher-employee-health-premiums/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: For the first time in the playoffs, the Big Three returns to form.
SAN ANTONIO — LeBron James — you know, the four-time MVP winner and not the imposter we saw the other night — has finally joined the Finals.
So has Dwyane Wade, the 2006 Finals MVP model.
We hadn’t seen Miami’s celebrated trio dominate together in a game in the Heat’s first 19 playoff games. Not against the Bucks or the Bulls or the Pacers or in the first three games of the Finals. But they came to play on Thursday night and played like the superstars that they are, sending the Spurs to a 109-93 defeat.
This night, James, Wade and Bosh combined for 85 points. That’s total dominance, especially when you consider that Miami’s entire team had scored only 77 in its pitiful performance two nights earlier.
RELATED: MIAMI SPORTS BAR COLLAPSES DURING HEAT/SPURS GAME
They had to be the Big Three to keep their title hopes alive.
“It was on all our shoulders, obviously," James said after scoring 33, his best effort of the series. “We had to figure out how to play at the highest level. When all three of us are clicking at the same time, we’re tough to beat."
It doesn’t mean they’ll keep it going on Sunday and head back home with a 3-2 lead. You never know with James, even if he keeps winning MVPs like no one since Bill Russell, and is the best player on the planet.
Wade is even less of a sure thing at this stage of his career. Bosh came out the other day and said he wanted to be a Heat player for the rest of his career, and there had to be a lot of people in South Florida who must have thought that that’s not such a great idea.
But for one night, when the Heat absolutely had to win, when Miami couldn’t go down 3-1 in this series, the Big Three were the best players on the floor — by far. And the best statistic to back that up is that they had 37 baskets — six more than the entire Spurs team.
PHOTOS: HEAT BEAT SPURS IN GAME 4 OF NBA FINALS
When that happens, when they make 58% of their shots, as they did, Miami is going to win every time out. Doesn’t matter who they are playing.
“They were all able to be aggressive," Erik Spoelstra said. “The next game, we’ll have to see. But this game they were and we needed it."
They really did need it because in the first three games it looked as if the Big Three had run its course.
Wade hadn’t scored more than 21 points in a playoff game this season. In this series, he had been almost invisible after scoring 17 in Game 1.
<bot>: LeBron James — you know, the four-time MVP winner and not the imposter we saw the other night — has finally joined the Finals. So has Dwyane Wade, the 2006 Finals MVP model. Ditto, Chris Bosh.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013061419id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/lawrence-finally-big-3-play-terrific-trio-article-1.1372493
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: FBI agents remove evidence from the house where three women who had disappeared as teenagers approximately ten years ago, were found alive in Cleveland, Ohio. Amanda Berry, who went missing in 2003, Gina DeJesus, who went missing in 2004, and Michelle Knight, who went missing in 2002, were all found alive in the same house. Three suspects, all brothers, have been taken into custody. — Bill Pugliano, Getty Images, May 7, 2013
<bot>: Ariel Castro pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, sexual assault and physical abuse of Amanda Berry, who went missing in 2003; Gina DeJesus, who went missing in 2004, and Michele Knight, who went missing in 2002.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013050919id_/http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-130507-ohio-missing-women-found-pictures
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Sometimes we think it’s better to linger in silence, hoping that our problems will go away.
But when we don’t talk about our problems, they get worse. And we get worse, too – by pushing the worries to the side and to the back, next to those boxes of painful memories and dusty, misremembered oaths. You know, those promises to remember? To support? To care?
Well, look at the calendar. I guess now’s as good a time as any to talk about some of the problems we’re ignoring.
On this, my second deployment with the Army, my responsibilities as a squad leader include supervising and guiding nine other soldiers, all of whom are on their first overseas mission.
Here in Kuwait, life is simple. We’re infantry, so being safe, bored and forced to wear silly yellow reflective belts rankles us. But our unit has done well, considering multiple mission and leadership changes (Afghanistan … canceled! Kuwait … canceled! Afghanistan again … canceled again! Kuwait … yup, Kuwait!) over the past year. But now, with less time ahead of us than behind, we’re facing a new set of challenges.
Specialist “Ponch” is one of my soldiers. He’s approaching 30 and is popular with the platoon, and has a great sense of humor. Our duties here include spending long hours checking IDs or searching vehicles; this gives us plenty of time to joke around and talk about going home. Home is always on our minds. Home is something that seems less distant and more real every day.
We were sitting in a guard shack, waiting for vehicles to search and IDs to check.
“I have this recurring nightmare where I go home and can’t find a job,” Ponch said, shaking his head and staring wide-eyed at the simmering Kuwaiti desert. “I go back to my job and it’s not there for me. Nobody can help me. I need to take care of my dad, of my girlfriend. And I can’t. It’s scary, man.”
I started laughing immediately. Understandably, this may seem like the wrong response to such a serious proclamation.
“What, is that crazy?” Ponch asked. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said, catching my breath. “No, you’re not crazy. I’m laughing because it’s true. We’re all dealing with that. I have the same worries, man.”
“Oh good,” he said. “It’s just good to know that someone else is thinking about this stuff, too.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Maybe we should be worried about this.”
Deployed troops often experience extreme hardship, but we are also often afforded a reprieve from the hidden demands of the seductively “soft” civilian life. That is one reason why so many troops choose to re-enlist or extend deployments. Even in Afghanistan, I could forget about the troubles of home: the bills, the struggle to get ahead or just to stay afloat, the social pressures, the drumbeat of a million tiny anxieties.
Like so many of our problems, sometimes it’s better just not to talk about it.
That’s especially true when the reality of home is that you have become invisible, and your work, your profession and your entire way of life are suddenly of little consequence to the average American. Not talking or thinking about that leads to your staying away longer, because being gone (and you are gone, aren’t you?) is suddenly a more attractive option.
It’s better not to talk about it when home is where your friends and family who didn’t bother to write, e-mail or call for months at a time suddenly want to ask you deeply personal questions about traumatic experiences. Home is where you find your job is gone. Home is where you find your apartment or house empty, save for a few boxes and the dusty footprints of the one who left you. Home is where you interact with your spouse and children with desperate periods of horrible silence.
Home is where the two men running for president, and most of the media around them, share that same horrible silence when it comes to the war, or to the missions that support that war, or to your role and place as a soldier and a citizen within the machine, within but on your way back out, returning to a place and a people you remember vividly but would now hardly recognize.
This is uncomfortable, isn’t it? Then I guess we’d better start talking.
Being in the military is often an exercise in the surreal. The process of unreality begins in basic training, continues through your training and deployment, and peaks when you emerge on the other side with a DD-214 in your hand and years’ worth of (good, bad, painful, confusing, conflicted, devastating, frustrating, bitter, proud) memories in your head. The surreal is no longer the drill sergeant smoking you for eating a cookie, the officer ordering you to build a doggie door for his unauthorized pet or picking up the last unit’s garbage in the Mojave Desert for four days straight.
The true surreal is watching the political process play out on brightly lighted screens showing dull-eyed commentators and analysts. The surreal is trying to connect with people back home – people who love you, people who like you, people who have put you out of their minds.
The surreal is hearing those dusty words and phrases like “9/11” and “Never Forget” and trying to rationalize how, a decade on, what you are doing and what the competing candidates are not saying about what you are doing can possibly relate to that day not so very long ago.
The surreal is finding that when you do go home again, you see, hear and feel nothing that pertains to you, your service or your worries (nightmares). Everyone has tuned you out. Society sees you on the screen, but in the corner there’s a bright green word that reads “mute,” even though inside your own head the volume is cranked to the max. Then there’s a flip of the channel, a press of a button, and we’re back to talking about whatever it is that is not what we are not talking about.
This is uncomfortable, isn’t it? Then I guess we’d better start talking.
Like the returning veteran, the average citizen sees a world that quickly changes and is often frightening. Our future, both as individuals and as a nation, is uncertain because we often refuse to critically evaluate the motivations and decisions that brought us to these points.
What are the merits of staying in the military? What are the merits of transitioning out? What are the merits of staying in Afghanistan? What are the merits of leaving? What are the consequences of our decisions, of our inaction, of our over-reactions? Why have our military and social strategies brought us to these points? Why have we tolerated this state of affairs?
What do we owe our veterans, those at risk for suicide, our troops overseas, or the people who died because of the actions of terrorists so many sad Septembers ago?
Is it better not to talk about it? Because that’s the message we’re sending ourselves. That’s the message we’re sending Specialist Ponch. That’s the message that we’re sending the retiring sergeant major driving out of Fort Bragg for the last time, the terminal lance corporal shaking the sand from his M.C.U.’s as he packs for home, the transport pilot setting a course for the States, the junior petty officer putting his back to the sea and his eyes on the road ahead.
These questions deserve answers. They deserve thoughtful responses. They – we – deserve a conversation, a debate, a consideration. Ignoring the war – ignoring us, or ignoring our fears about veterans’ returning home to unemployment or isolation or alcoholism or substance abuse or a million other demons – does our nation no good.
So let’s talk about these things, O.K.? But don’t be freaked out if we laugh.
That just means we’re relieved to know that we’re not the only ones worried.
Sgt. Jonathan Raab is a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and a spokesman for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He is currently serving in Kuwait with the New York National Guard. He lives and writes in Rochester, N.Y.
<bot>: Sometimes we think it's better to linger in silence, hoping that our problems will go away. But when we don't talk about our problems, they get worse. And we get worse, too.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012092719id_/http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/its-time-to-talk-about-what-troops-leave-unsaid/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Even if you use the utmost caution, you can still be a victim of credit card fraud. Credit card companies and banks are more and more often putting the onus of catching phony or incorrect credit card charges on the consumer.The most important thing is to check your billing statment, of course. And there are organizations like Creditcards.com that offer tips on how to keep your cards safe as well. Here, we take a look at 10 of the riskiest places you might use your card, according to Creditcards.com, and what you can do to avoid the dangers.By Constance Parten, Senior ProducerPosted 9 Jan., 2011
Photo: Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy | Stone | Getty Images
<bot>: Even if you use the utmost caution, you can still be a victim of credit card fraud. We show you where your credit cards are most and risk, and what you can do to keep them safe.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150918225303id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2011/02/09/Riskiest-Places-to-Use-Your-Credit-Card.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Deciding to get an abortion is never easy, and pro-life advocates have recently tried to make that choice more difficult. Pro-life legislators have succeeded in passing mandatory ultrasound laws for women considering abortions in ten states. They argue ultrasounds give women as much information as possible before they make their decision. Implicitly, the right-wing logic goes that if a woman sees her sonogram, she will want to carry her pregnancy to term.
But a new study published this month in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology debunks that theory. Women who were already certain that they wanted to get an abortion went through with the procedure even after seeing an ultrasound.
In one of the largest studies on the topic to date, researchers analyzed 15,575 medical records from an abortion care provider in Los Angeles. Each patient was asked about her choice for an abortion and answers were divided into high, medium and low decision certainty about the procedure, with only 7.4 percent of women falling in the latter two categories. All patients underwent an ultrasound, and 42.5 percent of them opted to see images. Of those who saw the pictures, 98.4 percent went on to terminate the pregnancies.
Here’s the most important part, as highlighted in Slate: the 1.6 percent women who viewed the sonograms and decided to carry their pregnancy to term all had medium or low certainty about the procedure when interviewed before the ultrasound.
In short: Women who were certain about having an abortion before coming to the clinic did not change their minds because of the sonogram; but some of the women who were uncertain about the procedure to begin with were dissuaded by the sonogram picture.
The study contradicts earlier (pro-life abortion crisis center funded) studies that said fetal bonding could occur with women who did not want to give birth. The studies have become so pervasive that last year, pro-life pundit Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that more than 90 percent of women change their minds about abortion after seeing their ultrasound.
These new results showing that women rarely change their minds about this difficult choice aren’t all that surprising. The decision to have an abortion is based on a number of personal factors: money, age, stability, who the father is, life plans, etc. Seeing a sonogram picture does not change those factors.
However, for the very small percentage of women who are doubtful about having an abortion when they visit a clinic, the ultrasound can sway their decision. So what’s the harm in a law that requires an ultrasound if it will not change the minds of women who are certain but will give more information to women who are on the fence?
Pro-choice advocates would argue that offering the option of an ultrasound and requiring an ultrasound are very different. Choice is after all their guiding principle. And it follows that they are against this requirement and believe that making a woman have a sonogram is both an invasion of privacy and a tactic used to shame women out of having abortions.
And then there’s the issue of whether these mandatory ultrasounds violate women’s constitutional rights. In November, the Supreme Court rejected the state of Oklahoma’s efforts to reinstate a law that would require women to undergo an ultrasound of their fetus before proceeding with an abortion, ruling that such a law conflicted with Roe v. Wade: ultrasounds impose an “undue burden” on the women’s right to a procedure.
This study lends more credence to the idea that women who are certain that an abortion is the right choice for them are not going to change their mind, and putting these women through the process of an ultrasound is an undue physical and emotional burden as The Supreme Court has indicated in its rulings so far. But with a renewed focus on abortion in the House this year, the debate is far from over.
<bot>: Depends on how certain you are you want to have an abortion
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014010919id_/http://healthland.time.com/2014/01/09/will-looking-at-an-ultrasound-before-an-abortion-change-your-mind/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Maj. Mark Bomann, the flight doctor who treated a sick baby who was rescued from a family boat in the Pacific Ocean, said the 1-year-old girl was in stable condition.
LOS ANGELES — As her family began what was supposed to be a monthslong journey in a 36-foot sailboat from Mexico to New Zealand, Charlotte Kaufman wrote openly of her misgivings about taking her two daughters — ages 1 and 3 — to sail the South Pacific, with her husband as captain and herself as the crew.
“I think this may be the stupidest thing we have ever done,” she wrote in her trip blog, before concluding: “It is a difficult self-imposed isolation that is completely worth it.”
Less than two weeks later, 900 miles off the coast of Mexico, Charlotte and her husband, Eric, unable to steer their ship, the Rebel Heart, called for emergency help. Their younger daughter, Lyra, who had been treated for salmonella just weeks before the trip, was covered in a rash and had a fever. After a complicated rescue effort orchestrated by the California Air National Guard and the United States Navy and Coast Guard, the Kaufman family was on a Navy ship heading to San Diego, scheduled to arrive on Wednesday.
But well before they set foot on dry land, the Kaufmans have become the focus of a raging debate over responsible parenting. Some readers of their blogs have left blistering comments suggesting that the authorities should take their children away, seizing on such details in Ms. Kaufman’s postings as the baby rolling around and unable to sleep because of the ship’s violent pitch, and soiled diapers being washed in the galley sink.
Experienced sailors have also shaken their heads.
“I have a rule in my mind that I would never bring a kid less than 2 years old,” Matt Rutherford, who has completed several solo journeys across the seas and is planning to sail to Japan from Northern California this month, said in an interview. “There’s some real risks here, and you bring somebody else along and you’re taking the risk for them, too. That’s a serious question.”
Still, other observers said the parents were doing the right thing by following their passion and involving their children early. Pam Wall, who began sailing with her children when they were infants and traveled around the world with them for nearly seven years, said the Kaufman family — whom she does not know — had seemed to take the necessary precautions. “There were probably a series of events that two people just couldn’t handle,” said Ms. Wall, who has served as a consultant for dozens of families contemplating similar trips.
She often tells them that the sooner they get their children aboard a boat, the better. “The whole idea of being a family that goes out to sea is that you are totally self-sufficient,” Ms. Wall said.
But critics have borne down not only on the couple’s parenting judgment but also on their qualifications as sailors and the expense involved in their rescue, with some calling for them to be forced to pay the tab. The rescue involved three state and federal agencies and had California Air National Guardsmen parachuting from helicopters into open waters to escort the Kaufmans into inflatable boats before their sailboat was sunk on purpose.
James Gardner, 56, a fisherman from Oceanside, Calif., who said he had spent 45 years on the sea and now owns a bait shop near the docks, called the decision to take such young children on such a journey “ridiculous.”
“Teenagers, maybe, but kids of those ages — I think it was asinine,” Mr. Gardner said in an interview. “He put his family at risk. Any Joe can take a Coast Guard course and you are a captain — it is just above a cereal box certification.”
The couple had spent months preparing for the ocean crossing. They chose a route that is generally considered safe by experienced sailors — traveling along trade winds and waiting for the right conditions. Ms. Kaufman posted pictures on her blog and Facebook of mounds of food and diapers nestled into the boat’s crevices.
Just days before they were to set sail, Ms. Kaufman and Lyra were told they had salmonella and given antibiotics, according to posts on her blog. They postponed the trip for a couple of weeks and apparently had clearance from their family doctor in a small town on the coast of the state of Nayarit, Mexico, where they had been living since last year preparing for the trip.
Dr. Beth E. Ebel, an attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital, said it would not be unreasonable to take children on such a trip. “I think people should take the big important precautions, like wearing life jackets, but I don’t fault them for being out of instant touch with modern medicine,” she said. “It’s our job to be prepared and to have a backup plan. It sounds like they needed their backup plan and executed it.”
But some parenting experts said in interviews on Monday that they took a dim view of the whole expedition. “I am very much anti-Bubble Wrap and think we should be giving our kids safe risks, but that doesn’t mean exposing them to actual risks,” said Ashley Merryman, a co-author of a parenting book called “NurtureShock.” “It’s not as if a 1-year-old is going to remember an experience, whether it’s positive or negative. We all need to think about what they are really ready for.”
Even some family members questioned their actions. Ms. Kaufman’s brother, James Moriset, told a television station in San Diego, where the Kaufmans used to live, that he had refused to send them off.
“I saw this coming — I saw the potential for every bit of it,” Mr. Moriset said. “I don’t understand what they were thinking to begin with. I’m sorry, I don’t even like to take my kids in a car ride that would be too dangerous, and it’s like taking them out into the big ocean?”
In a statement issued from aboard the Navy ship, the Kaufmans vigorously defended their actions.
“When we departed on this journey more than a year ago, we were then and remain today confident that we prepared as well as any sailing crew could,” they wrote. “The ocean is one of the greatest forces of nature, and it always has the potential to overcome those who live on or near it. We are proud of our choices and our preparation, and while we are disappointed that we lost our sailboat and our home, we remain grateful for those who came to our aid and those family and friends who continue to encourage and support us.”
A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the family rescued at sea. They are the Kaufman family, not Kafman.
<bot>: Charlotte and Eric Kaufman became the focus of a debate over parenting after they took their daughters — ages 1 and 3 — on a trip across the South Pacific that ended with a Navy rescue.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014040819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/us/2-tots-a-sailboat-and-a-storm-over-parenting.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Iryna, a bashful 19-year-old New Yorker, was approached by a charismatic young man at a bustling Midtown train station in 2008. He started by asking for directions, and then continued the conversation with a fixed interest on the details of her life. The young blonde was charmed – but little did she know he was a pimp on the prowl.
He asked her on a date and the romance intensified. He was her first boyfriend. He made her feel special. “He swept me off my feet. He would kiss my hand in public and open car doors for me,” said Iryna, who asked not to publish her last name.
But Iryna’s seemingly charming suitor was actually a pimp – manipulating her vulnerabilities to control and exploit her.
“As girls, we grow up with ‘Cinderella’ stories. And the traffickers know that,” Iryna said, explaining how teenage girls especially are susceptible. “As psychoanalysts and unlawful businessmen, they are very good at picking their victims.”
Student hackers to help Manhattan DA fight human trafficking
While Iryna, now 26 years old, was able to break free from her oppressor, countless others aren’t so fortunate. A special NYPD Vice squad has spent the past decade cracking down on trafficking and prostitution, focusing on hotel hot spots and digital solicitations. But victims such as Iryna are often hidden in plain sight – forced into a cycle of shame and degradation, subservience and fear.
The Daily News doesn’t typically identify victims of sexual assault but Iryna has previously spoken to media outlets about her experiences as a survivor.
Human trafficking cases in New York City are up 50% this year with documented cases totaling 84 in comparison to last year’s 55. The same goes for trafficking-related arrests, according to the NYPD. The Deputy Commissioner of Public Information stressed that case numbers quantify suspected reports of trafficking from various outside sources and don’t necessarily result in the squad pursuing the case.
“The reality is, most victims are betrayed by those who they have grown close to, either through friendship or romance,” a spokesperson of the NYPD said in a statement. “The first time being forced to commit sex acts is usually masked behind the false, ‘Just this one time for financial reasons’ and ‘If you love me, you'll do this.’ Once the act is committed, that becomes another tool of manipulation by utilizing threats to expose their actions to those who know them. Physical violence is not required (though often used), but the fear of violence is ALWAYS present.”
Kids who survived violent migration face unimaginable horrors
For Iryna, she was too engulfed in her first relationship and her boyfriend’s prior kindness to believe any differently.
The pimp isolated her from friends and family, phoning her numerous times a day to ensure he knew her whereabouts. Friends commented on the strangeness of Iryna having to pick up the call on the first ring to report where she was and who she was with.
He said he owned her from head to toe, that he had total ownership over her body. He exerted that control by setting her up with partners, a “paid rape” of pimping her out of a bare-bones motel near Canarsie.
“He never battered me – he didn’t have to,” she said, going on to later mention that none of the profits the pimp made from her victimization reached her hands, “He kept everything.”
De Blasio congrats ex-sex trafficking victim for tying the knot
Iryna never pressed charges due to fear of retaliation from the pimp.
Detective Rose Muckenthaler – one of eight detectives assigned to the Vice Major Case/Human Trafficking Team – is baffled by what’s going on behind the closed doors of some no-frills hotels in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
“The hotel clerks don’t ask questions and there is no security screening,” Muckenthaler said in a private interview. “Men can just come in.” The short-stay hotels offer hourly rates that facilitate a revolving door of Johns who purchase time with the abused women and girls. “It’s happening so much in New York. It’s happening right now in our backyards,” she said. “And it’s the 13-14 year old girl – someone’s daughter – that’s being forced into prostitution.”
Backpage.com and other websites are used in New York City to solicit young girls and women online, police said – adapting traditional “street-walking” for our increasing mobile world.
Human traffickers are using Uber to smuggle migrants
Though terms on Backpage require users to refrain from posting ads for services or sales prohibited by law, public controversy ensues in the U.S. over whether the site, and others like it, makes it easier for pimps to sell women and children for sex in cities like New York.
Let My People Go recently organized a coalition of non-governmental organizations, anti-trafficking detectives and various religious leaders for a panel discussion on web-based solicitation, prostitution and human trafficking in the city.
“Everyone has vulnerabilities,” said Raleigh Sadler, host of the event and executive director of Let My People Go, which works to empower churches to fight human trafficking. “If you address vulnerability you are addressing prevention, intervention – everything at once.”
Women who are trafficked often can’t or won’t self-identify, Sadler commented. That idea was underscored by a police spokesperson who said, “Victims are taught to blame themselves for their situation and rarely self-identify as victims. This poses an incredible challenge to law enforcement and service providers because the victims often see themselves still in the relationship with the individual they identified initially, rather than the monster they've become.”
Massive human trafficking sting in Texas leads to 61 arrests
For Iryna – a friend of Sadler – the abuse eroded her confidence and sense of self-worth.
“My mind was just consumed with surviving,” she told The News.
Members of the NYPD’s human trafficking team say city’s brusque attitude – the “New York way” of minding one’s own business – in some cases means turning a blind eye to victims. The squad is appealing to the public for tips on any suspicious activity.
“Just call 9-1-1. It’s okay if you’re scared. I know you’re afraid of being wrong… but it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to identifying these victims,” said Lt. Greg Graves of the NYPD Task Force.
Iryna was able to break free from her abuser after she connected with a woman near the Canarsie hotel. The two began to talk, the neighbor listening without judgment or blame.
After the two became closer, Iryna says, the woman told her what was being done to her was not her fault.
The woman’s trust helped her begin the long process of leaving her pimp’s coercive control.
“A shift took place – hope came in,” said Iryna. Though the years following her exploitation were just as hard as the abuse itself, “I was defeated and depleted, a lot of depression and self-loathing set in. I didn’t want to live.”
It took Iryna eight months to withdraw completely from the back-and-forth dependence she had to the pimp who fooled her.
“Each and every person has susceptible vulnerabilities regardless of your origin, sex, culture, income, sexual identity, or appearance,” said a spokesman from the NYPD. “A trafficker's method of execution is to exploit those very vulnerabilities to the point of complete dependence on them, allowing the traffickers to turn you into their slave.”
She left with the support of NYPD detectives and a newly expanded community in Brooklyn.
Iryna is now enrolled in a master’s program for social work, with the hopes of addressing the vulnerabilities in young women and girls headed down a similar path.
“You go from a victim to a survivor, and it’s still labeling ... a lot of people live in the ‘survivor’ label. I don’t.” Iryna said. “There is a life beyond that.”
<bot>: He asked her on a date and the romance intensified. He was her first boyfriend. He made her feel special.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016121019id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-york-bustling-unseen-world-human-trafficking-article-1.2904624
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Rescue pooch Daisy almost died after 'jungle lion pounced on her' during woodland walk
A DOG nearly died from horrific injuries inflicted in a savage attack by ‘the Beast of Bucks’.
Rescue pooch Daisy was being taken for a walk by owner Carlos Romero, from High Wycombe, in woodland near local beauty spot Tom Burt’s hill when she was attacked by a ‘black panther’.
Terrified Carlos believes his beloved pet was pounced upon by a jungle lion as the area is a hotspot for sightings of big cats. In 2001, experts confirmed prints found on Wycombe Heights Golf Centre were those of a puma. Since then, locals have reported several sightings of a black big cat in the area, leading it to be nicknamed the “Beast of Bucks”.
Carlos was walking Daisy, who is a mixed breed, in the woods when she went off to investigate something in the undergrowth.
Minutes later she howled in pain and came out limping towards her owner with blood gushing from gaping wounds on the side of her body. Carlos rushed her to the vet for emergency treatment and is now warning other local dog owners to be careful when walking their mutts. He said: “It must have been a powerful animal to have done this to her. “I was terrified because the area where we walk is frequented by lots of dog walkers and children. “If it is a panther, somebody needs to do something about it. “You can’t leave an animal like that on the loose with children and pets around.” “It is lucky Daisy is a larger dog – a smaller dog that gets caught up in something like that could be dead.”
But local vet Adam Maxton, of Temple End Surgery, said it was more likely to be a deer than a panther. He said: “It is highly unlikely that a panther has caused that. It is more likely to be a deer with antlers.”
A spokesman from the British Big Cats Society said the UK has plenty of ideal countryside which is good hunting ground for panthers, cougars, leopards and even lions and tigers because there is lots of woodland for them to hide in and leap out on their prey. He added that escapees from private collections and small zoos are now living wild and have started families, fuelling the British big cat population. He said: “Believing in big cats is not like believing in the Loch Ness monster. There is absolutely no doubt that they are out there. “The most credible reports are from farmers, and those guys know their stuff. We have also had policemen reporting sightings to us. For every report, there are going to be others who don’t report it.”
It’s the latest of a spate of big cat sightings in recent years with reports of pumas, lions and tigers being spotted across England.
In 2010 it was revealed that there had been more than 100 sightings of exotic and unidentified animals in England since 2005. Many zoologists think Britain has a large wild population of big cats which have been breeding and forming colonies in remote areas of countryside since the late 1970s, when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act forced owners to dump exotic pets.
Last year a man claimed to have come face-to-face with a ‘puma-like beast’ near the countryside home of the Duchess of Cambridge’s parents Michael and Carole Middleton at Bucklebury, Berkshire. In October 2012 a bushy-tailed, long-necked animal, dubbed the ‘Creature of Curridge’, two miles from Bucklebury, was spotted by local businessman Don Prater. And in 2011 young mum Natasha Wysockyj told how she fled in terror after she was ‘stalked by a black panther’ while out walking with her family in a wood at Pangbourne, a few miles from Bucklebury. In 2007, Patricia Lewis, of Earley, near Reading, said she saw a panther on the prowl in a wooded valley just outside Pangbourne while Geoff and Sylvia Killgallon, of Caversham, Reading, said they saw it stalking the fields around their home. A similar creature was also seen in Shinfield and Ashampstead near Reading in December 2007 and in 2005 a long, black cat-like creature dubbed the Beast of Berkshire was seen stalking through the countryside between Tilehurst and Pangbourne.
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<bot>: A DOG nearly died from horrific injuries inflicted in a savage attack by ‘the Beast of Bucks’. Rescue pooch Daisy was being taken for a walk by owner Carlos Romero, from High Wycombe, in woodland n…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016101319id_/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1968116/dog-suffered-horror-wounds-after-being-savaged-by-a-puma-on-country-walk-owner-claims/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Before he became governor of Indiana and a candidate to be Donald Trump's vice-presidential nominee, Mike Pence was a congressman, and he voted for every free-trade agreement that came before him. That record, along with at least two votes favoring freer trade with China, puts him squarely at odds with Trump on one of the signature issues of the businessman's presidential campaign.
Pence has risen toward the top of Trump's running-mate list in recent days, according to media accounts and betting markets. On Sunday evening, PredictWise gave him a 43 percent chance of being chosen by Trump, more than double the chance for the next-highest contender, former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Pence backed trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea, Panama, Peru, Oman, Chile and Singapore during his House tenure from 2001 through 2012. He voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.
Indiana Governor Mike Pence (R) is on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Here's what you need to know about him. (Peter Stevenson,Danielle Kunitz,Osman Malik/The Washington Post)
He voted to keep the United States in the World Trade Organization and to maintain permanent normal trade relations with China, the country Trump repeatedly criticizes for unfair trade practices and threatens with tariffs to boost U.S. job creation.
Pence also has publicly supported the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement of Pacific Rim nations, an agreement negotiated by the Obama administration which Trump opposes and has likened to rape.
As governor Pence led state trade missions to China and to Japan, another country Trump has threatened with tariffs. He noted that Japan is the state's largest trading partner in a letter to Indiana members of Congress last year, in which he urged them to support the TPP and a what is known as "fast-track" trade negotiation authority for the president.
"Reducing tariffs and other trade barriers so that Indiana businesses can enjoy increased market access and fairly compete on the world stage is something that Congress must do," Pence wrote. "I encourage your support for Trade Promotion Authority, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and any other trade-related measures when they are brought before the Congress for consideration.”
Trump has made opposition to trade deals the top economic issue of his general-election campaign against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who as a senator voted for trade agreements with Chile, Oman and Singapore but opposed CAFTA. She helped negotiate the TPP as secretary of state but has opposed it in the campaign, saying the final version does not meet her standards for trade.
This year, Pence urged an Indiana manufacturer, Carrier Corp., to reconsider a decision to move 1,400 jobs from Indiana to Mexico. The company is continuing with the plans but agreed to repay some state and local tax incentives.
After meeting with the company, Pence said he did not want to give Indiana workers "false hope" that the jobs would stay in their state.
<bot>: Donald Trump could pick someone for vice president who has supported policies that Trump says have been a disaster for the country.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016071119id_/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/11/a-leading-candidate-to-be-donald-trumps-vice-president-is-totally-at-odds-with-him-on-a-major-issue/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 With the fate of Fidel Castro still unclear, the Bush administration is looking for ways to prevent a possible surge in illegal immigration from Cuba while perhaps easing the way for some Cuban-Americans to bring their relatives to the United States.
With the 2006 Election Guide, you can analyze over 500 races for the Senate, House and governor seats and paint the political map yourself. Go to Guide »
Any effort by Cubans to enter the United States illegally by boat or other means will still be blocked, and officials are considering adopting a policy of rejecting new or pending visa applications for anyone caught trying to sneak in.
But the administration is considering setting up a system that would speed the immigration process for Cubans with close relatives in the United States who have entry applications pending, according to a report on Monday by The Associated Press that was confirmed by two federal officials.
The change would not necessarily increase the number of Cubans annually given permission to enter the United States, which is about 22,000, but it would give people with families here higher priority.
Before the Cubans could come to the United States, however, Cuba would have to grant them exit permits, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because no final policy decisions had been made.
Consideration of policy changes has been accelerated by the recent transfer of power from Mr. Castro to his brother Raúl.
The officials said another possible change would ease immigration for Cuban doctors who have gone abroad as part of a program sponsored by the Cuban government to send physicians to developing nations. But the United States would block immigration for Cubans with ties to the Castro government who have been involved in human rights abuses.
Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, which oversees immigration enforcement matters, said that no changes had been made and that Cubans should not see these discussions as a reason to consider trying to enter the United States illegally.
The administration continues to urge Cuban people to stay on the island and work for a democratic Cuba, Mr. Knocke said.
<bot>: The Bush administration hopes to prevent a surge in illegal immigration, while perhaps easing the way for some Cuban-Americans to bring in their relatives.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006080819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/washington/08family.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The federal government only occasionally intervenes forcefully in a state’s affairs, and it carries significant political risks. With immigration continuing to be a hot issue in political campaigns across the country, the Arizona law, which grants the local police greater authority to check the legal status of people they stop, has become a rallying cry for the Tea Party and other conservative groups.
The lawsuit, though widely anticipated, was confirmed by an unexpected source: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who answered a question about it from an Ecuadorean TV journalist in an interview on June 8 that went all but unnoticed until this week.
Noting that President Obama had publicly objected to the law, Mrs. Clinton said, “The Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act.”
A spokesman for the Justice Department said the matter was still under review, but other senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a decision had indeed been made and only the details of the legal filing were still being worked out.
These officials said several government agencies were being consulted over the best approach to block the statute, which, barring any successful legal challenges, takes effect July 29. At least five lawsuits have already been filed in federal court, and civil rights groups have asked a federal judge to issue an injunction while the cases are heard.
A State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said Mrs. Clinton’s comments, made during a visit to Ecuador’s capital, Quito, were meant to answer deep qualms about the law in Mexico and other Latin American countries. “It is important to recognize that this has resonated significantly beyond our borders,” Mr. Crowley said.
Still, in focusing on Arizona, the Obama administration is making a politically risky calculation: the move could help repair America’s image south of the border but open the administration to charges that it is trampling state’s rights. And a legal battle could energize the right during an election year.
At home, polls show that a majority of Americans support the law, or at least the idea of states more rigorously enforcing immigration laws. But Latino groups and elected officials have denounced it as an affront to Hispanics. Several large demonstrations, for and against the law, have been held in Phoenix and other cities.
Legal action has been widely expected, given Mr. Obama’s repeated statements against it, as well as the concerns that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has voiced in interviews and news conferences.
In late May, Justice Department lawyers traveled to Phoenix to speak with lawyers from the offices of the state attorney general, Terry Goddard, and Gov. Jan Brewer about the possibility of litigation. Mr. Goddard, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, and Ms. Brewer, a Republican who is running for re-election, both say a federal lawsuit is unwarranted.
In a side drama, Mr. Goddard on Friday took his office off the case, bowing to the wishes of Ms. Brewer, who had said his opposition to the law would make it difficult for him to defend it. Mr. Goddard said his decision had nothing to do with the Justice Department’s plans.
Mrs. Clinton’s disclosure — which came to light after her interview was posted by a political blog, therightscoop.com — quickly became fodder for political campaigns in Arizona. Republicans, led by Ms. Brewer, seized on the notion of a domestic policy decision’s being disclosed on foreign soil.
“This is no way to treat the people of Arizona,” the governor said in a statement. “To learn of this lawsuit through an Ecuadorean interview with the secretary of state is just outrageous. If our own government intends to sue our state to prevent illegal immigration enforcement, the least it can do is inform us before it informs the citizens of another nation.”
The federal government from time to time has successfully brought claims against laws it deemed discriminatory or infringing on voter rights. It also has a history of suing states on issues related to prison conditions and school desegregation, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar at the law school at the University of California, Irvine.
While Arizona’s law has drawn opposition from those who worry that Hispanic-Americans and legal residents will be mistaken for illegal immigrants, legal scholars say the case will more likely to turn on whether it intrudes on federal immigration authority.
In 2007, the Bush administration successfully sued Illinois after it passed a law barring employers from using a federal electronic system to verify the immigration status of would-be employees.
Racial profiling claims may be difficult to prove. The United States Supreme Court, in a 1975 case, ruled that immigration officers can include racial or ethnic identity among factors in deciding whether to check someone’s right to be in the country.
Still, the federal government could argue that the law, in effect, gives one state more regulatory power in immigration than another and raises thorny diplomatic problems abroad, said Jack Chin, a University of Arizona law professor.
The theory of this law, he said, is that Arizona is “borrowing federal regulatory authority to help carry out federal policy.” But he said, “If the federal government comes in and says you are interfering, I think that is going to be a problem for the state.”
Though not a legal issue, administration officials said the law, passed in April, has tarnished America’s image in Latin America. They point to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, which found that only 44 percent of Mexicans viewed the United States favorably after Arizona enacted the law, compared with 62 percent before that.
On a four-day trip last week to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, Mrs. Clinton was asked about the law at every stop. When she sat down with reporters from two local TV channels in Quito last week, it was the subject of the first question from both. One reporter suggested that the law might encourage violence against those suspected of being illegal immigrants.
Mrs. Clinton said that the administration was committed to changing immigration policy and that Mr. Obama had spoken out because he felt the law infringed on federal authority. Speaking to the NTN channel, she said flatly that he would challenge it.
Administration officials traveling with Mrs. Clinton did not immediately recognize she had made news. The process was slowed further because the State Department did not publish a transcript of her remarks until June 11, two days later, because of technical glitches.
While the crossed wires left people at the Justice Department shaking their heads, Mrs. Clinton’s aides were unapologetic. The State Department had urged the Justice Department to announce the suit earlier this week, so Mrs. Clinton would not steal her colleagues’ thunder, one official said.
And, as Mr. Crowley, the spokesman, pointed out, “There is clearly an international aspect to this.”
<bot>: The move by the Obama administration, a rare federal intervention in state affairs, carries political risks.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010062019id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/us/politics/19arizona.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: RIO DE JANIERO, June 22— The Brazilian Government has been dragged into the controversy over Israel's bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor through a tale of intrigue involving the Israeli secret service, alleged clandestine shipments of uranium to Baghdad and an air chase over the African coast.
Brazilian officials have categorically denied all aspects of the narrative, but doubts persist because of the habit of Brazil's rulers of conducting the country's affairs in secret and the history of Brazil's acceding to pressure from Iraq, its principal oil supplier until the war with Iran cut the flow.
The episode has proved embarrassing to Brazil because its highly pragmatic foreign policy labors to keep the country out of superpower struggles or political entanglements that could impede pursuit of its own interests.
Brazil, a country eager to be considered stable and reliable, is also portrayed in the account as trying to dodge international nuclear safeguards.
Israel Called Source of Story
One of the few details of the episode that has apparently been confirmed is that the original source of newspaper accounts of the operation was Mossad, Israel's international secret service.
Editors at the Rio daily Jornal do Brasil said Saturday that their correspondent in Tel Aviv had been approached on June 14 by Mossad agents with the same highly detailed narrative that appeared this week in the Sao Paulo newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo. The Rio paper elected not to publish the article until it could corroborate it independently.
According to the various accounts, two Iraqi planes, a Boeing 727 and an Ilyushin 76, left an airfield outside Sao Paulo on January 14 and 15 respectively, loaded with armaments for Iraq. Brazil is a major supplier of weapons and light armor to Iraq, and Government officials have confirmed this part of the episode.
But, the newspaper continued, the @Soviet-made plane also carried eight tons of uranium oxide. If such an event occurred, the only illegal aspect would be the secrecy of the maneuver. Brazilian-Iraqi Nuclear Accord
The 1980 Brazilian-Iraqi nuclear agreement covers the furnishing of natural and lightly-enriched uranium to Baghdad, though the first transactions were not anticipated for several years. Both Iraq, a signer of the international treaty to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, and Brazil, a nonsigner that has agreed to overview by the International Atomic Energy Agency, are pledged to submit all such shipments to safeguards and inspections.
The newspaper article suggested that the Iraqis could irradiate the uranium oxide in their reactor and produce plutonium for a nuclear weapon. This is plausible in theory but highly dubious in practice because of the difficulties the Iraqis would have had in performing such an operation without French technicians and international inspectors at the site knowing about it.
According to the newspaper account, things never reached this point because planes from an unidentified nation forced the Soviet-made aircraft down over Africa and unloaded the uranium before allowing the plane to proceed to Baghdad. The article did not identify the African nation.
The newspaper account alleged that West Germany, which is building reactors in Brazil and giving the Brazilians the technology to produce their own full nuclear cycle, was also supplying parts for a ''clandestine reprocessing facility.'' West Germans Deny Report
Diplomats at the West German embassy here denied the report and said the newspaper had distorted what was in fact Bonn's cooperation in creating a ''laboratory'' fully covered in the accord signed by the two countries.
Brazil's relationship with Iraq began in 1973 when the Brazilians, dependent on foreign sources for 80 percent of its petroleum, viewed soaring oil prices as a threat to their development.
In Iraq, Brazil saw a potential fuel supplier as well as a market not yet dominated by Western traders and open to Brazil's increasingly aggressive merchants and overseas project developers.
The Brazilian Government's oil company, Petrobras, received contracts to prospect in Iraq and the Brazilian military began supplying the Iraqi Army. Setback for Brazilians
The first setback came when Petrobras struck huge oil reserves only to have the Iraqis claim the oil for themselves and reduce Petrobas's role to that of a contract driller. The capacity of the field, called Majnoon, was estimated at 900,000 barrels a day, enough to meet Brazil's entire needs.
In May 1979, the Iraqi Vice President, Taha Mohieddin Maruf, came to Brasilia and pointedly brought along a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The group had been trying unsuccessfully for some time to establish an office in the Brazilian capital.
The Brazilians agreed to recognize the P.L.O. as representing the Palestinian people. Because of the resistance of the country's ruling generals, however, they refused to let the P.L.O. open an office in Brasilia.
During the same visit, the Iraqi Vice President pressed Brazil to sign a nuclear accord, at one point demanding it be done ''in 24 hours.'' With vast uranium reserves - now estimated at 219,000 tons, with more thought to exist - and access to West German technology, Brazil was of great interest to the men behind the Iraqi nuclear project. The agreement was formally signed in January 1980.
In return, Brazil found itself receiving half its imported oil from Iraq, with formal guarantees that the flow would continue uninterrupted for at least 13 years. Brasilia did not bargain, however, on the Iran-Iraq war, which has reduced imports to less than 100,000 barrels a day.
There is great irritation here at what is viewed as Israeli efforts to justify the bombing of the Iraqi reactor by trying to spread word that Brazil was helping the Arabs fashion a bomb. ''It's as if someone robbed a bank and then afterward tried to involve a guy who was selling popcorn outside,'' a Brazilian diplomat said.
<bot>: The Brazilian Government has been dragged into the controversy over Israel's bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor through a tale of intrigue involving the Israeli secret service, alleged clandestine shipments of uranium to Baghdad and an air chase over the African coast. Brazilian officials have categorically denied all aspects of the narrative, but doubts persist because of the habit of Brazil's rulers of conducting the country's affairs in secret and the history of Brazil's acceding to pressure from Iraq, its principal oil supplier until the war with Iran cut the flow. The episode has proved embarrassing to Brazil because its highly pragmatic foreign policy labors to keep the country out of superpower struggles or political entanglements that could impede pursuit of its own interests. Brazil, a country eager to be considered stable and reliable, is also portrayed in the account as trying to dodge international nuclear safeguards.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150524083322id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/23/world/for-brazil-on-embarrassing-tale-of-intrigue.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: NEW YORK—A former president of the United Nations General Assembly and five others were accused Tuesday of engaging in a bribery scheme, part of what federal authorities said was a wider probe into corruption in the top ranks of the international body.
“We will be asking, is bribery business as usual at the U.N.?” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, at a news conference announcing the charges.
<bot>: John Ashe, a former president of the United Nations General Assembly, was one of six people charged Tuesday in a wide-ranging bribery scheme involving payments by Chinese business interests to U.N. officials.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015100619id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-u-n-general-assembly-president-charged-in-bribery-scheme-1444141619
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Eight years ago, I was enraptured by Lawrence Hill’s epic novel Someone Knows My Name. It became an ESSENCE Book Club pick, and Aunjanue Ellis propelled The Book of Negroes, the television adaptation, into must-see TV. With his latest effort, The Illegal, Hill eerily captures a tale that could be ripped from the headlines. The engrossing narrative focuses on the journey of Keita Ali, a refugee who leaves fictitious Zantoroland and heads to Freedom State—a powerful nation that has cracked down on displaced persons. Suddenly, Keita is living life as an “illegal.” We feel his pain and walk in his shoes.
<bot>: Two authors trace their family background, another recalls the importance of Alex Haley and three others probe hot-button issues of the day
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160710202015id_/http://time.com:80/4195123/essence-books-black-history-month/?xid=homepage
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: “Robert, James, Elizabeth and Sally are not concepts but people,” she added, referring to the Hemings family.
Ms. Gordon-Reed turns over the decisions that Sally Hemings and her family made throughout their lives, examining them from every side as if they were a Rubik’s Cube. She refuses to accept generalizations and easy conclusions; for instance, she rejects the assertion that all sex between master and slave must be viewed as rape, saying it strips black women of the singularity of their life stories and their dignity.
As Ms. Gordon-Reed spoke about how profoundly strange life in Monticello must have been, a large monitor played a short history of slavery in New York City.
Sally Hemings’s father was John Wayles, a slave owner and the father of Jefferson’s wife, Martha. After his death, all the Hemingses eventually came to Monticello.
It is almost impossible to put ourselves in their places, Ms. Gordon-Reed said. As she writes of James Hemings in her book, “A man is born into a society that allows his half-sister and her husband to hold him as a slave.” Does he grieve when Martha dies, she asks, or when her child — his niece — is buried? Did he and his brother resent the fact that the man who controlled their lives inherited the fortune that — as John Wayles’s sons — would have been theirs had they been born free white men? And what did Jefferson, who gave his enslaved servants a relative amount of freedom and sometimes considered himself a friend, suppose of their feelings?
“The connections between these two men are so divorced from anything resembling what could be recognized today as ‘normal’ human relations that they can be recovered only in the imagination and, even then, only with great difficulty,” she writes of James Hemings and Jefferson.
And then there is Sally, light-skinned and beautiful, who apparently bore a remarkable resemblance to her dead half-sister.
Ms. Gordon-Reed tries to understand why the pregnant Sally Hemings made the decision to return with Jefferson to Virginia from Paris, where the law declared her a free person and where there was a community of free Africans.
She suggests that an insecure existence in a foreign country, away from her family, would be a frightening prospect for a pregnant teenager. Jefferson promised to free their children in exchange for her coming back to Virginia; she would have a home and a powerful protector.
All four of her children were later freed; three of them passed as white.
Joseph Ellis, a Jefferson scholar who had been wary of the claims about Hemings before the DNA tests, called Ms. Gordon-Reed’s book “the best study of a slave family ever written.”
Ever since she was a child in Conroe, Tex., Ms. Gordon-Reed has been interested in Thomas Jefferson. In the third grade she read a children’s biography of him that showed him as a child with a slave his own age. “Jefferson was smart,” she said, but the black boy in that book “was a person of no consequence and no curiosity.”
The depiction bothered her, she recalled: “That was supposed to be a stand-in for me.”
Before integration, her mother was an English teacher at a black high school; Ms. Gordon-Reed went to the better-financed white elementary school. She was the only black in her first-grade class. “Delegations of people would stand in the doorway,” she remembered, as if they were thinking, “Let’s see how this experiment is going.”
Though she was mostly accepted, she said, she did break out in hives, probably from the stress. The following year the schools were legally integrated.
At 14 she read Fawn Brodie’s “Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History,” about his relationship with Hemings. It was a book widely disdained by Jefferson scholars at the time.
Ms. Gordon-Reed’s fascination with history continued at Dartmouth, but by the time she graduated academic jobs were hard to come by. So she ended up going to Harvard Law School, where she met her husband, now a civil court judge in Brooklyn.
“I always wanted to come to New York and be a famous writer,” she said, recalling how in Conroe she would read copies of The New Yorker. Now she teaches at New York Law School and in the history department of Rutgers University in Newark.
More than histories, Ms. Gordon-Reed said she expects a gold rush of fiction about the Hemings family. “We don’t have any letters from her,” she said of Sally. “She is a canvas that people can paint on.”
Ms. Gordon-Reed plans to write a second volume that will follow the family up through the late 19th century.
About four years ago, Ms. Gordon-Reed’s family gathered for a reunion for the first time. She had doggedly researched Sally Hemings’s ancestors and progeny, but realized that she knew little about her own.
“I’ve started thinking about my family a lot more,” she said. “Maybe that’s the next project for me.”
Years ago a state highway was built to run right through her family’s cemetery in Livingston, Tex., so all the graves were moved, and a record was made of every one.
“That,” she said, “would be a starting place.”
<bot>: In “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” Annette Gordon-Reed follows four generations of Sally Hemings’s relatives.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2008092019id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/books/20hemings.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Disconnect founders Casey Oppenheim and Brian Kennish (Photographer: Christian Peacock)
One hot afternoon in June four software engineers, a lawyer and a miniature pinscher named Lunch were gathered around designer Dan Kwon’s computer at Disconnect, a startup in San Francisco. They were watching their new education video, “Unwanted Tracking Is Not Cool.” Its star is an octopus puppet that gets sliced and diced while browsing the Web as countless companies secretly take information from him, make inaccurate assumptions and create profiles.
They congratulate one another on the clever use of a symbol of the surveillance state to sell Disconnect, a tool built to thwart the more Orwellian aspects of the Web. Disconnect is a shareware browser plug-in that slaps a green D next to the search bar and shows the number of requests being made on that site for your personal data–and blocks them, speeding up surfing noticeably. In two weeks of use I regularly got dozens of requests for my personal data on every site I visited, proving NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden right when he called the Internet “a TV that watches you.” The startup, which initially struggled to find investors, is cashing in on the paranoia stoked by Snowden’s revelations that the NSA partnered with a slew of Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo, to collect all manner of electronic communications. Venture capitalists are now clamoring for a piece of Disconnect even though the majority of its more than 1 million users pay nothing for it. The company launched a pay-what-you-want model three months ago; 3% of its new users have ponied up.
A lopsided arm’s race is afoot over the control of personal data, which some call the new oil of the 21st century. Facebook’s $62 billion market capitalization is a testament to the value of keeping a detailed repository of a billion lives. But the NSA spying scandal has sparked fear on the part of Web surfers of being tracked and traced by countless ad networks, data miners and brokers. The Federal Trade Commission is pushing browser companies, consumer advocates and advertisers to come up with a “Do Not Track” option for Internet users, but negotiations have all but broken down as advertisers and privacy advocates disagree on how much protection the tool should provide.
Money and attention is turning to a host of companies launched in recent years around privacy and tools to protect it. These include photo-deleting app Snapchat, which in June raised $60 million at an $800 million valuation, data locker service Personal.com, identity-obfuscating Ipredator and Silent Circle, which encrypts calls, texts and e-mails and comes preinstalled on $10,000 Vertu smartphones, a reminder that privacy, like a phone with a sapphire crystal screen and titanium case, is a luxury good.
Disconnect is one of this new breed, and it is situated smack-dab in enemy camp. One floor below its headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. is Disney Games, a division of the Magic Kingdom that got hit with a $3 million FTC fine in 2011 for improperly collecting data from its kiddie players. Many more lesser-known companies in the building–and in Silicon Valley as a whole–offer free products to users in exchange for putting ads in front of them or collecting (and monetizing) their personal information. Disconnect makes that harder to do.
The company will soon release a mobile app for children that will keep trackers and third parties from gathering information from kids’ phones. The app was developed by Disconnect’s newest hire: Patrick Jackson, who used to (irony alert) work for the NSA. Jackson has come up with a way to manipulate Apple’s operating system into letting Disconnect block advertisers and analytics companies from getting the location, user ID or other info from a person’s phone. (The app is currently in beta.)
Disconnect cofounder Brian Kennish, 37, used to be on the side of the trackers. Five years ago the shaggy-haired engineer was at ad-serving firm DoubleClick figuring out how to target ads on phones; though most of those devices were “dumb phones,” they still sent surprisingly revealing information to advertisers. He moved to Google in 2003, where he continued to work on ad products and then browser extensions for Chrome.
After Facebook admitted to an inadvertent data breach in 2010 that allowed advertisers to identify people who clicked on their ads by name, Kennish became concerned about the social networking site’s ability to track him around the Web with Facebook Connect. Those are the ubiquitous “Like” and “Share” buttons deployed by sites to make it easier to promote their content, but they also enable Facebook to track people online. Kennish took 30 minutes to write 20 lines of code that filtered traffic to Facebook and blocked it. He called the tool “Facebook Disconnect” and put it up online for free. He thought 50 people might use it, but within two weeks 50,000 people had added the extension to their browsers. “I realized people were starting to care about privacy,” says Kennish.
Kennish and his cofounder, Casey Oppenheim, a 39-year-old consumer advocate lawyer from Minnesota, made more than 50 investor pitches over the next six months. “We got rejected a huge amount. At the time no one was enthusiastic about privacy. They thought no one would care and no one would use the product,” says Kennish.
They managed to wrangle $600,000 from two venture capital firms and six angel investors and spent a year camped out in a conference room at investor Charles River Ventures, improving the product and creating versions for all of the major browsers. The latest edition blocks more than 2,000 parties from data grabbing. In June, just as Snowden was dominating the headlines, the company quickly raised an additional $3.5 million.
“Not every footprint you leave on the Internet needs to stay there forever,” says Rick Heitzmann, managing director at FirstMark, which led the recent investment in Disconnect. “People are not actively managing their privacy now. That will change.”
Mike Zaneis, general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a group that represents online marketers, is worried about the effect of privacy tools on the digital ad market, which had revenue of $36.6 billion in 2012. “It’s an economic tradeoff: You go to a website, you see ads. If you block those ads, you’re starving the content creators,” says Zaneis. “It would put tens of thousands of small publishers out of business if you had widespread, mass adoption of these tools.”
Zaneis predicts that the privacy firms will force marketers to come up with new ways to track people and their devices. There’s already a shift from using tracking-software snippets called cookies to “fingerprinting” their devices–a technique that involves identifying a particular user by looking at the size of the device’s screen and the exact settings on the clock, plug-ins and fonts.
“We don’t want to be an ad blocker, but, unfortunately, today the only way to reliably block tracking is to block entire requests which are often placed inside ads,” says Kennish. “We want to create a conversation between websites and users and eventually advertisers so that users have a say in what data they are giving up.”
<bot>: The NSA spying scandal is fueling consumer and investor obsession with online cloaking tools like Disconnect.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013072719id_/http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/dont-want-trackers-watching-your-web-and-smartphone-activity-this-start-ups-for-you/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead.
1. New Yorkers will head to the polls on Tuesday for the state’s primary election. Hillary Clinton, who represented New York in the Senate, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who grew up in Brooklyn, clashed intensely in their debate last week, shouting over and interrupting each other. Leaders of the Republican National Committee will meet in Florida this week to set the rules for their convention, which looks likely to be contentious if no candidate enters with the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination.
2. After a trip to Greece, Pope Francis took 12 Muslim refugees from Syria with him back to Rome, where the Catholic charitable association Sant’Egidio will help care for them. The mood in Europe has hardened against refugees, but the pope appealed for empathy: “We hope that the world will heed these scenes of tragic and indeed desperate need, and respond in a way worthy of our common humanity.”
3. The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in a challenge to President Obama’s executive actions protecting unauthorized immigrants from deportation. Twenty-six states, led by Texas, say that the president overreached his authority. The issue is deeply personal for millions of people and their families. Jerry Pinto, a Bolivian immigrant who is in the country illegally, has watched his children build lives in America and hopes to follow them out of the shadows and live in “a place where I can be visible.”
4. Regulators warned five of America’s largest banks that they are still too big to fail and do not have “credible” plans for unwinding in a crisis. Only Citigroup, which has shrunk its holdings by $700 billion in recent years, received passing grades for its so-called living will. Several big banks this week reported slumping profits, and many are planning reductions and cutbacks.
5. The Golden State Warriors, fresh off the best regular season in N.B.A. history, crushed the Houston Rockets in their first game of the playoffs, 104-78. Stephen Curry rolled his ankle, but the team says the injury is minor. In the N.H.L. playoffs, the New York Rangers defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-2, to even the first-round series at one game apiece.
6. Members of Georgetown University’s community are pressing the school to confront a wrenching part of its history: In 1838, 272 slaves were sold to pay off Georgetown’s debts and secure its financial future. Researchers are piecing together the life stories of the slaves and seeking out their descendants. What comes next is an open question: “What can you do to make amends?” asks one historian working on the project.
7. Grab your hiking shoes and head out to a national park, where admission is free for the duration of National Park Week. This year is the centennial of the National Park Service, which oversees 84 million acres of scenic sites and historical monuments. The nation’s most popular park, the Great Smoky Mountains, drew a record 10.7 million visitors last year.
8. The original cast members of “Hamilton” will get a share of the musical’s enormous profits, which now top $500,000 a week, producers announced on Friday. Actors hope the deal will have industry ripple effects, cutting them in on the action in those rare cases when shows they help develop become hits. As the company sings: “The revolution’s happening in New York.”
9. Yahoo will accept first-round bids for its core Internet business on Monday. Verizon and the private equity firm TPG are expected to make offers, but confusion swirls around the process. Suitors say Yahoo has shared little financial information on its operations, and its forecast is gloomy for the current year. One analyst called Yahoo’s core “a ‘melting ice cube.’”
10. An economic backlash is building against a state law in North Carolina that limits bathroom access for transgender people and eliminated anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation. Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr canceled concerts and Deutsche Bank froze a plan to add local jobs. Similar legislation is being considered in South Carolina, Tennessee and other states.
11. President Obama will travel this week to Saudi Arabia, Britain and Germany for talks on a variety of topics, including efforts to combat the Islamic State. One potential area of tension is a bill pending in Congress that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The kingdom has threatened economic retaliation if the bill passes.
12. A lawsuit over Sea Monkeys is the unlikely springboard for one of our best-read stories this week. The man behind the inventive marketing — a staple of comic-book back pages for decades — had a hand in many products, like X-Ray Spex, whose appeal lay in conjuring fantasies. The writer says that the case “leads into that lively place between ordinary truth and hopeful dreams and all the way to the essential contradiction at the core of the American character.”
Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a.m. Eastern.
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<bot>: Here’s what you need to know about the week’s top stories.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016041719id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/nytnow/your-weekend-briefing-pope-francis-new-york-rangers-supreme-court.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Oct. 29, 2013 7:38 p.m. ET
If D'Andra Galarza were to come face to face with death, she knows whose life would flash before her eyes: the life of her boss, a president at NBCUniversal Inc.
After 10 years as Edward Swindler's executive assistant, waking up at 4 a.m. to ensure he makes an early morning flight and keeping the office stocked with his favorite snacks—oyster crackers, peppermint Life Savers and Honey Nut Cheerios—Ms. Galarza says she's under no illusions about whose needs come first.
"You work very, very hard...so that they can shine and they can do their best," she says. "You're kind of the stage mom."
The schedulers, gatekeepers and caretakers of the corporate world are rarely seen, but they have a profound effect on the daily lives of the executives they serve. They do everything from booking business trips, ordering anniversary gifts and arranging pet care to attending high-level meetings and deciding who can and can't meet with their boss. The work can be thankless and often comes at a cost to their own personal lives, but these workers wield subtle influence at a company's highest levels--and no small amount of power.
Three executive assistants discuss their jobs:
CURRENTLY: Works part time as assistant to a family, after more than seven years as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's assistant
SALARY: $135,000 plus 30% bonus while at Facebook
ON-THE-JOB FEAT: Once threw a toga party for 350 people with 48 hours notice
ON HER FAMOUS BOSS: "I knew Mark before he became famous. He's still Mark."
ASPIRATIONS: Thinking about going back to school for psychology
CURRENTLY: Works for Pinterest co-founders Ben Silbermann (CEO) and Evan Sharp (head of design)
ON-THE-JOB FEAT: At a previous job, she had to tell her boss that his driver had crashed his Rolls Royce.
ON WORKING FOR A HOT COMPANY: "The same way I've approached the day at every other job. You just get up and do your best."
CURRENTLY: Works for several executives, including the CEO, at Nlyte Software Ltd.
HOURS: Starts around 5 a.m.; spent a recent sick day working from home. "You're never off."
ON-THE-JOB FEATS: Helped compile documents for a boss's divorce; selected an anniversary gift for another boss's wife.
ASPIRATIONS: Recently took on human resources responsibilities at her company. "I think our job is what we make it."
The career path can be uncertain, however, and assistants' fortunes often hinge on their boss's trajectory. If the boss is fired, the assistant can end up in limbo or working for a less senior professional. Yet as automation claims many administrative jobs, the assistants are prized for their business savvy and treated as the boss's not-quite-equal partner.
Now, a new networking group aims to emphasize the "executive" in executive assistant, pampering and pumping up these right-hand workers with nightclub parties, spa sessions and Behind Every Leader, a conference series that is coming next month to Newark, N.J. Among the scheduled sessions: "Yoga & Meditation for the Executive Assistant" and a boss's recounting of how his EA saved the company after superstorm Sandy.
Victoria Rabin, the 28-year-old founder of the Executive Assistants Organization and a former assistant at a London hedge fund, says the job deserves some cachet because assisting is an "incredible career" that only a "certain breed" can do.
Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based networking group has some 1,000 members, the majority of whom pay $500 to $1,500 a year in dues to gain access to events and online webinars, and, for the highest-paying, a personal mentor.
Assistants need to bond with one another, Ms. Rabin says, because few others can understand the demands of the job, from tracking down car services in a far-flung city to dealing with a boss's infidelity. Groups such as the 71-year-old International Association of Administrative Professionals have long offered assistants educational and networking opportunities, but several executive assistants say the EAO, whose current members are all female, feels "sexier" and fresher.
Anikka Fragodt is considered a celebrity in the realm of executive assistants. Until last March, she was Mark Zuckerberg's right-hand woman. For more than seven years, she planned everything from a toga party for 350 people with 48 hours' notice to Mr. Zuckerberg's secret wedding to Priscilla Chan in 2012. (Only four people knew about it in advance, she says, and the fourth was Ms. Chan's assistant.)
Ms. Fragodt describes herself as Mr. Zuckerberg's partner in business as well, helping him prepare for meetings and debriefing other staff members to ensure they understood his wishes. She also adopted her boss's signature hooded sweatshirts and says she could anticipate his needs at a glance.
"It's not like the old days of 'Mad Men,' where the secretary wears the cute skirt, makes the coffee and does what she's supposed to do," says Ms. Fragodt. "She goes to the meetings and represents the executive, and the partnership is stronger."
Adds Mr. Zuckerberg in an email: "Anikka joined Facebook early on, when we had less than 100 employees, and were basically working out what kind of company we wanted to be. Anikka helped me become a better CEO."
By her final year at Facebook, Ms. Fragodt, 44 years old, was being paid $135,000 plus a 30% bonus, as well as stock awards that left her "taken good care of." She has spent the past few months volunteering, working part-time and thinking about her next career move.
Ms. Fragodt, who will speak at the Behind Every Leader conference in Newark, advises today's executive assistants to be visible, no matter how strange it feels.
Melba Duncan, president of the Duncan Group, a search and training firm, recruits high-level executive assistants for salaries ranging from $75,000 to $175,000. Bosses want assistants who are knowledgeable about global affairs and economic trends and can help guide big decisions, she says. That means many candidates have graduate degrees, such as an M.B.A. or law degree.
The best executive assistants immerse themselves in the businesses they work for, adds Ms. Duncan, who worked as an executive assistant for Peter Peterson at Lehman Brothers for 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s. If Mr. Peterson arrived in the morning with a book, she would purchase a copy by that evening, she says. "Not that I would discuss it with him."
Michelle DiGiacomo, an executive assistant at Pinterest, says she is often an ambassador for her bosses, co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann and co-founder and head of design Evan Sharp. She spends most of her time interacting with executives, but "at the same time, I'm not on the leadership team," she says. She knew about the company's $3.8 billion valuation weeks before it became public though she couldn't mention it—or much of the other confidential information that crosses her desk—to colleagues. Meanwhile, the executives who share everything from email accounts to bank-account data to home-security codes with their assistants say the partnership works best when there's trust and constant communication.
Harry Kraemer, a former CEO of Baxter International Inc. BAX -0.18% Baxter International Inc. U.S.: NYSE $65.87 -0.12 -0.18% Oct. 31, 2013 4:04 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 3.02M U.S.: NYSE $66.02 +0.15 +0.23% Oct. 31, 2013 4:42 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 59,303 P/E Ratio 16.47 Market Cap $35.82 Billion Dividend Yield 2.98% Rev. per Employee $287,176 10/17/13 Baxter Profit Down 6.7 % on Ac... 08/14/13 China Raises Scrutiny on Forei... 08/05/13 Corruption Currents: From a Ne... More quote details and news » BAX in Your Value Your Change Short position and now a professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, says his assistant of 12 years kept him informed about what was happening at the healthcare company and encouraged him to communicate more with employees, pushing him to write all-company emails, share stories about his personal life and dress up as Santa around the holidays.
John Manuck, the chief executive of Techmer PM LLC, a manufacturing concern, says he leans on his assistant, Nicole Brannick, to tell him who he needs to speak with urgently and who can wait. Ms. Brannick is among the first to know when the company makes an acquisition, and she kept Mr. Manuck's cats company when he had to travel for work.
Assistants gain status from their boss's high profile. NBC's Ms. Galarza says another executive once tried to wheedle information from her about a private meeting her boss was attending. "People know I know everything," she says.
"It's sort of like EA code," she adds. "Everybody treats me with kid gloves. If I was working for a VP, it would not be that way."
Write to Rachel Feintzeig at rachel.feintzeig@wsj.com
<bot>: Executive-assistant jobs can be thankless, but the corporate world's schedulers, gatekeepers and caretakers have a profound effect on the executives they serve.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013103119id_/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304470504579164142663425498.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Feeling the I-need-a-new-bag itch? Say hello to Max Mara’s “Whitney” top handle, named after the newly reopened museum of American art that’s become a summer Instagram rite of passage in NYC.
It’s not just a name-only thing: The Italian fashion house teamed up with the building’s celebrity architect, Renzo Piano, and his workshop to conceive the luxurious piece. You can see it in the sleek shape and distinctive ribs, which echo the lines in Whitney’s industrial steel skin.
Since it debuted in April, the handbag has been snapped on a trio of stars who’ve made a collective case for its versatility. Sarah Jessica Parker helped the bag reach its after-dark potential, pairing it with a sexy metallic slip and blazer; Gigi Hadid went off-duty with hers, proving it looks just as good with sneakers; meanwhile, Karlie Kloss struck a happy medium, coordinating her chestnut tote with a day dress and simple sandals to match.
The bag comes in four colors and three sizes, the largest of which is all yours if you’ve got a cool $1,750 to spend.
Steep, sure, but remember: Fashion, like art, is an investment, and museum-quality design never comes cheap.
<bot>: Feeling the I-need-a-new-bag itch? Say hello to Max Mara’s “Whitney” top handle, named after the newly reopened museum of American art that’s become a summer Instagram rite of passage in NYC.  ...
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015080619id_/http://nypost.com/2015/08/03/what-buzzy-nyc-building-inspired-this-1450-it-bag/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: TEHRAN, Jan. 27 Iran's chief nuclear negotiator on Friday cast doubts on a Russian proposal to end the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program, but he did not shut the door on it entirely, saying Iran was willing to continue discussing it.
Amid international concern that Iran has resumed nuclear activities it had promised to suspend, Russia has proposed allowing Iran to operate civilian nuclear facilities as long as Russia and international inspectors took full control of the fuel. That would, in theory, enable Iran to satisfy its energy needs without giving it means to develop nuclear weapons.
The United States, Europe and China support the compromise as the best way to negotiate a resolution to the standoff. But Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council, who also leads the nation's negotiating team, said, "The Russian proposal does not meet the needs of Iran's nuclear energy program," according to the IRNA news agency.
"The capacity of the program is not sufficient for the needs of our nuclear program," he was quoted as saying. "But we cannot say that it is a negative proposal. We think it can be pursued."
He spoke Friday after a trip to China and Russia, where he sought support before a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency next Thursday. The West was alarmed this month after Iran broke its agreement with Europe by removing the protective seals at its nuclear facility in Natanz, where it can enrich uranium. Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear weapons, though Iran says its nuclear program is purely for peaceful energy purposes.
The United States, France, Germany and Britain have urged other nations to refer Iran to the Security Council for sanctions. In an interview on Friday with Bob Schieffer of CBS News, President Bush said that while he believed Iran should be referred to the Security Council, sanctions were only one option. "We are going to work with our friends and allies to make sure that when we get in the Security Council, we will have an effective response," he said.
Mr. Larijani, however, warned Europe on Friday to avoid "any hasty or irrational action."
Much of the reason there is broad support for the Russian proposal is that Iran could simply withdraw from negotiations and eject international inspectors if the Security Council took up sanctions.
The details of the proposal need to be defined, but it calls for a plan in which Iran would ship UF4 and UF6, the gasses produced at Iran's nuclear facility in Isfahan, to Russia for enrichment. The enriched uranium would then be shipped back to Iran.
Iran dismissed the proposal a few months ago, but showed interest this month under international pressure.
Kazem Jalali, the spokesman for the Iranian Parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, however, said in an interview that it was unlikely that Tehran would accept the plan unless it enabled Iran to carry out the work in the country.
"Russia's proposal is still very vague, but we cannot accept it if it does not allow us to enrich uranium inside Iran," he said. "We will continue the negotiations with the Russians, but it should be a partnership inside Iran."
"Having the fuel cycle inside the country is our red line, and we cannot compromise over our national interests," he added.
David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
<bot>: Iran's chief nuclear negotiator cast doubts on a Russian proposal to end the standoff over Iran's nuclear program, but he did not shut the door on it entirely.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006012819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/international/middleeast/28iran.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: New Orleans residents plan celebrate Cinco de Mayo on Thursday by throwing a “Sinkhole de Mayo” party that pokes fun at a 30-ft.-wide hole in the middle of Canal Street near Harrah’s Casino.
Chrissy Gross and her friends came up with the pun in a group text message chain, The Daily Beast reports. They made a Facebook event, calling on city residents to come whack a traffic cone piñata with them at the site of the sinkhole. To date, about 1,500 users say they will attend, while another 2,700 or so say they are interested in going. Many have been sharing memes and “Photoshops” of what a party inside a sinkhole would look like.
Co-organizer Carson Rapose told Nola.com that he did not have a permit for the gathering, and after Gross had a phone conversation with City Hall, organizers were forced to change the party’s location from the sinkhole site to Woldenberg Park, by the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, because of safety concerns.
As the American Society of Civil Engineers put it, “When the party’s over, engineers will be at work on a 6-month, $5 million project” to repair what the city’s mayor Mitch Landrieu has called a “catastrophic failure.”
<bot>: In honor of Cinco de Mayo and a giant sinkhole
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016050819id_/http://time.com/4319528/cinco-de-mayo-sinkhole-new-orleans/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET Talk about the executioner’s song: Christopher Chew makes for a fine, haunted Sweeney and Amelia Broome (pictured, with Chew) is a commanding Mrs. Lovett in Spiro Veloudos’s darkly compelling production of Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork about a wronged barber who takes his revenge on the world, one customer at a time. Phil Tayler, as innocent young Toby, is a standout among the able supporting cast. Through Oct. 11. Lyric Stage Company of Boston. 617-585-5678, www.lyricstage.com
CHICAGO Director-choreographer Nick Kenkel adds his own brand of stylish sizzle to the Kander & Ebb musical about corruption, greed, and celebrity fixation in the 1920s. (Thank heaven those problems are no longer with us.) Heather Parcells plays murderess and fame junkie Roxie Hart with a winning edge of screwball comedy, and she’s ably abetted by Bahiyah Hibah as a coolly magnetic Velma Kelly and Sean McDermott as raffish lawyer Billy Flynn, for whom the dollar is indeed almighty. Through Oct. 5. North Shore Music Theatre, Beverly. 978-232-7200, www.nsmt.org
GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER A flawed but surprisingly appealing stage adaptation of the platitudinous 1967 film, with especially strong work from Malcolm-Jamal Warner as an African-American physician and Will Lyman as a white newspaper publisher whose liberal convictions are put to the test when he learns his daughter is engaged to the doctor. Through Oct. 5. Huntington Theatre Company, at BU Theatre, Boston. 617-266-0800, www.huntingtontheatre.org
BENT Victor L. Shopov confirms his status as one of the most dynamic actors in Boston with his superb portrayal of a gay Berliner who learns what he is capable of as he fights to survive the barbaric cruelty of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. Martin Sherman’s drama is insightfully directed by David J. Miller and bolstered by fine performances from Brooks Reeves and Mikey DiLoreto. Through Oct. 11. Zeitgeist Stage Company, at Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts. 617-933-8600, www.zeitgeiststage.com
THE LION KING The puppet-driven magic concocted all those years ago by Newton-bred director Julie Taymor is very much intact in this exhilarating production of the 1997 musical about a young lion’s coming of age. So is Taymor’s artistic vision. Jelani Remy radiates charisma as the grown Simba, and Nia Holloway matches him stride for stride as the grown Nala. Through Oct. 12. Production by Disney Theatrical Productions, presented by Broadway in Boston, at Boston Opera House. 866-870-2717, www.lionking.com
EMILIE: LA MARQUISE DU CHÂTELET DEFENDS HER LIFE TONIGHT Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1749) was Voltaire’s collaborator and his lover, and she helped pave the way for Einstein’s E = mc2. But you don’t have to understand physics to appreciate Lauren Gunderson’s poignant 2009 play, which gives Emilie her due and is hilarious to boot. In this production, a passionately spontaneous Lee Mikeska Gardner as Emilie and an engagingly boyish Steven Barkhimer as Voltaire orbit each other like the halves of a binary star. The play needs no defense; neither does this production. Through Oct. 5. Nora Theatre Company, at Central Square Theater, Cambridge. 866-811-4111, www.centralsquaretheater.org
THE UNTITLED STILL LIFE COLLECTION Trajal Harrell and visual artist Sarah Sze revisit their 2010 “Co Lab: Process and Performance” commission to complement the Institute of Contemporary Art’s exhibit “Fiber: Sculpture 1960-present.” Performed by Harrell and dancer Christina Vasileiou, the work uses strands of fiber as literal and metaphorical connecting threads. Oct. 4-5, Free, with museum admission. Institute of Contemporary Art. 617-478-3103, www.icaboston.org
EMBODIED PROCESSING In this intriguing concert, choreographer Emily Beattie and media artist Brian Knoth use a motion-sensing camera to create an immersive experience exploring interactions between the body and technology. Dance artist Kathleen Kelley and poet Sarah Rose Nordgren pair live movement with video projections of text. Oct. 3-4, $15. Dance Complex, Cambridge. 617-547-9363, www.dancecomplex.org
ONCE UPON EACH TIME At its best, improvisation is a journey of vulnerability, curiosity, and discovery for both participants and audience members. Olivier Besson reunites an elite group of alumni of the Boston Conservatory as well as multi-instrumentalists Rob Flax and Nate Tucker for this one-night-only event. Oct. 4, 8 p.m., $5-$15. Green Street Studios, Cambridge. 617-335-6906, obesson@bostonconservatory.edu
JUNTOS DANCE COLLECTIVE This fledgling project brings together dancers from pre-professional programs at the Boston Conservatory, Lines Ballet at Dominican University, SUNY Purchase, the Juilliard School, and the Ailey School to share the power of dance in communities in Mexico and Central America. This benefit performance showcases some of the group’s ballet and modern dance repertoire. Oct. 3, 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., $10-$20. Green Street Studios, Cambridge. 617-864-3191, www.juntoscollective.org
BRADFORD WASHBURN: VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS Jaw-dropping black-and-white contact prints of Alaskan mountain ranges, shot from air and land by the epic explorer, aerial photographer, and founding director of the Museum of Science. Some have never before been exhibited or published. Through Jan. 13. Panopticon Gallery, 502c Commonwealth Ave. 781-718-5777, www.panopticongallery.com
ALEX WEBB AND REBECCA NORRIS WEBB: MEMORY CITY After Eastman Kodak Company declared bankruptcy, this husband-and-wife team spent a year photographing Kodak’s hometown of Rochester, N.Y., in color film, Kodachrome (now only processed as black and white), and digital. Through Oct. 31. Robert Klein Gallery, 38 Newbury St. 617-267-7997, www.robertkleingallery.com
COLLISION:MORE HUMAN The art-tech group COLLISIONcollective explores technology’s effects on human evolution, and how we, and our environment, constantly adapt to our new tools. As we become savvier, are we more in technology’s thrall? Through Oct. 26. Boston Cyberarts Gallery, 141 Green St. 617-522-6710, www.bostoncyberarts.org
MARIA MOLTENI: STANDARD VARIATION The multimedia artist sifts, classifies, and repurposes packing materials and office supplies according to formal and aesthetic associations. She finds unexpected patterns that hark back to those in her great-grandmother’s quilts. Through Nov. 1. Lincoln Arts Project, 289 Moody St., Waltham. (No phone), www.lincolnartsproject.com
CALDER AND ABSTRACTION: FROM AVANT-GARDE TO ICONIC This show will feature more than 40 three-dimensional works by the giant of 20th-century modernism. It will include examples of the kinetic metal works Calder called “mobiles” and the standing sculptures he called “stabiles.” Through Jan. 4. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem. 978-745-9500. www.pem.org
SCULPTURE VICTORIOUS: ART IN AN AGE OF INVENTION, 1837-1901 An ambitious exhibition of diverse sculptural works that examines the role of sculpture in Victorian England, a time when that art was seen as “the highest form of culture.” The Yale Center for British Art describes it as “the first [exhibition] of its kind ever undertaken by a museum.” Through Nov. 30. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. 877-274-8278, britishart.yale.edu
RAGNAR KJARTANSSON: THE VISITORS A spellbinding, nine-screen video installation showing Kjartansson and a number of musician friends playing and singing in unison in the separate rooms of a mansion on the Hudson River. Through Nov. 2. Institute of Contemporary Art. 617-478-3100, www.icaboston.org
LORNA SIMPSON A 30-year retrospective of the photographic and text-based work of Simpson, who taps into sensitive, often concealed aspects of gender and race. The show will feature a recent three-channel video installation called “Chess.” Through Jan. 4. Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover. 978-749-4015, www.andover.edu/museums/addison
<bot>: Globe reviewers offer their recommendations for the best in local theater, including “Chicago,” “Bent,” and “Sweeney Todd.”
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20141008010400id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/theater-art/2014/10/01/week-ahead-theater/V1leMn9nevutZCD2WLwG4H/story.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: All the week’s fashion news that’s fit to reprint.
Karlie Kloss: the new face of L’Oreal
In this week’s least controversial news, it’s been announced that kookie-maker and Victoria’s Secret angel wing-wearer Karlie Kloss is L’Oreal’s newest spokesmodel. This girl is really working overtime.
Yet again, Marc Jacobs is taking to social media for his Marc by Marc ad campaign casting. Using the hashtag #castmemarc, the young and the out-there can upload selfies in hopes of being chosen by the ultimate fashion anointer. Don’t leave your Doc Martens at home, now.
The dress the price of the Ritz
Rodarte’s spring 2015 dresses just went up for pre-sale on Moda Operandi. The price? $25,000. Insane, obviously, but if any garment was going to cost so much, it might as well be these, which look to be constructed of gossamer, pixie dust and sea foam.
It was discovered that the department store sold a parka whose hood was labeled “faux fur” but was, in fact, made with some real fur — to get specific (and disgusting), real fur from raccoon dogs. And this isn’t the first time: in 2013, Kohl’s was found to be selling purses it claimed were ornamented with faux fur but that turned out to be rabbit. This seems like a really easy (and inexpensive) problem to avoid?
It’s the slowest back-to-school shopping season in five years, since the recession ended in 2009. The period — which extends through the end of the month — is second only to the holidays in terms of store traffic. The slump is surprising only if you don’t factor in the continuous rise of e-commerce, which has got to be a particularly appealing option for the fed-up parents of covetous, chocolate-covered kids — what they don’t see, they can’t want.
Kendall Jenner, 18-year-old Kardashian sister and model du jour, told E! this week that she drinks 12 cups of detox tea per day. This unhealthy and extreme diuretics consumption is a great example of the type of insane facts that fashion insiders report as though they’re totally normal.
The Infanta heads to France
Speaking of Kardashian girls, North West made her Paris Fashion Week debut on Wednesday. Her inaugural presentation? Balenciaga, bien sûr. Carine Roitfeld was even seen blowing air kisses towards le bébé.
On Thursday morning, the ad campaign for Alexander Wang’s H&M collection was unveiled, and guess what? It features Joan Smalls, Raquel Zimmermann and Isabeli Fontana (plus some athletes) and lots of aerodynamic black leather outfits. Start lining up now, downtowners. The collection launches on November 6th.
My birthday started yesterday already with this flower portrait of Leo made by the incredible @marlaweinhoff !! Wow thank you girl You nailed it!!! Kisses iv
Scenes from the New York Fashion Week photo diary of Barbara Anastacio.
<bot>: Plus, a look at Alexander Wang’s H&M collection, Marc Jacobs’s latest crowdsourcing campaign and more from the week in style.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014092619id_/http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/north-west-fashion-week-debut-rodarte-spring-price-tag/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," February 28, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Governors across the country scrambling to deal with the sequester fallout in their states. When asked who is to blame for the mess, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin answered, "Everybody." She joins us. Nice to see you, Governor.
OKLAHOMA GOV. MARY FALLIN: Good to see you, too, Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: OK, Governor, so who -- who are the everybodys? I mean, I got my list of everybodys, but who's yours?
FALLIN: There's a lot of people. Well, first of all, beginning at the top with leadership, and that's the president. You know, the president suggested the sequester, and of course, it went to Congress. Congress put it in there as a default, that they were going to work on trying to balance the budget, lower the deficit. They didn't do it. So now we have this default of the sequester.
So I think everybody is to blame, whether it's Republicans, Democrats, the House, the Senate, the president. But in the end, it starts at the top with the president.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, I've looked at the -- the White House issued a paper, and I'm looking at the part that goes to your state, Oklahoma, where they say that all -- this is where the cuts are going to affect Oklahoma. And I'm curious whether you agree. It says Oklahoma will lose approximately $4.9 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting 70 teacher and aide jobs at risk.
Now, that $4.9 million funding -- maybe you know this or don't -- is that additional money that you weren't expecting? I mean, where -- what's this $4.9 million? Is it -- are you going to be below the baseline of what you've had, or this slowed growth?
FALLIN: I think it's going to be slowed growth. I mean, it's hard to tell. I mean, a lot of the governors just don't know exactly what to expect. And all we hear is these scare tactics that we're going to have to cut teachers, we're going to have to cut this, cut that, all these different scary things that are going to happen.
But you know, in my state, when I took over two years ago in Oklahoma, we had around a $6 billion budget. We had a $500 million budget shortfall, and I didn't go around scaring people, telling them I was going to have to kick granny out of the nursing home or fire all the teachers or do these kinds of things.
What I did was go about prioritizing my spending, looking at ways I could eliminate government waste, make things more efficient. I was able to close that budget gap, which was close to around 8 percent cut in spending in Oklahoma. And the result of that has been that my unemployment rate dropped from 7 percent down to 5.1 percent. Now I have actually economic growth in our state. And we went from having $2.03 in our rainy day savings account to over $600 million in savings in just two years.
So if states can do it, the federal government can do it. What I don't hear the president talking about is how are we going to make government more efficient, more effective, eliminate waste? He just talks about how we got to have tax increases, how we got to cut all these programs and how we're going to just scare everybody into believing that the nation's going to heck in a handbasket.
VAN SUSTEREN: Let me ask you about your prior life when you were in Congress, and just so you can explain. -- I think this is an important point to drive home for the American people because they hear the word cut, and they think that means that we're going to have less this year than we had last year. That's what -- that's what most people think cut is. But in Washington language, what cut means is that we're just not going to grow as much as -- we're not going to spend as much extra that we planned to spend, right?
FALLIN: We're going to slow down the growth.
FALLIN: And in fact, you know, spending has increased so much in Washington, D.C....
VAN SUSTEREN: How does Washington, D.C., get away with calling that a cut, the slowed-down growth?
VAN SUSTEREN: I swear, everyone thinks -- everyone thinks it's a cut. It's just -- we're just not going to spend as much as we thought we were going to spend extra.
FALLIN: Absolutely. We're just not going to spend as much as we have been, and we shouldn't be spending so much. I don't think people think we don't have enough money in Washington. I think they think we have a spending problem. I think we have a spending problem in Washington, D.C.
I know for the time that I was in Congress to the time I've been governor, we've just seen spending go up and up and up in Washington. So what we're really talking about is slowing down the spending growth in Washington, D.C., and we can do that. Governors across the nation, Republican governors, are proving that they can do that.
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, I'm not -- I'm not convinced that we even need to cut programs because there's so much fat in the government and there's so much waste...
VAN SUSTEREN: ... that if we even made even one effort to locate it, to locate the fat, the repetitive payments, anything -- I'm not even sure we have to cut any of these services!
But anyway, Governor, I take the last word on that. Thank you.
<bot>: Oklahoma Gov . Mary Fallin wants Pres. Obama and Congres to sit down and put the nation first, for once.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Food maker ConAgra’s latest quarterly results were stung by a $247 million impairment charge related to the company’s private brands business, a newer focus for ConAgra after it paid $5.07 billion to buy Ralcorp nearly two years ago. Here’s what else you need to know about the company’s earnings report.
What you need to know: ConAgra’s CAG multi-billion bet on the private branded packaged foods industry with its acquisition of Ralcorp is increasingly looking like a dud. That acquisition made ConAgra the largest private branded food maker in North America, with sales of more than $4 billion in the latest fiscal year. Private brands are owned by retailers and suppliers, who get food manufacturers like ConAgra to make the goods.
But the segment has performed poorly, and ConAgra has booked millions in impairment charges, including $605 million in such charges in June of this year and an additional $247 million recorded on Thursday. The private branded segment reported a second-quarter operating loss of $202 million as a result of the charges, and ConAgra warned that it expects the recovery of that segment to take “longer than previously expected.”
Bloomberg earlier this year raised questions about the company’s ability to manage both private-label and branded products. The company’s strategy will certainly get a second look when a new CEO is named, as current Chief Executive Gary Rodkin has already announced his intention to retire in the spring of 2015.
The big number: Private-brand segment sales slid 5% to $1.1 billion for the quarter ended Nov. 23, hurt by volume declines for snacks, cereal, pasta and condiments. ConAgra said the segment’s results were also hurt by an “intense bidding environment,” as well as higher commodity costs that weighed on profitability. The company is hopeful that some price increases should help offset the jump in commodity costs down the road.
Results were mixed at ConAgra’s other two businesses: sales for the commercial foods segment increased 2%, but the larger consumer foods segment’s sales slipped 2%. ConAgra’s branded lineup includes Slim Jim, Healthy Choice, Swiss Miss and Hunt’s.
What you might have missed: ConAgra, warning of soft volumes and difficult pricing, expects the private brands segment’s operating results to be “considerably below” fiscal 2014’s levels. The operating loss for the business totaled $375 million for all of last year, while the loss for the first six months of fiscal 2015 has already totaled $160.4 million. The company said it is hopeful for an improvement in the segment’s performance in fiscal 2016.
<bot>: Food maker's latest quarterly results stung by a $247 million impairment charge.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20141218141204id_/http://fortune.com/2014/12/18/conagra-private-label/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Just be glad for Vlad.
Because right now it looks like Vladimir Putin might have single-handedly saved the world!
His out-of-nowhere offer to stockpile Syria's chemical weapons and put them all under an international body's watchful eye has the Russian president looking brilliant.
And our president? Not so brilliant.
Forget about putting on the ritz, is it me?
Or don't you find all this Putin grandstanding a bit rich?
Isn't this the same Vladimir Putin who only days ago insisted Syria had no chemical weapons and now he's offering to gather them up and put them under lock and key?
And isn't this the same Putin who's no stranger to chemical weapons himself and has famously used them against his own unruly subjects?
And back in October 2002, when Russian forces pumped a still unknown chemical agent into a Moscow theater's ventilation system to disrupt Chechen rebels who had seized hostages.
He killed a lot of those rebels, but he also ended up killing about 130 of those hostages.
Then there's Alexander Litvinenko, remember him? The KGB defendor who chronicled the Kremlin's human rights abuses in a stunning book, "Blowing up Russia."
Fatally poisoned by radioactive polonium reportedly obtained from Russian sources.
And Russian opposition journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin who contracted a mysterious illness, in which his internal organs literally began collapsing one by one before he died, later traced to thallium poisoning.
And Viktor Yushchenko, the anti-Russian candidate running for president in Ukraine, who somehow survived a dioxin poisoning, only to end up horribly disfigured in the process.
I'll leave out the more conventional killings.
Like those of Russian human rights attorney Stanislav Markelov, who was famously shot in the back as he was leaving a press conference.
And Russian Central Bank deputy Andrei Kozlov, who was shot and killed in Moscow as he was waging a one man show to stamp out money laundering there.
A Forbes Russian editor shot in broad daylight.
A leading Russian human rights journalist and young mother abducted and shot and dumped in a roadside gutter.
You get the picture. Not pretty pictures.
And all linked to an increasingly cracked and cracking down Kremlin.
And a man whose peace overtures to the world seem to ring hollow with the many bodies piling up back home.
Yet the world celebrates him.
And an embarrassed White House all but thanks him.
Such is the state of global affairs today.
Where this guy calls the shots.
And we just look shot.
<bot>: Your World w/ Cavuto on FoxNews.com - follow Neil Cavuto on Weekdays at 4:00 PM ET
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013091019id_/http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/2013/09/10/cavuto-putin-grandstanding-bit-rich
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: 02/13/2015 AT 04:30 PM EST
With her new NBC lifestyle show
is getting used to life back on the small screen about five years after
, when the camera pulled back, revealing the set as a wink at the poorly kept secret that the "reality" show
With the exception of a stint on
and her short-lived VH1 series,
, Patridge, 29, has mostly kept out of the spotlight, taking "a step back" from public life after the scrutiny she faced as an MTV personality.
"I felt I had to take a year off for my soul, for myself. I was so used to waking up and being told what to do, who to hang out with, what to say, what I was doing that night, who I should date," she tells the online magazine
. "I felt I was losing who I was. I was like, 'What do I want? I don't know who I am anymore.' "
The key to finding herself again? Moving to the beach and lying low.
"I rode my bike everywhere," she explains. "I lived a simple life, and I took that time to figure out what I wanted."
But is she still close with her
every now and then, and
and I talk every month. ... I don't really talk to
or Lo [Bosworth]," she says. "We went our own separate ways. We weren't all friends before
, and we were kind of friends for the show."
Still, she adds, "We're cordial. There are no bad feelings."
Bad boy Justin Bobby, the on-screen romantic interest fans loved to hate, is definitely not in Patridge's life anymore: She's back with BMX racer
, her on-and-off boyfriend for almost eight years.
"We're working on things, and we both love each other. But it's been a struggle. It's hard when you're rarely together," she says. "I've always been a relationship girl, a one guy kind of girl. I want to be with someone that I'm comfortable with and who knows me and I can talk about anything with and who knows my family."
<bot>: The reality TV star also reveals whether she's still close with Lauren Conrad
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150214005042id_/http://www.people.com/article/audrina-patridge-life-after-hills
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Paul Nassif Files for Divorce from Adrienne Maloof
" star Dr. Paul Nassif has filed for divorce from his wife
We broke the story ... Dr. Paul originally
back in July. The divorce docs filed this morning cite irreconcilable differences.
As TMZ previously reported ... Dr. Paul -- repped by powerhouse attorney Lisa Helfend Meyer -- made it clear in the separation docs there is a prenup in place. He also stated he wants joint legal and physical custody of the couple's children. Paul's divorce petition reaffirms that he wants joint custody and acknowledges the prenup. Fact is ... they both have their own money.
Adrienne had planned on filing divorce papers simultaneously with Paul ... but backed out at the last minute. It's unclear if Maloof will ever file the papers ... because it would serve no real purpose.
The couple married in 2002, they have three boys together.
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<bot>: "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Dr. Paul Nassif has filed for divorce from his wife Adrienne Maloof ... TMZ has learned.We broke the story ... Dr.…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013082519id_/http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/28/adrienne-maloof-paul-nassif-file-divorce/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: GAIOLE IN CHIANTI, Italy — Fences are rising. There is talk of a brutal and destructive insurgency, invasions and a slaughter that could include hundreds of thousands in the years ahead.
If that sounds something like a war, the battlefield is the prized vineyards of Chianti, Italy’s vaunted wine region in the heart of the rolling hills of Tuscany.
And the enemy? An exploding population of voracious wild boars and deer that savor the sugary grapes and the vines’ tender sprouts, but that are also part of the region’s famed landscape, hunting traditions and cuisine.
Long allowed to thrive as part of that heritage, the wild ungulates, the group to which these species belong, are now four times as numerous in Tuscany as they are in other Italian regions. In Europe, only parts of Austria have more.
Wine growers and farmers here say that population now threatens a delicate Tuscan ecosystem, in addition to provoking hundreds of car accidents a year and damaging the production of their treasured Chianti Classico.
The toll is estimated at $11 million to $16 million a year in lost harvest. There are also the costs of erecting and keeping up fences, which themselves have proved controversial because of criticism that they mar the beauty of the Tuscan countryside.
“We now live enclosed,” said Francesco Ricasoli, the owner of the Barone Ricasoli estate, which includes about 2,000 acres of oak and chestnut woods where the boar and deer live and hide, as well as more than 500 acres of vineyards, where they love to forage.
Though the heir of one of Tuscany’s most prominent men — Bettino Ricasoli, twice the prime minister of Italy and creator of the modern Chianti wine recipe in the 19th century — even he is on the defensive against the onslaught.
“Our vineyards are rather protected,” Mr. Ricasoli explained, “but our fields are prey to wild boars and roe deer recurrent incursions and have holes that look like Ho Chi Minh trails.”
“It is not the Chianti we dream of,” he said. “It was time that the region acted.”
Act it did. In February, after years of lamenting, the region approved a law aimed at drastically reducing the number of wild boars and deer over the next three years, bringing the population to around 150,000 from over 400,000 today.
“This law is at least a first step,” said Marco Remaschi, the Tuscany region’s councilor for agriculture, who acknowledged that the proliferation of the species here had been “largely undervalued and not governed.”
“We now need to apply it well, and to make hunters, farmers and environmentalists understand that it’s in everyone’s interest to reduce the number of wild boars and deer and to take Tuscany back to normalcy,” Mr. Remaschi said.
But the law, it seems, has settled one argument and started several others.
It extends hunting outside the regular three-month season to licensed hunters or professionals, but allows them to shoot only wild boars and roe and fallow deer of a certain age and gender and with regimented procedures.
Hunters, of course, would rather simply hunt the animals as usual, unleashing dogs that chase the boar from the forest into areas where the hunters, arrayed in a line, can shoot at will. They consider the method more efficient than selective hunting.
The law also extends the areas where the hunting can take place to include, under strict conditions, fields, parks, vineyards and even more urban areas. Environmentalists fear the militarization of the peaceful Tuscan countryside.
Yet the law adds nothing to discourage hunters from leaving out food to lure their prey, a practice that environmentalists and winegrowers blame for contributing to the exploding of the boar population and for drawing the animals into fields where they wreak havoc.
In the mountains above the Brolio Castle, the fortress dating back to the 11th century, of the Barone Ricasoli estate, Massimiliano Biagi, the technical director, and his colleagues say they have found vans belonging to the “cinghialai,” as the hunters of wild boar are known, packed with loaves of bread and containers of corn.
The hunters tell another story.
“First of all, feeding wild animals is prohibited, unless authorized,” said Marco Cocchi, at manager at the hunters’ association Federcaccia in Tuscany.
“Even if they did it, why would they feed the animals in protected areas where they cannot shoot them?” he argued. “We also want to limit this proliferation. And this law is inefficient and provided inadequate means to reduce the number of wild ungulate in Tuscany.”
So fences continue to rise. Those, too, have been a source of discontent, but to some the only solution.
Through colorful bureaucratic battles with the local authorities, Paolo De Marchi, the producer of the famous Chianti Classico wine Isole e Olena, started fencing his vineyards in the western section of Chianti as early as the 1990s.
Today, all Isole e Olena vineyards are authorized to be fenced, and now have the same six-and-a-half-feet tall, zinc-coated steel mesh perimeter, with gates for access to the adjacent forest.
“We now manage to avoid the complete disruption of the product, and reduce the damage by 90 percent,” Mr. De Marchi said.
It was well worth the cost — about $110,000 for laurum and evergreen bushes — to embellish the fences to preserve the beauty of the landscape, he said.
Other estates in Tuscany, however, remain vulnerable to the violent invasions of wild boars and deer, which has set off something of an arms race.
Some wine producers have tried small gas-fueled cannons to keep the animals out. Others have used electrical wires. The newest and least invasive tool, but one still being refined, are machines that produce ultrahigh frequencies that only the animals can hear, which drive them away.
“We had and are having enormous damage because of this uncontrolled phenomenon,” said Roberto Da Frassini, the technical director who joined the Tenuta di Nozzole estate in northern Chianti in 2011.
Mr. Da Frassini said he had seen the situation worsen year by year. “We can’t even harvest in some of the vineyards, especially those adjacent to the forest,” he said. “The plants are killed by fallow deer or the grapes sucked by wild boars.”
The Tenuta di Nozzole has built about six miles of fences in the last two years. Just in 2015, Mr. Da Frassini said, he invested about $90,000 to build fences, instead of buying new technology for the cellar.
“It’s extremely ugly, we know it,” Mr. Da Frassini said. “It’s like building a camp on the vineyards, but what is the alternative?”
“We don’t live off philosophy,” he added. “Tuscany’s landscape is beautiful because it’s human-shaped. I can’t preserve it if I don’t pay the salaries.”
<bot>: Efforts in Chianti to reduce an exploding population of wild boars and deer, which devour grapes and the vines’ tender sprouts, are creating issues of their own.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016030719id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/world/europe/italy-tuscany-chianti-wine.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) The last of 10 Americans detained while trying to take 33 children out of
after the Jan. 12 earthquake was freed Monday when a judge convicted her but sentenced her to time already served in jail.
Laura Silsby, the organizer of the ill-fated effort to take the children to an orphanage being set up in the neighboring Dominican Republic, returned to her cell briefly to retrieve belongings before quickly heading to the Port-au-Prince airport.
"I'm praising God," Silsby told The Associated Press as she waited for a flight out of Haiti. She declined to answer further questions before clearing immigration and heading through a gate to catch a plane to Florida.
The Idaho businesswoman had been in custody since Jan. 29. She was originally charged with kidnapping and criminal association, but those charges were dropped for her and the nine other Americans who were previously released. Silsby she was convicted of arranging illegal travel under a 1980 statute restricting movement out of Haiti signed by then-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Prosecutor Jean-Serge Joseph said she was convicted and sentenced to the 3 months and 8 days she spent behind bars. Last week, the prosecution had recommended a six-month sentence and she faced a maximum of three years on the charge.
"She is free," Joseph said.
The 40-year-old Silsby told the court earlier she thought the children were orphans whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake. But she lacked the proper papers to remove them from the country at a time when the government was restricting adoptions to prevent child trafficking in the chaos that followed the disaster.
An AP investigation later revealed all the children had at least one living parent, who had turned their children over to the group in hopes of securing better lives for them.
Silsby and others in the group, mostly members of the same Baptist church in Idaho, insisted they had only come to Haiti to help. They unwittingly helped draw attention to the dark side of the adoption industry in Haiti, where children for many years have been abandoned by their parents or sold into slavery.
In February, a Haitian judge released eight of the Americans after concluding they had not knowingly engaged in any crime. The judge released a ninth member, Silsby's friend and former nanny, Charisa Coulter, in March.
Silsby was held the longest because she organized the venture and prosecutors insisted she knew that she did not have the proper authorization to take the children out of Haiti.
She was prosecuted with Jean Sainvil, an Atlanta-based pastor born in Haiti who allegedly helped find the children for the missionaries. The pastor, facing the same charge as Silsby, was not in Haiti and was being tried in absentia. The status of his case was not immediately clear.
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<bot>: A Haitian court has convicted American missionary Laura Silsby of arranging to transport 33 children out of the country following the Jan. 12 earthquake.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010051719id_/http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-05-17-Haiti_N.htm
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WASHINGTON — Justice Antonin Scalia is known as a consistent and principled defender of free speech rights.
It pained him, he has said, when he voted to strike down a law making flag burning a crime. “If it was up to me, if I were king,” he said, “I would take scruffy, bearded, sandal-wearing idiots who burn the flag, and I would put them in jail.” But the First Amendment stopped him.
That is a powerful example of constitutional principles overcoming personal preferences. But it turns out to be an outlier. In cases raising First Amendment claims, a new study found, Justice Scalia voted to uphold the free speech rights of conservative speakers at more than triple the rate of liberal ones. In 161 cases from 1986, when he joined the court, to 2011, he voted in favor of conservative speakers 65 percent of the time and liberal ones 21 percent.
He is not alone. “While liberal justices are over all more supportive of free speech claims than conservative justices,” the study found, “the votes of both liberal and conservative justices tend to reflect their preferences toward the ideological groupings of the speaker.”
Social science calls this kind of thing “in-group bias.” The impact of such bias on judicial behavior has not been explored in much detail, though earlier studies have found that female appeals court judges are more likely to vote for plaintiffs in sexual harassment and sex discrimination suits.
Lee Epstein, a political scientist and law professor who conducted the new study with two colleagues, said it showed the justices to be “opportunistic free speech advocates.”
The findings are a twist on the comment by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that the First Amendment protects “freedom for the thought that we hate.” On the Supreme Court, the First Amendment appears to protect freedom for the thought of people we like.
“Though the results are consistent with a long line of research in the social sciences, I still find them stunning — shocking, really,” Professor Epstein said.
The study considered 4,519 votes in 516 cases from 1953 to 2011.
It was conducted by Professor Epstein, who is about to join the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis; Christopher M. Parker, a political scientist at Centenary College of Louisiana; and Jeffrey A. Segal, a political scientist at Stony Brook University.
There may be quibbles about how they coded individual votes. But it was seldom difficult to tell which side was invoking the First Amendment. Nor is it usually hard to assign an ideological direction to particular speakers or positions.
In Supreme Court cases involving the First Amendment, both conservative and liberal justices are more likely to vote in support of speakers if they share their ideology.
Disputes at the margins will, in any event, be overwhelmed by the size of the gaps in many justices’ support for free speech.
The largest one, at least among members of the Supreme Court who cast more than 100 votes in free speech cases since 1953, belongs to Justice Scalia. Justice Clarence Thomas is not far behind. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. have not cast enough votes for a reliable appraisal, but the preliminary data show a similarly significant preference for conservative speakers.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the current court’s most reliable free speech vote, favored conservative speakers by a smaller but still significant margin.
The Roberts court’s more liberal members “present a more complex story,” the study found. All supported free expression more often when the speaker was liberal, but the results were statistically significant only for Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010.
In the case of Justice Stephen G. Breyer, the difference was negligible. And it is too soon to say anything empirically meaningful about Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
There are many ways to think about the Supreme Court’s free speech cases, of course. The new study is important, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, “because it offers an explanation for justices’ behavior in First Amendment cases and shows how much justices’ ideology influences the speech they are willing to protect.”
But he added that it was possible to sort votes in other ways, too. “For example,” he said, “the Roberts court is very pro-speech except when the institutional interests of the government are at issue.”
The court has, he said, protected hateful speech at military funerals, allowed the sale of violent video games to minors and struck down campaign finance laws. But it ruled against a government whistle-blower, a student expressing a pro-drug message, a prisoner and a human-rights activist.
Justice Scalia was in the majority every time.
<bot>: A study covering 1953 to 2011 found that “the votes of both liberal and conservative justices tend to reflect their preferences toward the ideological groupings of the speaker.”
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014050519id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/us/politics/in-justices-votes-free-speech-often-means-speech-i-agree-with.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: A YouTuber, known only as Steve, calls himself "The Food Surgeon" and is using surgical equipment to dissect food in the creepiest of ways. (The Food Surgeon/ YouTube)
Wearing blue surgical gloves and holding a scalpel, a mysterious man behind YouTube’s newest sensation is created a buzz for his precise handling of everyday food items.
Food Surgeon's YouTube channel only features two videos and has only been up since Jan. 19., but already it has more than 17,000 subscribers.
“Reese’s Peanut-Butter-Ectomy with Oreo Cream Transplant”--in which a dissected Reese's Peanut Butter Cup is inserted with the cream of an Oreo cookie-- has seen viewed almost 600,000 time to date.
That's pretty good considering that these video show a slow, methodical breaking down of the food, without music or fancy edits.
So who’s the person behind the videos? He told NPR his name was Steve (he refused to give his last name)--and was an engineer from Seattle. He said he was keeping his identity a secret because he doesn't want "his art to be about him."
We're not sure his videos are art, but his careful movements as he peels layers off of food is both mesmerizing and a little creepy--part "CSI" with a dash of Hannibal Lecter.
A California mandarin is broken down in minute detail –from peeling off the tiny label to separating pith from flesh.
He told Yahoo Food that he's got no surgical or filmmaking experience and that he's learning as he go. "I hope to keep my subscribers hungry and happily disturbed."
<bot>: Steve, a Seattle engineer, has posted mesmerizing videos of food dissection.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016020719id_/http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2016/02/05/food-surgeon-is-latest-youtube-culinary-sensation/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WASHINGTON Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the embattled Connecticut Democrat who was facing an increasingly tough bid for a sixth term in the United States Senate, has decided not to seek re-election this year, Democrats familiar with his plans said Wednesday.
Mr. Dodd, 65, a pivotal figure in the major debates now confronting Congress, is to announce his decision at a news conference Wednesday afternoon in Connecticut.
The decision came hours after another Democratic senator, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, also announced that he would not seek re-election this November. The developments underscored the fragility of the Democrats’ 60-vote Senate majority, which is just enough to block Republican filibusters. Democratic incumbents also face serious challenges in Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada and Pennsylvania among other states.
In this case, Mr. Dodd was already considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats facing re-election this November, and party officials had been privately hoping he would step aside. His move opens the way for the state’s highly popular attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, to run. Democrats and Republicans said he would be a much stronger candidate in what is a Democratic state.
Mr. Dodd’s decision was reported by The Washington Post on its Web site late Tuesday night, and later confirmed by his associates. As of early Wednesday morning, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, had not heard from Mr. Dodd about his decision, according to aides to Mr. Reid.
Mr. Dodd has been a fixture in the Senate since his election in 1980 and had been at the center of the contentious recent debates on overhauling the health care system and financial regulation. In November he proposed an overhaul that included consolidating bank regulators, creating a consumer financial protection agency and imposing new restraints on exotic financial instruments and credit rating agencies.
But his standing in Connecticut had been on the decline starting when he made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2008 moving his family to Iowa and when questions arose about a disputed loan he took from Countrywide Financial, the fallen subprime company.
On the Republican side, Mr. Dodd faced the prospect of running against Linda McMahon, a political novice who was prepared to use her vast personal fortune to beat the incumbent senator. Also challenging the senator was former Representative Rob Simmons, a Republican.
Mr. Dodd’s troubles escalated in 2008 when he was one of two Democratic senators the other was Kent Conrad of North Dakota who had been accused of receiving improper discounts from Countrywide Financial. In August, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics ruled that it had found “no credible evidence” that the senators had violated gift rules in accepting the loans.
But the committee criticized Mr. Dodd and Mr. Conrad for not avoiding the appearance of impropriety.
Both Mr. Dodd and Mr. Conrad had been members of the “Friends of Angelo” V.I.P. program at the bank, named after Angelo R. Mozilo, the chief executive of Countrywide.
Polling in Connecticut suggested that Mr. Dodd had been hurt both by his association with Countrywide and by criticism for his role in legislation that appeared to clear the way for bonuses to be paid to executives of American International Group, the insurance firm that received a government bailout.
Republicans had viewed the issues as powerful weapons to use against him, particularly considering the depth of anger toward A.I.G. and Countrywide.
Even as his political prospects seemed to plummet, Mr. Dodd was so busy over the last few months that some colleagues have joked about whether 2009-10 should be called the “Dodd Congress.”
As chairman of the Senate banking committee, he had a central role in both the huge government rescue of the financial system and the economic stimulus package that was adopted at the start of last year.
Then, with his close friend, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, battling terminal brain cancer, Mr. Dodd stepped in as acting chairman of the Senate health committee, which became the first Congressional panel to approve a version of far-reaching health care legislation last year.
Amid all of this, Mr. Dodd found out early last summer that he was suffering from prostate cancer and spent the August recess undergoing surgery and recuperating.
He is said to be in good health now. But even as he has been at the center of the action on Capitol Hill, the looming re-election battle in Connecticut has seemed to weigh heavily on him. And his decision to retire did not surprise his Senate colleagues.
David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.
<bot>: Christopher J. Dodd, the embattled Connecticut Democrat who has been a key figure in the big debates now before Congress, has reportedly decided not to seek a sixth term.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010010819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/us/politics/06dodd.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: MOSCOW -- In the wake of what many now humorously call “the alien bombardment” of the Russian industrial Urals, divers Saturday finished their initial inspection of a lake 60 miles west of Chelyabinsk but found no traces of the space object that exploded Friday morning over the region, Interfax reported.
A big chunk of it is believed to have fallen into Chebarkul Lake, breaking the thick ice.
What experts agree was a meteor or a small asteroid wreaked havoc in the densely populated and highly industrialized Urals, injuring hundreds, causing millions of dollars' worth of material damage, disrupting phone and Internet communications and prompting residents and leading scientists to draw new lessons from the small Chelyabinsk Armageddon.
PHOTOS: Meteor over Russia's Ural Mountains
“When a small piece of rock would fall on the Earth 100 years ago it could have caused minimal damage and would have stayed largely undetected, but Friday's accident fully demonstrated how vulnerable the technological civilization of today has become,” Vladimir Lipunov, head of the Space Monitoring Laboratory with Moscow State University, said in an interview Saturday.
"It is high time Russia should start heavily investing in building an advanced space danger monitoring and warning system and above that a system capable of destroying such super bombs falling on us from the skies."
The Chelyabinsk region has long been one of the most important military-industrial regions of Russia, where you "can’t drive a mile without passing a defense or a nuclear industry installation," the scientist said.
"We should be thankful to fate that this meteor in fact was a blessing in disguise and instead of destroying a significant part of Russia with quite dire consequences to the rest of the world, it sent us a clear warning signal by simply blowing up a bunch of windows and lightly injuring over 1,000 people," Lipunov said.
The scientist’s stern remark echoed the first signs of concern displayed by the government. "Today neither Russia nor the United States is capable of shooting down objects from outer space," Dmitry Rogozin, a vice premier in charge of the military industrial complex, tweeted.
"On Monday I will present to [Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev] an objective picture of the Urals event and proposals on possibilities to register the danger of the Earth’s coming close to 'aliens' and prevent it in the future."
Lipunov, who runs a monitoring system of four 15.7-inch telescopes deployed across Russia from Kislovodsk in the south to Vlagoveshchensk in the far east, proudly announced Saturday that they managed to grab a high-quality two-hour video of 2012-DA14 Asteroid passing close to the Earth overnight.
He said his lab has managed to detect and register about 200 new bodies in outer space, but observers are unable to provide warnings about asteroid dangers, and Lipunov laments the lack of funding and the loss of a broader monitoring system that the Soviet Union possessed. Even if his lab can detect some large asteroids in advance, it cannot discern smaller asteroids and meteors, which can also pose a grave risk when traveling at high speed, Lipunov said.
Many Russian experts agree that such a system should be reinstated and equipped with modern 59-inch telescopes like those in the United Sates, because Russia can’t rely on the U.S. help when such dangers arise.
"Americans can, for example, detect a dangerous object and calculate that it can fall somewhere in the Urals, but that doesn’t concern them," Alexander Bagrov, a senior researcher with the Astronomy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences told Russia-24, a federal news television network. "They can pass it over in silence."
Bagrov spoke in favor of creating an early warning system of satellites monitoring space for signs of approaching danger instead of restoring a global land- and sea-based system. Lipunov argues that a space system would be more expensive and may take a decade to install -- and even then it would not be as reliable as an Earth-based system equipped with powerful telescopes.
As scientists argue about ways to save the globe, 20,000 municipal workers, emergency crews and volunteers have been working round the clock to repair thousands of windows broken by the explosion in the Chelyabinsk region, where the nighttime temperature fell to minus 4 Fahrenheit.
Regional Gov. Mikhail Yurevich told reporters Saturday that the material damage to the region already exceeds $33 million. He said that 30% of about 100 square meters of broken windows had already been replaced.
The explosion damaged 3,000 residential houses, 34 hospitals and clinics and 360 schools and kindergartens, as well as several businesses. High school and university students received a day off Saturday. At least three hockey games were canceled because of damage to the local rink.
Police have collected several small pieces of a black rock-like substance believed to be remnants of the meteor, Interfax reported.
In the meantime, local residents are congratulating one another for surviving "the Apocalypse" and reliving the high moments of Friday panic.
<bot>: MOSCOW -- In the wake of what many now humorously call “the alien bombardment” of the Russian industrial Urals, divers Saturday finished their initial inspection of a lake 60 miles west of Chelyabinsk but found no traces of the space object that exploded Friday morning over the region, Interfax reported.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013021619id_/http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-wn-fg-chelyabinsk-meteor-lessons-20130216,0,4643856.story
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Britney Spears is being honored May 22nd at the Billboard Music Awards with the Millennium Award and a mashup performance celebrating a career that has already spanned two decades. Meanwhile, her Las Vegas Residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino has been extended with a $35 million deal for the next two years, and she has a new album on the way. In her spare time, a smiling Spears can be seen flaunting her fit body on Instagram and posing with her two sons—Sean Preston and Jayden James. From her gleeful social media posts and booming career it's easy to forget that the 34-year-old mother of two still doesn’t control most aspects of her life. She has been under a court-ordered conservatorship since 2008 which stemmed from an undisclosed mental illness and substance abuse in 2007. Her father, Jamie, and lawyer, Andrew Wallet, are her conservators and make key personal and financial decisions for the pop superstar. Attorney Alana Yakovlev explained conservatorships are generally granted for those people who are unable to manage themselves or their finances. Many conservatorships are temporary. Yakovlev explained Spears’ conservatorship is unique. “Although it is unusual for someone this young to have a conservator appointed, it seems to have worked out for Ms. Spears' best interests,” she said. “The probate conservatorship in place for Ms. Spears is different from others in that she retains some autonomy and control over decision making process such as where she resides, although she must consult with conservator as far as financial decisions come into play.” Los Angeles-based lawyer Julian Chan notes Spears cares for her children under the conservatorship.
“Ms. Spears conservatorship seems to have an odd quirk,” he said. “While established to protect her from herself, it appears from news reports that she actively parents her children. In other words, someone is deciding she is fit enough to parent but not take care of herself.”
And the erratic part of her life from 2007 and 2008 is still making headlines, though the starlet has come a long way. Spears has recently been forced to face her once self-appointed manager Sam Lutfi in court. He claims that the singer still owes him 15 percent of her 800,000 per month income while the Spears family insists Lutfi fueled her with drugs during her breakdown. Earlier this month, her conservators hinted the singer is stable by allowing her to testify in a deposition against Lutfi, saying in court documents that “giving such testimony is not likely to cause harm to her.”
Pop expert Lisa Durden said the Lutfi case has reignited talk of Spears' bad behavior.
“The only reason why we are even talking about her shady past is because of Sam Lufti, who is really nothing but a leech and a hanger on,” she explained. “America has turned into a court culture, so people sue for anything, which is exactly what this ‘cry baby’ is doing to Britney now. It's ironic that Britney Spears' Vegas show is entitled ‘Piece Of Me,’ which is exactly what that bootleg manager, Sam Lufti is trying to do -- get a piece of her coins after the fact.”
Lindsey Carnett of Marketing Maven Public Relations, said fans haven’t forgotten about Spears' public meltdown but instead have decided to ignore it. “Like a protagonist in a story, U.S. consumers love to see the rise and fall of a hero, or in this case, a major celebrity,” she said. “I don't think anyone has forgotten Britney's crazy past. Her fans have simply moved forward as Britney has evolved as an artist in her new phase of life.” Pop culture expert and Spears enthusiast Cate Meighan noted that because of her conservatorship, Britney isn't likely to get involved in another scandal. “Britney's life is so closely controlled by court-appointed people that there isn't much room for new scandal so, of course, people mention her past. While Britney's career has certainly rebounded that opportunity to really connect and bond with her fans seems to have been impeded by her father especially.” And given the success Spears has demonstrated, Yakovlev believes that Britney may be able to stand on her own now. “When conservatorships are renewed, there must be some form of continual need for the court to continue its jurisdiction. In this case, given Ms. Spears success, I don't believe if she chooses to contest it that the court would deny her that right.”
<bot>: Britney’s being honored with a big mashup performance at the Billboard Awards.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016051119id_/http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/05/11/can-britney-spears-ever-fully-break-away-from-her-erratic-past-behavior.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Lethal weapons have become a fashion accessory for some teens
COPS have seized a “zombie killer” knife and a “robbery kit” during drug raids on suspected gang members.
The serrated weapon and a pack containing another knife, a balaclava and black gloves, were found alongside bags of heroin, crack cocaine, and a taser.
In two days of raids, 16 suspects were arrested in areas where the number of gang-related shootings have increased in recent months.
On Thursday nine men were arrested on suspicion of supplying Class A drugs when officers swooped down on 12 addresses in Harlesden, north-west London.
The anti-gang operation arrested another six men and a woman aged between 18 and 51 in Hackney, east London on Wednesday.
Superintendent Tim Champion from the Met’s Trident and Gang Crime Command, said: “Reducing gang violence is a Met priority.
“Gang related drug dealing ruins lives for those that are directly involved, like dealers and users. IT also leaves local communities scarred by crimes and the anti-social behaviour that is an inevitable consequence of the dealing.”
In March this year it was announced the “zombie killer” knives will be banned because of a spate of horror attacks.
Cops had warned the home secretary they were becoming a fashion accessory for teens.
Dozens of the lethal weapons have been confiscated, and boy has died after playing with one of the knives with his friends.
Serial killer Joanna Dennehy posed with one of the weapons.
A teen thug was jailed after hacking Stefan Appleton, 17, to death with one of the knives.
<bot>: COPS have seized a “zombie killer” knife and a “robbery kit” during drug raids on suspected gang members. The serrated weapon and a pack containing another knife, a balaclav…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016062519id_/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1341366/horror-zombie-killer-knife-seized-by-cops-during-drugs-raid/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Extreme’s timing was both excellent and terrible. The Boston band’s breakthrough album came the year before Nirvana wiped the slate clean of pop-metal, and its follow-up arrived the year after. It’s easy to lament Extreme’s interrupted momentum, but Wednesday’s House Of Blues show was about celebrating the moment the group managed to grab while the winds were in its favor, as it performed “Extreme II: Pornograffitti” in its entirety to commemorate the album’s 25th anniversary.
“We had to go back and learn it,” joked guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. “We are a tribute band now.”
And a fine one, too. The band members played the album with the energy and conviction of their 25-years-younger selves. Taking the stage half an hour late because of a fire alarm that required that the audience be completely evacuated and then re-admitted, Extreme burst out of the gate with the stomping, itchy “Decadence Dance” and didn’t come up for air until Bettencourt’s electric guitar was swapped out for an acoustic four songs later, for “More Than Words.”
Bettencourt offered constant reminders that he was one of the more distinctive guitarists to have been washed away by the alternative explosion of the ’90s. His rhythm playing was tight and intricate, while his leads were ragingly, almost defiantly melodic. Even the preposterously frenzied “Flight of the Wounded Bumblebee” solo that prefaced “He-Man Woman Hater” had a clear line weaving through the cascading barrage of notes, as did the song’s fluttering, percussive riff.
As with many full-album concerts, some duds were unavoidable. The band claimed that it had never played “When I First Kissed You” on tour, and it was easy to see why. With Bettencourt on piano, bassist Pat Badger on upright electric bass, and singer Gary Cherone on fedora, it was a snoozer, not because it was a blue-light jazz-standard pastiche but because it was a subpar blue-light jazz-standard pastiche. “When I’m President” and “Get the Funk Out” were lumbering ’80s-metal takes on rap and funk. And the ham-handedness of Extreme’s stabs at social satire has only increased in the last quarter century.
But that hardly mattered when attached to the complex, fretboard-spanning riff of “Pornograffitti,” the arena rush of “Suzi (Wants Her All Day What?),” or the arm-waving Queenisms of “Song for Love.” The encore visited other corners of Extreme’s catalog, from the metallic chicken-pickin’ of “Take Us Alive” to the proggy gravity and scope of “Am I Ever Gonna Change.” Extreme may not have been able to capitalize on its success, but at least it made good on it.
• After a leak, Björk rush-releases her most personal album
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• The Decemberists, ‘What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World’
<bot>: Wednesday’s House Of Blues show was about celebrating the moment Extreme managed to grab while the winds were in its favor, as it performed “Extreme II: Pornograffitti” in its entirety to commemorate the album’s 25th anniversary.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150128053654id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2015/01/22/more-than-words-from-extreme-sharp-anniversary-show/xz9Q6JUiutatd8K8XyOSrN/story.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: There’s a not-so-hidden agenda behind the attached video — posted this week on Apple’s home page and YouTube channel.
iPad sales fell last quarter for the fifth quarter in a row.
CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk puts his finger on part of the iPad’s problem:
People feel like they know it. They have their uses for it. They’re perfectly comfortable with what it does for them. And they don’t really need a new one because there isn’t a new one that offers anything radically different.
Matyszczyk dismisses Apple’s effort as “half-hearted” and predicts that viewers will tune it out like a nagging parent.
But “Everything changes with iPad” has another agenda: To do something about information overload on the App Store, where there are, by last count, half a million native iPad apps.
So Apple has done some useful curation, pointing users with a special interest — in, say, cooking, learning, traveling, redecorating or running a small business — to the best of breed in each category.
And if some of those apps require a better screen, more memory or a faster processor, so much the better.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple AAPL coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
<bot>: To goose weakening sales, Apple's latest video shows users cooking, learning, traveling, redecorating and running a small business on their iPads.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150510225144id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/05/08/five-things-you-didnt-know-you-could-do-with-an-ipad/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Explore the best film, art and music events around the globe
This is a major mid-career exhibition of New Delhi-based artist Subodh Gupta, and is spread across two buildings: the ornate Jaipur House â for paintings and small-scale sculptures â and the modern glass extension. Guptaâs sculptures are made from everyday objects and utensils that are ubiquitous in India, like the steel tiffin boxes used by millions to carry their lunch, along with milk pails, thali pans, even bicycles. By incorporating these objects into his work, Gupta refects on the transformation of his homeland.One of the largest installations to be seen at the show is a site-specific piece that transforms the staircase of the new wing into a cascading mass of stainless-steel utensils, frozen mid-avalanche and the equally imposing sculpture, Very Hungry God (2006).
<bot>: <p>This is a major mid-career exhibition of New Delhi-based artist Subodh Gupta, and is spread across two buildings: the ornate Jaipur House â for paintings and small-scale sculptures â and the modern glass extension. Guptaâs sculptures are made from everyday objects and utensils that are ubiquitous in India, like the steel tiffin boxes used by millions to carry their lunch, along with milk pails, thali pans, even bicycles. By incorporating these objects into his work, Gupta refects on the transformation of his homeland.<br />One of the largest installations to be seen at the show is a site-specific piece that transforms the staircase of the new wing into a cascading mass of stainless-steel utensils, frozen mid-avalanche and the equally imposing sculpture, Very Hungry God (2006). </p>
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20140113233645id_/http://www.bbc.com/culture/event/20131106-subodh-gupta-everything-is-inside
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: I got some flack in July when I wrote that Apple’s iPhone 6 Already Has Tough Competition From LG’s G3, but now that I’ve had a chance to compare the 6 Plus with the G3, I’m feeling vindicated.
For the past week I’ve been carrying an iPhone 6 Plus in one pocket and the G3 in another and — after extensive use of both — I can see how each would have its fans and detractors. Both are excellent phones and while there is no clear winner, I’m leaning slightly in favor the LG G3.
Of course, if you love iOS or all things Apple than the iPhone is your personal winner. Only an iPhone can run Apple’s operating system so your decision is easy. But if you’re open to Android — which has finally matured into an operating system that’s truly competitive with iOS, then the G3 has some hardware features that might win you over.
It starts with the form factor. While both phones have essentially the same size (5.5-inch) screen, the iPhone is considerably taller and slightly wider (though a little thinner). Actual dimensions of the G3 are 5.76 x 2.94 x 0.35 inches compared t0 6.22 by 3.06 by .28 inches for the 6 Plus.
Personally, I much prefer the size of the G3. It fits better in my hand and is less prone to slipping than the iPhone, yet delivers the same amount of screen real estate.
Technically, the G3 has a higher screen resolution (1440 x 2560 pixels vs 1920-by-1080) but both screens look great. I’m not sure why, but I actually prefer the iPhone’s screen slightly over the G3 despite the lower resolution.
LG G3 (left) vs iPhone 6 Plus. Same size screens but different size phones (photo by Larry Magid)
When it comes to storage, Apple gives you a choice of 16, 64 or 128 gigabytes while LG comes only with 32 GB but has a MicroSD slot, making it easy and affordable to add up to 128 extra GB for about $100, making the G3 a better value for those who want to store plenty of music, video, apps or photos on their phone.
If you judged the camera purely on resolution, the LG with its 13 MP camera would win over the iPhone’s 8 MP camera but that’s not the whole story. Apple has done an amazingly good job with its camera both in terms of ease of use and image quality. Based on my tests, I’d have to call it pretty much a tie when it comes to camera quality. Neither can replace a high-end SLR camera, but both can take very good snapshots and decent video under a range of lighting conditions.
Call quality of course depends on your carrier but both phones sounded pretty good in my tests.
The iPhone has “Touch ID” and the LG G3 doesn’t so, when it comes to being able to use your fingerprint to sign into the phone, there’s no competition here. I really like Touch ID and would love to see something like it on all phones and, I give Apple credit for doing it right. It takes awhile to train the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to recognize your fingerprints but, once it does, it recognizes them almost every time. Touch ID will be particularly important once Apple rolls out its Apple Pay service by allowing users to verify a purchase with the touch of a finger.
As per price, the G3 is available unlocked for $580 (from AT&T) vs. $750 for the least expensive (16 GB) iPhone 6 Plus. If you’re willing to sign a contract, the prices are the same ($199) on AT&T and Verizon Wireless
Personally, if I were to buy an iPhone, I’d be more likely to get the regular 6 because it feels better in the hand. But if you want the larger screen size in a more compact case, take a look at the G3.
<bot>: I got some flack in July when I wrote that Apple's iPhone 6 Already Has Tough Competition From LG's G3, but now that I've had a chance to compare the 6 Plus with the G3, I'm feeling vindicated. For the past week I've been carrying an iPhone 6 Plus in one pocket and [...]
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014093019id_/http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2014/09/29/iphone-6-plus-vs-lg-g3-is-no-slam-dunk-for-the-iphone/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Fans had been concerned 1D star was ‘missing’ after week-long online absence
ONE Direction singer Liam Payne has broken his social media silence and it couldn’t come at a better time as his girlfriend Cheryl prepares to celebrate her 33rd birthday.
The 22-year-old pop pin-up had sparked concern for his well-being from his fans after missing in action from Instagram for a week.
Some had also expressed fears about his slimmer appearance in recent posts.
Taking to the photo sharing site, Liam checked in last night (June 29) with a selfie which he had given himself a cartoon makeover using a Snapchat filter.
He wrote alongside it: “Snapchat boredom on a rainy day #spellcheck – boredom. Very slow today.”
It is believed that Liam could be planning to pop the question to his former X Factor judge missus today.
According to a report by the Daily Star, he recently splashed out on a huge diamond ring.
The black diamond and ruby sparkler is said to feature a design inspired by her famous rose bum tattoo, a version of which Liam got done on his hand not so long ago.
Brunette beauty Cheryl has been married twice before.
The pair started dating back in December just a few months after her split from second husband Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini in August.
Earlier this month, rumours about a wedding intensified when Cheryl and Liam attended his sister’s nuptials a few weeks ago and put on a loved up display as they arrived at the church in Wolverhampton.
And a source told Reveal magazine that Liam’s family were concerned that the romance wouldn’t last but added: “Cheryl has completely won them over, and now they’re both convinced she could be ‘The One’ that Liam could finally settle down with.”
The magazine also claimed that Liam’s sister Ruth was even heard joking on her big day: “You’ll be next,” to her brother.
The source added: “Karen is now convinced Cheryl is the perfect candidate to be Liam’s wife.”
Even the bookies have slashed their odds over a Liam-Cheryl wedding after William Hill reduced theirs from 6-1 to 4-1.
Spokesman Joe Crilly said: “At first it looked like the relationship would struggle to see out the month.
“But the pair have confounded the doubters and a proposal may not be out of the question.”
If the rumours are indeed true, Cheryl and Liam will have to wait to get hitched as she is still married to the French businessman, who is rumoured to be playing hardball having dumped his legal team for failing to reach a financial agreement with Cheryl’s advisers.
Got a story? email digishowbiz@the-sun.co.uk or call us direct on 02077824220
<bot>: ONE Direction singer Liam Payne has broken his social media silence and it couldn’t come at a better time as his girlfriend Cheryl prepares to celebrate her 33rd birthday. The 22-year-old pop pin-u…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016063019id_/https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/1366305/bored-liam-payne-returns-to-social-media-in-time-for-cheryls-birthday/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Shares of the New York Times Co. hit a five-year high Tuesday after a Chinese businessman expressed interest in acquiring a large or controlling stake in the publishing firm.
The stock hit $16.14 a share before easing to close the session down 1.4 percent, at $15.87.
Chen Guangbiao, a recycling magnate, told Reuters he was due to meet a Times shareholder on Jan. 5 to discuss his interest in the paper.
The Sulzberger family, which controls the New York Times, has been under pressure from investors in recent years as the company, battling eroding print advertising, has experienced some financial distress.
The Graham family, which operated the Washington Post, sold the paper to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in August.
The Sulzbergers have maintained that the Times Co. is not for sale.
“There’s nothing that can’t be bought for the right price,” Chen countered, telling Reuters he’d be willing to invest up to $1 billion in the company.
The New York Times Co. has a market cap of $2.4 billion.
Chen, who has been known for making large pronouncements simply to gain publicity, said he has raised $600 million from an unnamed Hong Kong-based partner.
In its latest quarter, the Times reported revenue of $361.7 million. Times Co. advertising revenue was $138 million, while total circulation revenue was $204 million, through Sept. 29.
The China market is important if the Times’ international ambitions are to be realized.
The firm just relaunched its International Herald Tribune as the International New York Times.
The Times launched a Chinese-language lifestyle website in October, according to Reuters.
<bot>: Shares of the New York Times Co. hit a five-year high Tuesday after a Chinese businessman expressed interest in acquiring a large or controlling stake in the publishing firm. The…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014010319id_/http://nypost.com/2013/12/31/chinese-tycoon-to-make-play-for-new-york-times/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: When our daughter Lori was just 34 years old, my husband Frank and I lost her to the demons of addiction.
I had known her since she was 6 years old. I fell in love with her and her big sister, Tracy, almost before I fell in love with their father—my husband, Frank. Lori had long blond hair and bright, sparkling eyes.
It broke my heart to watch the look that grew in Lori’s once-bright eyes as her addictions overcame her. There is an old saying: “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” As Lori grew progressively sicker, the potential disappeared from behind her eyes. The light, the sparkle she once had, left her. What remained was a dull, flat void. It was the look of hopelessness. And that look is what haunts me most.
Lori had been battling addictions for years. She had been in and out of rehab three times. As anyone who has loved someone with an addiction knows, you can force someone into rehab, but you can’t make her well. Only the addict can do that.
Virtually every minute of every day after those two police officers stood in our living room, Frank and I wondered what signs we had missed, what we could have done differently to help Lori overcome her demons. It is the torture of second-guessing that every parent who has lost a child to addiction goes through.
Unfortunately, too many of the men and women I have met on the campaign trail have experienced tragedies like ours. They have lost fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. Drug addiction is an epidemic, and it is taking too many of our young people.
This is a battle that we must fight. There are things that we can and must do.
We must invest more in mental health and in the treatment of drug addiction.
We shouldn’t be criminalizing addiction. If you’re criminalizing drug abuse, you’re not treating it. In New Hampshire alone, 85% of state prisoners have a substance abuse problem. These men and women need help.
We need to reform the criminal justice system and make sure we’re putting the right people in prison. The federal prison population has nearly doubled in the last 20 years—and nearly half of the inmates in federal prison are in there for non-violent drug offenses.
It’s important to keep violent criminals out of our communities—but it’s also true that prison is not always the right answer. Drug offenders who go into treatment—rather than through the normal criminal justice system—are about 25% less likely to be re-arrested in the two years after leaving the program.
It’s clear that there is a better way—and a number of states are on the forefront of this fight, developing innovative solutions to a problem that the federal government has failed to solve.
Texas now has specialized drug courts that allow more flexibility in addressing non-violent offenses. Georgia has made it a priority to help inmates earn a degree and gain skills that will help them get a job and stay out of prison.
In New Hampshire, I have gotten to see some of these innovations firsthand. Last month, I visited CADY (Communities for Alcohol- and Drug-free Youth), an organization that has had success in offering youth with substance abuse disorders a pathway to recovery that does not take them through the traditional criminal justice system. Instead, CADY gets them the help they need. We need to empower states like Texas, Georgia, and New Hampshire to implement the solutions they know are working.
At the moment that those two police officers delivered the news to my husband and me, we lost both the woman Lori was and the woman she could have been. All our hope for her and her life died. We grieved for Lori, for our family, for ourselves.
Unfortunately, I have seen the look from Lori’s eyes in too many people around the country. People are losing the sense of limitless possibility that has always defined this nation.
In too many cities, young people are getting access to drugs—and then getting arrested—and then turning back to drugs. It’s a terrible cycle.
We need to create a circumstance where people have a stake in their community—and they will only have that stake if they believe that their community offers them possibilities for a future. It’s time to take our country back from the professional politicians and return that sense of possibility to the people of this nation.
I look forward to discussing these important issues at the New Hampshire Forum on Addiction and the Heroin Epidemic at Southern New Hampshire University on January 5.
<bot>: If you’re criminalizing drug abuse and addiction, you’re not treating it
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016010519id_/http://time.com/4166541/carly-fiorina-we-must-tackle-the-addiction-crisis/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Sometimes stallion sperm just isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Sure, the stuff can fetch $300,000 a shot, but that's chump change compared with its mid-1980s peak when thoroughbred stallions commonly earned $500,000--in '80s dollars--for doing what comes naturally. Talk about deflation.
To add insult to injury, it doesn't even always work. You can easily spend the gross national product of a small Caribbean nation attempting to breed a championship racer, only to see it languish on the track.
In Pictures: Horse Racing's Biggest Studs
It's maddening. Despite the best efforts of art and science, you cannot buy the Kentucky Derby. What makes a champion thoroughbred remains as elusive as ever. The least-heralded nag can, and on several occasions has, won the fabled race. On the flip side, some of the priciest horses, bred by some of the world's richest people, simply can't compete. It turns out that horses are a lot like people. Some are overachievers that live to run and win, while others are underachieving slackers.
"That's what keeps people like me, from a modest background, going," says Thomas Gallo, a thoroughbred-besotted horse buyer and seller from Saratoga Springs, N.Y. "I can produce a horse that can outrun one somebody spent millions to breed."
And he has. One horse born and raised on his farm, Commentator, has earned over $1 million in purses in its career so far. Still, the closest Gallo's gotten to the Kentucky Derby is watching it.
"It's a very unique and energizing business," he says. "It's the only business where a person like you and I can own a piece of an athlete and take a real active participation in a sport. You wake up every morning with dreams of winning the Kentucky Derby, and you have as good a chance as anybody." In fact, horses are so unpredictable that even siblings can be very little alike. Or, as one breeder said to Gallo, "Mrs. O'Neal only had one Shaquille."
At the moment we are in something of a horse boom. Thoroughbred sales totaled $1.46 billion in the U.S., Canada and Europe in 2005, and stratospheric prices are being paid for certain promising young horses. In 2006 a strapping, 2-year-old colt named the Green Monkey sold at auction for a record $16 million. Unfortunately, he has only earned back a little more than $10,000 in purses, and it looks unlikely that he'll be coveted as a breeding stallion.
Even these millions, however, pale against the money spent by other, even better-heeled, or better-sandaled, horse folks. Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, has reportedly spent $1.4 billion on horses, building perhaps the greatest stable in the world. (We estimate his personal fortune at $16 billion (see "Richest Royals"). But despite such spending, Maktoum has yet to win the Derby.
Surely it must irk the sheik to know that many Derby winners were bought cheaply as colts. Seattle Slew, who won the Triple Crown in 1977, was such a gawky, clumsy colt that he was nicknamed Baby Huey and initially sold for just $17,500. More recently, Derby and Preakness Stakes winner Funny Cide sold as a youth for $21,000.
Although it's impossible to predict which colt will grow into a champion, people still try. One obvious way to try to tilt the odds is by paying huge stud fees for stallions with the best records as sires. Of course, paying big money guarantees nothing. In essence, you're buying past performance. And as with stocks and mutual funds, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Perhaps the most valuable breeding stallion of all time is Mr. Prospector. Only a moderately talented racer himself, by the time he died in 1999 he'd fathered 165 stakes winners and had stud fees that reached as high as $500,000. But even this fabled stud fathered just one Derby winner, Fusaichi Pegasus, who won in 2000.
The top living stud is Storm Cat, who's sired 158 stakes winners. Storm Cat was the top horse from 2002 through 2007, when he earned a stud fee of $500,000, grossing his owners at Overbrook Farms $100 million in that span. But even Storm Cat saw just 13% of his foals win stakes races, and no Derbies.
It's just this unpredictability that keeps the sport exciting for veteran breeders.
"Every time a baby stands up for the first time, and nurses to its mother, you look at it and say, 'Could this be the one?' " Gallo says. "And you just never know."
In Pictures: Horse Racing's Biggest Studs
<bot>: Mystery and luck matter more than millions in creating a great thoroughbred champion.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2009050219id_/http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/04/thoroughbred-breeding-sperm-bix-xports-champions08-cx_ds_024horse.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The fallout from the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union has battered the stock market, dragged sterling to its lowest level in decades and sent investors fleeing to haven assets.
But it hasn’t scared 71-year-old Dene Alden.
“We see it as an opportunity,” said Ms. Alden, a retired graphic designer who trades stocks from the computer...
<bot>: Some U.S. individual investors viewed stock-market declines after the U.K. referendum to leave the EU as a chance to snare coveted shares.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016062919id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/brexit-signaled-buy-for-these-u-s-investors-1467216087
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Using one another as pillows, like a family huddled together for warmth in a house without heat, most of the Marines were catching a little sleep before their mission was to begin. But one sat wide awake at the edge of their huddle.
Tyler Hicks caught this quiet moment.
Another Marine gazed at a snapshot of himself and his wife. The picture’s tattered edge conveyed how well traveled it was. And how often it was so lovingly examined.
Along with members of Company K, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, Mr. Hicks, a staff photographer for The Times, was preparing to go into battle.
I have to carry cameras, lenses, a laptop, satellite transmitter, chargers, batteries and cables. I bring duplicates of some chargers in case one shorts out because if I can’t charge, then I can’t file my pictures. A sleeping bag, enough clothes to stay relatively warm, three days of food and water. I also wear body armor, a helmet, protective goggles and some first aid gear — pressure bandages and tourniquets, mostly. Things begin to get heavy.
The Marja offensive, aimed at retaking a Taliban stronghold, involved the third major air assault Mr. Hicks has covered as an embedded photojournalist since he began working in Afghanistan nearly 10 years ago. Troops had been massing in Helmand Province for days and there had been numerous news reports detailing the impending assault. The Taliban had time to prepare. “In some ways this weighed on our minds as bad weather delayed our helicopters,” Mr. Hicks said, “but thinking about what lays ahead can be more stressful than the event itself, so I didn’t concentrate on it.”
I reminded myself that I only have to take pictures and, unlike the Marines around me, I have the freedom to get low and maneuver however I want, if needed. There had been particular anxiety among Marines about I.E.D.’s that would be easy to plant prior to our arrival but those did not become a major threat until later — at least not for a company landing by helicopter. The I.E.D.’s were mostly on the roads and the region’s outer belt. It turned out that they were not in the fields, which is where we landed.
I worried more about snipers. We had a briefing before we joined the company that flew in. The officer told us that a few Special Forces units had operated briefly near where we were going, but they never managed to get up the place. They always ended up getting fired at by the Taliban, including single-shot sniper fire — a pretty rare occurence in my Afghanistan experience. So I thought a little about that, since we would be there a while. Sniper fire is nastier than random Kalashnikov fire.
Early on Feb. 13, Mr. Hicks and C. J. Chivers, a Times reporter, landed along with Kilo Company in absolute darkness. “The helicopters quickly departed, showering us with dirt and heat from the engines, and it was quiet again,” Mr. Hicks said. “We had arrived in Marja.”
Chris used his satellite phone in the landing zone to call the paper and tell them where we were. He gave them the latitude-longitude coordinates for the landing zone. And then the Marines got up and started to move toward some buildings. We followed them inside and I took pictures as they swept it. They had flashlights on their rifles and they turned them on as they entered rooms; this was the only illumination beside starlight. Once the first sweep was over, it was black again. I turned on my laptop and satellite antenna and sent a few frames to New York, so the paper would have some opening images of the offensive.
An Afghan man was surrounded, arms outstretched, lit by flashlight and framed by shadows of Marines pointing their weapons. The image made it to Page 1 of The New York Times later that day, next to a two-column headline: “Allies Attacking Big Taliban Haven in Afghan South.” Operation Moshtarak (Together) had begun.
At first light, I was able to start taking pictures. The Marines were on the move, crossing fields of young poppy and bounding over irrigation canals. I would try to get into position to take some pictures and then catch back up to where I had been in the line. But carrying the gear, with the added weight of a Kevlar vest and helmet, made working difficult. Hours later we reached our pause, a bleak outcrop of mud-walled homes and compounds surrounded by flat deserted land. It seemed empty, until the shooting began.
Sometimes the most serene-looking war photographs speak volumes of the danger afoot: body language or the subtlest of expressions will betray it. Then, Marines scurry across a field, in a hail of bullets, and the picture making continues. A Marine’s brief glance towards the camera shows the fear in his eyes. Scenes of warriors seeking cover in a barren landscape feel timeless, reminiscent of other wars. Or perhaps every war.
Despite the amount of action going on during a fight, I find combat the most difficult to translate photographically. You can be in the most compromising situation, surrounded by gunfire, but the pictures may only translate to someone firing a weapon. If possible, I try to get movement in my pictures. The less static, the more experience is captured. Facial expressions and emotion are just as important as the tactical part of a fight.
I try to capture the experience of battle, while at the same time protecting myself. There are times you have to break away from the action, focus and gather yourself. Chris and I check on each other constantly. Working with someone you can rely on is one of the most important aspects of embedding in a place like Afghanistan. You can be protected militarily, but having a buddy system with someone you trust is invaluable in the field. Chris and I have been working together for years embedded in Afghanistan and have relied on each other under the most extreme circumstances. We look after each other always, and keep each other up. He knows I have his back. I know he has mine. Not having to wonder about who you’re with frees you up to work.
The Marines used an airstrike to hit a compound. The order came to go search the building’s rubble, and so Chris and I ran over and joined the squad that was going out there. It meant crossing back across the canal and the open fields, and then going by some high reeds. There were about 15 of us.
The Taliban ambushed the patrol. It was brief, but a lot of fire. I was walking along a dirt road, just before dark, when bursts of automatic fire erupted from a patch of tall grass ahead of us. Chris was out in the field, in the open. The Marines returned fire and pushed the Taliban away.
Chris couldn’t see me and was calling my name to make sure I was not shot. And I couldn’t hear him because my attention was on the bullets going by and I had tuned out everything else. The Marine squad leader, a corporal, told Chris he could see me and everyone was O.K., so far. Then he ordered the squad to get up and run right toward the Taliban, as soon as there was a lull in Taliban firing. We ran with them. For the next three days after that, we were under pretty much constant fire. Nights were quiet, though. The Taliban backed away at night.
In a dim blue light, Marines stood near a pocked wall, stunned after the loss of one of their men. Their expressions ranged from sadness to shock to mystification.
As their squads filtered into our compound just before dark, I could see the emotion of the loss on the Marines’ faces. These situations are delicate, and you have to approach them with respect for what they’re going through. I was able to shoot just a few frames before it was dark, but in this case was able to tell part of their story through that scene.
During an intense firefight on Feb. 14, Mr. Hicks’s view of the war in Afghanistan grew terrifyingly close up. A Marine was hit by gunfire as he crouched behind a wall. Bullets were piercing the air as Mr. Hicks photographed the wounded Marine being treated by the medic. Minutes later, a rocket barrage hit a house nearby, killing 12 civilians. It was far too dangerous to move. Mr. Hicks was stuck.
These would have been important pictures, but I couldn’t move alone across an open battlefield to reach them in time. It was several hundred yards of open ground. A sniper had just shot a Marine near Chris, and I had taken pictures of the corpsman treating the injury. I knew how dangerous it was, and it would have put Marines at risk to ask them to accompany me out there.
We never do that. Our ethical position is that we will take every step we can alongside the people we cover in combat, but never ask them to take a step for us, or to take us somewhere they would not go on their own. If they were to get hurt doing something we asked them to do, it would weigh on us personally forever. Chris and I follow this code. We believe in it and do not deviate from it.
But even though I was on ethically firm ground, this was a personally frustrating moment for me, a thought that continues to harass me, because that would have been important to document. I remind myself of the reality of conflict that I’ve learned over the years. Time and distance become something completely different in battle, when a moment can make all the difference, and a few feet can feel like a mile, and where we have a responsibility not to get anyone else hurt, and to allow the events to flow naturally around us.
In addition to the danger of making pictures in a war zone, something as mundane as lack of electricity can be agonizing and debilitating. In the age of minute-by-minute news, speed of transmission becomes nearly as important as the pictures themselves. To prepare for this, Mr. Hicks and Mr. Chivers brought a car battery. “It was like running with 100 pounds on your back and a big dumbbell in one hand and a camera in the other,” Mr. Hicks said. “I carried the battery on the first night. Once the sun came up, Chris took it so I could shoot pictures and have both hands free.”
However, the car battery failed. Then, after two days, the computer battery died. “For the first time in 10 years,” Mr. Hicks said, “I was sitting on pictures that I was unable to send.” Military vehicles eventually arrived and the pictures began flowing again to New York.
On his last day with Company K, Mr. Hicks focused on the Marines’ exhaustion. Under the threshhold of an ancient doorway, in a shallow indentation in the ground, a young man reclined in a cocoonlike blanket. Once again — however briefly, however furtively — it was time for sleep. And Mr. Hicks was there.
<bot>: Tyler Hicks of The Times accompanied Company K, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines into Marja. Patrick Witty annotates Mr. Hicks's firsthand account.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010030519id_/http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/assignment-28/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The Federal Trade Commission had some harsh words for Sony on Tuesday, announcing a settlement that says the gaming giant was not truthful in marketing its PS Vita. The FTC's claim? That Sony promised "game-changing" features would be available on the Vita, and they weren't.
It also marks the first time that the FTC has taken action against a company regarding how it advertises using Twitter. FTC has also filed a complaint against Deutsch LA, Sony's advertising agency, for asking employees to generate buzz on their personal Twitter accounts without disclosing their connection to Deutsch LA.
Last March, the FTC updated its online advertising disclosure guidelines to say that sponsored social media messages, such as tweets, should be disclosed to keep campaigns from being deceptive. FTC Western Region Director Tom Dahdouh said on a press call that social media advertising -- particularly of video games -- will be an area the agency will watch closely in the future.
Neither Sony nor Deustch LA immediately responded to a request for comment.
The complaint against Sony specifically refers to the Vita's "cross-platform" gaming features, which let players link games they're playing on their PlayStation 3 or 4 with the same titles on the handheld Vita. For example, on some Vita games, users can play on one machine, pause the gameplay, and resume on the other -- if they've bought the title for both the Vita and the PlayStation.
Those features were front-and-center in early ads for the Vita but, as the FTC said, it was really "only available for a few PS3 games, and the pause-and-save capability described in the ads varied significantly from game to game." The agency also said that Sony and its ad agency, Deutsch LA, did not make it clear that players would have to buy the same game twice, for each device, to get the full benefits of play.
The FTC also said that Sony falsely implied that those who picked up the 3G-enabled version of the Vita would be able to play live, multiplayer titles and that games on the Vita would be as full-featured as they were on the console. The agency also filed a complaint against Deutsch LA, saying that a campaign using the hashtag "#gamechanger" was simply not true.
As part of the settlement, Sony will have to pay some PS Vita buyers back. Those who bought the handheld console before June 1, 2012 are entitled to either a $25 cash or credit refund or a $50 voucher for certain games or services. The FTC did not say how many customers will be eligible for refund. It may not be too many considering that Vita sales started in February 2012, with a relatively quiet launch. Those who got the Vita for Christmas that year, or who bought it when the PlayStation 4 came out in 2013, for example, will not be eligible for the refund.
If you are one of the Vita owners who can get a refund, Sony says it will let you know via e-mail.
Hayley Tsukayama covers consumer technology for The Washington Post.
<bot>: As part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over false advertising charges, Sony will be offering early Vita buyers a small refund.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014112519id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/25/the-ftc-says-sony-lied-about-how-innovative-the-ps-vita-is/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Golden State’s Draymond Green and Cleveland’s LeBron James had words during the NBA Finals on Friday.
When the Golden State Warriors attempt to close out the NBA Finals Monday night in Oakland, they’ll do so without sparkplug forward Draymond Green.
Green, as you may have heard, was suspended for Game 5 after punching Cleveland’s LeBron James in the groin region during the Warriors’ Friday night victory.
A punch to the groin is no picnic, of course. But if the intent is to display a physical dominance over an opponent while simultaneously jabbing a knife into the gut of sportsmanship, there are ways to do it that might even be worse than the ol’ crotch-punch.
1. The Bat Flip. This taunt — baseball’s answer to the middle-finger — gained widespread attention last season when Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista, following a home run in the American League Divisional Series, sent his bat skyrocketing in a show of one-upsmanship. From there, its legend only grew. On Sunday, Boston College found itself on the wrong end of a bat flip when the University of Miami’s Edgar Michelangeli hit a grand slam to give the Hurricanes a 9-3 lead in the team’s Super Regional matchup — then carried his bat halfway down the first base line before chucking it skyward. As you might imagine, the benches cleared.
2. The Bite. Sure, in the real world, biting is an activity enjoyed mostly by toddlers. But in soccer, apparently, it’s just a quirky thing players do to each other sometimes. Back in 2014, Barcelona’s Luis Suárez was disciplined for feasting on an opponent during a World Cup match. And in March, Chelsea’s Diego Costa was caught taking what looked to be a bite out of an Everton opponent’s neck. (In the second case, both players later said no bite actually occurred).
3. The Finger-Wag. Having your shot blocked is demoralizing enough. Having a 7-foot behemoth wagging his finger in your face afterward is particularly unpleasant. The move made famous by longtime Denver Nuggets big man Dikembe Mutombo became — for a while anyway — one of basketball’s ultimate taunts. “No,” the finger-wag seemed to say. “No way.”
4. The Poop Ball. It’s a taunt as old as time. You catch a three-yard touchdown pass — like Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin did against the Patriots in Super Bowl 49 — and then you crouch down and pretend to “release” the ball from your backside. Classic move. Although it’s even more classic if your team doesn’t proceed to blow a 10-point third-quarter lead and lose the game in about the most demoralizing way possible.
5. The Field-a-Splintered-Piece-of-Baseball-Bat-and-Then-Throw-It-at-the-Batter-as-He’s-Running-to-First. Tough to top this one: 2000 World Series, Game 2, first inning. The Mets’ Mike Piazza hits a broken-bat foul ball, sending a chunk of his bat flying toward the mound. Yankees’ pitcher Roger Clemens, apparently taking offense to this completely random and unintentional turn of events, picks up the jagged piece of bat and fires it toward Piazza. All’s well that ends well, though. The broken bat was reportedly sold at auction in 2014 for nearly $50,000.
<bot>: Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5 after punching Cleveland’s LeBron James in the groin during the Warriors’ Friday-night victory. But if the intent is to display a physical dominance over an opponent while gutting sportsmanship, there are ways to do it that might even be worse.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160618133259id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/lifestyle/2016/06/13/the-groin-punch-worse-than-finger-wag-bat-flip/AWH3kPYNhSBwjKD2Cz9jGN/story.html?
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: At least 12 people have been killed, including four Europeans, after gunmen opened fire near hotels in Ivory Coast.
Between two and four attackers were reportedly involved in the assault on Sunday, launched on a beach in the popular seaside town of Grand-Bassam, a weekend retreat for residents of Abidjan, about 25 miles (40km) away.
Local media reported that gunmen had entered the L’Etoile du Sud (the Southern Star) hotel, taking guests and staff in the building hostage. A police source told Reuters that up to a dozen people were killed in the attack.
“For the moment, we have a total of 12 dead, including four Europeans ... We don’t know yet if there are others. We are doing clean-up operations right now,” the officer told security forces during a briefing attended by a Reuters reporter.
The attackers were “heavily armed and wearing balaclavas” and “fired at guests at L’Etoile du Sud, a large hotel which was full of expats in the current heatwave”, a witness told AFP.
A military official told Le Monde Afrique that gunmen ordered their victims to shout “Allahu Akbar” before shooting them and that one jihadi was killed while two others fled. Local reports claimed the gunmen shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they opened fire, though it was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.
Another witness told France24 that six people were killed and several others were injured in the shooting. Graphic pictures appearing to show at least four dead bodies were posted on social media.
“I saw seven dead that I filmed. There were four attackers. I was swimming when it started and I ran away,” said Dramane Kima, who showed the video of the bodies to Reuters.
He also took pictures of grenades and ammunition clips that he believed had been left behind by the attackers. A Reuters witness saw two wounded people.
One witness said the gunmen shot a child although he was kneeling down and begging for mercy. The witness said a woman was also shot.
Special forces in the former French colony were on the scene and the beach where the shooting began was evacuated.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said officials were “urgently” trying to establish whether any British nationals had been caught up in the incident.
In its travel advice, the FCO advises against all but essential travel to the western regions of Dix-Huit Montagnes, Haut-Sassandra, Moyen-Cavally and Bas-Sassandra. It said of Sunday’s attacks: “On 13 March, there have been reports of an armed attack at Grand-Bassam resort, near Abidjan. You should avoid the area if possible. If you are in the vicinity follow the instructions of the security authorities.
“There is a high threat from terrorism. You should be vigilant after recent attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners.”
Attacks in recent months on luxury hotels in the capitals of neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso have killed dozens of people, leaving west African nations scrambling to boost security in the face of a growing jihadi threat.
Analysts have voiced fears that Islamist attacks could spread to countries such as Ivory Coast and Senegal, and the region’s US-led Flintlock military exercises that wrapped up recently focused on the need to counter jihadism.
Grand-Bassam, which has about 80,000 inhabitants, holds Unesco world heritage status for its elegant colonial-era facades.
The attack took place nearly two months after Islamist fighters killed dozens of people in a hotel and cafe frequented by foreigners in neighbouring Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou, raising concern that the reach of militancy in west Africa was spreading.
<bot>: Four Europeans among dead and several injured after attackers launch assault on beach in Grand-Bassam, reports say
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016031319id_/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/13/gunmen-open-fire-in-ivory-coast-tourist-resort
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The first openly gay Episcopal bishop said at a packed church hearing Wednesday that he is "not an abomination," as he pleaded with the denomination not to bar gays from the office of bishop, even temporarily, for the sake of Anglican unity.
If Episcopalians "see Christ in the faithful lives of our gay and lesbian members," they should have the courage to say so, no matter the potential consequences, said Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
"I am not an abomination before God," he told the Episcopal General Convention. "Please, I beg you, let's say our prayers and stand up for right."
But Bishop Robert Duncan, who leads a network of conservative Episcopal dioceses that opposed Robinson's consecration, told those at the hearing that the denomination is attempting an impossible task, "which is to hold together the conserving and progressive wings of our church."
"We've reached a moment where it is very difficult, indeed I think we've reached an impossible moment, in holding it together," said Duncan, of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
The convention will vote over the next few days whether to meet demands from Anglican leaders to impose a moratorium on electing gay bishops and express regret for the turmoil caused by Robinson's 2003 consecration.
The Episcopal Church is the U.S. arm of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, the global association of churches that trace their roots to the Church of England. The majority of overseas Anglicans believe the Bible prohibits same-sex relationships, and they want the Americans to follow that teaching or leave the communion.
If Anglican leaders dislike the outcome of the General Convention, which runs through June 21, the communion could break apart. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, has repeatedly expressed concern about the future of the fellowship.
"We cannot survive as a communion of churches without some common convictions about what it is to live and to make decisions as the Body of Christ," he wrote in a message to the General Convention, which runs through June 21.
Wednesday night's hearing was organized by a committee crafting the Episcopal response to the crisis. The main proposal before delegates does not contain a moratorium on future gay bishops. Instead, it asks dioceses to "exercise very considerable caution" in electing leaders. However, delegates can revise or reject the legislation.
People began standing in line more than an hour before the hearing began to make sure they could get inside. Delegates and visitors filled the vast hotel ballroom to its 1,500-person capacity, while an overflow crowd outside listened on speakers as delegates took turns commenting on how the church should proceed.
Many expressed concern about the church's place in the Anglican family, while others said it would go against God to put restrictions on gay clergy.
<bot>: COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The first openly gay Episcopal bishop said at a packed church hearing Wednesday that he is "not an abomination," as he pleaded with the denomination not to bar gays from the office of bishop, even temporarily, for the sake of Anglican unity.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006061419id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061400282.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: On the first episode of his new reality series, the beleaguered R&B singer Bobby Brown pokes fun at his extensive rap sheet and his bad boy reputation. "Maybe you don't recognize me because I'm not in an orange jumpsuit," he tells two middle-aged men dining in a fashionable restaurant. Mr. Brown then turns around and places his hands behind his back as if he's being handcuffed. (It is a stance that he has become quite accustomed to over the years.) "Recognize me now, don't you?"
Bobby Brown, serious about his new cable television series.
La Princia, 16, with her father, Bobby Brown. He advises, "If someone ever tries to kiss you, smack 'em!"
He may joke about his criminal record, the tabloid headlines and reports of a rocky marriage, but Mr. Brown, 35, is quite serious about using his new series, "Being Bobby Brown," to set the record straight about his life. "On a daily basis, I'm trying to prove my point, that I'm more good than I am bad."
The series, which begins next Thursday night at 10 on the cable channel Bravo, chronicles Mr. Brown's exploits over the last six months. Watch Bobby Brown narrowly avoid prison, party in the Bahamas and pose for pictures with adoring fans. Watch him dance a jig at a local Chinese eatery and pick the lock on his hotel room mini bar.
Lounging in a conference room at the Waldorf-Astoria one recent afternoon, Mr. Brown said he had cameras following him 24 hours a day, logging more than 3,000 hours of film.
"I didn't want them to miss anything," said Mr. Brown, a devout believer in the all-press-is-good-press doctrine. "I wanted them to get the ups and downs and the good and bad because that's what made me."
"I'm not ashamed of any of it," he later added. "I'm not going to run and I'm not going to hide. They're going to talk about me anyway - thank God. I just want to control it."
The idea for a reality series came out of a conversation he had two years ago with his children - Landon, 18; La Princia, 16; Bobby Jr., 14; and Bobby Kristina, 12. "I was in jail, and they were like 'Dad, your friend Flavor Flav has a reality show," he recalled. " 'When you get out, you should do a reality show.' " Upon his release, Mr. Brown linked up with two Atlanta television producers who were intrigued by the constant press Mr. Brown and Whitney Houston, his wife of 14 years, generated. "Outside of all the negative blurbs, we wanted to know what else is there to these people," said Tracey Baker-Simmons, an executive producer of the show. A pilot episode was shot and sent to Bravo, where it took the network's president, Lauren Zalaznick, only 15 minutes to greenlight the series. "I'm not someone that buys something in the room," Ms. Zalaznick said. "I'm a ruminator. But it was very apparent to me that this was something right for Bravo. This is very tactile. You feel something when you watch this show."
Though the show is a Bobby Brown vehicle, Ms. Houston figures prominently. She lovingly greets her husband when he returns from a stint in jail. She is there with him in court when he faces domestic abuse charges brought by her. And when Mr. Brown is given a slap on the wrist, it is she who enjoys a romantic dinner with him the evening following his court date.
Among the many things viewers learn about the couple: Ms. Houston snores loudly, Mr. Brown uses Preparation H to treat bags under his eyes and the two enjoy a very active sex life. In a voice that is meant to be sultry, Mr. Brown asks his wife, "Can I impregnate you?" To which she quickly responds, "You tried to impregnate me all last week." In one of the show's more uncomfortable moments, Mr. Brown freely discusses how he helped relieve his constipated wife.
But those expecting a train wreck will have to settle for a major fender bender. While "Being Bobby Brown" has its share of bizarre moments, viewers are also given an opportunity to see Mr. Brown as both a doting father and loving husband, one who often doles out hugs and kisses. And he admits to being an overprotective dad.Note the advice he gives to his daughter La Princia: "If someone ever tries to kiss you, smack 'em!"
Still, a sliver of Mr. Brown's bad boy side was apparent early last week. Though he was nattily dressed in designer jeans, a white vest and matching sneakers, his cornrows appeared fuzzy and in dire need of rebraiding; his eyes were a tad bloodshot. When not answering questions in a near whisper, he struggled to stay awake, even nodding off for a moment during the interview. Was Mr. Brown bored? "No," he replied. "I'm just tired." It turns out the singer had spent the previous evening in the edit room for his show and in the studio recording a track for his new album, which he hopes to release independently this fall. "There's a lot going on right now," he said with a sheepish grin.
<bot>: The beleaguered R&B singer Bobby Brown is serious about using his new reality series, "Being Bobby Brown," to set the record straight about his life.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060924191713id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2005/06/23/arts/television/23bobb.html?ex=1277179200&en=7563ad94b2f42ba3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: This post has been updated.
We’re following former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s bus tour through the Northeast, a trip that has renewed speculation about her presidential ambitions.
Details on the tour are still hazy. The trip will include a stop on Friday in New Hampshire, a state Palin has not visited since 2008. She also plans to visit the Civil War battlefields at Gettysburg and Antietam and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.
Palin released a Web video promoting the trip, and she has been updating supporters after each stop on the Web site of her political action committee, SarahPAC.
Wherever Palin goes, we’ll be following her — and you can too, with this map:
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<bot>: We’re following Sarah Palin on a tour of the Northeast.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011060319id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/following-sarah-palins-bus-tour/2011/05/27/AGspXwCH_blog.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Words of wisdom from the head of a multimillion-dollar empire.
By Taffy Brodesser-Akner | May 18, 2016
In the conference room of an oceanside hotel in Pismo Beach, Calif., Martha Beck stands on stage, nearing the end of an effusive 90-minute keynote speech for the semiannual Meet and Greet of the (mostly) women enrolled in her life coach training program, when she stops abruptly. âIntegrity check!â she says.
Sheâd been telling the 80 or so trainees a story about her diagnosis many years ago of fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. Sheâd been an avid runner before the diagnosis; sheâs started running again, even though exercising is often painful for people with fibromyalgia. Her point was that we shouldnât always believe in our limitations, no matter how expert the source who presents them or how concrete they may seem. Also, maybe we donât need quite so many rules! She reminded everyone that so much of what we know is told to us with great authority, and we accept it. Part of Beckâs credoâpart of any trained sociologistâs credoâis to understand that most rules put in place for our lives are a social construct, so itâs our constant job to ask, âWait, is that presumption that I have true? What proof do I have that itâs true? How did I come to believe this, and does it serve me to continue believing it?â
A little earlier, sheâd illustrated her point by inviting a trainee onto the stage. She asked the woman what was on her mind, and the trainee, who hasnât given me permission to share her story (so Iâll say it in the broadest terms), said she was having a trust issue with someone she knows. Beck coached her through the problem, teaching her that the only person the trainee needed to trust was herself, and that once she trusted herself, she would know how to live. Beck employed several of her best-known techniques: some questions, some kinesiology. She had the woman raise her arm and try to keep it raised as she made a statement she considered true about her conundrum. The body weakens when itâs lying, Beck explained. So if Beck applies pressure to an arm and it goes down easily, the person knows sheâs lying to herself (or others). If it stays strong, well, then the statement is true. The traineeâs arm withstood Beckâs pressure, and she learned from this to trust her instincts. She then made a namaste gesture with hands, bowed, and went back to her chair.
Now, in the long seconds after Beck suddenly stops, the room falls silent. She looks at the people in her audience, meets their eyes. Many look as if theyâd been created in her image: flowing fabrics and decorative, loosely draped scarves. Beck wears a turtleneck and some stealth jeggings, short motorcycle boots, and a long cardigan. Her smile is slight and confident; sheâs the calmest, most attentive person in the world. She squints, inhales as if smelling something familiar but unidentifiable, and turns her head two degrees. Then she looks back at the crowd: âIâve just done an integrity check,â she resumes. âAnd I realize that if itâs OK with you, I would like to stay and talk to you again after lunch. Would that be OK?â Would it! Theyâd been scheduled to do workshops after lunch, but another chance to listen to the woman in whose image they were re-creating themselves? No question. The (mostly) women rise from their seats and clap. Some go off to have spinach salads, while others do quick integrity checks, decide the better move is a hamburger from room service, and run back to their rooms.
For the uninitiated, Beck is the Matryoshka doll of life coaches: She coaches herself, she teaches other coaches, they in turn coach, and so on. She grossed $3.5Â million last year, but more significant than her own earning power is her role legitimizing the field. Life coaching used to be a fluke that people rolled their eyes at or likened to psychic readingsâa sphere of half-truths at best and rarely sustainable as a full-time job. According to a survey done by the International Coach Federation (ICF), as of 2012, there were more than 15,000 life coaches operating in the U.S. and 41,300 coaches worldwide taking in a total of $2 billion. While numbers are hard to verify (the business is unregulated; some coaches operate out of their homes and call it something else), the federationâs report found that accredited life coaches charge from $85 to $214 per hour.
To understand how life coaching transformed into a viable career option and (almost) shame-free resource, Beck is as good a place as any to start. At first her operation was small: People came to her for coaching, so she coached them. Then there were so many that she decided to write a book, then another, then another. Oprah Winfrey came calling, first for some live coaching on her TV show, then to grant the people what they wanted with a monthly column by Beck in O, The Oprah Magazineâthe most strangely compelling, likable, and knowing column of words you could read every monthâwhich sold more books and left more people seeking out Beck. Finally, she began hearing from her readers, who loved her insight so much that not only did they want to apply it to their lives, they wanted to do what she does.
Sheâd already been teaching small groups her methods, workshop-style. But the demand was suddenly immense. Martha Beck coach training was born. In 2011, Martha Beck Inc. (MBI) grossed $2.1Â million, according to Beck. Revenue has risen 63Â percent since thenâmuch of the growth happening by 2013âat a company with exactly two full-time staff members (Beck makes three). Corporations frequently book her, too, for upwards of $35,000 a session. The attendees at Pismo Beach will bring to 4,121 the total number of people she and her team have trained to be coaches since 2008.
Coach training is an eight-month telecourse and Internet-based program. The cost is $7,770 for instruction led by Beck and master coaches, life coaches whoâve taken the certification course, completed 75 hours of paid coaching, and taken on extra training. Certification for a life coach costs $850 (and includes being listed on the Martha Beck website as a coach); the master coach certification costs an additional $8,500 and includes six months of instruction that culminate in a retreat at Beckâs home, the North Star Ranch, in Central California.
âHow did I come to believe this, and does it serve me to continue believing it?â
During training, Beck requires each aspiring life coach to collect fees for their time, even if itâs a small amountâsay $20 or $40 per hour. Once theyâre certified, theyâll make up to $200 an hour asking people if theyâre sure their suppositions are true, and pushing back gently and supportively against people who are sure theirs are.
Whatâs surprising is that the coach trainees arenât people who believe theyâre doing so well in life that they want to tell you how to live yours. Instead, they seem to be people who didnât know how to live and found a way to at least ascertain what they want out of life. This skill, this ascertainment, is what they want so badly to share. Theyâre among the humblest people Iâve ever met. Performing my own integrity check, I must say that Beck and her army initially had me thinking Iâd debunk a subculture thatâs trying to, at best, feel their way through life by the squishiest means, and, at worst, feel their way through peopleâs wallets. But once with Beck and her acolytes, I had the undeniable sense that, for all their peculiar ways of speaking, they were gaining an understanding of the human conditionâand accepting itâto an extent that few do.
The prospective life coaches in the audience know exactly what an integrity check means, and what an integrity cleanse is, too. Last August, Beck incorporated the integrity cleanse into her coaching curriculum. Sheâd been hanging out with her friend Byron Katie, another prominent figure in the self-improvement arts and sciences, and Katieâs husband, Stephen Mitchell, who noticed that Beck spoke about some of her business obligations with a palpable dread. She rolled her eyes and resented the constant attention and promotion that went along with being a best-selling author of four books and a novel, an in-demand speaker at such places as Gulfstream, General Electric, and the Chopra Center, and a sought-after personality in her industry. Mitchell, a scholar and a poet, had translated Beckâs favorite version of the Tao Te Ching, which she gives to every guest in her home and has given to me twice. Heâd said to Beck, âThen why are you doing these things?â And, Beck says, she looked hard at the two and their work and saw that âthey just live their truth so deeplyâso deeply.â She spent the day watching them run their businessâbooks and workshops based on Katieâs method, The Work. âAnd it was just like absolutely no variation from the deepest integrity,â she says. âLike every product had to feel like the truth. I canât even describe how honest these people are. And I, just, it was like somebody gave me a big drink of water in the desert.â
So Beck went on an integrity cleanse. She decided she wouldnât be dishonest with anyone about anything for any reason. When she feels her expression is becoming disingenuousâpolitely smiling when sheâs annoyed, patient when she just wants to get out of thereâshe reconsiders. Recently on a conference call with a few people ready to give her a pile of money, she realized sheâd had enough. âIâm going to get off this call now,â she interrupted, then asked her chief executive officer, Bridgette Boudreau, also on the call, if she would handle it. Boudreau said yes. Beck hung up, walked outside, and tilted her face toward the sun.
The integrity cleanse is now part of every life coachâs training. They learn to stop in the middle of an interaction if theyâre being more accommodating and less truthful than they should be, and say, âIntegrity check!â Then they check their own internal truth meters. In the world according to Beck, we all possess one, and it never breaks. Whatâs difficult is finding it beneath the layers of politeness and trauma we endure in our lives.
Beckâs coaches are trained to do a lot of things, but they donât give advice, because they donât have access to your truth meterâonly you do. The job of a coach, Beck says, isnât to tell you how to live your life. Itâs to keep digging until the coach understands what the client really wants from her life, her romantic partnership, her friendship, her career; itâs the job of the coach to âhelp enhance the quality of life and help find what is causing the suffering.â
The Meet and Greet in March was the second of Beckâs gatherings Iâve attended. In 2013, I went to her Coaches Summit in Phoenix. There I found an enthusiastic, ebullient audience of (mostly) womenâmedical doctors and English lit professors and psychotherapists and investment bankers, all of whom (really, each one I spoke with) had one day realized there was an ongoing misery in their lives despite their successes. They were trying to find what theyâd do best, or, as the title of Beckâs first best-seller had it, their ânorth star.â What they realized is that they wanted to do what Beck did.
âWhat could I possibly be doing to help these people? I mean, everything I was saying was so obviousâ
A licensed therapist told me she was looking to learn coaching so she could help her clients plan the future instead of staying mired in the past. A woman in turquoise capris, who had an MBA and had been an investment and money manager, said she was âstuck in a boxâ doing what she thought she was supposed to be doing. âI was an impostor,â she said. She started seeing a life coach who helped her realize that the mentoring part of her job, the part she loved, was what she should be doing full time. She quit her job and started training as a coach.
I met a grief counselor who wanted tools to help support those in mourning. Another woman, after a tough divorce, wanted to learn how to help people in transition. She told me that Beck had said that âwhatever your hell-and-back is, thatâs your gift.â
And then there were the people who help explain why life coaching has had such an uphill battle in terms of legitimacy:
âI didnât decide to do it,â said one. âIt decided to do me.â
âI had a knowing,â said another, who, when I asked what that meant, simply repeated herself.
âI was being drawn to my future self,â said a woman who previously had braided hair at Renaissance festivals until she felt the calling to train as a coach.
Another: âOne day I asked myself, âWho am I?â Then I said, âWho am I not?âââ
But three years later in Pismo Beach, Beckâs audience has changed. Mostly, I meet people who are mounting a proven and potentially lucrative career track.
The North Star Ranch sits at the end of a long, dusty road in San Luis Obispo about 15Â minutes after you lose your cellular service. Beck bought it three years ago and has since acquired horses that are of use in one kind of coaching she does. She doesnât subscribe to just one way to live oneâs life, or even one way of coaching. She believes you can use survival training, animal tracking, horse training, just plain talking, religion, atheism, academia, research, personality psychology, other gurus (like Katie)âall in the service of finding, yes, your truth.
Beck is an autodidact, and it seems as if thereâs no part of culture or history or academia that she doesnât know a lot about. A partial list of references she makes during a two-hour interview at the ranch includes: The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, Pablo Picasso, Alexander McCall Smith (author of The No. 1 Ladiesâ Detective Agency series), the reality show Naked and Afraid, Tarahumara Indians, the movie Her, Alan Watts, Eckhart Tolle, Christian mystics, Jewish mystics, and fractals.
âWeâre in the afterlife. This is the afterlife of my 20-year-old self, and your 20-year-old self. We are living after that life, and that person is gone.â
âEnlightenment is this return to childhood through the heroic saga of the personality, like fighting itself. The ego bloating up and getting punctured. To return after that is an innocence that is also wise, and I think thatâs what weâre all trying to get to, but itâs interesting to strip away the layers of artifice.â
She lives on the ranch with her romantic partner, Karen; her middle child, Adam; two women who teach life coaching through horse interaction; and a man they jokingly call a farmhand who also coachesâhis specialty being helping gay men heal from trauma and shame.
She once had a more conventional family. She was the second-youngest of eight children in a prominent Mormon family in Provo, Utah. While at Harvard studying East Asian studies and sociology, she married another Mormon, John Beck. She found out during her second pregnancy that her baby had Down syndrome. To the surprise of her colleagues at Harvard, where she had finished her studies and was doing research, she didnât end the pregnancy. She and John moved back to Utah, but decided to break from the church during a period of suppression, when many people were being excommunicated. The Becks ultimately divorced. They both were gayâheâd known he was for a while, and eventually she realized she was, too. They continued to live together and co-parented while raising their three children. Eventually they moved south, where they both taught at Arizona State University.
Beck designed and taught a career development class at the business school, where she learned that her matter-of-fact approach to finding the life you want wasnât just appealing to her students, but also was considered essential. Immediately, students began flooding her office hours. They asked if they could book an hour with her. She charged $50, and with that, her life coaching business was born. âI could barely force myself to put it in the bank,â she says. âI just felt like it was highway robbery. What could I possibly be doing to help these people? I mean, everything I was saying was so obvious. If it makes you feel good, do more of it. And if it makes you feel horrible, maybe you should back off a little. And that was really all I said. And they kept paying me.â
âIt works every time. I donât know whyâ
In 1999 she published a book called Expecting Adam about her pregnancy with her middle child. She then wrote Finding Your Own North Star, the first of several books about stripping away the conditions youâve invented so you can figure out what to do with your life. The advice in it seemed obvious to her. Not so to her editor and publisher. It became a best-seller. She eventually wrote a book about her life in the Mormon community in which she described the sexual abuse sheâd endured as a child. She left the church and is no longer in touch with what she calls her âfamily of origin.â She calls herself and her fellow coaches âwayfinders.â She believes her abuse and her suffering were a felix culpaâit either made her into a wayfinder or identified her as one.
âI believe, and please, I would say this very, very gently to anyone whoâs reading this, this is on the far side of a lot of healing, I was lucky enough to be abused,â she says. âI was very fortunate to be born with a high level of sensitivity, I think as most people are, and then to encounter suffering in a form that was very, very challenging and almost completely destructive, and then to find my way back to peace and happiness and everything.â
She wouldnât trade what she has now for a ânormalâ life. âItâs what Ernest Hemingway said, life breaks us all. We can hope to be strong in the broken places,â she says.
At Arizona State, the administration didnât seem pleased with her popularity, so Beck left the school and went out on her own, increasingly emphasizing not how students could better proceed in their own careers, but how to do what she does. With that, she created a course for her first coach training, and although it would be three years before MBI was an official company, her business, as she knows it now, was born.
No small part of MBIâs success is, naturally, Beck herself and how her touch is insistent but never tough. âWe get a lot of letters saying, âI read this column, it changed my life,âââ Amy Maclin, her editor at O, says. âSometimes sheâll have exercises that force you to get down to it. If you do the work, it changes you. Itâs not just pablum. Thereâs nothing shallow or surface about it. She challenges people.â
Beck believes that people who rise to the top of pyramid-structured businesses are narcissists. Everyone on âthe team,â which is what she calls the two full-time employees and six part-timers at MBI, is in charge of what theyâre in charge ofâcoach training, CEO, marketing, social media, though nobody has such clearly defined responsibilities as to interrupt their collaborative methods, which are their pride. âItâs like itâs so sort of incestuous at this point. Itâs like who knows whoâs touching what,â says Jessica Steward, who largely oversees marketing and is a master coach who helps train coaches.
The team meets via Skype weekly when one or more is traveling. When meetings stop being productive or something appears to be off, they make the decision not to go back to work and work harder, but to shut down their computers and go rest. When business doesnât seem to be thriving, Beck instructs them all to go out and play at something unrelated to the work. They come back each time to find their concerns resolved. âIt works every time,â Beck says. âI donât know why, but it does, so I guess I donât really need to know.â
The morning of Beckâs keynote, there had been business-building workshops for the coaches-in-training. After lunch that day, there was supposed to have been a Q&A session with the master coaches, but then Beck came back onstage. No one was upset about the program change. As much as she tries to convey to her trainees that theyâre each maximally gifted, they still look to her as their superior, gazing at her with sparkling eyes. When she walks into the room, their already shiny murmur comes even more alive.
As she begins speaking again, Beck asks if there are any questions about what had happened before the break to the coach trainee, the one with trust issues. To recap, a woman had a question about a relationship, and Beck had coached her into understanding that she had a perfectly working truth meter herself. The only way she could really live her life was to understand that if she kept checking in with the truth meter, it wouldnât let her down. The case seemed closed, and the woman satisfied. Confused, I raise my hand and ask what the woman is supposed to do next. Martha thanks me politely for my help, then asks me to come onstage. She says I didnât quite get it. Sheâd like me to understand that coaching isnât about advice; itâs about tearing away fear and every other layer to figure out exactly what you wanted in the first place, which is always the right thing.
She asks whatâs going on with me, and I think for a minute about how that morning I had had a hard time getting dressed. Iâd gained some weight recently, or maybe not as recently as I like to think, and had packed the wrong jeans. In general, if I were honest, this was an ongoing situation, turned more frustrating by my many attempts at weight loss. I tell her I canât figure out why I canât lose weight, how it consumes me so much of the time, and how bad it makes me feel. She asks when the thought is worst. In the morning, I tell her, when I get dressed and look in the mirror and try to proceed with the day like a regular person.
âWhat is the thought you have when youâre getting dressed?â she asks.
âI think when I get dressed that my body is disgusting,â I answer.
She asks what happens when I have that thought, how it makes me feel, and what I do next. I tell her that it makes me tired and pessimistic, it makes me avoid eating breakfast because I canât deal with the matter that somehow got me here. She points out that the stress, plus the hunger, will probably send my cortisol soaring, and cortisol forces an animal hunger for the largest amount of high-calorie food there is. She asks me to imagine the opposite of the troubling thought that my body is disgusting.
âMy body is functional,â I try.
She asks the room if they think my body is functional, or if I am, in fact, beautiful.
âWhoever thinks Taffy is beautiful, raise your hand.â Everybody does. She tells me to look around the room. She says to look everyone in the eye and look at the whites of their eyes. If theyâre shaking, Iâll know theyâre lying. Look how the whites of their eyes arenât shaking.
Itâs in this moment that Iâm supposed to have a revelation about my body (and maybe I do) that I really come to understand why so many people respond to Beck and want to have what she has. By the time we hit the year 2016, weâve been inundated with so many people professing so many aphorisms and rules parading as truth that our clichés have clichés. A life coach is really just a coal miner used for digging through the platitudes and finding out whatâs true for the individual. The truth of a personâs life isnât only about the will toward integrity; itâs about discovering what you want under the layers of what youâve been told you should want all these years.
Now that Iâd been seen by all these people who were all also on integrity cleanses, Beck asks me again what the opposite of me saying my body is disgusting is. Finally, I say what I know she wants to hear.
âMy body is beautiful,â I say. Everyone claps, and I cry.
I get down off the stage while people look at me solemnly, wishing only for my peace and happiness. Sitting down, I wonder what has just happened. Have I been manipulated? Have I been wrong to lose my cynicism and skepticism even for that one minute?
In retrospect, I think my body being functional was the opposite of it being disgustingâthat I was at the beginning of learning to be OK with it on a functional level. But functional isnât the word that will make you feel like youâve gotten your moneyâs worth from a life coach. In therapy, coming out with such a verdict can be a good goal. For coaching, the answer and the accompanying feeling have to be magicalâthey have to elevate you enough to remain with you after youâve left the session.
So what was my integrity check of that moment? Iâll tell you that in that moment, my internal truth-o-meter was flooded with love and well-being and hope for all the ways I still havenât quite arrived at the person I want to be. And though Iâm not wrong to be cynicalâcynicism is the integrity check of my profession, after allâI realized Beckâs essential lesson: What exactly is the harm of believing the thing that makes you feel good rather than bad? And Iâll tell you what happens next, which is this: I get off the stage, and, one by one, the trainees line up, a line that snakes among the round tables and almost out the door. And, one by one, almost all 80 of them hug me and tell me Iâm beautiful, just like that.
<bot>: Words of wisdom from the head of a multimillion-dollar empire.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016051819id_/http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-martha-beck-life-coach/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Hardline president Erdogan stepped up his campaign of blackmailing Europe yesterday as he slammed the EU for stalling over discussions allowing country to move towards joining the bloc
TURKEY’S hardline president stepped up his blackmailing of Europe yesterday as he slammed the EU for stalling over talks to let the country join the bloc.
President Erdogan accused the EU of being against the “Muslim-majority country” and threatened to hold a British-style referendum to see whether Turks want to continue trying to join the EU or give up altogether.
The threat comes with the EU desperate to keep Turkey on side to solve the migrant crisis.
Lashing out at Brussels in a ranty speech, President Erdogan said: “We can stand up and ask the people just like the British are doing.
“We would ask ‘Should we continue the negotiations with the European Union or should we end them? If the people say ‘continue’ then we would carry on.”
Ankara and Brussels first signed an agreement stating Turkey would become a member back in 1963.
Turkey officially applied in 1987 and accession talks began in 2005 but its bid has been held up by an array of problems including major concerns about its human rights record.
Brussels agreed to speed up membership talks as part of a deal to tackle the migrant crisis and a new chapter will be opened next week.
That sparked accusations from Brexit campaigners that David Cameron had “lied to the British people” after the PM insisted Turkey was not on course to join – in a bid to defuse worries its 75 million population will pile new immigration pressure on Britain.
President Erdogan used his speech to accuse Europe of wanting to oust him, and said the EU was welching on a deal for visa-free travel in exchange for help stopping the flow of migrants.
He said: “You are not keeping your promise. This is your ugly face. When Erdogan exposes your ugly face you go crazy,” he said.
“And that is why you are making efforts on ‘how do we get rid of Erdogan’.”
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu insisted the referendum comments were “not a blackmail or a threat”.
He said: “We are also under great pressure from our people who ask us what we are doing in a place where there is so much anti-Turkish sentiment.”
<bot>: TURKEY’S hardline president stepped up his blackmailing of Europe yesterday as he slammed the EU for stalling over talks to let the country join the bloc. President Erdogan accused the EU of being …
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016062419id_/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1333814/turkeys-anger-as-eu-talks-delayed/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Trying to lie still in a Malaysian jungle, while being bitten - more like consumed - by a swarm of angry fire ants had me questioning whether the story we were pursuing was worth it.But the figure of $26bn kept popping into my head. That is the estimate by one wildlife protection group as to how lucrative and expansive the yearly illegal trade in animal trafficking has become. Things have gotten so out of hand that scientists predict more than 40 percent of South East Asia's animals could be wiped out in this century. And so there we were: A cameraperson and myself, hunkered down in the back hills of Penang, Malaysia, trying to avoid a sentry and a barking guard dog, which looked as if it would be tearing into the jungle and into us at any moment. We had been carefully making our way around a property linked to Anson Wong, one of the world's most notorious wildlife traffickers.In 2010, when authorities burst into this place, they found an incredible array of animals, including Bengal tigers. On the trailThe raid followed the arrest of Wong, also known as "The Lizard King", who had been caught, just days earlier, at the airport in Malaysia trying to smuggle boa constrictors into Indonesia. While it was his second conviction, he served just 17 months of a five-year sentence.Released in February 2012, sources close to the Lizard King told us that, within days, he was back plying his trade. That information is what led us to this property, where we were trying to get a peek of what, if anything was being kept there.In fact, our arrival in Penang was the tail-end of a year-long investigation. With the help of several informants, we had tracked the Lizard King’s network of "agents" to source countries including Madagascar, where endangered Ploughshare Tortoises could be found and sold off for $25,000.The Ploughshare is reported to be the prized animal of choice for Wong, because of its value and resilience in surviving transport.From there, we followed the often-used smuggling routes into South East Asian countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, where illegally trafficked wildlife is often housed, and then sold off to buyers around the world.For most of our investigation, The Lizard King eluded us. But our decision to check out his rural Penang property proved fruitful."Can you see what’s inside those pens?" whispered our cameraperson.BingoAfter what seemed like an eternity, the guard and attack dog, having not seen or heard any more movements, had seemingly lost interest and moved on.It allowed us to change our vantage point, and it was from this new position that we spied what looked like new enclosures.
"I think there's something big inside," he said.Slowly we snuck closer. And then we noticed movement. There were three large cats inside - and not of the household variety. From our pictures, wildlife experts would later determine they were Serval cats from North Africa.A visit to another stash-house in Penang, once again linked to Anson Wong, turned up Albino pythons, lizards and a range of other snakes, including vipers. All, according to an employee there, were being prepared "for sale and shipment elsewhere".The one question we kept asking ourselves is how was this possible? Following his 2010 conviction, the Malaysian government's wildlife department, Perhilitan, had publicly announced that Wong and his family were banned from holding any business licences or permits to trade in wildlife.
Government linkThe minister in charge of the department had confirmed to us in an interview that that ban should stand to this day.
Yet, when we searched a slew of public records, we found Wong and his wife still running several companies specialising in the export of animals - all of which had been signed off by authorities.N Surendran, a lawyer and opposition minister of the Malaysian parliament, has for years called on Perhilitan to be investigated for corruption. When we presented our evidence to him, he believed that Wong could not have operated alone without the "complicit aid of authorities".It would be far from surprising if that was true. To infiltrate the black-market underworld of wildlife trafficking, we had posed as dealers. Time and again, smugglers and "distributors" – some who had worked closely with Wong for more than 30 years – would tell us that customs and wildlife officials were regularly "bought off".They also told us that, at times, authorities in certain countries would get too "greedy", and go "rogue", where they would start seizing shipments they knew were coming through a port or airport, and sell off the animals themselves.
After it having happened several times in one location, dealers would be forced to switch their routes, and try to find more "reliable officials".Utter failureIt speaks poorly of the worldwide effort to tackle wildlife crime. This year marked the 40th year of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) - a pledge made by 179 countries to bring an end to animal smuggling and save the earth's most precious species.
Yet the current plight of rhinos and elephants in Africa, and the evidence we uncovered in our investigation show those efforts have proven far from effective – you could go so far as to call it an utter failure.This year, the UN listed wildlife smuggling as a "serious crime", on par with the trafficking of drugs and people. It is an attempt to empower nations, and enforcement agencies and convince them to get tougher.But is there a will?When asked how quickly the world could put an end to wildlife crime, one smuggler said to us:
"It would take just one day. All you have to do is get rid of officials on-the-take, and then it becomes impossible for us to move our supplies around," he said. "But then again, that'll never happen."Our documentary, we hope, underlies how desperate the situation is for many of the world's most iconic species, along with the challenges involved in tackling what is a reprehensible crime. At the end, we did manage to track down the Lizard King, to ask him directly whether he remains at the helm of his global wildlife-trafficking empire. His answer spoke volumes.
Follow Steve Chao on Twitter: @SteveChaoSC
<bot>: Join the hunt for a wildlife trafficker who has successfully eluded authorities time and again.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013112319id_/http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/asia/tracking-lizard-king
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Donald Trump released his latest attack ad on Instagram, and the material gives just a taste of what the presidential campaign could look like if the billionaire faces off against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the general election. And it isn’t pretty.
The short video is a mash-up of clips featuring a laughing Russian President Vladimir Putin, ISIS pointing a gun, and a Hillary Clinton barking like a dog—a moment taken out of context from a February stump speech. It’s overlaid with text that starts out “When it comes to facing our toughest opponents…” and goes into snapshots of Putin body slamming an opponent in a white karate uniform and an image of an Arabic-speaking terrorist pointing a gun at the screen.
That all leads into the implication that Clinton is a “punchline” to the U.S.’ most dangerous opponents as it cuts to a multi-second clip of her barking like a dog, a move that was initially meant to shame Republicans in one of her campaign speeches.
“We don’t need to be a punchline!” the ad concludes.
The Instagram ad posted to Trump’s account Wednesday, a day after he swept even more delegates during the Republican presidential primaries on Tuesday, making it seem ever more likely that he could be headed to the general-election show down against Clinton after her strong performance Tuesday. Clinton nabbed victories in four of the five states that cast ballots in the third Super Tuesday primaries and a virtual tie in Missouri against Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
<bot>: It features a clip of Hillary Clinton barking like a dog.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160419221203id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/03/16/donald-trump-instagram-ad/?
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: In general I’m not big on worrying about how we’re setting ourselves up for the next crisis; after all, we’re nowhere near done with the current crisis. Yet it is worth noting that current trends in our policy and political discourse, in addition to blocking efforts to promote recovery, is also setting the stage for a much worse crisis further down the line.
Consider a question some of us ponder now and then: this was bad, but it wasn’t a full replay of the Great Depression. Why?
I think we know the answer:
1. Central banks intervened massively to provide liquidity, preventing a replay of the 1931 global banking crisis. They were able to do this because, as an interesting paper I missed (pdf) points out, they weren’t constrained by the gold standard.
2. Although there wasn’t much effective discretionary stimulus, automatic stabilizers that didn’t exist in 1931 did a lot to cushion the economy.
On the latter point, let me repost a figure I’ve used before:
So it wasn’t just the fact that taxes fell while spending didn’t; the safety net programs also kicked in (and were about the only thing that did).
So consider, now, what’s going on politically. Gold bugs have taken over the GOP; even if they can’t reimpose the gold standard, they will make it very hard for future Bernankes to do even as much as the current one did to fight the crisis. And there’s a big push on not just to downsize government, but to convert federal programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance into block grants,more or less ensuring that they will be cut rather than expanding in a slump.
In short, what we now have is a political drive that will, in effect, undo all those institutional changes that prevented the Great Recession into turning into another Great Depression.
<bot>: Making the world safe for another Depression.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011070619id_/http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/the-armageddon-caucus/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Pedro Armestre/Agence France-Presse â Getty Images
Fans in Madrid cheered as Spain scored its second goal against Italy in the Euro 2012 soccer final on Sunday. Spain won, 4-0.
The street partying in Madrid was repeated across Spain, with flag-waving and chanting fans filling city squares while caravans of honking car drivers set off even before Spain had completed its 4-0 victory over Italy in the final, held in Kiev, Ukraine.
The success of La Roja, or the Red, as Spain’s team is known, has — at least momentarily — helped overshadow the country’s deepening recession and banking crisis, which forced the Spanish government to request a European bailout of up to 100 billion euros, or about $125 billion, to shore up its troubled banks. With almost a quarter of Spain’s work force unemployed, many people here have appeared to be drowning their economic sorrows in La Roja’s victories.
“This team cannot make the crisis go away, but it’s managed to provide a level of joy and inspiration that goes well beyond what sports can produce in normal times,” said Javier Morales, a doctor, who, like many others, was wearing the team’s red shirt on Sunday night. “All the talk at the hospital has recently been about health care cuts, so I’m really looking forward to having something much happier to discuss in coming days.”
Miguel Blanco, an 18-year-old student draped in a national flag, said, “The crisis has made Spain look like a hopeless country, when, in fact, we’re showing tonight that we’re the best in Europe.”
Politicians have also jumped on the soccer bandwagon, led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was in the stadium in Kiev on Sunday, alongside Prince Felipe of Asturias, heir to the Spanish throne, and Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister.
Mr. Rajoy attended Spain’s opening match of the tournament three weeks ago in Poland — a day after requesting the European bailout — justifying his trip by declaring the banking crisis “resolved.”
Monday is not an official holiday in Spain, but it almost certainly will feel like one, given Sunday’s late-night partying and the fact that more official celebrations are scheduled to take place Monday, when a huge crowd is expected to gather to welcome their returning soccer heroes.
But many people in Madrid seemed unhappy about allowing Mr. Rajoy to bask in La Roja’s accomplishment. “Rajoy knows how to enjoy soccer, but not how to resolve a crisis,” said David Hernández Herrero, a 42-year-old health care worker. “Everybody knows that we’re going to come back to earth with a thump because Rajoy has a lot more cuts and hardship in store for us.”
La Roja’s victory amounted to an unprecedented third consecutive soccer title, after the European championship in Vienna in 2008 and the World Cup in Johannesburg in 2010. But, even in a soccer-mad country like Spain now used to seeing its national team win, La Roja’s latest glory run generated unparalleled passion. More than 18 million television viewers followed the penalty shootout last Wednesday against Portugal, setting a new TV audience record for any show, well ahead of the 14.5 million who watched two years ago when Spain won its first World Cup, in overtime against the Netherlands.
In Rome, Italians — and foreigners — who had gathered in the Campo de’ Fiori to watch the game straggled desolately out of bars and restaurants afterward, mostly resigned to Spain’s superior game. “We’re sad but not upset, because Italy played a great European championship and no one expected they’d get so far, and play with so much heart,” said Luca Reho, the owner of the Hostaria Romanesca restaurant on the square. Noting that Italy’s premier soccer league was tainted this year by a match-fixing scandal that led to the arrest of several players, Mr. Reho said that the Italian national team gave a message of hope. “They made us proud,” he said.
“I thought that after we beat Germany we would go the distance, but Spain deserved to win,” said David Piperno, a tobacco shop owner from Rome who painted an Italian flag in a mohawk motif on his bald head in honor of Italian striker Mario Balotelli. “This time it went like this, but we’ll get them at the World Cup.”
Speaking on state broadcaster RAI after the game, Prime Minister Monti said that he had told the players after the game: “Guys, you made us dream; tonight we woke up.” All Italians, he said, were grateful to the team, who did “something extraordinary.”
Seeming to address the larger problems facing the country, which — like Spain — has been under pressure in the global financial markets in recent weeks, Mr. Monti said that Italians were “able to overcome moments of difficulty, when they work together.”
Still, even some disappointed Italian residents of Madrid were willing to recognize the psychological importance of such a victory for recession-suffering Spaniards. “I feel sad, but it’s true that soccer has turned into the opium of the people here,” said Alessia Dell’Acqua, an Italian interior designer who has worked in Madrid for the last eight years. “It’s almost the only source of satisfaction that Spaniards have left, and I can’t imagine what the atmosphere would have been like at work this coming week if La Roja had lost.”
Raphael Minder reported from Madrid, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.
<bot>: The success of La Roja, or the Red, as Spainâs team is known, has â at least momentarily â helped overshadow the countryâs deepening recession and banking crisis.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012070219id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/world/europe/a-salve-to-national-pride-as-spain-wins-euro-title.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: (BISMARCK, N.D.) — The sprawling encampment that’s a living protest against the four-state Dakota Access pipeline has most everything it needs to be self-sustaining — food, firewood, fresh water and shelter. Everything, that is, except permission to be on the federal land in North Dakota.
Federal officials say they won’t evict the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires camp, due to free speech reasons, even though it’s on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land near the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers that many Native Americans believe is still rightfully owned by the Standing Rock Sioux under a nearly 150-year-old treaty.
“We’re not leaving until we defeat this big black snake,” camp spokesman Cody Hall said of the pipeline.
But residents in the area have expressed feeling unsafe and frustrated with how the protest has swelled to scores of self-described “water protectors” who have joined the tribe’s fight, and Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer — North Dakota’s lone voice in the House — says the camp is illegal. He blames the agency for looking the other way.
“If that camp was full of people advocating for fossil fuels, they would have been removed by now,” Cramer said. “There is some discretionary enforcement going on.”
The camp is the overflow from smaller private and permitted protest sites nearby and began growing in August. The gathering has been called the largest gathering of Native American tribes in a century, all there to protest Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners’ $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which tribal officials believe threatens sacred sites and a river that’s a source of water for millions.
Corps spokeswoman Eileen Williamson said the agency is “encouraging” people to relocate to areas where there is a permit, such as a nearby smaller camp where demonstrators have been allowed to legally protest on federal lands managed by the agency.
“We don’t have the physical ability to go out and evict people — it gives the appearance of not protecting free speech,” she said. “Our hands are really tied.”
Cramer believes the “bigger problem” of the camp is “the illegal activity that may be orchestrated from there” — meaning a base to launch interference with pipeline construction miles away. About 95 people have been arrested in several pipeline protests — some as far as 70 miles away from the camp — since early August, but none at the camp itself. Protesters deny state officials’ charge, with Hall saying the camp promotes “peaceful” protest.
“People don’t leave from the camp with malicious intent to do harm,” Hall said. “There are always going to be a few bad eggs in any group you can’t the message to.”
Ranchers and farmers in the area are wary of the growing number of protesters and are fearful of damage to their fields and pastures, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said.
“We’ve had several reports of people down there getting stopped on the road and being intimidated to hay that has been stolen to grazing animals without permission,” he said.
Matthew Rebenitsch, who has a ranch just a few miles from the encampment, said he and his neighbors worry about talking publicly about the situation.
“To be honest, no one around here wants to say anything because we’re afraid they will come and threaten us,” he said. “I’ll say this, every rancher around here is packing and people are locking their doors — and no one has ever locked a door in their entire life.”
Republican state Rep. James Schmidt, who also farms and ranches nearby, said he and his neighbors are more cautious.
“I’m starting to see a lot more guns in the back of pickup trucks. All it is going to take is one incident and emotions are going to overtake the situation,” he said.
Complicating the issue is a grazing lease on that land. The renter, David Meyer, is responsible for the condition of the land. He could enforce his lease and have people removed, Williamson said, but hasn’t requested any intervention. Meyer recently sold part of his historic Cannonball Ranch to Energy Transfer Partners for an undisclosed price; he hasn’t returned telephone calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.
The Standing Rock Sioux has challenged the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant permits for the pipeline that is intended to carry North Dakota oil to Illinois. Due to a federal court decision, construction has stopped within 20 miles on either side of Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir that is near the encampment. The Departments of Justice, Army and Interior also has said it will “reconsider any of its previous decisions” on land that borders or is under the lake.
Hall, a member of South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, said the Sioux “never ceded” the land on which they’re camping. He said they are preparing to stay through the winter by stockpiling firewood, heating stoves and warmer clothes. But there’ll be no permanent structures built, Hall said.
“We will leave this camp as we found it,” he said.
<bot>: The gathering has been called the largest gathering of Native American tribes in a century
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016100219id_/http://time.com/4515746/pipeline-protest-camp-feds-wont-evict/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The tragic saga of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 has come to an end, but in the aftermath, new details have emerged that reveal more about how the company fumbled what turned into the biggest smartphone failure ever.
Not only was the internal team conflicted about how to handle the rapidly escalating Note7 crisis, but a key decision appears to have been responsible for Samsung's eventual decision to cancel the device's replacement program, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
In general, much of the information revealed covers a narrative familiar to those who followed the product disaster in real time, but this new report offers a new perspective from inside the secretive confines of Samsung's executive inner circle.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the report claims that, initially, there was internal debate at the company's South Korea headquarters on how to handle the reports of exploding Note7's, with some assuming the reports were no big deal, while others urged swift action.
One executive even told Samsung that the smartphone was 'becoming increasingly unsalable.'
Eventually, according to the report, Samsung's head of mobile, D.J. Koh, and other company insiders, including J.K. Shin and G.S. Choi, examined X-ray and CT scans of the phone, which appeared to show heat damage to the device's battery.
Afterward, Koh and Samsung executive Lee Jae-yong decided that Samsung SDI’s batteries were the source of the trouble and quickly announced its own Note7 recall, rather than wait for more conclusive proof of the cause of the explosions. That was later followed by a CPSC-backed recall and replacement program.
As we now know, those replacement Note7 devices did not solve the problem, as users with replacement smartphones began reporting explosions as well.
In the weeks that followed, pressure mounted and the report claims that telecoms executives, including a Verizon official, privately pleaded with Samsung to take the Note7 off the market. One executive even told Samsung that the smartphone was "becoming increasingly unsalable."
The final decision to end tech debacle came on Oct. 11, when the report claims that Lee called Koh and told him to take the smartphone off the market.
Now that the Note7 is officially dead, Samsung is already hard at work on its next smartphone, a device some expect to be called the Galaxy S8, likely to be released in the first part of 2017.
But after such a historic product flameout, Samsung will have to do a lot more than introduce an array of cool new features to win consumer trust back.
<bot>: A damning, blow by blow account of what really happened inside Samsung during its biggest product crisis ever.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016102419id_/http://mashable.com/2016/10/23/samsung-note-7-inside-story/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Cherie DeCastro, the last surviving member of the DeCastro Sisters, whose sultry ballad “Teach Me Tonight” sold millions of copies in 1954, died on March 14 in Las Vegas. She was 87.
The DeCastro Sisters in 1954. Cherie DeCastro, far right, the last surviving member, died on March 14.
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The cause was pneumonia, said Alan Eichler, her manager.
Cherie (pronounced share-EE) DeCastro and her two sisters, Babette and Peggy, grew up in Cuba and gave a Latin spin to the close-harmony style of the Andrews Sisters. After emigrating to Miami in the early 1940s, they developed a flashy stage act that combined singing, dancing and comedy.
Soon they were performing at top Manhattan nightclubs like the Versailles and La Conga. A booking at the Copacabana led to their appearance with Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda in the big finale number of the 1947 film “Copacabana.”
The sisters made their first recordings on the Tico label with Tito Puente, who had brought them to the Palladium in Manhattan. After Americanizing their sound and signing with Abbott, a country-and-western label, they released “Teach Me Tonight,” a slow, sexy ballad, with lyrics by Sammy Cahn and music by Gene de Paul, backed by a big band.
The record, a throwaway B side to the up-tempo “It’s Love,” caught on with listeners, who thrilled to its risqué lyrics:
Starting with the A B C of it,
Right down to the X Y Z of it,
Help me solve the mys-ter-ee of it,
The song reached No. 2, stayed on the Billboard charts for 20 weeks and inspired cover versions by Jo Stafford and Dinah Washington.
Cherie Dawn DeCastro was born on Sept. 1, 1922, in the Dakota Apartments in Manhattan. Her father, Juan Fernandez DeCastro, was a Cuban aristocrat who owned a large sugar plantation in the Dominican Republic and radio stations in Cuba.
While visiting New York he fell for Babette Buchanan, a showgirl with the Ziegfeld Follies. After buying her contract from Florenz Ziegfeld, he married her and took her to Havana, where he built the mansion (now the Chinese Embassy) where Cherie and her sisters grew up.
After the sisters came to the United States, an alert talent agent who heard them at the Clover Club in Miami brought them to New York, where they appeared with Perry Como at the Versailles and at the Copacabana on a bill with the Will Mastin Trio, which included a young Sammy Davis Jr.
The DeCastro Sisters soon began performing at big theaters around the country and in films. They provided the bird voices for “Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah” in Walt Disney’s “Song of the South” (1946) and sang in “Over the Santa Fe Trail” (1947) and “Stairway for a Star” (1947).
On Jan. 22, 1947, after being introduced by Bob Hope, they performed “Babalu” in a garage on the Paramount Studios lot for the premiere broadcast of KTLA in Los Angeles, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi.
The DeCastro Sisters recorded several hits with Abbott, though none on the scale of “Teach Me Tonight.” “Boom Boom Boomerang,” a snappy comic love lament, reached No. 17. Part of its appeal was a bouncing bass vocal response line by Thurl Ravenscroft, later the voice of Tony the Tiger in hundreds of television commercials.
Their two years with Abbott yielded several other records that made the lower rungs of the Top 100, including “Too Late Now,” “Cowboys Don’t Cry,” “Snowbound for Christmas” and “With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming.”
The group later recorded for RCA, ABC-Paramount and Capitol.
Cherie was the only singer who performed with the group throughout its history. Babette, who died in 1992, and Peggy, who died in 2004, left from time to time, and Olgita, a cousin, stepped in as a substitute beginning in the late 1950s. She died in 2000.
Cherie DeCastro’s two marriages, one to the cowboy actor Monte Hale, ended in divorce. She is survived by her longtime partner, Trevor Young.
The sisters’ stage act remained popular, especially in Las Vegas. They performed with Noël Coward when he made his debut at the Desert Inn in 1954 and with George Burns and Bobby Darin when they first appeared in Las Vegas. They also sang in the film shorts “Singin’ and Swingin’ ” (1950) with Maynard Ferguson and “Riot in Rhythm” (1957) with Harry James.
Cherie continued to perform even after the death of her sisters. Unexpected validation came in 2000 when Tony Soprano’s mother on the HBO series “The Sopranos,” played by Nancy Marchand, named the DeCastro Sisters as one of her favorite groups.
<bot>: Ms. DeCastro was the last surviving member of the DeCastro Sisters, whose sultry ballad “Teach Me Tonight” was a hit in 1954.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010032419id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/arts/music/25decastro.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Users of Apple's operating system could already access Gmail through a mobile site or set it up as their default e-mail account. But the new app promised a smoother experience with a host of new features. The tech blogosphere was delighted.
"Go get the iPhone app for Gmail!" popular blogger Robert Scoble wrote on his Google+ page.
Then, a few minutes passed.
"UPDATE: DO NOT. The Gmail app is really a piece of crud," he wrote. "Not worth loading. Very disappointed."
Google had obviously already noticed what Scoble did. Shortly after it was unveiled, the app was pulled from the Apple Store.
"The iOS app we launched today contained a bug with notifications," Google posted on its Gmail Twitter account. "We have pulled the app to fix the problem. Sorry we messed up."
Later, a fuller explanation was added to the original blog post.
"Earlier today we launched a new Gmail app for iOS," Google posted. "Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app. We've removed the app while we correct the problem, and we're working to bring you a new version soon. Everyone who's already installed the app can continue to use it."
The app ... at least the fully working version of it ... will send push notifications and sound cues when new messages are received, search your inbox for an e-mail, autocomplete e-mail addresses and upload photos to messages.
It will also feature the same Priority Inbox that Gmail's Web version has and add a new mobile interface that will allow users to navigate their inbox more quickly with touch controls.
There was no word from Google Wednesday afternoon as to when the fixed app might be back up.
<bot>: One of the most highly anticipated apps for Apple devices was made available on Wednesday. At least, until it wasn't.Google announced a Gmail app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that was
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011110619id_/http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/02/tech/mobile/gmail-app/index.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: A police report obtained by a US publication has resurfaced child molestation claims against the late singer Michael Jackson.
Material later used in a trial against the singer was reportedly found at Jackson’s Neverland ranch in 2003, when it was raided by police after accusations of child molestation were made against the Thriller singer, by 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo.
A team of 70 officers raided the California ranch.
"In a book Jackson called 'Room to Play', there is a deeply disturbing photo of a [murdered child beauty queen] JonBenet Ramsey look-alike with a noose around her neck," a private investigator told Radar Online, which claims to have obtained the "never-before-seen police reports" of the raid.
Michael Jackson in 1992. (Getty)
Former Santa Barbara Senior Assistant District Attorney Ron Zonen, who unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute Jackson, claimed the material was used to "de-sensitise children".
"Michael admitted taking one child after another into bed with him for long periods of time," he said.
"We identified five different boys, who all made allegations of sexual abuse. There’s not much question in my mind that Michael was guilty of child molestation."
Jackson was acquitted in June 2005 of the charges, four years before he died of a cardiac arrest.
Jackson's arrest documents in 2003. (Getty)
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement the reports and photographs "appear to be copies that were authored and taken by Sheriff’s Office personnel".
"(The documents are) interspersed with content that appears to be obtained off the Internet or through unknown sources. The Sheriff’s Office did not release any of the documents and/or photographs to the media," it said.
"The Sheriff’s Office released all of its reports and the photographs as part of the required discovery process to the prosecution and the defense."
Jackson on stage in 1986. (Getty)
The Jackson estate is yet to comment.
<bot>: Michael Jackson had a "sickening" stockpile of pornography showing naked boys, animal sacrifice and child torture, according to newly-surfaced police documents.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160623164108id_/http://www.9news.com.au/World/2016/06/22/08/56/Michael-Jackson-home-had-sickening-stash-of-child-porn-prosecutors
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: JERSEY CITY — Last December, in one of the final installments of “The Best Show on WFMU,” the free-form radio show he had hosted for 13 years, Tom Scharpling was in his usual irascible mood.
Speaking to the nationwide audience that identifies with his underdog spirit, he played the Velvet Underground’s kiss-off song, “One of These Days”; wondered aloud if Billy Joel would still be playing Madison Square Garden at the age of 99; and questioned whether Ornette Coleman was annoyed that the Grateful Dead considered him an influence.
Extending the analogy, Mr. Scharpling imagined himself as the underappreciated genius and a younger generation of broadcasters as clueless imitators.
“That’s how I feel half the time, doing this show,” he said wryly. “I listen to these garbage podcasts. If this is what I birthed, what hath I wrought?”
Almost a year later, Mr. Scharpling was crouched on the tile floor of a clean but barren apartment here, building Ikea furniture for the studio where he is reviving “The Best Show” as an Internet podcast. Mr. Scharpling, 45, a New Jersey native with a burly, John Belushi-esque build and the tousled hair of a Roman emperor, compared the experience of immersing himself in this project to diving into a pool without knowing what’s in it.
“Maybe it’s empty,” he said. “Maybe it’s filled with razor blades. Maybe it’s filled with water. My head is about to find out.”
Later this month he plans to resume broadcasting at thebestshow.net, having grown it into an on-air hangout for pop-cultural kibitzing, eccentric callers and comedians like Patton Oswalt, Julie Klausner and John Hodgman. Whether Mr. Scharpling, who has also worked as a music video director, a journalist and a writer-producer of the USA series “Monk,” can find online success with “The Best Show” will depend on how well his comically crabby persona stands out in a field already crowded with choices, where every stand-up, storyteller and improv comedian seems to have a podcast.
Either way, the real Mr. Scharpling is uncharacteristically sunny about the project.
“It’s my favorite thing to do,” he said. “It’s the one thing I’m actually good at, in a way. Everything else feels like a grind. This thing feels like flying.”
Mr. Scharpling was already a jack-of-all-trades — a fanzine editor, a sheet music store employee, an impresario of his own indie-rock label — when he arrived in the mid-1990s at WFMU, the independent Jersey City radio station known for its unpaid, volunteer D.J.s.
With Jon Wurster, a drummer for Superchunk and other rock bands, he began performing seemingly spontaneous (but in fact carefully scripted) comedy routines in which Mr. Wurster phoned in under various annoying guises.
Perhaps their most famous bit was their first, “Rock, Rot & Rule,” in which Mr. Wurster played the author of a book that, in frustratingly arbitrary manner, classified pop artists into those three categories. (The Beatles rock, but do not rule because “they wrote a lot of bad songs”; David Bowie rots because he went through “too many changes.”) Mr. Wurster said in a telephone interview that in spite of the “curmudgeon-osity” of Mr. Scharpling’s radio persona, he is “a super-caring guy” in real life.
“People are annoyed by random, inconsequential things, and they love to hear him comment on that,” Mr. Wurster said. “There’s no one who addresses those little aggravations as well and as comically as Tom does.”
In 2000, Mr. Scharpling created “The Best Show,” which he and Mr. Wurster populated with characters who live in the fictional New Jersey town of Newbridge.
With this format, Mr. Scharpling became one of the most popular personalities on WFMU’s roster.
The exact number of listeners for the show, either on the radio or the wfmu.org website, is difficult to measure. The longtime station manager, Ken Freedman, said that Mr. Scharpling was probably its biggest fund-raiser, who alone could generate $250,000 in contributions in two days during pledge drives. But Mr. Scharpling said he was worn out from expending energy on those drives and was frustrated that he could not make money by doing “The Best Show” for the station. Mr. Freedman said in a phone interview that Mr. Scharpling’s departure was inevitable.
“His show had become such a phenomenon, and it was interfering with his ability to do other work,” he said. “Meanwhile, he was watching other comedy podcasts get sponsors and turn into full-time jobs.”
Mr. Freedman said Mr. Scharpling “gave me a ton of notice, many months before he left, and I’m very happy for him.”
Mr. Scharpling now says his exit was intended only as a temporary hiatus to plan his next steps. During this time he worked on a “Best of the Best Show” boxed set, which will be released in March, and directed an infomercial parody for Adult Swim based on his Newbridge characters.
Most crucially, Mr. Scharpling said, he realized he had to make the show his priority.
“Rather than look at it like a calling card or a fun sideline thing, what if I do it like it’s the real thing?” he said.
The show’s new incarnation will continue to involve Mr. Wurster, and Mr. Scharpling has received logistical support from Brendan McDonald, a producer who helped turned the comedian Marc Maron’s podcast into an Internet phenomenon.
Mr. McDonald said he has been advising Mr. Scharpling on studio equipment (still neatly contained in boxes on a mid-November visit) and a business model that relies on advertising rather than listener subscriptions.
What will help Mr. Scharpling gain traction online, Mr. McDonald said, is not only his social media presence or his Twitter following, but also the many years of practice he has put into his program.
“Tom is not a new voice who needs to come in and establish himself,” he said. “He has a command of the medium and a dexterity with what you can do with it, to create this theater of the mind.”
Matt Fraction, a comic-book writer and listener in Portland, Ore., said that Mr. Scharpling spoke to a specific kind of audience that would not be satisfied with other programs.
“You have a feeling, immediately, that you are in presence of someone who is going to get all your jokes and who is funnier than you,” Mr. Fraction said.
Describing the identification card he received from a WFMU pledge drive that recognizes him as an official “Friend of Tom,” Mr. Fraction said, “We carry these little pieces of paper with us so we can show each other when we meet out in the world. It’s that kind of level of fanatical devotion.”
For all the positive energy directed his way, Mr. Scharpling said the fundamental crankiness of “The Best Show” would not change and that he still reserved the right to hang up abruptly on callers who had lost his interest.
“It’s the thing everybody wants to do in real life,” he explained. “How many times do you wish you could just go to somebody and say: ‘You’re boring. I’m going to stop talking to you now.’ ”
<bot>: Tom Scharpling’s “The Best Show,” a longtime favorite on WFMU, will find a new life on the Internet.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014120219id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/arts/tom-scharpling-plans-podcast-of-the-best-show.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WASHINGTON — As a young law clerk working for Justice Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court in September 1987, Elena Kagan wrote an angry memorandum urging her boss to try to overturn a conservative appeals court ruling that had questioned the constitutionality of a rent-control ordinance.
“All in all, this opinion is outrageous,” wrote Ms. Kagan, who is now a Supreme Court nominee.
The appeals court judge who wrote it, she added, “has flouted the opinions of this court and has reached a result that is sweeping in its implications. Although the decision does not invalidate the ordinance on its merits, it is an authorization for broad, wholesale attacks on rent-control regulation.”
But the Supreme Court decided to let the lower-court ruling stand.
Now, in an era in which the government’s power to encroach on property rights has been a hot issue, Ms. Kagan could face sharp Republican questions at her confirmation hearing about her strong reaction to the rent-control ruling.
The three-page memorandum is one of hundreds Ms. Kagan wrote analyzing petitions to the Supreme Court during its 1987-88 term. Those documents, housed at the Library of Congress, constitute a rare paper trail that provides insight into her early legal policy views. Largely written with a liberal sensibility on a variety of matters from criminal rights to environmental regulations, the memorandums could provide ammunition to conservative critics of her nomination, while comforting liberal skeptics.
Still, it is not clear how much the memorandums reflect her thinking today. At her confirmation hearing to be solicitor general last year, Ms. Kagan sought to distance herself from them, saying that she no longer agreed with some and that her job as a clerk was to “channel” Justice Marshall’s views.
But she also acknowledged some personal responsibility for the views in the documents, testifying that “I don’t want to say that there is nothing of me in these memos,” and “I think that it’s actually fair when you look” at a particular memorandum “to think that I was stating an opinion.”
Most of the memorandums are terse. For example, she took just four sentences to describe a case in which a man had challenged the District of Columbia’s strict gun-control ordinance on the grounds that he had an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.
In 2008, the Supreme Court would vote 5 to 4 to strike down the ordinance on precisely those grounds. But in her August 1987 memorandum, she simply dismissed that individual-rights view of the Second Amendment: “I’m not sympathetic,” she wrote.
By contrast, the rent-control case memorandum was one of several dozen in which Ms. Kagan appeared to take a stronger personal interest — writing in more emotional terms or at significantly greater length.
Several such memorandums suggested a friendly attitude toward the view that the Constitution contains unwritten rights protecting personal liberty — the so-called substantive due process doctrine that formed the basis of several famous liberal rulings, like a 1973 decision striking down abortion bans. Many conservatives are skeptical about that doctrine, saying it allows judges to make up new rights.
A three-page memorandum from September 1987, for example, discussed a case in which welfare authorities had failed to protect a child from violent parental abuse. It raised the question of whether the government had an unwritten constitutional duty to help such children.
Ms. Kagan expressed “worry” that a majority on the court would use the case to reject a broad view of substantive due process under which the doctrine can not only be used to restrict official actions, but also to require the government to affirmatively do things.
In a November 1987 memorandum about a similar case involving a child who was abused in a foster home, Ms. Kagan wrote that “some members of this court will doubtless object” to an appeals court ruling that the authorities had violated the child’s constitutional rights, but she thought it was “correct.”
Another recurrent theme was a generally liberal approach to law-enforcement issues. In roughly a dozen memorandums involving the rights of prisoners or suspects, she adopted a strategic tone aimed at limiting opportunities for the increasingly conservative Rehnquist court to roll back liberal precedents.
Lisa Faye Petak and Bernie Becker contributed reporting.
<bot>: Elena Kagan wrote hundreds of memorandums analyzing petitions to the Supreme Court during its 1987-88 term.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010060519id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/us/politics/04kagan.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Politico’s Jake Sherman dives into the “chaos” of House Republicans today. Nothing really new, but some good descriptive detail. It’s summed up well by Kevin Drum:
Apparently there are now two groups of Republicans in the House. First, there’s a group of firebrand conservatives headed by Eric Cantor, which, as near as I can tell, is mostly dedicated to finding slightly more slippery language to sell its usual right-wing agenda of school vouchers, block granting Medicaid, increased tax credits, and gutting labor laws. Second, there’s a group of insane, frothing-at-the-mouth conservatives who think of Cantor as Nancy Pelosi’s lapdog and are basically uninterested in anything other than repealing Obamacare, slashing taxes even more, ending the welfare state, and making speeches about how Obama is destroying America. It’s quite a little group that John Boehner has up there.
And yet: Boehner has somehow managed to get through more than two years without a real meltdown. Oh, sure, House Republicans are desperately unpopular, but what do you expect when 1) they’re in Congress, and Congress is always unpopular, and 2) they are almost exclusively focused on satisfying their most extreme constituents in order to avoid getting the dreaded RINO label and then having to face an unpredictable primary.
In the 112th Congress, in 2011 and 2012, Boehner dealt with it by allowing lots of bills and amendments to come to the floor. Many of them were nutty, but given the large Republican majority it was possible to pass lots of them anyway. Unfortunately for him, that strategy doesn’t work any more in the current Congress, with its smaller GOP majority, and so Boehner is basically just giving up on normal legislation.
The real trick, however, is to get through “must pass” legislation without a self-destructive train wreck. It’s not easy at all, since for anything to be enacted into law it has to get Barack Obama’s signature, and for many — dozens, perhaps — of his Republican members that’s pretty much a deal breaker. And yet, so far at least, Boehner has survived numerous deadlines without a government shutdown, a government default (despite one close call) or any other full-on disaster that would really get the general public engaged and angry with Republicans.
One thing that does help Boehner is that no one wants the job under these conditions; a conservative coup led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor could probably have succeeded at several points over the last two years, but Cantor would then find himself in exactly the same place as Boehner — those must-pass bills, after all, still would need to pass, and they still would need majority support in the Democratic Senate and they would still need Barack Obama’s signature, which would still mean that most of his conference would oppose anything that could pass and blame the Speaker for supporting it.
Overall, however, Boehner has probably done about as well a job as anyone could given the circumstances. Unless, that is, there’s someone out there who could fix the broken Republican Party. But that’s probably beyond the ability of anyone, including any possible Speaker of the House.
<bot>: The more we know about House Republicans, the better the speaker looks
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013050119id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/05/01/the-more-we-know-about-house-republicans-the-better-john-boehner-looks/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Embattled U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm isn’t waiting for an indictment to declare his innocence.
The two-term Republican’s lawyer announced Friday that federal charges were coming against Grimm — and attacked prosecutors for unleashing “a politically driven vendetta” against his client.
A grand jury returned an indictment against Grimm, sources told the Daily News, and it will be unsealed on Monday when the congressman is arraigned following his expected surrender. The charges stem from Grimm’s 2010 campaign finances and financial irregularities in his co-ownership of a Manhattan restaurant, Healthalicious, the sources said.
While U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch’s office declined to say if there was an indictment, attorney William McGinley unloaded on her with a harsh preemptive attack. “After more than two years of investigation plagued by malicious leaks, violations of grand jury secrecy and strong-arm tactics, the U.S. Attorney’s office has disclosed its intent to file criminal charges,” said McGinley.
“When the dust settles, (Grimm) will be vindicated.”
The News previously reported the feds were probing whether Grimm violated federal campaign finance laws in collecting contributions for his first congressional campaign.
Meanwhile, the congressman’s ex-girlfriend, Diana Durand, was indicted Friday for funneling more than $10,000 through straw donors to two unspecified congressional candidates that same year. Her lawyer said Durand, 47, of Houston, was guilty of nothing and had not flipped against Grimm — who was presumably one of the two.
Grimm’s investment in an Upper East Side health food restaurant was also under investigation, with his business partner, Ofer Biton, widely believed to be cooperating with prosecutors. Biton, whose lawyer declined to comment Friday, was reportedly involved in the campaign finance shenanigans as well.
Grimm is up for reelection this November, and his lawyer declared the Staten Island incumbent had no intention of resigning — indictment or not. The criminal charges raised the possibility that Democratic challenger Dominic Recchia could win the only GOP congressional seat in New York City. “In light of today's news, it is important to let the federal authorities do their jobs and focus on this ongoing matter,” Recchia said.
Grimm, 44, is a former FBI agent and Marine Corps veteran who turned to politics after leaving law enforcement in 2006. He made unwanted headlines in January after threatening to break a NY1 reporter “in half” — and toss the journalist off a balcony.
Dan Friedman reported from Washington.
<bot>: The two-term Republican’s lawyer announced Friday that federal charges were coming against Grimm — and then attacked prosecutors for unleashing “a politically driven vendetta” against his client.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014042619id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/rep-michael-grimm-faces-federal-charges-lawyer-article-1.1769177
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: 10/01/2015 AT 08:15 PM EDT
celebrated a decade as a member of the Grand Ole Opry this week, bringing his steady sidekick – pup Jake – on stage for a victory lap. It was a fitting tribute given that Jake was also by the singer's side in 2005 when Bentley was first inducted into the famed country music club.
"It's pretty surreal how fast the last 10 years have gone," Bentley told PEOPLE before taking the stage as the closing act of Tuesday night's Opry. "It feels like it was just Oct. 1, 2005 and I was here with Jake being inducted."
With his dog dutifully perched on his lap, Bentley, 39, marveled that "I still have Jake" but jokes that his pup's "hearing isn't what it used to be." PEOPLE Country's
then proved his point by playfully calling Jake's name – with no reaction from man's best friend.
Dierks Bentley and Jake in 2005; Dierks Bentley and Jake in 2015
Chris Hollo / Hollo Photographics Inc.
Bentley, who recently wrapped his "Sounds of Summer" tour and joined
(yes Dierks, we spotted that T.S. 1989 bracelet on your wrist!)
to perform "Every Mile a Memory," remains grounded and grateful for his success.
the Opry was such a big dream for me," Bentley tells PEOPLE, reflecting on the days before he was a country superstar. "Becoming a
of the Opry is beyond the scope of anything I could have ever imagined."
"Ten years – that's crazy," Bentley told the crowd before launching into his biggest hits. The "Drunk on a Plane" singer, who left the
at home, treated the audience to a song from each of his six studio albums, including his first No. 1, "What Was I Thinking," from debut album
, as well as his current single, "
at the upcoming CMA Awards, will also be celebrating the
charity motorcycle ride and concert that benefits the Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt on Nov. 1.
, Cole Swindell, The Cadillac Three and more country music artists will be joining Bentley for the annual affair.
<bot>: The musician brought his best bud along to the Opry celebration
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20151002234230id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/dierks-bentley-grande-ole-opry-tenth-anniversary
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: You're thinking about taking a last-minute cruise, and cruise websites bombard you with offers for sailings with discounts of up to 70% or so. But are these deals for real?
The Carnival Imagination cruises along Miami Beach.
The Carnival Imagination cruises along Miami Beach.
And, should you book your last-moment Caribbean or Mediterranean cruise with a travel agency that specializes in cruises — such as Cruise.com, CruiseOne, LastMinuteCruises.com and Vacations To Go— or stick to cruise line websites and their reservation phone lines?
The basic answer is that cruise agency "deals" are measured against brochure rates. The cruise lines, with some exceptions, offer nearly identical pricing. That's because most major cruise lines have a no-rebate policy, which bars the agencies from undercutting them on price.
The cruise lines reduce their rates and those of their travel agency partners to ensure ships don't tour the seas empty. As a result, bargains are to be found.
Still, there are reasons to book through the agencies, says Erica Silverstein, features editor for Cruise Critic, a cruise community and review site.
An independent voice is one factor.
"Royal Caribbean isn't going to tell you that the cruise you really want is a Carnival cruise," Silverstein says.
Cruise agency websites also negotiate with the lines and can provide extras such as onboard credits, prepaid gratuities, a free shore excursion or bottle of wine, and sometimes discounts based on the state you live in, Silverstein says.
For example, Cruise.com offers passengers onboard credits for certain Norwegian Sky sailings when booked before Dec. 31. Book a cabin for $3,001 to $5,000 and the credit is $250. A $500 credit comes with a reservation of more than $5,000.
There are exceptions to the rate parity.
When cruise agencies block out group space on a sailing in advance, they can offer lower rates than the lines, Silverstein says. But you'll probably have to phone the agencies, instead of booking with them online, to get those rates.
Another tip: With all the focus on cruise prices, don't overlook the airfare. Soaring international airfares can, well, knock you out of the water.
These cruise agencies have sections of their websites that feature last-minute deals. All but Vacations To Go give you the choice of booking online or over the phone. With Vacations To Go, you can only reserve a cabin over the phone.
Overview: Founded in 1998 and part of Omega World Travel, offers last-minute cruise deals from several days to four months away.
Pros: Offers prepaid gratuities, onboard credits, free upgrades, complimentary bottles of wine on select sailings and under certain terms and conditions. Upgrade options clearly presented during booking process.
Cons: Last-minute deals relatively difficult to locate on the site, which has the "look and feel" of a busy supermarket circular.
Takeaway: Good cruise content, but user interface unattractive and retro.
Overview: Part of World Travel Holdings, with 650 offices and its website, which features Last Minute Deals over the next couple of months.
Pros: Deals neatly organized in categories such as Last Minute Short Caribbean, Last Minute 7 Night Caribbean. Can input preferences and requests. Attractive cabin-selection tool. Handy "Click Here and We'll Call You" button. Wish Lists for saving cruises of interest. Sends hotel info on request.
Cons: Must enter e-mail address too early in shopping process. Clunky navigation: Must click "Continue" repeatedly after entering e-mail address, number of passengers, etc.
Takeaway: My favorite of the sites reviewed. Has relatively up-to-date tools and feel.
Overview: Features Last Minute Cruise Deals on home page. Subsidiary of Travel Holdings.
Pros: Clean look and feel with easy access to itineraries, ports, decks, amenities and photos. Offers live chat.
Cons: Seems a little bait and switchy: Click on a $179 Carnival Imagination sailing for four nights in Western Caribbean and it's difficult to find that rate on landing page amid more expensive cruises. Many "last minute" sailings were 10 to 12 months away.
Takeaway: Nice website features; not very transparent.
Overview: 90 Day Ticker presents extensive listings of last-minute sailings. Founded in 1984 and subsidiary of Vacation Publications.
Pros: Comprehensive. Can filter by cheapest overall, cheapest oceanview, cheapest balcony, cheapest suite. Clear identification of which sailings offer onboard credit. Easy conversion to other currencies.
Cons: No online booking. Homepage resembles a printout. Annoying flashing headers at top of 90 Day Ticker.
Takeaway: The only thing online about Vacations To Go is its marketing. Old school.
Is there a product, app or website you'd like the Digital Traveler to review? Send us an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com.
<bot>: Cruise lines reduce their rates and those of their travel agency partners to ensure ships don't tour the seas empty. As a result, bargains are to be found.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011052319id_/http://travel.usatoday.com/digitaltraveler/story/2011/05/Navigating-sites-for-cruise-deals/47493230/1
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: A Bronx woman said she'll think twice about riding the bus after she was struck by a manhole cover that ripped through the floor of the Bx11 bus Tuesday.
Josephina Guzman was sitting near the front of the bus as it waited at a stoplight along West 170th St. when the 300-pound cover shredded the plywood floor below her seat.
The driver heard a loud bang, followed by Guzman's screams.
"She thought one of the tires exploded," a friend acting as Guzman's translator told NBC New York Thursday. "She wasn't expecting that."
Photos obtained by the Daily News show half of the metal lid protruded from the ground, hitting Guzman's seat and leaving shards of wood scattered.
Guzman was left with a swollen ankle, bruised leg and foot pain, and she has to use a walker to get around, she said. She was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital for treatment and received an X-Ray, revealing she did not have a fracture.
Most of her injuries appeared to have been caused by splintered wood from the bus floor, the driver told union officials.
The accident occurred while Guzman had been on her way to a doctor's appointment to check on her progress after a recent hip surgery.
While the cause of the freak accident is not clear, there was no record of a manhole explosion, officials said.
MTA representatives said the bus likely rolled over the cover, dislodging it and shooting it into the bus. But union officials dispute that such an occurance is even possible.
When asked whether Guzman will ride the bus again, her friend said, "She has to think about it."
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.
<bot>: A Bronx woman said she'll think twice about riding the bus after she was struck by a manhole cover that ripped through the bus floor.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015080719id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/injured-rider-fears-bus-manhole-lid-rips-floor-article-1.2317840
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Cameron Scoggins was catnapping, his long frame filling a couch before an interview at Playwrights Horizons. If he’s a bit tired these days, it’s not surprising. Isaac, the character he plays in Taylor Mac’s play “Hir,” is a tightly wound former Marine who returns home after a dishonorable discharge and finds his family utterly transformed: His younger sister, Maxine, is now his brother, Max (Tom Phelan), and his abusive father (Daniel Oreskes) has become a meek puppet of his wife (Kristine Nielsen).
Though laid back in person, Mr. Scoggins’s performance is high-octane and physically challenging — Isaac retches when upset, tears through a house right out of “Hoarders” and at one point beats an air-conditioner with a baseball bat. (The character is also his second meth-head at Playwrights, he pointed out; the other was in Samuel D. Hunter’s “Pocatello.”)
Rest will have to wait, as “Hir” has been extended through Jan. 3. Instead of heading home to Greensboro, N.C., for Christmas, Mr. Scoggins, 26, a 2011 Juilliard graduate, will spend the holidays in New York with his outrageous fictional family instead.
Before a recent matinee, Mr. Scoggins talked about a career that also includes “Letters From an Old Trunk,” a 2013 album of songs he wrote for the Whiskey Collection, a band he formed with Juilliard friends. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q. “Hir” is dark for Isaac. He’s endured terrible things and comes home to a place that is unrecognizable. Does it take a toll?
A. More mentally and physically than emotionally. Taking in so much new information requires a lot of focus and a lot of listening. The more we’ve done the show, the easier it’s become to sort of settle in and not work so hard to show all of this internal stuff.
Most important, I stretch, because we’re moving around so much. And the puking a lot is a lot of work; it’s basically my ab workout. And walking on all the clothes and standing on Barbies and books for the whole first act, you just need to be loose or you can pull something. Also, I listen to a lot of music. It slows things down and allows me to settle down and be more present. It’s a great role. I’ve never gotten a chance to play something like this.
He’s such the masculine young man. I don’t want to use the word bro, but he’s a bro. He has a lot of compassion and a lot of heart, too, but he also gets to bring that hard-core bro-ness.
Yet it’s interesting that he accepts his younger sibling transitioning from female to male somewhat easily.
This is what I mean when I say he has so much heart. He assesses a lot of information, but he’s able to process that and sort of be there for his sister/brother and figure out what his role is now because they were so close, we feel like, in their past. It really was them together in the house maybe protecting Mom or watching Mom be abused, or avoiding Dad together.
Do you have actual siblings?
I’m the youngest of four boys. We’re all so very, very different. They’re all math and science heads.
And do you get along?
When we were younger we were bickering and fighting, but now we do. One of my brothers is an actual rocket scientist, so we are literally opposite ends of the spectrum.
When did you decide to be an actor?
Sixth grade. We did “Fiddler on the Roof” in middle school. I didn’t have a very big part, but I got to know the theater as much as you can in a middle school production. The next year, we did “Guys and Dolls.” I was Nathan, and I got a lot of response.
You’re also a musician. Is it accurate to call the style folk?
Yeah, folk rock and bluegrass. My main area of expertise is on guitar, and I play a little bit of banjo now. I’m working on a solo record that I hope to put out in a year or two. My mom raised me on funk and soul and R&B, which is still a huge part of my life. She would be bumping George Clinton in the house when we were younger.
<bot>: He portrays a tightly wound former Marine in this production at Playwrights Horizons.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015120919id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/theater/cameron-scoggins-brings-the-bro-to-a-very-strange-family-in-hir.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: What is the curse of modern Britain? Some might say it’s our disproportionate fear of terrorism, the rise of nannyism, corporate cynicism or the “don’t blame me” culture.
iPods: easier to use than Sony Walkmans?
All good candidates for sure. But there’s also a case to be made for neophilia.
In its most unhealthy form, neophilia is the belief that a new gadget or technological development is always superior, even if the all the evidence is to the contrary.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with liking new things now and again, particularly in the privacy of your own home.
There’s no doubt that DVDs are superior to VHS, iPods are easier to use than a Walkman cassette player, and digital cameras an improvement on cheap film cameras.
The internet, mobile phones and the 21st century have been Good Things. Innovation drives culture and art and ideas and business.
But the die-hard neophiliacs confuse novelty with progress. It is neophilia that is sweeping away analogue television and forcing everyone to switch to digital and is soon do the same to analogue radio.
Neophilia has produced a generation of mobile phones that have so many unwanted extra features the batteries run out after a day.
And it’s created such complicated televisions, DVD recorders and computers that many people find them virtually impossible to use.
Given the danger they pose to society and sanity, how do you know if you are living next door to a neophiliac?
1) They have a burning hatred of iPods. Not because they destroy conversation and cocoon people in a self-centred little world, but because they are not as good as the latest Icelandic MP3 player that also doubles up as a telephone, hairbrush and teas maid.
2) They read those technology magazines with women wearing pants on the cover without any embarrassment.
3) They have a MySpace page even though they are over the age of 30. That’s the equivalent of still having a French pen friend in your 40s.
4) They are obsessed with the medium, but don’t care about the content. They’ve already bought both formats of high definition DVD player even though the films available are clearly piffle. Van Helsing may be one of the worst films ever released, but you can now see its awfulness in true high definition quality.
5) They have attached more than one speaker to their TV and can enjoy Coronation Street in 5.1 surround sound.
6) They almost certainly have a blog.
What can be done? I would argue that it’s time for the Government to act swiftly and compile a register of neophiliacs so we can find out where they are living.
Then we can shun them, or even better, talk loudly about how old fashioned cathode ray tubes televisions are SO much better than LCD screens in their presence.
A public register of neophiliacs may sound extreme. But it will also avoid innocent people being mistaken for a neophiliac.
We don’t want a repeat of the kind of incident where neurologists are being attacked just because the local residents don’t know the difference.
<bot>: David Derbyshire muses whether those who love new technology without exception are a curse of our times?
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006090819id_/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/davidderbyshire/september2006/cursemodernbritain.htm
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