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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Italian prosecutors are appealing the case of Amanda Knox, the baby-faced American student who was freed after a sensational trial over the killing of a British student, the Associated Press reports.
The appeal seeks to reinstate the murder convictions for 24-year-old Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito; their 2009 convictions were thrown out last October on appeal. The case was a media sensation from the start, with allegations of sex, drugs and murder, The Times' Henry Chu reported last year:
Was she a killer, capable of murdering [British student] Meredith Kercher in the pursuit of sexual pleasure? Or was she the helpless victim of a prosecutor's character assassination and a botched police investigation?
Knox recently sought to appeal another conviction, this one for slander, which stems from her statements implicating an Italian bar owner in the killing during police questioning, the Guardian reported. Knox said she was pressured by police to accuse the man, who was arrested and ultimately cleared.
PHOTOS: The Amanda Knox case
Knox has also been seeking a book deal. Her story has already been made into a Lifetime TV movie, which aired while she was still in prison. That upset her family and friends, who argued it could prejudice the jury, The Times reported last year.
Amanda Knox looking for book deal
'Overwhelmed' Amanda Knox returns to Seattle
Reversal of Amanda Knox verdict won't quell debate
-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles
Photo: Amanda Knox, left, is comforted by her sister, Deanna Knox, during a news conference shortly after her arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in October. Credit: Elaine Thompson / Associated Press
<bot>: Italian prosecutors are appealing the case of Amanda Knox, the baby-faced American student who was freed after a sensational trial over the killing of a British student, the Associated Press reports. The appeal seeks to reinstate the murder convictions for 24-year-old Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, whose convictions were thrown out in October. The case was a media sensation from the start, with allegations of sex, drugs and murder, Henry Chu reported last year:
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012021419id_/http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/02/italian-prosecutors-reinstate-amanda-knox-murder-conviction.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: For more than two months, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, has made it clear that he considers the federal government and BP’s response to the gulf oil leak a failure on many fronts.
But elected officials in Louisiana and members of the public seeking details on how Mr. Jindal and his administration fared in their own response to the disaster are out of luck: late last week the governor vetoed an amendment to a state bill that would have made public all records from his office related to the oil spill.
The measure was proposed by Senator Robert Adley, a Republican, and easily passed the Democrat-controlled legislature. He told the Associated Press that the veto was a “black eye” on the state. “This governor has opposed transparency for the three years he’s been in office,” he said.
In his veto letter, the governor asserted that opening the records could give BP and other companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon blowout an advantage in future litigation over damages to the state. “Such access could impair the state’s legal position both in responding to the disaster that is unfolding and in seeking remedies for economic injury and natural resource damage,” Mr. Jindal wrote.
But Zygmunt Plater, a law professor at Boston College who served as chairman of an Alaskan legal task force after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, called the governor’s legal rationale flawed, particularly in regard to tallying environmental damage.
“It’s extremely difficult for me to see why natural resource claims would be at all compromised,” he said. “The natural resource damages part of that makes no sense to me.”
Mr. Plater said that the governor’s broader argument, that opening the records could give BP a legal advantage during future litigation, was also illogical. Any documents relevant to such litigation would have to be disclosed during the discovery process, he said.
“In the long-term, anything that’s relevant to a legal action by the state is going to be discoverable. It’s going to be revealed in open court,” he said.
Louisiana has an open records law, but it does not apply to records in the custody of the governor’s office.
<bot>: Elected officials in Louisiana and members of the public seeking details on how Gov. Bobby Jindal and his administration fared in their own response to the disaster are out of luck: late last week, the governor vetoed an amendment to a state bill that would have made public all records from his office related to the oil spill.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010063019id_/http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/a-governor-seals-oil-spill-records/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: It is the kind of letter that might well lead to a distinctly uncomfortable conversation around the breakfast table: this month, between 20,000 and 30,000 German households received legal warnings for having viewed copyrighted pornographic films via the streaming website RedTube.com.
Initially, it had been assumed that a court error had led to the sending of the letters, which ask for the payment of a €250 fine to the Swiss media agent that claims to hold copyright for the films, including Amanda's Secret, Miriam's Adventure and Glamour Show Girls. But now the legal firm behind the warnings says it plans to look into more infringements on porn streaming sites in the coming year. "Redtube was more like a test balloon," Thomas Urmann of U+C told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
Were the Bavarian law firm to succeed, it would set a worldwide precedent. In the past, streaming sites have been able to circumvent copyright law, as no copy of the original work is created. But U+C, which specialises in file-sharing cases, argue that viewing clips on streaming sites can constitute a proliferation of copyrighted material since a tiny copy of the file is created in the memory of their computer.
Urmann said the letter had elicited responses from hundreds of internet user households, some of them from irate wives and partners. "Most of the conversations, however, have been very factual and businesslike."
RedTube's Alex Taylor released a statement saying: "RedTube stands by its firm opinion that these letters are completely unfounded and that they violate the rights of those who received it in a very serious manner," describing the court's actions as blackmail and a violation of privacy.
The copyright lawyer Christian Solmecke told the Guardian that there was not only "no legal basis" for the fines, but that it was possible that the law firm behind the letters may have broken the law: "It is hard to imagine how the IP addresses of the users could have been obtained on a legal basis."
He suggests that the Cologne state court that handed out the IP addresses to U+C law firm only did so in the mistaken belief that RedTube.com was a file-sharing site like BitTorrent. Furthermore, research by online news portal heise.de suggests that those users who received the warning were redirected to the copyrighted clips without their knowledge, in what the site calls a "computer scam".
Solmecke said he had received thousands of calls from people unsure whether to pay the fine or not. "Most of them remember having accessed RedTube.com in the past, though none of them had very clear recollections about the titles and storylines of the films they had watched."
<bot>: Letters ask recipients to pay €250 fine for watching films on streaming website RedTube.com
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013121719id_/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/thousands-germans-legal-warning-letters-copyrighted-porn
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Donald Trump spoke to former president Bill Clinton in late May, weeks before launching his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
While Clinton aides have insisted that the conversation was informal and did not touch specifically on the 2016 race, the two men did reportedly focus on the American political landscape and Trump’s increasingly prominent role within the Republican party.
Trump has ridden a series of self-induced controversies – fuelled by his remarks about Mexicans and immigrants, 2008 nominee John McCain and members of the 2016 field – to lead polls of the Republican field. As the frontrunner, he will take center stage in the first debate of the GOP campaign, in Cleveland on Thursday night.
The very fact of his conversation with Clinton, however, raises key questions. After all, Clinton is not just a former Democratic president and an elder statesman in his party – he is the husband of Hillary Clinton, the former New York senator and US secretary of state who is the current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
Furthermore, Clinton is very close to two Republican ex-presidents, George HW Bush and George W Bush, whom he has come to view almost as family. With Jeb Bush – son of HW and brother of W – also running for the Republican nomination in 2016, an extra level of intrigue is added to news of Clinton’s conversation with Trump.
Trump and the Clintons have a long and complicated relationship. In 2005, Bill and Hillary Clinton were guests at Trump’s third wedding, to his current wife, Melania Knauss. The real-estate mogul has also been a longtime donor to the campaigns and causes of both Clintons, giving up to $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and donating to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
While some anti-Trump Republicans seized on the conversation as evidence that Trump is somehow a Democratic plant, designed to wreak chaos in the GOP primary – after all, he is a sometime Democratic donor who has favored universal healthcare – the truth is likely far more banal. Bill Clinton is an inveterate political junkie, who in 2012 reportedly gave Mitt Romney some tips before he debated President Obama.
The ex-president has talked politics with a number of potential presidential contenders. His chat with Trump was simply another opportunity to do so.
Also, like almost everyone else in the US, Clinton likely finds the spectacle of Trump’s insurgent campaign simply too fascinating to miss.
<bot>: Reports the former president met with Trump before his campaign launch leads some to say he’s a Democratic plant – but they have a long, complicated past
<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://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/06/bill-clinton-donald-trump-meeting-campaign-launch
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: VATICAN CITY (AP) It often starts as a voice in the wilderness, but can swell into an entire nation's demand for truth. From
's many victims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church are finally breaking social taboos and confronting the clergy to face its demons.
Ireland was the first in Europe to confront the church's worldwide custom of shielding pedophile priests from the law and public scandal. Now that legacy of suppressed childhood horror is being confronted in other parts of the Continent — nowhere more poignantly than in Germany, the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI.
The recent spread of claims into the Netherlands, Austria and Italy has analysts and churchmen wondering how deep the scandal runs, which nation will be touched next, and whether a tide of lawsuits will force European dioceses to declare bankruptcy like join their American cousins.
"You have to presume that the cover-up of abuse exists everywhere, to one extent or another. A new case could appear in a new country tomorrow," said David Quinn, director of a Christian think tank, the Iona Institute, that seeks to promote family values in an Ireland increasingly cool to Catholicism.
Quinn noted that stories of systemic physical, sexual and emotional abuse circulated privately in Irish society for decades, but only moved aboveground in the mid-1990s when former altar boy Andrew Madden and orphanage survivor Christine Buckley went public with lawsuits and exposes of how priests and nuns tormented them with impunity.
Floodgates opened for Irish complaints that have topped 15,000 in this country of 4 million. Three government-ordered investigations have shocked and disgusted the nation, which has footed most of the bill to settle legal claims topping euro1 billion (nearly $1.5 billion).
"A lot comes down to: When does that first victim gather the courage to come forward into the spotlight?" Quinn said. "It seems to take that trigger event, the lone voice who says what so many kept silent so long. That's basically happening now in Germany. It could happen next in Spain, Poland, anywhere."
In January, an elite Jesuit school in Berlin declared it was aware of seven child-abuse cases in its past and appointed an outside investigator, Ursula Raue, to seek testimony. Within weeks, she had gathered stories of long-suppressed woe from more than 100 ex-students abused by their Jesuit masters, and from 60 molested by parish priests.
"I always thought that at some point the wave would reach us," said Petra Dorsch-Jungsberger, a commentator on Catholic affairs and retired University of Munich communications professor.
She credited heavy German media coverage of the latest Irish abuse scandal — a November report into decades of cover-up in the Dublin Archdiocese involving approximately 170 priests — with inspiring similar soul-searching in Germany.
"Once the door had been opened, then many others felt they were able to step up and say: That happened to us too," she said.
In recent weeks, new German abuse claims have surfaced on a near-daily basis and spread to Pope Benedict's Bavarian heartland and the Regensberg boys' choir long directed by the pope's brother. Benedict was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich from 1977 to 1982, and questions now focus on what role, if any, the pontiff, played in handing pedophile priests to new parishes rather than to the law.
The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland, and contended he has long confronted abuse cases with courage.
In separate interviews, both the Holy See's spokesman and its prosecutor for sex abuse of minors by clergy sought to defend the pope.
"It's rather clear that in the last days, there have been those who have tried, with a certain aggressive persistence, in Regensburg and Munich, to look for elements to personally involve the Holy Father in the matter of abuses," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.
It's inevitable that all bishops of the day, including Ratzinger, handled abuse complaints against priests in-house, said the Rev. Fergus O'Donoghue, editor of the Irish Jesuit journal Studies.
"The pope was no different to any other bishop at time. The church policy was to keep it all quiet — to help people, but to avoid scandal. Avoiding scandal was a huge issue for the church," he said. "Of course there was cover-up," he added. But worse was "the systematic lack of concern for the victims."
In the Netherlands, a former Catholic boarding-school abuse victim is leading a campaign for accountability. Bert Smeets, 58, has formed Mea Culpa, a victims group that has collected testimony from hundreds of abuse victims and is mulling a class-action lawsuit against the Dutch church.
The church has apologized to the victims and set up an inquiry headed by a former government minister, a Protestant. Smeets dismisses that effort as "a typical Vatican cover-up." He said the pressure on the church came from aggressive investigations into abuse in Ireland and the U.S.
In other predominantly Catholic areas of Europe, child-abuse scandals have tarnished individual priests and even a Polish archbishop, but have not mushroomed into a mass movement. In Spain, more than a dozen priests have been convicted of child abuse in recent decades and two potentially larger-scale cases are attracting attention.
Ireland was until relatively recently the most enthusiastically Catholic country in Europe. Its half-dozen seminaries exported priests worldwide. All but one of those seminaries is closed now, illustrating the rapid falloff in Mass attendance as the economy has advanced and secularism has spread.
Quinn, the Dublin think-tank director, noted that a few Irish dioceses are openly warning that they're struggling to pay bills stemming from abuse claims. In the southeast diocese of Kells, the archbishop's house has had to be remortgaged.
"The church is asset-rich but cash-poor," Quinn said, noting that it's the biggest property owner in Ireland but has comparatively little cash in the bank. He said the Vatican, too, has less money on tap than resides in the endowment fund of a typical top-tier U.S. university.
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<bot>: It often starts as a voice in the wilderness, but can swell into an entire nation's demand for truth. From Ireland to Germany, Europe's many victims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church are finally breaking social taboos and confronting 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/2010031619id_/http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-03-13-pope-scandal_N.htm
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Yippee (or groan)! It’s National Grammar Day again.
You didn’t know? Me neither, until recently. It’s more American than British, and was started in 2008 by Martha Brockenbrough of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.
So what are we supposed to celebrate? Before you run outside disguised as a proper noun, or convert your blog style to baroque Dickensian, let’s consider what is at stake.
In the blue corner: those who espouse National Grammar Day and think grammar is going to the dogs. In the red corner: professional linguists, who hold the diametrically opposed view of what “grammar” means.
There is much hostile misunderstanding between them, mostly due to radically different interpretations of the word. Linguists define it roughly as “the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology”.
Everyone else understands it as “a set of prescriptive notions about how to use English”. Interpreted thus, it becomes a rubbish chute down which people shove every use of language they object to (or should that be “to which they object”?).
In its technical sense, grammar mainly comprises the rules about combining words to make sentences, inflections (eg “dived/dove”, “consortia/consortiums”), what adverbials are, and the like.
Writers of real grammars do not class mere spelling mistakes as grammatical errors. In fact, the linguistic and technical definition of grammar excludes everything that raises some people’s blood pressure.
1. You know enough grammar (ie syntax) to untangle that heading. Congratulations!
2. Objecting to “verbing” nouns (eg “to interface”) is not grammar. Charitably speaking, it is a stylistic preference; uncharitably, it is paranoid prejudice.
3. Mispelling [sic] a word is not grammer [sic]. It is poor spelling. But who never makes a spelling mistake?
4. If a Yorkshire person says “it were her”, or someone from anywhere says “I done”, it is not bad grammar. It is non-standard, which is not the same.
5. New words/expressions are neither good nor bad. Like them or loathe them, they have nowt to do with grammar.
6. When someone interprets “nonplussed” to mean “not fussed or bothered”, that too has nothing to do with grammar: it is a word in the process of changing meaning.
7. If you dislike the way someone pronounces something, you dislike it. That’s all. Again, grammar doesn’t come into it.
This tut-tutting interpretation of “grammar” developed over centuries for many reasons, particularly to mark status. An 1892 quotation about aitch-dropping shows how rigorous such demarcations could/can be: “A very fine young man, but evidently a nobody, inasmuch as he dropped his aitches and so on.” (Rolf Boldrewood, Nevermore, 1892.)
Yet, as Terry Eagleton says: “Dropping your aitches in Knightsbridge probably counts as a deviation, whereas it is normative in parts of Lancashire.” (How to Read a Poem, 2007.)
Prescriptivist sneering emerges in the book title I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar, derived from a Facebook group. Most mistakes its members glote [sic] over are spelling glitches or word choices. The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar website invites us to sneer at “distinguished the fire” for “extinguished”. Sadly, this pseudo-grammatical anality is as irrational as certain people’s (ie English southerners’) prejudice against northern accents.
One example illustrates the arbitrariness of pre/proscriptions. Some American editors get hysterics if a food, diet, etc is described as “healthy”, insisting that only “healthful” is correct.
The (false) reasoning behind this is that if you define “healthy” as “in good health”, it applies, by definition, only to people. A turnip cannot – as far as we know, but then we don’t speak “turnip” – enjoy rude good health, and therefore another word is required.
“Healthful” is the older word, granted, but “healthy” has meant “conducive to good health” since the 16th century. Its pariah status was proclaimed in 1881, and has since become a minor editorial meme. Banning it ignores a productive feature of English: the transferred epithet. You can apply “sad” both to people and to what makes them sad. Countless other words behave similarly: to except “healthy” is nonsensical.
In 1862, when prescriptive grammar ruled, Thoreau wrote:
“When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly … I think –
Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it.”
Amen! By interpreting “grammar” as our entire language system, we celebrate the ingenuity of human and animal brains in developing it, and the myriad ways in which it enriches us. Let’s also celebrate that everyone knows the grammar of their language, even if they can’t formulate its genuine rules.
<bot>: Pedants, rejoice – National Grammar Day is here! But let’s think carefully about what exactly it is we’re celebrating
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016030419id_/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/04/national-grammar-day-rules
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: For instance, not once in the entire debate, inexplicably, did Mitt Romney’s much-loved “leading from behind” line ever come up, according to the transcript. Not once. I expected the line, which initially came from President Barack Obama’s own staff to describe his philosophy of acting more like a shepherd than a drill sergeant in foreign affairs—and can be traced back to Nelson Mandela—to be one of the most overused lines of the night. By deploying this line, I suspected, Romney would try to paint the president as weak, especially on issues like Libya (which got far less air time than anyone would have guessed). I was wrong. Romney’s calculus appeared to be that criticizing the president for “leading from behind” might make Romney himself look too hawkish.
President Obama’s strategy, meanwhile, was to remind people that he had actually held the role of commander-in-chief, and that he knows what it takes to lead credibly on a world stage. He even began his answer to the first question with the words, “Well, my first job as commander-in-chief...” Later on, he offered a not-so-subtle dig at Romney’s lack of foreign-policy experience by reminding his opponent that “I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy—but every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong.”
Still, Obama’s most effective line came when he said “here’s one thing I’ve learned as commander-in-chief: you’ve got to be clear, both to our allies and our enemies, about where you stand and what you mean. You just gave a speech a few weeks ago in which you said we should still have troops in Iraq. That is not a recipe for making sure that we are taking advantage of the opportunities and meeting the challenges of the Middle East.”
I have no idea how this played with the independent middle-America voters to whom Romney was clearly trying to pander. But the president’s description of leadership—a word thrown about ad nauseam with little real definition in last night’s debate—couldn’t be more correct.
Yes, leadership in foreign policy is about being strong. And yes, it is about having a vision of the future and where the country should be heading. But it is also about communicating in a principled and consistent fashion where you, as the U.S. president, stand on specific foreign-policy issues. Without doing so, there is no clarity, whether for Americans, the people who support us or those who oppose us. And without clarity, there is no leadership.
Great leadership profiles of Barack Obama
Great leadership profiles of Mitt Romney
Like On Leadership? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter:
@post_lead | @jenamcgregor | @lily_cunningham
<bot>: Note once in the debate did Romney use his standard jab at the president’s foreign-policy 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/2012102319id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/in-final-debate-mitt-romney-leaves-behind-the-leading-from-behind-critique-of-obamas-foreign-policy/2012/10/23/07081d44-1d16-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_story.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Image: Mashable composite. Larry Downing, Pool/Assocaited Press and Twitter .
In an unofficial vote, Congress and the American people have decided that it's okay to use the Internet while the president is speaking.
On Twitter, users sent 1.7 million tweets related to the President Barack Obama's State of the Union address during the 70-minute span on Tuesday night, encompassing Obama's remarks and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers' official Republican response. Even members of Congress were not above fiddling with smartphones during the speech; they contributed 750 tweets to the chorus — 0.04% of the 1.7 million total.
"Fairness," "healthcare" and "defense" were among the most hashtagged terms related to the State of the Union. Twitter released the following interactive graphic to track how the online conversation progressed; it links buzzwords with the actual words Obama spoke during the address.
A pop culture reference outperformed his remarks about healthcare and raising the minimum wage for federal government workers: The conversation peaked at more than 33,000 tweets per minute when Obama made a quip about the TV show Mad Men.
The Mad Men reference came as Obama talked about gender inequality in the workplace. He argued that it's unfair that, on average, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.
"This year, let’s all come together — Congress, the White House and businesses from Wall Street to Main Street — to give every woman the opportunity she deserves," Obama said. "Because I firmly believe when women succeed, America succeeds."
Meanwhile, Internet users also turned to Google during the speech for background information and answers to their burning questions. Here are some insights about popular State of the Union searches.
Eschewing Google, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) used Vine to pose a post-State of the Union query.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
BONUS: Major Moments From Obama's State of the Union Address
<bot>: 1.7 million tweets were sent on Tuesday night related to President Obama's State of the Union address.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014013119id_/http://mashable.com/2014/01/29/obama-sotu-twitter-google/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: 11, 2010 Ivanka Trump shows off her baby bump for Harper’s Bazaar, May 2011 French President Nicolas Sakozy and wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy are seen at Elysee Palace as they wait for South African President Jacob Zuma and wife to attend a state dinner at Elysee
you're pregnant, it helps to have Chanel and other top French design houses at your disposal. French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, preggers with her second child, wore coolly chic shift dresses at this week's G8 Summit in Deauville, France. To report corrections
faced a couple of light-hearted questions on the increasingly apparent – but not yet admitted – pregnancy of his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. An Italian journalist offered "congratulations, whether it is a boy or a girl". Mr Sarkozy replied to that by saying:
back to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s LBD, very tastefully done that we can take fashion guidance from right here in Atlanta! Carla Bruni-Sarkozy spotted at a social gathering during the G8 Summit. Amber Cornelio loves to keep up with fashion trends and fashion
<bot>: Collection of all USATODAY.com coverage of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, including articles, videos, photos, and quotes.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011052919id_/http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/carla+bruni-sarkozy
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: I'm not talking about the many companies and investors honestly sinking lots of money and work in to alternative energies like solar power. They are literally trying to succeed by building a better and cleaner mousetrap. I'm talking about the environmentalists who bill themselves as "progressive" but in reality are much more anarchistic and nihilistic, focused on tearing down the energy industry — oil, gas, coal and nuclear — without much thought (or science) as to what would be available as a replacement. And the recent drop in gas and oil prices is likely to set them into a higher gear of "tear it all down" mania.
Read More Insana: What the US should do to fight the 'oil war'
I'm talking about the people who protest every new well, every existing or proposed power plant, every fracking project, and every pipeline.
It's not important to them that the world needs more energy, not less.
It's not important to them that even the EPA admits there is no evidence that fracking causes environmental damage.
It's not important to them if this keeps up, big portions of this country could be plunged into the literal darkness caused by power outages and supply disruptions.
Read MoreMassive power outage hits downtown Detroit
It's not important to them that when supplies go down, prices go up and those higher prices hurt the poor most of all.
And for those of you who think that these efforts are all part of a justified move to solar power, think again.
First off, no one claims that we have anything close to the alternative energy capacity to replace the coal-, oil- and natural gas- reliant energy grid we have today. Second, everyone knows that even if we did have adequate replacement supplies, they would cost much, much more than what consumers pay now.
But just as telling is how the progressive movement responds to many of the major projects and expansion plans launched by the alternative energy companies themselves.
Read MoreCramer Remix: What falling oil means to you
That is starkly clear in California, where many of these same so-called environmental activists also continue to oppose plans for large solar farms. That opposition is supposedly based on concerns for snake and turtle habitats in the Mojave Desert, but I'm not so sure.
Taken as a whole, it's hard not to believe the goal of this progressive or green movement, (which is also diametrically opposed to agricultural innovations like GMO foods), is really to make life for humans on this planet a heck of a lot more uncomfortable. That means making us hotter in summer, colder in winter, and hungrier and thirstier all year round. So much so, that it truly seems like massive human population control and reduction is the real goal we're talking about here.
Think of these people like that group in the Batman movies, "The League of Shadows." Remember, those bad guys, led by Liam Neeson's character, aren't really interested in helping the downtrodden or make life easier for anyone per se. They just believe that every few centuries the world needs to burn up, shut down and start over. I don't really think there's a nefarious "League of Shadows" truly at work here, but some of their goals are frighteningly in line with the anti-energy industry progressives out there who truly seem to want to cast the civilized world into a shadowy new order without an electric light or nat-gas heated home to be found.
Here's the scariest part: They're winning.
Read MoreCrumbling oil makes Putin more dangerous: Pro
No, they haven't succeeded in cutting the world birth rate by shutting down the power and switching off the lights … yet. But here in the U.S., new nuclear power plant construction is still mostly blocked despite growing demand for electric power. We haven't built a new refinery with major output capacity in the U.S. since 1977. And do I even need to mention what's happened to the Keystone Pipeline?
It's almost a joke to speculate about the possible roadblocks to American energy expansion caused by price fluctuations when we have 40+ years of real roadblocks to that expansion right in front of us! No momentary price drop could stop a power-hungry nation from getting the power plants, refineries and pipelines it needs. But a loud, aggressive and celebrity-laden progressive movement has been getting just that done just fine since the 1970's.
The war for cheaper, cleaner and more plentiful energy can't be won until the good guys can at least identify who their enemies are.
Let's hope the industry and the financial news media catch on soon.
<bot>: Here's the REAL energy threat, says Jake Novak — and it's not Saudi Arabia and OPEC.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150923184011id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/02/heres-the-real-energy-threat-hint-not-saudi-arabia-or-opec-commentary.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese mobile phone tycoon, has established a foundation in his name as an African-based project to recognise good leaders among 48 sub-Saharan African countries - and to "name and shame" underperforming regimes.
The Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership will each year land a former head of state or government with the sum over 10 years, with a $200,000 annual life pension to follow.
The award, which will be first granted in 2007, far exceeds the $1.3 million given to recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Meanwhile, the annual Ibrahim Index for African Governance will rank the countries according to governance quality, with the idea of showing African citizens how their rulers match up.
The foundation is backed by several former world leaders. including Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, Kofi Annan, the Ghanaian United Nations secretary-general and Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank.
"I'm ashamed that we always have to look to the rest of the world for assistance -Â it impacts on our dignity and our self-respect" Mo Ibrahim, founder"Nothing, simply nothing is more important to African development than good governance," Ibrahim said.
"I'm ashamed that we always have to look to the rest of the world for assistance -Â it impacts on our dignity and our self-respect"
"I'm ashamed that we always have to look to the rest of the world for assistance. It impacts on our dignity and our self-respect.
"We want to celebrate the guy who managed to take his people out of poverty. That deserves the largest prize in the world."
The winner will be chosen by a team of 18 academics in conjunction with the UN and other bodies such as the World Bank.
They will be informed by the Ibrahim Index, which assesses national progress on sustainable economic development, health and education programmes, transparency and empowerment of civil society, democracy and human rights, security and the rule of law.
The index has been drawn up by experts at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the United States.
"There are no excuses for anyone to criticise. This is not mixing business with politics: I am a concerned African citizen and this is my private money," Ibrahim said.
"For once, we want Africa to do something for itself. I have no better way of spending my money."
And he warned rulers in Africa who may be corrupt: "Watch out -Â we are coming after you."
Foundation board member Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN high commissioner for human rights, said the award would have all the more impact because it was an African initiative rather than a Western handout.
"It's greatly significant that this is an African businessman who has invested in 14 countries, made big profits and done it cleanly and has now decided to put it back in to his own people," she said.
<bot>: A top African businessman is offering a $5 million award - the largest of its kind in the world - to departing African statesmen for good governance.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160227024136id_/http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2006/10/200849125727731745.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: RICHMOND, Va. — Thirsty for jobs and good times, the city of Richmond is vowing to build a brewery on the James River.
The estimated $36 million tab includes $5 million from Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s “Opportunity Fund.”
If approved by the City Council, most of the money will be raised with a general revenue bond, which puts the city’s taxpayers on the hook if the Stone Brewing Co. venture goes bust.
Details remain sketchy, and that has skeptics wondering if the city will see a replay of the stalled downtown baseball stadium project touted by Mayor Dwight Jones.
“There is no free lunch,” said Paul Goldman, a Richmond lawyer and longtime civic activist. “The public is in a ‘show-me’ mode.”
Click for more from Watchdog.org
<bot>: Thirsty for jobs and good times, the city of Richmond is vowing to build a brewery on the James River.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014101619id_/http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/16/buzz-kill-richmond-puts-brewery-on-public-tab/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: It's plenty tough out there--all the more so for small businesses, which run on gumption and grit during the best of times and must embrace any imaginative means just to survive in the worst. Herewith, are eight remarkable entrepreneurs prospering in the depths of recession by offering unique luxury goods and services. Could they stumble if the slump wears on? Absolutely. But with healthy order backlogs--some stretching a few years out--these operations are safe for now.
Sam Zygmuntowicz works 15-hour days to sell just six instruments a year.
Mike H. Stewart, owner of Wildrose Kennels, breeds $12,000 pooches that can hunt and play.
Morgan Motor has banked on sleek designs and small production for a century.
For snakes and skulls, though, tattoo artist Paul Booth charges $400 an hour.
For $2,200 you can own a Bogdan fishing reel. Slightly more if you want one used.
There's a four-year backlog on hand-built bicycles from Sacha White--and he's not accepting new orders.
Unlike many plastic surgeons, Dr. Yan Trokel is getting a lift during the recession.
Want to smell like your rose garden? Or maybe your Bentley? Call Francis Kurkdjian.
Talent is important. Figuring out where you belong is downright crucial. Here's how.
These sites pair willing lenders with cash-strapped borrowers. Here's how.
You need the green stuff, and your bank isn't lending. Here are some (rather pricey) options.
Why leave money on the table if you don't have to?
Ten common problems, 10 uncommonly good solutions.
Learn how these wunderkinds bagged a bundle before their 20th birthdays.
When your partner's real partner is work, here's what to do.
Forget the Yellow Pages. Try these nifty services.
<bot>: Lean staffs, a passion for their products and obsession with quality give these entrepreneurs insulation that bigger outfits don't have.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010020919id_/http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/26/thriving-in-downturn-entrepreneurs-management-recession_land.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: It’s time to book that holiday to Paris/Rome/Barcelona before Congress starts calling the Europeans currency manipulators.
The euro is falling like a stone against the dollar Friday on the back of figures showing much faster-than-expected job growth in the U.S.in February.
A 295,000 rise in non-farm employment–way ahead of the 240,000 forecast–has reinforced expectations of that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates as early as June.
But while the Fed is preparing to tighten the supply of dollars, the European Central Bank is preparing to open the euro floodgates, having committed again Thursday to pumping €60 billion a month of new money into the economy for at least the next 18 months. The fact that the world’s two most important central banks are heading in completely different directions is making for an extraordinarily sharp move.
The euro fell by more than a cent on the Bureau of Labor Statistics data to $1.0876, its lowest level in 11 and a half years. It had already fallen by over a cent since ECB President Mario Draghi held his regular press conference Thursday.
<bot>: ECB QE + stellar US jobs data = vacation in Paris (and forget the budget restaurants).
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150309004401id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/03/06/dollar-surges-to-11-year-high-vs-euro-as-fed-ecb-go-separate-ways/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Flying home wasn’t an issue for Panetta when he served in Congress from 1977 to 1993 and built a reputation as a deficit hawk. Like many lawmakers who returned to their districts for the weekend, he took commercial flights and paid the bill himself. He followed a similar routine when he served as budget director and White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, although the demands of the latter job made it tougher to escape Washington.
Panetta resumed his cross-country commutes when President Obama plucked him from retirement to lead the CIA in 2009. Given the nature of the spy business, Panetta’s whereabouts usually weren’t public knowledge.
Since becoming defense secretary in July, however, his travels have attracted more attention, in part because Pentagon leaders say they are scraping by to adjust to a new era of austerity. Under a defense budget that will shrink slightly next year for the first time since 1998, Panetta has proposed closing military bases, cutting the number of active-duty troops and raising health insurance premiums for military retirees.
Under government rules established by President George W. Bush, the defense secretary is required to fly on military aircraft, which are outfitted with secure communication links to the White House and Pentagon.
Under the same rules, Panetta must reimburse the government for what it would cost for a round-trip commercial flight to the same destination — usually a fraction of the expense of operating a military plane.
The Associated Press reported this month that Panetta had reimbursed the government about $17,000 for 27 personal trips since becoming Pentagon chief. The AP calculated that the expense of operating Panetta’s military aircraft — usually an Air Force C-37A — totaled about $860,000 for those trips.
It costs the Pentagon about $3,200 per hour to operate a C-37A on Panetta’s trips, according to the AP. Defense officials said the expense of Panetta’s individual flights can vary, depending on the number of staff and crew members who accompany him and the itinerary. The defense secretary often schedules stops for official business at military bases while en route to California or on the way back to the Pentagon.
The C-37A is similar to a Gulfstream business jet. It is considerably smaller than the Air Force’s E-4B, or National Airborne Operations Center, a modified Boeing 747 that Panetta flies when traveling overseas. He does not use that aircraft when going home for the weekend.
Although Panetta said he regrets the cost to taxpayers, he told reporters that he is open to “alternatives here that I can look at, that might possibly be able to save funds and, at the same time, be able to fulfill my responsibilities not only to my job but to my family.”
George Little, a Pentagon spokesman, said Panetta was “always concerned about costs” and has asked defense officials whether there are cheaper options that would enable him to travel with secure communication links.
“No one wants the secretary of defense making decisions on classified military operations from the middle seat on a crowded commercial jet,” Little said.
At a joint news conference with Panetta, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, volunteered that the defense secretary is hardly slacking off back home on the weekends.
“Let me help the boss here,” Dempsey said. “He doesn’t get much rest in California, based on the number of times I know that I’m in contact with him.”
<bot>: The weekend flights have cost taxpayers more than $800,000 since July.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012041719id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/panetta-said-he-regretted-cost-to-taxpayers-for-trips-home-to-california/2012/04/16/gIQAGl2OMT_story.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: “Sherlock” is returning to PBS on Sunday for a third season, and for those who haven’t watched it, it is worth starting now, and even catching up with the first two seasons (at PBS.org or Netflix.)
It would be unfair to say that this BBC production is the best Sherlock Holmes ever: There have been so many, and so many great ones. But it is certainly the right one for right now.
There is no easy explanation for why this Arthur Conan Doyle character has such a lasting hold on the public imagination; possibly only Dracula has had as many incarnations. And that may be a clue to the detective’s enduring popularity.
Vampires, after all, supposedly symbolize uncontrolled desire and repressed sexuality. It could be that more than almost any other sleuth, Sherlock Holmes represents logic and the unapologetic triumph of reason over emotion. And especially in this age of ambivalence and subjectivity, a purely cerebral hero is particularly welcome.
“Sherlock” stars Benedict Cumberbatch and was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (“Dr. Who”), and they, of course, depict the hero as freakishly smart and oddly talented. This Sherlock is also lissome, spirited and briskly energetic; most important, the famous detective isn’t turned inside out to suit current, navel-gazing fashions.
Sherlock jokes about his chilly British upbringing with his older brother, Mycroft (played by Mr. Gatiss), but his psychic deprivations and sexual orientation go largely unexplored. When Sherlock tells Watson (Martin Freeman) “the game is on,” it’s an invitation to help him solve the case, not explore his innermost feelings. (Though it would be funny if Sherlock said it while turning on the World Cup finals.)
Particularly on television, it’s almost impossible to find another interesting crime solver who isn’t driven by childhood wounds or crippling psychological flaws or fixations. People are always trying to humanize Dracula; they too often try to do the same to Sherlock Holmes.
“Elementary,” on CBS, is a case in point: It’s a New Age variation on the persona, positing a modern-day Holmes who is a recovering drug addict with daddy issues. His Watson is a doctor, played by Lucy Liu, who was hired by his father to serve as Holmes’s companion-watchdog.
“House,” the old Fox show that starred Hugh Laurie as a doctor, was also a reworking of Sherlock Holmes — and possibly a little of Dr. Joseph Bell, a surgeon who was Conan Doyle’s real-life model. The show reveled in House’s deductive diagnoses but couldn’t leave the hero’s cool superiority alone: House was physically handicapped and deep down a mess. By series end, he was cracking up more than he was cracking cases.
The flawed detective is so common that it’s become a television cliché. The heroes of “The Mentalist,” “The Following” and “True Detective” are almost as consumed by their own demons as they are by clues. (One noteworthy exception to that rule is a British show, “Above Suspicion,” created by Lynda La Plante, who was also responsible for “Prime Suspect”; it’s now available on Acorn.tv, an online channel that specializes in British series.)
PBS’s “Sherlock,” set in contemporary London, ingeniously converts 19th-century technology to today’s world of smartphones, blogs, surveillance cameras and GPS, without adopting the attendant self-absorption and psychobabble.
This Sherlock could be turned into a textbook psychiatric case, but the show allows him to be merely eccentric, bracingly tactless and haughtily free of introspection, though he does crave cocaine when bored and sometimes turns morose if he can’t figure out a clue. When people question his sang-froid, calling him a psychopath, Holmes corrects them by cheerfully describing himself as a “high-functioning sociopath.”
“Sherlock” is a huge hit in Britain — Season 3 drew more viewers there than “Downton Abbey” did — and it’s not hard to see why. Holmes has been translated into dozens of languages and has universal appeal, but he is, above all, a reassuring, even flattering figure to the British. He is the Englishman supreme, and, like “Downton Abbey,” an exemplar of a more confident, masterful age.
In Season 3, Sherlock’s emotional detachment is put to the highest test: He reunites with Watson after a two-year absence (he had his reasons), and then is best man at Watson’s wedding.
Sherlock expresses genuine friendship and even warmth (there are a few soppy moments, including one with Mycroft), but the show resists turning him into a basket case or, worse, a normal human being. The wedding episode is a gripping and even hilarious tour de force: Sherlock solves two crimes while delivering a long, serpentine wedding toast.
Episodes echo, rather than follow, plots from the original stories, so that “A Study in Scarlet” becomes “A Study in Pink,” and Conan Doyle’s fiendish master blackmailer, Charles Augustus Milverton, becomes Charles Augustus Magnussen, a Murdoch-esque tabloid press lord.
The writers take fanciful liberties with Conan Doyle’s work, mixing together strands from different stories and often concocting whole new tangents. And, oddly enough, some of the more improbable elements in the books — like Moriarty, the archenemy who runs a vast criminal network — have more resonance in a post-Sept. 11 world.
The show’s verve is reminiscent of that of a 2005 BBC series, “ShakespeaRe-Told,” in which different directors retold classic plays in modern settings: The hero of “Macbeth” is an ambitious chef in a fancy three-star restaurant; in “Much Ado About Nothing,” Benedick and Beatrice are co-anchors of a news show in Wessex. Like those fractured Shakespeare tales, “Sherlock” is inventive and humorously far-fetched, but always in the spirit of the original work.
“The game is never over, John,” Sherlock sternly tells Watson at a rare, mournful moment of doubt. And that is a vow “Sherlock” intends to keep, at least for another season.
<bot>: The hero of PBS’s “Sherlock” is lissome, spirited and briskly energetic, but he isn’t turned inside out to suit current, navel-gazing fashions.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014011819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/arts/television/benedict-cumberbatchs-sherlock-is-back-on-pbs.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: President Obama is encouraging the nation’s African-American youth to remain patient and hopeful regarding the ongoing problem of racism in American society.
Obama, in his first TV interview since a grand jury decided not to indict the New York cop who killed Eric Garner, stressed that America has made progress and that further advances in civil rights and combating racism would be made — eventually.
“This isn't something that's going to be solved overnight. This is something that is deeply rooted in our society, that is deeply rooted in our history,” Obama told BET Networks in a discussion about racism slated to air Monday night titled “A Conversation with President Barack Obama.”
“But the two things that are going to allow us to solve it: Number 1 is the understanding that we have made progress,” Obama said. “It's important to recognize, as painful as these incidents are, we can't equate what's happening now to what was happening 50 years ago.”
“Things are better. Not good, in some cases, but better,” he added. “And the reason it's important for us to understand progress has been made is that then gives up hope that we can make even more progress.”
Excerpts of the interview were released Sunday, but the full discussion will air Monday on BET’s “106 & Park.”
Obama also urged young people to remain “persistent” in fighting racism.
“Typically progress is in steps It's in increments. When you’re dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism, or bias, in any society, you have to have vigilance, but you have to recognize that is’ going to take some time,” he said. “You just have to be steady, so that you don't give up when we don't get all the way there."
The interview will be his first to be televised since the Garner decision rocked the U.S., sparking protests across the nation.
On A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO.
<bot>: President Obama is encouraging the nation’s African-American youth to remain patient and hopeful regarding the problem of racism in America.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014120719id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-urges-patience-fight-racism-article-1.2036935
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Economic worries can drive the course of campaigns. In the past, when people have felt more vulnerable economically, they have generally been more open to a third-party candidate. That was the case in 1992 when Ross Perot pledged to fix the nation’s ailing economy. Running as an alternative to Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, he won 19 percent of the vote, taking votes away from both the Democrat and the Republican candidates.
In January of that year, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that nearly half, 49 percent, of that poll’s respondents said the economy and jobs were the most important problems facing the country. Health care, which would become a centerpiece of the first Clinton Administration, barely registered on the public’s list of concerns. Only 1 percent cited it as the most important problem.
If Iowa and New Hampshire are any indication of how things are shaping up this year, a New York Times/CBS News poll taken over the weekend suggests that economic concerns and health care taken together rival the war on the Democratic side and terrorism on the Republican side as issues which will factor in voters’ decision making.
In Iowa, for example, 36 percent of the likely Democratic caucus goers said the war would influence their vote more than other issues. Twenty-two percent said health care and 17 percent said the economy. If they are looked at together as part of larger financial worries, then 39 percent of Democratic voters will be at least as motivated by some kind of economic concern as they are by the war in Iraq.
Republicans in Iowa are less concerned about health care but equally concerned about the economy. Together, they will influence 25 percent of the Republican voters while concerns about terrorism will influence 30 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa.
Some of the respondents to the October CBS News poll were called back recently to discuss their views in depth. Derrick Heard, 28, is a medical technician who lives in Rochester, Minn. He describes his political affiliation as Independent.
“A lot of the economy is based on consumer confidence and a year ago everyone said, ‘Oh, the housing market is fine and there’s not going to be anything wrong with it,’ ” he said. “But it has continually gotten worse and I think it’s going to continue to be a problem. Gas will continue to go up. We’re losing lots of jobs to overseas.”
Other respondents like Michael Reid, 54, a computer data manager from Brooklyn, who says he is a Democrat, worries about health care. “At the present moment I have full health insurance coverage because I’m working,” Mr. Reid said, “but I have no idea what will happen when I retire.
“We should have some kind of major national health care, like in Canada or England,” he said. “I think health care is more important than Iraq.”
<bot>: Voters’ anxiety about the cost of health care is strikingly high — higher, in fact, than other economic worries.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2007111419id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/us/politics/14web-elder.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Seven years ago, photographer Peter Aaron visited Palmyra with his wife and twin girls to get away from his busy New York life. On their first night, he walked down Straight Street in Damascus, photographing an ancient road flanked by Ottoman-era houses and relics of the city’s Greco-Roman past. Aaron’s images—the stumps of classical columns, ancient drinking fountains, a Roman arch halfway up the street, impeding traffic—now stand as lasting witnesses of the ancient ruins, many of which have been destroyed by ISIS militants.
“The ruins of Palmyra should make Rome jealous,” Aaron says. “The Syrians were well aware that they had some of the greatest antiquities in the world in their own country and I’m sure that every Syrian feels the loss of these beautiful things.”
It was the subversion nobody foresaw: the toppling of a sleepy ancient trading city under Islamic State occupation that ended last week when the Syrian army took it back. While a reported 70 percent of the city remains intact, the damages inflicted were insurmountable: Explosives leveled a 2,000-year-old temple, the Temple of Bel, according to reports. Where Palmyra’s grand columns once stood, broken marble lay on piles of rubble, their white-stone cores exposed for the first time in centuries; an ancient statue of a lion had fallen, its broken nose at its foot; chalk targets have been drawn on the back wall of the amphitheater stage, where militants had taken target practice.
“One Syrian man in in his 20s said to us, ‘if there were a civil war here, it would be a complete catastrophe, an apocalypse. There are so many warring factions there would be no end,’” Aaron tells TIME. “ We had no idea that this terrible fate would befall Syria within two years of our visit.”
The Islamic State’s brutality induced a moral outcry that made this once unknown ancient city the focus of Western media attention in a way the Syrian civil war failed to do. The collapse of the ruins meant more than the loss of antiquity; It was an attack on universal enfranchisement, an assault against broader religious tolerance; an iconoclastic campaign with a brazen irreverence towards culture with a capital C. In the billowing cloud of smoke at the heart of the Syrian desert, came an unhallowed defilement of that symbol.
Aaron’s black-and-white images of the now-altered ruins carry that kind of ominous foreboding. For Aaron, the loss of these archeological treasures is personal. “I felt so disturbed by the destruction of these antiquities that I wouldn’t even read the articles or look at the pictures,” Aaron says. “It was like losing a loved one. It was gut wrenching.”
Michelle Molloy, who edited this photo essay, is a senior international photo editor at TIME.
Rachel Lowry is a writer and contributor for TIME LightBox. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
<bot>: A photographer’s images of Palmyra become witnesses to an archeological treasure
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160813113608id_/http://time.com:80/4280936/see-the-palmyra-we-can-never-get-back/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Moving the black market in marijuana into the light has been a boon for state tax coffers, entrepreneurs and cannabis users, but an inconvenient fact went unaddressed in the process: Potentially dangerous chemicals are used to grow it.
That changed last fall, when a Colorado newspaper’s investigation found shelves stocked with products grown using pesticides that hadn’t been approved for cannabis farming, spurring a rush of legal, regulatory and business activity.
Since then, states have quickly drawn up regulations, companies have seen their products and methods put under the microscope — sometimes taking big hits to their businesses — and cannabis product and pesticide buyers have filed lawsuits against their manufacturers.
There is even concern that the federal government could intervene out of concern for public health, stalling the spread of cannabis legalization and the growth it has fostered.
“If the feds wanted to crack down, we’ve given them all the reasons to,” said Nic Easley, Comprehensive Cannabis Consulting founder and chief executive, who has helped more than 60 cultivators develop their growing practices.
Photo: Getty ImagesThe use of pesticides in marijuana cultivation attracted widespread attention in September, when the first of 25 recalls of cannabis products over five months in Colorado was announced. The recalls followed a September Denver Post investigation that found pesticides the state hadn’t approved for marijuana farming on products sold at dispensaries.
Little long-term testing has been performed on the dangers of eating or smoking products made with cannabis and grown using pesticides, so the extent of the hazard they pose is mostly unknown. Still, legalization experts worry that those unknowns could endanger the burgeoning legal marijuana industry in the US.
Experts say the risk is partly a byproduct of the haste to create growing capacity after legalization, which has attracted growers inexperienced with large-scale and indoor farming and led to cultivation environments that require pesticide use to sustain yields and keep plants alive. Many states also lacked pesticide regulations at the time of legalization, leaving growers without guidance.
While the Justice Department has essentially left states to manage their own marijuana enforcement, it also threatened intervention if states fail to prevent “the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana use,” according to a 2013 memo. The Justice Department did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
California was first to legalize medical marijuana in 1996; it is now legal in 23 states. After Colorado and Washington passed the first recreational marijuana legalization laws in 2012 — it’s also legal in Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia — a “green rush” to enter the industry began.
Some climates in states where marijuana is legal — including Oregon, Washington and Colorado — require it to be cultivated indoors, said Rodger Voelker, lab director at cannabis testing service Oregon Growers Analytical. The combination of an indoor climate and overplanting can lead to “stressed” plants more likely to develop fungus and mites, Voelker said.
Growers have turned to pesticides — such as myclobutanil, which breaks down into an asphyxiant that can cause various forms of sickness when burned, and the insecticide imidacloprid — that have been used on such ornamental crops as roses and Kentucky bluegrass, as well as edible crops in regulated amounts, according to Easley.
But no long-term studies of the effects of inhaling those chemicals by smoking them have been conducted, according to experts. Pesticide use on marijuana crops, meanwhile, has been “rampant,” according to Brian Smith, communications director for the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board, even as the health implications remain unclear.
“There’s no research on what any of this means,” said Smith.
The Environmental Protection Agency ultimately approves the use of pesticides on crops, but states can do their own testing, draft guidelines for growers within their borders, and propose pesticides for federal testing and approval. As of February, no state had submitted a complete application for pesticides to be used to grow marijuana, according to the EPA.
“The use of unregistered pesticides on marijuana may have unknown health consequences, as no pesticides have undergone complete risk assessments for use on marijuana at this time,” the agency said in a statement. The EPA has not demanded proposals from states that have legalized marijuana use.
Some states, meanwhile, have published pesticide rules — well after they’d legalized cannabis use. Colorado, Washington and Oregon have issued lists of pesticides they say are safe to use; others are still being tested.
In mid-February, Colorado piggybacked on its recalls — which were initiated by the city of Denver, rather than the state — by placing a hold on the sale of products made by two marijuana cultivation sites in Colorado Springs it said used pesticides containing myclobutanil pending an investigation. The companies, Dr. Releaf Inc. and High Mountain Medz, did not respond to requests for comment.
The holds were the first actions taken under a November order issued by Gov. John Hickenlooper that declared it a public health risk to use pesticides not approved by the state.
Oregon, meanwhile, stopped the sale of the previously approved pesticide Guardian in February after Voelker discovered that the label did not disclose the active ingredient, abamectin — which wasn’t approved for cannabis use — in lab testing and alerted state officials. Guardian manufacturer All In Enterprises declined to comment.
Oregon has approved about 250 pesticides for use on cannabis: It allows pesticides that can safely be used in unlimited amounts on edible products and adopted its tobacco-growing rules for smokable marijuana. The state is working with the EPA, Washington and Colorado to refine regulations and develop a testing program, according to Sunny Jones, the Oregon Agriculture Department’s cannabis policy director.
Washington issued pesticide guidelines for recreational marijuana as part of its July 2014 adult-use legalization rollout. It currently has no separate pesticide guidance for medical marijuana, which was legalized in 1998, but the recreational guidelines will extend to medical cannabis in July.
The state in December issued its first and only administrative holds on New Leaf Enterprises and BMF Washington, which both grow marijuana and make products from it, saying pesticides not approved for recreational production were in their plants. The hold on New Leaf ended in January, according to a state spokesman, while BMF’s continues.
New Leaf founder Boris Gorodnitsky said the pesticides were traces from a previous medical grow. Once discovered, the company conducted an internal investigation and stopped using plants that contained the chemicals.
The hold was a “nightmare” for New Leaf, according to Gorodnitsky, who said lost business required the company to lay off most of its staff. BMF, which is still under the hold, said it is working with the state “to better understand the levels of pesticides on the products.”
The combination of marijuana’s federal illegal status and varied state pesticide regulations creates complications for companies like New Leaf, according to Gorodnitsky. The goal for regulators, he said, should be to reduce harm for consumers, rather than prohibiting pesticide use.
“The reason it’s such a mess is not because it’s unsafe. It’s because [cultivation] is not federally regulated,” he said.
Nevada waited 15 years after legalizing medical marijuana use to allow sales in dispensaries — which began in July — while it addressed questions about pesticides and other concerns. The state allows cultivators to use 22 pesticides on medical marijuana crops in low levels. Crops are tested by independent labs before they are approved for sale; they are destroyed if unapproved pesticides are found.
While the delays have slowed the growth of businesses hoping for quick profits, some say they’ve put companies in the state on a firmer footing.
“Cultivators want to know what the rules are and want to play by the rules,” said Todd Denkin, chief executive at Las Vegas-based cannabis testing service Digipath Labs. “If you can’t grow a clean product, you’re going to be out of business.”
As state governments wrestle with pesticide regulation, some people have taken matters into their own hands.
In October, a recreational cannabis customer joined a medical cannabis customer to file a class-action suit against Denver-based marijuana edible manufacturer LivWell, claiming financial damage because the company didn’t disclose that it used myclobutanil.
The suit was dismissed in February after the Denver District Court ruled that the suit failed to prove injury or damage. Corry & Associates attorney Rob Corry, one of the lawyers who brought the suit, said he is still considering whether to appeal or amend the complaint.
LivWell said it stopped using myclobutanil in early 2015, before regulatory issues arose. “None of our products have ever been recalled, and we have never received a health-related complaint regarding our products,” said LivWell chief legal strategist Dean Heizer. “The lawsuit has not impacted our business.”
And after Oregon stopped the sale of Guardian, a customer sued its manufacturer, All In Enterprises, in February, alleging deceptive practices in marketing the product as “100% natural” and failing to disclose its active chemical ingredient. The class-action suit wants financial relief for people who wouldn’t have bought it if they’d known what was in it.
While lawsuits like these can hurt companies’ brands and sales, some experts view them as bumps in the road to productive long-term regulation. The industry hasn’t experienced “dramatic, law-changing events” yet, according to Hilary Bricken, an attorney at Seattle-based marijuana industry law firm Canna Law Group, “but it’s brewing.”
More broadly, some see complications related to pesticides as normal for a young industry. “This is nothing new,” says Trek Hollnagel, a member of cannabis industry and lifestyle news publication DOPE Magazine’s board of directors. “The willingness of the cannabis community to put reforms in place is beyond compare. Everyone is willing to do what it takes to make this industry succeed.”
Still, a concern that pesticides could upset the detente between the industry and the federal government lingers.
“We have an incubated environment we’re allowed to operate in right now,” said Derek Peterson, chief executive of cannabis-focused agriculture company Terra Tech. “If we keep opening up opportunities for people to use dangerous things on plants, it becomes an embarrassment and we invite more scrutiny from the federal government. It would be a huge step backward.”
This article originally appeared on Marketwatch.
<bot>: Moving the black market in marijuana into the light has been a boon for state tax coffers, entrepreneurs and cannabis users, but an inconvenient fact went unaddressed in the process: Potentially da…
<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: Every time his old butt skids, the mandate speaks. Every time his rainbow jumper drops, the message soars.
Every time he stares down basketball's scariest player in the corner of the locker room and tells him to zip it, dude, his bosses better listen.
When Derek Fisher becomes a free agent next month, the Lakers have one directive for which there can be no caterwauling or confusion.
Don't mess it up. Don't let him walk.
Go ahead, sign a younger point guard, but don't think it will make Fisher irrelevant or undeserving of crunch time. Fine, cut his $5-million salary if you must, but don't embarrass him or make him beg.
You don't need to star him. You don't need to even start him. But you do need to keep him.
Fisher is 35, his legs are slowing, his stamina is fading, but his impact is enormous. He is ordinary in autumn, forgettable in winter, but absolutely irreplaceable in the spring, where once again he is six feet of rock and two hundred pounds of glue.
"Our captain," Jordan Farmar said simply. "Our leader."
Imagine someone making that statement on a team that includes Kobe Bryant, yet not saying it about Kobe Bryant, but make no mistake.
Kobe has never won a championship without Fish. Kobe cannot carry a team without Fish. Kobe would be a lonely locker-room dictator without Fish.
Bryant is the main reason Fisher was brought back here in 2007 after he spent three years understandably chasing big money in Golden State and Utah. Bryant is one of the reasons he can now not be allowed to leave, as he constantly clears the path of communication between the Lakers' intense superstar and his occasionally intimidated teammates.
"Most of what Fish does, you'll never see," Lamar Odom said. "He keeps everything level, everyone on the same page. He is one person, one speech, one word."
Sometimes that word is for Bryant â "I'm sure there's some times he wishes I were taller, faster and quicker . . . and there's sometimes I wish he would pass a little bit more," Fisher said with a twinkle.
Usually, though, that word is for everyone.
In the Lakers' 102-89 victory over the Boston Celtics on Thursday in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, that word was "bump." The raw Fisher bumped the skilled Ray Allen through screens, through breaks, down the lane, over the top, bumped him right into three-for-eight shooting with zero threes and a bunch of ouches.
<bot>: Every time his old butt skids, the mandate speaks. Every time his rainbow jumper drops, the message soars. Every time he stares down basketball's scariest player in the corner of the locker room
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010060619id_/http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0606-plaschke-lakers-20100606,0,2230485.column
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Michael Picard was filming a protest near a police DUI checkpoint in West Hartford, Conn., in Sept. 2015 when troopers confiscated his camera. The ACLU says this recording proves the officers fabricated criminal charges against Picard. (ACLU-CT)
Three Connecticut state troopers fabricated criminal charges against a man protesting at a DUI traffic checkpoint, according to a lawsuit filed against Connecticut State Police last week.
In an odd twist, the state troopers appear to have accidentally filmed themselves making up the charges — using the protester’s own video camera, according to the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.
“There’s a lot about the case that attracted our attention,” Dan Barrett, legal director of the ACLU of Connecticut, told The Washington Post. “Of course, Michael’s protesting and that’s an important thing. But also we’ve seen … how vital it’s become to police oversight that people be able to record police.”
The roadside protest in question was not out of the ordinary for Michael Picard, a 27-year-old East Hartford man who had become something of a regular at DUI checkpoints in Connecticut.
These set-ups, Picard thought, were a waste of public money. For years, he would find out where Connecticut State Police planned to hold the checkpoints, then would show up with his digital camera. Afterward, he would upload the videos to YouTube, with titles such as “How to Flex Your Rights at a DUI Checkpoint” and “Cop Claims Freedom of Speech Does Not Give Citizens the Right to Question Police.”
His regular protests had made him into something of a known thorn in the side of police — so much so that a Hartford police employee apparently notified state police weeks ahead of time that Picard probably would be at a checkpoint on Sept. 11, 2015, but noted that he was “harmless” and the lawful owner of a pistol, according to the lawsuit.
On that September evening, Picard arrived at such a checkpoint with a handwritten yellow sign — “Cops Ahead: Keep Calm and Remain Silent” — and situated himself on a triangular traffic island near an Interstate 84 entrance road, according to the lawsuit. For an hour-and-a-half, he recorded activity at the checkpoint, including that of state trooper John Barone, sergeant John Jacobi and master sergeant Patrick Torneo, the lawsuit said.
[‘Unprovoked, violent, intentional act’: Video shows car plowing into Phoenix police officers]
Shortly after 8 p.m., Barone walked over to Picard. Someone had called in a complaint about a man “waving a gun and pointing it at people,” the lawsuit claims Barone told him.
Without warning, Barone slapped Picard’s camera out of his hand, causing it to fall to the ground, an act that was captured on video. Barone then confiscated a pistol Picard had been wearing in his hip holster, as well as his pistol permit from his pants pocket — “theatrically” shouting “I’ve got a gun!” in the process, according to the lawsuit.
Picard knelt down to pick up his camera to see if it was broken and then pointed it back at the troopers, the lawsuit said. Barone strode back to protest: “It’s illegal to take my picture,” he said, as captured on video. “Did you get any documentation I’m allowing you to take my picture?” After a brief debate, in which Picard argued that he was on public property, Barone grabbed the camera and took it back to the two other troopers, as indicated by the video.
“I got the camera,” he told them, setting it on top of Torneo’s vehicle.
What the troopers appeared not to know was that the camera was still working — and recording everything.
In the video, they can be heard discussing how to charge Picard after his pistol permit comes back as valid.
“You want me to punch a number on this either way?” Barone is heard saying, referring to entering a code in the police database. “Gotta cover our ass.”
The troopers discuss where Picard was standing on the road. Jacobi, the sergeant, tells the two others: “So, we can hit him with reckless use of the highway by a pedestrian and creating a public disturbance, and whatever he said.”
They agree. After some additional discussion, Torneo, the master sergeant, adds: “And then we claim that, um, in backup, we had multiple people, um, they didn’t want to stay and give us a statement, so we took our own course of action.”
“Okay,” Jacobi is heard saying.
[Father ‘utterly terrified’ after trooper points gun at his 7-year-old during traffic stop]
The police ended up pressing Picard with two criminal trespassing charges: one for reckless use of highway by a pedestrian, the other for creating a public disturbance.
Both eventually were dropped by the state, after nearly a year in the Connecticut superior court system.
“The evidence clearly shows that these police officers violated Mr. Picard’s rights,” attorney Joseph Sastre said in a statement. Sastre defended Picard against the criminal charges and also, with ACLU’s Barrett, is representing Picard in the civil lawsuit. “We are confident that the court will agree, and we hope that it will send a strong message to police and the public alike that enforcing the law means respecting free speech, not trampling on it.”
Barrett said they had not heard anything from Connecticut State Police regarding what action the agency took, if any, as a result of the incident.
“It was unbelievable — this is an interaction that was recorded from start to finish on high-quality digital video,” Barrett said in an ACLU summary of the case. “A year later, there has been zero movement on the internal affairs investigation as far as anyone knows, which just shows that police and prosecutors in Connecticut should not be in charge of policing themselves.”
A Connecticut State Police spokeswoman said the agency was not making any statements about the case, nor would it confirm the current employment status of the three troopers named in the lawsuit.
“They’re not commenting on anything at this time,” she said.
In its lawsuit against the Connecticut State Police, the ACLU of Connecticut claimed the troopers violated Picard’s First Amendment right to “receive and memorialize information” and his Fourth Amendment right against seizure of his property without a warrant.
In addition to the First Amendment violation, Barrett noted that Connecticut lawmakers passed a statute last year that makes clear that a person is allowed to record police officers as they perform their public duties.
Picard also declined an interview but confirmed the authenticity of the videos.
“Community members like me have a right to film government officials doing their jobs in public, and we should be able to protest without fearing political retribution from law enforcement,” Picard said in a statement through the ACLU of Connecticut. “As an advocate for free speech, I’m deeply disappointed that these police officers ignored my rights, particularly because two of the troopers involved were supervisors who should be setting an example for others. By seeking to hold these three police officers accountable, I hope that I can prevent the same thing from happening to someone else.”
Florida lawmaker captured on video hitting a man who took down one of his campaign signs
An animal activist gave water to slaughterhouse-bound pigs. Now, she’s on trial for mischief.
Texas gun-rights activist slammed for graphic film portraying shooting of a student protester
<bot>: "Gotta cover our ass," one of the Connecticut officers is heard saying in the recording.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016092019id_/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/20/cops-accidentally-record-themselves-fabricating-charges-against-protester-lawsuit-says/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Not too long ago, as part of a test designed by psychologist Melissa Russano, a young woman in a tank top sat at a table with a look of growing apprehension, hunched protectively over her handbag. A student, she had just taken an exam, and a test administrator was accusing her of cheating: Her answers, he said, matched up with those of another student. The administrator said he had just called the professor running the study and reported that he was not at all happy. âHe may consider this cheating, I donât know,â the man said, with sympathy. âIâm sure you didnât know it would be such a big problem to be sharing. I probably would have done the same thing if I were in your shoes.â... It would ease my professor up if you were seen to be cooperating.â He slid a piece of paper toward her with a confession written on it.
âI donât think I should sign it. I didnât do anything,â said the student. Shaking her head, her face pursed in disgust, she signed. As it turned out, she was innocent.
A decade ago, Russano, a professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, set out to design a study that would replicate the social and emotional dynamics of a real interrogation in the lab, where conditions could be controlled. And where, unlike in the messy world of actual cases, the truthfulness of confessions could be easily evaluated. Her study had subjects take a cognitive ability test in a room with another student. Half the time the second student, who was actually working for Russano, would ask for help. The test subjects knew it was against the rules, but most would willingly share their answers. Later, after the test administrator had ostensibly looked over some of the results, he would come back, say there was a potential issue, and leave the subject to stew alone in a room for five minutes. Then some version of the interaction above, taken from a video of one subject, would unfold.
Russano was interested in testing what have long been the twin poles of interrogation styles: âminimizationâ and âmaximization.â Theyâre forms of coercion that correspond, roughly, to âgood cop, bad cop.â Minimization plays down the significance of the crime and offers potential excuses for itââyou just meant to scare herâ or âanyone in your situation would have done the same thing.â Maximization plays it up, confrontationally presenting incriminating evidence and refusing to allow any response except a confession. The two are the most widely used tools in the American police interrogator toolkit. The Army Field Manual, which governs all military interrogations, lists approved maximization methods such as âEmotional Fear-Upâ and âEmotional-Pride and Ego-Down.â
source: "detecting true lies: police officersâ ability to detect suspectsâ lies" by samantha mann, aldert vrij, and ray bull
Chicago-based John E. Reid & Associates is the biggest interrogation trainer in the world, teaching thousands of police officers, intelligence operatives, and private investigators every year. Its techniques are based on the experience of the companyâs founders, interviews with suspects after interrogations, and what would appear to be common sense. âIn sex crimes, it is also helpful for the investigator to state that he has heard many persons tell about sexual activities far worse than any the suspect himself may relate,â the Reid manual Criminal Interrogation and Confessions advises. âThis will serve to encourage the suspect to admit a particularly âshamefulâ kind of sexual act.â
These techniques do indeed produce confessions. What Russano found, though, was that those confessions are often unreliable. âGuilty people are more likely to confessâ when minimization and maximization are used, she says. âThe problem is, so are innocent people.â Minimization alone nearly doubled the number of cheaters who confessed in her studies. But it tripled the number of noncheaters who falsely confessed. The videos of those false confessions make for fascinating viewing. Some are angry, some resigned. One young woman keeps her composure until the test administrator leaves the room with her signed confession, then dissolves into tears.
These techniques are a long way from tortureâuniversity researchers arenât likely to run a waterboarding study. Theyâre also a long way from the sorts of interrogations that have unfolded in precinct houses and desert prisons; after all, as Joseph Buckley, president of John E. Reid & Associates, points out, compared with actual criminals, college students are easy marks. What Russanoâs work shows, however, is that even gentler forms of coercion can implicate the innocent and produce misinformation.
Russano is still running versions of that first interrogation study, changing the script to see how it affects the outcome. In one iteration, she explored whether minimization could be purged of the implicit offer of leniency. She had her interrogators be sympathetic, even flatteringâsaying things such as, âI am sure you are a good person, and no one wants to be accused of cheating or breaking the rulesââbut without playing down the seriousness of the offense or its potential punishment. They got just as many true confessions that way, but far fewer false ones.
hundreds of studies have shown that interrogators would be just as well off flipping a coin
Coercive methods are also hobbled by investigators who, far from having some kind of hard-boiled street sense about guilt and innocence, are not necessarily good at knowing whether theyâre interrogating a criminal or a valuable witness. The typical interaction between an interrogator and a suspect begins with a determination of guilt or innocence, what Reid calls the Behavior Analysis Interview. But hundreds of studies have shown that interrogators would be just as well off flipping a coin. It doesnât matter whether theyâre simply observing someone speak or asking them questionsâthe biggest difference between professional and amateur lie detectors is that professionals are much more confident in their abilities.
For one thing, liars often donât act the way they do on television and in interrogation training manuals. Reidâs Criminal Interrogation and Confessions lists âscratching any part of the body,â âclosed, retreated posture,â and lack of eye contact as possible signs of deception. In 2003 a team led by the psychologist Bella DePaulo, then at the University of Virginia, studied those and other cues, synthesizing all the research studies that had been done to that point. Breaking eye contact and fidgeting didnât actually correlate with lying, they found, nor for that matter did any of the physical tells they looked at. A lot of the behaviors can be symptoms of nervousness, of course, but even an innocent person under interrogation is likely to be nervous. âThe basic assumption that liars will be more affected emotionally, itâs very intuitive, but itâs never been supported empirically,â says Par-Anders Granhag, a psychologist at the University of Gothenburg who has trained the instructors at the Norwegian Police University College.
Granhag is a leading proponent of an alternate approach to lie detection that relies on deceptionâs mental cost rather than its emotional one. Lying is hard: Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans show heightened activity in the brain regions associated with self-control during lying. A liar has to keep his story straight, he has to monitor the listenerâs reaction, and he has to monitor himself to make sure he doesnât look shifty. As a result, lies tend to be told more carefully than true storiesâliars speak more slowly, and they include fewer details.
When the psychologist Aldert Vrij, of the University of Portsmouth, asked English police officers to watch videos of people telling stories and pick which ones seemed to be thinking harder rather than which were lying, the officers got better at spotting deception. An interviewer can also add to the cognitive load of the interviewee. A 2008 study led by Vrij, for example, found that when liars were asked to tell their stories in reverse rather than chronologically, they were significantly more likely to be spotted. Other work has suggested that introducing incriminating evidence incrementally, rather than all at once, also makes a liar more likely to slip up.
Source: âPitfalls and opportunities in nonverbal and verbal lie detectionâ by vrij, granhag, and porter, Association for Psychological Science
Buckley refutes work such as Vrijâs. The compromises required to simulate in a lab study what happens in the real world, he argues, render the findings useless. âWhen you deal with people who are committing mock crimes, thereâs no parallel, because they have nothing at stake,â he says. The Reid method is, he freely admits, built on anecdotal evidence, but in an interaction as complex as an interrogation, thatâs all there really is. âThereâs no scientific research on it. I mean, itâs impossible to do that,â he says. âHuman nature is pretty much human nature.â
But what if interrogators avoided coercion altogether? Laurence Alison, a psychologist at the University of Liverpool, has found evidence for the power of rapport-building in real-world interrogations. Alison got access to 181 interrogations of Islamic and right-wing terrorists by British police and coded them for different approaches. He found that the most productive interrogations in terms of information were those in which interrogators essentially acted like therapists. Investigators in Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom are now trained to focus not on extracting admissions of guilt but on gathering evidence. That information can back up an innocent suspectâs story, or it can be used to nail a guilty one. Confessions are not discouraged, but British conviction rates suggest that, to juries, the contortions of suspects facing inconvenient facts can be just as damning.
But what if interrogators made no judgments of any kind about their subjects and didnât use coercion at all?
Much of the HIG-funded research and training has focused on getting better information, even out of people who are perfectly willing to talk. Memories can be as tricky to access for the subject as for the interrogator. One of the limiting factors, it turns out, is the simple act of asking questions. In the early 1980s a young cognitive psychologist named Ronald Fisher noticed he had a strange knack for helping people find misplaced possessions. A friend would call asking if he had left his wallet at Fisherâs apartment, then while talking remember where heâd put it. Fisher realized that without thinking about it he was jogging their memories, subtly guiding the conversation based on theories of memory he was teaching his students at the University of California at Los Angeles. Along with his colleague Edward Geiselman, he started poring over the research literature and watching hundreds of hours of interviews. In a 1985 paper the two formalized the procedure into what they would call the Cognitive Interview.
One of Fisher and Geiselmanâs insights was that a typical question-and-answer format makes an interview less likely to yield new information. âGood interviewers ask very, very few questions,â Fisher says. âIf you stop and think about it, it makes sense. Why do you ask a question during an interview? Because the witness is not telling you what you want to know.â The more questions asked, Fisher realized, the less likely a witness was to volunteer information, since he was just waiting for the next question.
To address this, the Cognitive Interview emphasizes open-ended questions: Witnesses are told to report everything they remember, whether or not it feels important. They are asked to close their eyes or draw a sketch of how a room was laid out. Interviewers prompt them by asking that they describe the scene from other vantage pointsâacross the street from where they stood or from the car in front of theirsâand to retell a sequence of events starting at different points or in reverse order. Memory is highly associative, and what for a liar is a cognitive challenge can sharpen recall for someone recounting actual experiences, shifting the context in a way that throws previously unnoticed details into relief. In 2013, Fisher ran a study at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers in Glynco, Ga. Instructors there were able to get 80 percent more relevant, accurate information using the Cognitive Interview than using the traditional method they taught their students. Police departments and intelligence agencies have begun to adopt it. HIG is teaching federal investigators the method, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the branchâs law enforcement and intelligence arm, is training all of its investigators in it.
Researchers are even moving beyond conversation entirely. In 2012, Maria Hartwig started looking at the role that environment played in investigative interviewing. Hartwig, 34, is a former student of the University of Gothenburgâs Granhag and a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, where she keeps a small Pinocchio figurine in her office. The basis for her work is a theory called âembodied cognition,â which holds that because our brains first evolved to move our bodies through the worldâand only later became capable of higher-level thinkingâbody and brain still influence each other in elemental, unconscious ways. Some of the best-known work has found that being physically warm makes people more generous toward others and that being excluded socially can lower someoneâs estimate of the room temperature.
If the embodied cognition literature was correct, Hartwig reasoned, the typical interrogation roomâclaustrophobic, locked, austereâwas exactly the wrong sort of space to get someone to divulge information. In a yet unpublished study, she redesigned the space around the theme of openness: open windows, an open book on the table, open desk drawers, âa picture of open water under an open sky,â as the paper describes it. She found that subjects provided more detail when questioned in the redesigned interrogation room. The Philadelphia Police Department has expressed interest in the idea, and Hartwig and her collaborators are trying to figure out how exactly they will redecorate interrogation rooms.
Hartwig admits that the work is preliminary. Even if the results hold up, sheâs not claiming that the right décor will get terrorists to reveal bomb plots right away, but most interrogators agree that nothing will. âInterrogation doesnât have a magic switch,â says Colonel Kleinman. âThereâs not some âbreak in case of fireâ type of option.â Believing there is, he argues, is part of how you end up with a torture program. In a way, the new tactics are more about doubt than certainty. As deception researchers like to put it, there is no Pinocchioâs nose.
Drake Bennett is a staff writer for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York. He can be reached on Twitter @drakepbennett or by email at dbennett35@bloomberg.net.
Editor: Bryant Urstadt Design and code: Stephanie Davidson Photographer: Steven Brahms/Bloomberg Businessweek Set Design: Jason Singleton
<bot>: The Dark Science of Interrogation: How to Find Out Anything from Anyone
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<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: RIO DE JANEIRO — The morning after her 2008 Olympics ended, gymnast Shawn Johnson awoke with one gold medal, three silvers and no idea what to eat for breakfast. She had no idea when to go to bed, either.
In the weeks that followed, Johnson felt lost each day at 4 p.m., when practice had always begun. Something as basic as working out in local fitness centers proved bewildering; she’d only trained in gymnastics facilities.
“You feel really lost for a while, just trying to figure out your new routine,” Johnson, now 24, recalled during an interview in Rio, where she covered gymnastics for Yahoo Sports. “It’s a really confusing time.”
Johnson’s experience — Olympic glory built on order and discipline, followed by an Olympic crash of confusion and dismay — is hardly unusual, nor is it a new phenomenon. Each of the 11,000 athletes who competed at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics over the past two weeks endured some measure of meticulous preparation, all building to a single competition when the world’s focus is most intense. Just beyond their medals and the post-Olympic exhibition tours and commemorative cereal boxes looms a hurdle they don’t see coming: everyday life.
“I remember waking up the next day after my last competition and feeling like I had run straight into a brick wall,” Johnson recalled. “As an elite athlete, you obsess; you’re a perfectionist over your field. And when you don’t have that to devote every ounce of energy to every day, it’s hard. Any elite athlete will tell you: The transition period from the Olympics into normal life is so hard.”
[Archives: Michael Phelps wakes up to life as a former athlete]
Athletes and experts say this applies in both the near term and years later, both to Olympic champions and those who compete once and lose, both to competitors and coaches. On Sunday night, the 17 days of the Rio Games conclude. On Monday morning, most Americans will rise and go work. The athletes will do — what, exactly? Many don’t know.
“It’s an emotional, psychological transition, and it’s very tough,” said Steven Ungerleider, a sports psychologist and author who has worked with both the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee for four decades. “. . . We’re always seeing a large number of athletes who win medals, or don’t win medals, and come home, the lights are turned out, the media is gone, and they go into a state of shock because they have been up on the pedestal and this emotional high for so long. And without their training regimen and support staff, it’s a tough transition.”
Suddenly, a lot of free time
In the months leading up to the Olympics, athletes are defined by their preparation and sacrifice. Katie Ledecky put off college for a year and swam 70,000 yards each week. Jordan Burroughs began days with pre-dawn runs and seemingly infinite sets of pull-ups and push-ups before even taking to the wrestling mat for practice sessions, eschewing time with his toddler son and infant daughter. Simone Biles chose home-schooling over her friends, and any semblance of a social life, to train more than 30 hours weekly and travel for gymnastics.
All of those decisions were based on the cycle of the Olympics. The Games may enter the public’s consciousness only for 17 days every four years. For the athletes, almost by definition, they are an obsession.
[The agony of Jordan Burroughs’s Olympic defeat]
“It’s almost like Christmas,” Burroughs said. “It’s like, ‘I can’t wait until Christmas, I want to open my presents early. Mom, Dad, what’d you get me? I got to see it. The presents are under the tree, let me open them.’
“But once you open them and you play with them, you realize that, man, it’s over. Now there’s 364 days until the next one. But for us, it’s over 1,000 days.”
The effort athletes exert often results in expectations both about what being an Olympian will mean and what life afterward will be like. Taraje Williams-Murray twice made the Olympic team in judo. In 2004, he was teammates with Rhadi Ferguson. In the weeks following the Beijing Games, the two wrote a post on Williams-Murray’s blog titled, “Post-Olympic Stress Disorder: The Dark Side of Going for the Gold,” which warned athletes about the perils of becoming addicted to the competition and the attention.
“You think sex is great?” they wrote. “You think gambling [and winning] is great? Driving fast cars? Sky-diving? None of that can light a candle to the thrill of that torch, to the sense of fate, destiny — being a part of something so BIG, universal. You are on stage and the WHOLE world is watching YOU.”
The reality: Many Olympic athletes must pay some out of pocket for training and travel. Williams-Murray returned to financial stresses.
“I was burdened with debt from the run, as well as student loans,” he said Saturday by email. “I had bouts with depression and often self-medicated with alcohol and marijuana.”
That isn’t a solitary story. David Boudia was 19 when he made his first Olympic team as a diver in 2008. Like with most athletes, his focus on the Games defined his existence.
“Everything I did, I did with the idea of going to the Olympics and winning,” Boudia said before the Rio Games began. “I wanted fame, the riches. I wanted the Games to be the vehicle that delivered all those things.”
Boudia expected to win a medal, maybe two. Instead, he finished 10th in the 10-meter platform event and, with a partner, fifth in the 10-meter synchronized competition. He returned home to Indiana, enrolled at Purdue University, but entered a world he couldn’t handle. He drank. He did drugs. In his book “Greater Than Gold,” released as the Rio Games opened, he revealed that he contemplated suicide.
“The Olympics didn’t fulfill me or bring me satisfaction,” Boudia said. “So for a long time, I wanted to do nothing except to stay in bed.”
[Archives: The last flight of Speedy Peterson]
The reality is that only a fraction of the competitors in any Olympics end up on the podium. Each arrives with a goal, a standard by which he or she would define success. If that goal isn’t reached, they return home to a great unknown.
“Imagine what they’re going through,” said Robert B. Andrews, a Houston-based sports-performance consultant who works with Biles, the gymnast who won five medalists here. “They put so much passion and commitment and attention and focus into this. They all have a plan for competing. Then when the plan ends, what is the next plan? How do you even begin? There is a huge sense of loss.”
But such a sense isn’t unique to competitors who don’t medal. The public troubles of U.S. freestyle skier Jeret “Speedy” Peterson began at the 2006 Turin Olympics, where he was sent home early after fighting with a friend on the street following his seventh-place finish.
Peterson, a bold competitor who invented the high-risk “Hurricane” jump, struggled with alcohol and depression following a troubled childhood in which he was sexually abused and his younger sister was killed by a drunk driver.
When Peterson won silver at the 2010 Vancouver Games, he broke down in tears. In July 2011, he committed suicide at age 29.
Adjusting to a 9-to-5 life
The USOC’s website includes a section on sports psychology that features links to 14 articles on the topic of athletic performance, offering them as helpful resources for coaching and athletes, with titles such as “A three-step formula for competition readiness,” “Routines, rituals and performing under pressure,” and “USOC Sports Psychology’s Top Ten Guiding Principles for Mental training.”
Not a single article deals with what athletes face when competition is over. This, despite the fact that athletes, coaches and sports psychologists have understood the phenomenon going back decades. In 1997, Ungerleider studied 57 Olympians in 12 sports and wrote about the need for developing ways of helping elite athletes make a successful transition to the workplace.
“The majority don’t have a game plan,” Ungerleider said. “. . . When there is not a program in place or a mentor to prepare them, many of them get depressed. Empirical data show they start drinking or taking drugs or sort of get lost if they don’t have a support system.”
The USOC now offers the “Athlete and Career Education Program” to offer counseling and help former Olympians deal with planning a career, finding a job, networking and academics. But in some ways, the very qualities that pushed these athletes to the top of their pursuits can make it difficult to fit into a 9-to-5 existence.
“Olympians are outliers, largely independent and often self-starters — individuals that are largely predisposed and may have a natural advantage as entrepreneurs,” Williams-Murray said. “The path to a new self-identity that may allow these high achievers to be happy may go beyond finding a job.”
[So you just won a gold medal? Welcome to the rest of your life.]
There is now, though, a heightened awareness about what awaits Olympians when they return home. Many athletes here said they have discussed potential pitfalls with teammates. Swimmer Allison Schmitt won three gold medals, a silver and a bronze at the 2012 London Olympics, but she fell into such a deep depression over the ensuing two years that she and her coaches believed it was unlikely she would compete at such a level again.
With help, Schmitt overcame her problems. She came to Rio with the goal of not only helping the Americans to a medal — which she did, gold in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay — but to, as she said, “de-stigmatize the negativity around mental health.” Schmitt said before she left Rio that she plans to travel, that she knows she must keep busy. But she also knows that understanding her past experiences doesn’t mean she is better prepared to deal with what’s to come.
“I’m more aware of it,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how much more prepared I am for it. I would like to say I am.”
The last day of the Rio Games is Sunday. Some athletes have already departed. And back in Houston, Andrews, the sports-performance consultant, is fielding pleas for help.
“I’ve already had [Rio] Olympic athletes calling me and saying, ‘I need to come in and talk. I don’t know what to do next,’ ” Andrews said. “Their Olympics are over and, ‘I don’t know how to handle everything that’s coming at me. How do I handle this TV show and all these appearances and endorsements? I want to keep competing, but I don’t know how much time to take off. Where do I go to vacation?’ ”
Adam Kilgore contributed to this report.
<bot>: Athletes unprepared for the sense of loss, which can lead to depression, drugs and alcohol abuse.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016082019id_/https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/olympians-struggle-to-adjust-to-life-beyond-the-rings/2016/08/20/9222dd98-66d1-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: “There’s only one word to describe Abby Wambach,” Australian soccer star Lisa De Vanna wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “Legend.”
Just before the US women’s national team was to be feted at the White House, Wambach announced she would be hanging up her boots for good at the end of this year. “While we still have more work to do for women’s soccer, after bringing the World Cup back to the United States this summer, I’m feeling extremely optimistic about the future of our sport,” the champion striker noted in a statement.
Tributes to No20 have already begun pouring in from all over the world as soccer fans and players celebrate the career of an all-time great. But the Rochester, New York native couldn’t have picked a better time to retire. Fresh from the US World Cup victory Wambach will leave the pitch a champion in every sense of the word, racking up 184 goals over the course of 252 international matches – the most of any female or male soccer player. Ever. Fifa Women’s Player of the Year in 2012 (an honor only one other American has ever achieved: Mia Hamm) Wambach’s impressive hardware collection includes two Olympic gold medals (2004 and 2012) and of course her 2015 World Cup honors. In total, she scored an impressive 14 goals in World Cup matches and nine goals in Olympic competition.
184. 252. 14. These are the numbers that will etch Wambach’s impressive career into the history books. But Abby Wambach’s legacy is, and always has been, about so much more than her just record-breaking statistics sheet.
I do not remember Wambach’s first game with the national squad back in September of 2001, a month with more than its fair share of newsprint. I do, of course, vividly remember the World Cup final two years earlier, when Mia Hamm, Brianna Scurry, Michelle Akers, Brandi Chastain and co defeated China in truly dramatic fashion, in the process gifting millions of little girls with a new definition of what it meant to “play like a girl”. With the ‘99ers on their way out, however, the national team needed a new hero.
Luckily for them (and us), what they got was Abby.
Throughout her career Wambach has quietly but confidently busted stereotypes – both about female athletes and women in general. A fearsome competitor who liked to lead with her head (literally: she will retire with close to 80 header goals), Wambach was living proof that being a total badass and being a woman absolutely go hand in hand. At the same time, she was unabashedly open about her body and the challenges facing female athletes. Posing naked for ESPN’s Body Issue in 2012 Wambach noted that her muscled, 5ft 11in frame made her much bigger than many of her teammates (Alex Morgan, for reference, is closer to 5ft 7in), and that’s OK.
A leader on the field and off, Wambach’s actions have often spoken the loudest – perhaps none more emphatically than the widely televised kiss she shared with wife Sarah Huffman after the World Cup. Growing up, none of the athletes I admired were openly LGBT. Too young to appreciate trailblazers like Billie Jean King I took it for granted that all my heroes, from Mia Hamm to Jackie Joyner-Kersee, were straight. Not that I realized I was gay at the time, mind you – it would take many more years of confusion and pain before I was able to come to terms with my own sexuality.
What I still do remember, however, was the causal way my childhood classmates tossed around slurs like “faggot” and “dyke,” especially when it came to girls who dared to cut their hair short or were deemed “too butch”.
It’s thanks to women like Wambach and Megan Rapinoe (and the other openly lesbian or bisexual women who played in the World Cup as well as their courageous peers in many other sports) that women today are less and less likely to grow up in an environment limited by such archaic stigma. Everybody deserves to have a hero that loves the way they love.
Ultimately, Abby Wambach’s legacy belongs to the girls (and boys) who have painted their faces and toiled over poster board signs and traveled many hundreds of miles to scream her name over the past 15 years. This is what makes US women’s soccer so special – and so powerful. As I have written previously in Quartz, sexism remains rampant in our society, a problem mirrored in professional sports. Women’s soccer, despite its relative success internationally, is by no means immune. But while World Cup victories and scoring titles won’t solve these systemic problems, each win does help the playing field seem a little more level, making it that much harder for men to argue – as they do, with straight faces – that women remain inherently lesser somehow than men.
I only had the privilege of watching Abby play in person once – after a best friend and I embarked on a madcap, spontaneous road trip to Montreal for the World Cup semi-final this year against Germany. Sporting Wambach’s black jersey from the 2011 Cup, my spirits were rivaled only by the height of our nosebleed seats. Wambach didn’t start that match; in fact she didn’t even step foot onto the field until the 78th minute. But when she did, she practically could have sailed onto the turf so thick were the cheers from the crowd.
When the dust settles and the points are tallied and dutifully reported, sport is less about the official winners and losers and more about the little moments like these, moments that transcend the minutiae of athletic competition to become something special, tangible. Abby Wambach wasn’t perfect, but she never made excuses for who she was and she took responsibility when she was wrong. So we should remember her for her tremendous skills, certainly, we must not forget the little moments that made her so much more than a soccer player. Turns out it’s been Wambach’s world all along – I’m just glad I had a chance to live in it.
<bot>: Meredith Bennett-Smith: The world’s all-time leading goalscorer, who announced her retirement on Tuesday, has been an imperfect, fiercely competitive and uncompromising cornerstone of the feminist movement. She is a real American hero
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015102819id_/http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/oct/28/abby-wambachs-towering-legacy-only-begins-with-broken-records
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Lil Wayne, the New Orleans rapper, has turned his experience at Rikers Island into a memoir that will be published in November, two years after his release, Grand Central Publishing announced on Thursday. The book, “Gone Till November,” is described as an internal monologue based on journals Lil Wayne kept during his eight-month stint at the New York City jail on a gun possession charge.
“He kept detailed journals of his inner and outer life while he was on Rikers Island and they certainly tell as story,” Ben Greenberg, the executive editor at Grand Central, said in the announcement.
Born Dwayne Carter Jr., Lil Wayne is one of the best-selling hip-hop musicians in the country with a wide fan base. He had one of the top-selling albums in 2008 with “Tha Carter III,” which won a Grammy for best rap album. His most recent album “Tha Carter IV” is also nominated this year in that category.
<bot>: His book is based on journals the New Orleans rapper kept during his eight-month stint at Rikers Island.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012011219id_/http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/lil-wayne-the-memoirist/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Tim Hetherington poses next to his World Press Photo-winning image in Hamburg, Germany, in 2008. Photograph: Jens Ressing/EPA
I first met Tim while doing a postgrad in journalism at Cardiff University. He was the star student on the photojournalism course – everyone on the print courses wanted to work with him as he fast gained a reputation as a creative photographer with a knack of getting access to interesting people and situations. Back then he was a gangly but striking figure with thick dreads, who always seemed to have a roll–up to hand.
We later worked together on a series of articles on Gulf War Syndrome at the Big Issue in London, where he was their first trainee photojournalist and I was a reporter. I remember trawling the streets and hostels near Waterloo – where cardboard city used to be – with him, tracking down a veteran who claimed to have information of an MoD cover up. The guy clearly suffered from post-traumatic stress but Tim's frank but calm manner soon put him at ease, and we got a great colour feature.
That mix of charm and compassion was a great attribute in a job where you were often dealing with vulnerable, distressed, if not traumatised, individuals: young runaways, victims of abuse, the mentally ill and addicts. Whenever he accompanied you on a story there was little need to persuade interviewees to open up - people just dropped their guard.
I lost touch with Tim when he subsequently moved to CNN and I went to the BBC. But I always took an interest in his success, which came as no surprise.
<bot>: David Batty recalls studying and working alongside the British photographer, who has died in Libya
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20130930030552id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/21/tim-hetherington-remembered
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Part of complete coverage on
The Gulf Coast oil disaster is made up of many facets: the lives, the numbers, the science, the economy, the wildlife and more. The worst U.S. spill began April 20, and the consequences could last decades. Explore some of the threads of this unfolding story.
HERE'S HOW MUCH OIL HAS FLOWED INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO SO FAR:
On July 15, a cap stopped the gush of crude.
How does this compare to US daily oil production?
Potential loss to Gulf Coast travel economy over three years
Wildlife: How many birds, turtles and mammals died?
The cost to BP of responding to the Gulf oil disaster is a fraction of the company's annual profits.
Policy and politics of oil in America
<bot>: Gulf Coast Oil Disaster: Not over yet - Special Coverage from CNN.com
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010072819id_/http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/gulf.coast.oil.spill/interactive/data.viz/index.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: An Oklahoma Marine made the ultimate sacrifice when he pulled a friend out of a fiery plane wreck, saving her life but suffering fatal burns over 90 percent of his body.
Friends of Hannah Luce, the lone survivor of Friday's crash of a twin-engine Cessna 401 just northwest of Chanute, Kan., hailed Austin Anderson as a hero who gave his life without a second thought. The pair was among five young adults bound from Tulsa for a Christian youth group conference in Iowa.
“He is a very tough guy, but once you got to know he was such much of a teddy bear,” Lauren Rockett said of the man she got to know at Oral Roberts University. “It would be totally like Austin's character.”
- Lauren Rockett, friend of hero Austin Anderson
Three companions aboard the flight, Stephen Luth, Luke Sheets and Garrett Coble, died instantly, but Anderson, 27, and Luce, 22, survived the crash. Luce was trapped inside the burning fuselage, but Anderson managed to pull her out and guide her to a nearby road. Luce had a passerby call her father while they waited for an ambulance, which then took them to a Wichita hospital. Anderson died there early Saturday morning.
Hannah is being treated for severe burns over 28 percent of her body. She was scheduled to undergo skin graft surgery on Monday.
"The way I discovered about my daughter and the plane accident was probably the most unscripted way you could imagine," Ron Luce said Sunday during a news conference at University of Kansas Hospital. "I asked [the woman], where's the plane? She said it's off in the distance, and there are flames, there's smoke."
Luce said he asked his daughter about reports that Anderson had pulled her from the wreckage, but "she just began to tear up" and didn't respond.
"I know Austin, he's that kind of guy," Ron Luce said. "He served two tours in Iraq, and he was willing to give his life for his country. He was willing to give his life for a friend. He was always willing to go that extra mile."
Anderson had just being hired for a Christian group called Teen Mania. Rockett said she wasn't surprised when she heard Anderson had saved a life with little regard for his own. Rockett’s classmate, Brooke Ninowski, created a documentary more than a year ago about Anderson’s life for a class assignment. In the film, Anderson spoke of feeling "fearless" because he has God’s help.
“That's one of the only comforting thoughts that he knew before he died, that he had a relationship with God," said Rockett.
Anderson served in Iraq before attending Oral Roberts University, where Luce also attended and graduated from last year with a degree in theology.
The five were flying to an "Acquire the Fire" Christian rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It was the last of 33 such events this year held across the U.S. by Teen Mania Ministries, which was founded 25 years ago by Ron Luce, with the goal of reaching out to troubled youths. The ministry is based in Garden Valley, Texas, where the Luce family lives.
Click for more from Fox 23 Tulsa
<bot>: In a final act of heroism, Marine Austin Anderson saved the life of friend Hannah Luce after their plane crashed over Kansas by pulling her to safety from the fiery wreck.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012051519id_/http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/14/marine-commits-final-act-valor-saving-friend-from-plane-wreck/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Q. Were you in leadership roles when you were a kid?
A. Well, I have three sisters, and at the largest expanse weâre seven years apart. I was the oldest, and any time a decision had to be made, they looked to me.
I was elected to the student government, and I did it because I wanted to make things happen. I would listen to what people in my class wanted, and I would go to meetings with administrators and say, âThe girls want a bus to go to the soccer match,â or whatever. In my senior year, I was elected school president, and it was based on my reputation of not being afraid to tell them what we needed or what we wanted. It was almost as if I was on a debate team. Iâd say: âHereâs why we want to do it, hereâs how you would do it, hereâs how it would impact everyone. Why canât we do it?â Sometimes they had to agree.
What about your parentsâ influence?
Itâs partially their personality, but also from growing up in the Bronx. My parents were of Italian descent, and we were a blue-collar, hard-working family. The piece that is very Bronx-like is street smarts: how to be aware of things, how to read body language, how to look around at all times so you knew what was happening.
And those would be explicit discussions?
Yes. Theyâd say: âDid you see the way they looked at you? They were nodding their head, but you could tell by watching their eyebrows that they really didnât like your idea.â And my parents were extremely straightforward. So when youâve got something on your mind, tell it to me straight. Donât sugarcoat it. Tell me what youâve got to say and weâll get there faster.
What was your first management role?
I was about 26 and oversaw a group in media planning. The biggest challenge was being the same age or younger than my counterparts, and then getting the nod to be in a management position.
So what was your best strategy for handling that?
The thing that worked most often for me was making sure people got credit for their work, so they felt like they had a voice and a hand in creating the material. That got me a lot of credit with the team. That works, and it still works.
Were there key leadership lessons youâve learned from mentors over the years?
Donny Deutsch taught me a lot about giving direct, sometimes negative, feedback. He might say, âThis doesnât make any sense at all,â but it was never a judgment on your skills or your intellect. Itâs just a reaction to work you put in front of him. Then he would come by two minutes later and ask about something else: âCan I ask your advice? What do you think I should do about this?â So heâd give you a big reinforcement that he didnât think any less of you than he did five minutes ago; itâs just that he didnât like what you put in front of him. That was a great lesson, because having people believe that you respect their opinion is really important.
Any key moments in your evolution as a leader?
There was a very clean break for me at a certain point â the transition from being part of the team and friend to everyone, to being the leader of the team. There was a very specific point when I had to separate myself from socializing with everyone so that I could make important decisions that people didnât necessarily agree with, and maybe even think they didnât have to follow. There was a time when I had to say: âNo, thatâs not what weâre doing. Weâre going to do it this way. If itâs a mistake, weâll make a new decision, but we have to have one decision, and we all have to march and hold hands together.â
Tell me about the culture you try to foster.
One of the things that attracted me to here is that there are really no politics. People say: âWeâre front-stabbers, not back-stabbers.â That works really well for us, because when you have a problem with someone you just say: âLook, this is the issue I have. I can get past it, but what are you going to do to get past it?â It just puts everything on the table, and makes it so much easier to get your work done.
The first thing I need to know is, can they get the job done? Iâll listen to how they tell me the stories about what they consider their best accomplishments. Iâll ask what they like to do and donât like to do in their jobs, because I want to understand what would make them happy in their jobs. Iâll ask them what they want to be doing in five years. I look for people who want to grow, who have a vision for something that theyâre interested in implementing. I also want to hear stories of how people manage. So Iâll say, âTell me about a confrontation you had to have with someone you worked with and how you resolved it.â
What behaviors at work do you have a particularly low tolerance for?
When someoneâs not listening. They might ask a question that makes it obvious that they werenât really listening to what was just said. Thatâs like nails on a chalkboard to me, because what it says to the people in the room is either, âI donât care what you just said,â or, âI disagree but Iâm not going to tell you I disagree, so Iâm just going to ask you a question that will make you say it again.â When someone asks a question that proves they werenât listening, you can see the reaction on everyoneâs face.
The other thing is a little more subtle, but itâs not having the radar to look around and read peopleâs reactions to whatâs going on in a room. Thereâs a real skill and an art to reading the room, and it drives me crazy when people are not present. You have to be present.
<bot>: The C.E.O. of the advertising agency in New York says itâs always important to be straightforward with employees. âIt just puts everything on the table,â she says.
<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://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/business/val-difebo-of-deutsch-ny-on-being-direct.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: A company dubbed the "Walmart of Weed" is putting down roots in America's capital city, sprouting further debate on marijuana — medical or otherwise.
Just a few miles from the White House and federal buildings, a company that candidly caters to medical marijuana growers is opening up its first outlet on the East Coast. The opening of the weGrow store on Friday in Washington coincides with the first concrete step in implementing a city law allowing residents with certain medical conditions to purchase pot.
Like suppliers of picks and axes during the gold rush, weGrow sees itself providing the necessary tools to pioneers of a "green rush," which some project could reach nearly $9 billion within the next five years. Admittedly smaller than a big box store, weGrow is not unlike a typical retailer in mainstream America, with towering shelves of plant food and vitamins, ventilation and lighting systems. Along with garden products, it offers how-to classes, books and magazines on growing medical marijuana.
"The more that businesses start to push the envelope by showing that this is a legitimate industry, the further we're going to be able to go in changing people's minds," said weGrow founder Dhar Mann.
Although federal law outlaws the cultivation, sale or use of marijuana, 16 states and the District of Columbia have legalized its medical use to treat a wide range of issues from anxiety and back pain to HIV/AIDS and cancer-related ailments. Fourteen states also have some kind of marijuana decriminalization law, removing or lowering penalties for possession.
Nearly 7% of Americans, or 17.4 million people, said they used marijuana in 2010, up from 5.8%, or 14.4 million, in 2007, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. A Gallup poll last year found a record-high of 50% of Americans saying that marijuana should be made legal, and 70% support medical uses for pot.
Marijuana advocates also tout revenue benefits, as well as cost and efficiency savings for not prosecuting or jailing people for pot.
But a recent push from the federal government to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries has led several states to delay or curtail their dispensary programs for fear of prosecution. It means some medical marijuana users may seek to grow their own— paving the way for companies like California-based weGrow to open a budding number of locations across the country to help legal users and larger cultivators grow their own pot plants.
WeGrow doesn't sell pot or seeds to grow it. The store, however, makes no secret that its products and services help cultivators grow their own plants for personal use or for sale at dispensaries. Selling hydroponic and other indoor growing equipment is legal, but because those products are used to cultivate a plant deemed illegal under federal law the industry has tried to keep a low profile.
"For the longest time, it's been a don't ask, don't tell industry," Mann said. "Most people still want to hide behind that faade."
Mann, who opened the first store in Sacramento last year, said he started his venture after he was kicked out of a mom and pop hydroponics store in Berkeley, Calif., just for mentioning marijuana. WeGrow has since opened a location in Phoenix and also will open stores in San Jose and Flagstaff, Arizona, in the near future. The company has franchisees in New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and plans to expand into Oregon, Washington state and Michigan.
The frankness of the business comes as public attitudes toward marijuana use and legalization in the U.S. transform. But federal pressure on customers means companies catering to the marijuana industry could take a hit — in their wallets and with jail time.
"There's a whole host of risks associated with investing and opening up shop here," said Jason Klein, a D.C. attorney who represents medical marijuana operators. "These entrepreneurs see themselves as doing yeoman's work, putting themselves in personal risk … to get medicine to the sick people who deserve it."
D.C. officials on Friday are set to announce those eligible to apply for permits to grow and sell medical marijuana to dispensaries under the district's 2010 law. Applicants must sign a statement saying they understand a license doesn't authorize them to break federal law.
"They do so at their own peril because I can't imagine that the federal government is going to allow marijuana selling for any purpose right in their backyard," said Kevin Sabet, a former senior adviser to the president's drug czar and an assistant professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida.
"Whether it's D.C. or all the way out in California, the government's been pretty clear that medical marijuana doesn't pass the giggle test."
Sabet said the idea of dispensaries trying to be passed off as a medical establishment is a joke, adding that the grow store will be the first in a series events where people are going to try to "make big money off an illegal drug."
The national medical marijuana market was estimated to be worth $1.7 billion in 2011 and is projected to reach $8.9 billion within five years, according to an economic analysis done for the American Cannabis Research Institute. The study also says that nearly 25 million Americans are potentially eligible to use medical marijuana based on current state laws.
"There's great potential for the industry across the country," said Steve Fox, a spokesman for the National Cannabis Industry Association, a D.C.-based trade group representing marijuana-related businesses. He said support for the businesses has emerged in states like California, Colorado and Washington state. "They are showing that just like any other industry, there's a demand for a product and these businesses are sprouting up to address the need."
The issue of marijuana in the nation's capital isn't new. A public referendum to legalize medical marijuana overwhelmingly passed in the late 1990s but Congress blocked it from taking effect for years. Allowing the city's latest move on medical marijuana use could also indicate an attitude shift on a federal level.
"The political winds on a federal level really affect our ability to get things done on a local level," said Brendan Williams-Kief, spokesman for D.C. councilmember David A. Catania, who co-sponsored the medical marijuana legislation. "When the (legislation) was passed, it happened at a time when there was a Congress that was less-inclined to exert their will on the District. … But they're always up there on the Hill looking down."
Klein believes that, despite being next door to Congress, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Justice, the D.C. medical marijuana program will avoid the ire of the federal government because it was crafted to tightly control the industry.
"It's the sort of thing the feds will probably just look the other way elsewhere, but given the fact that it's right under their noses, is going to really be unique conundrum," Klein said. "I'm really looking forward to getting a couple of Congresspeople in a cab and caravaning them over to a dispensary … so that they can see that this is not the danger that they imagine it might be."
For Alex Wong, the franchisee of the D.C. weGrow store, his involvement in the industry is both personal and professional. The mid-40s entrepreneur was drawn to the business after seeing the firsthand effects of his mother's colon cancer and learning that medical marijuana might have made her more comfortable during treatment.
"It is a viable medicine," said the. "All I can do is use my small business expertise to lend a hand in this movement."
Rafael Lemaitre, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, issued a statement saying science and research — not politics — should drive the approval process for medicine, and to date the "smoked form of marijuana has not met the modern standard" established by the Food and Drug Administration.
"Chronically ill and suffering patients deserve access to modern medicine that is proven to be effective and safe," Lemaitre said. "We ardently support continued research into medical uses for the components of marijuana and will continue to do so."
Mann, however, says medical marijuana cultivation and distribution is going to happen with or without federal government approval.
"Regardless of how rigorously they want to enforce intervention, it's not going to stop the industry," Mann said.
<bot>: Blocks from the White House, company that caters to medical marijuana growers sets up first outlet on East Coast.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012032919id_/http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/story/2012-03-29/marijuana-store-opens-dc/53861352/1
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: 8/20/2010 6:05 PM PDT by TMZ Staff
TMZ has learned ... Oksana Grigorieva is currently attending funeral services for a close friend of hers ... a friend who also happened to babysit for Oksana and Mel Gibson's daughter Lucia ... and may have had some critical information about Mel. As we previously reported, the babysitter had claimed that she was at Mel's home on January 6th -- and allegedly heard the actor go crazy while Oksana was at her son's basketball game. The woman -- who died after battling cancer -- claimed to have heard part of the explosive argument between Mel and Oksana later that day, but claims she left before any alleged blows were struck. And ... we're told the babysitter never gave a sworn statement to police or the lawyers regarding the incident ... because she claimed she was sick and had other things on her mind.
Tags: Oksana Grigorieva, Mel Gibson, Celebrity Justice, Developing Stories
<bot>: TMZ has learned ... Oksana Grigorieva is currently attending funeral services for a close friend of hers ... a friend who also happened to babysit…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010082619id_/http://www.tmz.com/2010/08/20/oksana-grigorieva-babysitter-funeral-services-mel-gibson-lucia/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: A jetliner pitched dangerously from side to side before making a miraculous landing during a record-breaking storm in the Netherlands
The harrowing touchdown was caught on video at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport as the pilot struggled for control.
The Boeing 777 slid out of the sky as gusting winds bowed nearby trees, the stunning footage showed.
The KLM Asia flight narrowly escaped catastrophe as the wings rolled perilously close the runway before the skillful pilot righted the aircraft and brought it down intact.
Saturday’s storm was the worst ever recorded in July in the Netherlands with wind speeds of 75 mph.
The country’s meteorological service issued a “Code Red” warning, and dozens of flights were delayed at Schiphol.
One person was killed when a wind-blown tree crashed down on top of his car.
Falling trees also blocked numerous roadways, and trains stopped running at Amsterdam Central Station.
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? SEE THE VIDEO HERE.
<bot>: The KLM Asia flight narrowly escaped catastrophe as the skillful pilot righted the aircraft just in time and brought it down intact.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015072819id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/watch-jet-harrowing-landing-powerful-amsterdam-storm-article-1.2305948
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WILLIAMS, Calif. — Four dusty miles off State Route 20, around a curve on a dirt road once used by stagecoaches, a scattering of barns and dilapidated buildings sits hidden among rolling hills speckled with oak trees. There is no electricity or cell service. There is a compact outhouse and a redwood cabin just big enough to hold one air mattress. There is no other sign of civilization for miles.
This is Rancho Venada, and for all its isolation and ostensible inhospitality, it is the place that this state’s governor, Jerry Brown, is gravitating to as he approaches the end of his 50-year career in politics. These 2,514 wind-swept acres have been owned by the Brown family for almost 150 years, since the governor’s great-grandfather August Schuckman, a German immigrant, traveled to central California on a wagon train.
For the past year, Mr. Brown, 77, and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, have adopted this land as something of a mission. They sleep in the tiny cabin many weekends, rebuilding barns piled with garbage and pockmarked with bullet holes, organizing family reunions and laying plans to create a library here documenting the history of the ranch and this politically storied family. They may even live here after his term ends in 2019.
“Nobody likes this place except me,” Mr. Brown said recently.
His father, Edmund G. Brown, who was California’s governor from 1959 to 1967 — and whose mother, Ida, was born here — took his son to the ranch just once.
“My father didn’t like it,” Mr. Brown said. “What’s here? There’s no swimming pool, no basketball court. There are rattlesnakes and wild boar, and it’s 110 degrees. In the middle of nowhere. Wind gusts blowing. Dust getting in your mouth. It’s not for the faint of heart.”
Mr. Brown’s interest in the property grew deep enough that he asked a state official — one of his appointees — to research the mining and oil drilling history of the land, The Associated Press reported last month, prompting accusations of impropriety. The official who conducted the review has since resigned, although he said the decision was not related to the governor’s request, and another state employee filed a whistle-blower’s complaint for being ordered to do the work.
“What’s so special about Jerry Brown’s ranch?” asked the headline of a Los Angeles Times editorial that questioned Mr. Brown’s drawing on government resources for personal needs. Mr. Brown defended the request, saying he was simply seeking publicly available information, as any citizen is entitled to do.
“I said, ‘Hey, what’s out there?’ ” Mr. Brown said. “They always try to overdo it for the governor. I have to be very careful what I ask for. Bureaucrats don’t own public information — the people do. And the governor, as one of the people, gets to look at it, too.”
It turned out that the land had little potential for fracking or oil drilling — a conclusion that perhaps mirrors how bleak many people find the place.
Mr. Brown spoke as he offered the first extensive tour of this property to a reporter. The visit came as California began to contemplate a post-Brown era, when a governor central to shaping this state’s national identity leaves the stage. Mr. Brown served two stints in the office that were separated by decades, navigating and personifying the ever-changing political and ethnic currents here.
His retirement may prove just as unusual as his time in office, as after all these years in the brightest of spotlights, Mr. Brown looks to a place that could hardly be farther off the grid.
Mr. Brown has a history of unconventional housing choices. He spent three years studying to be a Jesuit in the enforced silence of a seminary. When he first became governor, in 1975, he slept on a mattress in a Sacramento apartment. When he was elected to a second tour as governor in 2010, he and Ms. Gust Brown, who do not have children, opted to live in a loft a few blocks from the Capitol. They recently moved to the newly renovated governor’s mansion.
At least the governor’s mansion is on a paved road. The town closest to Rancho Venada, Williams, is 12 miles away; Sacramento is an hour’s drive south. Cattle graze on the hills here — though in the midst of the state’s drought, there is not much grass for them.
The outhouse is a 200-foot walk from the cabin, which replaced a tent where Mr. Brown slept when he started coming here. “I can definitely touch the walls lying on the bed,” he said. On winter nights, there is not much to warm the cabin. “Just each other,” Mr. Brown said, gesturing to his wife, “and the two dogs.”
And then there are the rattlesnakes.
“I was sitting out there in the chair and reading,” Mr. Brown said, pointing to the front of their cabin, and recalling the time when Ms. Gust Brown returned from a hike with their corgis. She froze, she said, picking up the story, at the sight of a six-foot rattler sunning itself below where Mr. Brown was sitting.
“There’s a rattlesnake!” she yelled as Mr. Brown tipped back in his seat.
The encounter was memorable. “I don’t like rattlesnakes,” the governor said.
He passes his weekends here doing — well, not much. “They spend a lot of time outside,” said Walt Seaver, a farmer who is one of Mr. Brown’s cousins. “I went up there, and he was sitting on a stump reading a book. I asked him what he was reading. It was like Greek mythology.”
“They just think it’s nirvana when they get up there,” Mr. Seaver said. “To me, it’s just an old desolate hill.”
On a recent Sunday morning, Mr. Brown, wearing the black sweatshirt he had slept in the night before, jumped into his Kawasaki off-road vehicle and took the reporter on a two-hour tour of Rancho Venada, roaring up steep hills and across ravines parched by the drought. “Whoops!” he exclaimed when the vehicle plunged into an unseen gully before lurching up on to flatter land.
Ms. Gust Brown declined to come along. “You are taking your life in your hands,” she said.
Mr. Brown and his sister, Kathleen Brown, 70, have both grown increasingly fascinated by their ancestry. Mr. Brown mentioned Mr. Schuckman’s voyage in his 2011 inauguration speech and has brought up his great-grandfather’s journey several times in interviews. In his office in Sacramento, Mr. Brown keeps a photo of his great-grandfather herding sheep.
Over the past year, Mr. Brown has been the cheerleader for family reunions, where more than 100 far-flung cousins have gathered around picnic tables to examine an eight-foot-long document of the family tree that includes two Democratic governors of California.
“He was a little overwhelmed when we all showed up,” said Bobbie Jo Seaver, a cousin and Walt’s mother.
Steven Bohlen, who was the head of the state oil and gas division and the official Mr. Brown called for help in evaluating the property, has returned to his previous employer, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Mr. Bohlen said he had left his state job because he had been overwhelmed by “all the negative press and all the negative state legislative work” that accompanied his agency’s efforts on fracking and other oil and gas issues.
“We do this for the public all the time,” he said of the governor’s request.
Mr. Brown said he intended to display documents he had collected from his request — which included a single-page summary about finding no evidence of significant oil or gas wells — in the library he plans to establish. “They give you the old well records: I want to put those behind a glass case,” he said.
Kathleen Brown said her brother was drawn to the ranch because he “finds this a place where he can be contemplative and at peace, and not have distractions.”
Gazing across his ranch at the fluttering flags of California and the surrounding Colusa County, Mr. Brown seemed to take contrarian pleasure in the notion that he could find peace in a place others find forbidding.
“You know what I like?” Mr. Brown asked. “You get up in the middle of the night, the stars are very bright, the moon shining on the barn. It makes for a good balance between the intensity of the political and the serenity of the land.”
<bot>: “Nobody likes the place but me,” Governor Brown said of a property that his family has owned for almost 150 years — and that might be his retirement home.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015122819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/us/jerry-brown-california-ranch.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Getting access to an experimental treatment for the deadly Ebola virus seems to depend entirely on who you know.
If you work for a charity run by the son of a famous U.S. evangelist, with the resources to fly a few precious vials of experimental vaccine to your bedside, you can get it.
But a few weeks ago, back when it was mostly African villagers who were dying of Ebola, the question was asked in several thoughtful medical articles: "Is it time to consider using experimental treatments not yet tested on humans?"
The consensus then was no, it's too risky and not ethical.
But then two Americans, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, became infected, and the theoretical concerns were swept aside as an "experimental serum" was secured in a sequence of events that unfolded like a Hollywood movie.
Writebol is a Christian missionary working in Liberia and Brantly is a doctor with the American charity, Samaritan's Purse, which is run by Franklin Graham (son of evangelist Billy Graham) and which is helping run an Ebola treatment centre in the country.
Both Writebol and Brantly became infected around July 22, and soon after someone from Samaritan's Purse began asking about experimental drugs.
According to a statement from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which denied any official role in all of this, someone from the Centers for Disease Control, who happened to be on the ground in Liberia, told Samaritan's Purse to talk to a scientist from the NIH, who was also in Liberia.
The scientist, acting in unofficial capacity, gave the charity the name of a company in the U.S. that was making an anti-Ebola antibody cocktail in tobacco plants.
This is where the story gets murky. No one will confirm exactly what happened next.
Nancy Writebol, a U.S. missionary, is shown here with children in Liberia in October 2013. Writebol is one of two Americans working for a missionary group in Liberia that have been diagnosed with Ebola. (AP Photo/Courtesy Jeremy Writebol)
What we do know is that, by the following Thursday, three vials of this cocktail were somehow secured.
Did Samaritan's Purse get FDA approval to fly it out of the country? The U.S. Food and Drugs Administration won't say.
Who flew it there? The charity won't provide any information. Did Samaritan's Purse officials get approval by Liberia to use it? No one seems to have asked the Liberian health officials, the Wall Street Journal reported
The first word about this "experimental serum" came in a single sentence in a short press release from Samaritan's Purse the day after it arrived:
"Yesterday, an experimental serum arrived in the country, but there was only enough for one person. Dr. Brantly asked that it be given to Nancy Writebol," said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan's Purse.
This unconfirmed story about Dr. Brantly's selflessness was instantly and breathlessly repeated by dozens of major media outlets. But it was several days before reporters were given an answer to the question: "What experimental serum?"
When I called initially to ask, Samaritan's Purse refused to say more.
Days later, a CNN report suggested that the Samaritan's Purse press release wasn't quite true. There were three vials of this mystery serum, not one, according to CNN.
Dr. Brantly, the report said, offered the first dose to his sick colleague, but then, after taking a turn for the worse, asked for it back.
Again, this is CNN's version, also unconfirmed. The charity will only say "we can confirm he did get the serum over there."
This is not to question the actions or motivations of a man fighting for his life. Or even those of an organization with no apparent qualms about releasing a tiny shred of a misleading story and watching it spread.
But to point out that an enormous ethical fissure has now been opened.
Dr. Kent Brantly and his wife, Amber, are shown in an undated photo provided by Samaritan's Purse, the Christian charity helping run an Ebola treatment centre in Liberia. Brantly was the first person infected with Ebola to be brought to the U.S. on Saturday and is being treated with an experimental serum. (Samaritan's Purse / Associated Press)
A few vials of a precious experimental elixir was flown to Liberia and given to two Americans. What about everyone else?
Now Liberians — at the centre of an Ebola epidemic in central West Africa that has killed over 900 people — are reported to be begging their health ministry for the same access.
Three prominent British researchers have said Africans deserve the same privileged access to this kind of experimental drug. And the World Health Organization will meet next week to consider what to do now.
Though when it comes to this particular treatment, the question might be moot.
There were only a few handfuls of the serum. It's not clear how fast those that make it can produce more. The companies involved are not returning phone calls.
When it comes to this current epidemic, vaccines are another non-starter.
There is no way to quickly make the many thousands of doses that would be needed.
U.S. health officials have ordered that vaccine development be ramped up, but the doses won't be available until sometime next year.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of doses of another experimental drug sitting on a shelf, and the company is prepared to give it away but can't find any takers.
The Canadian scientist who developed it is waiting for an email from the president of Sierra Leone. It seems the ability even to offer an experimental serum also depends on who you know.
In Toronto, Eleanor Fish, an immunologist and senior scientist at the University Health Network, has been trying to find someone who will listen.
Finally she contacted the executive assistant to the president of Sierra Leone and, after asking for her credentials, he said they would get back to her.
What she's offering is a treatment that has been tried in humans, unlike the one given to Brantly and Writebol. It is just that it hasn't been used against the Ebola virus.
The drug is a synthetic version of interferon, a molecule the body makes to fight viruses.
Ebola is one of the viruses that has evolved a way to shut off the body's interferon production. SARS was another.
Late in the 2003 SARS outbreak, Canadian researchers scrambled to launch a clinical trial to use this synthetic interferon on people with SARS.
They published the results in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the WHO circulated the protocol so it could be used in a future SARS outbreak.
Will it work against Ebola? Dr. Fish doesn't know. She says the drug might help reduce the amount of virus in a patient's system, which could help that person successfully fight off the infection.
No one knows if the other experimental treatment will work either.
The synthetic interferon has been tested against Ebola in guinea pigs and mice. And there is inventory, up to 50,000 expensive doses that will expire in March.
The company that now owns the inventory says it is prepared to give it to whichever African country can use it. That's if anyone answers Dr. Fish's email.
<bot>: It was first seen as a heroic, good-news story when two U.S. aid workers, with links to a high-profile evangelical charity, were back-channelled experimental drugs to combat the deadly Ebola virus. But now officials are asking, where are the drugs for Africans?
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014080719id_/http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/ebola-outbreak-experimental-treatment-sparks-who-you-know-debate-1.2729458
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Your browser, Internet Explorer 8 or below, is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites.
<bot>: Nancy Writebol recovered from Ebola after being infected in Liberia
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014090319id_/http://time.com/3264225/ebola-survivor-nancy-writebol/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Dozens of animals awaiting adoption can rest a little easier after a nonprofit gifted city shelters $27,000 worth of specially designed beds.
MEET THE NEW DOGS AND CATS UP FOR ADOPTION AT THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
Roughly 200 Kuranda beds for dogs and cats were delivered to Animal Care Centers of NYC East Harlem shelter compliments of the animal advocacy group Rock & Rawhide. A second shipment is expected to be delivered in the spring.
“The whole point is to provide items like this to shelters in order to help them in their cause,” said Rock & Rawhide’s Sean Patrick Hillman. “That way they can focus the money on adoption outreach.”
The chewproof, cot-style beds boast aluminum frames that “stand up to the toughest dogs, indoor or out.”
<bot>: A nonprofit gifted city animal shelters $27,000 worth of specially designed beds.
<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.nydailynews.com/new-york/city-animal-shelters-receive-specially-designed-beds-article-1.2562680
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Thirteen years after it first won our hearts, Love Actually remains a holiday film staple.
Director Richard Curtis made it a point to cast both up-and-coming performers and blockbuster-seasoned talent in the London-centric movie. So, while established actors like Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Colin Firth made the A-list long before the film’s 2003 release, a handful of the ensemble cast has Love Actually to thank for helping them ascend the ranks of the Hollywood elite.
Check out the video above to see what the Christmas classic’s breakout stars, including January Jones and Chiwetel Ejiofor, have been up to since teaching us all about the complexities of love — and the importance of bringing tissues to the theater.
<bot>: See what the breakout stars of the holiday favorite have been up to in the 13 years since the film’s release
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20161230124857id_/http://people.com/movies/cast-of-love-actually-where-are-they-now/cm.peo/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Eivind Natvig began his career far away from his homeland of Norway. He traveled to the east, to capture the locales of Nepal, India and Bangladesh. But after a while, he decided to return to Norway and focus on “ordinary life.” For the last few years, Natvig has trained his lens on the everyday goings-on of his fellow Norwegians. But to say that his photographs are ordinary would be wrong. His ruminations on life in his native land are a poetic testament to how ordinary life can actually be very profound and astonishing.
Natvig’s latest project, “Come for all is now ready,” catapulted him into the northernmost region of Norway, just south of the Arctic Circle and consisting of thousands of islands. There he mingled with the people of the various coastal towns of Nordland, hanging out with people like the priest Anders Roslan who has dedicated his life to serving these isolated communities. Through his interactions, Eivind has given us insights into a coastal way of life in Norway that isn’t often seen and is disappearing. Although Eivind likes to say that he is just focusing on ordinary life and that “the normal is more than enough for me,” the end result is anything but ordinary.
How palm oil cultivation in Borneo is threatening the ecosystem everywhere
Stunning photos from Tibetan Buddhists’ Bliss Dharma Assembly
Legendary photographer Ansel Adams visited a Japanese internment camp in 1943, here’s what he saw
Kenneth Dickerman is a photo editor at The Washington Post.
<bot>: Photographer Eivind Natvig gives us a glimpse into a coastal way of life in Norway that isn’t often seen and is disappearing.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015120419id_/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2015/12/02/these-photos-show-a-disappearing-way-of-life-in-far-north-norway/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Michael Strahan, with his weekly gig on “Fox NFL Sunday,” is one of dozens of football players who have found a welcoming home on sports programming — either as commentators or game analysts — once their gridiron careers have come to an end. These days, stars like Dan Marino, Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason, and even journeymen like Tim Hasselbeck and Rich Gannon, can be found on the air talking about the sport they once played. (Though perhaps none made the transition from player to commentator more memorably, or did it better, than Frank Gifford and “Dandy” Don Meredith when they were on “Monday Night Football” in the 1970s and ‘80s.)
But the list of former players who, like Mr. Strahan, have branched out into show business — and did so successfully — is not quite as long. Here are a few of the more notable examples.
Jim Brown One of the few players to retire at the height of his career, the Hall of Fame running back walked away from football in 1966 at age 29 to focus on a film career. Mr. Brown found some success as an actor, delivering well-received performances in such films as “The Dirty Dozen,” “Ice Station Zebra” and “100 Rifles” (including an interracial romance scene, then controversial, with Raquel Welch), before moving on to a series of blaxploitation films in the 1970s. He also appeared nude in Playgirl in 1974.
Joe Namath After winning the Super Bowl with the New York Jets in 1969, Broadway Joe was an instant celebrity, something he tried to cash in on even before his playing days were over, most notably by taking a starring role opposite Ann-Margret in “C. C. and Company.” (“A truly awful biker film,” one critic said.) Other films like “Norwood” and “The Last Rebel” also failed to establish him as a credible actor. But Namath seemed undeterred by the lack of praise from either critics or audiences, dabbling in dinner theater around the country and even appearing as Joe Hardy in a production of “Damn Yankees” at the Jones Beach Theater on Long Island in 1981.
Terry Bradshaw The winner of four Super Bowls — still a record for an N.F.L. quarterback — the former Pittsburgh Steeler went on to have a respectable acting career in the 1970s and ‘80s, taking supporting roles in the Burt Reynolds films “Hooper,” “Cannonball Run” and “Smokey and the Bandit II.” More recently, he starred with Kathy Bates as Matthew McConaughey’s parents in “Failure to Launch,” a film that contained a memorable — if “eye-searing” counts as memorable — nude scene by the aging Mr. Bradshaw. He is also a co-host of “Fox NFL Sunday” with Mr. Strahan.
Alex Karras The former All-Pro defensive lineman for the Detroit Lions from 1958-70 might have been one of the few players who actually found greater fame after his playing days were over. Mr. Karras, who died last year at age 77, made his movie debut in 1968, playing himself in the film version of the George Plimpton book “Paper Lion.” Other film credits included “Porky’s,” “Against All Odds” and “Victor/Victoria.” But he is probably best known for his starring role on the sitcom “Webster” from 1983 to 1989, in which he played a retired football player who takes in a black boy (Emmanuel Lewis), the orphaned young son of a former teammate.
Merlin Olsen The star former Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle from 1962-76 was another player who found post-football fame on the small screen, most notably on the Michael Landon series “Little House on the Prairie,” playing the bearded lumberman Jonathan Garvey for several seasons. He followed up that with a starring role in his own series, “Father Murphy,” which ran on NBC from 1981 to 1983. Mr. Olsen died in 2010 at the age of 69.
<bot>: Dozens of former football players have found a welcoming home on sports programming, but the list of those who have branched out into show business is not quite as long.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013020319id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/fashion/former-nfl-players-move-into-show-business.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: After praising the "Harry Potter" books in 2001, author Connie Neal said that she opened her inbox to see death threats scattered among the reactions from fellow Christians. The one time the California-based writer found her book, "What's a Christian Got to Do with Harry Potter?," at a Christian bookstore, it was on the occult/New Age shelf.
In its early years, "Harry Potter" was a litmus test of orthodoxy for some conservative Christians, who expressed concern over its portrayal of witchcraft. A Christian lawyer sued a public library for encouraging young readers to check out the series. Texas Pastor John Hagee called the books a "precursor to witchcraft." In 2005 a Canadian website published a letter opposing the books written by Pope Benedict XVI when he was Cardinal Ratzinger. (In 2009, the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano published a favorable review, seeming to reverse course on the series.)
The hysteria has largely died down, and not many religious leaders asked their flocks to avoid the final movie, which opens today. Potter observers cite a few possible reasons for the waning concern, including a natural desire to move on to other entertainment issues, but also an interest in the themes that unfolded.
Christians today are certainly not universally enchanted by the series. Over time, however, more readers have begun to express praise for its honest depiction of fear, loneliness and sacrifice as Harry faces the evil wizard Lord Voldemort. Many Christians have cheered the portrayals of loyalty, courage and love, as the main character repeatedly risks his life.
"These books are not written for people who have a mechanical faith," says John Granger, author of "Looking for God in Harry Potter." "For Christians who are consumed with moral elements and symbolism, Potter mania was ironic beyond words." Spoiler detail about the movie aside, the idea that sacrificial love conquers power, including magical power, is strongly suggested in the final book.
"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, a member of the Church of Scotland that has Presbyterian roots, initially avoided talking explicitly about her faith. "To me, the religious parallels have always been obvious," Ms. Rowling said in 2007. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it, because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."
Ms. Rowling is hardly the first author to face misunderstanding from a religious audience. Before C.S. Lewis became well known as a Christian, he noted that most British reviewers missed the underlying theology in his science fiction "Space" trilogy. Christian writer Madeleine L'Engle was criticized by some for the magic elements in "A Wrinkle in Time." On the other hand, J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" appeared to escape similar scrutiny despite his characters' use of magic.
Since the seventh Potter book came out in 2007, Ms. Rowling—who acknowledged the influence of Tolkien and Lewis on her work—has drawn more explicit religious parallels. She suggested that the two Bible verses found on tombstones in the final book almost epitomized the whole series: "And the last enemy that shall be defeated is death" and "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
The author put a little damper on some enthusiasm when she said that she always thought of one of her main characters, Albus Dumbledore, as gay (after which Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network called for a ban on the books.) And she did distance herself somewhat from C.S. Lewis when she told Time magazine in 2007 that "I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity."
Christians are still somewhat divided on "Harry Potter," with lingering concerns. "We're not monolithic on this," says Bob Waliszewski, a media specialist for Focus on the Family. "The major issue for the faith community is all packed in that simple word: witchcraft."
Many cite biblical passages, such as Deuteronomy 18:10-11, that warn against witchcraft and sorcery. "But the literary witchcraft of the Harry Potter series has almost no resemblance to the I-am-God mumbo jumbo of Wiccan circles," Christianity Today said in a 2000 editorial.
Mr. Waliszewski suggests that Christian families whose children express interest in the books use them as a teachable moment. "When you see self-sacrifice, heroism, the strong power of friendship, applaud it," he said. "I am more concerned about non-Christians reading the books because I do think it puts witchcraft in a light that is more favorable and positive than it deserves biblically."
Ms. Neal, for her part, is not worried about anyone reading the books. Rather than being a means for corrupting the youth with witchcraft and the like, she says, "The Harry Potter phenomenon was the greatest evangelistic opportunity that the church has missed."
Ms. Bailey is online editor for Christianity Today.
<bot>: In The Wall Street Journal's Houses of Worship column, Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes that as the final movie opens, many ex-doubters now see the boy wizard as a good egg.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011071619id_/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303812104576441641674217076.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: British Airways CEO Willie Walsh said the company will still try to operate as many flights as possible.
London, England (CNN) -- British Airways was operating roughly half its flights Saturday despite a planned three-day strike by cabin crew that started at midnight Friday.
But the airline said Saturday that it had gotten "off to a good start," with more cabin crew reporting for work at London airports and crossing the picket lines than expected.
"Cabin crew are reporting as normal at Gatwick and the numbers reporting at Heathrow are above the levels we need to operate our published schedule," BA said in a statement.
An airline consultant said that, if that continues, BA may be able to reach its goal of flying 65 percent of its flights during the strike.
"Things are going pretty smoothly," consultant Jamie Bowden told CNN. "What the union [is] going to hope is that things get more complicated as the week goes on, but British Airways, I think, will get a lot of confidence if the day goes smoothly."
The union representing the striking cabin crew also delivered a positive assessment.
"The strike is strong," said Ciaran Naidoo, a spokesman for the Unite union. "There has been an excellent turnout."
A statement on the BA Web site late Saturday said the airline is reinstating previously canceled flights because of the high number of crew members reporting to work.
Are you caught up in strike?
But Unite said that 80 percent of cabin crew members had not shown up for work.
The reinstatement included all flights to and from London City, long-haul flights to and from London Gatwick and all flights operated by the airline's subsidiary, franchise, alliance and codeshare partners.
The statement said the airline is "planning to operate 60 percent of flights."
Teams of customer and crew support agents flocked Saturday morning to a terminal at Heathrow airport to try to help passengers and workers amid the confusion of the strike.
A captain and crew under contract to British Airways from Astraeus Airlines arrived at 6 a.m. and appeared confused about where to go. They walked the length of the terminal and were helped by customer support, but the captain still had to go to the assistance desk for directions.
Using such contract crews is one way BA hopes to minimize the strike's impact.
BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh has said the airline will be leasing aircraft and using replacement workers to achieve his goal of completing 65 percent of scheduled flights.
As of Saturday morning, 161 of BA's 347 flights at London's Heathrow, Gatwick, and City airports had been canceled. That means the airline was only able to operate about 53.7 percent of its flights out of London Saturday, short of Walsh's goal.
Members of the Unite Union, which represents most of BA's 15,000 cabin crew, planned to hold a rally Saturday near Heathrow in support of striking workers.
"These Unite members understand the pressures the recession places on the company," Unite said in a statement. "But they believe BA's future and 40,000 jobs depend on it staying a premier airline."
The two sides have been at odds for more than a year over changes BA wants to make to cabin crew pay and work practices.
British Airways says the changes will save the company more than 60 million pounds ($90 million) a year. But Unite has said the plans, which call for longer working hours and a cut in crew staffing levels, will damage customer service and the BA brand.
Walsh and the joint general secretary of Unite, Tony Woodley, met late into the night Thursday and again Friday, but failed to reach a compromise to avoid the strikes.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged late Friday that the strike be called off immediately, saying in a statement he "believes that this strike is in no one's interest and will cause unacceptable inconvenience to passengers."
In addition to the three-day strike, Unite plans to strike for four more days beginning March 27.
CNN's CNN's Melissa Gray, Ayesha Durgahee, and Erin McLaughlin contributed to this report.
<bot>: British Airways was operating roughly half its flights Saturday despite a planned three-day strike by cabin crew that started at midnight Friday.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010032019id_/http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/03/20/ba.strike/index.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Suge Knight finally has a date for his Los Angeles murder trial.
The founder of Death Row Records is set to begin his jury trial on Feb. 22, more than two years after allegedly mowing down two men outside a Compton burger stand, killing one of them, a judge said Wednesday.
His lawyers also made a special request for a court-ordered medical examination of the incarcerated music mogul.
"Mr. Knight indicates he is suffering from blood clots and continues to suffer from swelling and difficulty breathing," the proposed medical order filed Wednesday by defense lawyer J. Tooson said.
Judge denies rap mogul Suge Knight murder-trial witness info
"Mr. Knight further indicates every time he is sent to the hospital the doctors are not allowed to treat him because (of) law enforcement," the form obtained by the Daily News said.
Knight, 51, has pleaded not guilty in the felony murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run case.
“Mr. Knight is eager for the trial to begin and has not lost faith that justice will prevail and he will be found not guilty,” Tooson told the News on Wednesday.
Knight has been locked up, unable to make his steep $10.5 million bail, since his arrest on Jan. 30, 2015.
Rap mogul Suge Knight blocked from seeing son despite court order
Knight claims he accidentally killed local businessman Terry Carter, 55, as he attempted to flee an armed assault.
Prosecutors claim he was bent on revenge when he hit the gas on his Ford F-150 Raptor truck and first mowed down Cle "Bone" Sloan, a gangster turned filmmaker who fought with Knight in the parking lot and earlier that day at a production office tied to the NWA biopic "Straight Outta Compton."
Sloan was hospitalized but survived.
Knight has been plagued by health issues while in custody and recently told a judge he was worried he might die in jail.
Rap mogul Suge Knight allowed visits from his young children
"My time is ticking some days because of the health problems," he said in court last month.
<bot>: Suge Knight finally has a date for his Los Angeles murder trial.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016081819id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/suge-knight-murder-trial-mowing-men-slated-feb-article-1.2755533
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Every time President Obama opens his mouth, people listen. And when he shoves something in there, people pay attention. Based on a review of more than 12,400 reports filed by the White House press pool since he took office six years ago, TIME.com took it upon themselves to dissect nearly every one of the President’s public dining choices, including dozens of burger joints, a slew of steakhouses and more than 15 date night destinations with Michelle Obama.
Needless to say, this list is making us hungry.
It’s no secret that our Commander-in-Chief’s go-to-meal is a good old fashioned burger. His locations of choice include everywhere from the ever-growing Shake Shack to Washington, D.C.’s Good Stuff Eatery to Matt’s Bar in Minneapolis (known for stuffing gooey, molten cheese in the middle of their patties).
But Mr. Obama isn’t alone in his foodie habits — when the First Couple goes out to eat, they do it right. Their date night dinners have included N.Y.C.’s pricy, farm-to-table Blue Hill, Honolulu’s Asian fusion hot spot Nobu Waikiki location and 12 Bones Smokehouse in Asheville, NC for some delectable barbecue. Let the reservation envy sink in.
Apparently steaks are also a fit meal for the leader of the free world. He’s dined at Washington, D.C.’s BLT Steak, Bourbon Steak as well as Bill and Giuliana Rancic’s RPM Steak in Chicago — where he chowed down on everything from a Grand Seafood Platter (oysters, shrimp, Alaskan king crab and lobster), a dry-aged bone-in Kansas City cut steak and the restaurant’s signature chocolate cake.
While the First Lady is his favorite dinner date, the TIME.com interactive gives a breakdown of all of the others frequenting his table, including one pastor, two mayors, and four governors.
So what’s Obama’s favorite restaurant? The president has eaten at Alan Wong’s Asian-fusion restaurant more than any other place during his six years in office — he gets the soy-braised short ribs.
<bot>: Alex Brandon/AP Photo Every time President Obama opens his mouth, people listen. And when he shoves something in there, people pay attention. Based on a review of more than 12,400 reports filed by ...
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015012119id_/http://greatideas.people.com/2015/01/20/president-obama-restaurant-barack-michelle-favorite-places-to-eat/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: By Greg Latshaw, USA TODAY
, Wash., Fire & Medic One ambulance speeds toward a hospital, medics are focused on saving lives, not money, says Medical Division Chief Paul Berlin.
But the service — and thousands like it across the USA — can't ignore the bottom line — not when the fire district is projecting a $1.5 million drop in property tax revenue next year.
So on Sept. 1, the tax-funded district raised its ambulance fees, hiking its basic service from $375 to $550.
"We're not here to make a profit," Berlin says. "The only thing we can do is try to improve our service — or maintain it."
Ambulance providers nationwide are coping with rising costs, decreased support from local government, low Medicare reimbursement rates and a jump in the number of uninsured Americans, says Stephen Williamson, president of the American Ambulance Association.
A 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office showed providers were paid a Medicare reimbursement rate 6% below cost, and the gap widened to 17% in remote areas. Williamson says the disparity has grown since then.
In the past, providers could rely on subsidies from local government, but those resources have dwindled during the economic downturn, Williamson says.
Steve Weigand, director of servicing for the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics, says the number of uninsured people receiving ambulance transport has swelled during the past 18 to 24 months.
"We're having to raise the rate on everyone else because of the people who don't have insurance," Weigand says.
Among ambulance providers to recently seek increases:
•Colorado Springs: American Medical Response of Colorado, a private ambulance company, will increase rates by nearly 6% Saturday, says Douglas Moore, a spokesman for Emergency Medical Services Corp., AMR's parent company.
•Los Angeles: The city's fire department increased its ambulance prices by nearly 37% to $974 for basic life support services in July, the second hike in two years, says David Frelinger, a battalion chief in the emergency medical services section. Even when ambulance providers increase their rates, they often get only a fraction of the full payment, says Cathy Carter, president of Medical Claim-Aid in Denton, Md., which provides billing and collection services for ambulance providers in Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.
Medicare and Medicaid pay a fixed amount, based on set rates that are below the actual cost of ambulance transports, she says.
Private insurers in some cases have stopped reimbursing ambulance providers and send payment directly to the patient, she says. The problem with that, Carter says, is that the person often pockets the money.
Latshaw reports for The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times
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<bot>: Ambulance providers are coping with rising costs, decreased support from local government and a jump in the number of uninsured Americans.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010122919id_/http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/healthcare/hospitals/2010-12-28-ambulance-fees_N.htm
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... I slept for prices to drop to more than a decade now declines in prices has taken a heavy toll ... on the company has ... been a rare move ... Elijah state controlled oil producers of China ... and Malaysia ... have both announced their cunning Fendi and production ... to cope with the low prices ... why is this happening ... global oversupply in ... the world to have too much oil ... despite the low prices many oil producers have refused to cut production because they want to protect market share ... and four cents against the non happening recently lifted ... the Middle East and that concern could at least five hundred thousand barrels a day to my ... in ... global oil demand is slowing down ... China is clearly the second biggest oil consumer in the world ... the miss any as China moves away from heavy industry in this economy ... to more services oriented one ... the countries on the demand ... is also likely to slow down ... exceptionally warm winter in North America ... any new app ... is also a demand on oil ... so was implication ... cut jobs and capital spending ... OE of companies worldwide ... I think I think that that thing ... to keep the cash flow high ... the CEO on Company shelling has ... said it will slash spending by as much as eleven point four billion dollars in the next four years ... China's state controlled oil and gas producer has seen on ... plans to cut capital expenditure by forty four percent from twenty fourteen ... the company said it thinking when exceed nine and twelve billion dollars this year ... the sharp drop compared with previous ... shops are also getting cut elsewhere ... BP says he will flash than forty thousand jobs ... over the next year ... Chevron plans to cut fifty seven thousand jobs ... and Royal Dutch Shell ... the six thousand jobs ... so will there be a rebound ... with too much oil in Middleton and fights me down may still be some distance away ... Goldman Sachs beckons prices could fall as low as twenty dollars a barrel ... before producers will be willing to cut production ... Morgan Stanley says ... that the NPCC of the U S dollar ... could push oil prices down to around twenty dollars ...
<bot>: Recent surging global supply has led oil prices to drop to a 12-year low, and oil companies are cutting spending and production. The WSJ's Jenny Hsu explains how China plays a role in all of this. Photo: CCTV
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016012019id_/http://www.wsj.com/video/why-global-demand-for-oil-is-slowing-down/501BE7F8-A148-4D29-93BA-03FBEF3E9364.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Best Coast singer Bethany Cosentino has criticised singer Chris Brown for “perpetuating rape culture” with his recent single Back to Sleep.
Cosentino objected to the lyrics of the track, which is also known as Fuck You Back to Sleep and contains lines such as “Just let me rock, fuck you back to sleep girl / Don’t say a word no, girl don’t you talk / Just hold on tight to me girl / Fuck you back to sleep girl, and rock you back.” The track reached the US Billboard top 20 in March.
The Best Coast star tweeted: “You already know how I feel about Chris Brown – but WHY/HOW are those lyrics OK? Cool, a song that perpetuates rape culture being a hit.”
She also took aim at the industry, criticising the A&R team who approved the song and publications such as Billboard who gave the track a glowing review.
Responding to criticism of her position, Cosentino wrote: “4 those of you that don’t understand the definition of “consensual sex” – it’s not TELLING a woman yr gonna wake her up 2 fuck her. BYE”
Brown has been no stranger to controversy since, in 2009, he pleaded guilty to a felony assault on his then-girlfriend Rihanna.
Chris Brown or his representatives are yet to respond to Beth Cosentino’s accusations.
<bot>: Bethany Cosentino has hit out at the lyrics of the R&B singer’s single Back to Sleep, along with the press and management who have supported 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/2016041819id_/http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/18/best-coast-chris-brown-perpetuating-sexual-abuse-culture
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Global warming is already cutting substantially into potential crop yields in some countries — to such an extent that it may be a factor in the food price increases that have caused worldwide stress in recent years, researchers suggest in a new study.
Wheat yields in recent years were down by more than 10 percent in Russia and by a few percentage points each in India, France and China compared with what they probably would have been without rising temperatures, according to the study.
Corn yields were off a few percentage points in China, Brazil and France from what would have been expected, said the researchers, whose findings were published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
Some countries saw small gains from the temperature increases, however. And in all countries, the extra carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the air acted as a fertilizer that encouraged plant growth, offsetting some of the losses from rising temperatures caused by that same greenhouse gas.
Consequently, the study’s authors found that when the gains in some countries were weighed against the losses in others, the overall global effect of climate change has been small so far: losses of a few percentage points for wheat and corn from what they would have been without climate change. The overall impact on production of rice and soybeans was negligible, with gains in some regions entirely offsetting losses in others.
But the authors of the study — David Lobell and Justin Costa-Roberts of Stanford University, and Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University — pointed out that temperature increases were expected to accelerate in coming decades, making it likely that the challenges to food production will grow in an era when demand is expected to rise sharply.
Over the period covered by the study, 1980 to 2008, temperatures increased briskly in many of the world’s important agricultural regions. A notable exception was the United States: for reasons climate scientists do not fully understand, temperatures in the Midwestern corn and soybean belt during the summer crop-growing season have not increased in recent decades.
“One way to think of it is that we got a pass on the first round of global warming,” Dr. Lobell said.
However, the study found that in virtually all of Europe, large parts of Asia and some parts of Africa and South America, temperatures during the growing season have warmed by an average of several degrees since 1980, increasing the likelihood of extremely hot summer days. The study also looked at rainfall, but changes were relatively minor compared with the temperature increases.
Plants are known to be sensitive to high temperatures, especially if the hot days occur when they are flowering. “In many of these countries, a typical year now is like a very warm year back in 1980,” Dr. Lobell said.
Wheat, rice, corn and soybeans account for the majority of calories consumed by the human race, either directly or as meat from animals raised on grains. Because demand for these grains is inflexible and rising, the losses from climate change probably accounted for price increases of about 6 percent in the four major commodities, the study’s authors found.
At today’s grain prices, that calculation implies that climate change is costing consumers, food companies and livestock producers about $60 billion a year.
“We aren’t talking about the sky falling,” Dr. Lobell said. “But we are talking about billions of dollars of losses. Every little bit of production is valuable when we’re trying to feed the world.”
If the price estimate is correct, it makes climate change a small contributor to a large trend. The prices of many foodstuffs have doubled or tripled in recent years as a result of a host of factors, including rapidly rising food demand in Asia, government mandates to use crops for biofuel production and extreme weather that may or may not be linked to climate change.
The authors of the new study specifically excluded the effects of extreme weather like brief heat waves and flash floods because of limitations in the data that they used. For that and other reasons, Dr. Lobell said, the study’s estimate of the impact of climate change is probably conservative.
<bot>: The climatic stress to agriculture in some countries may be a factor in the food price increases that have caused worldwide stress in recent years, researchers suggest in a new study.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011050619id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/science/earth/06warming.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Many animal shelters put a hold on black cat adoptions before Halloween for fear they'll be abused, but not everyone thinks it's necessary for the under-adopted animals.
"It seems highly unlikely that a person with bad intentions will go into a shelter, pay $80 and sit through an adoption counseling session," Peninsula Humane Society/SPCA spokesman Scott Delucchi told the local CBS station in San Mateo, Calif. They have 22 black cats up for adoption.
Black dogs and cats typically are adopted less than pets of other colors, which Delucchi says may be because they don't stand out as much in the kennel or because their features aren't as clear in photos.
Of course, black cats also carry the weight of centuries-old superstitions on their backs. Its said if one crosses your path you'll have bad luck, and they were believed to be the devilish companions of witches in American and European lore. Still, other cultures consider encountering a black cat good luck, particularly if it comes into your home.
What comes to your mind when you think of black cats?
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<bot>: Should black cat superstitions prevent pre-Halloween adoptions? - Paw Print Post: A community for Dog, Cat, and Pet Owners - USATODAY.com
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2009102819id_/http://content.usatoday.com/communities/pawprintpost/post/2009/10/spca-still-pushes-black-cat-adoption-before-halloween/1
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: In the battle to sign up the “young invincibles” for healthcare insurance, some pro-Obamacare advocates believe they have found the perfect ally – their moms.
While recruitment is steadily growing, there is concern that low-risk, healthy young adults may not be so keen to sign up. Unless they take insurance through state exchanges or the federal healthcare.gov website, the pool will be unbalanced by all those newly insured who are older and may have chronic conditions, making payouts for medical care more likely. But some of the so-called young invincibles are expected to prefer to pay the fine, arguing that they do not need health insurance because they are unlikely to get sick.
But Nick Duran, Florida state director of Enroll America, says there is a way to change their minds, not least over the Thanksgiving dinner. “Moms are a major influence in a family. We do a lot of our outreach and messaging to moms. They have a good deal of influence on the coverage of the family and the son about to turn 27,” he said.
Enroll America is targeting mothers as a way to reach entire communities too.
She is going to influence not only her family but her community, her friends, her church,” Duran said.
Duran is also recruiting young people who can spread the word. A 27-year-old man with type 1 diabetes from Palm Beach came for help, went into the website and enrolled in a platinum plan for which he is paying less than $200 a month. “Now he is working with us. We're going to have thousands [like him] in the next few weeks.”
Gepsie Metellus, executive director of the Sant La Haitian neighbourhood center in Miami, is also seeing young people get involved, explaining insurance to their families who may not speak English or understand the documents even in Creole. “To a large extent they can be a go-between for their parents,” she said. “But we want them to understand that an accident can happen at any time and they do happen at any time. At least they need a catastrophic policy.”
She and her staff were prepared to give young people examples of disasters that had wrecked the lives of young people who thought themselves invincible, to “shake them into understanding”.
Meanwhile, a counter-offensive in the battle for the young is taking place on campuses across America. Generation Opportunity, funded by the anti-Obamacare billionaire Koch brothers, who have already excited controversy with a series of “Creepy Uncle Sam” TV adverts, recently threw a tailgate party at the UM-Virginia Tech football game.
This is how David Pasch, the group's communication director, described it in an email printed in the Tampa Times: "We rolled in with a fleet of Hummers, F-150s and Suburbans, each vehicle equipped with an 8in high balloon bouquet floating overhead. We hired a popular student DJ from UMiami (DJ Joey), set up OptOut cornhole sets, beer pong tables, bought 75 pizzas, and hired eight “brand ambassadors”, aka models with bullhorns to help out. Student activists independently brought (lots of) beer and liquor for consumption by those 21 and over. Oh yeah, and we educated students about their healthcare options outside the expensive and creepy Obamacare exchanges."
There are plans, he said, for similar student parties elsewhere.
On campus away from their families, students may have other things on their mind than health insurance, but at least in historically uninsured communities, campaigners are finding high levels of interest, if also frustration. Some have been advising people not to try to sign up yet, but wait until the technical problems are resolved.
“Our community is very determined to get their insurance,” said Josephine Mercado, executive director of Hispanic Health Initiatives, which offers health fairs, classes and screening to central Florida families.
“They are trying. I have advised them that maybe they should wait until December. I don't want them to get so frustrated that they give up. Some people have not had any kind of insurance in their adult life. They need help – they really do.”
Metellus also says she has advised waiting to the many Haitians who want to enroll. “We have said take your time, there is no hurry,” she said.
Nothing becomes effective before January 1st, so wait. It is an opportunity for people to be better educated and informed. Buying insurance is not easy for all these people who have never done it before and come with preconceived notions.”
Many people believe that Obamacare is a single insurance plan – and that it is free. “The biggest thing is the misconception of what the ACA is,” said Paul Salazar, a navigator working for the Jessie Trice Community Health Center in Miami, where the patients are 64% African-American and 28% Hispanic. “They think it is free healthcare for everybody. They come to me and say I want to sign up for Obamacare. When do I get my free insurance?”
His colleague Myrlene Charles, who is Haitian, says wrong messages have been put out by Haitian radio and she has to put people straight. “They are shocked,” she said. “Even now my parents are listening to this radio, misleading the Haitian community." It makes her job very difficult “if people on the radio who have a voice that millions of people listen to are giving out the wrong information.”
Mercado said 75% of the Hispanic people in contact with her organisation are uninsured and ill-informed. “There are so many myths, misinformation and even lies,” she said. “Someone was telling them a disc would be inserted into their body, another spoke of death camps. I'm just hoping it will get straightened out. I believe it will be. Our community is not only the largest group of uninsured, but there are also serious cases of obesity and diabetes – chronic diseases that are driving health costs.”
But there is no doubt about the interest from the uninsured. At the Borinquen medical centers of Miami-Dade, which are, like the Jessie Trice centers, federally qualified and subsidised with federal funds, chief administrative officer Paul Valez talks of “overwhelming demand”. They are one of the largest health centres catering for the Hispanic population in the US. Every week, he says, they have hundreds of people coming to find out what is available to them and how much it will cost – some 3,500 so far, he said.
“The whole process is one of education,” he said. “We were hearing all the negative information about the website, but it is a process like buying a cell phone plan or car insurance. People don't know thequestions to ask.”
But they are finding out and the website appears to be working better. He is now hearing of six or seven completed insurance plans every day.
<bot>: Amid growing concern that healthy young adults may not be signing up in healthcare marketplace, activists seeking new approaches
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013112619id_/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/obamacare-young-invincibles-recruitment-mothers
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The question was reasonably obscure — What was the last opera in Wagner’s “Ring” cycle? — but Ruthie Duskin knew the answer.
“ ‘The Dusk of the Gods,’ ” she intoned into the microphone.
A fellow panelist leapt to correct her.
“It’s Gott-dam ... Gott-dam,” he stammered, as the producers of the live radio broadcast winced.
“He means the German name, Götterdämmerung,” Ruthie interrupted. “But in English, it’s what I said.” She was 7 years old.
Ruth Duskin Feldman, who died on May 18 at 80, was a regular panelist, and perhaps the best known of the comparatively few girls, on “The Quiz Kids,” the torrentially popular show of the 1940s. Broadcast nationwide from Chicago on NBC, it tested its young combatants weekly with rigorous questions in math, science, literature and much else. (“What would I be carrying home,” one question ran, “if I brought an antimacassar, a dinghy, a sarong and an apteryx?”)
Ruthie joined the show at 7 in 1941, about a year and a half into its run. She remained for nine years, appearing in 146 episodes on radio and 11 on television after “The Quiz Kids” moved there in 1949.
In adult life a freelance writer, editor and lecturer focusing on child development, Mrs. Feldman was one of the Quiz Kids who emerged relatively unscathed from the immense celebrity and rigorous intellectual pressure the show engendered.
Not all of them did, and in middle age — partly in tribute to them, partly to answer her own lingering questions about the show’s effect on its young stars, — she sought them out. The result was a book that combined memoir, historical narrative and longitudinal study: “Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids? Perils and Profits of Growing Up Gifted” (1982).
The young panelists of “The Quiz Kids” quickly supplanted the Dionne quintuplets as small objects of international fascination — doted on by adults, snubbed by their peers and swooned over by advertisers. Their pictures were published in newspapers and magazines; they were buttonholed by strangers, autograph books at the ready; they appeared in Hollywood shorts, received mountains of fan mail and made coast-to-coast whistle stops to sell war bonds.
With her apple cheeks, blond sausage curls and almost preternatural command of literature — and later chemistry — Ruthie became an audience favorite.
“Ruthie is a Chicago fifth grader,” The New York Times reported rapturously in 1944, “who can tell you the plot of any Shakespearean play, opera libretto or Bible story, and who once mildly humiliated five University of Chicago professors in a spelldown by naming the 12 sons of Jacob.”
She wrote her first book, “Chemi, the Magician,” at 13, while still a panelist. (Published by Dodd, Mead & Company, it is a children’s adventure story centering on chemistry.) She sang a duet with Bing Crosby, sat on Chico Marx’s lap and saw her likeness grace a welter of merchandise. (“Imagine playing with a paper doll of yourself?” Mrs. Feldman wrote. “I did.”) Jack Benny once spent actual money to buy her a gold ring.
Ruth Sondra Duskin was born in Chicago on June 13, 1934. Her father, Boris, was a high school chemistry teacher; her mother, the former Rita Schayer, was a poet and homemaker. The household was awash in books, music, culture and science, and in 1941 Mrs. Duskin wrote to “The Quiz Kids,” proposing Ruthie for the panel.
When she was accepted, her parents, not wanting to cultivate a pocket prima donna, did not tell her that “The Quiz Kids” went out over the radio. Until a classmate spoke of having heard the broadcast, Ruthie thought the show was a playlet, enacted only for its studio audience.
After leaving “The Quiz Kids” at 16, its mandatory retirement age, she entered Northwestern University, from which she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1954. She had wed her college sweetheart, Gilbert Feldman, the year before and soon settled into marriage, motherhood and, eventually, writing for a suburban Chicago newspaper chain.
But as the years went by, Mrs. Feldman was nettled by a vague discontent.
“I felt I should be making more of a name for myself on a national stage,” she told The Boston Globe in 2005. “And I think that expectation went back to all the acclaim I got as a child.”
She realized that she would have to come to terms with her life as a Quiz Kid.
“It’s not cool being labeled a brain, especially for girls,” Mrs. Feldman told The Times in 1982. “I tried to compartmentalize my life into Quiz Kid and not. Perhaps that’s why I married at 19 and took my husband’s name, the anonymity. Was I taking refuge? Perhaps. I remember as I was growing up, changing the subject when the Quiz Kids were brought up. Often, when I was asked, I turned off completely.”
She tracked down as many fellow panelists as she could. One, Gerard Darrow, the ornithological prodigy who knew at once that an apteryx is a flightless bird of New Zealand, had met a forlorn end: After eking out a living, battling alcoholism and ending up on welfare, he died of kidney failure in 1980, at 47.
But as Mrs. Feldman found, most Quiz Kids, though ambivalent about the show, had turned out remarkably well. They included a network television producer, a diplomat, college professors, several actors, a Nobel laureate (James D. Watson, who with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins mapped the molecular structure of DNA) and a Jesuit priest.
As she spoke with many of them and interviewed others by questionnaire, Mrs. Feldman realized, she wrote, that she too was among those whom the experience had ultimately bolstered.
Her other publications include the textbooks “Human Development,” with Diane E. Papalia and Sally Wendkos Olds; “A Child’s World: Infancy Through Adolescence,” with the same co-authors; and a revised edition of “Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids?,” published in 2013. Mrs. Feldman edited the journal Humanistic Judaism for more than 30 years.
She lived in Highland Park, Ill. Besides her husband, her survivors include a younger sister, Bunny Shuch, an occasional Quiz Kid; a son, Steven; two daughters, Laurie Feldman and Heidi Feldman; and eight grandchildren. Heidi Feldman confirmed her mother’s death, which occurred in Ontario, Calif., while she was visiting family. The cause, apparently, was heart failure.
“If I had the opportunity to relive my childhood, would I choose to be a Quiz Kid?,” Mrs. Feldman asks in her book. “It’s a moot question. What I know is this: I am who I am, and the past is history — my history.”
An earlier version of this article misidentified the city where Ruth Duskin Feldman lived. It was Highland Park, Ill., not Oak Park.
<bot>: Mrs. Feldman made her entrance to the radio quiz world in 1941 as Ruthie Duskin, age 7.
<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: Image: SCOTT GRIES (PICTUREGROUP)/COMEDY CENTRAL & KEVIN FITZSIMONS/COMEDY CENTRAL
<bot>: These eight fanfiction relationships will have you questioning humanity.
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<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014020819id_/http://mashable.com/2014/02/08/fanfiction-relationships/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WASHINGTON — Smoking, the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, continued to decline last year, federal health authorities reported Thursday, with the share of American adults who smoke dropping to 16.8 percent, down from 17.8 percent in 2013.
Smoking has been one of the brightest public health successes of recent history. Nearly half of all Americans smoked in the 1960s, but a broad push against the habit, starting with the surgeon general’s warning in 1964, helped bring rates down. The rate has dropped by about a fifth since 2005, when it was 21 percent.
But the national numbers mask deep trouble spots within the American population. About 43 percent of less educated Americans smoked in 2014, compared with just 5 percent of those with a graduate degree. About a third of Americans insured by Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, smoked, compared with 13 percent of Americans with private insurance.
The figures, reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, underscored the extent to which smoking in America has become a problem of the poor. Nearly six million Americans covered by Medicaid smoke, as well as almost nine million uninsured Americans, or about a third of the uninsured population.
Smoking-related diseases accounted for more than 15 percent of annual Medicaid spending from 2006 to 2010, or about $39 billion a year, according to the American Lung Association.
“Disparities are the single most important issue in smoking,” said Kenneth E. Warner, a professor of public health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Dr. Warner added: “The people who are politically influential believe the smoking problem has been solved. It’s not in their neighborhoods. Their friends don’t smoke. Those who still smoke are the poor, the disenfranchised, the mentally ill. That’s who we need to focus on.”
On Thursday, the federal government appeared to take aim at that problem by proposing a rule that would prohibit smoking in public housing nationwide.
Nationally, success of the antismoking campaign has been striking. Progress among the poor and less educated, however, has been far slower.
About 43 percent of people with only a high school equivalency diploma smoke, virtually unchanged from 2005. In comparison, smoking declined by about 26 percent among people with college degrees, to 8 percent from 11 percent. For people with a high school degree only, smoking declined by about 12 percent, to 22 percent.
Smoking among people who live at or above the poverty line declined by about 26 percent, to 15 percent from about 21 percent in 2005. Those below the poverty line declined by about 12 percent, to 26 percent, from 30 percent, the report found.
American Indians and Alaskan Natives had the highest smoking rate, about 29 percent, followed by Americans of more than one race, about 28 percent of whom smoked. Whites and blacks smoked at about the same rate in 2014 — about 18 percent — while Hispanics had a much lower rate at 11 percent.
<bot>: About a third of Americans insured by Medicaid in 2014 were cigarette smokers. The figure for the privately insured? 13 percent.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015111219id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/health/us-smoking-rate-cdc-report.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: WASHINGTON — The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign, with voters in five states getting their say Saturday in nominating contests (all times Eastern Standard Time):
John Kasich is showing a rare quality in the 2016 presidential campaign: humility.
In a low-key campaign speech in Traverse City, Michigan, he said: “I’m not really worthy, to tell you the truth.”
The contrast with cockier candidates could not have been greater. Supporters praise Kasich’s authenticity and maturity. But some say his refusal to join the Republican melee is keeping him off center stage.
Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) came into the 11th GOP debate with a fiery energy, vowing to win Ohio and calling for a return of "common sense" in America. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Susan Mendenhall is 62 and describes herself as a “one-woman media campaign” who posts information about the Ohio governor on social media. She says, “He’s got to get his face out there somehow.”
Twenty-six-year-old Kurtis Berry acknowledges Kasich is a longshot in the Republican race. But Berry says Kasich has a chance if, as he puts it, “people wake up and realize we can’t have in essence a little kid being president.” That’s an apparent reference to his view that front-runner Donald Trump is childish.
The review is in from Bernie Sanders. The Democratic presidential contender says the wild Republican debate Thursday night looked like a sixth-grade food fight.
Sanders is in Cleveland for an event at a historic black church. Speaking from his Cleveland campaign office, he said of the GOP debate: “I hope most sixth-graders understand we don’t act like that.”
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio isn’t tipping his hand on the prospect he’ll get the endorsement of Jeb Bush before the March 15 primary in their home state of Florida.
Winning the state would be crucial for Rubio as he tries to chase down GOP front-runner Donald Trump. Florida will award all of its 99 delegates to the winner of its primary.
A former Florida governor, Bush remains an influential figure in state Republican circles. He’s also a face of the GOP establishment and an unsuccessful candidate for president this year, making his potential support tricky for Rubio given how primary voters have embraced outsiders such as Trump.
Rubio said Saturday at conservative gathering in suburban Washington that he believes Bush was “the greatest governor in Florida history.”
The Florida senator confirmed the two allies-turned-rivals have spoken since Bush ended his White House bid on Feb. 20, but he said he won’t discuss private conversations he has with anyone.
Marco Rubio is promising he would not nominate a Supreme Court justice in the final year of any four-year term he serves in the White House.
The Florida senator made the promise Saturday in response to a question at a gathering of conservative activists in the Washington suburbs.
As have his fellow Republican presidential candidates and many GOP senators, Rubio has argued that President Barack Obama shouldn’t attempt to fill the seat vacated by the Feb. 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Rubio says the Supreme Court can “function with eight justices.” He adds, “There’s no magic No. 9.”
Rubio did not discuss the practical effects of 4-4 rulings from the court, which result in leaving the decisions of lower courts in place.
It can be a dilemma for Donald Trump’s rivals: Hit back or walk away.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sihk) says a sure way to grab the spotlight for his campaign would be to hurl insults at the Republican presidential front-runner.
But Kasich won’t take the bait.
“I’m with Harry Potter - I’m not going to the dark side.” That’s what Kasich tells reporters after a rally in Traverse City, Michigan.
But Marco Rubio — who’s called Trump a “con artist” — takes a different approach:
“Where I grew up, if someone keeps punching people in the face, eventually someone’s going to have to stand up and punch them back.”
The Florida senator got loud cheers from an audience at a conference of conservatives outside Washington.
How does Donald Trump compare running for president with his other job — businessman and developer?
“This is better than real estate. This is more fun,” he tells a crowd in Wichita, Kansas, before the start of the state’s Republican presidential caucuses.
Trump ditched a planned speech at a conference of conservatives in the Washington area so he could make one last stop in Kansas.
The GOP front-runner tells his supporters: “After making this huge U-turn to Kansas, if I lose, I’m going to be so angry at you.”
Establishment figures are frantically looking for any way to stop Trump, perhaps at a contested convention.
Trump says “the Republicans are eating their own. They’ve got to be very careful. We have to bring things together.”
Republican presidential candidate John Kasich (KAY’-sihk) says a sure way to grab the spotlight for his campaign would be to hurl insults at front-runner Donald Trump — but he won’t take the bait.
“I’m with Harry Potter — I’m not going to the dark side.” That’s what he tells reporters after a rally in Traverse City, Michigan. The state’s presidential primary is Tuesday.
The Ohio governor says voters care about substance and experience and he insists that his prospects are improving as the campaign moves into his home turf.
He calls Ohio “the crown jewel.”
Kasich says he expects to win enough delegates elsewhere to help deny Trump a majority and enable the GOP convention to select the nominee.
Hillary Clinton says the Supreme Court is “on the ballot” in November’s general election.
And she’s criticizing Republicans for their opposition to restoring important parts of the Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the high court in 2013.
The Democratic presidential candidate tells African-American ministers in Detroit that “my name may be on the ballot,” but so, too, is the future of the Supreme Court.
She says the GOP-run Senate must do its “constitutional duty” and “make a decision” about any nominee President Barack Obama may submit.
Clinton is set to debate rival Bernie Sanders in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night. The state holds its primary on Tuesday.
A Donald Trump backer in Kansas has a stern warning for the establishment figures in the Republican Party who are frantically looking for any way to stop the billionaire businessman from grabbing the presidential nomination.
“If the big, fat GOP don’t like him, they don’t like me.”
Those are the words of 65-year-old Connie Belton, a retired homemaker from Wichita, Kansas.
She’s come out for a Trump rally in Wichita on Saturday morning before heading to the party’s caucuses to give her support for the front-runner.
Belton says she “adores Trump.” She thinks “his heart is as big as his hands.”
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is planning to air a five-minute ad on the Univision television network ahead of Florida’s Democratic primary on March 15.
The goal: show Sanders’ appeal with Hispanic voters.
His campaign says the ad will air Thursday night on the Spanish language network. The campaign says the spot will feature Sanders’ advocacy for workers in Florida’s agricultural sector.
Sanders is trying to overcome a delegate deficit against Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Democratic contests and the ad aims to reach new voters and Latinos.
Some Republican leaders in Kentucky are worried about a low turnout for the state’s presidential caucuses on Saturday — perhaps because their home-state candidate no longer is in the race.
The caucuses were tailor-made — and paid for — by Rand Paul. They were created so Paul could run for president and re-election to the Senate without violating a state law that bans candidates from appearing on the ballot twice in one day.
The senator is long gone from the presidential race, but he’s still on the hook to pay $250,000 plus other expenses for a contest among four people not named Paul.
A series of election contests this weekend in the 2016 presidential race will divide up 175 delegates among the Republican candidates and 134 delegates between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Going into the weekend round, Donald Trump leads in the GOP race with 329 delegates. Ted Cruz has 231, Marco Rubio has 110 and John Kasich (KAY’-sihk) has 25.
It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination.
On the Democratic side, Clinton leads with 1,066 delegates to 432 for Sanders. It takes 2,383 to win the party’s nomination.
The hunt for delegates by the presidential candidates is resuming Saturday.
Voters in five states are getting their say in the 2016 race.
Democrats and Republicans have contests in Kansas and Louisiana. Republicans in Maine and Kentucky are holding caucuses, as are Democrats in Nebraska.
The polls have already opened in Louisiana.
And there’s more on Sunday, when Maine Democrats and Puerto Rico Republicans are up.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
<bot>: The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign, with voters in five states getting their say Saturday in nominating contests (all times Eastern Standard Time):
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016030519id_/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-latest-busy-day-in-campaign-2016-5-states-weighing-in/2016/03/05/87b48d18-e2d6-11e5-8c00-8aa03741dced_story.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: On a weekend when No. 1, No. 3, and No. 4 went down, Alabama served notice that it's on its way up. Maybe all the way up.
The Crimson Tide wasn't supposed to be this good.
They weren't supposed to be able to smash Clemson at the start of the season, they weren't supposed to be five touchdowns better than Arkansas, and they certainly weren't supposed to be able to hold this season's most impressive football clinic between the hedges, no less.
But forget the long-term rebuilding project. Forget the fact that the Tide has only 10 scholarship seniors on the roster. Forget the fact that they weren't even in the Coaches' Top 25 when the season started.
When they caused a different type of blackout than Mark Richt and the rest of Athens, Ga., had in mind Saturday, it makes us wonder if Nick Saban is putting together one of those dream second seasons that we've seen in this decade.
For decades, "third-year success" was considered the mark of a great coach. Look at the list of guys who have won national championships in their third season in the '70s, '80s, and '90s:
But the standard in this century is winning in the second year. Everything is about winning right now, which is why coaches are being paid these days like they're oil company executives.
Bob Stoops (2000), Jim Tressel (2002), and Urban Meyer (2006) all won national championships in their second seasons at Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Florida.
What we learned this weekend is that suddenly it's not preposterous to envision Saban joining that group. His team thoroughly outclassed the third-ranked team in the country, busting Georgia's 11-game winning streak, and setting up a terrific SEC West race with LSU and Auburn.
This is why not having a Top 25 ranking until mid-October is a good idea. Alabama has had to climb from outside the rankings, but when the BCS rankings begin later this month, the Tide will not be penalized for preseason perception.
Saturday, Alabama went to work on Georgia early and turned the lights out by halftime. The 31-0 first half was spellbinding in the efficiency that Alabama showed all over the field. Quarterback John Parker Wilson was 10-for-11, for instance, and that was reflective of the performance of every Tide player on the field.
They took one of Georgia's most-hyped home games in years and turned it into one of the most eye-opening revelations in years.
In the first half, Alabama looked like it could be the best team in college football. Of course, Oklahoma has looked that way, too, and it's foolish not to consider LSU in that conversation. Missouri and Penn State, too, should not be counted out.
Although the list of teams that can "control their destiny" continues to shrink precipitously, USC's loss on Thursday night makes it clear that if any team can negotiate the SEC or the Big 12 with a perfect record, it will roll into the BCS championship game. How would Oklahoma-Alabama sound? Or Missouri-LSU?
Of course, lots of teams remain in the hunt USC, Florida, Georgia, and perhaps even Ohio State with its new personality with October, November, and even those December games on the horizon.
Still, put any of them in a game with Alabama, and Saban and his staff would put the Tide in position to win, and the offensive and defensive lines would see to it that it happens. Wilson, running back Glen Coffee, wideout Julio Jones and their chums make the small and big plays that make a team special.
They sure make them in the first half of games. To become a special team, Saban recognizes, they have to keep playing as well and hard in the second half as they do in the first half.
Alabama has shown itself to be terrific right out of the block. The Tide has yet to allow a point in the first quarter (13-0, 13-0, 17-0, and 10-0) in its four games. By halftime, their average lead has been 24-3.
Don't look now, but Michigan is 1-0 in the Big Ten and as of today the Wolverines are not the same hapless, soulless team that they looked like through their first three-and-a-half games.
Rich Rodriguez's offense still doesn't fit the personnel, but the Wolverines grew a heart Saturday, and that's worth a lot. Bouncing back from that 19-0 halftime deficit against Wisconsin to win, 27-25, simply changes the team that Michigan is and can become. That doesn't mean anything will be easy for them, but it means anything is now within the realm of possibility in any game.
They're at different corners of the country, they both have won national championships in the past five years, and they were both ranked in the top five heading into the weekend. But USC and Florida have something else in common: They play down to the level of their opponents at times.
Consider that the Trojans have lost to four unranked teams in the past 23 games and two of those teams have been named the Beavers.
And the Gators have lost to six unranked opponents since 2002 and three of those teams have been named the Rebels.
All phases of the Florida Gators contributed to the shocking, 31-30 home loss to Ole Miss.
So, which is worse? Take your pick: Giving up an 86-yard TD pass, having an extra-point blocked, or failing to convert a fourth-and-one in the last minute? Add 'em up and it's no top-10 ranking for you.
On a day that Chase Daniel took the day off (Missouri had a bye), two other Big 12 quarterbacks showed that they're not to be overlooked as they continue to impressively lead their undefeated teams. Daniel has nothing these days on Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy.
McCoy and Texas, though, actually get a chance to face both of the other teams. And despite a rocky sophomore season, McCoy's playing his best football of his career which is saying something. And with five games in a row coming up against teams that are currently undefeated, McCoy and the Longhorns can make some serious hay.
Right now, it looks like those three guys, along with Tebow and Knowshon Moreno, could be the top five in the minds of Heisman voters well, at least in the mind of this Heisman voter.
Stanford won. Northwestern won. Duke won. Tulane won. Navy won. On the same day!
Vanderbilt didn't play, but at 4-0, the Commodores moved to the front of the SEC East since Florida and Georgia both lost Saturday.
The hackles went up around the country when Oregon State beat USC. The refrain was something to the tune of "the Pac-10 sucks."
So ... with Ole Miss winning at Florida, does that mean the SEC sucks?
Well, not exactly. While the competitive conference games of the Pac-10 are not that different from the competitive conference games of the SEC, or any other conference, the Pac-10's 1-5 record against the Mountain West Conference, and 3-2 mark against the Western Athletic Conference do not help the league's resume this year.
There are lots of good matchups in the coming week ... here's a baker's dozen of the key games to watch:
<bot>: Saban could have Tide in title game in Year 2
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2008100119id_/http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/story/8616192/Saban-could-have-Tide-in-title-game-in-Year-2
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor
(CNN) – Osama bin Laden wore the mantle of a religious leader. He looked the part and talked a good game, but his theology was a radical departure from traditional orthodox Islam.
The pitch to join al Qaeda did not start with an invitation to put on a suicide vest but, like other religious splinter groups and cults, took advantage of disenfranchisement and poverty.
Bin Laden had no official religious training but developed his own theology of Islam.
"We don't know that (bin Laden) was ever exposed to orthodox Islamic teachings," said Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of religion and Islamic studies at Duke University.
The writing of ideologues in the Muslim Brotherhood influenced bin Laden heavily, Moosa said.
"He takes scriptural imperatives at their face value and believes this is the only instruction and command God has given him - unmediated by history, unmediated by understanding, unmediated by human experience. Now that's a difference between Muslim orthodoxy and what I would call uber- or hyperscripturalists," Moosa said.
The vast majority of Islamic scholars and imams say the teaching of the Prophet Mohammed happened in historical context that needs to be understood when reading and interpreting the Quran.
"If the likes of bin Laden, if they had spent one day or maybe one month possibly, in a madrassa (Muslim religious school) and understood how the canonical tradition is interpreted, they would not go onto this kind of destructive path they go on," Moosa said.
In the entire leadership structure of al Qaeda, "no one has had any sort of formal religious training from any seminary," said Aftab Malik, a global expert on Muslim affairs at the United Nations Alliance of Civilization. He is researching a Ph.D. on al Qaeda.
"What you had was an engineer and a doctor leading a global jihad against the whole world," Malik said. "That would never happen in normative Islam. It's just such an aberration."
John Esposito, a professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, said bin Laden "appropriates Islam ... to legitimate and mobilize people."
"If you look at bin Laden's early statements and arguments, his interview with Peter Bergen on CNN ... lots of people would see it as something that would go down very well not just with many Muslims but among many analysts when he talks about longstanding political grievances," Esposito said.
"What bin Laden ends up doing is saying anyone who disagrees with him, any Muslim, is in fact an apostate," he said. That includes Muslims who would not join his fight, he said. "It's a distortion of the traditional teaching, and it just extends the parameters and the consequences in order to legitimate how when you're fighting on the ground you're fighting against your own people."
Malik said, "The key issue is of apostasy," referring to when a person leaves a faith. "One of the things Osama bin Laden deviates from is calling those people who do not implement Sharia, or God's law, on the planet as apostates. If they did not implement Sharia, they deserved death. This is a major departure from normative Islam."
"The second major deviation is the targeting of noncombatants. Even when you read in the Quran there are injunctions for fighting. But before and after the injunctions for fighting are calls for restraint. 'Do not attack monks, do not attack women, do not attack children.' And these are numerated heavily in the Hadith, which are uncontested," Malik said, referring to the sayings of the prophet and his close companions.
"What bin Laden has done is ignored those injunctions," he said. "The reason he has ignored them, in Osama bin Laden's theology it's basically a theology of anarchy.
"Once you let the genie out of the bottle you can't put it back in, and that's the big difference between al Qaeda theology and normative Islam. Normative Islam has heavy constraints - very, very heavy."
Bin Laden's theology is waning greatly in influence, Esposito said, in part because of the rise of the Arab Spring, the revolts of people on the street across the Middle East that have overthrown regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
"(Al Qaeda's) whole notion was to develop a mass movement," Esposito said. "Well, they never did."
Flashback: Read CNN's Chief International Correspondent Nic Robertson's report on a Libyan group that denounced bin Laden ideology
Follow the Belief Blog on Twitter
<bot>: By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN) -- Osama bin Laden wore the mantle of a religious leader. He looked the part and talked a good game, but his theology was a radical departure from traditional orthodox Islam.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011050419id_/http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/04/bin-ladens-theology/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: U2's "Under a Blood Red Sky," at age 13 and hasn't looked back. Besides listening to artists ranging from The Ramones to Dean Martin, Micek also writes about music, his work appearing in publications including The Big Takeover, Pop Culture Press and Playlist
over again. The police are there to protect victims. Yet they are protecting him. 'They have done more for him than me.’ ■ Dean Martin, 25, was left looking ‘like the Elephant Man’ after he was beaten up in a Newcastle nightclub last year. The student
three times...I won a trip to see Wayne Newton..., I won a trip to Tijuana to the bullfights, and then the big one was I won a trip to Portofino, Italy with Deana Martin, Dean Martin's daughter." STEVE MARTIN was a hit on the popular U.S. blind date show.
U2's "Under a Blood Red Sky," at age 13 and hasn't looked back. Besides listening to artists ranging from The Ramones to Dean Martin, Micek also writes about music, his work appearing in publications including The Big Takeover, Pop Culture Press and Playlist
have been married and it is my little, inner-circle family, every Christmas morning, we get up and light a fire and put on Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and The Carpenters Christmas albums and we play those on like a loop, and then we open presents and head over
A tearful but defiant Army widow addressed her husband's killer Thursday, dismissing any suggestion that the actions of the former teenage al-Qaeda militant should be excused because of his age.
Tom Bosley, whose long acting career was highlighted by his hugely popular role as the understanding father on television's nostalgic, top-rated 1970s comedy series Happy Days, died Tuesday. He was 83.
A new video game features the legendary singer as narrator.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer today vowed to sign a controversial immigration bill into state law, advancing a politically charged debate that is already having reverberations in Washington.
Before the Las Vegas Strip ruled the gambling world, the Rat Pack helped make the Cal Neva Lodge one of Nevada's coolest casinos.
Stars for the late crooners will be unveiled Feb. 22 in a ceremony at the Flamingo Las Vegas casino-resort.
Sin City is paying homage to iconic singers Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin by giving them each a place on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars.
The granddaddy of all pro-ams and the mother of all things weather arrives this week to the Monterey Peninsula for the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
Short and sweet and plenty dangerous. That would be the 10th hole of the Riviera Country Club near Los Angeles, host to this week's Northern Trust Open. Measuring a mere 315 yards, the hole is both alluring and precarious, a docile birdie hole one minute, a brutish, emerald stretch with bogey or worse written all over it the next.
Jean Simmons, the lovely, ethereal film star who played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, sang with Marlon Brando in "Guys and Dolls" and costarred with Gregory Peck, Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas, has died. She 80.
<bot>: Collection of all USATODAY.com coverage of Dean Martin., including articles, videos, photos, and quotes.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012021919id_/http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Dean+Martin
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: By Jim Bruce | UPS
Itâs a fact â climate and congestion concerns are going to change the way companies around the world do business.
Already, congestion in the United States costs nearly $80 billion a year in wasted time and fuel â not to mention indirect costs to the environment. For UPS, congestion has made it more difficult to deliver goods quickly, efficiently, safely, and affordably in urban areas. To counter gridlock in the New York City metro area, for example, UPS dispatches approximately 60 additional delivery drivers and 20 additional tractor-trailer combinations than it did five years ago. And adding more vehicles to the road only contributes to further road congestion.
Congestionâs impact on the environment is also an issue for our communities. In the United States, transportation is responsible for more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. And the ramifications on our climate â including increased global temperatures and more extreme weather patterns â are well-documented around the world.
The question today isnât so much whether these issues pose significant risk, but what can be done about them. Crafting solutions that protect our planet and encourage continued economic growth requires a coordinated effort by businesses and governments â using innovative ideas and open dialogue to transform present challenges into future opportunities.
At UPS, one solution is our ORION navigation system â a world-class route optimization software that makes sure our delivery drivers follow the most efficient routes possible given a slate of packages. By the end of 2016 when ORION is fully implemented, we expect to achieve a reduction of 100 million miles annually, saving 10 million gallons of fuel and eliminating 100,000 metric tons of CO2 each year.
The question today isnât so much whether these issues pose significant risk, but what can be done about them.
Without continued and increased investments in our nationâs infrastructure, however, even advanced software like ORION canât make significant dents in congestion concerns. Unfortunately, the U.S. lags behind many of its overseas competitors in transportation infrastructure investment. The World Economic Forumâs Global Competitiveness Report for 2015-16 ranked the quality of all U.S. transportation infrastructure at ninth in the world. Rail infrastructure ranked 15th, port infrastructure 10th, road infrastructure 13th, and airport infrastructure fifth.
And beyond simply increasing investment in our transportation network, governments also have to create smart policies that effectively address congestion concerns without unintended adverse consequences. Proposals to limit access to urban centers for all vehicles are growing increasingly popular as a reactive way to improve air quality and reduce congestion â but without properly engaging the business community, these regulations can pose overwhelming restraints on economic activity. To tackle these challenges, governments should partner with businesses to brainstorm, test, and implement solutions. It takes time, but by joining forces with public officials, UPS has found mutually beneficial solutions that can be customized and sometimes replicated around the world.
In Hamburg, Germany, UPS developed a limited, but custom delivery model for the city that drops off large parcel containers at approved central locations and delivers from those points to customers on smaller delivery routes ⦠via tricycles and electric-tricycles! We also worked to convert conventional diesel vehicles to run on electric motors, which are now operating in London and inside formerly restricted areas in Amsterdam.
Solutions like these are repeatable in other cities, but there is no silver-bullet solution. Thatâs why UPS uses a ârolling laboratoryâ approach, trying numerous alternative fuel and technology solutions. This allows us to account for a wide variety of business demands while still reducing environmental impact and expense.
The future of the transportation industry looks greener than ever. UPS, like-minded companies, and city leaders with bold ideas are at a point where we can envision significant sustainability advancements powered by smart and cutting-edge technologies. But to get there, weâll need help.
Some needs are small and concrete â more funding for research, for example, often in less glamorous but critically important areas like engine emissions technologies or determining how to cost-effectively manufacture renewable fuel from waste byproducts. Other needs are bigger, like creating a predictable regulatory framework so businesses can pursue long-term solutions. We also need enough flexibility to accommodate fresh ideas and change course if new developments and technologies present themselves.
The future of the transportation industry looks greener than ever.
Congestion and climate change have many interlocking parts, which can make it difficult to develop strategies to reduce traffic and emissions while meeting bottom-line demands. But Iâm confident these issues can be addressed by working jointly with government authorities, technology and engineering firms, think tanks, academics, and companies of all sizes and scopes. Collaborative innovation today will pay immense dividends tomorrow. Together, we can turn our biggest challenges into our biggest opportunities.
Jim Bruce is vice president for UPS Public Affairs and specializes in sustainability policy.
The Wall Street Journal news organization was not involved in the creation of this content.
<bot>: Congestion in the United States costs nearly $80 billion a year in wasted time and fuel.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160612035026id_/http://www.wsj.com/ad/article/ups-turning-congestion-challenges-into-operational-opportunities
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Marcus Yam for The New York Times
A proliferation of computer screens is the latest workplace upgrade, and it is responsible for the new look at companies and home offices â they are starting to resemble mission control.
Workers in the digital era can feel at times as if they are playing a video game, battling the barrage of e-mails and instant messages, juggling documents, Web sites and online calendars. To cope, people have become swift with the mouse, toggling among dozens of overlapping windows on a single monitor.
But there is a growing new tactic for countering the data assault: the addition of a second computer screen. Or a third.
This proliferation of displays is the latest workplace upgrade, and it is responsible for the new look at companies and home offices — they are starting to resemble mission control.
For multiscreen multitaskers, a single monitor can seem as outdated as dial-up Internet. “You go back to one, and you feel slow,” said Jackie Cohen, 42, who uses three 17-inch monitors in her home office in San Francisco, where she edits a blog about Facebook.
Her center screen shows what she is writing or editing, along with e-mail and instant messages; the left and right monitors display news sites, blogs and Twitter feeds, and she keeps 3 to 10 tabs open on each. One monitor recently broke, and she felt hamstrung. “I don’t want to miss seeing something,” Ms. Cohen said.
Her computer seemed to work a bit faster with one monitor fewer, she said. But her brain was a different matter.
“I can handle it,” she added. “I’m sure there are people who can’t.”
Certainly more people are trying. Tech firms sold 179 million monitors worldwide last year and only 130 million desktop computers — meaning “more screens per desk,” said Rhoda Alexander, who heads monitor and tablet research at IHS iSuppli. Monitors are bigger, too. The average monitor sold worldwide is 21 inches, up from 18 inches five years ago, according to iSuppli.
NEC Display, a major supplier of monitors, said 30 to 40 percent of the employees of its corporate customers now used more than one monitor, up from 1 percent four years ago.
There are many reasons for the spike in sales: monitors are much cheaper ($200 to $300 for a 24-inch display today compared with $700 five years ago); they are slimmer, too, so desks can accommodate more of them; and there are more communication tools — instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook — that workers have to keep an eye on (or at least feel they should).
More and bigger screens can convey bragging rights, too. Tech companies use them as recruiting tools, said Chuck Rossi, 45, who uses three monitors (27-inch, 30-inch and a 17-inch laptop) to toggle among dozens of tabs for his engineering job at Facebook, where he checks hundreds of software updates to the site each day before they become public.
“Companies will pitch it” to job candidates, Mr. Rossi said. “They know real estate is important. It shows they are serious about their engineers.”
And the engineers do care about the screens, he said, noting that someone might tell a friend about a new job by adding, “They’re giving me a 30 right off the bat,” which is shorthand for a 30-inch monitor.
The main rationale for a multimonitor setup is that it increases productivity. But that notion is not simple to prove or measure, partly because it depends on the kind of work people do and whether they really need to be constantly looking at multiple data streams. Another theory holds that people have just grown so addicted to juggling that having more monitors simply creates a compulsion to check them.
One study, by the University of Utah, found that productivity among people working on editing tasks was higher with two monitors than with one. The study was financed with about $50,000 by NEC Display, which had hoped to find evidence that companies should buy more monitors to increase productivity. (Other tech companies also promote multiple displays — one Hewlett-Packard ad declares that “two is better than one.”)
The author of the study, James A. Anderson, a professor of communication, said he had not been influenced by NEC’s financing. He said he uses three monitors himself, but also said that it was hard to generalize about whether more monitors are better.
<bot>: In a new tactic for countering the data assault, offices are giving workers a second computer screen and sometimes a third.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012020819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/technology/for-multitaskers-multiple-monitors-improve-office-efficiency.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Before making an online purchase, check your browsers status bar for https://… (Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg)
As more shoppers turn to their computers and mobile devices to shop, spending smartly this holiday season is about more than knowing how to get a good deal.
Consumers can save money, time and hassle during the Christmas rush by buying online, but they're also targets for identity theft and online scams.
"During the holiday season, you can be in such a rush and let your guard down," said Scott Boding, director of order screening at CyberSource, a Visa company. "Because there's so much more purchasing taking place, it can become easier for a fraudster to blend in and slip through the cracks."
So before you whip out that credit card and power up your laptop or tablet, here are some tips to protect your personal information.
Update your computer's anti-virus and anti-spyware software and download the latest security updates. If you're using a wireless connection, make sure it's encrypted with a password.
Strengthen your online passwords by making them unique and difficult to steal. Avoid predictable passwords such as pet and spouse names, birthdays and consecutive numbers. Instead, incorporate random numbers, symbols and capitalized letters.
Use credit cards instead of debit cards. A stolen debit card gives an identity thief a direct line to your bank account; by using a credit card, you'll be better protected from fraud and face less liability in the event your card number is stolen. Review your credit card statements monthly for unauthorized charges.
Shop at trusted brands with secure websites. Before making a purchase, check your browser's status bar for "https://" URLs that indicate secure connections when placing orders. Look for delivery guarantees from online retailers and keep hard copies of order confirmations.
Watch what you post online. Avoid sharing your address and phone numbers on social networking sites, or storing credit card numbers and passwords in your email account.
Be on the lookout for phishing and email scams. One popular scam sends emails, purportedly from UPS or DHL, alerting recipients that a package has been sent and asking them to fill out an attached form with their personal information. Don't open any attachments; instead, delete the emails.
Shoppers should also be wary of fake online stores, California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris said in a consumer alert on safely shopping online for the holidays. Many online scammers steal information by redirecting shoppers to Web pages that look like the checkout pages of legitimate shopping sites.
To avoid those traps, be careful what links you click. Set your browser to block pop-up windows, and make sure you type in the store's Web address into your browser window instead of clicking links from email or other websites.
If you have children, talk to them about the dangers of online shopping. Kids are major targets for identity thieves, who know that children are often comfortable online.
And finally, use common sense. Beware of suspicious emails that request information such as your social security number or that promise a special deal. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
"If a television that's usually $2,000 is on sale for $200, a flag should pop up," said Doron Simovitch, chief executive of shopping search engine Sortprice.com.
<bot>: As more shoppers turn to their computers and mobile devices to shop, spending smartly this holiday season is about more than knowing how to get a good deal. Consumers can save money, time and hassle...
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011122519id_/http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-techsavvy-online-shopping-20111124,0,5199335.story
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Prostate cancer cells. Photograph: Getty Images
Men who have a vasectomy have a greater risk of developing the most aggressive form of prostate cancer, a study has found.
Harvard scientists analysed the medical records of nearly 50,000 men and found that those who had the operation were 10% more likely to be diagnosed with the disease.
The study revealed a stronger link with the most serious forms of prostate cancer, with rates of advanced or lethal disease rising by 20% in men who had the procedure. The danger seemed to be highest among men who had a vasectomy before the age of 38.
Cancer charities said the study was "extremely important" and urged doctors to discuss cancer risk with men who were considering sterilisation.
The most dangerous forms of prostate cancer are rare. Over the 24-year study, 1.6% of men developed lethal prostate cancer. A 20% increase would raise that figure to less than 2%.
Kathy Wilson, a co-author on the study at Harvard School of Public Health, said it was unclear how a vasectomy might raise the risk of prostate cancer, but one possibility was that the operation changed the protein composition of seminal fluid made in the prostate. "The underlying mechanisms really aren't known, though, and will require more clinical and experimental studies," she said.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. More than 40,000 men a year are diagnosed with the disease. In 2011, nearly 11,000 men died from prostate cancer in Britain.
The Harvard team analysed the medical records of 49,405 men for up to 24 years, from 1986 to 2010. During that time, 6,023 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 811 men died from the disease. One in four who took part in the study had a vasectomy.
Having a vasectomy had no reliable effect on the chances of developing low-grade prostate cancer, but men who had the procedure had a 19% greater risk of lethal prostate cancer and were 20% more likely to be diagnosed with advanced disease than other men.
During the study, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, 16 in every 1,000 men developed lethal prostate cancer. A 20% increase due to vasectomy could raise that number to around 19 in every 1,000.
The study goes a long way to ruling out biases that have undermined previous studies, such as the tendency for men who have had vasectomies to have more medical checkups.
Malcolm Mason, of Cancer Research UK, said: "This is an extremely important study, the largest one of its kind looking at the link between vasectomies and prostate cancer. Importantly, the extra risk of developing prostate cancer after having a vasectomy appears to be small but of the few that do go on to develop the disease, a higher number will develop an aggressive form.
"Vasectomy is still an important option for contraception, but this information should form part of the discussion before a man makes an informed decision as to whether or not it is right for him. Future research should look at a combined analysis of this study with others of a similar nature – and if these findings are confirmed, more research will be needed to work out why vasectomy seems to have this effect on prostate cancer risk."
<bot>: Danger seems to be highest among men who had a vasectomy before age 38, according to 24-year study of 50,000 men
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014071219id_/http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/11/vasectomy-prostate-cancer-study
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: I want the IA to have the highest profile it can have and be as strong as it can… (Bob Chamberlin, Los Angeles Times)
When rock star Bono and members of his band U2 recently showed up at the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg, Canada, they were greeted not with cheers but jeers from more than 80 members of one of Hollywood's most powerful unions.
Their beef: U2's decision to hire a nonunion crew to film a documentary of the show that the band had come to finish shooting. "This is nothing short of union-busting," declared Matt Loeb, president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
Taking on the world's most famous rock group was just the latest example of Loeb's willingness to thrust the typically low-key union into high-profile skirmishes on behalf of the nearly 120,000 stage hands, camera operators, grips, costume designers and others who work behind the scenes on scores of movies and TV shows.
The IA, as it is known, in November waged its first high-profile strike in Los Angeles in nearly two decades, in a highly publicized showdown with the producers of the hit reality TV show "The Biggest Loser."
Unlike other Hollywood unions such as the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America, the IA has traditionally avoided public confrontations with employers. It was an approach espoused by the union's longtime former leader Tom Short, who placed a premium on maintaining smooth relations with the studios and keeping labor peace â even if it meant occasionally calling out other guild leaders for their tactics or militant rhetoric.
But since taking over from Short nearly three years ago, Loeb has put the IA on a more aggressive course, shaking things up inside the entertainment industry's largest union. In one of his first interviews as president, Loeb spoke to The Times about the recent strike, as well as a controversial and ambitious plan to extend union contracts to visual-effects workers and his efforts to create a more open culture inside a labor organization that dates to 1886.
"I want the IA to have the highest profile it can have and be as strong as it can be," he said. "Having a solid membership that understands why the union is there and what it does for them is key."
Loeb, 46, grew up in Cleveland and got his start in the entertainment industry in 1988 in New York, where he worked for a local painters union, cleaning up sets and handling timecards.
He soon became the de facto shop steward and quickly rose through the ranks of the IA, heading its East Council and the union's first movie and TV division. When Short abruptly resigned in July 2008 after 14 years on the job, the IA's executive board tapped Loeb to succeed him.
Loeb is reluctant to draw comparisons with his predecessor, saying he prefers to focus on the future. But his style is clearly different from that of Short, who was credited for unifying a formerly fractious collection of local unions and increasing the IA's ranks while also clashing with dissidents who chafed at his mercurial management style.
"I want to be approachable," Loeb said. "I want people to feel like they can bring a good idea or a bad idea or disagree with me. I believe if I'm not getting input, I've lost something and I don't have the tools that I need to lead."
Short could not be reached for comment.
As part of Loeb's outreach, the IA has hired a research firm to survey the views of union members on the union's health and pension plans and will hold a series of "town meetings" in the next year to discuss the state of the healthcare industry and what changes they would like to see.
It's part of an effort to rally the dozens of local guilds that fall under the IA's umbrella to be more involved in negotiations to replace the current contract, which expires in July 2012.
"He wants to hear directly what members have to say, and that's new,'' said Steven Poster, president of the International Cinematographers Guild, which is part of the IA.
Loeb also has been trying to improve relations with other unions, especially the Teamsters, which represents location managers and casting directors. The two unions have a long history of friction, clashing over turf. Last year, Loeb reached out to Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa, son of the late Teamsters boss.
"I said we ought to be helping each other and building strength by standing together," Loeb said. Hoffa agreed and the two men signed a so-called mutual assistance pact to work together.
Loeb said that at a time when many unions are losing membership, one of his chief priorities is to expand the IA's base. That's one reason the IA threw its resources behind the two-week strike against the NBC series "The Biggest Loser," which allowed 50 crew members to count their hours toward their health insurance benefits.
"I was trying to make the point that reality TV wasn't going to be ignored by us," Loeb said of the strike. "It bolstered the notion that there are things worth fighting for and that we would pull the trigger."
<bot>: When rock star Bono and members of his band U2 recently showed up at the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg, Canada, they were greeted not with cheers but jeers from more than 80 members of one of...
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011062719id_/http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-loeb-20110621,0,4617135.story
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: With neighboring Ukraine locked in a battle with pro-Russian separatists, there have been fears that tensions could spread to Moldova. The republic lies in eastern Europe between Romania and Ukraine.
Read MoreFrance suspends delivery of warship to Russia, cites Ukraine
It has signed an association agreement with the EU alongside Ukraine and Georgia, however, clearing stating its intentions to form closer bonds with the West.
Timothy Ash, head of emerging market research at Standard Bank, said the pro-EU parties would likely get a narrow majority in parliament, but stressed that Trans-Dniester would continue to "loom" over Moldova.
The region declared its independence in 1990 but has never been recognized internationally. There are fears of potential Russian intervention, Ash said, given that Moscow has been blamed for backing the rebels fighting in the eastern part of Ukraine.
"I think the Russians are biding their time, still keeping their options open," Ash told CNBC via email. "Ukraine remains the big prize, and Moldova is being used as something of a bargaining chip."
<bot>: A top Russian policymaker issued a warning to Moldova as election results showed that pro-EU parties were edging toward victory.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20151129215008id_/http://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/02/is-moldova-the-next-crimea-russia-is-worried.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Rohit Paul has seen the future of digital security, and it is free of pesky passwords. Recently, he needed to use a laptop to edit a vacation photo stored in Google Photos. He grabbed his wife’s computer. But the 27-year-old engineer didn’t type in Google credentials. Instead, he tapped a button on the screen of his Nexus 6P smartphone.
“It makes life easier,” Mr. Paul said. “No need to worry about typing a complicated...
<bot>: Technologists are working hard to find alternatives to pesky computer passwords. Aiming to strike a balance between security and ease of use, big tech firms are turning to the smartphone as a replacement for passwords and other identification.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016020919id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-firms-push-toward-a-future-without-passwords-1454977631
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: A view from the viewing platform of Aguille du Midi in the French Alps, France. (Fred Adler/BBC)
The French Alps have exquisite landscapes: mountains intersperse with hulking glaciers, glittering lakes and glam ski resorts. Once the winter sports season's over and the snow has melted, stay to go hiking, sample the cuisine or explore the picturesque town of Annecy.
SeeThe Aiguille de Midi is one of Chamonix’s most distinctive landmarks – a soaring tower of rock commanding majestic views of the Alps. The Aiguille de Midi cable car runs to the summit from Chamonix (returns £40).
A tangle of medieval streets set on the shores of a pristine lake, Annecy is one of the loveliest towns in the French Alps. Explore the Palais de l’Isle, a turreted 12th century building on an islet in the city’s canal (10am-12pm and 2-5pm, closed Tue; admission £3).
France’s first national park is spectacular. The 200 square miles of the Park National de la Vanoise take in vast glaciers and snowy peaks, and are home to marmots and ibex. The information centre in Bonneval-sur-Arc has details of trails around the park.
Les Trois Vallées is the largest ski area in the world, with over 350 miles of piste and 180 ski lifts. Skiers divide between three main resorts – Méribel, celeb hangout Courchevel, and Europe’s highest resort, Val Thorens (ski pass £40 per day).
Grenoble might not be the most prettiest of French cities but it can claim a fine crop of museums and galleries. Visit the Musée de Grenoble, renowned for its collection of modern art with pieces by Matisse, Monet and Picasso (£4).
Eat and drinkChez Mémé Paulette in Grenoble is an old curiosity shop of a café, crammed with antique books, cuckoo clocks and other knick-knacks. It dishes up wallet-friendly soul food, such as homemade tarts (00 33 476 513 885; 2 rue St-Hugues; closed Sun-Mon; plat du jour £8).
Set at the foot of the Bossons Glacier in Chamonix, La Cremerie du Glacier is renowned for its croûtes au fromage – Alpine cheese on toast with an extensive choice of toppings (766 Chemin de la Glacier; open 7.30pm every evening; mains from £9).
Les Vieilles Luges in Chamonix can only be reached on skis, or by taking a scenic 20 minute hike from the Maison Neuve chairlift. Feast on delicious home cooking such as beef bourguignon, washed down with mulled wine (Les Houches; mains from £15).
Perched above Lake Annecy, Chalet la Pricaz specialises in organic produce. Try tartiflettes – cheese with potatoes, crème fraîche, onions and bacon. The wine list is exemplary (00 33 450 607 261; Col de la Forclaz; mains from £16).
Flocons de Sel is a two-Michelin starred restaurant in Megève. Typical fare is freshly caught fish or pigeon, followed by the signature desert, flocons de sucre – or sugar snowflakes (1775 Route de Leutaz; set lunch from £33).
SleepLa Ferme du Petit Bonheur is a vine-clad farmhouse in Chambéry. In summer guests enjoy the gardens with views out to the Bauges massif, while in winter the wood-burning stove in the salon provides welcome respite from the cold (538 chemin de Jean-Jacques; from £80).
The Farmhouse in Morzine is an evocative stone building dating back to 1771. Rooms are split between the house and a trio of cottages spread over the attractive grounds – including a mazot (a miniature mountain chalet). Evening dining is a lavish affair (429 Chemin de la Coutettaz; from £80).
Hotel du Palais de l’Isle in Annecy brings contemporary décor to this 18th-century building on the canal. Rooms sport views of the castle and across the rooftops of the old town (00 33 450 458 687; 13 Rue Perrière; from £90).
With window boxes ablaze with geraniums, Auberge du Manoir ticks all of the requisite alpine chalet boxes – pine-panelled rooms, pristine mountain views and roaring fires in the communal area. A fine breakfast includes homemade tarts and DIY boiled eggs (8 Route du Bouchet; from £100).
The Château des Allues is a restored 19th century house where stately rooms come furnished with copper fireplaces, oil paintings and four-poster beds. Meals see the owner making good use of the herbs and vegetables grown in the garden (Saint Pierre d’Albigny; from £105).
When to goWinter snows attract skiers, while summer sees hikers strolling through the region’s epic landscapes. Annecy celebrates its Fête du Lac festival in August, while Grenoble hosts its Detours de Babel music festival in March.
How to goFly to Lyon, Geneva or Grenoble airports – easyJet flies to Grenoble from Birmingham, Bristol and Stansted (from £80). During the ski season, Eurostar runs from St Pancras to stations in the French Alps, including Moûtiers (from £115).
Getting aroundThe area is best explored by car – vehicle hire is available at Grenoble airport (from £75 per day). The Mont Blanc Express runs to Chamonix from St Gervais-Le Fayet station, connecting with the rest of the French rail network (returns £20).
<bot>: Whether spending time in quaint towns like Annecy or hitting the slopes at Les Trois Vallées, the Alps are the perfect spot for outdoor adventurers and urban culture-fiends alike.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012040119id_/http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20120217-mini-guide-to-the-french-alps
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 5 — Already stripped of its unblemished record and even its home-court flavor, the United States proceeded to surrender all hope for a medal at the world basketball championships tonight when it blew a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and was ousted by the defending champion, Yugoslavia, in the quarterfinals, 81-78.
It felt as if Conseco Fieldhouse had been turned into Little Belgrade as a sizable band of Yugoslav fans easily outcheered, if not outnumbered, another sparse crowd of Americans, who watched the professionals from the N.B.A. lose for the second time in two nights in international competition after 58 straight victories.
"It was like we were playing at home," said the Yugoslav coach, Svetislav Pesic.
Digging in for an effort that was as blue in the collar as their sleeveless team jerseys, the Americans built a 69-59 lead behind Paul Pierce and Andre Miller, only to have Yugoslavia go on an 18-4 run that was capped by a dagger of a 3-pointer from the right wing by Milan Gurovic. That gave Yugoslavia a 77-73 lead, and after Miller's 3-pointer cut it to a point, guard Marko Jaric made four free throws to seal the victory.
"It was an N.B.A. playoff game in the summer," said the crestfallen United States coach, George Karl, whose Milwaukee Bucks failed to make the playoffs last spring.
Bedlam was set off in the Yugoslav rooting sections and on the court as Miller misfired a 3-point attempt as time expired. It was the first time that an American team failed to earn a medal at the world championships since 1978, when the tournament was played in October and the United States sent the barnstorming amateur team Athletes in Action.
Yugoslavia will play New Zealand, which upset Puerto Rico, 65-63, in the semifinals tonight. Argentina, which beat the United States on Wednesday night, eliminated Brazil, 78-67, and will next play Germany, which ousted Spain, 70-62.
The United States team, led tonight by Pierce and Miller with 19 points each, was consigned to the consolation round Friday night against Puerto Rico, a development Miller called embarrassing.
If Wednesday marked the end of the American dominance, tonight was the official beginning of the new world order, the first time since the N.B.A. unleashed its dunk-and-pony show in the international arena in 1992 that one could argue there was no more order at all. Anybody could win, and the United States could obviously lose.
"The game isn't ours now, it's everybody's," said Mike D'Antoni, an assistant coach for the Phoenix Suns who last season coached Italy's Benetton Treviso's Euro League champions and is familiar with most of the foreign players here.
That the Americans' 58-game winning streak was finally over was less the shock than the way they were vanquished Wednesday by Argentina: nearly beginning to end and in every measurable aspect of play.
Before the United States team even had the opportunity to redeem itself tonight, the focus around the arena was more on who was not wearing the United States uniforms than who was and who would have to be in them for 2004 Olympics for the Americans to win.
Few would argue that Shaquille O'Neal, who played for the United States in 1994 and 1996, would change the dynamic and outcome of any tournament, but in two years he will be 32, with chronic big toe pain and most likely coming off another playoff run deep into June.
Tim Duncan would certainly give the United States a much improved post presence from what it has here, but those who believe that more elite personnel will be the American panacea might reflect back on Sydney before looking ahead to Athens.
The 2000 United States Olympic team, while playing without O'Neal, did have a roster laden with so-called franchise players: Kevin Garnett, Vince Carter, Jason Kidd, Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning, Antonio McDyess. They flew home under critical assault for surviving a Lithuanian 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have beaten them had it been good and for being unable to shake France in the gold medal game.
For Karl and his players, burdened now by unwelcome historical distinction, the first N.B.A. team to lose and not earn a medal, all that mattered was the chance to prove that Wednesday was a false step, if not a fluke. After more or less guaranteeing earlier in the week that some future team would be the one to lose, Baron Davis said, "We'll be back to win the gold medal."
Yugoslavia had its own medal plan and such a desire to finally defeat the N.B.A. entry that Vlade Divac claimed to have given up smoking until Sunday. Having lost twice early in the tournament before reaching the single-elimination round, Divac, Peja Stojakovic, who led Yugoslavia tonight with 20 points, and their teammates wound up meeting the United States sooner than they would have preferred. But they were ready, running out to a 9-0 lead as their raucous fans roared.
Desperate for veteran poise and leadership, Karl started Reggie Miller, the 38-year-old hometown Pacer, and it was Miller's pair of 3-pointers that cut into the early deficit, got the United States on its defensive toes and into a better state of mind. The score was tied at 20-20 by the end of the first quarter, but the game would get away in the last six minutes, leaving the United States two long years to determine a strategy to reintroduce itself as a world basketball power.
<bot>: The U.S. was eliminated from the world basketball championships, losing to defending champion Yugoslavia in the quarterfinals.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160610043426id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2002/09/06/sports/othersports/06HOOP.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: By now, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are comfortable playing husband and wife—both in their upcoming action-romance Mr. and Mrs. Smith and in a ’60s-era photo shoot for the June issue of W magazine. But on April 19, it was clear that the sexy stars were no longer just role-playing for the cameras: Strolling on Kenya’s Diani Beach with Jolie’s 3-year-old son Maddox, they enjoyed a family beach outing, with Pitt engaging Maddox in some shovel-and-bucket sand play while Mom looked on. Back at the luxury Alfajiri Villas where the trio were staying, “Brad and Angie looked very jovial,” says an observer. “They walked together, laughed.” Given how relaxed they seemed, says the source, “it would have been hard to convince someone that they were not husband and wife.”
And so, after nearly a year of intense speculation—during which time the pair turned up in extravagantly romantic settings from Amalfi, Italy, where they shot scenes for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, to Palm Springs, Calif.—PEOPLE’s two-time Sexiest Man Alive and Esquire‘s reigning Sexiest Woman Alive appear to have joined forces as the Universe’s Sexiest Couple Alive (and readers agree; see page 72). After repeated steadfast denials of a romantic relationship—talk that reached a fever pitch in January, when Pitt and wife Jennifer Aniston announced their split, with Jolie singled out as the seductive Other Woman—this time around Pitt, 41, and Jolie, 29, are keeping notably mum. And yet as evidence of a romance mounts, a close source maintains that there was nothing improper going on before the actor’s separation. “He didn’t do anything while he was married,” says the source. “He’ll go to the grave saying that.”
Of the intimate Pitt-Jolie African rendezvous, during which the pair shared a romantic $2,000-a-night oceanside villa and journeyed on a half-day safari at the Shimba Hills National Reserve in Kenya, “it is what it is,” says the source.
What exactly is “it”? Although the same source says that the stars “are obviously friends,” it seems unlikely that “just plain pals” would go to the trouble of meeting in a remote pocket of Kenyan coastline. Even more telling, protective mom Jolie—who has often spoken of her desire to keep the men in her life at a distance from Maddox lest he get attached to one—has clearly given Pitt the green light. Whether sharing downtime on the Smith set in L.A. last spring or cavorting in Kenya, Pitt and Maddox have forged an obvious bond. While shooting Smith, “Brad liked to play with [Maddox],” says an on-set source.
During the same shoot, several sources close to Pitt made it clear that the actor had fallen under Jolie’s notorious spell. (She has been involved with several of her leading men, including ex-husbands Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton.) “Angelina can turn on the charm, and there’s not a guy in the world who wouldn’t be fascinated with her,” said a source at the time. With the rumors swirling last May, Jolie downplayed any real-life chemistry between herself and Pitt: “I end up in the paper with everyone I work with,” she told PEOPLE.
What is undeniable, however, is the mutual admiration both stars have expressed for one another. Pitt “is a great actor, a great guy,” Jolie told Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton in an episode taped in New York City on April 25. “He’s one of those people…they seem very far away. But he’s extremely down-to-earth. He’s goofy. He’s funny.” On the Smith set, “he was always encouraging me to be dumber,” she said. “He’d say, ‘You know what would be funny? If you turn around and walk into that door.’ And then I thought, ‘Now I’m just being a complete idiot.’ We had a lot of fun.” On the topic of sex scenes in general-there’s an especially steamy one in Smith—Jolie spoke with typical candor. “I can do a sex scene quite easily,” she said. “You find something about that person and you enjoy it, and you’re an adult. And if [your costar’s] husband or wife is there, you make a point of showing some respect to them, showing them that they’re the most important person.”
Regardless of whether she extended that courtesy to Aniston (for more on Pitt’s soon-to-be ex, see box), Jolie has clearly had a profound influence on Pitt, whose interest in Third World relief parallels Jolie’s longtime work as a UN ambassador. Following his getaway with Jolie in Kenya, the actor jetted to Ethiopia and South Africa on back-to-back humanitarian missions (see box). During his Ethiopia visit, “he just mucked in with everybody else,” says Francesca Stuer, Ethiopia director of Family Health International, a group that provides help to children with HIV/ AIDS. “I really got the impression that he likes the fact that few people know who he is in Ethiopia.”
No such luck in most of the rest of the world, where news of Hollywood’s newest supercouple—Brangelina, anyone?—is sure to keep Pitt and Jolie squarely in the white-hot glare of the spotlight. With Pitt continuing his humanitarian work in Africa—and preparing to shoot the drama Babel in Morocco with Cate Blanchett—and Jolie stateside for her Actors Studio appearance, the pair are maintaining their public silence for now. All that may change, however, when publicity gears up for the June release of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (see box)—and audiences can judge the Pitt-Jolie combustibility for themselves. “They have amazing chemistry onscreen,” says a source who worked with them on Smith. “They are insanely hot people.”
Michelle Tauber, Jason Lynch and Chris Strauss. Todd Gold, Mike Fleeman, Julie Jordan, Sandra Marquez and Brenda Rodriguez in L.A., Bryan Alexander and Sara Hammel in London, Xan Rice in Kenya, Neil Michael in Addis Ababa and Lisa Ingrassia and Courtney Hazlett in New York City
<bot>: By now, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are comfortable playing husband and wife—both in their upcoming action-romance Mr. and Mrs. Smith and in a ’60s-era photo shoot for the June issue of W ma…
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Forget about Brad, Jen, and Angelina. The most scandalous love triangle of all time happened 51 years ago.
Pop singer Eddie Fisher (who once had teenage girls shrieking Justin Bieber-style) married America's sweetheart Debbie Reynolds, a movie actress, in 1955 (Carrie Fisher is their daughter).
Reynolds and Fisher -- who died at age 82 Wednesday night of complications from hip surgery -- were known as "America's favorite couple." Think Brad and Jen, circa 2000-2005.
But when Fisher's best friend, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a 1958 plane crash, Fisher rushed to console his widow, legendary femme fatale Elizabeth Taylor. Fisher divorced Reynolds and married Taylor in 1959, causing a scandal that rivals that of Brangelina.
SODAHEAD SLIDESHOW: See the most scandalous love triangles.
Alas, the Fisher-Taylor marriage lasted only five years. La Liz fell in love with co-star Richard Burton during the filming of "Cleopatra," divorced Fisher, and married Burton.
But was this old-school celebrity love triangle really bigger than Brangelina-gate, which the celeb rags are still harping about to this day? Or are they both minor blips on the tabloid radar compared to Princess Di, Prince Charles, and Camilla's warped three-way?
<bot>: Who Had the Most Scandalous Love Triangle of All Time?
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010092519id_/http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/09/24/scandalous-love-triangle-time/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s...Jennifer Lopez?
The actress said that she was ready to play a supehero during an interview with E! News this week while promoting her film “The Boy Next Door.”
Since quite a few of Lopez’s films have featured her kicking butt, she was asked if it was time for her to don a cape and tights.
“That would be awesome,” the star said. “I don’t know why somebody has thought about that yet.”
The “American Idol” judge definitely has the chops to play a superhero, based on her roles as a U.S. marshal in “Out of Sight” and a woman defending herself against an abusive ex in “Enough.”
Lopez seemed to agree, playfully asking for a gig from the president of Warner Bros., which produced the “Batman” and “Superman” franchises.
“Greg Silverman – I need to play a superhero!” she said.
As one of Hollywood’s biggest triple threats – acting, singing and dancing – J.Lo would be more than equipped to take on a role as a superhero.
If she’s serious about following in the steps of stars such as Halle Berry (“X-Men’s” Storm) and Scarlett Johansson (“Avengers’” Black Widow), what are Lopez’s options?
For starters, there’s the cosmically powered Captain Marvel, who’s receiving her very own film in 2018. It’s also Marvel Studio’s first solo female superhero movie, and since the role has yet to be cast, Lopez could potentially throw her hat into the ring for consideration.
Other superheros she could play if the characters ever make the leap to the big screen include Zatanna, a sexy magician from DC Comics, and Psylocke, a gorgeous British telepath who’s a part of the “X-Men” franchise (licensed from Marvel Comics).
As for Lopez’s current movie role, she can next be seen in theaters in “The Boy Next Door,” which premieres Jan. 23.
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO.
<bot>: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s...Jennifer Lopez? The actress said that she would like to play a superhero on the big screen.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015011019id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/jennifer-lopez-play-superhero-article-1.2071538
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: In Britain we are still assuming that we will not wake up on Wednesday to the news that President-Elect Trump is shortly to be installed in the White House. Or the Trump House as he will call it once it’s been redesigned as a building more appropriate to the 21st century.
But of course we said the same about the Brexit referendum in June. There was no way Remain could lose: too much uncertainty; too much financial pain; too much of a step back into a nationalistic world of competing polities. And we were wrong. A majority – admittedly a slim majority – let out a howl of anger about a variety of issues and decided to make the EU the whipping boy for their anguish.
To hell with economic growth and political stability, we were going to leave. Lots of people in the UK decided they had nothing to lose anyway, so backed the destructive course for the sheer hell of it, and maybe Americans will do the same. There comes a point where you’ve gone so low in life that Armageddon looks quite attractive.
When we Remainers (or “Bremoaners” as the “Brexiteers” now like to paint us) woke up on 24 June to the news that the unthinkable had happened and the UK – or parts of it – had voted to leave the EU, the first reaction was one of disbelief. How could a majority of my fellow citizens have voted to turn the clock back in this way?
A young woman on the news summed it up perfectly on that morning. She said she was in a daze, doing the things she normally did, seeing the people she normally saw, but knowing that many of them had voted Leave – something she saw as anathema. She likened them to “zombies”: she thought she knew and understood the people she lived among, but clearly she didn’t.
This was the disbelief phase, and it quickly gave way to anger. How could voters be so dumb? How could they swallow all the Leave lies about giving more money to the NHS? People were never really told what leaving the EU would mean. The fine detail – the question of “hard” v “soft” Brexit, questions about the status of EU citizens already here and British citizens living in the EU, the role of parliament in determining the terms on which we leave – are only now being discussed.
The debate, if it can be called that, in the months leading up to the vote on 23 June was laughably simplistic. An immensely complex decision had been reduced to a binary vote. The referendum was a fiasco and should never have been called. Losing his job as prime minister wasn’t sufficient punishment for David Cameron, who had called the referendum to try to salve wounds in the Conservative party and then led a ham-fisted, directionless campaign to keep us in. He should have been locked up in the Tower of London.
But anger only gets you so far. Thinking back to the referendum, one image stuck in my mind. The day before the vote I’d been shopping in a high street close to where I live in south-west London. I’d noticed a young man with a clipboard – I assumed he was a student at the local university – walking up and down the street handing out leaflets and badges, and talking to passersby. He was campaigning for Remain. One person trying to do something for the cause he believed in.
And I felt guilty, because I had done nothing to try to keep Britain in the EU – a cause in which I passionately believed. I had assumed my fellow zombies would be too sensible to swallow the Leave nonsense and immigrant-scapegoating and vote to quit the EU. I realised that I – and all of us Bremainers/Bremoaners – deserved what I had got. Our arrogance had lost us the referendum.
The neighbourhood in which I live had been festooned with Leave posters. The Leavers really wanted this and were prepared to make public their preference. In sporting parlance, they were up for it. The then Ukip leader Nigel Farage said his supporters would “crawl over broken glass” to get to polling stations to vote to leave the EU, and he was right. Leave may not have had the arguments on their side, but they had all the energy. Remain, who didn’t put up posters or show any passion for their cause, were supine in the face of their rhetoric. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” How right Yeats was.
Does all this remind you of anyone? Trump may talk nonsense a lot of the time, but there’s no denying his energy, passion and rhetorical skill. I watched several of the debates involving the Republican hopefuls, and he was incredibly bullish and entertaining. There was no denying he was box office. In an age increasingly suspicious of technocrats, and with people in the “squeezed middle” struggling to stay afloat and looking for simple solutions, Brexit/Trump is an attractive proposition.
All of which led me to the phase I’m now at – believing that I’m as guilty as every other Remainer (except the guy with the clipboard) for the catastrophe of 23 June, and eager to join the battle to rectify the mistake. We had a referendum in 1975 to stay in the forerunner of the EU; we decided to leave in 2016. In my book that makes the referendum score 1-1, and there is still all to play for. I believe (perhaps naively) that once people see the damage leaving would do to the UK economically and politically, sentiment will change.
I will do all I can to help shift that sentiment – writing pro-EU articles, arguing the Remain cause, getting involved in some of the pro-Remain organisations now springing up. We are the insurgents now; we have the passion and the energy. The Leavers are in the ascendant, but defence can be harder than attack if the attackers are determined, as we will have to be.
In this third phase, following denial and anger, I have never felt so energised. I have found a cause in which I truly believe – openness, tolerance, togetherness, economic growth for our common social good. I am even typing this in a T-shirt that displays the 12 stars on a blue background that signify the European Union. I feel I owe it to that student who worked so hard while the rest of us did nothing. He saw the danger of defeat; we arrogantly assumed life would go on as normal. The things that matter in life have to be fought for.
So if Trump does win, it’s your fault. Just as I have to recognise that I am partly responsible for Brexit, so you would have to recognise you are responsible for Trump and Trumpism (or is it Trumpery?).
And for you, as for me, the only response to that realisation is to change your ways and fight. Unlike Brexit, where us Bremoaners have an outside chance of being able to reverse the decision, or at least to argue for a Brexit so soft that you will barely discern what has changed after our exit from the EU, you would be stuck with Trump for four years (unless you find grounds for impeachment, which might indeed be possible). But you still have to fight.
From day one of a Trump presidency, work for the America that is as good as you want it to be. Join campaigning organisations; find (or found!) a political party that reflects your views; get involved in a social group that is working for greater equality and an end to deprivation in your town. You are stuck with Trump, but you can still oppose, negate and eventually destroy Trumpism (assuming the new president doesn’t destroy us all first in his version of the last Trump).
Nothing is written in stone, and individuals can make a difference. A train might look as if it’s inevitably running to a destination, but people lay the tracks. We decide the route. The lesson I’ve learned from the past few months is that denial and anger achieve nothing. The only thing that will make a difference – and make you feel better about the situation – is to vow that this will not stand. I will fight the reactionary, small-minded thinking that underpins Brexit. You must fight the manifest absurdities of Trumpism. Make America great again in your own way.
• This article was amended on 7 November 2016. A previous version said a referendum was held in 1975 to join the the forerunner of the EU; it backed the UK staying in.
<bot>: ‘Remain’ supporters assumed the worst couldn’t happen, but it did. Those who fear a Trump presidency must put their heart and soul into preventing 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/2016110719id_/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/04/brexit-lessons-for-us-voters-election-day-2016-trump
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Ever see the episode of “The Simpsons” when a group of heavily bundled men work diligently in an Arctic-like setting to … procure bags of ice for the Kwik-E-Mart?
“You’ve got to start selling this for more than a dollar a bag! We lost four more men on this expedition!” the exasperated team leader tells the Kwik-E-Marti’s manager, Apu, who responds in kind: “If you can think of a better way to get ice, I’d like to hear it.”
That sort of feels like what baseball’s Hall of Fame week has become: a simple assignment turned into a most trying and dangerous journey, thanks to the subject matter of illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
Doesn’t there have to be a better way?
There is, and it will be up to those outside the game’s mainframe to lead the way. To turn down the volume on this unnecessarily loud topic. You can recognize the discipline while avoiding the demonization. Or, to tweak an old phrase of faith, tolerate the sinner while appreciating the sin’s gravity — but not losing any sleep over it.
“The Hall of Fame has not seen an issue this pervasive since the Negro Leagues,” said John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian. That, if you don’t know, concerned folks’ efforts — with Ted Williams sounding the bugle at his 1966 induction speech — to get deserving Negro League participants into the Hall. The illegal PED hailstorm, to the contrary, has become all about the desire to keep people out of the Hall.
This past week felt particularly stormy, with a confluence of events forcing us to contemplate myriad strains of the phenomenon that has hovered over the sport since the late Ken Caminiti’s 2002 confession of illegal PED usage to Sports Illustrated. We saw Mike Piazza, long suspected of illegal PED usage despite a lack of reported evidence, gain Hall of Fame election from the Baseball Writers Association of America in his fourth try, breaking through the wall that had existed for pumped-up sluggers of Piazza’s time. We saw Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both targets of (and victors over) the United States government, receive encouraging early returns for their prospective candidacies, only to settle for more modest gains once the full results came out. We saw retired Blue Jays and Phillies ace Roy Halladay, a rather vanilla guy during his playing days, go after Bonds and Clemens on Twitter, with the fiery Clemens responding passionately.
We saw the Phillies’ Ryan Howard and the Nationals’ Ryan Zimmerman file lawsuits against Al Jazeera for accusing both players (in a documentary) of illegal PED usage. And in the least anticipated development, we saw The New York Times discover a professional connection between Charles Sly, the primary accuser (and now recanter) in that Al Jazeera documentary, and Jason Riley, an athletic trainer whose clientele has included Derek Jeter.
To date, MLB has uncovered no wrongdoing by Riley, who partnered with Sly to create Elementz Nutrition, a supplement company. Jeter started working with Riley after the 2007 season when Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told him that his defense at shortstop was becoming a liability. Even with Riley, for whom he obtained the Yankees’ authorization and payment, Jeter proceeded with extreme caution. According to one source, Jeter typically shunned the post-workout smoothies that Riley prepared for him, so careful was the Yankees’ captain about what he put in his body.
Such behavior has exalted Jeter in the eyes of his fans, many of whom didn’t mind when he refused to move from shortstop to make room for the superior Alex Rodriguez. The celebrated “integrity, sportsmanship, character” language in the Hall of Fame’s voting guidelines can be a tricky concept, can’t it?
That language was wholly ignored until Mark McGwire joined the ballot for 2007. As for the notion that baseball’s record book was “destroyed” by anomalistic run-scoring totals, “We call these anomalies because we are present-centered in our view,” Thorn said. “Most people who turn up their noses at the possibly PED-boosted stats of the so-called Steroid Era pay no attention to the 1920s and ’30s,” when factors like segregation, the live ball and the outlawing of the spitball came into play.
MLB always will have to carry forth the conceit that the game is replete with role models — it generates marketing revenue and keeps away the dolts in Congress — yet commissioner Rob Manfred subtly has introduced a welcome lack of emotion into the almost-completed first year of his stewardship. He welcomed back Alex Rodriguez after his yearlong suspension and wound up utilizing the still-popular slugger to help promote youth baseball. And in rightly rejecting Pete Rose’s application for reinstatement, Manfred volunteered his correct belief that his ruling shouldn’t impact Rose’s Hall of Fame eligibility.
Let’s amplify Manfred’s understated embracing of common sense. If the players want baseball to keep the heat on those who try to break the rules, there’s no objection here to increased patrolling or tougher penalties — and, teasing it out, using such penalties to penalize Hall of Fame candidates. That needn’t be married to unchecked anger on this topic. We can disagree without hurling insults, see both sides without proclaiming Armageddon if your argument falls short.
Our collective, belated New Year’s resolution: Let’s aim for a more peaceful Hall of Fame process in 2017. One with a greater appreciation of the long view and less concern about damaging a business and a building that already have withstood far worse.
<bot>: Ever see the episode of “The Simpsons” when a group of heavily bundled men work diligently in an Arctic-like setting to … procure bags of ice for the Kwik-E-Mart? “You’ve got to start selling this …
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160611125128id_/http://nypost.com:80/2016/01/09/how-hall-of-fame-ped-debate-should-be-conducted-in-future/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: <![if ! lte IE 8]> <![endif]>
When I arrived in Singapore one sultry summer evening in 1962 as a 22-year-old student, the Union Jack still fluttered over the British colony. Coolies unloaded wooden boats on the docks, per capita income was languishing under $500 and the young independence leader Lee Kuan Yew was still in his 30s. It was a far cry from today’s well-ordered cityscape of manicured parks, gleaming office towers, high-rise apartment blocks filled with middle-class families and glittering malls swarming with wealthy consumers.
What distinguished Singapore back then was its colonial torpor, a total absence of natural resources (not even its own supply of drinking water) and little industry. It was a small, backward Third World outpost. Besides a few iconic British buildings, the city consisted mostly of low arcaded “shop houses,” flimsy street stalls that made up its outdoor markets and a chaotic infinity of dilapidated shacks that formed the slums where most of Singapore’s poor Chinese, Malay and Tamil immigrants made their homes.
As Europe’s colonial era in Asia drew to a close, this ragtag, polyglot populace had turned for leadership to a fiery young anti-colonialist organizer called Harry Lee (as Lee Kuan Yew was then known). By the time he died last week at the age of 91, after serving his country for well over a half-century, not just Singapore but much of Asia had come under his thrall.
Upon returning from legal studies at the University of Cambridge, Harry Lee had plunged with single-minded determination into the task of first organizing his People’s Action Party to liberate his city from colonialism and then building a new kind of micro-country. After Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai snidely described him as “like a banana—yellow of skin, but white underneath,” he soon dropped the Anglicized “Harry” and become, simply, Lee Kuan Yew.
In the early 1960s, his real problem was not his name but that Singapore was ethnically fractured, under attack by Indonesia in its bizarre policy of “konfrontasi,” reviled by Beijing as “a running dog of U.S. and British imperialism,” and then in 1965 expelled unceremoniously from an ill-fated union with Malaysia. In announcing this devastating rupture on television, Lee became so distraught by the apparent hopelessness of his country’s situation that he ended up weeping.
Lee came from the diaspora of simple, poor emigrants who had been driven from the South China Coast by penury. Stripped of anything but folk culture and an abiding belief in the importance of their families, education and diligence, they had heaved onto the alien shores of this unlikely colonialized city-state. As Lee ruefully observed in trying to imagine his small country’s future, “City-states do not have good survival records.”
Left with no other allies, he turned to Singapore’s own people, who were immigrants like himself. Because they were so divided by what he called “the most hideous collection of dialects and languages,” he quickly concluded that, if full democracy were implemented, everyone would simply vote for their own ethnic group and overlook the common interests of the country. Anyway, despite his British schooling and fluency in English, he never accepted the idea that Western liberal democracy was the only suitable political model for Singapore, or even that Western political principles were universal, much less superior.
One finds expressions of this divided loyalty between East and West again and again in his writings. “We felt a sense of loss at being educated in a stepmother tongue, not completely accepting the values of a culture not our own,” he would say of his British education. “My world of textbooks and teachers was totally unrelated to the world I lived in.” He was, he lamented, “lost between two cultures.”
Though cut off from his Chinese roots, Lee was a proud Chinese, and that may very well be how history remembers his astonishing career. Impressed by the economic growth enjoyed by Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and finally China, Lee began wondering if their common Confucian heritage was not the foundation of their success. He was soon propounding the Confucian virtues that came to be known as “Asian values”—family, diligence, filial piety, education and obedience to authority. He viewed these values as binding agents for developing countries that needed to find a way to maintain order during times of rapid change.
“In the East, the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everyone can have maximum enjoyment of their freedoms,” Lee declared, suggesting that the curtailment of one freedom sometimes best assures the advancement of others. In his view, economic success and social order fully justified whatever state controls were necessary, even if a leader sometimes had to act in an arbitrary, even dictatorial, manner. “We have to lock up people without trial whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists,” he bluntly said in 1986. “If you don’t do that, the country would be in ruins.”
Sometimes what Lee said and did outraged Western liberals, but he took a certain delight in being independent-minded and provocative. “Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right,” he proclaimed. “If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless!” And his record on civil liberties and political pluralism was checkered indeed: Many of his critics ended up in exile, jail or bankrupted by long, costly libel suits.
But there was an irony in Lee’s latter-day conversion to Chinese traditionalism and Asian authoritarianism, especially in his insistence that they could serve as agents of modernization. After all, it was only a few decades earlier that reform-minded Chinese intellectuals (including Communists like Mao Zedong) had identified such Confucian “Asian values” as the very cause of their country’s backwardness and weakness, and then sought to extirpate them from Chinese thinking. After the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards drove a final stake through the heart of traditional Chinese culture by savagely attacking it as retrograde and “feudal,” hardly anyone expected to see a self-conscious revival soon.
Then, just as Lee was extolling his notion of “Asian values” abroad, something unexpected happened in China. Faced with social upheaval brought about by Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, leaders in Beijing began groping for new ways to maintain order themselves. Intrigued by what Lee had been doing in Singapore, they too began reviving aspects of their old cultural edifice as a stabilizing force. The cultural vacuums in Singapore and China may have had different origins, but some version of “Asian values” suddenly felt like a comfortable remedy for both.
By then, Lee’s earlier anticommunism had morphed into an ideologically more neutral pragmatism. He found himself becoming not only a fan of China’s new Confucianism Lite but an enthusiastic booster of Deng’s reform-minded leadership. In fact, to demonstrate his fraternity with China, only a year after the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, when most countries still spurned China, Lee fully normalized diplomatic relations.
“I consider Deng a greater leader who changed the destiny of China and the world,” he said. He was deeply gratified by the way that Deng had brought wealth, power, order and pride back to China—still his racial homeland—as well as to all Chinese.
Deng’s admiration of Lee was just as deep. He appreciated Lee’s pragmatism and friendship, especially his refusal to criticize China for its undemocratic form of statecraft, even after the infamy of 1989. And, because “the Singapore model” proved that a country could modernize without surrendering to “wholesale Westernization,” Deng (and all subsequent leaders in Beijing) celebrated it. “If I had only Shanghai, I too might be able to change Shanghai as quickly,” he once wistfully lamented of his success. “But I have the whole of China!”
Lee’s own support for Deng grew to the point where he started admonishing the U.S. for being too critical of China and too sanctimonious about the virtues of liberal democracy. “It is my business to tell people not to foist their [political] system indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work,” he chided. In the West, he continued, “the idea of the inviolability of the individual has been turned into dogma.”
For Lee, the Chinese aphorism that best captured the uniquely Asian/Confucian view of the individual’s role in society was: Xiushen, qijia, zhiguo, pingtianxia: “Bringing peace under heaven first requires cultivating oneself, then taking care of one’s family, and finally looking after one’s country.”
Various people have described today’s supremely well-ordered Singapore as “a think tank state,” “a paradise designed by McKinsey” or “Disneyland with the death penalty.” Call it what you will: Lee’s nation-building experiment succeeded spectacularly well.
Modern Singapore boasts the world’s second-busiest port, its most celebrated airline and an airport that hosts 15 million visitors a year. With an annual average growth rate of almost 7% since 1976, it now has a per capita income of well over $50,000, making it the wealthiest country in Asia. And it has the second most entrepreneurs per capita in the world, trailing only the U.S.
But quite apart from Lee’s acumen as a leader or the fact that he became the longest-serving prime minister in world history, we are still left to wonder: Where did his enormous commitment and energy come from? How was he able to create such an unusual success story from virtually nothing?
Lee was a very different leader from his confreres in Beijing, but he shared something important with them: a mutual sense that, despite the long, painful and humiliating history of the Chinese people’s modern weakness, it was their destiny to make something of themselves. Where Lee seemed to connect most deeply with Deng and other Chinese leaders was in this common yearning to win back a measure of the prosperity, greatness and respect that they, as “a people,” had once known but had lost to the West and Japan over the last bitter century of defeat.
Lee once described the Chinese as burdened by “a sense of frustration that they were down for so long” and as “enormously ambitious to catch up.” As this rebirth finally began in the 1990s, it allowed Lee to proudly proclaim that China’s “reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force.” In making such utterances, he seemed to be speaking as a Chinese who identified as much with his race as with his nation. True, Lee was a Singapore nationalist, but like many overseas Chinese, he often seemed to view the destiny of his own small country as inextricably connected to the larger enterprise of Greater China.
At the same time, his sympathy for China’s rise never eclipsed his respect for the U.S., as well as his firm conviction that the rule of law was important for Singapore and that its interests would be best served by refusing to take sides in big-power competitions. “We will not choose sides between America and China,” he told Charlie Rose, “or between China and India.”
When Lee’s ancestors joined the great Chinese diaspora, they were stripped of their culture and national identities. This defoliating process created, in them and later generations of overseas Chinese, a strange kind of hunger for advancement, and in Singapore, Lee could begin to satisfy that longing for progress uninhibited by the conservative traditions that have so often clashed with modernizing impulses around the world. His new country may have been an almost synthetic nation, without a coherent cultural core, but this relative vacuum ended up being a blessing in disguise when it came to the challenges of creating a completely new state from the bottom up.
China faced a similar situation in the wake of its own tectonic revolutionary upheavals. Mao Zedong once spoke of his people as possessing “two remarkable peculiarities.” They were, he said, “first poor and secondly blank,” which meant that they were inclined to “want revolution.” As he observed, “a clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful pictures can be painted on it.”
Mao’s savage Cultural Revolution destroyed even more of his country’s cultural legacy. But he was fond of reminding his followers that, “Without destruction there can be no reconstruction.” By the time Deng came to power in the late 1970s, his own reforms met with little resistance from those traditional forces that had so obstructed change earlier in the century. Like Lee in Singapore, Deng was aided by the fact that traditional culture had already been demolished.
Lee was no Maoist, but when he came into Singapore’s narrative more than a half-century ago, just before I first landed there, his city-state did evince a certain “poorness and blankness.” Aided by a powerful patriotic yearning to put an end to the long period of imperial domination in Asia, Lee managed to kindle a miracle of development that was distinctly un-Western. As a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing eulogized Lee after his death, “He was a uniquely Asian statesman and a strategist boasting both Eastern values and international vision.”
Fighting back tears, Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s current prime minister, memorialized his father by saying: “He fought for our independence, built a nation where there was none, and made us proud to be Singaporeans. We won’t see another man like him.”
Lee Kuan Yew not only made Singaporeans proud; he also made Chinese and other Asians proud. He was a master builder, a sophisticated Asian nationalist dedicated not only to the success of his own small nation but to bequeathing the world a new model of governance. Instead of trying to impose Western political models on Asian realities, he sought to make autocracy respectable by leavening it with meritocracy, the rule of law and a strict intolerance for corruption to make it deliver growth.
Though his country was minuscule, Lee was a larger-than-life figure with a grandness of vision. He saw “Asian values” as a source of legitimacy for the idea that authoritarian leadership, constrained by certain Western legal and administrative checks, offered an effective “Asian” alternative to the messiness of liberal democracy. Because his thinking proved so agreeable to the Chinese Communist Party, he became the darling of Beijing. And because China has now become the political keystone of the modern Asian arch, Beijing’s imprimatur helped him and his ideas to gain a pan-Asian stature that Singapore alone could not have provided.
As countries such as Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and even China continue to search for new models of development and governance that do not bear the stigma of their former Western colonizers, Lee Kuan Yew’s example is a tempting option. Even though he is now gone, the Venice-like republic he founded will continue to be extolled as a hopeful experiment, and the man himself, the progenitor of what has come to be known as the “Singapore model,” will doubtless remain an influential political evangelist.
Mr. Schell is Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society and co-author, with John Delury, of “Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the 21st Century.”
<bot>: He preached ‘Asian values’ and turned a tiny, poor city-state into an astonishing economic success. Is Lee’s ‘Singapore model’ the future of Asia?
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015032819id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/lee-kuan-yew-the-man-who-remade-asia-1427475547
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Republican campaign officials said yesterday that they expect to lose at least seven House seats and as many as 30 in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, as a result of sustained violence in Iraq and the page scandal involving former GOP representative Mark Foley.
Democrats need to pick up 15 seats in the election to take back control of the House after more than a decade of GOP leadership. Two weeks of virtually nonstop controversy over President Bush's war policy and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's handling of the page scandal have forced party leaders to recalculate their vulnerability and placed a growing number of Republican incumbents and open seats at much greater risk.
GOP officials are urging lawmakers to focus exclusively on local issues and leave it to party leaders to mitigate the Foley controversy by accusing Democrats of trying to politicize it. At the same time, the White House plans to amplify national security issues, especially the threat of terrorism, after North Korea's reported nuclear test, in hopes of shifting the debate away from casualties and controversy during the final month of the campaign. These efforts are aimed largely at prodding disaffected conservatives to vote for GOP candidates despite their unease.
Still, GOP leaders privately said that Democrats are edging much closer to locking down a majority of House seats because a small but significant number of conservatives are frustrated with Republican governance, while independent swing voters are turning against GOP candidates.
"If you are a Democrat, you have to like the atmosphere," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), a top campaign strategist for the GOP. Davis said Republicans could lose as many as 30 seats if conditions worsen.
With four weeks left in the campaign, GOP strategists, speaking on background, have begun to outline a highly gloomy view of the House election for their party.
They are all but writing off GOP open seats in Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Florida (the one previously held by Foley). Party officials said that three GOP incumbents in Indiana are trailing in private polling and that seats thought safe suddenly appear imperiled. These include the open Florida seat vacated by Rep. Katherine Harris, who is running for senator. "It is unquestionably closer than we would like," said Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.).
In a sign that the political environment is getting worse for Republicans, political handicapper Charlie Cook now lists 25 GOP-held seats as a tossup -- seven more than before the Foley scandal broke Sept. 29. Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan expert on House races, has raised to nine the number of GOP seats tilting Democratic or likely to switch hands.
Unlike in most elections, when both parties defend several seats, Democrats are favored to win every seat they now occupy and are spending money to defend only a few. As a result, Democrats are not as vulnerable to the GOP's campaign finance advantage in the final weeks as they have been in past campaigns.
A Democratic takeover of the House is not a foregone conclusion, however. Because of congressional redistricting plans that gave huge advantages to incumbents, fewer than 50 of the 435 House seats are competitive. Democrats said internal polls show that the fallout from the Foley scandal is confined to half a dozen races. Moreover, House elections are traditionally shaped by local issues and personalities, and the closest races come down to which party can turn out its most loyal voters.
The page scandal erupted two weeks ago when Foley abruptly resigned after being confronted by ABC News with sexually explicit messages that he exchanged with a former page on the Internet. Investigations by the Justice Department, the House ethics committee and Florida authorities have ensued.
The GOP's emerging strategy on the Foley scandal is to try to limit losses among conservative voters who are expressing alarm about the scandal and about the apparent failure of GOP leaders to act on early warnings about Foley's behavior.
As part of that strategy, the Republican National Committee is seeking to convince conservatives that the debate is fundamentally centered on politics, not values. The RNC is shipping reams of information to conservative radio hosts, television commentators and bloggers. Those GOP talking points detail the Democratic connections of groups including the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and American Family Voices, which are working to turn the scandal into an issue with national implications.
The NRCC is highlighting Democratic leaders who supported former representative Gerry E. Studds (Mass.), who was censured by the House in 1983 after admitting to sexual contact with a male page a decade earlier; Studds went on to serve in Congress until 1997. "It is important to contrast how Republican leadership is handling the situation with problems with one of its own, and how Democrats did," said former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, a close White House ally.
Still, the "Foley factor" has made GOP strategists nervous. Several officials said it has dramatically undermined the reelection prospects of several incumbents, including Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), who was criticized by Democrats for not doing enough to stop Foley's advances on young male pages after learning about them this spring.
Several interest groups with Democratic ties are seeking to take advantage of Reynolds's newfound vulnerability. Majority Action, a group designed to help Democrats retake control of the House, is sponsoring a radio ad in which a narrator says: "Another scandal in Washington, and our Congressman Tom Reynolds is right in the middle." Two public polls show Reynolds trailing his Democratic challenger, Jack Davis, in a race neither side considered very competitive a few weeks ago.
Rep. Deborah Pryce (Ohio), the fourth-ranking GOP leader, is facing the toughest reelection race of her career. She has said she had no prior knowledge of Foley's behavior but has faced criticism for telling a reporter that the former congressman was one of her closest friends in Congress.
"I don't think this is personally sticking to Deborah Pryce, but it is certainly having people have a more jaundiced view of Washington, which is not good for Republicans," said George Rasley, Pryce's spokesman. Pryce had a slight lead over Mary Jo Kilroy in her internal polling before the Foley scandal, an aide said, but Republicans expect Pryce to suffer as much as any incumbent for the renewed scrutiny of congressional ethics.
Scandals are hurting Republicans elsewhere in Ohio, where charges of corruption have rocked the GOP at the local and state levels for the past two years. In the open seat vacated by indicted GOP Rep. Robert W. Ney, Joy Padgett is struggling to lock down a reliably GOP seat east of Columbus, the state capital. Polls show Democrat Zach Space, a liberal critic of the war, on top and GOP strategists agree Padgett is behind.
"It is definitely a challenge to overcome," says Padgett spokesman Morgan Ortagus. "Voters are definitely in a throw-the-bums-out mood."
Space is calling for Hastert's resignation and is asking Padgett to do the same. Padgett canceled a fundraiser with Hastert last week.
In other races where Republican incumbents have been dogged by scandal, Democrats are pushing the Foley story hard.
Former representative Nick Lampson (D-Tex.) is asking Houston City Council member Shelley Sekula-Gibbs (R) to call for the resignation of any member of the House leadership who knew about the e-mails and instant messages exchanged between Foley and former congressional pages. The two candidates are competing for the seat from the 22nd Congressional District, left vacant by the departure of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R), who is under indictment in Texas.
Elsewhere, the political debate is returning to traditional disputes over the war, taxes and health care, according to Democrats and Republicans. The Foley story "is getting a lot of attention now, but I don't think it will have the legs to last four weeks," said Ron Carey, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party.
<bot>: Republican campaign officials said yesterday that they expect to lose at least seven House seats and as many as 30 in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, as a result of sustained violence in Iraq and the page scandal involving former GOP representative Mark Foley.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006101019id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901218.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: “Oh, sweet,” Nuno said before placing it in his locker and answering questions.
A little more than two weeks ago, Nuno was pitching in the minor leagues. On Monday, he was a star for the Yankees. That this little-known recent call-up would be central in a Yankees victory should not be surprising, not in 2013.
The Yankees are 10 games over .500 this for two principal reasons: their excellent pitching, and a group of unheralded players who have performed beyond expectations. Nuno fits in both categories.
After the Yankees lost, 1-0, to the Cleveland Indians in the first game of a makeup doubleheader, Nuno, 25, pitched five superb innings to his minor league catcher, Austin Romine, as if they were playing a game of catch, in a 7-0 win.
The day also featured the debut of Corban Joseph, who played first base in the opener and shifted to second base in the finale. He got his first major league hit in the second game, doubling to lead off a six-run seventh.
Adam Warren, also 25, earned his first career save with four inning in relief of Nuno, and was basically just as good, allowing only two hits.
David Phelps, an old man at 26, gave up the run in the first game as the Yankees held the Indians, who had been doing well at the plate, to a run over 17 innings.
In their last eight games, the Yankees have surrendered two or fewer runs seven times, and only one run in three of their last six games.
But Justin Masterson threw a four-hit shutout, his second shutout of the season, in the opener to break the Yankees’ five-game winning streak. That is what made Nuno’s tone-setting performance so important.
A former Indians draft pick whom they released in 2011, Nuno allowed only three hits in his first outing in 14 days, and only his second outing in the majors.
“He did an unbelievable job,” Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said. “Considering he hadn’t pitched in a while, his pitch count. He has not been up in a while, and to give us five shutout innings like that, it’s really an unbelievable job.”
He threw a first-pitch strike to open the game, and followed that pattern throughout. Whether it was his fastball, slider, curveball or changeup, he threw them all for strikes with any count, and the Indians could not figure him out. Nuno did not allow a base runner until Yan Gomes singled up the middle with two outs in the third inning.
The key moment came in the fifth when the Indians had runners on first and third with two outs and the Yankees clinging to a one-run lead. With two strikes on Asdrubal Cabrera, Romine called for a curveball in the dirt. But Nuno shook him off.
Again, Romine called for the curve, knowing that Cabrera has the potential to drive a fastball into the seats. So he went to the mound to discuss it. Romine said Nuno told him: “No, I want to throw an outside fastball. Don’t worry, I’ll pinpoint it.”
Nuno, whom the Yankees signed from the independent Frontier League in June 2011, seems saturated with confidence, and he pitches that way. As promised, he threw a fastball on the outside corner that froze Cabrera, ending the inning, and his day, with flair.
“He dotted it,” Romine said.
Then in the seventh inning, the Yankees batted around. Joseph led off with a double to center and one out later he scored on a double to left by Romine. It was Joseph’s first major league hit and Romine’s first hit since Sept. 25, 2011, in his first month in the big leagues.
And so the Yankees concluded an eight-game trip to three cities in three times zones and two altitudes, beating the Colorado Rockies twice and the Kansas City Royals three times, and splitting with the Indians to finish 6-2 and retain their hold on first place in the American League East.
“To be able to do that is a really good road trip,” Girardi said. “Let’s go home.”
Curtis Granderson may be called up to the Yankees as soon as Tuesday, Joe Girardi said, depending on how he feels after his latest minor league rehabilitation start Monday. Brennan Boesch was optioned to Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, opening an outfield spot. ... In between games, the Indians presented Mariano Rivera with a framed gold-plated record of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” which is Rivera’s theme song.
<bot>: Clevelandâs Justin Masterson pitched a four-hit shutout in Game 1, and the Yankees responded with a five-hitter in Game 2, led by the little-known Vidal Nuno.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013051319id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/sports/baseball/indians-yankees-doubleheader.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: This owner won't have to worry about making a connection with its newly adopted animal.
He already saved its life.
Kansas City Officer Jeff O'Rear and his partner Erik Winter rescued a small four-pound male dog that was struggling while being locked inside a hot car last month.
And now the officer will ensure the part Chihuahua is always safe from now on.
O'Rear officially adopted the tiny canine, who has yet to be given a name, from the KC Pet Project. Footage from TV Station KMBC shows the delightful faces of his two daughters Michelle, 13, and Melaina, 8, as they were presented with the animal.
The dog was near death when the officers spotted him sprawled in the car with his tongue dangling in a desperate attempt to cool his body.
"He was just so close to death at that time, it was a very horrific picture," O'Rear told the Kansas City Star. "That was so emotional to see that dog; to see that somebody would do that to him for no reason; just neglect."
As a crowd of nervous people gathered around the car the officers broke a window and freed the animal. They rushed it to a local pet store that discovered his body was over 107 degrees and his heart rate had skyrocketed.
The canine went into shock and his body temperature then plummeted but employees rubbed him with blankets and after spending the night he made a recovery, the newspaper reported.
The dog's owners have been cited for animal cruelty and allowed the dog to be adopted.
The officer immediately volunteered to take him in.
"We realized that, of course, this was the perfect home for this dog," Tori Fugate, a marketing manager for the KC Pet Project animal shelter told the newspaper.
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.
<bot>: A Kansas City police officer adopted a dog he rescued from a hot car.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015080319id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/kansas-city-police-officer-adopts-puppy-rescued-article-1.2313351
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: McLaren Automotive has produced a brief but fascinating documentary on the creation of the Ownerâs Handbook for its iconic F1, a three-seat 627-horsepower supercar that held the title of world's fastest production car for more than a decade.
In this five-minute film, McLaren’s Design Operations Manager, Mark Roberts, discusses his first job with the company: illustrating the owner’s handbook for the F1 road car back in 1992. As he did with the car itself, McLaren chief Gordon Murray oversaw every aspect of the handbook’s creation. No surprise, the book was a clothbound work of art, every bit as meticulously crafted as the car it described. The illustration style – pencil drawings with colour washes that highlight relevant areas – is one that, with a modest smirk, Roberts calls “almost Leonardo-like.”
Fitting for a car that came with a gold-plated titanium Facom tool set and a serial-number-engraved TAG Heuer wristwatch, Roberts’ handbook illustrations contain a few Fabergé-quality Easter eggs, including a digital clock set to 2:31 (a reference to the car’s rev-limited 231mph top speed) and a Kenwood 10-disc CD changer cartridge ready to receive Bob Dylan’s Street Legal (Murray’s favourite album).
Because McLaren built only 72 road-going F1s between 1992 and 1998, the car’s handbook has become the Gutenberg Bible of owner’s manuals. Moreover, each copy of the book was tied to a specific car, with details such as chassis and engine numbers written in by hand – by Gordon Murray’s hand, in fact. Says Mark Roberts: “Gordon had the best handwriting in the office, so we got him to do all the writing! Seems funny now, to think of him sitting down in the office doing that.”
The McLaren F1. (McLaren Automotive)
The McLaren F1. (McLaren Automotive)
If you would like to comment on McLaren's Drawn from Memory, or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
<bot>: McLaren illustrator Mark Roberts shares the story behind the F1 supercar's amazing handbook.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014102719id_/http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20141025-owners-manual-as-work-of-art
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: SALT LAKE CITY A pre-wedding shopping trip for a 21-year-old bride ended with felony charges against her parents, who she says kidnapped her and drove her 240 miles to Colorado, trying to talk her out of the nuptials along the way and holding her until she missed the ceremony.
"I've never had a case quite like this," Utah County Attorney Kay Bryson said Tuesday after charging Lemuel and Julia Redd with second-degree felony kidnapping.
Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Crime Center
Bryson said he met with the couple's daughter, Julianna, and her now-husband, Perry Myers, before charging the parents. "It is strange that parents would go to that extent to keep an adult daughter from marrying the man that she had chosen to marry," he said.
The Redds told their daughter they were taking her on a shopping trip Aug. 4 and then drove from Provo to Grand Junction, Colo., according to Provo police Capt. Rick Healey. Myers, 23, called police when his bride didn't attend a pre-wedding dinner with his parents that night.
The Redds spent the night in Colorado and drove back to Provo, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, the next day, Healey said. They arrived after the young couple was supposed to have been married in a ceremony that day at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple in Salt Lake City.
"I was totally confused and manipulated," Julianna Myers told KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City. She said she supports the charges and hopes her parents get help.
"They had their concerns, their reasoning," she said. "Honestly I don't understand. It had nothing to do with Perry."
Bryson said after reviewing the police investigation it was clear a crime was committed.
The couple, both students at Brigham Young University, were married in the temple on Aug. 8, Myers said. They are expecting their first child in May.
"We were just glad the way it ended and she just came back and she was OK," Myers said. "We've gone forward since then.
Lemuel Redd, 59, and Julia Redd, 56, were charged Friday and are scheduled to make an initial court appearance Oct. 26. If convicted, they could face one to 15 years in prison.
A call to a listing for Lemuel H. Redd at the address in Monticello, Utah, listed in court documents went unanswered Tuesday. No attorney for the Redds is listed in court documents.
<bot>: Utah Parents Charged With Kidnapping Daughter to Prevent Marriage, Julianna Redds of Utah says her parents told her they were going on a shopping trip but didn't return her to her pre-wedding activities; she said her parents, who are now being charged with kidnapping, were trying to talk her out of the nuptials.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006100719id_/http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,217726,00.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Lavishing praise on lawmakers for capping property tax increases, legalizing same-sex marriage, and cutting the state budget last year, Mr. Cuomo urged them not to shy away from tackling more thorny policy issues this year.
“If we leave the status quo, then we will have failed,” Mr. Cuomo, surveying the lawmakers seated before him, said from the stage of a state theater near the Capitol. “We will have become part of the problem, and that’s not why we’re here.”
Mr. Cuomo proposed a $132.5 billion state budget for the fiscal year that begins April 1. That would be $225 million less than what the state is spending this year — a cut of 0.2 percent. The budget would be balanced in part by a revision of the state income tax, approved last month by the Legislature, that created a higher tax bracket for individuals who earn more than $1 million and married couples earning more than $2 million.
Mr. Cuomo’s task this year was considerably easier than last year, when the state faced a $10 billion budget gap, prompting the governor to seek sharp reductions in spending on health care and education, as well as wage and benefit concessions from state workers. This year, Mr. Cuomo needed only nips and tucks rather than huge cuts to address a budget gap of $2 billion.
Outlining several contested policy objectives as part of his annual budget proposal, Mr. Cuomo vowed to withhold a promised increase in state aid to school districts that did not adopt a teacher evaluation system.
He also proposed limiting retirement benefits for newly hired public workers across the state, including in New York City, offering a choice between a pension that is less generous than that for current public employees, or a defined contribution plan, which is similar to a 401(k).
In many ways, the governor’s policy proposals were more ambitious, and controversial, than the financial details of his spending plan, which Mr. Cuomo described as “refreshingly straightforward.”
Seeking to reduce the projected cost of running the state government by more than $1.1 billion, Mr. Cuomo proposed continuing a hiring freeze, combining some offices and agencies, and consolidating procurement and information technology services.
Mr. Cuomo also proposed saving more than $750 million by limiting planned increases on mental health programs and social services, including eliminating an automatic cost-of-living increase for nonprofit providers of services like foster care, adoption and family counseling.
Addressing a major concern of local governments, Mr. Cuomo proposed that the state gradually take over yearly increases in Medicaid expenses that are now shouldered by county governments and New York City.
Public employee unions immediately rejected Mr. Cuomo’s proposal to limit pension benefits, the second consecutive year the governor has tried to do so.
Kenneth Brynien, the president of the Public Employees Federation, said that the budget “ignores the fact that state workers have done their share to address the state’s fiscal problems.” And Danny Donohue, the president of the Civil Service Employees Association, called Mr. Cuomo’s pension proposal “an assault on the middle class and a cheap shot at public employees.”
Stephen J. Cassidy, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, invoked the firefighters who died on Sept. 11, 2001, as he criticized the proposal.
“This legislation, if enacted, will throw the widows and children of future firefighters killed in the line of duty under the bus,” Mr. Cassidy said.
But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has eagerly sought pension changes as the city’s pension costs skyrocket, praised Mr. Cuomo for a budget that he said “demonstrates a bold commitment to tackle some of the toughest challenges” facing New York. He noted that the governor’s proposals on pensions and Medicaid spending could save the city billions in the long run.
Legislative leaders, who will begin holding budget hearings next week, were generally supportive of Mr. Cuomo’s approach. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, said Mr. Cuomo had “done a great job in putting out an outline” for lawmakers, and the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, offered a strong endorsement of the governor’s pension proposal.
“I think we’re going to get it done,” Mr. Skelos said. “We have to continue to do bold and innovative things in Albany, as we did last year, when people thought it would not be done or that we would be cowards of some sort and not get things done. We’re going to get them done.”
In many areas, Mr. Cuomo’s budget retained the priorities he pursued during his first year in office. After closing several juvenile justice facilities last year, the governor on Tuesday proposed closing additional upstate facilities this year in an effort to move young offenders from New York City into city-run facilities closer to their homes.
Mr. Cuomo is also seeking to improve monitoring and spending controls at nonprofit organizations that provide services for the state. Among his proposals, the governor would limit the annual state reimbursement for executive salaries at state-subsidized nonprofit groups to $199,000, a move that followed a report last year by The New York Times highlighting high compensation at organizations that provide Medicaid-financed services to the developmentally disabled.
Mr. Cuomo’s budget proposal offered few surprises in the two largest, and often most contentious, areas of state spending: education and health care. The budget would honor a pledge Mr. Cuomo made last year to increase spending in those areas by 4 percent, after it was cut in his first budget. A portion of the proposed increase in education spending, totaling about $800 million, would be designated for poor school districts.
But Mr. Cuomo insisted that increased state aid should be made available only to school districts that approve teacher evaluation systems by January 2013.
The delay in putting in place a teacher evaluation system, caused by disagreements among school districts, unions and the State Education Department, has imperiled at least $700 million in federal education aid to New York State, and Mr. Cuomo said he was now prepared to use state aid as leverage to force a resolution to the stalemates.
“The equation is simple at the end of the day,” Mr. Cuomo said. “No evaluation, no money. Period.”
<bot>: The governor proposed a $132.5 billion state budget, asking legislators to slightly reduce overall spending by trimming human services programs and consolidating state government operations.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012011819id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/nyregion/cuomo-offers-budget-with-more-trims-than-deep-cuts.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Putin’s remarks raised fears that he was justifying a possible incursion into southeastern Ukraine, where the United States says 40,000 Russian troops are massed just across the border. U.S. and European officials have accused Russia of organizing the armed men and agitators who have been capturing government buildings in southeastern Ukraine and raising Russian flags. Putin denies it. The West says he is lying.
“Nonsense,” Putin said Thursday. “There are no Russian units in eastern Ukraine — no special services, no tactical advisers. All this is being done by the local residents.”
In early March, Putin denied that the well-equipped troops operating on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and wearing green uniforms without insignia were Russian. Anyone could buy those uniforms, he said. On Thursday, when asked about the soldiers widely known as the green men, Putin acknowledged that they were Russian. Their presence had been necessary, he said, to keep order so that Crimeans could decide their future in a referendum.
“We didn’t want any tanks, any nationalist combat units or people with extreme views armed with automatic weapons,” he said. “Of course, Russian servicemen backed the Crimean self-defense forces.”
The hastily arranged March 16 referendum resulted in 96 percent counted as voting for joining Russia. “In this situation,” he said, “we couldn’t have done otherwise.”
For just shy of four hours Thursday, Putin answered questions from a studio audience, from a video-connected crowd standing in the heart of the Crimean city of Sevastopol and from people calling in and texting from around the nation. Of 2 million calls and 400,000 texts, he answered around 70 questions. Last year, he spoke for four hours and 47 minutes.
Even Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed a wide-scale U.S. surveillance program and has taken refuge from prosecution in Russia, came out of the shadows to ask a video question: Does Russia spy on its citizens the way the United States did?
No, Putin said. “Thank God, our special services are strictly controlled by the state and society, and their activity is regulated by law.”
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted in contradiction: “Snowden would probably be interested to know that Russian laws allow the control, storage and study of all data in the communication networks of the Russian Federation.”
Putin’s program was broadcast live on three main television channels and three radio stations. From across the nation, people added their voices to a chorus of “thank-you-Mr.-Putins,” expressing their gratitude for his acquisition of Crimea and his standing up to the West. Journalists and artists lauded him. “There is no legitimate power in Ukraine today,” lamented Karen Shakhnazarov, a filmmaker, who said that as a 20-year-old, his father had fought in the Soviet Army to free Crimea in World War II.
Andrei Norkin, a journalist for Kommersant Radio, said he was worried about the nation’s level of patriotism and urged Putin to support legislation that would set up military academies where schoolchildren could study under inspiring conditions.
“They learn respect for women and older people,” he said. “At cadet schools, they are trained to become real men.”
A few critics were heard, giving Putin the opportunity to describe how misguided they were.
“Laws are being developed that will make culture just a servant of ideology,” said Irina Prokhorova, a literary critic, head of the Civic Platform party and sister of Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov. People are being persecuted if they object to the annexation of Crimea, she said, calling it a “sad and forced decision.”
This is not 1937, Putin said, when people were being sent to labor camps.
“Some members of the Russian intelligentsia are unaccustomed to the fact that they might meet resistance or have someone else express a different position and disagree with their position,” Putin said. When contradicted, he said, they get emotional.
He said he had heard that regarding Crimea, some people “want their country to lose and think that this is a good thing. Here, too, there is a continuity. As is known, during the First World War, the Bolsheviks also wanted the Russian government and Russia in general to lose, and the situation quickly got out of hand, which led to the revolution.
“There is some sort of historical continuity here, not the best, though. However, I agree that in any case, we should not slip into some extreme forms of dealing with each other’s views or cast aspersions on people for their opinions. I will do my best to prevent this from happening.”
He dismissed U.S. complaints about Russian behavior as a double standard. “Why isn’t Russia allowed to defend its own interests?” he asked. And he criticized the sanctions the United States has imposed on Russia because of its annexation of Crimea as counterproductive.
“If you try to punish someone like mischievous kids and put them in a corner kneeling on frozen peas so it hurts them, then in the end, you will cut off the branch on which you are sitting,” he said, mixing his metaphors.
Many of his friends — wealthy men — were targeted by the sanctions. They had nothing to do with Crimea, he said.
“I should tell you,” he said, “that I don’t feel ashamed of my friends.”
Would he remarry, someone asked, referring to Putin’s recent divorce.
“First, I have to help my former wife get married, then think about myself.”
His comments were once again met by applause.
<bot>: In a national Q&A, the leader admits Russian troops were in Crimea but denies a role in continuing unrest.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014041719id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-changes-course-admits-russian-troops-were-in-crimea-before-vote/2014/04/17/b3300a54-c617-11e3-bf7a-be01a9b69cf1_story.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Dell’s latest XPS 13 ultraportable computer is an absolute stunner.
The 13-inch laptop, which starts at a low $799, is somehow well priced and really well built. The XPS 13 is a startling example of what a laptop in 2015 should be: Functional and pretty, light and powerful, with a beautiful screen that doesn't seriously compromise battery life.
I don’t care what the rumors are about a 12-inch MacBook Air; the XPS 13 is the best Ultrabook you can buy. Don’t wait.
It may look like a smaller machine, but the XPS 13 really is a 13-inch laptop. And yes, it actually is smaller. That near-invisible bezel? Dell calls it the "Infinity Display," a nearly edge-to-edge pane of glass with only the slightest hint of aluminum jutting out. This panel will make whatever computer you're using look like a behemoth by comparison.
And as slick as the Infinity Display is, just like it is on the Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet, the picture quality is just as impressive. The screen is bright and easily usable outdoors, and color contrast and clarity are picturesque. There are two display flavors: Full HD 1080p (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) and QHD+ (3,200 x 1,800 pixels).
Open it up and the inside is covered in an almost-rubbery carbon fiber that’s crazy comfortable, surprisingly stain-resistant and very pleasant to the touch. Unlike the cold aluminum of Apple laptops and plenty of clones, or the stolid plastics of typical cheaper PCs, you’ll want your hands all over the XPS 13. Soft corners and the gunmetal-grey checkered covering somehow feel like just the tip of the iceberg. Out of all the laptops I’ve tested in the past year, this frame has no comparison. I love to type on it, I love to carry it, and I love to use the touchscreen.
The small frame and light weight make a huge difference when compared to other laptops. The XPS 13 is about the size of a 12-inch laptop, though the keyboard is plenty easy to type on with smaller yet well-spaced backlit keys. The midsize trackpad also works well. Because of its smaller size, this laptop’s under three pounds and it still feels solid. That also means cranking away on a spreadsheet or a run of Binding of Isaac is just as easy on a table as it is on your lap, without anything tipping over.
Just remember that this is as ultra-portable as a laptop gets. Like the MacBook Air, it has just two USB 3.0 ports, a Mini DisplayPort connector, an SD card slot and a headphone jack. Dell sells a USB adapter that includes VGA, HDMI, USB and Ethernet connectors, which is practically a requirement for desk use or travelers who want the most out of their computers.
The XPS 13 comes standard with the latest Intel Broadwell processor, a very low-power chipset that is built for balance between power and low wattage. The first test unit Dell sent over suffered from poor battery life until they sent a software update to patch the constantly running graphics processor, though more problems sprouted up during my testing with that PC. Everything from the CPU getting stuck in a specific power state (always at full-blast or always at barely trying) to the mouse activating the poorly placed battery indicator on the front of the laptop — you name it, my computer had it. It just needed proper vaccinations.
Dell sent a replacement laptop that didn't have any driver or hardware issues, though it’s worth noting that the latest processors are so new that the software for them isn’t quite fully cooked. It’s rare to run into the hodgepodge of errors I encountered, but it happens.
Even though I didn't see any strange issues on the second test laptop, there are some quirks to the XPS 13. If you’re plugged in or running it hard, the left side of the keyboard warms up to uncomfortable levels. It’s not bad enough to stop typing, but it will make you want to close some tabs and maybe play music from your phone instead.
Then there’s the wildly dense touchscreen. With the QHD+ version, you need better than 20/20 vision to read text from the tiny screen. Seriously, QHD+ is too dense for even a 15-inch laptop screen; it was too many pixels on the Razer Blade, and the XPS 13 is smaller. Windows, as good as 8.1 is, doesn’t support higher resolutions well, so why PC makers keep doing this is mind-boggling.
It’s an easy fix for buyers: The much more readable 1080p model with identical components — but no touchscreen — sells for $300 less and still has next to no bezel. At least with that model you can’t get fingerprints on the screen.
Better yet, the battery life on the XPS 13 with the 1080p display is rated much better, at 15 hours, compared to 11 hours for the QHD+ model. I’ve actually tested between 8-9 hours of battery life depending on usage, which is still good but not exactly as promising as Dell makes it seem. It also means you should see at least 12 hours on the 1080p model.
What does it all get you? A dual-core 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U chip capable of boosting to 2.7GHz, with 8GB of RAM, the 128GB solid-state drive and Windows 8.1, all for $999.
Performance is good if you’re willing to give up some battery life for it. Maximizing battery life led to problems. After playing with the power settings, I was able to squeeze out 10 hours of use, but they were 10 somewhat unpleasant hours. The XPS 13 was slow. Scrolling was chunky, new web pages loaded slowly, and even typing in Word 2013 would sometimes lag.
But if you boost the power settings slightly, like setting it to the default “Balanced” power setting, then everything works fine, no questions asked. You’ll just need to plug in an hour or two sooner.
There may be a list of gripes, but they’re practically nothing when you consider that this is one of the best Windows laptops ever built. While last year’s Acer Aspire S7 put a ton of power into a very MacBook Air-sized and styled body, the Dell XPS 13 manages to surpass Apple’s offering with something that’s actually unique. The XPS 13 is a laptop I want to use all the time. It’s a blast to use under almost any conditions. It can chug through as a workhorse connected to an external monitor or be your best friend in a cramped airplane seat. And that’s really the experience you should get from a laptop.
The fact that it won’t break your bank account in the process is a box of doughnuts to go along with the cake. While I wouldn’t recommend the $799 or $899 models, just because you’ll like using the XPS 13 so much that you’ll want the extra RAM and better CPU, the $999 model definitely hits the sweet spot of price for the whole package. Or, for another $100, double the internal storage to 256GB.
Make no mistake, though: If you’re looking for a powerhouse of a laptop, the Intel Core i5 in the XPS 13 is solid, but it isn’t a performance processor. You’d be better off waiting for the standard M-class chips in full-size laptops coming soon.
So let’s be clear. I like having the most powerful machine in the state. And I don’t want to give this up. The XPS 13 is too good, like that perfect cut of steak right off the barbecue. Why can’t every Windows laptop be this well-made? PC makers, I'm looking at you.
Fantastically designed Windows laptop • Solid performance • Great price • Awesome display • Good battery life
QHD+ model renders text too small • Left side of keyboard gets warm
With a beautiful display, great performance and big battery life, the Dell XPS 13 just set the bar really high for all other Windows laptops.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
<bot>: If you're looking for the best Windows laptop, the Dell XPS 13 is the one to get.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015022519id_/http://mashable.com/2015/02/25/dell-xps-13-review/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Ever since leaving Disney, Miley Cyrus has made it her mission to be famously unfiltered. In a new interview with Elle, the newest Voice judge gamely opened up about her past as Hannah Montana, the alter ego that launched her to tweenage stardom in the 2000s.
“I did not grow up spoiled in any way. I just wanted to be on TV,” she told Elle. “I mean, at one point—they’ll probably kill me for saying it—I was probably the least paid person on my [Hannah Montana] cast because I didn’t know any better. I was just like, I can be on Disney! Yeah, I want to do it! My name was Miley on my show, but I didn’t own my name—we didn’t think about that.” Cyrus added that her parents ultimately helped surround her with people who enabled her to gain more control of her career, for which she doesn’t have a makeup artist. (In the Kardashian era, that’s a headline-worthy admission.)
“Mostly, I tell people, Don’t wear makeup,” she said, “I mean, I cover my zits, but besides that, I don’t really wear it. And Alicia [Keys] doesn’t really wear it. But she’s got a makeup artist and I don’t.” Stay being Miley.
<bot>: She may have starred in 'Hannah Montana,' but Cyrus wasn't raking in top dollar.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016092919id_/http://time.com/4511928/miley-cyrus-hannah-montana-salary/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Witnesses to the worst mass shooting in American history could be heard describing the carnage at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in 911 calls revealed Tuesday.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office released 20 dispatcher recordings from the June massacre that killed 49 people as media outlets continue seeking the Orlando Police Department’s 911 calls.
A neighbor to the gay nightclub targeted June 12 by Omar Mateen said in one of the calls to the sheriff’s office that frightened patrons were hiding behind his car and banging on his front door seeking shelter. Another caller dialed 911 shortly after the shots rang out.
“And you're not injured?” the dispatcher asked him.
Charity collected millions after Pulse attack amid GoFundMe scams
"No, no, no, I'm fine," he said. "We were leaving the club, and then as soon as we left, gunshots were just going like crazy."
Another man told a dispatcher his girlfriend was sending him texts as she and several others hid in a bathroom at Pulse, according to ABC News.
“There's like 18 people, two are dead, they're in the bathroom,” he said. “They're all scared to death, they all think they're gonna die.”
His girlfriend was speaking to him through the text messages to keep the shooter or shooters from hearing her voice, he said. She stopped responding to his messages at one moment.
Pastor who caused outrage after Orlando arrested for molestation
“It's OK, she might be with the deputies or she might be just trying not to let the light come out,” the dispatcher said. “I'm gonna stay on the phone with you.”
Another caller said his friend was ailing from wounds in a bathroom in a spot where no one could see him.
“We called him because he posted on Facebook that he had got shot, so we said, 'Is everything OK?' He said, 'Got shot three times.' We said, 'Where are you?' And the response was 'In bathroom, tell them to check the bathroom,’” the caller said.
The calls became more despairing and angry as the three-hour standoff wore on. One man said he got home from Pulse earlier in the night only to hear from a friend who was shot.
Orlando hospitals won't charge surviving Pulse victims for care
"My friend told me he got shot three times," the man said. "He said he’s in the bathroom and he goes, ‘Help. Help!’ I’m not there, I can’t do nothing!"
"Do not text him or call him, OK? Just in case," the dispatcher told him. "Because if he has a phone, you know ringing or making noise or something, we don’t know anything about anything. So at this point we don’t want any noises around."
The man who had called about his girlfriend earlier in the night called 911 again hours later.
"There are now four dead in the bathroom and two shot, they’re bleeding now. And if someone doesn’t there soon, they’re gonna die," he said.
Orlando first responder cannot claim PTSD on workers' comp
"I just finally was able to speak with her again and there’s nobody in the f-----g nightclub. And this is the fifth time I’m telling you the location."
And a desparate father called in tears about his son while driving in a panic to Orlando to try to find him.
"He got shot and nobody’s going in there for him!" the man said.
Police said officers fatally shot Mateen following the standoff. More audio from 911 calls may show the difficulties faced by investigators as they decided when to send in a SWAT team.
One call from Pulse to the Orlando Police Department included a 28-minute call from the shooter himself saying he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Mateen was “saying that he is a terrorist and has several bombs strapped to him in the downstairs female restroom,” according to a log of the department’s calls released in June.
The department has yet to release audio of its calls. The city of Orlando and two dozen news media companies have gone to court over allowing the recordings to go public.
<bot>: Witnesses to the worst mass shooting in American history could be heard describing the carnage in 911 calls revealed Tuesday.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016083019id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/orlando-nightclub-shooting-911-calls-released-article-1.2771905
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: LIKE many of the best things in life, this one came along by chance though it had been hiding in plain sight.
On a witheringly hot summer day a few weeks ago, our niece and daughter had chickened out of the trek to the Eiffel Tower, and the long wait to go up it. But a friend recalled that it was open at night, and, indeed, to my surprise I learned that you could ride up as late as midnight.
So we set off, and hit the tower line around 10 p.m. As during the day, the lines snaked away from the elevators at the north and east pillars, and the stairs in the south pillar. But you weren't wilting in heat, forced to buy bottled water or ice cream at exorbitant rates from nearby stands. Nor was the wait quite as long an hour or so, better than the 90 minutes you can expect on the average summer day in July and August, when the tower attracts up to 31,000 visitors during the hours the elevators are open.
The crowning pleasure was, of course, the view that unfolded at the second stage. There you are, 377 feet above Paris, with the illuminated bridges sparkling in the Seine's reflection, the cleverly illuminated tricolor fluttering above the vast crystal roof of the Grand Palais, the summer Ferris wheel turning above the Tuileries gardens, tossing shadowy light onto the Rue de Rivoli and toward the Louvre. Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré-Coeur, the Invalides, the Panthéon, St.-Sulpice all these famous monuments laid out in a visual feast.
Sure, by day, this is a spectacular view. You see in detail how Paris has preserved its ancient core, cleverly consigning the architectural gems or monstrosities of the late 20th century to the city's outer reaches, where they cannot sully the wonder of the heart. You appreciate, too, the hint of the Mediterranean that is part of Paris's lure: the buildings are pale, like many across Southern Europe, with streets running like dark rivulets across the cityscape.
At night, however, there is a seductive magic to the glittering spectacle of Paris. And there is mystery, the hint of romance and adventure, in all those dark spots dotted with lamplight and the odd burst of neon color from stores and theaters. What is going on down there, in between the lights?
For the complete thrill, you must go to the summit (elevator access to the top is limited, so to be sure of making it in time, get to the tower line by 9 p.m.). That puts you roughly 1,000 feet above all this. On a rainy night, your head is literally in the clouds, which scud across a sky riven by the spotlight that rotates continuously from the apex, adding another aspect to that view.
Everyone is beguiled: Waldemar Neufeld, 40, on his third visit to Paris from Koblenz in Germany, simply rolled his eyes when someone asked what was different at night. Everything. The Cisneros family, from Montclair, N.J., was enthralled. I think it's great; you just see it all sparkle, said Claudia, 9, her eyes radiant. C'est très, très, très bien, gushed her mother. Even a more cynical spectator, a middle-aged Russian named Valentin who noted proudly that I am from St. Petersburg, so you can't surprise me with much, conceded: I got what I wanted. This is how it should be.
At the summit, there are clear, helpful guides to all the monuments you can see, and reminders of how far you are from home: 9,739 kilometers from Tokyo, for instance. You gaze in at replicas of Gustave Eiffel's office and apartment on the tower, where, on Sept. 10, 1889, the year the tower was built for the World's Fair, Eiffel received Thomas Edison, who brought a model of his recently unveiled phonograph. And, yes, you will feel the tower sway.
There are so many marvels to a nighttime visit, but here are two more.
First, the elevator ride up and down, through the illuminated lattice work of the tower itself, and the even greater pleasure when it is lighted a giant flashing sparkler with 20,000 light bulbs, for 10 minutes, on the hour every hour till 2 a.m. (1 a.m. in winter). The ride makes you appreciate the true genius of Eiffel's tower: it is an engineering marvel and an aesthetic masterpiece, its curls and swirls echoing the filigree stonework of Notre Dame's rose windows, or the carefully wrought balconies of all those buildings along Haussmann's boulevards. You can see this by day, but much more clearly at night.
Secondly and this too is true by day, but enhanced by the cocoon of darkness it's a chance to savor all those people around you. I have traveled a lot, but can think of few spots where you will see so many different people from across the planet as you do here. Lovers kiss. An aging Chinese woman in a wheelchair marvels, while a young South Asian man in another wheelchair strains upward so his friend can snap his face against the backdrop of that nighttime view. You will hear Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, German, oh, yes, English, Swedish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and, of course, Chinese.
It is also here that you appreciate how fast mass tourism has grown. Last year, the Eiffel Tower had a record 6,695,000 visitors, according to Carole Baudry, of the Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, the private body that runs the tower. That is one million more than in 1997. When the Chinese (already 4 percent of the annual visitor total) really start traveling en masse, will 15 hours a day be enough to accommodate all those rightly longing to see one of the wonders of the modern world?
The Eiffel Tower is open daily (www.eiffel-tower.com). From June 15 to Sept. 1, the elevator is open 9 a.m. to 12:45 a.m. Stairs are open 9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. Last tickets are sold 45 minutes before close; last trip to the summit is officially 11 p.m. but may be earlier depending on weather and crowds. Around the Easter and May holidays, these hours also apply. Otherwise, from Jan. 1 to June 14, and Sept. 2 to Dec. 31, the elevator is open 9:30 a.m. to 11:45 p.m.; stairs, 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Elevator to summit: 11.50 euros (about $16 at $1.38 to the euro); 6.30 euros for children age 3 to 11. To second stage: 7.80 euros; 4.30 euros for children. The first stage, which features a movie on Eiffel Tower history, is 4.50 euros; children, 2.30 euros. Disabled people with papers attesting to disability go at reduced rates, as does one accompanying person. Wheelchairs are not allowed to the summit.
Altitude 95 (telephone 33-1-45-55-20-04), on the first stage, has a panoramic view over the Seine and the Trocadero. Appetizers start at 11 euros, and main courses from 17 euros (for a vegetable plate); salmon fillet with asparagus risotto is 24 euros; and a two-course fixed-price lunch is 26 euros. The Jules Verne (33-1-45-55-61-44), on the second stage, is pricey; at least 100 euros a head for dinner; lunch menu is 65 euros. Reservations for dinner are needed at least six weeks in advance.
More suggestions on what to do and see in Paris can be found at nytimes.com/travel.
ALISON SMALE is the managing editor of the International Herald Tribune. Maia de la Baume contributed reporting.
<bot>: At night, there is a seductive magic to the glittering spectacle of Paris, especially at 377 feet above the city atop the Eiffel Tower.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2007082719id_/http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/travel/26heads.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Maryland and several other states are pushing rapidly toward adoption of new academic standards proposed Wednesday for English and math, adding momentum to the campaign to establish common expectations for public school students across the country.
The District also is on track to adopt the common standards drafted by experts in a project led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. However, it is possible that Virginia will not join the apparent surge toward approval.
Widespread adoption of common standards would mark a watershed for schools, triggering consequences for curricula, textbooks, testing and teaching. Some critics say common standards amount to a thinly disguised ruse to establish national standards under federal control -- an allegation that state and federal officials deny.
In most places, power to adopt standards rests with state boards of education.
Ohio officials said their board plans to vote June 8. Maryland officials are pondering a possible spring vote. Florida's board is pushing toward action in the summer.
"I think you'll get half of the states by the end of the year [to adopt the proposal], based on what they've said to us," said Brenda Welburn, executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education.
Kentucky last month became the first to adopt the proposal, acting on a late-stage draft before the public release.
In Maine, the legislature holds power of approval. Maine Commissioner of Education Susan A. Gendron said she expects a vote next week that would allow the state to adopt the standards when they are finalized in the spring.
"What is different about mathematics in Maine from California?" Gendron said. "I don't believe there is a difference. You will see far more states adopt the standards than not."
Alaska and Texas are the only two states that declined to join the common standards project when it began last year.
Virginia is part of the project, but state officials have been cautious about changing standards. Asked whether Virginia would consider approving the proposed standards, state Education Department spokesman Charles Pyle said the Board of Education has not discussed doing so.
"Virginia has a successful standards-based reform program -- the Standards of Learning," Pyle said. "Abandoning those standards would be very disruptive to our school divisions, our teachers and our students. We've made all of this progress in the last 15 years under the SOL program. It's not something we're just going to walk away from."
Under the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, states are free to set standards and testing systems to rate schools. As a result, benchmarks vary widely in rigor and quality. Experts say many states eased academic requirements to enable schools to meet the law's accountability targets.
To address that issue, and enable academic performance to be judged consistently across the country, the governors and school chiefs are seeking common standards that would have all students ready for college or career after high school. President Obama has encouraged the initiative, but his administration played no role in drafting the blueprint.
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<bot>: Maryland and several other states are pushing rapidly toward adoption of new academic standards proposed Wednesday for English and math, adding momentum to the campaign to establish common expectations for public school students across 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/2010031119id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031000024.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The American military, along with its international partners, will need to remain in Iraq even after the expected defeat of the Islamic State group, outgoing Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Saturday.
Carter said the U.S. and its coalition partners must not stop after completing the current campaign to expel ISIS from Iraq's second largest city of Mosul.
He said the militants are on a path to lasting defeat.
"But there will still be much more to do after that to make sure that, once defeated, ISIL stays defeated," he said, using an alternative acronym for ISIS. "We'll need to continue to counter foreign fighters trying to escape and ISIL's attempts to relocate or reinvent itself. To do so, not only the United States but our coalition must endure and remain engaged militarily."
"In Iraq in particular, it will be necessary for the coalition to provide sustained assistance and carry on our work to train, equip, and support local police, border guards, and other forces to hold areas cleared from ISIL," said Carter.
Carter did not say how long this continued U.S. military presence might be necessary or how many troops would be required. At any rate, those decisions are likely to fall to the Trump administration after it takes office in January.
While describing recent Pentagon actions to put a stranglehold on ISIS worldwide, Carter said the Obama administration has directed the secretive Joint Special Operations Command to prioritize destroying the militant group's ability to conduct attacks in the West.
Carter said that in his final weeks in office, he is focused on ensuring a smooth transition to his successor.
Earlier this week, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he intends to nominate retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to be his defense secretary.
Carter congratulated Mattis on Saturday, who is a former commander of U.S. Central Command overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I've worked with Jim for many years, he's a friend, and I hold him in the highest regard," Carter said. He made no mention of the aspect of the Mattis selection that has drawn the most attention: the fact that his nomination will require legislation by Congress to exempt Mattis from a legal prohibition on a retired military officer serving as secretary of defense before he has been out of uniform for a minimum of seven years. Mattis retired in 2013.
Carter made his remarks at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
<bot>: The American military, along with its international partners, will need to remain in Iraq even after the expected defeat of the Islamic State group, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Saturday.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016120419id_/http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/04/defense-secretary-ash-carter-says-us-partners-need-to-stay-in-iraq-after-isis-defeat.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: LONDON — It might sound like something from a science fiction movie, but an Italian doctor says full-body transplants, where a living person’s head would be attached to a donor body, could be possible in two years.
Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, first proposed the idea of transplanting a head onto someone else’s body in 2013, but he’s moving things forward by announcing the project at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons in Maryland in June where he’ll seek support and sponsors for it.
Canavero’s idea is based on a controversial operation where the whole head of a monkey was transplanted onto a different body.
Since 1970 Dr. Robert White, renowned Cleveland (Ohio) neurosurgeon, has performed 35 animal head transplants.
In 1970, Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon, completed a procedure between two rhesus monkeys, but the monkey that received the transplant died after nine days. White's animal head transplant experiments were called grotesque and barbaric.
In an article published this month in Surgical Neurology International, Canavero writes that the process hinges on the reconnection of the severed stumps of the two spinal cords involved.
In a procedure he calls “GEMINI spinal cord fusion” he writes that the “key” to it is the "sharp severance of the cords themselves” with minimal damage.
However, other surgeons have expressed doubt about the procedure ever happening.
"This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely," Harry Goldsmith, a clinical professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, Davis, told New Scientist.
"I don't believe it will ever work, there are too many problems with the procedure."
And even if the procedure is theoretically possible, Canavero’s biggest problem could be be finding a country that will allow him to do it.
"The real stumbling block is the ethics," he told New Scientist. "Should this surgery be done at all? There are obviously going to be many people who disagree with it.”
Even if the U.S. or Europe won’t back the procedure, Canavero hinted he’d go elsewhere.
"If society doesn't want it, I won't do it. But if people don't want it in the US or Europe, that doesn't mean it won't be done somewhere else. I'm trying to go about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you."
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
<bot>: An Italian doctor says full-body transplants, where a living person’s head would be attached to a donor body, could be possible in two years.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015022619id_/http://mashable.com/2015/02/26/head-transplant-by-2017-claim/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Until last week, I had not, I must confess, heard of a certain chap by the name of Richard Staveley. But since then I have not been able to stop marvelling at him. For those of you still as ignorant of this man’s charms as I once was, I shall explain.
Richard Staveley is the head of marketing at a company I shall call Sludge Drinks, so as not to give those twonks any further publicity. Sludge Drinks is one of those companies that claims drinking liquidised gunk, instead of eating actual food, is an excellent way to lose weight – if you’re a woman, that is. Notably, the “weight loss” section on the home page of the company’s website is illustrated by a topless slim woman with “Sludge Drinks” written on her arse, like a branded piece of livestock. The “add muscle” section, on the other hand, is illustrated by a muscular man, his fist clenched tight with righteousness. Because women should be skinny and food-deprived, while men should be muscular and overloading on protein, just as God and Sludge Drinks intended.
But I digress! Recently, Sludge Drinks launched an advertising campaign in train stations across the land that makes up in obnoxiousness what it lacks in grammar. “ARE YOU BEACH BODY READY?” the bright yellow poster bellows, illustrated by requisite woman in tiny bikini and a couple of Sludge Drinks’ untempting-looking products.
Reaction to this campaign has been, to use the favoured euphemism, mixed. Some women reportedly stood in front of the posters for hours, trying in vain to make sense of this nonsensical slogan. Others simply walked on past without noticing it, so used are they to women’s bodies being used to sell pointless products that no one needs. Then there are those who have taken a stand, arguing that any body that makes it to the beach is, literally, a beach body, so Sludge Drinks can shove their adverts up the part of their anatomy that is branded on their website. Petitions were launched, social media mockery ensued and a demonstration planned in London’s Hyde Park. In short, all the things that would normally give a marketing manager a minor cardiac episode.
But not plucky Richard Staveley. Far from backing down with a meek apology, Mr Staveley has, as the young folk say, doubled down. Of course Sludge Drinks isn’t being sexist by saying the only women who should be allowed on a beach are those in bikinis with Barbie-like proportions, he snorted. Rather, the company is benevolently encouraging “a healthier, fitter nation”. Honestly, it’s a wonder Sludge Drinks hasn’t won the Nobel peace prize for its efforts. He then added the kicker: “It’s been quite odd how many people we’ve found who are far quicker to fit-shame then fat-shame.”
I always enjoy this argument: that anyone who criticises the commodification of women’s bodies is “fit-shaming” and, by extension, endorsing bingeing on crisps and looking like Jabba the Hutt. Fashion editors are, you might not be surprised to learn, especially keen on this strawman of an argument (strawmen: so enviably skinny!). When asked on the American news programme 60 Minutes, in 2009, why models are so thin, American Vogue’s Anna Wintour complained there is “an epidemic of obesity in the United States, and for some reason everybody focuses on anorexia”.
This kind of logic is ironclad: you absolutely never read articles about the dangers of obesity in the media, or see fat people being mocked on television and in movies, or encounter shops selling clothes only up to size 16 and suggesting anyone bigger is a circus freak, do you? Those poor thin people can hardly move through city centres these days without being jeered at by fit-shamers and having Mars bars thrown at their Lycra-clad backsides. Truly, this is the civil rights issue of our time.
I could at this juncture point out that women aren’t annoyed at thin models; they’re sick of being told that only one body type is acceptable. I could also say that medical studies have repeatedly shown that being slightly overweight is much healthier than being underweight. But all that needs to be said is that, if fashion editors are tired of people asking them about anorexia, they could consider featuring women other than underweight models in their publications.
As for Mr Staveley, I’ll make a deal: if he agrees to live on Sludge Drinks’ protein puke for a week and be photographed in a Speedo for the next round of adverts, I promise I won’t fit-shame him. • Sophie Heawood is away.
<bot>: The ‘Are you beach body ready?’ advertising campaign backfired spectacularly earlier this week. Which just goes to show women are not as stupid, or as weight-obsessed, as we’re made out to be
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015050219id_/http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/02/beach-body-ready-advert-backlash-hadley-freeman
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Apparently, there are only five things you need to do to win Wimbledon, Nick Kyrgios: beat Richard Gasquet, Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray – and, as one of your compatriots sitting courtside said the other day, “pull your head in”.
The growing perception that the strong-minded young Australian from his country’s most boring city, Canberra, is in danger of becoming “a bit of a tool” – as a columnist in the Sydney Morning Herald put it so delicately the other day – might be harsh, but it is not going to go away. Mud sticks.
An Australian television station canvassed views among British tennis writers in the first week and it was clear that Kyrgios, after barely a year in the unforgiving glare of a sometimes brutal media examination, has divided opinion from Melbourne to London. Those craving “a character”, someone to market, to save tennis from descending into post-Federer-Murray-Nadal-Djokovic boredom, can’t get enough of his freewheeling antics and exuberant tennis. Others – older and stuffier in his youthful reckoning, probably – who remember the dignity that Rod Laver and his generation brought to the game think he is, well, see above.
I would like to have a bit each-way on him coming through this – but maybe not for a year or two. He’s still struggling with his celebrity, whatever he might think to the contrary, in his laid-back, knowing way.
When Kyrgios drawls “Nah” to the question of whether or not he cares what people think about him, it does not ring true. He might be rich and getting richer ($1.36m in three years on the Tour), he might be the star turn in the locker room, he might even win this Wimbledon, but the advice from the stands during a match last week to basically get on with it and stop complaining disturbed him. “I didn’t find it funny,” he told us later.
So he is not as impassive to criticism as his drooped eyelids and air of indifference in front of reporters that night might have suggested – at least not to his friends, among them the American Jack Sock, who was standing at the back of the room, swapping knowing smirks.
A lot of the players like Kyrgios. Murray is an admirer. Roger Federer has hit with him. Wawrinka, who chased him in vain all summer to share a practice court, likes his cheek. Stan thinks Nick loves to wind up the press. There is no harm in that – if you can take it, as well.
Everyone would like to cut the kid a bit of slack. He is, after all, a special talent. If fit, he can beat Gasquet in the fourth round. He might take Wawrinka, the French Open champion who looks as strong as a bull after three matches, to a fourth or fifth set. He will not beat Djokovic – and nor would he beat Murray in the final.
But one day he could. Those fine players are in their late 20s and early 30s, and Kyrgios left his teenagehood behind him only three months ago – which will come as no surprise to anyone who has endured his often withering sarcasm.
Some critics have compared him to one of his biggest fans, John McEnroe, but that is misleading. Superbrat could be sullen on and off the court.
When Kyrgios has a racket in his hand he is at his happiest, “having fun” as he has repeatedly described it, and he is a joy to watch: eccentric, courageous in the shot, inventive and – when not being appallingly rude to officials – entertaining fans with the sort of easy banter you would hear in a park or on a beach, but rarely in the down-to-business surroundings of Centre Court.
He is also capable of perceptive analysis of his sport – when he can be bothered to answer questions about it. The players he admires are the showmen who express themselves on court, particularly Gaël Monfils, who wears his genius far more lightly. Maybe he should have a chat with the Frenchman.
Back in the boring grown-up world, Djokovic remains favourite to win here. The defending champion has had fewer anxious moments than either Murray or Federer, his main rivals alongside Wawrinka, who he will probably meet in the semi-finals, and is disturbingly relaxed, usually a sign that his mind and body are in sync – and that is not always the case.
And, if Djokovic were to play Kyrgios in the semi-finals? For as long as it lasted, it would not be dull.
<bot>: Nick Kyrgios’s arrogance and tantrums have proved a big turn-off, but in time he could challenge the best. At least it won’t be dull
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015070519id_/http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jul/05/wimbledon-nick-kyrgios-superbrat-tantrums
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Wednesday, October 30th 2002, 8:16AM
"I felt a connection to Salvatore's story from the beginning, because even though he and I lived in different worlds, I knew we were both listening to the same music, like the Moonglows and the Flamingos."
- Paul Simon, explaining why he wrote "The Capeman," about '50s teen killer Sal Agron
It was two decades after the Moonglows and the Flamingos began perfecting their velvet harmony that another Chicago group, the Chi-Lites, cut the enchanting ballad "Oh Girl."
And it was 30 years after that, this past Sunday, when "Oh Girl" proved again on "The Sopranos" that for a bridge between people, a song can beat steel.
"I love the song," says "Sopranos" creator David Chase. "It's a beautiful song, and I've always looked for a way to use it."
Tony Soprano feels the same way. He hears it on WCBS-FM, cranks it up and sings. His eyes mist over. Tony was probably in high school when "Oh Girl" was a hit. It's embedded.
Of course, Tony being Tony,
he can't just leave it at that. He gets to thinking about one of his ex-bimbettes and how she's now dating one of his sleazy pals, and he has to go beat the guy up.
The song frames the whole sequence, which is particularly mesmerizing because we'd
already seen the power of "Oh Girl" in an earlier scene.
Tony and two pals are cutting a deal with Maurice, a black ex-
activist so disenchanted he is happy to front a housing-rehab scam for white mobsters.
Still, Tony and Maurice both know where the other comes from. Tony doesn't much like blacks, and Maurice spent years facing off in Newark with Anthony Imperiale, one of Tony's icons. They've been on opposite sides too long to become instant goumbas, even for money.
But as they walk out of the sauna and locker room music comes up, they hear "Oh Girl."
"Chi-Lites," says Tony. It's a nod to the song, and to Maurice. To keep a distance, Maurice quickly gripes that the Chi-Lites were on the same label as Tommy James and the Shondells.
Just as quickly, Tony shakes his head and says no, "The Chi-Lites were on Brunswick."
And Tommy James was on Roulette. Tony's right.
But the real point is that 30 years ago, when Tony was training to run the mob and Maurice was trying to change the world, they were listening to the same record. Now it gives them a common language in a situation where neither imagined he would ever be.
What they use that language to say, of course, is beyond the power of even the Chi-Lites.
<bot>: "I felt a connection to Salvatore's story from the beginning, because even though he and I lived in different worlds, I knew we were both listening to the same music, like the Moonglows and the Flamingos."- Paul Simon, explaining why he wrote "The Capeman,"about '50s teen killer Sal Agron It was two decades after the Moonglows and the Flamingos began perfecting their velvet harmony that another
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100504162016id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/archives/entertainment/2002/10/30/2002-10-30_for_tony_soprano___oh_girl__.html
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The Senate report on CIA sanctioned interrogation tactics under George W. Bush’s administration hits just as his younger brother Jeb will soon decide if he’ll run for President in 2016.
The timing for the Tuesday release of the 528-page report couldn’t be worse: The former President is in the middle of a book tour for his heartwarming biography on his father, 41st President George H.W. Bush, and Jeb is poised to make up his mind “in short order” on if he’s going to run.
The report’s detailed portrayal of waterboardings, rectal feedings and physical violence against suspected terrorists after 9/11 calls into question the legacy of the 43rd President.
Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney and then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice signed off on the CIA’s use of waterboarding in 2003 but, according to the report, the President himself was not clued into the details of the interrogation techniques until 2006.
Bush “expressed discomfort with the ‘image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself” after the April 2006 briefing, the report said, but Bush ultimately defended the CIA measures, saying months later in September that the “American people need to know we're using techniques within the law to protect them.”
Ironically, Bush defended the measures in a 2006 interview with Matt Lauer on the “Today” show, the NBC program that later hired the President’s daughter, Jenna Bush Hager, as a correspondent in 2009.
Since the report’s publication on Tuesday, Bush hasn’t yet addressed the conclusions.
When asked about the anticipated report over the weekend, the former President only praised operatives at the CIA as “patriots.”
“Whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base,” he said in a CNN interview on Sunday.
Bush also heaped praise on the man possibly most damned in the report, former CIA Director Michael Hayden.
Hayden was a staunch advocate of the intense interrogation tactics and is portrayed as possibly having misled Congress about the agency’s activities, according to the report.
In Bush’s biography, “41: A portrait of my father,” published in November, the former President touted Hayden as a “lifelong public servant...nobody knew the intelligence business better than Mike.”
Though Bush is careful not to publicly criticize President Obama, he did write that he was “disappointed” that his successor failed to keep Hayden on as head of the CIA in 2009.
“His knowledge would have been very valuable to the President.”
Cheney, Bush’s hawkish confidant who isn’t shy about criticizing Obama, dismissed the Senate report as “a bunch of hooey” in a New York Times interview published Monday, before the report was released on Tuesday.
Obama tried to soften the blow of judgment against Bush, conceding on Tuesday that “the previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue Al Qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country.”
“At the same time, some of the actions that were taken were contrary to our values. That is why I unequivocally banned torture when I took office, because one of our most effective tools in fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe is staying true to our ideals at home and abroad.”
<bot>: The Senate report on CIA interrogation tactics under George W. Bush leaves his brother Jeb in an awkward place.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014121119id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/cia-torture-report-complicates-prospect-jeb-bush-article-1.2040434
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: If you’re dreaming of the day you’ll get to live on Mars, you may have a bit longer to wait.
Mars One announced on Wednesday its project to start a human colony on the Red Planet will be delayed by five years. The Dutch company now says it will send its first crews to Mars in 2031 instead of its previous target date of 2026.
The venture is delaying its missions so it can raise more money, according to CEO Bas Lansdorp. “Of course the whole Mars One team would have preferred to be able to stick to the original schedule, but this new timeline significantly improves our odds of successfully achieving this mission roadmap,” he said in a statement.
This is far from the first time Mars One has delayed its project. Despite Lansdorp’s confidence, other scientists have expressed significant doubts about the mission’s feasibility. In 2014, MIT grad students released a report that said the missions would require great financial resources and technological advances, and that the humans on Mars would likely begin dying within 68 days of arrival. There have also been questions about how Mars One selected its astronauts and how much a mission to Mars will actually cost.
<bot>: The company said it needs more money to send people to Mars
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016121119id_/http://time.com/4595859/mars-one-mission-delay/
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Keep those selfies rated G.
Snapchat is trying to cut down on smut by releasing new guidelines instructing minors to "keep your clothes on" and not to engage in pornography.
"Don't use Snapchat for any illegal shenanigans and if you're under 18 or are Snapping with someone who might be: keep your clothes on!" read the new rules posted on their website.
The popular photo sharing app, which allows users to send images and videos that disappear after seconds, had become a known haven for sexing since its September 2011 release.
Team Snapchat hopes to reduce the racy activity with the new "Community Guidelines," which were published under "Abuse and Safety" and tell youngsters "not to Snap" X-rated material or "nudity or sexually suggestive content involving minors."
Rule-breakers may have their accounts suspended and banned from using the app, the company warned.
"Please take these rules seriously and honor them in the spirit in which they are intended," the message says.
"We will do our best to enforce them consistently and fairly, and ultimately we'll try to do what we think is best in each situation, at our own discretion."
<bot>: Snapchat has released new rules telling minors to "keep your clothes on."
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015022719id_/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/snapchat-new-guidelines-warn-teens-clothes-article-1.2131544
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: <![if ! lte IE 8]> <![endif]>
BOSTON—A cardiac surgeon at one of the nation’s most prominent hospitals was shot twice Tuesday morning and later died after he was confronted near his office by an armed assailant, who then fatally shot himself, authorities said.
The incident triggered an immediate lockdown at the prestigious Brigham and Women’s Hospital here. The surgeon, identified by the hospital as Michael Davidson, the director of endovascular cardiac surgery at Brigham, was rushed to the emergency room by his colleagues. He died Tuesday evening, the hospital said at 10:45 p.m. A relative of Dr. Davidson declined to comment on Tuesday.
“Dr. Davidson was a wonderful and inspiring cardiac surgeon who devoted his career to saving lives and improving the quality of life of every patient he cared for,” the hospital said in a statement. “It is truly devastating that his own life was taken in this horrible manner.”
Police said they believe the apparent gunman, 55-year-old Stephen Pasceri of Millbury, Mass., was targeting Dr. Davidson when the gunman entered the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center about 11 a.m. Mr. Pasceri went to the surgeon’s second-floor office and asked to speak to him, police said.
After an altercation in a foyer between the waiting room and an examination room, the assailant shot Dr. Davidson twice, police said. Mr. Pasceri was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in an examination room, they said.
“It’s leading us to believe that there was something in the past that upset this guy, and he came in looking for this particular doctor,” said Boston Police Chief William Evans. Police said they were still trying to determine a motive for the attack, but were looking into the possibility that Mr. Pasceri was related to one of the doctor’s patients.
During the ordeal, people at the hospital barricaded themselves in offices, police said. A temporary lockdown was lifted by noon. Hospital officials said at a news conference that there are no metal detectors at Brigham, but that the hospital is assessing its safety plans and has confidence in its security force.
Dr. Davidson graduated from Princeton University in 1992 and Yale University School of Medicine in 1996, according to the hospital’s website. He was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, according to his Brigham profile. Dr. Davidson lived in Wellesley, Mass., and was the father of young children, and his wife also is a doctor, said people familiar with the case.
Boston’s hospitals were widely lauded for their quick efforts to save the lives of scores of people who were critically wounded in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Tuesday’s shooting also brought to real life a violent scenario that Brigham had rehearsed for, said Ron Walls, the executive vice president and chief operating officer at Brigham.
Dr. Walls said the hospital was one of the first in the U.S. to initiate broad-scale training of its staff for an active-shooter scenario. Brigham had developed video-training instruction for its employees and had spent a lot of time working with Boston police, running through scenarios that seemed unthinkable, he said. Still, while saying the hospital was well-prepared, Dr. Walls added that there were shortcomings to any such training.
“Our belief is that there is no amount of preparation that anyone can do that completely eliminates the prospect of any of this kind of tragic event happening,” he said.
In a statement, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said he was deeply saddened about Dr. Davidson’s death.
“This tragedy is the result of a senseless act of violence that has no place in our city,” Mr. Walsh said.
Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com
<bot>: A cardiac surgeon at one of the nation’s most prominent hospitals was shot twice Tuesday morning and later died after being confronted near his office by an armed assailant, who then fatally shot himself.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2015012019id_/http://www.wsj.com/articles/one-person-hurt-seriously-in-shooting-at-boston-hospital-1421774598
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Former NBA star Dennis Rodman makes
, as he tries to establish 'basketball diplomacy' between the United States and the communist nation. Rodman defends his trip and his friendship with dictator Kim Jong-Un, who according to reports recently executed his Uncle Jang Song Thaek. The basketball star claims that his trip is no different from the Olympic games and insists his visits are not for his own self publicity
<bot>: Former NBA star Dennis Rodman makes another controversial trip to North Korea, as he tries to establish 'basketball diplomacy' between the United States and the communist nation.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014010719id_/http://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2014/jan/06/dennis-rodman-returns-north-korea-video
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: America’s troops too often come home from war only to remain a step apart from the rest of the nation. The chasm between the military and civilian populations has never been greater. It’s simple math: Less than one percent of Americans now serve in the military, compared with 12 percent during World War II. So after a decade of unrelenting war, with some soldiers and Marines serving four or more combat tours, many Americans still don’t know a single soldier, sailor or airman.
Veterans will tell you that one of the most jarring experiences of their service is the sudden immersion back into a society seemingly unaware that there are any wars going on at all. While they fought, their country went about its business. So they must find their own ways to acknowledge their experiences. A common ritual is the commemorative tattoo. Troops honor fallen buddies, venerate their units, reiterate war mottos, engrave themselves with religious prose, or dream up art that reflects experiences they might not talk about.
Since 1992, Capitol Tattoo has been inking the bodies of returning soldiers in a storefront shop on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, Md., just north of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the massive Army hospital that is in the process of closing. “They are our family,” says owner Al Herman, of the soldiers who come in for artwork, or just to hang out.
On one day this summer, Herman opened his door to photographer Peter Hapak. The veteran clients rolled up their sleeves, stripped off their shirts, and revealed their scars, hoping that the resulting images would help bridge the chasm of understanding.
Mark Benjamin is an investigative reporter based in Washington, and a contributer to TIME, as well as TIME.com’s military intelligence blog Battleland. You can follow him on Twitter at MarkMBenjamin
MORE: Read Mark Benjamin’s magazine story, “The Art of War,” from this week’s issue of TIME [available to subscribers here].
<bot>: A common ritual for soldiers upon returning home from fighting abroad is the commemorative tattoo. Troops honor fallen buddies, venerate their units, reiterate war mottos, engrave themselves with religious prose, or dream up art that reflects experiences they prefer not to talk about.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011111319id_/http://lightbox.time.com/2011/11/11/the-art-of-war-honoring-the-fallen-for-a-lifetime/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Anne Pitoniak, who began her stage career in late middle age, but received a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut, in “ ’night, Mother,” and had an enduring career playing strong-willed older women, died on Sunday at home in Manhattan. She was 85.
The cause was complications of cancer, said her son, Christian Milord.
Other than a few roles in summer stock theater right out of college, Ms. Pitoniak spent most of her acting life in television and radio commercials. But in 1975, when she was in her mid-50s, her marriage having ended in divorce and her two children grown, she decided to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. Two years later she became a resident actor at the Actors Theater of Louisville in Kentucky, where her first role was in Marsha Norman’s first play, “Getting Out.”
Ms. Pitoniak quickly developed a following at the Actors Theater, the host theater of the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Among the plays she appeared in were John Pielmeier’s “Agnes of God” and Jane Martin’s “Talking With,” which was moved to Off Broadway by the Manhattan Theater Club.
“ ’night, Mother” was the third of Ms. Norman’s plays in which Ms. Pitoniak starred. She portrayed a fiercely desperate mother whose daughter, played by Kathy Bates, suddenly announces suicidal intentions, a performance described as “harrowing” by Frank Rich in The New York Times. The play went to the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., then to Broadway, where it opened in 1983.
Ms. Pitoniak acted in six more plays on Broadway, including a 1994 revival of William Inge’s “Picnic,” for which she received her second Tony nomination, and David Hare’s “Amy’s View” in 1999. She also appeared in movies and on television shows like “Third Watch” and “Law & Order: SVU.”
Born in Westfield, Mass., Ms. Pitoniak graduated from what is now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She joined the U.S.O. soon after and met her husband, Jerome Milord, then a soldier, when they were both in a U.S.O. show in Japan. They divorced in 1968.
<bot>: Anne Pitoniak began her stage career in late middle age, but received a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut, in “ ’night, Mother,” and had an enduring career playing strong-willed older women.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2007042619id_/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/obituaries/26pitoniak.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, is quickly becoming as much a part of the news as the headlines his organization is producing. The Australian leader of Wikileaks, which recently made news again after releasing hundreds of thousands of documents regarding the Iraq war, has come under fire both for personal issues--he faces charges of rape and sexual molestation--and for reported conflicts within his organization. His refusal to talk about both matters during a CNN interview he walked out of has only done more to make Assange almost as much a headline as the Iraq war logs news itself.
Like many organizational leaders, Assange is the face of Wikileaks, talking up the group's discoveries and taking much of the heat for releasing documents the Pentagon says puts at risk the lives of Iraqis and, previously, Afghans. He has been a frequent media presence, standing in the spotlight as the secretive organization's well-orchestrated revelations trickle out.
But all that media glare can backfire, too. When leaders become as much--or more--of the story than the results of the organization they lead, they are in danger of casting too long a shadow and may need to consider stepping aside.
Whether he would do just that is just one question reporter Atika Shubert asked Assange in the interview being taped for CNN before he departed the set. Reports have surfaced that there is a war within WikiLeaks itself, with approximately a dozen staffers and volunteers leaving after saying other exposes have been ignored at the expense of Assange's overwhelming attention on the U.S. military.
Internal turmoil has paralyzed the site, which has spun "out of control, still too driven by the personality and ego of its mercurial founder, Julian Assange," critics told the Post. In a profile in the New York Times Saturday, Assange is called WikiLeaks' "prime innovator and charismatic force" but "someone whose growing celebrity has been matched by an increasingly dictatorial, eccentric and capricious style."
Meanwhile, Assange is also in legal crosshairs in Sweden after prosecutors there reopened a rape investigation and decided that a sexual molestation complaint involving Assange should be investigated. He has denied the accusations and said the complaints are a smear campaign by the Pentagon.
By walking out on the CNN interview with Ms. Shubert, he promises to bring even greater attention to himself rather than the Iraq war documents to which his organization is trying to bring so much attention. Even if questions about his personal life weren't germane to the interview (and given his accusations against the U.S. government, they are), Ms. Shubert's questions about whether or not he is eclipsing the Wikileaks revelations were fair. A leader's job is to promote and defend the organization's work, yes. But that is best done behind the scenes rather than by making one themselves.
By Jena McGregor | October 25, 2010; 8:03 AM ET | Category: Bad leadership , Foreign Affairs , Leadership advice Save & Share: Previous: The First Amendment never protected your job | Next: What Warren got right
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<bot>: By walking out on the CNN interview with Ms. Shubert, he promises to bring even greater attention to himself rather than the Iraq war documents to which his organization is trying to bring so much attention. Even if questions about his personal life weren't germane to the interview (and given his accusations against the U.S. government, they are), Ms. Shubert's questions about whether or not he is eclipsing the Wikileaks revelations were fair. A leader's job is to promote and defend the organization's work, yes. But that is best done behind the scenes rather than by making one themselves.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010102519id_/http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/post_leadership/2010/10/when-the-leader-becomes-the-story.html
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that it is unconstitutional for states to require juveniles convicted of murder to be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
The 5-4 decision is in line with others the court has made, including ruling out the death penalty for juveniles and life without parole for young people whose crimes did not involve killing. Monday's decision left open the possibility that judges could sentence juveniles to life without parole in individual cases of murder, but said state laws cannot automatically impose such a sentence.
We "hold that mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on `cruel and unusual punishment,"' said Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the opinion for the majority., referring to the U.S. Constitution.
She was joined in that opinion by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
"Neither the text of the Constitution or our precedent prohibits legislatures from requiring that juvenile murderers be sentenced to life without parole," Roberts said.
The decision came in the robbery and murder cases of Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson, who were 14 when they were convicted.
Miller was convicted of killing a man in Alabama. Jackson was convicted of being an accomplice in an Arkansas robbery that ended in someone else committing murder.
<bot>: The Supreme Court says it's unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole for murder.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2012062519id_/http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/25/supreme-court-no-more-life-without-parole-for-juveniles/
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Updated NOV 15, 2014 11:40a ET
Mississippi State is in the midst of an historic season. As the Bulldogs head into Tuscaloosa for Saturday's battle with Alabama, they are apparently the least respected No. 1 team -- in the history of regular-season betting lines.
It doesn't matter that Mississippi State is 9-0 (5-0 in the SEC West) and is seeking the first 10-win season in school history.
The Bulldogs come into the game attempting to win at Baton Rouge and Tuscaloosa first time in the same season since they did it in 1957 and ... as 10-point underdogs.
Repeat: The No. 1 team in the nation is a 10-point underdog.
"In every article you read, we are big underdogs heading into this game," head coach Dan Mullen said this week. "We know that role. We are going to be OK with that. Our guys are going to come in with a chip on their shoulder and play with great effort. No matter what everyone else is predicting, we want to play that way every week."
The underdog role is unfamilar for these Bulldogs; Mississippi State has been a double-digit favorite in its two games since becoming the top dog in the land. The Bulldogs were favored by 14.5 points on the road against Kentucky on Oct. 25 and 10.5 points the following week against Arkansas.
Mississippi State is only half the equation when the betting line is set. The other part is that the Crimson Tide is rolling. Alabama heads into this crucial clash as a favorite for the 64th consecutive game. The last time the Tide was an underdog? How about the 2009 SEC Championship game when Alabama engulfed Tim Tebow and Florida, 32-13.
Alabama also was a double-digit favorite over a No. 1 in the postseason when the Tide came in as the second-ranked team to face Notre Dame in 2013 for the national title. They also have been the favorite twice against No. 1-ranked LSU squads (Nov. 5, 2011 and Jan. 9, 2012).
<bot>: There have been many firsts in this season for Mississippi State. The Bulldogs are part of another one Saturday in Tuscaloosa. And it should serve as motivation.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014111519id_/http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/story/no-1-mississippi-state-bulldogs-head-into-alabama-as-historic-underdogs-111514
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{'source': 'newsroom'}
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<human>: Produce an article summary of the following news article: Wm.H. Williams vs. The Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad Co., et al. -- This was an action to prevent the forfeiture of a contract alleged to have been entered into between the plaintiff and the defendants, whereby the plaintiff agreed to lay the track furnish cars and build stables for the company. The plaintiff claimed that he had been prevented from performing his agreement by reason of the fact that the defendants had failed to procure the right of way through Water-street in Brooklyn, and for other reasons. He averred that the company were about to complete the road at his expense, and asked an injunction to restrain such procedure and to prevent their violating their contract with him. The relief was granted.
The matter was now before the Court on a motion to dissolve the injunction, the defendants claiming that as the plaintiff had himself been remiss, and had performed his part of the agreement, he could not now demand a specific performance on their part. He was estopped from such an exaction.
The plaintiff, in opposition to the motion and in reply to the defendants, insisted that the remissness charged upon him was occasioned wholly by the laches of the defendants, they having failed to obtain the right of way in the identical street where it was desired he should lay the track; nor had they furnished him with specifications by which he could proceed to erect the stables as agreed. The Court reserved decision.
Jenkins, Opdyke & Ackerman for motion. Tracy, Powers & Tallmadge and Wm. Curtis Noyes opposed.
<bot>: Before Justice Ingraham. Win. H. Williams vs. The Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad Co., et al. This was an action to prevent the forfeiture of a contract alleged to have been entered into between the plaintiff and the defendants, whereby the plaintiff agreed to lay the track furnish cars and build stables for the company.
<human>: What could be a url for this news article?
<bot>: A url for this news article could be:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160628074245id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1862/03/27/news/a-brooklyn-railroad-without-a-track-why-it-had-none-supreme-court-chambers.html
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