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The recent combative hearings between House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Richard Cordray, and Hensarling’s proposed changes to the Financial CHOICE Act underscore the deep philosophical divide that exists between the proponents and opponents of the CFPB. While the sides continue to stake out and evaluate their positions in expectation of a battle over the director and the agency, it might be better for each camp to realize that given the sophistication and degree of integration of the mortgage and financial markets, the respective sides should (and do) have far more in common than they have differences.  A dramatic win by either side, as opposed to a moderate compromise, could hurt both banks and consumers.  Both Democrats and Republicans have at various times agreed that the CFPB should be headed by a bipartisan panel.  Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenPossible GOP challenger says Trump doesn't doesn't deserve reelection, but would vote for him over Democrat Joe Biden faces an uncertain path The Memo: Trump pushes back amid signs of economic slowdown MORE (D-Mass.) – the original architect of the CFPB -- initially envisioned the agency as headed by a panel as opposed to a single director.  The concept of a single director was a change made by the Obama administration.  Last year, when the Republicans introduced the Financial Choice Act to amend Dodd Frank, it included a provision changing the CFPB’s leadership to a panel.  Since that time, both Democrats and Republicans have changed their position, with each now wanting a single director, the difference being whether that director can be removed for cause or at the will of the president.  While the latter issue will be decided by the D.C. Court of Appeals if no compromise is reached, the simple fact is that both Democrats and Republicans have seen the merits of panel leadership, a model applied at analogous agencies.  Accordingly, one would think that it is an easy-to-reach compromise. In other areas, however, there is a disconnect between the need for common ground and the reality that it exists.  The fact is that balanced legislation is in the interests of both sides – even if they don’t realize it.  An unbalanced “victory” creating a lopsided regulatory regimen will not benefit either side in the long run. For instance, from the perspective of consumer advocates, many aspects of the CFPB’s laws and regulations increase the costs to the consumer of applying for and obtaining a loan.  Even consumer advocates have questioned the CFPB’s regulations at times.  Many of the regulatory protections literally wipe out loan products and reduce the ability of lenders to compete for consumers’ business.  Still other regulations increase the difficulty of shopping for loans, making it harder to find a one-stop shop where a variety of products are offered, resulting in a scenario where consumers need to go to a number of different lenders and provide extensive documentation and jeopardize their credit score with multiple inquiries in order to find the best rate. For instance, the interpretation of certain laws pertaining to the compensation of loan officers literally makes these employees untouchable and unaccountable for even intentional errors that can prevent consumers from obtaining a loan. Obviously, these were not the intended consequences, yet regulatory burdens impacting lenders and consumers  have created unwanted obstacles not contemplated when the laws were initially passed. Refining and streamlining these regulations is in the interests of consumers even if reforms would be more publicly welcomed by and seen as victories for banks, commonly considered opponents of the CFPB. On the other hand, significant curtailment of regulations could have undesirable impacts adverse to the very industry participants seen as proponents of regulatory reform.  Indeed, to the extent that the lifeblood of many lending institutions are the sale of loans, there needs to be an appetite for their purchase and transfer.  In many respects, the regulatory framework constructed after the financial crisis provided credibility that was necessary for those secondary markets to function.  Cutting back the regulations too far raises the risk that fewer entities will participate in buying loans, leading to reduced liquidity, higher interest rates, and fewer mortgages.  Moreover, many regulations have been in place for several years at this point, and the implementation required institutions to incur tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars to comply.  Hence, the costs of deconstructing these measures could far exceed the benefits, particularly when a partisan victory resulting in one-sided reform would likely beget a future equal and opposite response during the next swing of the political pendulum.   The reality is that the only solution -- regardless of whether you sit on the “for” or “against” side of the fence -- is moderate regulatory reform that maintains the integrity of the salient financial markets and simultaneously reduces overreaching regulation that impose substantial burdens on consumers and undermine their ability to shop for and obtain loans.  Any one-sided victory for either side will be illusory at best, and lead to a slew of new and perhaps worse problems, requiring an entirely different set of subsequent reforms.  The bottom line is that balanced reform is in the interests of all sides when they consider the long-term impact of regulations in this industry.  Any imbalance may well hurt the very side that “wins” the upcoming debate. Ari Karen, principal at law firm Offit Kurman. The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.  View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Government

President Trump said Monday that there’s “never been a piece of land that we’ve known that was so devastated” as Puerto Rico. Trump gave reporters in the Oval Office an update about his upcoming trip to the island Tuesday, saying he would be meeting with first responders and with military and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials during his visit. “Frankly, most importantly, we’re going to be seeing the people of Puerto Rico,” Trump said. Trump added that it’s been “amazing what’s been done in a very short amount of time in Puerto Rico.” “There’s never been a piece of land that we’ve known that was so devastated,” Trump said, detailing destruction to the territory’s infrastructure, telecommunications and electric grid. “But we’ve gotten tremendous amounts of food water and lots of other things, supplies generally speaking, on the island,” he added. The Trump administration has been criticized for its response to Hurricane Maria on the U.S. territory, facing claims that it hadn’t done enough to help the island recover. The administration responded by noting the food, water and supplies it has sent to the territory after the storm and cited the logistical difficulties in transporting items to the island. Trump had also faced criticism for his comments about San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who he said had “poor leadership ability” after the storm. The president also faced blowback for suggesting Puerto Ricans hadn’t done enough to help themselves recover from the hurricane. Puerto Rico’s roughly 3.4 million residents are struggling to recover from the massive Category 4 storm, facing a lack of access to drinking water, food shortages and a general loss of power across the island. Trump's trip to the island Tuesday will come nearly two weeks after the storm made landfall. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Government

President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump might have different opinions about LeBron James. Just hours after President Trump insulted the 33-year-old basketball player’s intelligence following James’ interview with CNN’s Don Lemon earlier this week — where the sports star called out the president for “dividing” the country — Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman released a statement in support of James. “It looks like LeBron James is working to do good things on behalf of our next generation and just as she always has, the First Lady encourages everyone to have an open dialogue about issues facing children, the statement from Stephanie Grisham read, according to CNN. “As you know, Mrs. Trump has traveled the country and world talking to children about their well-being, healthy living, and the importance of responsible online behavior with her Be Best initiative,” Grisham’s statement continued. At the end of the statement, Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman said that the first lady “would be open to visiting the I Promise School in Akron,” a school James recently opened up in his hometown, where attendees will receive free breakfast, lunch and snacks, as well as a free bike, according to Time. Responding to James’ interview, President Trump wrote on Friday night, “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon.” “He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do,” he added. Seemingly referring to basketball legend Michael Jordan, President Trump wrote, “I like Mike!” Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2018 Jordan later responded through his spokesperson. “I support LeBron James. He’s doing an amazing job for his community,” Jordan said, according to CNN. Days earlier, four-time NBA MVP James explained that “I can’t sit back and say nothing” while he watches President Trump “divide us.” “You know, we are in a position right now in America where this race thing [has] taken over,” he told Lemon on Monday. “I believe our president is kinda trying to divide us. He is — I don’t want to say kinda. He’s dividing us.” As an example, James cited the controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, a movement that started in 2016 by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a way to draw attention to the continued oppression of people due to their race in the United States. President Trump has continued to bring the protests up during his rallies and on Twitter. He’s also threatened to take away tax breaks for the NFL, urging team owners to fine or even fire athletes who “disrespect our flag.” LeBron James (@KingJames) says Trump's trying to use sport to divide people, but he believes it brings people together. He sits down with @donlemon at the opening of his new elementary school for at-risk children in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. Watch 10pET https://t.co/koTK4RarqE pic.twitter.com/CQYsTz2Fzl — CNN (@CNN) July 30, 2018 James has previously voiced his opposition to the president on multiple occasions. Ahead of the NBA Championships in June, James — who recently signed a $154 million contract with the L.A. Lakers — was one of the athletes who said he wouldn’t accept an invitation to the White House should his now-former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, win. (The Golden State Warriors went on to win the championship.) James also called Trump a “bum,” adding that “going to the White House was a great honor until you showed up!“ Talking with Lemon on Monday, James spoke openly about how being involved in athletics helped him understand people from different backgrounds. “Sports [was] the first time I ever was around someone white,” he said. “I got an opportunity to see them and learn about them, and they got an opportunity to learn about me. And we became very good friends. It was always about sport.” Added James: “Sports has never been something that divides people. It’s always been something that brings someone together.”

Politics

US

Two premature babies — a boy and a girl who were both born at barely more than a pound — are among the tiniest hurricane evacuees trying to escape a direct hit from Florence. The newborns who belong to two different families and were being cared for at New Hanover Regional Hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina, earlier this week as Hurricane Florence was barreling toward the coastal city. Doctors coordinated with crews at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, 200 miles inland to get both babies moved to safety. “It took about two days to get all of this together,” Megan Elliot, the nurse manager of the NICU at Levine Children’s Hospital, tells PEOPLE. Dariel was born at just 23 weeks old and his neighbor in the NICU, Sa’Briyah Brown, was born at 25 weeks. Brown’s mom, 28-year old Sheron Moore tells PEOPLE, “My main concern is that she’s safe during the storm.” The Charlotte hospital sent its Med Center Air, a specially equipped plane, to bring both babies inland. “Whenever babies are born at that stage their lungs are not developed so they need a ventilator, extra respiratory support, so they have to stay in the NICU,” Elliot says. She says both babies are now settled in their temporary home and doing well. The first-time mom says she was at church two weeks ago when she started having labor pains and by Monday morning on August 27, she was fully dilated and had no choice but to give birth. “I was told I’d never be able to have a baby on my own so this whole thing feels like a fairytale to me. I never thought any of this would happen,” Moore tells PEOPLE. The nurse manager says when babies are born that young, they can often spend two to three months in the NICU, and while both babies will ride out the storm in Charlotte, the plan is to fly them back to Wilmington as soon as it’s safe. Brown is anxious, but says she’s grateful for all that everyone is doing to make sure her baby is well taken care of. “That’s my miracle, that’s my fighter, I’m so proud of my baby girl!” she says.

Other

Other

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday said the Justice Department has decided not to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton or her aides and will close the investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. The announcement comes a day after FBI Director James Comey held a press conference in which he said “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue a case against Clinton, even though she and her staff were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified material. Lynch's statement provides further relief to Clinton, whose presidential campaign has been dogged by the email scandal, which spawned myriad probes and lawsuits, some of which will continue even as the DOJ’s investigation ends. “Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State,” Lynch said. “I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.” Lynch had previously said that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation, a declaration that came after Lynch came under fire for an impromptu meeting she had with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac late last month. Donald Trump seized on that meeting and a later New York Times article that said Clinton would consider keeping Lynch in her current role as evidence the system was “rigged” in Clinton’s favor and that Lynch had been bribed. "I'm not knocking the attorney general," Trump said during a rally in North Carolina on Tuesday night. "What I'm saying is how can you say that? It's a bribe. The attorney general is sitting there saying, 'If I get Hillary off the hook, I'm going to have more years or eight more years, but if she loses I'm out of a job.' It's a bribe. It's a disgrace." Trump again hammered Clinton during his rally in Ohio on Wednesday night, using the "Crooked Hillary" moniker before moving on to other topics such as Saddam Hussein and his disdain for CNN. Clinton’s camp, meanwhile, expressed its eagerness to move past the email scandal. “With the AG accepting Director Comey's recommendation, this case is resolved, no matter Republicans' attempts to continue playing politics," spokesman Brian Fallon said in a tweet Wednesday evening. The formal announcement from Lynch is hitting just hours before Comey is due to testify before the House Oversight Committee, which is expected to grill the FBI director about the decision to not recommend charges. Comey on Tuesday delivered a scathing assessment of Clinton’s choice to not only use multiple private email servers, but to use her private email extensively while in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. He also said that there was no “direct evidence” that Clinton’s email server was successfully hacked, but that investigators concluded that “it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.” While he provided plenty of fodder for Republicans eager to further damage Clinton’s trustworthiness among voters, Comey said there were doubts about a successful prosecution. “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” he said. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus strongly denounced Lynch's decision: "By so blatantly putting its political interests ahead of the rule of law, the Obama Administration is only further eroding the public’s faith in a government they no longer believe is on their side." Clinton’s use of a private email server and account emerged in March 2015, before she formally declared her presidential bid. She has consistently contended she only used the private email server as a matter of convenience and that she never sent or received messages that were classified at the time. However, she also later apologized and said she would have taken a different approach to her email. Comey on Tuesday not only used harsh language in describing Clinton’s email practices — he also directly contradicted several of Clinton’s statements about her server. The conflicts included Comey’s statement that the FBI had found at least 110 emails that were classified at the time Clinton sent or received them, and that the FBI has proof that she did not turn over “thousands” of work-related messages to the State Department — and that there could be many more that will remain undiscovered.

Politics

Government

WHAT IS THE biggest problem facing America? Or Japan? Or Britain? Or France? Opinions vary, naturally, but some worries crop up again and again. Those of a materialist bent point to decades of slow growth in median incomes, which has bred disillusion and anger among working people. Fiscal hawks decry huge public debts, destined to grow even vaster as ageing populations rack up ever bigger bills for health care and pensions. Then there is immigration, which has prompted a furious populist backlash in the United States and all over Europe. That hints at what, for many, is the most alarming trend of all: the lack of any semblance of a political consensus about how to handle these swelling crises. Rising incomes, low public debt, an affordable welfare state, popular support for mass immigration and a broad consensus on the policies underpinning these things—that is a distant dream in most rich countries. Many Western politicians could scarcely imagine a place that combined them all. Happily, they do not have to, because such a country already exists: Australia (see our special report). Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Perhaps because it is far away from everywhere, or has only 25m inhabitants, or is seen mainly as a habitat for cuddly marsupials, it attracts relatively little attention. But its economy is arguably the most successful in the rich world. It has been growing for 27 years without a recession—a record for a developed country. Its cumulative growth over that period is almost three times what Germany has managed. The median income has risen four times faster than in America. Public debt, at 41% of GDP, is less than half Britain’s. Luck has had a hand in these feats, to be sure. Australia is blessed with lots of iron ore and natural gas, and is relatively close to China, which hoovers up such things. But sound policymaking has helped, too. After the last recession, in 1991, the government of the day reformed the health-care and pensions systems, requiring the middle class to pay more of its own way. The result is that Australia’s government spends just half the OECD average on pensions as a share of GDP—and the gap will only widen in the years ahead. Even more remarkable is Australia’s enthusiasm for immigration. Some 29% of its inhabitants were born in another country—twice the proportion in the United States. Half of Australians are either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants. And the biggest source of immigrants is Asia, which is fast changing the country’s racial mix. Compare that with America or Britain or Italy, where far smaller inflows have generated hostility among a big portion of the electorate—or Japan, where allowing foreigners to settle in any numbers is a political taboo. In Australia both main parties argue that admitting lots of skilled migrants is essential to the health of the economy. These achievements are not without their flaws. The private investment funds through which Australians are obliged to save for their retirement have been charging excessive fees, leaving pensioners poorer than they should be. And as welcoming as Australia is to immigrants arriving through normal channels, it treats those who try to come by boat without the proper paperwork with unnecessary severity, packing them off to remote islands in the Pacific where even legitimate refugees have been left to rot for years. Moreover, there are reforms that Australia should be undertaking and is not. Aboriginal Australians suffer from enormous disadvantages, which a succession of governments has barely dented. Global warming is clearly causing grave damage—droughts have become more frequent and more severe, among other dismal consequences—yet Australia has done almost nothing to curb its emissions of greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, Australia’s example shows that reforms considered impossible elsewhere are perfectly achievable. Democrats in America assail most proposals to restrain the rising costs of public pensions or health care as tantamount to throwing grannies off a cliff; in Australia it was the left that pioneered such policies. The Labor Party sold obligatory private pensions to unions as an increase in benefits, since it is technically employers who are required to make regular payments into investment funds on their workers’ behalf. The party also made sure to retain a basic public pension, which is paid only to those who have not managed to build up adequate personal savings. By the same token, it is quite possible to maintain popular support for mass immigration, even from culturally dissimilar places. But it is essential to give voters the sense that their borders are properly policed and that there is no free-for-all (see next leader). Again, bipartisanship is important. It was a right-wing government that first allowed immigration from Asia on a big scale, admitting lots of refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s. Australia’s political system rewards centrism. All eligible citizens must vote, by law, and those who might not bother to turn out otherwise tend to plump for mainstream parties. There is no need to rally supporters to the polls by pandering to their prejudices. Since everyone has to show up, politicians focus instead on winning over the wavering middle. The system of preferential voting, whereby Australians rank candidates in order of choice, rather than picking just one, also exerts a moderating influence. The irony is that, just as the benefits of this set-up are becoming so obvious, Australians appear to be growing disenchanted with it. Voters express growing doubts about the effectiveness of government. It has not cost the two main parties many seats, thanks to the electoral system, but their vote-share has fallen by 20 percentage points since the 1980s. Politicians, conscious of voters’ disgruntlement, have also become increasingly febrile. They are constantly turfing out prime ministers, in the hope that a new face will boost their party’s standing with the electorate. Some in the ruling Liberal Party, although not the current prime minister, have begun to call for a reduction in immigration, undermining decades of consensus. Ambitious reforms have become rare. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Australia—and Australians could do with a refresher course, too.

Society

Inequality

More than 20 current and former WeWork employees explained what it was like to work at the shared space company.Even though WeWork has been positioned as a tech company, co-founders Adam and Rebekah Neumann don't use computers, preferring to dictate their texts and have assistants send emails.Rebekah only uses white-colored personal technology. Staff once bought white paint, disassembled her desktop phone and painted it, then reassembled the device because they could not find a white phone.For more on what it's like to work at WeWork, click here. Rebekah Neumann only likes white-colored technology. That means no rose gold iPhones, or silver Google Android devices. The WeWork co-founder's preference for white technology once led staff to buy a can of white paint, disassemble her desktop phone – which they couldn't buy in white – then paint it and reassemble it, two employees said.Neumann most recently was the CEO of the company's educational effort, WeGrow, before stepping down last week. Multiple employees highlighted the seeming disconnect between Rebekah and Adam Neumann's approach to their own technology and how they worked to position WeWork as a tech company. The current and former employees talked to Business Insider as part of a larger story on what it's like to work at WeWork.Read more: WeWork cofounders Adam and Rebekah Neumann are close friends with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and invited them to Rebekah's extravagant 40th birthday bash in ItalyA one-time actress who is cousins with Gwyneth Paltrow and graduated from Cornell University majoring in business and Buddhism, Rebekah Neuman was responsible for a lot of the creative elements of We's early slogans like the neon "hustle harder" signs. Some employees described an almost absolutist aesthetic, particularly when it came to a preference for all-white personal technology.She and previous WeWork CEO Adam Neumann didn't use their computers, multiple employees said. A spokeswoman for the Neumanns said Adam is dyslexic and prefers to dictate messages into his phone. At one point, more than a dozen WeWork staffers had iPads with access to Adam Neumann's iMessage account to field messages for him, multiple ex-employees said. One source who worked closely with the C-suite described it as a logistical and security nightmare. See more: The WeWork S-1t Show: How the co-working giant went from a $47 billion valuation to talk of bankruptcy in just 6 weeksA WeWork spokesperson declined to comment on the Neumanns' technology preferences but said the company is moving in a new direction under new co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham. "We are aggressively committed to moving the company forward and building a company and culture that our employees can be proud of," the spokesperson said. For more on what it's like to work at WeWork, read the larger story here.Got a tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 768-1627 using a non-work phone, email at [email protected], or Twitter DM at @MeghanEMorris. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Technology

Social Media

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A majority of EU countries on Thursday opposed a European Commission plan to extend anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels for two years, according to EU diplomats, putting pressure on the EU executive to review its proposal. However, the duties will not necessarily end because the 18 countries that voted against them do not represent a majority of the EU’s population, falling short of the blocking “qualified majority”. The case will now go to an appeal committee, also including representatives from the EU’s 28 member states. The majority view could also pressure the European Commission to review its proposal. The EU governments did back a two-year extension of tariffs designed to counter trade subsidies. These tariffs are capped at 11.5 percent. The European Union and China came close to a trade war in2013 over EU allegations of solar panel dumping by China. Butthis was averted by an agreement to allow a limited amount oftariff-free panels at a minimum 0.56 euros per watt. The Commission reviewed that agreement and also import duties as high as 64.9 percent for those outside the agreement all of which ended in Dec. 2015. The EU executive said in a paper sent to EU members that ending the measures would likely lead to a continuation of Chinese subsidies for the solar sector and a significant increase in dumped imports of solar cells and modules. It also said the measures would only have a limited effecton demand and that comparisons between the 50,000 people working in importing and installation and the 5,000 to 10,000 in manufacturing were not appropriate. Job gains in the former could be outweighed by losses in the latter, it said. A separate document said the minimum panel price would be cut to 0.46 euros/watt. EU ProSun, a group of manufacturers including Germany’s SolarWorld, had welcomed the Commission’s findings and said it was convinced an extension of anti-dumping measures would be settled within weeks. But SolarPower Europe, which represents those in the solar industry opposed to duties, said it was pleased with the majority view and hoped the Commission would review its proposal. The case is due to be settled by March 3. Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Ruth Pitchford

Politics

International Relations

(CNN)Japan announced Friday that it will impose unilateral sanctions on eight foreign firms and individuals as punishment for their alleged dealings with North Korea. The sanctions are among the latest international efforts to isolate the country and follow sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council earlier this month. North Korea drew a swift rebuke from the international community after successfully testing two intercontinental missiles in July, which experts say may eventually be able to deliver a nuclear warhead to the US mainland. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Friday, "it is extremely important to keep pressuring North Korea in coordination with US, South Korea and other countries." Adding, "we would like to strongly urge North Korea to take concrete action towards denuclearization." Chinese, Namibian firms targeted The new Japanese sanctions target six companies -- four from China and two from Namibia -- and one Chinese individual and another of an unknown nationality had their Japanese assets frozen. Tokyo has now sanctioned 72 organizations and 81 individuals for their dealings with North Korea. These so-called "secondary sanctions," punishing those who do business with North Korea, come on the heels of similar measures levied by the US Treasury Department against Russian and Chinese entities for their dealings with North Korea on Wednesday. The United States has hoped to marshal a global coalition to isolate North Korea as part of its so-called "peaceful pressure" campaign. The hope is to put enough diplomatic and financial pressure on North Korea to bring it to the negotiating table. Some illicit finance experts argue secondary sanctions are necessary in order to truly isolate North Korea and hinder its ability to bring in revenue. North Korea uses the money for a host of purposes, from funding the lavish lifestyles of the country's elites to its weapons programs. Accelerating missile program The North Korean missile program in particular has been moving ahead at a rapid pace. State media released propaganda photos Wednesday showing leader Kim Jong Un inspecting missiles in development that could be fired on shorter notice than some in its current arsenal. When it comes to the progress of Pyongyang's nuclear program, US military commanders are already operating under the assumption that North Korea has the ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead in order place it atop a missile -- an assessment that many independent nuclear scientists share. But South Korea's intelligence service said last month it does not believe North Korea has perfected a stable re-entry system, which allows a warhead to survive the heat-intensive process of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Sanctions evasion To pay for these programs, Pyongyang has skillfully evaded UN restrictions in order to earn cash, according to a recent report from the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea. The panel found Pyongyang raised at least $270 million from commodities transactions since October last year, despite a ban on much of the trade under Security Council existing sanctions resolutions. The report comes the same month the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a new round of sanctions on North Korea in response to the testing of two ballistic missiles in July that experts say may be able to reach the United States. "The United Nations Security Council just voted 15-0 to sanction North Korea. China and Russia voted with us. Very big financial impact!" US President Donald Trump tweeted after the vote. Though China voted in favor of the UN sanctions, the country has long said it's opposed to unilateral measures to punish North Korea like the Japanese announced Friday. Beijing views them as attempts from other countries trying to impose what it calls "long-arm jurisdiction." "We have fulfilled and shouldered our international obligations, and our effort has been clear for all to see. If any Chinese companies or individuals are suspected of violating UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea, we will investigate and deal with them in accordance with our laws and regulations," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Wednesday. Accounting for nearly 90% of Pyongyang's imports, China is by far North Korea's most important benefactor. US Presidents dating back to the Bush administration have tried to get China to use its economic leverage to rein in its unruly neighbor. But some analysts say China has shown more of a propensity to crack down on illicit trade with North Korea recently. "North Korea's economy is not so large that it can afford to forgo stiff economic sanctions on exports like coal, one of the mainstays of (the country's) economy," said Patrick Cronin, an Asia specialist at the Washington-based think tank Center for a New American Society. Others worry economic pressure may not be enough, as North Korea sees the ability to successfully strike the Untied States with a nuclear weapon as the only viable way to prevent any American led attempts at regime change. North Korea has long said unless the United States abandons its "hostile policy" toward Pyongyang, it will continue ahead with its nuclear program. "Unless a definite end is put to the US hostile policy and nuclear threat, the DPRK will never flinch even an inch from the road of bolstering up the nuclear forces already chosen by itself," a North Korean delegation said at a disarmament conference in Geneva, North Korean state media reported Friday. CNN's Richard Roth, James Griffiths and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report

History

Asia

Nonfiction When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. BLUFF CITY The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers By Preston Lauterbach Illustrated. 339 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $27.95. When Ernest Withers was a press photographer in Memphis in the mid-1950s, he put a slogan on his business cards: PICTURES TELL THE STORY. Indeed they did. He was no effete aesthete; he was a working reporter, one whose job was to get there, get in close, get the powerful shot and (if all went well) get paid. He was African-American, often publishing in The Chicago Defender and Jet magazine; drawn toward the biggest story around, he was soon covering the civil rights movement. And because he was good at his job, those pictures have vigor and punch. At the trial of Emmett Till’s murderers, he defied a judge’s no-cameras order and got off one quick, sharp frame as an accuser fingered one of the killers. He hung around a local blues club and photographed the rising star Elvis Presley as he soaked up the local musical culture he later reinterpreted for the rest of the world. He was with Martin Luther King Jr. aboard one of the first integrated bus rides in Montgomery, Ala., in 1956, and he was there when King lay in a funeral home in 1968. Withers wasn’t the visual poet laureate of the civil rights movement — that would probably be Gordon Parks — but he was absolutely one of its great documentarians, shooting every figure and faction that came through his town. He made more than a million pictures in his career. And he aged into a voluble and distinctive public character, a roguish charmer in a kufi, operating out of a packed storefront studio, tooling around Memphis in a plush old sedan. Which made it all the more astounding when, a few years after his death in 2007, the truth came out. Starting in the early 1960s, Withers had spent nearly two decades as a paid informant of the F.B.I., feeding its agents information about the activists he photographed. He not only informed; he took requests. At one anti-Vietnam War march, he was asked to photograph all of the 30-odd protesters, taking special care to catch all their faces, and he turned 80 8-by-10 prints over to his F.B.I. contact. On occasion, he sold his work to a local paper, then gave copies to the bureau. His daughter Rosalind, the youngest of his nine children and the one who handles his estate, was blindsided when the news came out via a series of FOIA requests and legal fights undertaken by Marc Perrusquia, a reporter from The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Perrusquia wrote about Withers and the revelation of his intelligence work in his own book, “A Spy in Canaan,” which was published last year. It’s a smart journalist’s book, crisply marching through Withers’s F.B.I. records and the paper’s battle to pry them out of the government’s grip. “Bluff City,” by Preston Lauterbach, aims instead for something less snappy and more lyrical. Its subtitle is “The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers,” which suggests that it’s a biography, but it isn’t quite that, or at least not a comprehensive one. Big stretches of Withers’s life get a fairly cursory look, and Lauterbach basically calls it a day after King’s assassination in 1968, dispatching the photographer’s subsequent four decades in an introductory chapter and an afterword. Nor is this a book about photography history, examining the photographs the way an art historian might. There are 18 pictures, most, though not all, by Withers, enough to hit the main points but no more. (Which is fine. Decisions about including photos in a book like this tend to be limited by the cost of rights, and anyway there are several nice volumes of Withers’s pictures out there. Or, you know, Google.) Instead what Lauterbach, a former Memphis resident and the author of two other books set in the South, “Beale Street Dynasty” and “The Chitlin’ Circuit,” is going for is a loose, rangy history of the civil rights movement in Memphis, using Withers and his camera as the (literal) lens. He’s done the work, tracking the complex, intertwined dances of the radicals and the centrists, the local ministers and visiting heavyweights like King. Weirdly, though, his very thoroughness and deep interest in this time and place have the almost certainly unintended effect of diminishing Withers rather than keeping him front and center. There are long stretches where, say, Stokely Carmichael appears, and we get 10 enthusiastic pages about his politics and S.N.C.C. and the dynamics between Carmichael and King, and then Withers pokes his head in to snap a few pictures and go meet his F.B.I. contact. Some of those scenes are nicely wrought, but the secrets in this life are often other people’s rather than Withers’s own. The narrative tightens up and gains momentum as it builds toward that deadly evening at the Lorraine Motel. Much of the book is structured around the final days of King’s life, as he tried to manage a sanitation strike in Memphis that turned violent, leaving him dejected. That was the protest at which Withers shot his best-known photo, of a line of strikers bearing signs that read I AM A MAN. The men are carrying the signs on sticks that Withers himself helped saw, and when the march turned violent, those pine two-by-twos became weapons. (Lauterbach expends some energy trying to figure out whether Withers had supplied them in hopes of creating a stir.) A week later, Withers was not on the scene when King was shot, although he arrived shortly after. Those famous pictures of King’s associates, pointing toward the direction of the rifle shot? Withers didn’t take them, but the young South African photographer who did, Joseph Louw, was too rattled to develop them himself, and nearly botched the processing. Withers stepped into the darkroom alongside him and made sure it got done right. The central question a reader is likely to ask of this book (and of Perrusquia’s as well) is: Why did a man whose life and work were knitted into the civil rights movement feed information to J. Edgar Hoover? The F.B.I. director’s explicit goals, after all, were to disrupt all the organizing, to drain the movement’s influence, to humiliate and destroy King. Lauterbach has a few theories, and all are probably true to varying degrees. For one thing, Withers needed the money. He raised his big family on a freelance photographer’s pay, and put most of his kids through college. (Some civil rights activists from the era say that, since they were operating in the open, Withers was not betraying them but simply conning the F.B.I. for some cash.) For another, he disliked the anti-American language on the fringier end of the left, especially when it turned communistic. He was preternaturally inclined toward a law-and-order point of view. In fact, he’d been a cop before he was a photographer, and a crooked one at that. In the early 1950s, he left the Memphis Police Department involuntarily, after he’d been caught selling illegal liquor under the table. Twenty-four years later, he was appointed to the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board — and then was stung again, this time by the F.B.I. itself, as he worked a scheme to get a prisoner out of jail in exchange for a cash payment to the governor. “Bluff City” may not get to Withers’s inner life, but it is not without pleasure. Lauterbach is justifiably sympathetic to his subject, noting that one has to be generous about judging the things a black man in the Jim Crow South did to get by. (Withers was beaten during at least one march he covered.) And Lauterbach likes the other central character in the book even better, that being Memphis itself. In his first chapter, he describes a day in 2005 when he dropped by Withers’s studio for a tour and got a lift home from the photographer in that old sedan. “He drove — in a manner many people familiar with Memphis will recognize — slowly, drifting right.” That kind of describes his book, too.

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The humble keyboard has risen in popularity in recent years; the seemingly infinite variety of models has turned the input accessory into something like watches for people with Newegg accounts. With companies trying to cater to every preference and price point, maybe it was inevitable that we’d end up with something like Roccat’s new Horde AIMO. It’s a $100 keyboard with an assortment of multimedia features and an uncommon “membranical” design that attempts to answer a series of seemingly contradictory questions. Is it possible to make a quiet typing experience without sacrificing the feel of obnoxious clackity-noise-making keyboards? Can we incorporate some much-needed features into a relatively inexpensive package? Can we make it look like it doesn’t belong in a college dorm and give it RGB backlighting? Maybe!Computer PeripheralsComputer PeripheralsRoccat Horde AIMO KeyboardComputer PeripheralsRoccat Horde AIMO KeyboardRoccat Horde AIMO KeyboardWhat is it?A keyboard that uses a membranical typing mechanism, a mix of membrane and mechanical keyboard features. Price$100LikeIt's got an integrated control dial, RGB backlighting, and a great sound when typing.No LikeIt feels a bit cheap, and isn't quite as responsive as a traditional mechanical keyboard. At its most basic level, what makes this keyboard special is its hybrid “membranical” design. If you’re not familiar with keyboard technology, here’s a quick rundown: Membrane keyboards (like the keyboard that shipped with your iMac) are cheap, made of a rubbery layer placed atop a circuit board. Pressing a key depresses the membrane, which closes the underlying circuit and transmits your keystroke. You can probably recognize a membrane keyboard by how “squishy” the keys feel, or how hard you have to press them.Mechanical keyboards offer a much more forgiving typing experience. They’re made with plastic and metal components—called a switch—that last longer, require less force (depending on the switch). These keyboards are preferred by people who want a more responsive experience when typing, or need to guarantee a keystroke is registered during fast-paced games where every second counts. Basically, they are for nerds and typing enthusiasts.Photo: Patrick Lucas Austin (Gizmodo)The idea of the Horde AIMO is to combine both of these, using a membrane layer to prevent popcorn detritus and dust from rendering it inoperable, and adding a more tactile mechanical element to simulate the premium mechanical keyboard experience. In theory, you should get that action you expect from a mechanical keyboard paired with a quieter typing experience. It’s not the only membranical keyboard around (Topre makes the gold standard), but compared to available options like the $100 Razer Ornata, which lacks some major features found on the Horde AIMO, it’s in line with the competition from a pricing perspective.As it happens, I’m a big fan of keyboards, and use a Logitech G710+ with Cherry Brown switches. They’re the middle-ground in the mechanical keyboard world: quiet enough to not annoy office workers, easy to use without much force (perfect for blog screeds), and quick enough to feel satisfying when I smash ‘em during devastating FTL runs.The multimedia functions (controlled with the integrated dial) are a time-saver when it comes to quick customization.Photo: Patrick Lucas Austin (Gizmodo)Compared to my G710+, the Horde AIMO does feel like a keyboard I wouldn’t mind using, especially when gaming. And if you haven’t been spoiled by the allure of a mechanical keyboard, it’s definitely better than that stock one you’ve got in front of you. Still, the keys on my G710+ bounce back quickly, and offer slight resistance compared to the Horde AIMO’s more nebulous keystrokes, which occasionally prompts my fingers to press just a tad harder on the keys after passing the actuation point.The membrane layer is no doubt to blame for the slightly less springy quality feel, but it’s a lot quieter than my mechanical keyboard And I love that staccato sound it makes when I’m really hammering away. The keys, lower in profile compared to mechanical keys, are slightly indented, and have a nice soft finish I predict will wear away within a year’s time. I’m a big fan of the column of the five customizable half-height macro keys on the leftmost end of the keyboard, probably because I’ve accidentally hit the normal-height macro keys on my G710+ so many times I’ve lost count.Half-height macro keys for faster response time? Sign me up.Photo: Patrick Lucas Austin (Gizmodo)Yet the Roccat Horde AIMO’s looks don’t do it any favors. It has a designed-by-committee aesthetic, like someone opened Photoshop and blended pictures of a keyboard at a public library with one from an e-sports tournament. There are sharp points on its front, soft slopes around some keys, indents on the sides, and a weird asymmetrical slot cut-out seemingly for a 3x5 photo of your loving family (the cut-out is too wide for any photo). The detachable plastic palm rest, emblazoned with the Roccat logo (some sort of Blade Runner-inspired typeface next to a cat) is flimsy. Like all plastic palm rests, and makes it look more like a gaming keyboard than is necessary.The dial is pretty great, but I wish you could depress it for just one more click. Also, this design leaves much to be desired.Photo: Patrick Lucas Austin (Gizmodo)It’s got an all-black, plastic construction, with white characters that allow the weak RGB lighting to dimly poke through in well-lit rooms. There’s no additional USB port either, meaning I can’t connect the dongle of my wireless mouse to it like I do with my current keyboard, nor can I charge it. On the plus side, the integrated 20-step dial (it rotates 360 degrees) is a real delight, and supports the same apps as Microsoft’s $100 Surface Dial. Still, it’s missing a much-needed click option. To the left of it is a set of predefined options for quick adjustments to speaker volume, microphone sensitivity, LED color, lighting pattern, app selection, and a user-defined option you can adjust in Roccat’s Swarm app.Roccat’s Swarm software needs a serious bug fixing session.Screenshot: Patrick Lucas Austin (Gizmodo)Speaking of which, the Swarm app, meant to manage Roccat’s suite of accessories and provide user customization options, is bad. On my Dell desktop, I had to reinstall the app twice to get it to work. It also needs to improve its support on high-resolution monitors, as the text and interface was downright tiny when viewed on a 4K display.Roccat’s Horde AIMO keyboard straddles both sides of the fence, providing a more than adequate typing experience along with some multimedia and gaming features perfect for someone who’s not ready to go all-in on a stark mechanical model or some gaudy and tricked out membrane keyboard. No, you’re not getting the best of anything here, but you’re getting something that just scrapes past the cost of admission, at least until you’re ready to upgrade.READMEKeyboard sounds lovely, feels responsive enough for most uses.Easy switching between Dial wheel settings. RGB illumination isn’t bright.Dial wheel integration is perfect for designers, but imperfect.Boring aesthetic doesn’t do it any favors.Software needs some serious bugfixes.No extra USB port

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After months of adding an editors note calling Republican nominee Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpPossible GOP challenger says Trump doesn't doesn't deserve reelection, but would vote for him over Democrat O'Rourke: Trump driving global, U.S. economy into recession Manchin: Trump has 'golden opportunity' on gun reforms MORE a "racist" to stories on the 2016 race, The Huffington Post is ending the practice, according to a report by Politico. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

US

You've probably realized by now that DJ Khaled is a pretty incredible human. He can get lost at sea and not lose his cool, and even motivate millions of people to use a single emoji. More than that, he's responsible for a lot of dope songs of our generation, and went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to celebrate. As if his presence wasn't enough, he brought out Future with him to really make an impact, as they both played crowd favorites from "All I Do Is Win," to "I Don't Play About My Paper" and "Jumpman."

Music

Rock

March 6 (Reuters) - Indonesian cigarette maker PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna Tbk said in a stock exchange filing on Monday: * Net profit for 2016 was 12.76 trillion rupiah ($955.95 million) versus 10.36 trillion rupiah a year ago Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: ($1 = 13,348.00 rupiah) (Reporting by Eveline Danubrata)

Finance

Investment

A 91-year-old widower in Santa Clara, California, was attacked and robbed while visiting his wife’s grave. The unidentified male victim was at the Mission City Memorial Park cemetery in Santa Clara on the morning of Sept. 14 when he was struck “on the head from behind with a large rock” by a male suspect, according to a statement from the Santa Clara Police Department. After hitting the elderly man with the rock, the suspect then robbed the victim and fled the cemetery on foot, before later getting on a bicycle. He was last seen riding a grey and black mountain bike. The victim was taken to a local hospital for treatment after the attack, and his current condition is not known. In the statement, police called the incident an “unprovoked and ruthless attack on a vulnerable member of our community.” • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. The attacker was described by police as “possibly a Hispanic or Latino male” between the ages of 35 and 50, with grey “slicked back” hair and a mustache. Along with their statement, police also released a composite sketch of the suspect. Captain Wahid Kazem with the Santa Clara Police Department told ABC 7 that the man visits his wife’s grave “almost on a daily basis, fairly religiously.” “He even brings a lawn chair. Sits by her side. And spends some time there with her,” Kazem continued. The Santa Clara Police Department added that the incident “appears to be an isolated one,” but encouraged the public to report further suspicious activity at the cemetery and other public places. Authorities also urged anyone with information about the attack to contact Detective Sergeant Nick Richards at (408) 615-4814 or anonymously at (408) 615-4847.

Crime

Police

* Loans to be rescheduled, delayed * Beaches, parks to close * Restaurants to stay open at reduced capacity (Adds banks’ measures, details, context) DUBAI/CAIRO, March 21 (Reuters) - Banks in the United Arab Emirates announced a raft of measures on Saturday they said would benefit the biggest contributors to the economy as the country announced its first deaths linked to the coronavirus pandemic. Aviation, hospitality, healthcare, retail, event management, consumer goods and education would be prioritised by the banks, which will reschedule or delay loan payments, reduce instalments and cut or reduce fees, state news agency WAM reported. Dubai’s largest bank Emirates NBD, Dubai Islamic , Emirates Islamic and Commercial Bank of Dubai, all state-linked, will introduce the measures from April 1 to June 30, WAM reported. Mashreq is also taking part and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) announced similar measures earlier on Saturday. The UAE also announced it was temporarily closing beaches and parks after they attracted large numbers of people over the weekend, while restaurants and cafes would have to reduce capacity to 20% of normal if they wished to stay open. Schools, cinemas, gyms, nightclubs and some bars have already been shuttered and many concerts and sporting events have been cancelled. The Gulf Arab state over the weekend reported two deaths linked to the coronavirus, its first fatalities. There have been 153 infections. Dubai government’s media office tweeted that people should stay home. The Central Bank has said it plans to support banks and businesses in the country with a 100 billion dirham ($27 billion) stimulus package. Dubai’s Emirates and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways have announced a series of flight suspensions as the coronavirus epidemic crushes travel demand. Saudi Arabia, which is on virtual lockdown, on Saturday launched a social media campaign urging people to stay at home as “our strongest weapon against coronavirus”. Qatar, which has reported 481 cases of infection, said on Saturday it is closing parks and public beaches until further notice. (Reporting by Yousef Saba and Samar Hassan Editing by David Holmes)

Finance

Stock Market

CNBC "Halftime Report " trader Jon Najarian has purchased shares of the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF as a safe-haven trade on geopolitical concerns. Here is what Najarian sees and the reasons he acquired it for his model portfolio.

Technology

Internet

(Reuters) - Telecoms operators in the European Union may be required to retain customer communications data as long as it is strictly necessary to fight serious crime and does not unduly interfere with privacy, an adviser to the top EU court said on Tuesday. The types of data that can be retained include the date, time and duration of calls, and the source and destination of calls, but not their content, an advocate general to the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) said. While non-binding, the opinions tend to be followed by the court in a majority of cases. Tuesday’s opinion referred to two cases in which data retention laws in Sweden and Britain were challenged on the grounds that they were no longer valid after the ECJ struck down an EU-wide data retention law in 2014 because it went too far and violated people’s privacy. However, national governments may oblige telecoms operators to retain communications data as long as there are strict safeguards to protect privacy, the advocate general said. A debate on data privacy has raged since former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about mass surveillance by British and U.S. spies in 2013. Islamist militant attacks in France and Belgium have reinvigorated calls for security agencies to be accorded greater powers. In a statement summarizing the adviser’s opinion, the ECJ said national data retention laws must include “accessibility, foreseeability and adequate protection against arbitrary interference”. The advocate general said that interference with fundamental rights could only be justified to fight serious crime, “whereas combating ordinary offences and the smooth conduct of proceedings other than criminal proceedings are not”. Data retention must also be “strictly necessary” for fighting serious crime, meaning there can be no effective alternative that is less intrusive. A number of UK politicians filed a legal challenge against a British surveillance law passed in 2014, part of which was suspended by a British court. British lawmakers subsequently passed an Investigatory Powers bill. Similarly, Swedish telecoms operator Tele2 had told its regulator that it would stop retaining data after the ECJ struck down the EU Data Retention Directive. The two cases were joined together by the Luxembourg-based court. Reporting by Julia Fioretti; editing by Philip Blenkinsop/Mark Heinrich

Technology

Privacy

Putin gives Trump a soccer ball at a conference in Helsinki, Finland this week.Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko (AP)While at a conference alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin at a high-profile conference in Helsinki this month, Donald Trump took some time out of relentlessly praising his counterpart—a former KGB foreign intelligence officer and currently suspected U.S. election-meddler—to accept a gift of one Adidas AG soccer ball. Turns out that model of soccer ball has a chip in it.Per a report in Bloomberg, said soccer ball carries markings identifying it as part of a line with a built-in “chip with a tiny antenna,” albeit one ostensibly designed by Adidas, not a basement lab at GRU headquarters. The contained NFC chip is “passive and only sends out information,” according to the Adidas website, and is marketed as allowing fans who bring their mobile devices close to the ball access to premium content like exclusive videos, competitions, and challenges.Bloomberg writes:But rather than a spy device, the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball. Photographs from the news conference in Helsinki, where Putin handed the ball to Trump, show it bore a logo for a near-field communication tag. During manufacturing, the NFC chip is placed inside the ball under that logo, which resembles the icon for a WiFi signal, according to the Adidas website.The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball. The feature is included in the 2018 FIFA World Cup match ball that’s sold on the Adidas website for $165 (reduced to $83 in the past week).In other words, this isn’t necessarily an indication of anything nefarious. Putin may well have simply given the president an off-the-shelf Adidas ball that does nothing more than transmit a code unlocking dumb premium content that, in all likelihood, neither the president or anyone else has an interest in unlocking. Per CNN, cybersecurity expert Scott Schober noted that any mobile device would likely need to be “within a couple of centimeters” of the ball to even register the code, while Adidas claims the encoded tag is impossible to interfere with.However, that is assuming that the ball was not surreptitiously fiddled with, such as by replacing the NFC transmitter with a near visually identical device of Russian origin, somehow modifying it, or just creating a fake ball. As Bloomberg helpfully noted, it “it couldn’t be determined from the photos” whether the ball was modified, because duh. That would be brash by intelligence standards. As Schober told CNN, any device brought into close proximity to the president would be examined by the Secret Service or counterintelligence officials to see if it emitted “any radio frequency”—and even given Trump’s suspiciously friendly relationship with Putin, it seems like a massive stretch the latter leader would be so brazen as to hand the president a bugged device personally. So cue the cries of “fake news!” and all that.That said, the Cold War is rife with stories of Soviet intelligence ingenuity, including a replica Great Seal of the United States containing a sophisticated, pencil-sized resonating device they gave U.S. Ambassador George Kennan in 1952. Dubbed “The Thing,” its operation—powered by KGB technicians in a nearby building who targeted it with microwaves—was only discovered when a British radio operator heard Kennan’s conversations being broadcast on an open channel.Bloomberg concluded that one kind of attack, in which the NFC chip could be modified or replaced to redirect a user to a malicious URL, is probably not happening:However, such a multi-stepped attack via a soccer ball seems unlikely, said Linus Neumann, a spokesman for the Hamburg-based Chaos Computer Club, a hacker collective that for decades has exposed weaknesses in German banking, government and other computer systems.“Trump would have to ignore multiple security warnings and intentionally install a malware on his device,” Neumann said, adding that such a hack working would depend on the president, “falling for a silly attack like this.”In one sense, that’s ominous, given the president does not know how cybersecurity works and is basically the number one guy who would fall for something “silly.” But in another sense, it’s reassuring, given the near certainty Trump does not know how to install an app on his phone.Melania Trump, however...First lady Melania Trump holding the ball after it was tossed to her by her husband.Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais (AP)Hmm.[Bloomberg]

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"Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent built tech empires that dominate China’s digital economy. Is the world big enough for both of them?"— FORTUNE's Adam Lashinsky writes. The state of play: "[A]s they’ve grown, each inevitably has begun to encroach on the other’s turf. Tencent ... is investing in retail and financial services, sectors that are Alibaba’s strength. Alibaba in turn sees an opening in Tencent’s domain, particularly by offering mobile-messaging tools." "[T]he two heavyweights of the Chinese Internet industry, Alibaba and Tencent ... [each] have market capitalizations that hover around half a trillion U.S. dollars." "Both command sectors of the rapidly growing Chinese digital landscape: Tencent owns the leading gaming and messaging platform, while Alibaba rules e-commerce. Both are aggressive investors inside and outside China." "[B]oth touch an astounding percentage of the world’s most populous country: Alibaba’s various online marketplaces count 552 million active customers; Tencent’s WeChat messaging service recently surpassed 1 billion accounts." "Their top leaders share a surname, though Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma aren’t related." Worthy of your time.

Technology

E-commerce

Liar, liar, Speedos on fire ... Ryan Lochte says he just doesn't believe Michael Phelps is done with competitive swimming -- despite the fact he filed official retirement paperwork earlier this week. Phelps' Olympic teammate was leaving Catch in West Hollywood on Monday when we broke the news to Lochte that MP formally removed his name from the U.S. drug-testing program ... which essentially means he can't compete at the Olympic level anymore. HOWEVER, Phelps did the same thing back in 2012 ... only to put his name back on in 2013. So ... yeah. Clearly, Lochte ain't buyin' the retirement thing -- which should probably scare the hell out of Team Australia. Sorry, mates ...

Sports

Athletics

Amid the turmoil at Uber that resulted in Travis Kalanick's stepping down as chief executive, the company announced a series of changes in late June aimed at improving its drivers' work experience, including a new tipping option in its passenger app. But even as Uber makes a concerted effort to win over drivers, it has not acknowledged all the ways it may have squeezed them in New York State. In May, Uber admitted to taking excessive commissions out of the fares of its New York drivers, who are independent contractors, and promised to make amends. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that the company may have shortchanged the drivers by far greater sums than it acknowledged. The following are signs that the ride-hailing service improperly deducted what could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars from drivers' earnings to pay taxes that, under New York State law, are technically due from passengers: Uber has insisted there was nothing improper in its handling of the taxes. Here is a look at the law and the evidence on the question — including the way a major competitor, Lyft, deals with the same issue. Under New York State law and regulations, passengers must pay: • A 2.5 percent surcharge for a state workers' compensation fund. The receipts of Uber drivers suggest that until Uber changed its contract in May, this money typically came out of drivers' earnings. Take, for example, a recent Uber trip in Brooklyn. The subtraction of taxes from the fare a driver receives does not in itself demonstrate that drivers were paying the tax. Uber officials argue that the $19.16 metered fare already included the tax — the same way a $1 slice of pizza includes tax — and that it was therefore proper for Uber to collect the tax by subtracting it from the fare that drivers receive and remitting it to the government. In 2015, Uber began reflecting this approach on its passenger receipts as well, so that a passenger would see that the fare paid included sales tax and the workers' compensation surcharge. (In a quirk of Uber's system, the sales tax shown has sometimes been calculated on a passenger fare generated before the ride that doesn't necessarily match the metered fare — as appears to have happened in this case.) In practice, the way a company displays a tax on its receipts doesn't demonstrate one way or another whether a driver or a passenger actually pays the tax. To determine who's really paying in a case like this, one must determine whether the price the company charges passengers truly includes the tax. If it doesn't, then the passenger isn't paying the tax — the driver is, regardless of what the passenger receipt indicates. There is growing evidence that Uber's fares in New York were not tax-inclusive. The receipt from this trip from Reno to Carson City shows a $1.36 "transportation recovery charge" — that is, the tax — added on top of the $42.67 fare. Both were paid by the passenger. This stands in stark contrast to the way Uber has operated in New York, where the company would typically have deducted the tax from the $42.67 fare the driver received, and the passenger would not have had to pay an additional amount for taxes. Receipts from Rhode Island, another state with a sales tax, showed that Uber added the tax on top of the fare the driver received there. Uber declined to comment for this article. The sales tax issue is being litigated as part of a lawsuit against Uber filed by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a driver's advocacy group. New York levies the tax only on trips that begin and end in the state; a trip that begins in New York and ends in Connecticut, for example, would not be subject to the tax. Yet Uber calculated the overall fare using the same base fare and the same time and distance rate on those trips, suggesting that the tax was not included. Compare two trips using Uber's black car service from August 2016, one beginning and ending in New York, and the other from New York to Connecticut. The two trips included the same fare components: • A base fare of $7. • $3.75 per mile. • 65 cents per minute. But Uber deducted no sales tax from the latter trip. Aug. 14, 2016 • Total = $179.10 Uber deducted $13.91 in sales tax and $3.93 for the workers' compensation surcharge from the total fare. Aug. 3, 2016 • Total = $180.48 Uber deducted no sales tax. (It deducted $4.30 for the workers' compensation surcharge because that is still assessed on interstate trips.) When asked about this, Uber has said that tax was in fact included in both fares, and drivers simply received a windfall payment on trips that ended in another state because no tax was removed from the fare. Uber's nationwide contract is perhaps the strongest indication that the company improperly made drivers rather than passengers bear the burden of the sales tax mandated by New York State. Before Uber updated it in late May, the contract appeared to give Uber permission to remove only its commission (known as the service fee) from the fare its drivers receive, stating that "Uber agrees to remit, or cause to be remitted, to customer on at least a weekly basis: (a) the fare less the applicable service fee." ("Customer" is the term Uber typically uses in its contract to refer to drivers; passengers are referred to as "users.") Until 2014, the contract defined the fare as "the amount (including applicable taxes and fees) that the transportation company is entitled to charge the user for the ride, based on the recommended fares for the city." This version appears consistent with Uber's tax-inclusive explanation — it is essentially the $1 pizza slice approach. But in November 2014, Uber made two changes to its contract that, together, made its meaning more ambiguous. First, it added language saying that some jurisdictions might "require taxes to be imputed in the fare" — further supporting the tax-inclusive explanation. Second, it revised its definition of a fare to omit the parenthetical phrase "including applicable taxes and fees," suggesting that the company was rethinking whether the fare should always include taxes in jurisdictions that levy them. The two changes seemed to be at odds. But when Uber revised its contract in December 2015, it appeared to resolve the ambiguity, replacing the "imputed" language with a reference to taxes "calculated on the fare." At this point, the contract defined the fare as including only a base fare and a time and distance component, with no mention of taxes. Collectively, the changes made in November 2014 and December 2015 appeared to indicate that the fare did not include taxes, and that the only amount Uber could subtract from this fare was its commission. The contract appeared to preclude the subtraction of taxes. But in New York, Uber deducted taxes and the workers' compensation surcharge from the fares that drivers received. In late May of this year, Uber changed its contract again, indicating that the driver fare would be calculated separately from what the passenger pays and that taxes only come out of the latter. The changes did not significantly increase the amount that drivers earn from each ride in most cases, because Uber also lowered drivers' metered rates, but the changes appeared to remove the basis for arguing that drivers were paying the taxes. According to data from New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission, Uber dispatched more than 125 million rides in the city from the beginning of 2015 to mid-March 2017. Assuming an average fare on those trips of at least $15, Uber would have deducted over $200 million for taxes and the workers' compensation fund surcharge from drivers during that time. The assumption of an average fare in excess of $15 appears reasonable: Uber calculated that the average fare for its lowest-cost service, Uber X, was over $27 in September 2014; it has dropped prices by about 15 percent since then. Uber also has higher-cost services, like Uber Black and Uber SUV, which have substantially higher fares on average. (The practice that Uber vowed to remedy, involving commissions, was a lesser issue. On a $20 fare that Uber said included roughly $2 in taxes, the company was taking its commission on the full $20; in late May, it conceded that it should have taken its commission on roughly $18, the amount net of taxes. What Uber does not concede is that it improperly took $2 out of the driver's pocket to cover taxes.) Uber's largest competitor, Lyft, deducts 11.4 percent from the fares received by drivers in New York, which appears to largely cover the amounts owed for the sales tax and workers' compensation fund. But Lyft has written its contract to essentially allow this. Lyft's current contract refers drivers to a commission schedule in which the company takes a 20 to 25 percent commission but adds an 11.4 percent "administrative charge" in New York. In a 2014 email to New York drivers announcing the additional charge, which appears to have been 10 percent initially, Lyft wrote: "NYC's regulations have different requirements than anywhere else, since they collect both an 8 percent local sales tax as well as a 2 percent fee for the Black Car Fund. To cover these costs, we will be adding 10 percent to Lyft's commission." The increase in the commission to largely offset taxes suggests that drivers are effectively paying most of the sales tax, even if they don't do so directly. But Lyft says the law allows this as long as it imposes the charge transparently. "Our driver agreement, which we've consistently abided by since entering the New York market in 2014, clearly lays out what commissions and fees apply to driving on the Lyft platform," said Adrian Durbin, a Lyft spokesman. "We do not collect sales tax from drivers." Unlike Uber, Lyft deducts the additional 11.4 percent from what drivers receive even when there is no sales tax — as when a ride begins in New York and ends in Connecticut. This would appear to be a more egregious deduction, since it amounts to a transfer from the driver to Lyft's bottom line, with no tax rationale to support it. But Lyft denies that the 11.4 percent charge funds tax payments specifically, as opposed to offsetting a number of costs. Finally, like Uber, Lyft has accounted for sales tax differently in other states than it does in New York. In some other states that levy a tax, Lyft has assessed the tax on top of the fare the driver receives, making clear that the passenger pays it, and raising questions about the accounting in New York. Allan Fromberg, an official with the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, wrote in an email that the agency had been examining the way Uber deducts the state-mandated sales tax and workers' compensation surcharge from fares, as well as the way the company took its commission. Mr. Fromberg said the inquiry had been going on for weeks before Uber's acknowledgment in late May that it had erred in how it took its commission. A representative of the New York State Department of Labor, when asked in May whether the department had looked into improper sales tax deductions or planned to do so, responded that the department "has not received any complaints on this issue." Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez, who represents East Harlem, has written to the state attorney general and the state Department of Taxation and Finance calling for an investigation into Lyft's practice of deducting 11.4 percent from driver earnings on rides that begin in New York and end out of state. When asked about the possibility that Uber and Lyft had improperly deducted sales tax on in-state rides, he said that, if true, "that's a much higher level of magnitude." He said that state and city regulators should look into the handling of taxes and that "if it hasn't been done correctly, they" — Uber and Lyft — "should fix it and make amends."

Technology

Transportation

Corrections that appeared in print on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. An article on Wednesday about Rudolph W. Giuliani’s call records, because of an error in the Democrats’ impeachment report, gave an incorrect date for a conversation between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mr. Giuliani. The call was on March 29, not March 28. A picture caption with an article on Wednesday about a Senate committee’s vote to advance the nomination of an oncologist to lead the Food and Drug Administration misspelled the given name of the nominee. He is Stephen Hahn, not Steven. A graphic with an article on Friday about Randal K. Quarles, the Federal Reserve’s vice chairman for supervision and regulation, misstated the source of data about Mr. Quarles’s meetings. It was from the Federal Reserve, not a Freedom of Information Act disclosure. An article on Tuesday about the screenwriter Lena Waithe described incorrectly the work Melina Matsoukas did on Beyoncé’s “Lemonade.” She directed “Formation,” which was a part of “Lemonade,” but did not direct the whole film. The No Regrets article last Thursday misspelled the surname of a guest at an event to celebrate the book “Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual.” He is Eric Boman, not Bowman. Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions. To contact the newsroom regarding correction requests, complaints or other comments about our coverage, please email [email protected] or call 1-844-NYT-NEWS (1-844-698-6397). Comments on editorials may be emailed to [email protected] or faxed to (212) 556-3622. For newspaper delivery questions: 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) or email [email protected].

Crime

Corruption

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian planemaker Embraer said on Friday that the U.S. Department of Commerce has shown that the Canadian government “heavily and illegally subsidized” Bombardier and its C Series aircraft, allowing the company to survive and distorting the aviation industry. The statement came just after Bombardier won an unexpected trade victory against U.S. planemaker Boeing Co when a U.S. agency rejected imposing hefty duties on sales of Bombardier’s new CSeries jet to American carriers. (This version of the story was officially corrected to remove Embraer support of Brazil’s request for WTO action after statement by Embraer) Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Leslie Adler

Technology

Computers

Respect. Self-worth. Hope. Proportionality. These were one-word visions for a reimagined criminal justice system from group of people who have considerable power to make change a reality: prosecutors. This summer 24 prosecutors from around the country and across the political divide came together in New York to discuss the criminal justice system and prosecutors’ role in it. Their aim was not to gain more resources to maximize convictions or felony charges, but rather to find ways to recognize the needs and the dignity of the communities they serve — including victims, witnesses and defendants — and to build a criminal justice system that better enhances safety and ensures fairness. This kind of convening — organized by the Vera Institute of Justice’s Reimagining Prison initiative and The Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (IIP) — was remarkable because prosecutors are some of the most powerful players in the criminal justice system. They wield wide discretion, including over what charges to bring and whether to enter a plea negotiation.   Traditionally, prosecutors are seen as measuring success in terms of convictions, plea bargains or the amount of punishment exacted. But prosecutors are rethinking their role in the criminal justice system. In a time where the future of criminal justice reform at the federal level is uncertain, justice delivery at the local level is even more important, and this shift represents a powerful sea change in thinking.  The prosecutors attending represented jurisdictions ranging from rural West Virginia, to suburban Alabama, to the nation’s largest coastal cities. Some have been in office for as long as 35 years, while others were elected last fall as part of a wave of reform-minded prosecutors. Despite the geographic and political diversity, some common themes emerged throughout the meeting. For one, everyone agreed that rehabilitation — which is not currently delivered through incarceration — is a key determinant of public safety. The prosecutors also unanimously agreed on the need for front-end reform: preventing people from being behind bars by implementing alternatives to incarceration, and making sure that other systems, such as education, provide more opportunity to keep people from the criminal justice system entirely. And what about after prosecution? The prosecutors were in widespread agreement that there’s currently a disconnect between them and other criminal justice system players. “If we want to see lower rates of re-offense, we need to care about what is happening to people while they are in prison,” one prosecutor told us, who argued for communicating more with departments of corrections. Another said that after realizing that the vast majority of his assistant district attorneys — the people in his office responsible for actually trying cases — had never been inside a prison, he had them go see one in person. And although more than 95 percent of cases result in a plea bargain and don’t go to trial, some prosecutors articulated that sentencing was not under their control, and that those decisions are subject to state laws and judges. However, others argued that prosecutors yield great power through sentencing recommendation and plea bargains; one prosecutor noted that “from the public’s view, we — and we alone — are the sole actor who sends people to jail and prison.”    In considering how prosecutors contribute to incarceration, the group participated in a discussion about what a reimagined prison system could look like. Prosecutors considered hypothetical cases and gave a wide variety of sanctions that they would recommend for each case, ranging from one to 15 years of prison time, to diversion and probation.  The diversity of sanctions presented by the group on these cases may make it seem like the criminal justice system is arbitrary, hyper-localized and far from what a reimagined system could look like. After all, there are more than 3,000 local counties, each with their own justice system. However, on that day, we also heard consensus about the need for reform from a broad range of prosecutors. And in the variety of responses, we also saw a range of options for moving past heavy-handed sentences that have helped create mass incarceration. One of the clearest things we heard from prosecutors was that many want to think about things differently, but they think they are alone. They’re not. Our organizations — The Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (IIP) and the Vera Institute of Justice — are partnering with prosecutors from across the country to consider how they can rethink their roles and responsibilities to help create a more effective and equitable criminal justice system. At the meeting, 24 prosecutors asked hard questions of themselves and each other, and considered how to use their power for public safety rather than solely for punishment. Critical to this shift is recognizing the humanity of each person in front of them and embracing a restorative approach to public safety and the administration of justice. Fred Patrick is the director of Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice. Patrick previously served as New York City Deputy Commissioner for Planning and Programs at the NYC Department of Correction, Commissioner of the NYC Juvenile Justice Department and NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs. He also served as a faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Meg Reiss is the executive director for the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Reiss has more than 20 years of legal and criminal justice policy experience, including as an assistant district attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, supervising compliance at the Los Angeles Police Department, and has served as the chief of staff of the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office. The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill. View the discussion thread. Contributor's Signup The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Law

Criminal Justice

Looks like Simone Biles can now have Zac Efron all to herself.Team USA star Aly Raisman is no longer single. The gymnast revealed that she's beens secretly dating football player Colton Underwood last night at the Sports Illustrated Sportsperson Of The Year Awards, where the athletes made their debut as a couple. According to 22-year-old Raisman, she and Underwood have been keeping their romance under wraps for a few months now. The pair made headlines when the 24-year-old free agent asked Raisman for a date via social media back in August. That boldness paid off, and they've been dating ever since.“We happened to both be in Denver at the same time,” the Olympian told People of their first meeting. “I was there for less than 12 hours, he was flying in for just a few days. it just ended up working perfectly.”She added that Underwood drove 90 minutes back and forth for their second and third dates. She's also met his family, and will be spending time with them over the holidays. Sounds like a good time for a Mom and Pop Raisman moment.

People

Twitter

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico is facing risks to its growth from trade protectionism, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday, as it cut its growth forecast for the coming years for Latin America’s No. 2 economy. The IMF revised its forecast for Mexican gross domestic product growth for 2016 to 2.1 percent from a 2.5 percent rate seen in July, according to its annual Article IV report on the country. It cut its 2017 growth forecast to 2.2 percent from 2.6 percent. The IMF also said it was revising down its medium-term forecasts for the following years by about half a percentage point due to lower oil production and a weaker U.S. outlook. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to tear up the NAFTA trade deal and impose tariffs on Mexican-made goods. The IMF suggested a weaker peso would “be indispensable to restore equilibrium in response to a permanent shock arising from increased protectionism and rising barriers to trade.” Mexico’s central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate four times this year as the peso slumped on concerns currency weakness could drive up inflation. But the IMF said there was no sign of widespread consumer price pressures from the weaker peso and recommended the central bank slow the pace of rate hikes. “A pause in monetary policy tightening appears warranted in the near term, given the moderation in economic activity, absence of second-round effects from the depreciation, and limited wage pressures,” the report said, noting that further moves by the central bank should be “data driven.” Bank stress tests showed Mexican banks were resilient to severe shocks given high levels of capital, the IMF said in a special report on the banking system. It recommended improvements in banking supervising agencies and noted authorities had no plan for a systemic banking crisis. Reporting by Michael O'Boyle; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli

Finance

Economics

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada on Tuesday approved Kinder Morgan Inc’s hotly contested plan to twin a pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific coast, setting up a battle with environmentalists who helped elect Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The government, under pressure from both green groups and the energy industry, said allowing Kinder Morgan to build a second pipeline next to its existing Trans Mountain line will help ensure oil exports reach Asia and reduce reliance on the U.S. market. “Our duty is to permit infrastructure so Canada’s resources get to market in a more environmentally responsible way, creating jobs and a thriving economy,” Trudeau told a news conference, adding he was “under no illusions” that the Kinder Morgan decision would be bitterly disputed. The government blocked Enbridge Inc’s Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific Coast, as expected. Trudeau had long opposed the project, which would run through the Great Bear Rainforest. Enbridge, however, will be allowed to replace the Canadian segments of its ageing Line 3 from Alberta to Wisconsin. The proposed upgrade had been less controversial than Northern Gateway project. Enbridge said it expected the pipeline to enter service in 2019, pending U.S. regulatory approval. Canada’s energy sector, hit hard by a two-year slump in oil prices, wants more pipelines to help ease bottlenecks in moving crude out of Alberta. Canada, home to the world’s third-largest crude reserves, wants to diversify away from its reliance on the United States and into Asian markets. Kinder Morgan’s C$6.8 billion ($5.06 billion) project would nearly triple capacity on the artery to 890,000 barrels a day. “”We are getting a chance to break our landlock. We’re getting a chance to sell to China and other new markets at better prices,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said in a statement. Environmental groups, who say the risk of a spill is too great, were quick to promise resistance to the Trans Mountain project. “You will see the movement continue to escalate in the streets as the number of protests and actions continue to grow, in the courts, and at the ballot box here in (British Columbia) and beyond,” said Sven Biggs of climate group Stand.Earth. Trudeau, keen to show environmentalists he is not selling out to the energy industry, also said the government would ban tanker traffic along the northern coast of British Columbia. Earlier this month he said Ottawa would toughen its response to oil spills at sea, which some saw as a signal Trans Mountain would be approved. The Liberals have taken other measures recently to shore up their green credentials, including speeding up plans to virtually eliminate coal-fired electricity, promising to bring in a minimum price on carbon emissions by 2018 and vowing to revamp the national energy regulator. Canada’s former Conservative government had approved Northern Gateway in 2014 but a federal court overturned the approval last June. Editing by Chris Reese and Meredith Mazzilli

Politics

Government

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is heading back to the big screen to prove that it’s not just a man’s world in the upcoming movie On the Basis of Sex. Focus Features released the historical drama’s first trailer, starring Felicity Jones as Ginsburg, the bright-eyed young lawyer who makes a splash as the one woman among many men in a sea of lawmakers. This year’s hit documentary RBG has already earned itself some Oscar buzz, and now a younger version of the now 85-year-old Supreme Court justice seems poised to enter the race as well. The movie narrows in on Ginsburg during one of her peak moments in Washington. Jones, 34, plays out the story of RBG teaming up with her husband, Martin D. Ginsberg (Armie Hammer) to combat the issue of gender equality. She fights to bring a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals which ultimately changed the scope of gender discrimination. “It means nothing if the law doesn’t change….It could topple the whole damn system of discrimination,” Jones as Ginsburg argues in the trailer. Alongside Jones and Hammer, the movie costars Justin Theroux, Jack Reynor, Sam Waterston and Kathy Bates as civil liberties lawyer Dorothy Kenyon. On the Basis of Sex marks director Mimi Leder’s first film in almost a decade. Her previous notable movies included The Peacemaker in 1997 and Pay It Forward in 2000. Leder served as an executive producer of HBO’s series The Leftovers. The movie will be released this Christmas.

Law

Legal

Investors seem to be showing interest in Tesla's upcoming debt offering, reported Bloomberg. The electric carmaker's record level of cash burn so far does not seem to be scaring off bond buyers. After a meeting with them on Monday, CEO Elon Musk had orders for just over a third of the $1.5 billion the company plans to offer, the news service said, citing investors who had been briefed on the matter. The offering is aimed at raising money to fund Tesla expansion into the mass auto market with its Model 3 sedan. The recently announced move could bode well for Tesla, which may pay yields of no more than 5 percent on the bonds. At that rate, and with interest rates still low, many debt buyers may be considering Tesla to be a more attractive investment, Bloomberg said. Investors also seem to be overlooking the nearly $1.2 billion in cash Tesla burned in the second quarter. Tesla has repeatedly returned to the markets since its initial public offering in 2010, leading to concern that further equity offerings would dilute the value of its shares. Tesla was not immediately available for comment to CNBC. Read the full story at Bloomberg.

Technology

Transportation

In “The Lost City of Z,” a lush, melancholic story of discovery and mystery, a mesmerizing Charlie Hunnam plays a British adventurer in the Amazon who is consumed by “all the glories of exploration,” as Joseph Conrad once wrote of a different journey. Enveloped by the forest, the explorer and his crew face snakes, piranhas, insects and that most terrifying of threats: other people, who at times bombard the strangers with arrows. Undaunted, he perseveres, venturing more deeply into a world that first becomes a passion and then something of a private hallucination. It’s 1906, and while wonders like moving pictures are rapidly shrinking the world, the dream of unknown lands endures. That dream isn’t only about the Amazon in “The Lost City of Z” but also about the movies and their ability to transport us to astonishing new worlds. For us, the Age of Discovery is long gone and, for the most part, so are old-fashioned historical epics, other than the occasional Chinese extravaganza or one of those international waxworks with clashing accents. Hollywood used to churn these out regularly, but they’ve faded, casualties of shifting industry logic, audience taste, cultural norms and other pressures. The romance of adventure has largely shifted from history to fantasy fiction, an easier, less contested playground for conquering white heroes. In “The Lost City of Z,” the writer-director James Gray has set out to make a film in the colonial era that suggests the likes of David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia,” but through a sensitive, contemporary lens. It’s one that starts from the premise that while white men have long been the keepers of the historical record, they didn’t make the past single-handedly. The story that Mr. Gray has chosen seems an unlikely candidate for such revisionism because it turns on Lieut. Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, who came to believe in the existence of a lost Amazonian civilization. He called it the lost city of Z; others called it El Dorado, a European illusion that proved catastrophic for the New World. The movie opens shortly before Fawcett is approached by the Royal Geographical Society to map uncharted territory in Bolivia. A career soldier and son of a disgraced aristocrat, Fawcett is anxious to change his fortunes and increase his social standing. Leaving behind, rather too easily, his loving wife, Nina (Sienna Miller, wonderful), and their young son (later played by Tom Holland), he sets off and is soon struggling through the Amazon with a small crew that includes an aide-de-camp, Henry Costin (an excellent Robert Pattinson, shaggy and almost unrecognizable). Deep in a jungle, where each wonder is matched by terror, Fawcett is ravaged — and then transformed — by his discoveries of both a new world and another self. Mr. Gray opens this world gloriously. As a director, he has an old-fashioned belief in cinematic beauty, in the charm and necessity of the perfectly lighted and framed face, the hauntingly darkened room, the grittily coarsened street. He’s a sensualist, and in “The Lost City of Z” he turns the Amazon into a ravishment for the senses. (The cinematographer, Darius Khondji, who goes dark brilliantly, shot Mr. Gray’s last film, “The Immigrant.”) As Fawcett presses on, walking and sailing through dense shadow, streaming light and canopies of variegated green, the natural world comes fantastically alive with strange animal cries, stirring trees, roiling fog and frighteningly violent eddies. In time, native peoples emerge from those trees, by turns watchful, threatening and welcoming. Much as he does throughout his Amazonian travels, Fawcett is enlivened by his encounters with the Indians. He’s a natural, somewhat surprisingly peaceful ambassador given his background and historical moment (even if his restraint also nicely suits Mr. Hunnam’s slow-burning charisma). When his expedition comes under siege at one point, he orders his men not to fire and instead waves a kerchief while calling out “Amigo!” It’s a stratagem, but Fawcett’s curiosity is boundless and he sees accomplishment and complexity in this world, which sharply goes against bigoted orthodoxies back home. Mr. Gray, working from David Grann’s 2009 book, “The Lost City of Z,” glosses over Fawcett’s more noxious beliefs. Mr. Grann, for one, writes that Fawcett “escaped virtually every kind of pathology in the jungle, but he could not rid himself of the pernicious disease of race.” It’s no surprise that the real Fawcett was as fascinatingly contradictory as you might expect of a Victorian-born British explorer. Mr. Gray doesn’t soften all of these uncomfortable edges — there is arrogance and tinges of cruelty in this portrait — but he’s far more interested in what seems to have distinguished Fawcett, namely his passionate belief that Amazonian Indians were not the primitives the West insisted they were. That passion sends Fawcett back to the Amazon several more times over the years, eventually becoming a kind of steadily devouring fever. He’s hailed as a hero after he returns from his first trip, but by the time he’s home he has a new child, whose birth he missed. This sets the template for his life, as Fawcett increasingly gives himself over to the Amazon and neglects his family, a familiar divide that Mr. Gray turns into the story’s axis point. In most movies of this type, the great man kisses the little woman goodbye and sets off. Here, partly because Fawcett repeatedly returns home, Nina emerges as a substantial narrative force and not only a reminder of what he’s willing to sacrifice. Fawcett finds ecstasy in and out of the Amazon, as does Mr. Gray, who fills the screen with intimate reveries and overwhelming spectacle, including a harrowing interlude during World War I. Until now, Mr. Gray has tended to work on a somewhat modest scale, often with art films that play with genre. Here, he effortlessly expands his reach as he moves across time and continents and in the process turns the past into a singular life. There’s much to love in this film, but what lingers are those lapidary details that often go missing in stories about great men, as if they had built the world alone and no child had ever raced down a road waving goodbye as a father disappeared into history.

Literature

Fiction

Church is a time for quiet contemplation, prayer, and the greatest dance hits from the '90s.  One little girl managed to incorporate all three while dancing to the Macarena during the sinner's prayer at her church.  The song is actually a perfect fit: the Macarena is about a woman who cheats on her boyfriend with two friends while he's being drafted into the army. Hey, sinner's prayer! Hasan Minhaj's dad once hilariously destroyed him over a high school cheating scandal 'The Farewell' offers a different kind of fish-out-of-water story Seth Meyers brutally outlines the best and worst case scenarios for the Democratic candidates Stephen Colbert busts out his best Bon Jovi impression to roast the Democratic candidates

Entertainment

Television

Wheels, an electric bike-share startup with operations in half a dozen US cities, has redesigned its two-wheeled vehicle to include a special spot to hold a helmet. The helmet is locked to the rear rack of the bike and is free for riders to use. The helmet can only be unlocked via the Wheels app. And for those concerned about lice and germs, a peel-off biodegradable headliner is included in each helmet. Wheels says that magnetic Reed sensors in the bike “recognize when the helmet is being used.” And the company is offering riders a 20 percent discount for using the helmet to first-time customers. Wheels has electric bikes in service in Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, Dallas, Austin, Scottsdale, and Cleveland, as well as Stockholm, Sweden. The company was founded earlier this year by Jonathan and Joshua Viner, brothers who also founded the popular dog-walking app Wag. They have since raised nearly $100 million to fund the expansion of their rentable e-bike service. How to get customers, who often take scooter rides impulsively, to wear helmets has been one of the more intractable problems of the shared electric scooter industry. According to a recent study, only one in 190 people injured while riding e-scooters was wearing a helmet. Recently, e-scooter startup Bird said it would start giving out free rides to customers who take selfies of themselves wearing helmets in an effort to promote safety while riding electric scooters. Revel, an electric moped-sharing business with operations in Brooklyn and Washington, DC, has a similar setup as Wheels with a helmet locked in a cargo compartment in the back. Researchers calculated that there were 20 individuals injured per 100,000 e-scooter trips taken during a three-month period in Austin, Texas. As scooter companies grow, the need to ensure that customers are taking their own safety into account has become a central challenge. The debate over helmet use is heating up after a federal safety panel recommended mandatory helmet laws for all 50 states. While helmets have been shown to reduce traumatic brain injuries, requiring their use has also been proven to discourage cycling. Most experts agree that the best way to protect bike and scooter riders is by building protected infrastructure, reducing car speeds, and supporting policies that improve road safety for all users.

Technology

Transportation

The Senate is poised to act on bipartisan legislation to address the growing epidemic of opioid abuse in the U.S. President Obama has asked Congress to approve more than $1.1 billion to fight the growing epidemic of opioid abuse in America, and there are signs of strong support for these proposals on Capitol Hill. Leaders from both political parties should be praised for their actions. As a physician, I have seen first-hand the enormous power of treatment to restore health and hope to patients and their families. We must expand access to high-quality addiction treatment – not just for opioids – at all levels of society. This is an important investment but we cannot simply treat our ways out of the opioid epidemic. To truly conquer the opioid epidemic we must do much more about preventing addiction before it starts and physicians and other caregivers must play a leadership role. In October, the president issued a memorandum requiring doctors working for the federal government to receive more training in prescribing opioids. That sets a great example for the profession and more needs to be done. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently convened a panel of experts to develop guidelines for all primary-care physicians in the country to help them change their treatment and prescription practices. This includes ordering non-opiate therapies whenever possible, putting patients on the lowest effective dose of a needed opioid for the shortest possible time and screening patients to ensure they are not abusing alcohol or drugs. These steps would improve the prescribing practices of primary care doctors and help them set and hold to boundaries with their patients. These guidelines and changes in behavior are profoundly needed. Within the past decade we’ve seen an exponential increase in the number of people seeking treatment for opiate addiction. According to the CDC, prescription opioid sales in the United States have increased by 300 percent since 1999, and almost 2 million Americans, age 12 or older, either abused or were dependent on opioid pain relievers in 2013. Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the US, with 47,055 lethal drug overdoses in 2014. According to the CDC, Opioid addiction is driving this epidemic, with 18,893 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers and 10,574 overdose deaths related to heroin in 2014. I don’t believe my fellow physicians had ill intentions but we played a significant role in creating a perfect storm for these tragic consequences to unfold. Too many doctors turned to opiates when alternative pain treatments were available. And too many patients demanded a prescription for one of these powerful drugs based on incomplete information and an understandable need to control their pain. That places doctors in a tenuous position. If they refuse to prescribe an opiate their patient might very well hop to another office until they get what they want and their continuity of care is broken. That’s why it’s critically important that the medical community play a significant role in creating meaningful change. Our goal as physicians must be eliminating irresponsible prescribing of opiates while allowing our patients’ pain to be appropriately treated. Primary care doctors are on the front lines of this epidemic but specialists have a role, too. For example, ob-gyns can, and should, look for alternatives to Vicodin for a new mother in recovery from a Cesarean. All physicians should make sure to discuss a patient’s drug and alcohol history to help inform prescribing patterns. Patients with a history of drug or alcohol abuse are at particular risk of becoming addicted to opioids. Before prescribing an opiate, doctors should perform toxicology testing to avoid the dangerous interaction of illicit and prescribed medications. Finally, medical schools and residency programs need to mandate education about these guidelines as part of physicians’ maintenance of certification. The opioid epidemic is the product of many years of neglect but we don’t have that long to reverse its course. Leadership from the highest levels of government is an important element to this response but ultimately it is the responsibility of the medical profession to heal the ills that are plaguing our society. Garbely is the medical director at Caron Treatment Centers. Caron, a Pennsylvania-based not-for-profit, has been providing behavioral health and addiction treatment for more than 60 years. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Substance Abuse

Addiction

Angelique Carson Contributor Angelique Carson is the editor of Privacy Advisor for the International Association of Privacy Professionals. I have to be honest with you. I’ve been working in the privacy space for the last six years, and privacy never really mattered that much to me. When I first understood, via Edward Snowden, that the U.S. government was collecting data on all of us, I didn’t knee-jerk freak out. I can’t say I was ever in the “if-you’re-not-doing-anything-wrong, you’ve-got-nothing-to-hide” camp, but I also wasn’t arms-up-in-the-air outraged that some corporation potentially handed my data over to the police. No, I didn’t love the idea that the feds maybe knew I’d once Googled “is a yam different from a sweet potato?” but, it didn’t keep me up at night, either. Then I attended an event called The Color of Surveillance at Georgetown Law and the hair on my arms stood up straight. I’d missed it completely. I’d missed the entire reason privacy isn’t just a concern for those who logged into Ashley Madison or researched something more nefarious than the difference between starches. I missed that it should matter to me because there are people for whom it has to matter, by virtue of their socioeconomic or racial status. And while I have the luxury, by virtue of my own socioeconomic status and race, of ignoring reality and letting this not be my problem, that’s not how wrongs are righted. I finally saw surveillance not as something mildly offensive to my own sense of civil liberties, but as a tool of institutional racism. It suddenly became clear to me — and I’m so embarrassed it didn’t prior — that the people most stripped of their privacy rights in this surveillance age are the people who are already vulnerable. But the powerful surveilling the powerless, and I’m specifically talking about race here, is nothing new. It existed even in the earliest days of slavery. Surveillance and power have long been closely linked to institutional racism, from slave owners branding their slaves so they couldn’t move freely and privately, to plantation owners building homes tall enough to surveil the entire plantation. Slavery may have been abolished, but now we see racism and oppression in a new power structure in which the powerful hold the data on the less powerful. Being watched changes how you move, how you think. Here’s one example. Khiara Bridges is a professor at Boston University who studied pregnant women applying to Medicaid. All of them poor, most of them of color. Her research found a system “fundamentally flawed by design,” in which women relying on government assistance to have a child were required, before ever seeing a health practitioner, to be “informationally canvassed” via coerced consultations that ask the kinds of degrading questions that white, privately insured women would never be asked at a healthcare facility. These women are routinely drilled on whether they’ve missed prenatal care appointments, whether the pregnancy was planned or accidental, whether they’ve ever abused controlled substances, been domestically abused, been homeless. And if they say yes, more information is gathered. That information is then funneled to other state bureaucracies, including immigration, customs enforcement or even criminal justice. In order to continue their Medicaid care, the women are then tracked and surveilled in demeaning ways, which Bridges calls the “poverty of privacy rights.” That’s the trade off. You want our help? We’ll use your data how we see fit. Or, for further evidence, we can look to black men. According to research presented by Hamid Khan of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, 30 percent of suspicious activity reports in Los Angeles are written on blacks — even though they make up less than 10 percent of the total population. Besides arrests, Khan reported, there are more covert surveillance methods employed, in which housing authorities are forging partnerships with police to track movements of residents; government-subsidized cell phones are distributed and their GPS chips used to track. Think about walking around your own neighborhood and having policemen watching your every move suspiciously, waiting for a reason to pull you aside for a “chat.” Being watched changes how you move, how you think. Forget about locking up black men. The way they are harassed and stalked creates the prison of the mind, as Michel Foucault described. And that kind of policing is something black men, and now Muslims in increasing instances, in many neighborhoods experience every day. And technology is only making surveillance easier. Between facial-recognition technology, algorithms used for “predictive policing” and, most recently, Stingrays, the watching done by the human eye historically will be done faster, easier, cheaper and en masse. Georgetown’s Alvaro Bedoya said that, to him, “privacy is black kids being able to make mistakes without the law watching their every move.” I like that. That’s the way I grew up. I made mistakes in my neighborhood all the time. In public. But in my public, there was even still some privacy, or at least obscurity. And I was allowed to get smarter, more mature from those mistakes rather than be forever marked by them. As always, we’re keeping the vulnerable vulnerable. Asserting power just because we can. Because he who owns the data holds the power. And that’s why privacy professionals, in this context, are so important. There’s been a lot of talk lately about the need to continue making ethics-based decisions and not just compliance-based decisions, and I can’t think of a context more worthy than the restoration of human dignity — for everyone. Privacy professionals get to make decisions that have real impacts on people’s lives, though it may sometimes seem more abstract than that. Decisions like, should we even collect this data to begin with? If we do, who might own it someday? And it may seem absurd that these questions are related to social injustice and an imbalance of power, but guess what, they really are. Maybe privacy matters more to me than I thought.

Technology

Privacy

The New Health Care Americans seem very afraid of cancer, with good reason. Unlike other things that kill us, it often seems to come out of nowhere. But evidence has increasingly accumulated that cancer may be preventable, too. Unfortunately, this has inflamed as much as it has assuaged people’s fears. As a physician, I have encountered many people who believe that heart disease, which is the single biggest cause of death among Americans, is largely controllable. After all, if people ate better, were physically active and stopped smoking, then lots of them would get better. This ignores the fact that people can’t change many risk factors of heart disease like age, race and family genetics. People don’t often seem to feel the same way about cancer. They think it’s out of their control. A study published in Science in January 2015 seemed to support that view. It tried to explain why some tissues lead to cancer more often than others. It found a strong correlation between the number of times a cell divides in the course of a lifetime and the risk of developing cancer. In other words, this study argued that the more times DNA replicates, the more often something can go wrong. Some took this to mean that cancer is much more because of “bad luck” than because of other factors that people could control. Unfortunately, this simple explanation is not really what the study showed. Lung cells, for instance, divide quite rarely, and still account for a significant amount of cancer. Cells in the gastrointestinal tract divide all the time and account for many fewer cancers. Some cancers, like melanoma, were found to be in the group of cancers influenced more by intrinsic factors (or those we can’t control), when we clearly know that extrinsic factors, like sun exposure, are a major cause. Further, this study was focused more on the relative risks of cancer in one type of tissue versus another. What we really care about is how much we can reduce our own risk of cancer by changing our behavior. A more recent study published in Nature argues that there is a lot we can do. Many studies have shown that environmental risk factors and exposures contribute greatly to many cancers. Diet is related to colorectal cancer. Alcohol and tobacco are related to esophageal cancer. HPV is related to cervical cancer, and hepatitis C is related to liver cancer. And you’d have to be living under a rock not to know that smoking causes lung cancer and that too much sun can lead to skin cancer. Using sophisticated modeling techniques, the researchers argued that less than 30 percent of the lifetime risk of getting many common cancers was because of intrinsic risk factors, or the “bad luck.” The rest were things you can change. Most recently, in JAMA Oncology, researchers sought to quantify how a healthful lifestyle might actually alter the risk of cancer. They identified four domains that are often noted to be related to disease prevention: smoking, drinking, obesity and exercise. They defined people who engaged in healthy levels of all of these activities as a “low risk” group. Then they compared their risk of getting cancer with people who weren’t in this group. They included two groups of people who have been followed and studied a long time, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, as well as national cancer statistics. Of the nearly 90,000 women and more than 46,000 men, 16,531 women and 11,731 men fell into the low-risk group. For each type of cancer, researchers calculated a population-attributable risk, which is the percentage of people who develop cancer who might have avoided it had they adopted low-risk behaviors. About 82 percent of women and 78 percent of men who got lung cancer might have prevented it through healthy behaviors. About 29 percent of women and 20 percent of men might have prevented colon and rectal cancer. About 30 percent of both might have prevented pancreatic cancer. Breast cancer was much less preventable: 4 percent. Over all, though, about 25 percent of cancer in women and 33 percent in men was potentially preventable. Close to half of all cancer deaths might be prevented as well. No study is perfect, and this is no exception. These cohorts are overwhelmingly white and consist of health professionals, who are not necessarily like the population at large. But the checks against the national data showed that if anything, these results might be underestimating how much cancer is preventable by healthy behaviors. This also isn’t a randomized controlled trial, and we can certainly argue that it doesn’t prove causation. A bigger concern to me is that people might interpret these findings as assigning fault to people who get cancer. You don’t want to get into situations where you feel as if people don’t deserve help because they didn’t try hard enough to stay healthy. Much of cancer is still out of people’s control. I was especially worried because, in this study, “low risk” status required all four healthy lifestyles. Failing in any one domain put you in the high-risk category, and that seemed like a lot to ask of people. On further reading, though, I discovered that the requirements weren’t overly burdensome. Not smoking was defined as never having smoked or having quit at least five years ago. That’s clearly good for health. Moderate alcohol consumption was defined as no more than one drink a day on average for women, and no more than two for men. That’s pretty much what I have argued for in writing about this issue in the past; it in no way requires abstinence. Adequate weight was defined as a B.M.I. of at least 18.5 and no more than 27.5. The cutoff for “overweight” is 25, meaning that you don’t have to be thin; you just have to be less than obese (B.M.I. 30). Finally, exercise was defined as 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity. That’s a reasonable and quite achievable goal. I was surprised to realize that I’m already “low risk.” I bet many people reading this are “low risk,” too. As we talk about cancer “moonshots” that will most likely cost billions of dollars and might not achieve results, it’s worth considering that — as in many cases — prevention is not only the cheapest course, but also the most effective. Simple changes to people’s behaviors have the potential to make sure many cancers never occur. They have a side benefit of preventing health problems in many other areas, too. Investment in these efforts may not be as exciting, but it may yield greater results.

Nutrition

Healthy Eating

After launching two cryptocurrency-oriented smartphones, the HTC Exodus 1 and the Exodus 1s, the company is expanding the lineup with an entirely new device: a 5G router that can function as a full Bitcoin node.  Called the HTC Exodus 5G hub, the Android-based router offers 5G connectivity for your home devices, with a heavy focus on privacy. This includes support for privacy apps such as decentralized VPN and ad blocker Incognito and private email service ProtonMail.  There are supposedly other privacy features in there, but HTC did not share the details at this time.  On the cryptocurrency side of things, the Exodus 5G Hub supports HTC's Zion Vault software, meaning it can run a full Bitcoin node. It also offers certain handy crypto-security features, such as social recovery for your cryptocurrency private keys, and a private vault for your cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH (with support for ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens), BNB, LTC and XLM.  The ability to run a full Bitcoin node may not be something most users are interested in, but it's important in the world of cryptocurrencies, as it helps decentralize the network. That said, running a full node is quite traffic-intensive, which is why a 5G router is probably a better device to do it on than HTC's Exodus phones, which share the same ability.  Visually, the HTC Exodus 5G Hub looks a lot like a smart home device, with a big, colorful screen on the front. In the press images I've seen, the screen displays prices of popular cryptocurrencies, though it's quite probable that this can be customized.  The press materials HTC originally sent me were a bit vague, so I've asked the company to share more details and was told that the device has a microphone, dual speakers, and supports Google Assistant. Specs-wise, it's similar to a smartphone, with a 5-inch, HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, 4/32GB of memory, a microSD slot, a nano SIM slot, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a 7,660mAh battery. It can play a number of audio and video formats, so it can also probably function as a home entertainment device. On the software side, the HTC Exodus 5G is running Android 9.0. HTC Exodus 5G Hub will become available in the second quarter of 2020. The price hasn't been announced. It's also not known whether customers will be able to purchase it with cryptocurrency, as was the case for the two Exodus phones. 

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Other

Mohammad Sharaf installed 200 headstones for the censored titles in a plot of land beside Kuwait’s Annual Book Fair. Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads In August 2018, Kuwait’s government officially acknowledged its national ban of over 4,300 books since 2014. On Friday, November 22, Kuwaiti graphic designer and artist Mohammad Sharaf gave these titles an official funeral in protest of the government-mandated censorship. He installed the “Cemetery of Banned Books” on land fittingly beside Kuwait’s Annual Book Fair. On over 200 headstones, Sharaf engraved the names of books including the Nahj al-Balagha, the Divine Comedy, Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and many more deemed unfit for public consumption. The national ban includes children’s books like Disney’s iteration of The Little Mermaid, encyclopedias, novels, and political or religious books. According to the New York Times, a committee of six Arabic readers and six English readers under the Ministry of Information are responsible for the official judgments. The Cemetery remained intact for four hours before it was removed by Kuwaiti authorities. Though he has not yet been approached by government officials, Sharaf tells Hyperallergic, “There is a chance that I might face legal repercussions because I did not take permission to use the land to put my installation.” He says the project was self-funded and in no way affiliated with the Annual Book Fair. Sharaf calls the installation a “symbolic piece of protest and public art intervention.” The artist says that while most of the feedback on social media has been positive, he has received criticism for supporting books “that are sexual or secular and in favor of atheism.” “The motivation [for the Cemetary] is simply to protest and fight the arbitrary ban of books in Kuwait. As a person who is an activist in the field in art and design, I’ve always thought that activism can be done in many forms,” Sharaf says. “Typical activism like riots, panel discussions, and lectures are good, but they are limited in their reach.” Sharaf says his motivations include, “to protest the ban on books in Kuwait … in a very creative, yet widely accepted way, that is conceivable by the general public.” He adds, “I wanted the message to reach the people who are not too involved in this issue.” At the front of the cemetery sat a librarian’s desk and stamp, signaling the symbolic idea that the books have been “checked out” of Kuwait’s canon.

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Other

Bill Shine, a former top Fox News executive, is resigning after less than a year leading President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE’s communications team, the White House announced on Friday. Shine will serve as a senior adviser to Trump's 2020 reelection campaign, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said Trump accepted Shine’s resignation on Thursday night. “Bill Shine has done an outstanding job working for me and the administration,” Trump said in a statement. “We will miss him in the White House, but look forward to working together on the 2020 presidential campaign, where he will be totally involved. Thank you to Bill and his wonderful family!” The sudden exit of Shine surprised some White House allies. The announcement was made while Trump was flying aboard Air Force One to tour tornado damage in Alabama.  Shine’s successor will be the sixth person to serve in the role under Trump, demonstrating the high level of staff turnover in the West Wing. White House officials did not indicate who might replace him.  Shine worked at Fox News for two decades, eventually rising to the position of co-president, and was seen as a symbol of the close links between the Trump White House and the network. He was brought on last July in an attempt to burnish the president’s image. “Serving President Trump and this country has been the most rewarding experience of my entire life,” Shine said in a statement. “To be a small part of all this president has done for the American people has truly been an honor. I’m looking forward to working on President Trump’s reelection campaign and spending more time with my family.” But the 55-year-old kept a low profile throughout his time in the White House and some people in Trump World questioned his effectiveness. Trump has continued to suffer from bad headlines in the news media, most recently from the failure of his nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Michael CohenMichael Dean CohenI'm not a Nazi, I'm just a dude: What it's like to be the other Steve King Wyden blasts FEC Republicans for blocking probe into NRA over possible Russia donations Hope Hicks defends accuracy of her congressional testimony MORE’s explosive testimony before Congress. The president had complained Shine had not done enough to drum up good press, even though he was mostly focused on stage-managing Trump’s public events, according to multiple reports. Others in the president’s orbit, however, believe the criticism of Shine is unfair because it is difficult for the communications team to have sway with Trump, who views himself as his own best messenger. Shine also developed a reputation as an enforcer when Trump became angry at members at the press corps. Last July, Shine and Sanders banned CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from a Rose Garden event after she asked Trump a question that was deemed “inappropriate.” He also co-signed the letter revoking the press pass of CNN’s Jim Acosta. The pass was eventually restored. Press freedom advocates criticized both actions as violating norms surrounding coverage of the president. Shine joined the White House just over a year after he was ousted from Fox News amid a sexual-harassment scandal surrounding then-network head Roger Ailes. Shine was accused of covering for Ailes misbehavior, which the Ailes and others denied. Still, Shine served as a visible link between the White House and Fox during his time in the West Wing. When Sean Hannity appeared with Trump during a November campaign rally in Missouri, Shine was seen high-fiving the Fox News host before he stepped on stage. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Society

Donald Trump tweeted late Sunday that China has agreed to “reduce and remove” tariffs on U.S. cars exported to China — but Beijing refused to confirm the president’s claims. The tweet gave no details of the supposed car deal, apparently struck at the G20 Summit in Argentina over the weekend, during which Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to a 90-day pause in the trade war to allow for further talks. “China has agreed to reduce and remove tariffs on cars coming into China from the U.S. Currently the tariff is 40%,” Trump tweeted. He followed up with another Tweet Monday morning hailing an “extraordinary” meeting that will help relations with China take “a BIG leap forward!” Trump went on to claim it was his close personal relationship with Xi that will "bring about massive and very positive change" on trade. Donald Trump tweeted late Sunday that China has agreed to “reduce and remove” tariffs on U.S. cars exported to China — but Beijing refused to confirm the president’s claims. The tweet gave no details of the supposed car deal, apparently struck at the G20 Summit in Argentina over the weekend, during which Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to a 90-day pause in the trade war to allow for further talks. “China has agreed to reduce and remove tariffs on cars coming into China from the U.S. Currently the tariff is 40%,” Trump tweeted. He followed up with another Tweet Monday morning hailing an “extraordinary” meeting that will help relations with China take “a BIG leap forward!” Trump went on to claim it was his close personal relationship with Xi that will "bring about massive and very positive change" on trade. He even suggested that he and Xi could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt "what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race." Tariffs on car exports have jumped from 15 percent earlier this year to the current 40 percent as a result of Trump’s trade war. As such, Chinese imports of U.S.-made cars and trucks — worth $10 billion in 2017 — have fallen off significantly. READ: China tries playing the trade war victim: Trump is bullying us When asked about Trump’s comment Monday, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang declined to comment. Despite the opacity of the reported deal, the car industry welcomed the news, with shares in GM, Daimler, BMW and Tesla rallying. GM's Frankfurt-listed shares jumped 7.3 percent. The company last week announced plans to layoff off 15,000 North American workers and the mothballing of four U.S. plants. The company claimed that the increased price of Chinese steel as a result of the trade war had led to job losses and closures. Trump’s tweet came after a Saturday dinner with Xi in Buenos Aires where the pair agreed not to impose a fresh round of tariffs from Jan. 1. A White House statement called the meeting “highly successful” and said China had agreed to buy a “very substantial” amount of agricultural, industrial and energy products. The statement added that Beijing would buy agricultural products from U.S. farmers immediately — though offered no actual figures. Trump said Monday that farmers "will be a very BIG and FAST beneficiary" of the new deal. While the agreement does give officials from both sides the chance to reach a comprehensive deal over trade, the U.S. warned that “if at the end of this period of time, the parties are unable to reach an agreement, the 10 percent tariffs will be raised to 25 percent.” However, the Chinese account of the meeting differed. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Commerce Vice Minister Wang Shouwen told reporters that the talks would focus on removing all U.S. tariffs and Chinese retaliatory tariffs but failed to mention a deadline. Many analysts have pointed out that China is simply playing the U.S., and that for all the smiles and handshakes, there will be few tangible results. “President Xi has successfully slow-walked President Trump,” Peter Morici, a University of Maryland economist, told the Wall Street Journal. “The president has fallen into the same trap as Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and even Bill Clinton. He will get more platitudes and promises and very few results.” Cover image: President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping make a joint statement at the Great Hall of the People on November 9, 2017 in Beijing, China. (Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images)

Politics

International Relations

FRANKFURT, Oct 15 (Reuters) - German insurer Talanx suffered an unusual spike in industrial property insurance losses in the third quarter, weighing on earnings this year, it said on Monday. The third-quarter loss before taxes in the Industrial Lines Division will be more than 100 million euros ($116 million), it said. Talanx added it now expected 2018 group net income of around 700 million euros, down from a previous target of around 850 million euros, but that 2019 net income would again rise to about 900 million. The company is due to release detailed nine-month results on Nov. 12. $1 = 0.8639 euros Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Mark Potter

Technology

Startups

The universe exploration game No Man's Sky hit the scene more than a year ago and disappointed many of the people who bought it. Some gamers felt that developer Hello Games had made big promises that they couldn't possibly live up to. But a dedicated fanbase kept the game alive with mods, bug fixes and—after the toxicity faded—a strong online community. Hello Games spent the past year working to improve No Man's Sky and add features the fans hoped for in the original release. The newest update—Atlas Rises—adds an expanded story, rudimentary multiplayer, and improvements to the game's economy. It's also adding several quality of life changes the fan community modded into the game almost a year before the official patch. One of the biggest additions that was already a mod is low altitude flying. In the original game, players could bring their ships only so close to a planet. If an explorer wanted to stay in their ship and cruise the planet's surface, they had to stay in high orbit. Players who dreamed of piloting their ships through caves and buzzing strange creatures had their hopes dashed. Until, that is, modders added the feature to the game two weeks after its initial release. Now, a year later, Hello Games is fixing a problem the community solved a year ago. It's not the only thing in the patch that fans had already fixed. Atlas Rises adds various graphics overhauls, the ability to summon your ship while exploring a planet, and new biomes. These are all improvements the community added to the game while Hello Games was working on other things. Despite that, some fans are thrilled.. After it's initial release, No Man's Sky bled players. It roped in hundreds of thousands of people and made publisher Sony tens of millions of dollars, but couldn't keep most of them. Thousands demanded their money back. On Steam alone, more than 800,000 people own it and during its first month more then 200,000 played it concurrently. These days, it's lucky to break 1,000 concurrent players on Steam. Those 1000 or so players are dedicated though. Motherboard reached out to the fans on Reddit to see how they felt about the new update, the state of the game today, and to see if Hello Games was catching up with the modding community. "I think looking at modding is always one of the best ways a developer can put an ear to the ground," Redditor Bolty wrote. "You see it a lot with Bethesda games; popular mods tend to become features in subsequent releases." User The_Scho_Empire said they were, "very satisfied," with the progress of the updates. "I didn't pay any attention to the hype pre-release, and have been happy with how the game has been developed and supported. [The previous updates] contained many quality of life and graphical improvements as well, so it's okay that it's taken a year to get more implemented. Hello Games is small and the vision behind the game is big, so I cut them some slack with improving it." The players also reminded me that mods are only a big deal to PC gamers. "Keep in mind that PS4 players got no mods at all, so this is huge for that player base," user Fred_Zeppelin wrote. "I don't think it makes sense in that context for Hello Games to have thought that mods would carry them until they got around to developing that feature, when much of the player base had no access to them." The fans also trust Hello Games to deliver on its promises and didn't worry to much about it fixing problems the fans had taken care of. "Each feature has it's own reasons for why it came along when it did," Fred_Zeppelin wrote. "Atlas Rises probably has a great development story. Would love to know how long this has been in the works." Hello Games did not respond to Motherboard's request for comment. Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.

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Other

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The Brazilian central bank said on Thursday it named Carolina de Assis Barros as the head of its administration division, including a woman in its interest-rate setting committee for the first time in eight years. If approved by the Senate, Assis, who currently leads the bank’s communications department and has been an employee since 2000, will replace Maurício Moura as one of the nine members of the so-called Copom committee. Moura, in turn, will become the bank’s head of institutional relations and citizenship. Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

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Other

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Air pollution in New Delhi hit 18 times the healthy limit on Friday under a thick, toxic haze after a night of fireworks to celebrate the Hindu festival of Diwali - despite a court-ordered ban on their sales. Residents of the sprawling Indian capital, which already ranks among the world’s most polluted cities, complained of eyes watering and aggravated coughs as levels of PM 2.5, tiny particulate matter that reaches deep into the lungs, rose alarmingly. Air quality usually worsens in New Delhi ahead of Diwali, the festival of lights, and the Supreme Court temporarily banned the sale of firecrackers, aiming to lessen the risk to health. But many still lit fireworks across the capital late into the night, either using old stocks or buying them from neighboring states. Some environment activists said the court order was poorly enforced and firecrackers were still available to celebrate one of north India’s biggest festivals. “Breathe nitrate and ammonia, home grown, hand made!” said environmentalist Vimlendu Jha in a Twitter post calling for city authorities to declare a public emergency. An index of air quality had crossed the “hazardous” limit of 300 on Friday, the most severe level on a U.S. embassy scale of measurement which rates a reading of 50 as good and anything above that as a cause for concern. Some parts of Delhi such as Mandir Marg showed an air quality reading of 941, close enough to the maximum level of 999 beyond which no readings are available. The index measures concentrations of PM 2.5, PM 10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide among other indicators. A hazardous level is an alert in which everyone may experience ill effects and are advised to stay indoors. Apart from the firecracker ban, the Supreme Court also ordered diesel generators and a power plant to be shut down to try to reduce the pollution. The Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority also ordered some brick kilns to close and a halt to the burning of rubbish. Dipankar Saha, a scientist at the government’s Central Pollution Control Board, said the still weather had also played a part in the toxic haze hanging over the city. But pollution levels were better than at last year’s Diwali when crop burning in nearby states and firecrackers combined. “It was going to be hard to beat last year’s level in any case,” he said. Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani

Politics

India

(Adds details, updates prices) May 15 (Reuters) - Canada’s main stock index reversed course to edge higher on Tuesday, as gains in industrial stocks led by Air Canada more than offset a drop in miners due to declining gold prices. * At 12:13 p.m. ET (1613 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index was up 9.44 points, or 0.06 percent, at 16,095.05. * Six of the index’s 11 major sectors were higher, led by the industrials sector, which rose 0.6 percent. * Air Canada rose 3.9 percent after JP Morgan upgraded the stock to “overweight” from “neutral.” * The materials sector, which includes precious and base metals miners, lost 0.7 percent as gold futures slipped 0.9 percent to $1,304.7 an ounce, while copper prices dropped 1.2 percent to $6,800 a tonne. * The biggest drags on the sector were Barrick Gold and Agnico Eagle, which fell 1.9 percent and 1 percent, respectively. * The Canadian dollar hit a near one-week low against its U.S. counterpart as the greenback broadly rose and investors weighed prospects of a deadline being met for a new North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. * Mexico’s economy minister said he saw diminishing chances for a new NAFTA ahead of a May 17 deadline to present a deal that could be signed by the current U.S. Congress. * On the TSX, 119 issues were higher, while 119 issues declined, with 100.34 million shares traded. * The largest percentage gainers on the TSX were Element Fleet Management, which jumped 18.6 percent, and Boyd Group Income Fund, which rose 4.7 percent. Both the companies reported first-quarter results. * Keyera Corp fell 3.9 percent, the most on the TSX, on plans to develop a crude oil storage and blending terminal in Cushing, Oklahoma. The second biggest decliner was Semafo Inc, which was down 3.5 percent. * The most heavily traded shares by volume were Element Fleet Management, Neovasc Inc and Aurora Cannabis , which was down 1.0 percent. * The TSX posted 15 new 52-week highs and seven new lows. * Across all Canadian issues there were 35 new 52-week highs and 64 new lows, with total volume of 160.01 million shares. (Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Manufacturing

Industry

(Reuters) - Lawmakers and advocacy groups are calling for more oversight of home-schooling after a California couple using this method of education was charged with torturing their 13 children. The number of U.S. children educated at home has doubled to about 1.7 million, or 3 percent of the nation’s school-age population, from 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Even so, most states do not require inspections or in-person testing that could help uncover abusive situations, said the Massachusetts-based Coalition for Responsible Home Education. More than 380 cases of severe or fatal child neglect have occurred since 2000 in families involved in home-schooling, according to the group. “We would not say abuse is more common among home-schoolers, but when it does occur, there are fewer safeguards, less to stop it from spinning out of control,” said Executive Director Rachel Coleman. The organization has called for requiring annual contacts by outside officials and background checks for parents who run home schools. Some home-schooling groups oppose these measures. David Turpin, a 57-year-old engineer, and his wife, Louise, will go before a judge on Thursday. They are charged with nine counts of torture and 10 counts of child endangerment in connection to their children, aged 2 to 29. Police said they found the children in filthy conditions, some shackled to their beds, when a 17-year-old girl escaped and called 911. In this case, the father had registered his house as the private Sandcastle Day School and listed himself as the principal. His children were the only students. Turpin’s parents told ABC News that the children would memorize long passages of the Bible. Neighbors said they were rarely seen outside the home. The California Department of Education said it was “sickened” by the incident but, by law, it was not authorized to monitor, oversee or inspect such schools. Parents running private home schools only have to register with the state. “My first thought was: How did this many kids get lost in the system?” said Sherryll Kraizer, founder of the Coalition for Children, an advocacy group. “One of the things that was interesting was he set up his own home school so the kids were accounted for and not really seen by anybody.” The Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association said states do not mandate welfare or safety visits at home schools. Coleman said most home-school regulations focus on educational testing, with only a few states, including New York, requiring in-person contact with educators or others. “I am extremely concerned about the lack of oversight the State of California currently has in monitoring private and home schools,” said Assemblyman Jose Medina, who represents Perris, the town where the Turpins live. The state politician said in a statement on Wednesday that he was looking into introducing legislation for oversight but did not provide further details. Mandatory contacts with outside health or education workers could help, Coleman said. She also said more states could adopt laws such as those in Pennsylvania, which does not allow home-schooling by those convicted of violent crimes, and Arkansas, which bars it when a registered sex offender resides in the home. But Home School Legal Defense Association President Mike Smith said his association opposes new regulations. “Should all the innocent home-school families, who do a great job, should they be intruded upon because of this family?” he said. “I think the answer is no.” Past efforts to regulate home schools have faced fierce resistance from groups that in recent decades have also rolled back rules, said Chris Lubienski, an Indiana University education professor. More accountability can be balanced with parental rights, Lubienski said. “I think people would agree we all have a responsibility for the kids like (the Turpins).” Reporting by Chris Kenning in Chicago; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Ben Klayman and Lisa Von Ahn

Education

Schools

Oct 9 (Reuters) - The Baltic Exchange's main sea freight index, which tracks rates for ships ferrying dry bulk commodities, jumped on Wednesday, boosted by stronger demand for capesize vessels. * The Baltic index, which reflects rates for capesize, panamax and supramax vessels, rose 72 points, or 4%, to 1,873, its biggest daily percentage gain since Aug. 30. * The capesize index jumped 177 points, or 5.8%, to 3,208, recording its steepest percentage rise in over five weeks. * The average daily earnings for capesizes, which typically transport 170,000-180,000 tonne cargoes such as iron ore and coal, rose $1,470 to $25,598. * The panamax index climbed 48 points, or 2.7%, to 1,852. * Average daily earnings for panamaxes, which usually carry coal or grain cargoes of about 60,000 tonnes to 70,000 tonnes, increased by $387 to $14,840. * The supramax index nudged up 5 points to 1,204. (Reporting by Nakul Iyer in Bengaluru)

Oil and Gas

Drilling

Lisa Marie Presley‘s contentious divorce continues. The actress-singer, 49, squared off in court with estranged husband Michael Lockwood on Wednesday, where a judge ordered Presley to pay $50,000 of Lockwood’s attorney fees at the rate of $10,000 per month, a source familiar with the situation tells PEOPLE. The exes’ legal teams also battled over Lockwood’s request for spousal support, which the judge did not grant on Wednesday. “Ms. Presley’s obligation to pay spousal support depends on whether the parties’ post-nuptial agreement is valid,” says the source. “The Court did not order Ms. Presley to pay spousal support at this time. Instead, it ordered that there will be a separate and expedited trial about whether the post-nuptial agreement is valid. The Court retained jurisdiction to make the spousal support order retroactive. That means that if the Court determines at a trial that will probably take place in three or four months that the post-nuptial agreement is not valid, it can order Ms. Presley to pay spousal support retroactively to today, and possibly earlier. On the other hand, if the Court determines that the post-nuptial agreement is valid, Mr. Lockwood probably will not receive spousal support.” Presley — Elvis’ daughter — and 55-year-old musician Lockwood’s Wednesday face-off in court is just the latest in their ongoing divorce battle. On Monday, Presley’s mother, Priscilla Presley, confirmed via social media that she is caring for the estranged couple’s 8-year-old daughters, Finley and Harper Lockwood, after Presley accused Lockwood of child abuse. In court papers filed earlier this month, Presley claimed that their girls were taken from their custody and that Lockwood is the subject of criminal investigations involving hundreds of inappropriate photos of children that authorities found on his electronic devices that left her “shocked and horrified and sick to my stomach.” At the time, Lockwood’s lawyer told PEOPLE that the claims are “a one-sided, inaccurate version of the facts” and that he “denies the truth of what Ms. Presley chose to put in the press.” Presley and Lockwood, her fourth husband, married in 2006 and welcomed their twin daughters in 2008 before the Graceland successor filed for divorce in June, citing irreconcilable differences and claiming Lockwood was a poor father and “took advantage” of her financially. The pair are next due in court April 10.

Other

Other

Kim Kardashian West revealed the name of her newborn daughter Friday, but super-sleuth fans of the Kardashian family may have figured it out sooner thanks to Rob Kardashian. On Wednesday, the youngest Kardashian sibling tweeted two bear emojis, leading many of his followers to speculate the new addition’s name was “Teddy,” “Koda” or simply “Bear.” (Some even guessed that the couple’s surrogate had actually welcomed twins.) Alas, Kardashian West and husband Kanye West have bestowed their daughter with the name Chicago — the city West grew up in, and home to the Chicago Bears football team and Chicago Cubs baseball team. The new mom of three shared the name to her app and website Friday — and sister Khloé Kardashian chimed in shortly after the announcement, tweeting, “I LOOOOOOOOOOVE her name 😍😍😍😍 hey Chi (shy).” Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter. I LOOOOOOOOOOVE her name 😍😍😍😍 hey Chi (shy) https://t.co/Ikd0ay3DsO — Khloé (@khloekardashian) January 19, 2018 Chicago Bears est. 1920Chicago West est. 2018 — Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) January 19, 2018 For more coverage, follow our babies magazine on Flipboard. Kardashian West previously had the internet buzzing with rumors that she and her husband had bestowed a Louis Vuitton-inspired name upon their daughter, posting a photo of one of the brand’s famous prints Wednesday. Fans were quick to throw out guesses like Elle V West, Fleur, Lou West and LV West. But the star quickly squashed the speculation on Twitter the next day, writing, “NOPE! It was Kim Jones last show and wanted to snap a LV pic 😂 How amazing did Naomi & Kate look?!” Also on Wednesday, an all-smiles West was photographed arriving to work in Los Angeles. When asked about his new baby girl, he admitted the couple “Can’t think of a name!” and, when one photographer suggested Donda after his late mother, replied, “Oh, that’s fire.” Chicago West. https://t.co/3MyLwcIzTh — Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) January 19, 2018 North, Saint & Chi — Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) January 19, 2018 Chicago White Sox. pic.twitter.com/BjeSoYAqe4 — Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) January 19, 2018 FROM COINAGE: The Lavish Lifestyle of the Kardashian Kids One person who may have known the new baby girl’s name before anyone else in the family? North, who had a big responsibility when it came to her little sister. “Kim and Kanye are letting North help with naming the baby,” an insider divulged to PEOPLE in December, explaining that Kardashian West “isn’t sharing the name” before the birth and citing her secrecy ahead of North and Saint’s arrivals. The new family addition will only be the youngest for a little while — both Khloé Kardashian and Kylie Jenner‘s are pregnant with their first children, due early this year.

Entertainment

Television

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) - India’s government is planning to ask state oil firms to lock in their crude futures purchase prices, a government source said on Thursday, anticipating a spike when U.S. sanctions on Iran snap back again in November. The move would be another step to tackle a slide in the rupee, as oil prices are putting pressure on India, which imports some 80 percent of its crude demand. Its currency has fallen sharply this year against the U.S. dollar, amid a wider sell-off in emerging markets. “The futures should be locked in when crude price is down,” said the source, who is familiar with deliberations on the matter, adding the step should have been taken earlier. The rupee, Asia’s worst performing currency this year, has depreciated about 12 percent year-to-date against the U.S. dollar, closing at 72.39 on Wednesday, after a record low of 72.99 on Tuesday. Markets were closed on Thursday. The government is expected to announce a set of measures to discourage non-essential imports to stem the slump in the currency. Separately, a senior finance ministry official said there was a view that the rupee could weaken further in the next two months if proposed steps failed to kill “speculation in the rupee market”. “The gap between the announcement of steps and action is creating a space for speculation. We have to stop this,” said the official. Officials at oil companies said they were open to the idea of locking in futures if the government asked. A senior official at Indian Oil Corp, a state-owned oil marketing company, said they were considering some options in terms of forward contracts. He declined to give details saying this was “market sensitive information”. An official at BPCL, another state-owned oil firm, said they were trying to hedge margins, under a policy reviewed every quarter. BPCL is also studying a proposal to buy dollars directly from the Reserve Bank of India instead of the market, in a bid to quell strong dollar demand that is denting the rupee. “Whenever, there is sharp volatility in exchange rates, this dollar window is opened. We’re studying the proposal,” he said. Another official at state-run HPCL said the government had not officially asked for it to examine forward contracts. “In case it is needed, or the government wants us to, we will then look into it,” the HPCL official said. The officials declined to be named as the proposals are still under consideration. India’s risk-averse state-owned refiners have in the past been reluctant to engage in futures trading or hedging strategies, fearing administrative blow-back if bets go wrong. The refiners typically buy up to 70 percent of their oil needs through term deals and the remainder through spot markets. Unlike state refiners, private players Reliance Industries and Nayara Energy use hedging tools to lock in costs on the international market. Additional reporting by Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Andrew Roche

Energy

Oil

No, this isn’t the next installment of the podcast Serial. This is just the story of a popular lizard named Petey, who may or may not have committed murder. Allegations against Petey (which have all been made in jest) first started when her owner Izzy posted a photo of the reptile to her Twitter @danisnobunk. The shot shows a somewhat diabolical-looking Petey in front of a window that faces a street. The street is filled with emergency vehicles with their lights on. “I think my lizard may have murdered someone,” Izzy captioned the post. Since the bearded lizard, who often appears on Izzy’s feed, has become a bit of a celebrity, the internet was quick to weigh in on Petey’s guilt. pic.twitter.com/YtJjn6n8mj — J (@iraqvet030405) March 8, 2018 Someone just found her spirit animal. pic.twitter.com/ZOJsWBS4PW — Evidence-based Stable Genius (@JamesMiner3) March 7, 2018 "I'm innocent mom, really I am!" My beardies give me the same look all the time. — Leslie Cox (@ljes4evr) March 8, 2018 pic.twitter.com/s2tedJtyYy — Lisa (@LisaKJMcA) March 8, 2018 The Iowa State University Police even got in on the fun. Hello. We have a few questions for your lizard if you don't mind. https://t.co/pCDJIhaYce — IowaStateU Police (@ISUPD) March 7, 2018 For now, Petey is considered innocent, allowing her to go about her normal activities, like long, luxurious baths. boy this bath bomb sure is weird pic.twitter.com/FOBbhW5yER — izzy (@danisnobunk) February 24, 2018 Can’t get enough of cats, dogs and other furry friends? Click here to get the cutest pet news and photos delivered directly to your inbox.  You’re not off the hook yet Petey, all 33,800 Izzy’s followers are watching you.  

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Other

Peter Navarro, an adviser to President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE on trade, apologized Tuesday for saying there is a “special place in Hell” for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or “any foreign leader” for crossing President Trump. “My job was to send a signal of strength. The problem was that in conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate,” Navarro said, according to Bloomberg and other outlets. “I own that, that was my mistake, my words,” Navarro said. He issued his apology during remarks at a Wall Street Journal conference in Washington, D.C. Navarro on his @JustinTrudeau comments: says his job last Sunday was to send a signal of strength. "In conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate and basically lost the power of that message. I own that, that was my mistake, my words." #WSJCFO Navarro tore into Trudeau during an interview on "Fox News Sunday" hours after the Canadian prime minister said his country would implement retaliatory tariffs against the United States. “There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” Navarro said. “That was one of the worst political miscalculations of a Canadian leader in modern Canadian history,” he added. Trudeau has not directly addressed Navarro's comments, but Canada's foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said the remarks were not “particularly appropriate or useful.” A number of U.S. lawmakers and foreign officials also were quick to condemn Navarro's comments, including Sens. Jeff FlakeJeffrey (Jeff) Lane FlakeArpaio considering running for former sheriff job after Trump pardon Overnight Energy: Warren edges past Sanders in poll of climate-focused voters | Carbon tax shows new signs of life | Greens fuming at Trump plans for development at Bears Ears monument Carbon tax shows new signs of life in Congress MORE (R-Ariz.) and Chris MurphyChristopher (Chris) Scott MurphyOvernight Defense: US, Russia tensions grow over nuclear arms | Highlights from Esper's Asia trip | Trump strikes neutral tone on Hong Kong protests | General orders ethics review of special forces White House eyes September action plan for gun proposals Trump phoned Democratic senator to talk gun control MORE (D-Conn.) and European Council President Donald Tusk. The spat between Trudeau and the White House has underscored a growing rift between the two allies over trade policy. Trump said Canada would be subject to steel and aluminum tariffs, citing national security concerns in his justification for the penalties. Trudeau responded that it was "insulting" that the U.S. viewed its neighbor to the north as a security threat. He added that Canada "will not be pushed around." In response, Trump criticized Trudeau for being "dishonest & weak." Following his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the president doubled down on his attacks, saying Trudeau's remarks would "cost a lot of money for the people of Canada." View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

News

MINNEAPOLIS — When the Los Angeles Sparks are at home during the W.N.B.A. season, guard Alana Beard starts almost every morning with coffee at The Cow’s End Café, a Bohemian spot a few steps from Venice Beach, sipping cortados and mingling with surfers who have become like family to her. When Beard was picked second over all in the 2004 draft out of Duke, she would have never thought to engage guys like Jay and Jim, the longhaired, flannel-wearing locals who taught her how to surf last year. Beard was reclusive socially, consumed by basketball to the point where it strained her body and her personal relationships. “I’ve grown into that because I’ve started to appreciate people a lot more,” Beard said. “I started to appreciate people in a different way. I just believe that everyone has a story and I’m always intrigued to know that story.” Beard’s own tale is continually being refined. At 30, she returned to the W.N.B.A. after missing two seasons with injuries. At 34, she became enamored with surfing. This season, at 35, she was named defensive player of the year and helped lead the defending champion Sparks back to the W.N.B.A. finals. The best-of-five series against the Minnesota Lynx is tied, 1-1, entering Game 3 in Los Angeles on Friday. If the Sparks win their second straight title, Beard’s first stop will not be Disneyland, but to the waters off Venice. “Once you catch your first wave, you want to try it again,” she said. “Sometimes it takes 10 times to catch another wave, but you keep trying and trying and trying. But it’s also exhausting. Everything is just body weight. You’re fighting against the water, but once you get up, it’s like the best feeling in the world. It’s like a sense of accomplishment you feel.” Beard has never had trouble bouncing back after getting knocked down. But her limits were tested in 2010 and 2011, when she missed two full seasons with ankle and foot injuries. Already a four-time All-Star, Beard was told by doctors that she might never play again. “I didn’t know how to stop,” she said. “It was kind of an obsession with the game, wanting to get better. I wasn’t where I wanted to be as a player so I kept going. Nothing stopped. I was just doing a workout with my coaches in the off-season and went for a sprint and felt a sharp, sharp pain and knew it was something. “It taught me that the game is only a small part of my life. It took that to understand that. There were times where I couldn’t go hang with my family because I wanted to work out; times I pushed my body to its limits when I didn’t have to; times when I overthought the game just a little too much.” Beard returned in 2012, signing as a free agent with the Sparks after six seasons with the Washington Mystics. She became more aware of her body’s signals and refined her diet, avoiding carbohydrates. Defense had always been a priority in Beard’s career, and in Los Angeles she became the maestro of the Sparks’ reinvention as a defense-first team, a characteristic further defined when Brian Agler became coach before the 2015 season. Forwards and centers have traditionally dominated the W.N.B.A.’s defensive player of the year award. An overreliance on statistics and the lack of defensive stats tailored to guards makes it harder for players like Beard to be recognized for awards, Agler said. But Beard’s effect on the Sparks has been hard to ignore. “She brings out things that people don’t know that they can do just by watching her do what she does,” Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike said. “Then defensively, I can see it not just from us, but from other people, that they know what they’re about to get and they’re not looking forward to it.” Beard has an innate sense of presence within the rectangular confines of a basketball court. Not only does she cause chaos blocking shots and swiping for steals, but she finishes the sequence. Rarely does the ball go out of bounds after Beard causes a turnover; she corrals the ball while always being cognizant to keep her feet within the boundaries, like a wide receiver staying inbounds by his tiptoes. “That’s what the great players do,” Agler said. “They complete the play. They make the play. It’s not just a deflection. It’s not just tapping the ball. She’ll tap it and go get it on the floor. She’ll block it and recover it. It’s been a great pleasure to coach her and watch her and see how her influence defensively has helped bring the best out of everybody defensively on our team.” As much as Agler has relished watching Beard stimulate the Sparks, he tries to place limits on her favorite extracurricular activity. When Agler first learned Beard was surfing, he sent her an article about how, during the 1996 season, Chicago Bulls center Luc Longley separated his shoulder surfing near where Beard was hanging ten. “He was like, ‘I’m not telling you what to do,’ ” Beard said, mimicking Agler’s Midwestern accent, “ ‘but take it as you wish.’ ” Agler acknowledged that he was trying to send a subtle message, but that Beard’s surfing buddies are “laid-back, humble, good guys.” Beard said: “One reason I like doing this, no one takes out their phone when having coffee. Jay has a Blackberry from like 2004. I’m in love with that type of stuff. He drives a school bus with all these surfboards on it. I’m sure in their own life they’re probably big time, but you would never know it. That’s what I love about it. They figured out months later I played. Anytime I walk up now, it’s, ‘Hey, Big Time,’ and then I start sweating and stuff. I don’t like that attention, and they know that.”

Other

Other

Professional athletes have to maintain a strict fitness and diet regimen — and ballerinas are no exception. Olga Smirnova is the 25-year-old prima ballerina for the Russian Bolshoi Ballet and the star of The Sleeping Beauty, a film version of the classic ballet that hits U.S. theaters March 10. Since discovering dance as a young girl she has spent her life strengthening her body for her art. “When I was [in school], I did want to be the best, and that was what propelled me forward to improve and achieve,” she tells PEOPLE. “What I like about dancing is the opportunity to express myself, because in life I can’t always be who I want to be — but on stage I can really be myself.” And she works hard onstage and off to accomplish that goal. “You rarely see people in a professional ballet company who aren’t in shape because the work is so physically demanding,” says Smirnova, who hails from St. Petersburg, Russia. Ballerinas earn their lean figures, she says, by spending most of their time in the studio. “As dancers, we start every day with a ballet class and the rest of the day rehearsing all the ballets in our repertoire,” she says. “Even [for] an easier or shorter performance, you still need several days and many hours rehearsing.”  

Dance

Ballet

April 11 (Reuters) - Canacol Energy Ltd: * CANACOL ENERGY LTD PROVIDES CHIRIMIA 1 DRILLING RESULTS AND OPERATIONS UPDATE Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

Technology

Telecommunications

The Winnipeg Jets try to extend their winning streak to a season-high three games Saturday afternoon when they visit the Buffalo Sabres as Connor Hellebuyck looks to build off a strong performance in his third consecutive start. Winnipeg won the first two contests of its three-game road trip to move back to .500 on the season, scoring 10 goals in victories over Tampa Bay and Florida. “It’s what we wanted to do on this road trip,” Jets center Bryan Little told reporters after Wednesday’s victory, “and we’re off to a great start.” The Sabres dropped three of their past four games, falling 4-3 in overtime Thursday at Chicago. Buffalo owns one of the best power plays in the NHL but is last on the penalty kill at 74.6 percent. “We’ve been better,” Sabres captain Brian Gionta told reporters, “but it’s something we need to improve and if we improve that, it’s going to lead to wins.” TV: 1 p.m. ET, TSN3 (Winnipeg), MSG (Buffalo) ABOUT THE JETS (19-19-3): Hellebuyck bounced back from a poor performance Saturday against the Islanders, making 68 saves in the two victories this week. Forward Patrik Laine leads all NHL rookies with 21 goals and recorded two goals with four assists in his past three games, while linemate Nikolaj Ehlers has four goals in his past three games. The Jets are 4-of-12 on the power play during their past four contests. ABOUT THE SABRES (14-15-9): Buffalo earned a point Thursday thanks in part to its special teams as it scored two power-play goals while escaping both shorthanded situations. Leading scorer Kyle Okposo extended his points streak to four games with a power-play goal Thursday, while center Jack Eichel has three goals and three assists in his past five contests. Center Ryan O’Reilly recorded a pair of assists Thursday after missing four games following an appendectomy. 1. Okposo scored twice as the Sabres beat the Jets 3-1 on Oct. 30 in Winnipeg. 2. Ehlers, who scored 15 goals (38 points) as a rookie last season, has 13 goals and 35 points through 41 games. 3. Thursday’s defeat dropped Buffalo to 3-9 in overtime and shootouts. PREDICTION: Jets 4, Sabres 3

Sports

Hockey

(Adds analyst comments, sales, background) Nov 13 (Reuters) - Pub operator J D Wetherspoon Plc posted higher first-quarter total sales on Wednesday, as customers spent more money at its nearly 900 pubs across Britain and Ireland. The company, which was initially called Martin’s Free House, has seen higher demand for pink gin, coffee, real ale, breakfast and beer, even as Britain is witnessing a move away from drinking by millennials. Wetherspoon, which expects full-year performance in line with its previous expectations, said total sales rose 5.6% for 13 weeks ended Oct. 27. Stifel analysts said they forecast full-year like-for-like sales growth of 4.5% and pretax profit of 89 million pounds ($113.88 million). The company, like most pub and restaurant chains, has been battling increased costs due to a mandatory minimum wage hike, higher property prices and power bills. It has also been investing in its more labour-intensive food and coffee businesses. Britain’s plan to raise the minimum wage to 10.50 pounds an hour was endorsed by an independent review last week that found setting a floor on pay had a negligible effect on job creation. Companies are now likely to see wage costs rise after next month’s snap national election whatever the outcome, further threatening cost levels at restaurants and pubs. But the wider British pub sector is brimming with deals, with Greene King bought out by Hong Kong’s CK Asset for 4.6 billion pounds, while Slug and Lettuce pub chain owner Stonegate agreed to buy Ei Group for 1.27 billion pounds. J D wetherspoon’s like-for-like sales rose 5.3%, which Stifel analysts called well ahead of the sector. “This is a strong start to the year in our view, ahead of our forecast revenue growth of 4.0% for the full year, but we are mindful of the early stage of the year, challenging market backdrop...and potential changes to national living wage,” Investec said in a note. $1 = 0.7815 pounds Reporting by Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich

Business

Investment

A company that runs the Transportation Security Administration's expedited check-in technology has teamed up with the National Football League to help get travelers through the airport faster. Fans of the New York Jets and the San Francisco 49ers can now sign up for the TSA's security checkpoint shortcut program — called PreCheck — while they tailgate. Applying for TSA PreCheck costs $85, and is good for 5 years. Currently, the pilot program is camped out at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and the 49ers' Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, with more teams expected to join the bandwagon within the next few weeks. PreCheck offers access to expedited lanes at airport checkpoints, allowing passengers to wear their shoes, jackets and belts and maintain possession of important carry-on items. There are currently about 4.9 million approved PreCheck enrollees, but TSA's goal is to sign up as many eligible travelers as possible. In that vein, some of the NFL's stadiums will be the first to partner with identity-verification company Idemia to bring the IdentoGO technology used by TSA to their venues. Idemia's tech will also provide some biometric-based technology that can enable 'trusted fan' programs to be deployed at some stadiums. "Our partnership with the Jets and the 49ers allows us to reach as many as 75,000 fans at each home game, and enroll a high percentage of those people into the proven safe and secure program," Didier Lamouche, Idemia's CEO, told CNBC. For now, Jets fans (ticketed or just tailgating) seeking to enroll in PreCheck will find a branded IdentoGo recreational vehicle parked at the MetLife entrance (between parking Lots E and F) on game days. Over on the West Coast, 49ers fans will need to be ticketed for the day's home game to access IdentoGo's RV, which will be parked along the vendor-rich "Faithful Mile," located at the Green Parking Lot 1- Gate C). For those not attending NFL games, the in-person verification process can take place at 44 airports. Some states, like Virginia. offer the service at a wide variety of out-of-airport offices, or IdentoGo locations. However, signing up at these football stadiums will come with a small bonus. In addition to the time-savings for sports fans, those who sign up at Jets home games will receive a $20 gift certificate that can be used inside the stadium towards beer, food and merchandise purchases. Fans who sign up at either stadium will also get an approved clear plastic bag that can be used to take items in the stadium. The San Francisco PreCheck sign-up kicks off this weekend, when the team plays the Dallas Cowboys at Levi's Stadium. Meanwhile, demand for the New York program has been so positive that IdentoGo had to double on-site enrollment capacity after the first game, said IdentoGo senior vice president Charles Carroll. For those who wish to avoid paying the $85 fee, there are about a dozen credit cards—including selected brands of American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Diners Club—that offer a fee credit for the TSA PreCheck and Global Entry programs, as well as several airlines and hotel brands. These include United Airlines, Hilton, IHG, Marriott and Carlson Rezidor, which allow members to pay for the program with accumulated miles or travel points. Clarification: IdentoGO is the entity running the pilot PreCheck sign-up program at NFL stadiums. —Harriet Baskas is the author of seven books, including "Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can't or Won't Show You, " and the Stuck at the Airport blog. Follow her on Twitter at . Follow Road Warrior at .

Other

Other

CHICAGO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - U.S. live cattle futures rose more than 1% on Wednesday to fresh multi-month highs and feeder cattle futures surged 2% on what traders said was a combination of fund-driven buying and signs of strength in the cash cattle market. Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) December live cattle ended 1.475 cents higher at 118.300 cents per pound after reaching 118.600 cents, the contract’s highest since April 25. CME most-active January feeder cattle futures settled up 3.200 cents at 144.800 cents per pound after reaching 144.975, its highest since May 21. The January feeder cattle contract triggered buy-stops as it pushed through chart resistance at 143 cents. “It felt like they were squeezing out the weak shorts. Tomorrow is the final trading day of October, and the funds close out their books on a monthly basis. So to me, this looks like end-month position squaring,” said Jeff French, analyst with Top Third Ag Marketing in Chicago. Cash cattle traded as high as $112 per cwt, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from about $110 last week. “That left a lot of traders believing it would be $114 by the end of the week, and that seemed to fuel the buying (in futures),” said Dennis Smith, a broker for Archer Financial Services in Chicago. “It’s my opinion we are seeing the funds pile in and get long here,” Smith added. CME lean hog futures closed higher but trailed the advances in the cattle markets. CME December hogs ended the day up 1.450 cents at 65.775 cents per pound. (Reporting by Julie Ingwersen Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

Finance

Markets

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google CEO Sundar Pichai had good reason to be excited Wednesday. Pichai, who is probably most often described as "subdued," was unusually energized as he emceed his team through a host of product announcements — several genuinely impressive. He kicked things off with Google Home, the company's answer to Amazon Echo. Then came Allo and Duo, a pair of messaging apps that look well poised to compete with the likes of WhatsApp and Apple's FaceTime. And Android Instant Apps — apps that download themselves directly from links — could change the face of mobile, ending (or at least mitigating) the cold war between apps and the mobile web. Underneath all the excitement, however, there's a sense that Google is afraid. It's no coincidence that most of Google's announcements directly compete with products from others. Gadgets like the Echo and apps like Facebook Messenger aren't just popular services, they're changing the way we interact digitally. More to the point, they're shifting our experiences away from searching the web and using apps themselves, areas that Google dominates and are responsible for most of its revenue. There's a reason people are turning away from traditional search and toward more and more new interfaces like voice interaction: convenience. When you need something — be it your calendar, a weather report, an Uber or even just a cat video — it's just simpler (or more "natural," if you prefer) to ask for it, out loud, than to reach for a device and commence tapping, swiping and waiting for various screens to load. Google vice president Mario Queiroz holds up the new Google Home device during the Google I/O 2016 keynote. Of course, Google's been doing voice and digital assistants for years, but today it showed it now understands playing the convenience game means more than just having good back-end technology. That tech also needs to have the right pathway to the user. That's one area the Echo got exactly right — it's the talking speaker we never knew we wanted. With Home and Allo, Google finally appears to have the right vehicles to meet users where they are, even if others got there first. Home is basically a clone of the Amazon Echo, but one of the Echo's weaknesses is that very little of our digital lives is lived on Amazon, so it relies on (often shaky) connections to other services to offer that full picture. With its ubiquitous services, Google is arguably in a better position to connect its smart speaker with our digital selves. With Allo, Google may finally give people a reason to use a Google messaging app instead of Snapchat, WhatsApp, Slack or Viber. With Allo, Google may finally give people a reason to use a Google messaging app instead of Snapchat, WhatsApp, Slack, Viber or one of the many other messaging apps, all of which seem to work better than Hangouts. The wild card here is, again, the interactions (which are sort of like a supercharged Slackbot) that could keep users coming back simply because it's more convenient than launching a bunch of disparate apps. All of this, if it works, translates into more users spending more time in Google services — a trend that, as our reliance on traditional search declines, often points the other way.  Even Android Instant Apps is part of this. It's no coincidence that the demo started with a Google search, but ordinarily a user would have been directed to download an app, a permanent window in their home screen that leads to a service that Google is more than likely not a part of. With Instant Apps, the search link still downloads an app, but it does so invisibly, gives the user the best experience, lets them pay for things with their Google account, and then it goes away — no permanent home screen real estate lost. Want to buy or do something else? Just come back to Google, and we'll handle it. Everybody wins. Well, except for Facebook, or Microsoft, or Amazon — all of which are fighting this same war over consumer attention with their own platforms. Whether or not Google's I/O broadside will give it an edge depends on execution, and if history is any guide, it'll be a mixed bag. Google engineering director Erik Kay talks about the new Allo messaging app and Duo during the Google I/O 2016 keynote. Hangouts (which Allo and Duo essentially replace) and Google Now (which the Google assistant evolved from) were well-received when launched, but both have suffered confusing purposes and interfaces. Google Now isn't even a proper app on Android, and Hangouts is a mess, with an unsatisfying mix of features that don't compare well with what's available on other services. With its announcements at I/O 2016, Google has shown it's very much aware of this. It knows it let others take the lead in key product areas, which is why it didn't simply try to revamp Hangouts or wait for its sister company, Nest, to build a smart home hub. It didn't need to just show something new, it needed to show a new way of doing things. It didn't need to just show something new, it needed to show a new way of doing things. At least that was the message; behind the scenes it may be another matter. Google is a sprawling, 60,000-person company with many different and sometimes redundant services, all glued onto the central cash engine of search and ads. Are Allo, Home, Instant Apps and the new assistant just a shiny coat of paint on on the old Google? Or has it really turned a corner in its approach? That's what will determine Google's fate in the next platform war. Not the Duo's knock-knock feature or Google Home's ability to understand small children or how many apps it recruits for its Instant Apps program. The tech was never the problem. Google needs to put the experience above all else — even above its aging search-and-ads business model. The feature Google needs to offer is seamlessness. Only then will it have nothing to fear. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

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Cloud Computing

THE pages crackle, specks of parchment falling to the ground like snowflakes. Wrapped in a white shawl, the book open on his knees on an embroidered velvet cloth, Father Teklehaimanot turns the sheets fastidiously lest the leather ligature tear them. Inside the text is dull and faded. By contrast, the colours of the illustrations are brilliant, rich purples and blues that brighten the gloom of the monastery. On the floor lies the cloth in which the volume is usually enfolded; beside it, the pile of boxes on which it rests. This is where one of the world’s most precious religious artefacts is kept, as it has been for as long as the monks can remember. The Garima Gospels are not easy to see. These illuminated Christian manuscripts—at around 1,500 years old, perhaps the oldest of their kind in existence—belong to Abba Garima monastery, which is perched on a remote outcrop in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. The roughly 100 monks store the two books in a circular treasure-house next to the church. Down a slope, just beyond the cloister, is a small museum, built six years ago with the help of the French government, but it is almost empty. The gospels were placed there only briefly before the monks removed them to their customary home. Visiting researchers are occasionally admitted—as The Economist was after lengthy negotiation—but tourists are rarely welcomed. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. The ongoing dispute over where and how the gospels should be kept, and who may see them, is intensely local yet symbolic. It revolves around the age-old traditions of an isolated monastery, but it exemplifies the scepticism sometimes aroused by Western heritage programmes. It encapsulates the rival claims of sacred rites and secular scholarship, raising questions about the aim of preservation and the ultimate ownership of a nation’s culture. According to legend the gospels—written in the ancient language of Ge’ez—are the work of Abba (Father) Garima, a Byzantine prince who founded the monastery in the 5th or early 6th century. The monks have protected the relics from Muslim invaders, colonial armies and fires. The monastery has been sacked or looted at least four times, most recently by the occupying Italians in 1936, each time being rebuilt. It is unlikely the gospels have ever left its walls. They were unknown to the outside world until Beatrice Playne, an English artist, visited in the late 1940s. Women are not allowed inside the compound, so the manuscripts were brought out to her. In recent years scholarly interest in them has surged. Vital restoration work was carried out by the Ethiopian Heritage Fund, a British charity, in the mid-2000s. Today a trickle of foreign academics arrive at Abba Garima’s gates seeking the gospels’ clues to the early history of eastern Christianity. But the monks’ suspicions run deep. A long history of cultural theft has scarred Ethiopia. In April riches plundered by the British in 1867-68 go on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, despite long-standing calls for their return. During the Italian occupation many artefacts were taken from Ethiopian churches to museums in Rome, afterwards vanishing. Lately there has been an uptick in low-profile thefts, driven by a flourishing black market in Ethiopian antiquities. “People come here with permission from the government, but then we find them doing other things,” says Father Teklehaimanot warily. The monks’ unease reflects a broader move against researchers by the Ethiopian Orthodox church. Scholars say it has become almost impossible to study ancient manuscripts. Photographing them is generally forbidden. Efforts by European and American libraries to digitise hundreds of thousands of Christian codices have ended abruptly, often bitterly. For some in the church, a deficit of trust is compounded by a concern over authority: control of texts confers it, sharing them dilutes it. “There is a feeling that if these manuscripts are made too accessible the church will lose its secrets,” says Michael Gervers, a historian at the University of Toronto. Some see digitisation as akin to robbery. The moving of sacred objects to profane settings arouses particular anxieties. “Museums necessarily re-contextualise the objects on display,” says Michael Di Giovine, author of “The Heritage-scape”, a book about heritage and tourism. In the Catholic and Orthodox faiths, he points out, veneration often involves touching, kissing, burning incense and audible prayer, “things you simply cannot do in a Western-style museum”. He points to the case of St Pio of Pietrelcina in Italy, whose body was exhumed in 2008 and displayed in a glass sarcophagus; distressed pilgrims tried to sue the church authorities for commercialising the shrine. Father Columba Stewart, an American Benedictine monk who digitised the Garima Gospels in 2013 for the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Minnesota, observes a similar worry in Ethiopia—that the placing of manuscripts under glass takes them too far from their role in religious ceremony. Conversely, researchers fret about the gospels’ future in their current setting. When Jacques Mercier, a French art historian, visited in 1995, the second volume of gospels seemed to have gone missing (it turned up later). As their custodians become aware of their financial value, the temptation to profit grows. Some monks can be bribed to produce the parchments for viewing, risking damage. “Every time you open the book the edges turn to dust,” says Mr Gervers. “So bit by bit they will fall apart.” At bottom this is a fundamental disagreement about heritage. To whom, in the end, do jewels such as the Garima Gospels belong? Since at least the 1960s Western ideas of conservation have emphasised humanity’s common inheritance and the ideal of universal access. This view replaces the principle of ownership with one of stewardship. Thus Mr Gervers suggests UNESCO should intervene to protect the gospels. Others think they should be taken into temporary custody by the church authorities. “It’s a matter not of who owns them, per se, but whether they are available to the public to study and examine,” says Getahun Girma, an Ethiopian scholar. “The monasteries don’t have the resources—the knowledge, the money, the organisational set-up—to do this.” But this universalist approach is not common in Ethiopia, even if the church officially encourages the keeping of antiquities in museums. In any case, an Ethiopian monastery is an island, the writ of the outside world barely reaching its gates. Abba Garima’s isolation has helped keep the manuscripts safe for centuries. The treasure-house may be cluttered and dirty, but it is bone-dry and closely guarded. “Many things were lost through history, but they kept these treasures,” Daniel Seife-Michael, a scholar and priest of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, says of the monks. “They would die to protect them.”

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Frank Bruni It’s looking more and more like Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton. He’s definitely the strangest. With his fits of pique, spasms of ignorance and flashes of demagogy, he has turned the G.O.P.’s favorite bogeywoman into its summer crush. I haven’t seen a love story this unlikely since “Harold and Maude.” Dozens of prominent Republicans have come out and said that they’ll vote for her or consider it, including, just last week, the Silicon Valley titan Meg Whitman, the Jeb Bush confidante Sally Bradshaw, and Maria Comella, a former spokeswoman for two of Trump’s most pugnacious promoters, Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani. You can expect that list to grow. The Clinton campaign clearly does. As Bloomberg Politics and The Washington Post reported last week, Clinton’s aides have gone so far as to set up something of a special operation — a defection watch — to monitor news accounts and any other public hints that a Republican leader is thinking of renouncing Trump, so that someone on Team Clinton can reach out and ask him or her to take the next step. The Times’s Jonathan Martin revealed that Clinton herself called Whitman a month ago. I envision a box of cigars en route to Colin Powell, long-stemmed roses for Condoleezza Rice, a brand-new smartphone for Senator Lindsey Graham. Hallmark should consider a line of come-to-Clinton cards, with a donkey and an elephant gazing into each other’s eyes against the setting sun of Trump’s orange head. The breadth of G.O.P. affection for Clinton shouldn’t be overstated. The grudging nature of it can’t be overlooked. If Trump stormed off and a more appetizing Republican was put on the menu, these Clinton converts would most likely revert to their usual diet. And there’s a real limit to the number of Republicans who will publicly embrace her. But many, many more Republicans are privately rooting for her. By making clear that they won’t vote for Trump, they intend to throw the election her way. After decades of demonizing her and all those Benghazi hearings, a noteworthy contingent of Republicans are giving her a degree of active and passive help that less polarizing Democratic presidential nominees never received. She’s gone from Republican voodoo doll to Post-Partisan Barbie. To appreciate the surprise of this, flash back on four words: “vast right-wing conspiracy.” That’s what Clinton labeled the political enemies who exposed her husband’s sexual involvement with Monica Lewinsky and who pressed, successfully, for his impeachment. The phrase was larger than that ugly chapter. It traced the magnitude of suspicion and animosity that the Clintons felt toward many Republicans, and vice versa. And remember that toward the end of her husband’s administration, she provoked the fury of pro-Israel Republicans with a public kiss of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat’s wife, Suha. Now many of those same Republicans are the ones most disposed toward her and opposed to Trump, whose geopolitical naïveté and isolationist talk worry them more than anything in her past. Clinton isn’t unschooled in appeasing the other side. For all the florid fighting that her husband did with congressional Republicans, he also moved rightward on occasion, famously signing welfare reform legislation. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when she was finishing her first year in the Senate, I did a long magazine story on her and Chuck Schumer’s effort to get help for New York, and several Senate Republicans told me how surprised and impressed they were by her work ethic, warmth and willingness to cooperate. For many months now, she has been sending signals that a second Clinton administration would differ from President Obama’s in the earnestness and aggressiveness of its bid for bipartisan cooperation. Her pick of Senator Tim Kaine as a running mate fit into that framework. He’s liked and respected by Republican colleagues, a dynamic that Clinton surrogates immediately stressed. What hasn’t happened, though, is the construction of a substantive, policy-based bridge across the aisle. She moved leftward during the primaries to deal with Bernie Sanders’s challenge, and many of her positions are anathema even to those Republicans who prefer her to Trump. Does she change that over the next months or, if elected, upon taking office? Does she have to? There are some fascinating forks in the road ahead — some big decisions — all created by the singular mess of Trump’s candidacy and the possibility, suggested in the latest polls, including one that showed her ahead in Georgia, that he’ll lose the election by a devastating margin. Many Democrats smell a rout, hope that a slew of Republicans go down with Trump, and fantasize about a subsequent Democratic dominance in Washington that will allow the party to enact laws without much if any Republican input and assistance. After all the Republican obstructionism that they’ve put up with, they ache for such liberation. But such a rout would presumably require Clinton to campaign stridently against endangered House and Senate Republicans between now and Nov. 8, an approach at odds with her current entreaties to the Whitmans of the world. It would also be a huge, risky bet on sustained Republican disarray and a durable Democratic advantage, without which Republican revenge would be swift and merciless. Obama defied Republicans during the first two years of his presidency, only to be tormented by them for the remainder of it. That’s why I’m hoping that Clinton takes a different, big-tent tack, and combines passion projects with attention to areas of common Democratic and Republican interest: tax reform, immigration reform, maybe even education reform. Yes, a big Democratic victory in November would give Democrats both the right and the imperative to implement their most deeply cherished ideas. But it would reflect the unpopularity of Trump as much as any sweeping, compelling mandate for a particular program. And we’ve seen, in recent years, what sharply drawn lines and perpetual warfare between the parties bequeath: legislative paralysis, debased discourse and the precise public disgust with politics and politicians that has given rise to Trump. Here we are, stuck and miserable. Clinton’s summer of love isn’t merely a stunning narrative twist. It’s an opportunity, in the nick of time. Despite our supposedly intractable partisanship, a swelling group of highly visible leaders is putting country before indiscriminate allegiance to their party. That’s an invitation for Clinton to do a bit of the same. Of all politicians, she could be the one with the best chance to move us a few crucial inches beyond this wretched sclerosis. Who would have ever predicted that?

Politics

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President Trump is expected to meet this week with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of the G-20 summit. The meeting will likely happen on Thursday evening, a spokesman for the German government said Monday, according to Reuters.  Merkel said last week the summit will focus on pressing forward with the Paris climate accord despite Trump's move to pull the U.S. out of the deal. Merkel last week told Germany’s Parliament she is prepared to have difficult talks with Trump at the G-20 summit about the Paris deal and climate change, The Washington Post reported. “Since the U.S. announced that it would exit the Paris agreement, we cannot expect any easy talks in Hamburg,” Merkel said. “The dissent is obvious, and it would be dishonest to cover it up. “We can’t, and we won’t, wait until the last person on earth is convinced of the scientific evidence for climate change,” she added in a jab at Trump, whom she didn't mention by name. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

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Tina Tchen, the woman who tried to grease the wheels for Jussie Smollett in Chicago, isn't saying much ... now that he's been cleared of all criminal charges. We got Tchen in Washington, D.C. -- she's a power player there as Michelle Obama's former Chief of Staff -- but also in Chicago. We asked her, multiple times, what her thoughts are on Jussie's future now that he's no longer facing 16 felony counts. Watch, she had an answer locked and loaded ... which she fired off. Repeatedly. You'll recall, Tchen had reached out to Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx shortly after Jussie reported the alleged attack. In text messages, Tchen said she was speaking on behalf of the Smollett family ... which had "concerns about the investigation." After Foxx's office let Smollett skate, critics speculated Tchen's involvement reeked of the kind of political cronyism for which Chicago's built an infamous reputation. If she's still pulling for Jussie, Tina didn't let on with us. Seems mum's the word after his sweet, yet controversial, deal.

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One of the world's most popular games, a first-person shooter named "Overwatch," is headed to the Nintendo Switch.The team-based competitive shooter has been wildly popular since it launched way back in May 2016."Overwatch" is scheduled to launch on the Nintendo Switch on October 15.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.The world's hottest game console, Nintendo's Switch, is about to get one of the world's hottest games: "Overwatch."Nintendo announced as much on Wednesday afternoon during a Nintendo Switch livestream on YouTube, including the game's release date: October 15.The game's imminent arrival on the Switch was first reported by Kotaku earlier on Wednesday. Though it's certainly a big deal that "Overwatch" is headed to Switch, it's far from surprising: The game is incredibly popular and already available on every other major game console.It's also colorful, enormously fun, and ridiculously addictive — the perfect "one more match" game, especially on a kid-friendly console like the Switch. So, why wasn't "Overwatch" already on the Switch?"Right now there are some technical challenges," Blizzard game director Jeff Kaplan told Business Insider in a May 2017 interview. "The tech specs [on Switch] aren't quite there. It would be a non-trivial undertaking for us to make the game on Switch."He pointed to Nintendo's history of upgrading consoles with more horsepower as something to keep an eye on. "One of Nintendo's most successful platforms is 3DS," Kaplan said. "And watch how many times they upgraded that over time," he said. "Just because something might not be feasible now doesn't mean that at some point in the future it might be an option for us."Of note: The main Switch model on sale in September 2019 is almost identical to the one that launched in March 2017.Check out the debut trailer for "Overwatch" on Nintendo Switch right here:

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Video Games

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK It’s a bit weird interviewing Paul McCartney. A day and time is agreed, your phone number is taken, and in the following weeks you tell your mates about it, you tweet about it, you tell pub smoking areas about it, you tell your mum about it. Everybody knows Paul McCartney. Everybody loves Paul McCartney. But it’s not until an unknown number calls you two weeks later, you answer it, and the voice at the other end says, “Hey Joe, it’s Paul here,” that you fully comprehend what is happening—“Shitting hell, I’m on the phone to Paul McCartney.” You’re talking to a living Beatle, a 21-time Grammy winner, a figure more integral to the history of contemporary music than the humble turntable – he’s waiting for you to say something, and all your questions just abandoned your head and floated skywards like dead souls. If articulating those questions was hard, writing them was ten times worse. In the build up to the call, I toyed with all sorts of research. Four CDs of Pure McCartney arrived first, his new 67 track brain-busting compilation of the greatest tracks he’s ever blessed—a blueprint, basically, for modern pop music. Then a book arrived in the post titled Paul McCartney: The Biography, written by Philip Norman. Totalling an intimidating 853 pages, it occupied a space on the left of my desk for days; casting a dark, towering shadow on everything within a five metre radius, and taunting me silently like a gremlin. Next, an incredibly in-depth BBC radio interview went online, in which Paul was thoroughly dissected for an hour about his entire career. Finally, as if to twist the knife, he dropped a six part virtual reality documentary containing stories, reflections and anecdotes that span his whole musical output. And this is just 2016, I’m tediously listing off. I’m not including every little bit of McCartneyography that has been happening since “Love Me Do” dropped in 1962. What purpose can another interview with Paul McCartney serve anymore? What could I ask that hasn’t been asked a million times? How did you write this thing? Nope. How did you meet John? Nope. What do you think of modern pop music? Nope. Something something something Kanye West? Nope. Nope. Nope. As Adam Gopnik wrote about McCartney in April’s New Yorker, “What’s to know is known.” So, what then? Should Britain stay in the EU, Paul? What do you order at Dominos? Do you ever covertly look at people in the reflection of train windows? Are ghosts real? After two weeks of blank stares, my extremely thorough research reached its conclusion—there was nothing in particular left to question Paul McCartney about. So, I figured, my only hope of an angle was to talk to him about exactly that: nothing in particular. Whether or not a conversation with Paul McCartney about nothing in particular can be interesting or even remotely publishable, I was about to find out. Noisey: Hi Paul. Do you ever feel like you have nothing left to tell people?Paul: Yes, definitely. There is one story for every situation. I do it in my live show. I’m talking and a story comes up. I think to myself, “If anyone’s been to my show before then they’ve heard all this.” There’s only one story about how I met John. I can invent another if you like, but everyone knows it wouldn’t be true. I always think to myself, “I’ve told this a million times.” Is there a positive to all the documenting? Has anything recently ever triggered anything you'd totally forgotten? Or have we literally milked you dry?That’s interesting, and it does happen. I enjoy it when it does. I did a poetry book a few years back. I had a reading coming up, so I asked my poet friend Adrian Mitchell, “What do I do?” He said just think of something to say about how the poem came about. I was planning on reading out “Blackbird.” I started to remember writing it. It was in the 60s when all the civil rights stuff was happening in America—Arkensas, Little Rock, and Alabama. I remembered that I had first started writing that song as something that I thought would give hope to the people going through those struggles. Now, I’d not thought about that in a long, long time. Now, when I do the song, I always remind people that’s what it was originally about. You’ve been stupidly famous for over 50 years. You haven’t publicly shamed yourself, suffered a breakdown, wrestled with addiction, or even just mysteriously disappeared for a decade. How do you survive something as deadly and unpredictable as fame?It’s something I’ve asked myself a lot. I think it all stems from my Liverpool family. They are very down to earth. Whenever I would go up there, it’s as if I’m not famous. I’m just “Our Paul.” It’s all, “Alright Paul, how you doing man? OK, great.” I got grounding from them. Once we got famous, you could remember that. You’re just an ordinary Liverpool person. Yes, it all spirals out into the fame thing, but as long as you remember who yo– [At this point in our call, there were a couple of sudden thuds and bangs, and a small McCartney sounding yelp—then the line went completely dead. Obviously, after about ten seconds, I started to think, “Oh no, what if I just heard Paul McCartney die?” By 12 seconds, I was feeling the sadness of a world without him. I saw the news reports, the tributes, the Tweets, the respectful street parties in Liverpool, the content, all of the content, the gigs, and the widespread national mourning. By fifteen seconds, I overcame my grief, and selfishly started to see newspapers interviewing me about it all: “We spoke to the guy who was on the phone to McCartney when he snuffed it.” Pull quote: “I couldn’t believe it. One minute we were talking normally then bang.” Then my phone rang, and it was Paul again.'] Paul: Sorry, I dropped the phone and all the batteries fell out… Anyway, I grew up with quite a good idea of how to keep things normal. I wasn’t always successful, but most of the time I was keen to keep it grounded. I go on public transport, I keep cool. Have you seen fame swallow those around you?Yes I have. That is what happens. That’s another way to keep yourself grounded, by seeing how fame goes for others. Once you’ve seen the “Do you know who I am?” syndrome in full effect, you know you’ll never do it yourself. If you do, then the minute you leave the room, everyone you were shouting at will just laugh and go “Fuck off!” Have you ever mentored others struggling with fame?There have been a few people I’ve tried to help over the years by chatting to them, but not always successfully. Some of them I could see were too heavy into drugs. I’d tell them to ease off a bit or be careful. But I wasn’t always successful, and some of them are no longer here. Does it feel different being on stage now to how it felt as a teenager?It’s different. You used to be unsure of what people thought of you. That is the basis of stage fright. You think, “They are going to hate me and something is going to go wrong.” In the early days, I used to get very nervous. I remember thinking about giving it all up one time in the early days of the Beatles. The difference now is, I just say to my promoter, “Just stick one show on sale and see how it goes.” He calls back he says, “Chicago just sold out in 2 minutes!” That boosts your confidence. Now, I’m more confident that people want to come and see us play. Is there anywhere in the world music hasn’t taken you that you wish it would?China. I’ve never been to China. Lots of people have. I’ve never been. I quite fancy that. Maybe one of these days. It could be pretty cool couldn’t it? Have you ever fallen out of love with music?It’s always something I love. Before I called you, I was noodling around on one of my guitars. I’d pick it up and play a little something. Suddenly you’re writing a song and not just noodling around. That is the excitement; that you can magically craft something that never existed. That is very addictive. Where is that moment of satisfaction? When you craft it? Or when you’re playing it onstage to thousands?There are a few moments. The moment when you craft it is one. The moment you record it is another one. Then, when you play it for the first time to people. They are the three moments of satisfaction. What have you learned from your time on earth?That’s a difficult question. The first thought that comes to mind is: don’t underestimate anyone. If you saw my Liverpool family, you’d think they were just a bunch of scousers. But once you get to know them, there are all sorts of hidden depths in there. One of my cousins—who was older than me—he compiled the crosswords for The Times, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. They have got to be three of the hardest crosswords in the world. They sure are.He’s just some scouse bloke. You’d never spot him in a crowd. You’d think he’s nobody. He doesn’t look like anything. But he is. That’s why I love talking to different people. I ask them “Where you from?”, “What you doing?” It sounds like I’m being nosey, but I just want to know. Because sometimes you find out the most amazing things about people. The world has taught me to never to assume somebody is nothing. You might be completely underestimating them. What would you tell a sixteen year old Paul McCartney if you could?Don’t go into the music business. Wow.No, I’m joking. What would I tell him? Be careful, son. Take it easy. Be true to yourself and enjoy it. So, you wouldn’t change a thing?You have certain regrets just like anyone does in life. Moments I look back on and think I wasn’t cool enough in that situation, or I wasn’t very kind to someone. But that’s life. When you’re growing up, you’re not always sensitive to people. But apart from that, I’d do it all again. What scares you?I suppose the way you can’t nail life down. You grow up thinking that if you learn enough stuff and get the right education then you’ll be able to nail life. I’ll know what’s going on. One thing you discover is that the goalposts are always changing. The rules change. The world changes. When that happens, you realize you still don’t have a clue. And it shocks you. You think, “I don’t have the information I need to deal with this.” That scares me. I do that a lot. I think, “If I just read this one book… If I just finish this one project… If I just go running for three months... I’ll be bossing life.” I never am bossing life. Then you read that book, you get that done, and somebody changes the rules. It’s this book now, it’s this thing now. The unpredictability of life. Other than that, I’m not too bad. I don’t live a fearful life. Has the internet made your life better or worse?I kinda like it. In music specifically, it had got very boring to do everything the traditional industry way. Releasing a record had become the worst part of making a record. You created it—a labor of love—you’ve played it as nice as you could. Then suddenly it was like you’d finished your exam paper and you had to wait for the teacher to judge you. I wasn’t making music to be judged; I was making it for the love of it. I don't know if I can even remember a pre-internet music industry anymore.One of the funniest clichés about the old music industry was 'going to Cologne.' They’d always send you to Cologne, and they’d invite everyone from France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. You would do a series of interviews, and it was so mind numbingly boring. We talked earlier about having the same stories to the same questions? Well, you would do that all day long. “What is this song about?” I’d answer. [Affects German accent] “Hey, what is this song about?” I’d say the same thing again. I remember saying, “I’m never going back to Cologne.” The Cologne syndrome. But in answer to your initial question, I like that the internet has made it an open game now. Anything that opens up the game is good. The Internet does that. Having said that, I’m not sure I would just ‘drop’ an album. Would you ever get Snapchat?Yeah! Sure! But I’m not technical. I’m barely technical with guitars. Someone tells me, “Hey Paul, I have an L130.” I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Could be a train for all I know. This translates to the computer and Internet world. I watch stuff on my iPad and take photos on my iPhone, but I’m not, you know… a gamer. Do you think you’ll ever be a gamer?I wish I had the time. But there is always something to do. Like this interview. If I didn’t have this interview, maybe I’d be gaming? Did you learn anything from becoming a grandfather that you didn’t from becoming a father?You just remember it all again. I suppose the thing is, your grandchildren are different from your own children. Time has passed. Now they are all on screens. Should kids be on screens all the time? There’s new stuff around that weren’t for my kids. So that’s what you learn from becoming a grandad… you learn how to operate a computer. You said in one of the episodes of your new virtual reality documentary, that you discovered the meaning of life in Bob Dylan’s hotel room one night, and you wrote it down. The next day, you found the piece of paper and it just said “There are seven levels.” First question: Were you on drugs, Paul?OK, first answer: Yes! I think that was our first pot experience. Yes! Answer: yes! Moving on. Second part: has your interpretation of the meaning of life changed since then?I never quite knew what I meant that night, but the weird thing is, I’ve run into people who have said they got something from it. They start going into scriptures and ancient texts and stuff, and apparently there are people who say that, about levels. All I know is, it seemed very definite to me at the time. And because it was my first pot experience, my overriding concern was telling everyone back home. You know how you do that? If you do something great, you can’t wait to tell your mates? Like, “I’ve just been there!” or “I’ve just met this person!” or “I’ve just been to Disneyland!” Well I thought I’d cracked the meaning of life, so I couldn’t wait to tell everyone back home. Who knows… Maybe “There are seven levels” is right. It certainly seemed very right that night. You can follow Joe Zadeh on Twitter. Pure McCartney is out now.

Music

Rock

Hillary Clinton has a nearly 80 percent chance of winning the White House in November, FiveThirtyEight polling guru Nate Silver predicted Wednesday. FiveThirtyEight projected Clinton has a 79 percent chance of winning the general election against Donald Trump, who has just a 20 percent chance of succeeding President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. “Here’s how to think about it: We’re kind of at halftime of the election right now, and she’s taking a seven-point, maybe a 10-point lead into halftime,” Silver told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America.” “There’s a lot of football left to be played, but she’s ahead in almost every poll, every swing state, every national poll.” Indeed, a Ballotpedia survey of seven swing states released Wednesday shows the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee sweeping Trump in Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia by margins ranging from 4 to 17 percentage points. Silver, who correctly forecast 49 out of 50 states in 2008 and every state in 2012, noted that both camps “have a lot of room to grow,” but no candidate has blown a lead as large as Clinton’s advantage over Trump in nearly 30 years, when former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis lost to George H.W. Bush despite maintaining a large lead coming out of the spring and summer. “It’s been a crazy year, politically,” Silver said, adding that more states, particularly red states, are in play in 2016 than in previous elections. “For example, Arizona looks like a toss-up. Maybe Georgia. Maybe Missouri, North Carolina again.” “Likewise,” Silver continued, “if Trump gains ground on Clinton then maybe a state like Maine — used to be a swing state, not so recently” — could be in play, too. Silver also defended his August forecast that gave the billionaire businessman a 2 percent chance to win the GOP nomination. “That wasn’t based on looking at polls. Trump was always ahead in the polls, and one big lesson of his campaign is don’t try and out-think the polls and try and out-think the American public,” Silver said. “And Trump has never really been ahead of Clinton in the general election campaign. He did a great job of appealing to the 40 percent of the GOP he had to win the election, the primary — a lot different than winning 51 percent of 100 percent.”

Politics

U.S. Government

A few weeks back, Ford invited us out to Salt Lake City to spend an afternoon in the 2017 Ford GT supercar. They’re only making 250 of these things per year, and they’ll go for around $500,000 each. Needless to say, I mulled it over for about 9 milliseconds before buying myself a plane ticket and heading for Utah. Before we dive in, a bit of backstory: back in 1963, Henry Ford II set out to buy Ferrari. The deal fell through in its final stages, leaving Ford with something of a grudge. He set out to build a car that could beat Ferrari at Le Mans, the (even then!) legendary 24-hour endurance race that Ferrari had dominated for years. It took a few years of defeat — but by 1966, Ford had cracked the code. They’d built a car they dubbed the GT40 MkII — and with it they swept the podium at Le Mans, their three cars walking away with first, second, and third place. Then they won again for good measure in 1967, 68, and 69. 50 years later, they’re celebrating the anniversary by reimagining the GT40 for the modern day. Thus, the 2017 Ford GT. Now, I only got to spend a total of a few hours behind the wheel — if we’re going to do an in-depth review of a car, we need to spend at least a week in it. But I did walk away with some impressions. This car drives the way every teenager who grew up with a poster of the GT40 plastered above their bed dreamed it might. You think, GT does. I tried pushing this car to its limits, and didn’t even get close. In a game of chicken between Greg and the GT, the GT won. For the sake of maintaining an aerodynamic profile, Ford shaved just about as much space out of the interior as they could. I’m 6′ tall on the dot — and, to my surprise, I could sit inside the GT comfortably. Once in a track harness and helmet, however, I had to slouch a bit to keep from rubbing the roof; if you’re on the taller end and planning on track days, expect as much. There’s not much in the center console in terms of gadgetry that you won’t find in more standard cars — these days, there’s just not much technology that can exist on the touchcreen of a $450,000 car that can’t exist elsewhere. Most of the tech goes into what you don’t see, like the fully carbon-fiber tub you’re sitting in and the 647 horsepower engine under the hood. But speaking of technology: Ford is launching a Performance racing companion app, and it’ll be exclusive to the GT at first. You pop open the app on your phone, plug it into the car via USB, and it acts as a super purpose-focused GoPro. It records video, all while pulling speed, gear, and GPS data straight from the engine. At the end of your laps, it dumps it all out in a straight-to-Facebook-ready video, complete with lap times and a video game-style map of your realtime position as you blast around the track. Ford’s not the only one doing this (Chevy has something in a similar vein with their Performance Data Recorder), but it’s a nice touch and hopefully it trickles down to their other vehicles quickly. Here’s a screenshot from one of the videos: Now, to be clear, if it somehow isn’t already: this is not a car you buy as your everyday driver — even if you might have $450,000 to burn, and even if you somehow manage to nab one of the 250 of these Ford will make per year. It’s a race car that happens to be street legal; practicality is not the point. The trunk is the size of a large shoebox, and the interior is just big enough for two medium-sized people to sit side-by-side assuming they’re pretty good friends and don’t mind rubbing elbows all day. If you just want a car that’ll destroy most cars at stop lights but you also need something to take the kids to school in, there are other options. But if you are in the position to put something like this in your garage and have already worked your way onto the list: don’t worry. I think you’ll be happy with your decision. And I’m super jealous.

Sports

Motorsports

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela is opening an investigation into the possible killing of 28 miners in the southeastern jungle state of Bolívar, officials said Monday. Family members of the missing miners have said that their relatives were murdered on Friday in a dispute over a gold claim. They have said that a gang seeking to control the claim dismembered the miners, who were operating there illegally, and then threw their bodies in trucks and took them away. “We will conduct an objective, independent and impartial investigation,” Tarek William Saab, Venezuela’s ombudsman, said on Monday, echoing a promise by the public prosecutor’s office. Francisco Rangel, the state’s governor and a staunch ally of the socialist administration, denied that any massacre had taken place, saying that the local police investigated reports of a shootout but found no bodies at the mine. “Once again, irresponsible politicians are trying to sow chaos in Bolívar State with FALSE information about murdered miners,” he wrote on Twitter, accusing opposition politicians of trying to discredit the government’s campaign to root out illegal mining. Families of the miners and people who said they had witnessed the attack demanded further investigation and blocked the main road connecting the region to the border with Brazil. Americo de Grazia, an opposition lawmaker, accused the state government of complicity in the crime, which he said was one of nearly two dozen similar episodes over the past decade.

Politics

Government

Demi Lovato continues to focus on her recovery in treatment following a harrowing overdose this summer. “She’s doing really well,” Lovato’s younger half-sister, 16-year-old Madison De La Garza, said in an interview with the podcast Millennial Hollywood posted on Tuesday. “She’s working really hard on her sobriety, and we’re all so incredibly proud of her,” the Desperate Housewives alum said, adding: “It’s been crazy for our family. It’s been a lot.” De La Garza noted that the incident has not shaken her family’s tight bond. “We’ve been through a lot together, and every single time — I mean if you read my mom’s book, you would know: Every time we go through something, we always come out on the other side a hundred times stronger than before,” the actress said, referencing mom Dianna De la Garza‘s new memoir, Falling With Wings. “So, we’ve just been so thankful for everything — for the little things.” Indeed, De La Garza hopes to do “so many little things” with her sister when she leaves treatment — including a frozen yogurt date. “It sounds so small, but [I want to] go to Menchie’s,” De La Garza said. “Honestly, I’m more of a Pinkberry person, but she likes Menchie’s, and so we usually go there.” On July 24, Lovato was hospitalized following an overdose at her Hollywood Hills home. She remained in the hospital for nearly two weeks before Lovato was released from the hospital on Aug. 4 to seek in-patient treatment. “She understands the severity of her overdose and the recovery has been very challenging for her,” a source told PEOPLE at the time. “She wants to be sober. She wants to get help. She understands that it will take a lot of work and commitment to stay healthy, but this is what she wants.” A week after checking into the treatment facility, the singer temporarily checked out to seek additional treatment for mental health and substance abuse in Chicago, PEOPLE confirmed. “She’s in the midst of recovery,” a source told PEOPLE at the time. “It’s going to be a long road, and Demi knows that. Emotionally, it hasn’t been easy, but she’s doing okay.” The “Tell Me You Love Me” singer has battled addiction, mental illness and disordered eating for years. In 2010, she entered treatment, where she received professional assistance for bipolar disorder, bulimia, self-harm and addiction. She relapsed after she left the treatment center, then entered a sober living facility for a year. In March, Lovato revealed she celebrated six years of sobriety, but three months later, in June, she released a new song, “Sober,” in which she suggested that she had relapsed. And Lovato’s recovery continues. Last month, she spotted taking a stroll outside her treatment facility. “I can honestly say today that she is doing really well. She’s happy, she’s healthy,” Lovato’s mom recently said in an interview. “She’s working on her sobriety and she’s getting the help she needs, and that in itself encourages me about her future and about the future of our family.” If you or someone you know is in need of help, please contact the SAMHSA substance abuse helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

Names

People

Scottie Lewis, Andrew Nembhard and Kerry Blackshear Jr. each sank two free throws in the final 42 seconds of the second overtime, and Florida overcame a 21-point deficit for a 104-98 victory over Alabama on Saturday in Gainesville, Fla., in the SEC opener for both teams. Nembhard scored a career-high 25 points, and Blackshear added 24 points and 16 rebounds for the Gators (9-4, 1-0 SEC), who set a school record by overcoming a 14-point halftime deficit to win. John Petty Jr. scored 19 points, and Kira Lewis Jr. had 17 points to lead six double-figure scorers for the Crimson Tide (7-6, 0-1 SEC), who hit 13 of 34 attempts from 3-point range but just 23 of 34 (68 percent) from the free-throw line. Petty’s 3-pointer with 16 seconds left in overtime tied it at 92 and forced the second OT. Trailing 78-69 with 3:45 left in regulation, the Gators fought back to get within 83-81 on Blackshear’s 3-pointer with 25.2 seconds left. Following a timeout, Florida’s Noah Locke (18 points) stole Petty’s inbound pass and sank the tying layup with 21 seconds showing to force OT. Scottie Lewis (17 points) sank two free throws and a 3-pointer, and Ques Glover (six points) added a jumper for a 7-0 run that pulled UF within 65-59 and 8:52 left. Locke and Blackshear each hit a 3-pointer to start the second half — after the Gators had scored the final seven points of the first half — to pull Florida within 46-38 with 19:01 left. Alex Reese scored 10 of his 14 points points to help Alabama build a 46-32 halftime lead. The Crimson Tide’s reserves outscored Florida’s subs 19-5 before intermission. The Gators sank seven of 14 from 3-point range in the first half, when the Gators missed five of six attempts from behind the arc. Nembhard hit a trey with one second left. Trailing 11-9, the Crimson Tide scored 14 straight points to go ahead 23-11 with 11:03 until intermission. James Bolden (15 points) had a layup and 3-pointer in the run. Leading by seven points, Alabama used a 13-1 run to take a 41-22 advantage 3:21 before halftime. Six different Crimson Tide players scored during the spurt. —Field Level Media

Sports

Basketball

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson raised U.S. prices on around two dozen prescription drugs on Thursday, including the psoriasis treatment Stelara, prostate cancer drug Zytiga and blood thinner Xarelto, all among its top-selling products. J&J joined many other companies that raised U.S. prices on hundreds of prescription medicines earlier this month. Most of the J&J increases were between 6 percent and 7 percent, according to data from Rx Savings Solutions, which helps health plans and employers seek lower cost prescription medicines. The increases came on the same day that Democratic members of Congress introduced proposed legislation aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs for American consumers. J&J said the average list price increase on its drugs will be 4.2 percent this year. However, it expects the net price it actually receives for its medicines to drop. That is because drugmakers negotiate rebates and discounts off the list price with payers in order to ensure patient access to their products. The company does not plan to raise prices on any more drugs this year, J&J spokesman Ernie Knewitz said. Drugmakers kicked off 2019 with U.S. price increases on more than 250 prescription medicines by Jan. 2. That total has almost doubled, with pharmaceutical companies hiking prices on nearly 490 drugs by Jan. 10, according to Rx Savings. This includes insulin price hikes of between 4.4 percent and 5.2 percent by Sanofi and 4.9 percent by Novo Nordisk. Sanofi said its increases were below the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services projections for medical inflation, and that it expects net prices to drop in 2019. Novo Nordisk said its raised list prices help offset increases in rebates to insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. With pressure from lawmakers and the administration of President Donald Trump intensifying, the pace of drug increases has been slower than last year, when drugmakers raised prices on around 650 drugs over the first 10 days of 2018. The United States, which leaves drug pricing to market competition, has higher prices than in other countries, where governments directly or indirectly control costs. That makes it by far the world’s most lucrative market for manufacturers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed policy changes aimed at lowering drug prices and passing on more of the discounts negotiated by health insurers to patients. Those measures are not expected to provide relief to consumers in the short-term, however, and fall short of giving government health agencies direct authority to negotiate or regulate drug prices. Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Bill Berkrot

Pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceuticals

When it comes to virtual reality, Seth Gordon has a unique perspective. As the director of films like “Horrible Bosses,” “The King of Kong,” and the upcoming “Baywatch,” he’s no stranger to making content for a wide audience. He’s also deeply interested in technology, and is an avid follower of games and gaming culture. I decided to quiz him on the wave of VR that is inevitably coming to all of our screens, big and small. Where would you say Hollywood is with VR? Completely nascent exploration. The consensus is that it has a lot of potential, but no one has cracked it yet. There’s a lot of dabbling going on, even from a few outfits that are proven. It feels like there’s a strong future — but really compelling, immersive storytelling that is distinct from, and improves upon, the best console games hasn’t quite shown itself yet. Is there anyone you’re watching in the field? I feel like Chris Milk is the early trailblazer, doing really interesting stuff. So are the guys at Twisted Pixel in Austin. For Milk, check out his TED talk. Essentially, his take on VR is that it’s an ideal means to build empathy by putting yourself subjectively in the point of view of the protagonist. For a good example of his work, look for “Clouds Over Sidra,” a VR experience from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl living in a refugee camp in Jordan. You really and meaningfully visit her displaced existence. It is very cool and powerful. To see what Twisted Pixel is working on, look out for their upcoming (2017) release of “Wilson’s Heart.” It’s innovative on a number of levels. Where do you think VR fits into the entertainment landscape? At the moment, before any of the consumer platforms (Oculus, Vivo, etc.) have taken the dominant position, the real competition for this kind of content will be the exceptional console gaming experience that’s already available. If you play a game like Uncharted 4, for example, you find it gives you an unbelievable amount of freedom: You can explore numerous variations of the narrative set in incredibly original locations. VR has that same capability to explore a world, but it must go beyond the gimmick. It has to create as compelling an experience as we already have in the best games. With VR, it feels like early days. It’s powerful, but it still requires standardization. Everyone needs to commit to a format. And there has to be one or two killer pieces of content that people who don’t yet own a device will be so interested in that they feel compelled to get one in order to get engaged. We haven’t seen that yet. So we need to get critical mass for the real creators to get involved? Yes and no. Creators are willing to try anything. But a studio has to be able to make money, unfortunately, before it’s getting involved. We’ll see investment in VR once a studio (or gaming company) sees a bright path to a core audience. Then, they’ll be willing to fund bigger investments and operations. So VR needs its Pokémon Go moment? Yes, that was a watershed moment, for sure. People I knew who didn’t ever talk about their devices or use them for anything but email and phones were talking about it. It was wild. And until then? The breakthroughs will come from a handful of independent artists, or even branded entertainment. Those are people who will try to do great VR and put money toward it. Once they prove that VR can reach a mass audience, you’ll see a tipping point. And then everyone will get involved. What do you think is the biggest potential for VR? For me, the way VR could overlap with social is very exciting. If you could create an experience that was flexible but could relate to peoples' social participation online, that would be transcendent. As CEO of Possible, Shane Atchison leads the company's long-term strategic vision of working with leading financial service organizations, consumer brands, startups, nonprofits and community-based organizations, helping each realize the potential of the internet and its impact on their business. Reach him @shanePOSSIBLE. This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Technology

Virtual Reality

New York (CNN)A former member of the National Guard was arrested Sunday for allegedly attempting to assist ISIS. The Department of Justice said that Mohamad Bailor Jalloh tried to assist the group get weapons "to be used in what he believed was going to be an attack on U.S. soil" on behalf of the organization. Jalloh, 26, made his first appearance in federal court in Virginia on Tuesday afternoon. He was flanked by three U.S. Marshals and spoke only to acknowledge that his lawyer was Ashraf Nubani. He did not enter a plea and Nubani did not comment. Jalloh will remain detained until his next court appearance next Tuesday. According to the Justice Department, Jalloh first came to the attention of authorities after an ISIS member who has since died brokered a meeting between him and a so-called "confidential human source" working on behalf of the FBI. Jalloh apparently had told the source that he left the Army National Guard after listening to lectures on the Internet by late Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki. In May, Jalloh mentioned to the source that "it was better to plan an operation for the month of Ramadan," according to the Justice Department. The Justice Department said Jalloh made "multiple unsuccessful attempts to obtain firearms" while traveling in North Carolina last month. Last week, Jalloh allegedly purchased a Stag Arms assault rifle from a gun dealership in northern Virginia, although the weapon was "rendered inoperable before he left the dealership with the weapon," authorities said. The next day, he was arrested. Jalloh has been charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if convicted. CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the day on which Jalloh was arrested. CNN's Ryan Browne contributed to this report.

Other

Other

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Website owners are free to store users’ internet addresses to prevent cyber attacks, the European Union’s top court said on Wednesday, rejecting a claim from a German privacy activist who sought to stop the practice. Patrick Breyer, a member of Germany’s Pirate Party, had sought to stop the German government registering and storing his Internet Protocol (IP) address when he visited its web pages, arguing that citizens should have a right to surf the web anonymously. Website owners routinely store users’ IP addresses to provide customized features, enable or disable access to content or to blacklist IP addresses involved in “denial of service” attacks against a website. German law prevents website owners from keeping users’ data indefinitely unless the data is required for billing purposes, but the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled on Wednesday that the prevention of cyber crime is a legitimate reason to store such data without users’ consent. “Internet companies will still follow us around the web, collect information about our private interests and pass this information on,” Breyer said in response to the ruling. “Now the EU has to close this unacceptable loophole in data privacy laws as quickly as possible.” Joerg Hladjk, leader of the Brussels cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practice at law firm Jones Day, said the ECJ ruling was an important decision that expanded the “scenarios under which data can be retained without the user’s consent beyond what is allowed under German law”. Additional reporting by Peter Maushagen and Eric Auchard in Frankfurt; Editing by David Goodman

Technology

Privacy

Facebook is facing criticism once again for its advertising policy.An open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was published Monday on GLAAD&aposs website, and it&aposs signed by over 50 major groups. The letter demands Facebook remove a series of "factually inaccurate advertisements which suggest negative health effects of Truvada PrEP."Truvada PrEP is a prophylactic that protects against HIV. If taken daily, it&aposs very effective at preventing contraction of HIV.Visit Business Insider&aposs homepage for more stories.For months, Facebook has faced consistent blowback for its decision not to fact-check political ads.But this week, Facebook is facing a new critique of its ad policy: The issue is "factually inaccurate advertisements which suggest negative health effects of Truvada PrEP," according to a letter published Monday on GLAAD&aposs website.The letter is signed by over 50 groups involved in LGBTQ advocacy, public health, and HIV/AIDS prevention, including three groups that directly advise Facebook on LGBTQ issues: the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and The Trevor Project.At issue is a series of ads run by law firms on Facebook that the letter says contain false information about the HIV-prevention drug Truvada.Truvada is proven to be very effective in clinical trials and in federal testing.The ads, which have been viewed millions of times, are intended to recruit gay and bisexual men who take Truvada. The law firms running these ads claim the drug has harmful side effects and are looking for Truvada users to join lawsuits against the drug&aposs maker, Gilead Sciences.The ads are "scaring away at-risk HIV negative people from the leading drug that blocks HIV infections," the letter says.  Though GLAAD and other groups have pushed Facebook to remove the ads "for months," according to The Washington Post, the social media giant has refused to do so. The letter is an effort to bring public attention to the ads and their potentially dangerous impact.It&aposs also a direct call to action, with specific demands.It demands that Facebook and Instagram "immediately remove the advertisements," that Facebook&aposs advertising policy is clarified around ads that contain misinformation, and that the company review its current ad policies.A Facebook representative told Business Insider that it was "examining ways to improve," but insisted the ads did not violate the platforms&apos ad policies "nor have they been rated false by third-party fact-checkers." The company did reportedly get in touch with HIV patient advocate Peter Staley on Monday, according to a report in The Washington Blade. Staley said that Facebook&aposs director of external affairs, Lindsay Elin, contacted him to say the discussion was ongoing."I think we got their attention," he said. Featured Digital Health Articles: - Telehealth Industry: Benefits, Services & Examples - Value-Based Care Model: Pay-for-Performance Healthcare - Senior Care & Assisted Living Market Trends - Smart Medical Devices: Wearable Tech in Healthcare - AI in Healthcare - Remote Patient Monitoring Industry: Devices & Market Trends

Technology

Social Media

Oil-rich Gulf countries and their need for affordable and social housing may sound an unlikely topic, particularly with most headlines focusing on the petroleum industry, wealth and excess. But there there is a dire need for affordable housing within the region. In fact, waiting lists for affordable housing for middle-income households in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations are long, according to Sassan Hatam, a partner at Roland Berger's Middle East offices who presented statistics on housing at the Gateway Gulf investment forum in Bahrain on Wednesday. That's not to say the needs are the same across the GCC, however, with 60,000 "units" on the waiting list in Bahrain, compared to, for example, 100,000 on the waiting list in Kuwait. Similarly, the notion of "affordable rents" differs around the GCC. In Bahrain, an affordable rent per month, for a mid-income household, is between 780 and 1179 Bahraini dinars ($2069 and $3127) while in Saudi Arabia, an affordable rent is between 480 and 1620 Saudi riyals ($127 and $431), which throws up the need for "diversified housing solutions," Hatam told the audience attending the "Affordable Housing" session at the forum. The lack of affordable housing in the GCC was, Hattan said, down to several factors including the cost of funding (a typical mortgage rate in Bahrain is around 5 percent), the large share of expats in the Gulf who have no long-term interest in housing, as well as large amounts of unused land. All these contribute to the under-supply of housing, he said. Hatam said governments in the region were starting to address the problem. In Abu Dhabi, for example, the government is creating an environment to support low-cost housing developments, requiring each new real estate development contains a minimum share of affordable housing. It's proved a success, too, with the first affordable housing development in 2016 selling out in just three weeks. Developers such as the UAE's Aldar Properties have also spoken to CNBC about affordable housing as a lucrative market. "There really is a tremendous opportunity going forward and governments play a critical role, but these developments will need to be executed with the private sector," Hatam said. Also speaking at the forum Wednesday, Bahrain's Housing Minister Basim Bin Yacob Alhamer said he had one goal in office. "For me, it's very simple — to increase and fast-track the delivery of housing units," he said. Alhamer said his ministry had faced a "massive challenge" to deliver on a decree by Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who directed in December 2013 the provision of 40,000 affordable housing units — of which 25,000 were to be delivered between 2015 and 2018. Now, a handful of those developments are coming to fruition. The Bahraini government has also started the Mazaya program — a social housing scheme in collaboration with the private sector in which eligible applicants can receive subsidized loans from banks to purchase houses with a maximum price of 120,000 Bahraini dinars ($318,000). Alhamer said the affordable and social housing units being built would "raise living standards" for citizens but that more private sector involvement was needed. "We have the leadership's support and (boosting the housing supply) is part of our 2030 vision. There is a high housing demand and the existing demand cannot be met by the existing supply, so we do need at least 5,000 units to be readily available for our national waiting list," the minister said.

Finance

Stock Market

The youths are behaving badly on Netflix's new, sexy teen drama. On Tuesday, Netflix released a trailer for upcoming Spanish-language series Elite, about an exclusive school in Spain that may or may not remind you of the Upper East Side institution that Blair and Serena barely attended on The CW's quintessential teen series Gossip Girl. Alas, while the prep school uniforms in Elite are certainly steps of the Met approved, there's one thing that this new show has right off the bat that Gossip Girl had to mine through several seasons of story for: a dead body. Yep, someone is dead in the pool in Elite's new trailer, which is basically an advertisement for brooding, great eyebrows, and velvet suit jackets. Set at a party cooler than one I have ever attended, the teens of Elite blow smoke from e-cigs, writhe sexily against one another, and give each other looks that could either mean "let's make out in the butler's pantry," or "I will definitely be responsible for your murder later in the season." Though it's not explicitly shown, the end of the trailer shows someone dead in a pool, swimming in bisexual lighting and their own blood. The official description from Netflix hints at what's possibly to come. It reads: "When three working class kids enroll in the most exclusive school in Spain, the clash between the wealthy and the poor students leads to tragedy." So who will be dead in the pool? Will it be the Hot Brooding Brunette Boy or will it be the Clearly Very Rich Girl With The Mean Face? Most importantly, which of these characters will be our Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) and who will be the successor to Penn Badgley's Lonely Boy? The new series drops on Netflix October 5, so place your bets now. Check out the new trailer below: Looking for more theories, recaps, and insider info on all things TV? Join our Facebook group, Binge Club. The community is a space for you to share articles, discuss last night’s episode of your favorite show, or ask questions! Join here.

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President Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. It’s unclear if Trump shared the highly classified information with them before or after this photo was taken. (Russian Foreign Ministry/ Flickr)This won’t come as a surprise, but Trump fucked up again. Last week, the day after the president fired James Comey, the tangerine nightmare that is now the leader of the free world met with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador. Then he reportedly revealed some highly classified information, putting not only our continued access to an important source in jeopardy, but also America’s efforts to fight ISIS at risk. The situation between Trump and Russia was already very bad, but this latest development makes it much, much worse. According to The Washington Post, the source of the classified information was “an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.” What’s even more unsettling is that, based on officials’ statements about the incident, Trump was “describing details about an Islamic State terror threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft” to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak—as well as their aides—without consulting anyone ahead of time. It honestly sounds like he started bragging and couldn’t keep the highly classified information to himself.One of the Post’s sources claims that Trump told the Russian officials. “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” “This is code-word information,” another unnamed United States official told the Post. “[Trump] revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”That’s so fucking bad. So bad that apparently White House aides were frantically calling the CIA and the NSA right after the meeting to try and limit the scope of the damage. That’s fucking embarrassing for everyone! Let’s not forget that this happened a day after President Trump fired the head of the FBI, and the White House made it very clear that he did so in order to help everyone “move on” from the agency’s investigation into Trump, Russia, and election rigging. And then the next damn day, Trump meets with Russian officials and gives them classified information, apparently unprompted.Did a Russian Photographer Smuggle a Surveillance Device Into the White House?Trump thumbed his nose at the American people on Wednesday by meeting with Russian officials as…Read more ReadThe Post goes on to explain that the information Trump reportedly shared included the specific city where the ISIS threat was identified, potentially enabling Russia to figure out what US ally collected the intelligence and how. On top of that, Trump apparently described “specific military operations in Iraq and Syria.” If you feel like you’re having a heart attack taking all this in, take slow deep breaths because it actually gets more infuriating from here.It’s inevitably another case of Donald Trump’s destructive habit of hypocrisy. During his campaign, Trump just loved to yell about how bad it would be to reveal America’s secrets. Look at this tweet:This was a constant attack Trump used on the campaign trail. He loved to exploit Clinton’s use of private email servers and exploit information revealed in the DNC hack as examples of how the Democrats couldn’t keep America’s secrets safe. As for the Republican leadership in Congress, the same message was very clear. Here’s a ringer from Paul Ryan:What will the United Kingdom or Germany or Saudi Arabia think now that the President of the United States is now offering up classified information to Putin’s top lieutenants, apparently by accident? It’s simple: They’ll think that the US is run by a reckless, dangerous buffoon who can’t be trusted to wipe his own ass without posing a risk to national security. And frankly, after last week and now this, they wouldn’t be wrong.

Politics

International Relations

BEE CONCERNED: Democrats and environmentalists are sounding the alarm following a decision by the Trump administration to scale back research on bee populations. Critics are warning that the decision eliminates a vital tool for monitoring how climate change and pesticides are reducing the number of bees worldwide, a development they say will have dire consequences for agriculture and the environment. The back story: The Department of Agriculture (USDA) quietly announced it was suspending its survey on bee populations following the Fourth of July holiday, pausing data collection for one of the few remaining government sources tracking bees and their rapid decline. Bees pollinate a third of U.S. crops and are considered a "canary in the coal mine" for gauging how human activity affects the environment. Now, after years of declining bee populations, researchers and the federal government will have fewer tools to study the species. The fallout: Critics were quick to blast the decision. "Trump's Department of Agriculture cutting off this crucial data is an outrage. At a time when pollinators are dying at alarming rates, we should be gathering more data and working to solve the problem," said. Rep. Earl BlumenauerEarl BlumenauerAirports already have plenty of infrastructure funding Climate protesters glue themselves to Capitol doors, confront lawmakers Here are the 95 Democrats who voted to support impeachment MORE (D-Ore.), who sponsored legislation earlier this year that would reduce the use of pesticides that are harmful to bees. The USDA survey began in 2015, part of an Obama administration effort to track problems facing pollinators. And advocates are worried about more than just the environmental fallout from decreasing bee populations. Commercial bees, which are brought to farms to pollinate crops like blueberries, squash, apples and almonds, contribute an estimated $15 billion in value to the agriculture industry. This winter an estimated 38 percent of commercial honeybees were lost, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, which, following the suspension of the USDA data collection program, is now one of the few sources left monitoring bee populations. While some bee loss is common over the winter, this year's figure was up 7 percentage points from last year. The cause? Initially, the source of trouble for bees was blamed on causes as varied as the use of Wi-Fi and cellphone towers, but increasingly a growing body of research points to pesticides as the culprit. "It's interesting because people still talk about colony collapse disorder as a mysterious thing, but we still know really well what's going on with honeybees and pollinators," said Lori Ann Burd, the environmental health director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "Pesticides are a major factor that react synergistically with other issues." Environmentalists say the Trump administration is making the problem worse by allowing the use of pesticides damaging to bees. Read more about the plight of bees here.    IT'S A RAINY THURSDAY! And welcome to Overnight Energy, The Hill's roundup of the latest energy and environment news.  Please send tips and comments to Miranda Green, [email protected] and Rebecca Beitsch, [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter: @mirandacgreen, @rebeccabeitsch and @thehill. CLICK HERE to subscribe to our newsletter.   AN AWARD-WINNING PROTEST: An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employee protested the agency's new union contract while receiving an award from Administrator Andrew WheelerAndrew WheelerEPA walks back use of 'cyanide bombs' to protect livestock from wild animals EPA proposes rolling back states' authority over pipeline projects New Mexico says EPA abandoned state in fight against toxic 'forever chemicals' MORE on Wednesday.  Loreen Targos, an EPA employee in Chicago, unfurled a banner on stage next to Wheeler reading, "I care about EPA workers having a fair contract to address public health and climate change. Do you?" Targos was on stage with the rest of a team being honored for cleaning up refinery waste near Muskegon Lake in Michigan.  In a video released by American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 704, based in the Great Lakes region, Targos can be heard asking Wheeler if he supports a fair contract for EPA workers.  EPA employees have been outraged by a recent contract that went into effect Tuesday that remains unsigned by union leaders and scales back union protections.  In an interview with The Hill, Targos said Wheeler did briefly respond to her.  "I did look at him and ask him and ask if he was going to support a fair contract and he said something along the lines of agency talking points of 'We tried to come to the bargaining table but you guys refused.'" The fight between the EPA and the union began over how much of the contract was even negotiable. The EPA wanted to renegotiate the entire contract, while the union wanted to renegotiate a narrower slice. Under the latest contract, union employees would have to give up office space within the EPA offices and union leaders would not be able to use the intranet or agency billboards to communicate with members. It would also limit the amount of time union leaders could spend helping rank-and-file employees with labor disputes and other issues by 75 percent. It also changes how employees can arbitrate their grievances. Targos said the new contract was "unilaterally imposed." The AFGE has already filed an unfair labor practice charge against the EPA. "There was all this pomp and circumstance to highlight the good work of EPA employees," Targos said. "Why take away the conditions that supported such award-winning work?" The agency's response: The EPA said it issued the new contract after years of fruitless negotiations. "Administrator Wheeler was proud to host the National Honor Awards ceremony for the first time in 10 years and recognize the outstanding achievements of more than 700 EPA staff," a spokesman told The Hill. "This collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expired 12 years ago, the Trump EPA has worked with AFGE for the past two-and-half years to reach a new CBA and EPA is not the party refusing to come to the negotiating table." Targos said a security officer stopped her later and asked if she was actually an EPA employee. Read more about the protest here.    DIY CLIMATE DEBATE: Environmental groups are teaming up with The New Republic and Gizmodo to host a presidential climate summit after the Democratic National Committee (DNC) refused to hold a climate debate despite calls from progressive groups. The four-hour discussion will be held on Sept. 23 in New York City during Climate Week NYC.  It will be moderated by Errol Louis, a political commentator for CNN and NY1, and event co-planners, Emily Atkin from The New Republic and Brian Kahn from Gizmodo. The events sponsors include Earthjustice, an environmental legal group, the League of Conservation Voters and Columbia University's Earth Institute.  The official invites, with the date, went out Thursday alongside the public announcement, Atkin told The Hill.  Will candidates show? No candidates have yet confirmed if they will attend. But organizers contacted all Democratic candidates back in June with preliminary information notifying them of a climate-focused forum, and received "a lot of interest," Atkin said.  Organizers said it will be a forum-style event, but that they would change to a debate format if the DNC reverses its prohibition on candidates taking part in non-DNC debates.  A DNC spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Hill as to whether the party plans to lift the rule.  The forum will involve each candidate taking the stage one by one to be asked questions by moderators and others. Read more about the debate here.    OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY: -Washington floods expose a double threat: Old drains and climate change, The New York Times reports.  -Department of Energy may have mistakenly shipped dangerous nuclear materials to Nevada, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. -States, provinces OK plan to protect Great Lakes from carp, the Associated Press reports. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Environment

Land Conservation

Consumer Reports has reversed its position and now recommends the Tesla Model 3, after the car company shipped an over-the-air update this week that improved the vehicle’s braking distance by nearly 20 feet. The outlet had previously said the Model 3’s braking “was far worse than any contemporary car we’ve tested” in a review that was published on May 22nd. While the publication still takes issue with some aspects of the Model 3, like the car’s ride comfort and its reliance on a touchscreen interface, CR said the better braking distance was enough to warrant the recommendation. “There are still other flaws with the vehicle,” Jake Fisher, CR’s director of automotive testing, told USA Today. “Those have not necessarily been addressed. It’s not the top in its category, but it’s certainly a vehicle that scores high enough to recommend.” Fisher said today that he is impressed with the fact that Tesla was able to quickly correct the issue with an over-the-air software update. “I’ve been at CR for 19 years and tested more than 1,000 cars,” said Fisher, “and I’ve never seen a car that could improve its track performance with an over-the-air update.” “Really appreciate the high quality critical feedback from @ConsumerReports,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter. He added that “road noise & ride comfort [were] already addressed” in newer versions of the Model 3 than what CR tested, and that improvements to the Model 3’s touchscreen user interface are coming “later this month” (though it’s unclear if he meant May or June). CR had tested two Model 3s before the update that was issued and found that it took them an average of 152 feet to stop from a speed of 60 miles per hour. That’s seven feet more than it takes a Ford F-150 to come to a stop from the same speed, according to CR, and 25 feet more than the Tesla Model X. Ultimately, the software update that Tesla pushed to the Model 3s on the road reduced that stopping distance by 19 feet to a total of 133 feet, which CR says is “typical for a compact luxury car.” Tesla apparently achieved the better braking distance by tweaking the software that controls the Model 3’s antilock braking system, according to CR. The history between Tesla and CR is as long as it is checkered. The publication has often praised the car company’s innovation, but has also not shied away from criticizing its shortcomings, with each decision generating headlines. CR pulled its recommendation of the Model S in 2015 over reliability concerns, even after it had “broken” its own ratings system to give the all-electric sedan a score of 103 out of 100. CR later returned to recommending the Model S, but it has also been critical of the Model X SUV for similar reliability concerns. Tesla, meanwhile, has employees working around the clock to ship as many Model 3s out the door as possible, according to a recent email that Musk sent out to staff. The company is trying to increase output of the car to around 5–6,000 per week by the middle of this year. Until that happens, Tesla says it’s losing money on every Model 3 it delivers.

Technology

Transportation

Grief is never simple, so writing about it shouldn't be either. Or at least that's the case with YA author Jeff Zentner's latest novel Goodbye Days. The book follows Carver, a teen grieving the death of his three best friends after they all die in a tragic car accident. Now instead of spending his senior year with his closest friends, Carver is mourning the loss of lives that passed far too young. "How do you measure the value of a life that never had a chance to get married, have kids, get a first job, graduate from college, all of these things?" "So often we assign value on lives based on accomplishment and based on a compendium of things done in life," Zentner explains. "But how do you measure the value of a life that never had a chance to get married, have kids, get a first job, graduate from college, all of these things?" It's a heavy question and one at the core of the book. But the novel isn't just about grieving friends  — it's also about the complicated feelings of regret and guilt that come with death.  When emergency responders were investigating the deadly car accident, they found evidence that Carver's friend, who was driving the car, was in the middle of responding to a text that Carver sent. Because of this discovery, Carver soon finds himself not only working through his own sense of guilt, but also fighting for his innocence in a criminal investigation that holds him personally responsible for his friends' death. "I think there's a difference between types of guilt," Zentner explains. "I believe that you can have caused a result without being morally culpable, without being guilty for a result. The term guilt comes weighted with a moral judgment. And I wanted to explore how actions can be weighted with moral judgment or can shed this moral judgment." To make matters even more challenging, the families of the deceased begin asking Carver to host "goodbye days,” where he recounts stories and sometimes even stands in for his friends as their families share their final messages.   All of these themes — death, guilt, regret, family — all merge in Goodbye Days to craft a novel that is as complicated as it is devastating. This week on the MashReads Podcast, we are joined by Jeff Zentner to read and discuss Goodbye Days. Join us as we talk about novels about grief, tropes in YA, and Goodbye Days. And as always we close the show with recommendations: Jeff recommends The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro. The book is the second book in the Charlotte Holmes series. "Both books are the most utterly brilliant blend of commercial and literary writing." He also recommends History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera (which we talked about here on the MashReads Podcast with Silvera himself). And finally, Jeff has also been reading books by Khaled Hosseini. "He is what I want to be. His books are so poignant and so resonant and so beautifully written." Aliza recommends the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series after seeing the new off-broadway show The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical. "They're fun and they're funny. Even though when you are reading them, it's very clear they are written for 12-year-olds, there is some deep dark stuff barely under the surface." Peter recommends HBO's show Big Little Lies. "This is one of the rare things where I would almost have watched this than read the book because it is such a visual story, or at least how they tell it on HBO. It is so dramatically withholding in visual form." MJ recommends South and West by Joan Didion. "[Joan Didion] is just such an astute observer of life." And if you're looking for even more book news, don't forget to follow MashReads on Facebook and Twitter. 

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If you went to a screening of Crazy Rich Asians this week, there’s a good chance you heard some squeals of glee in your audience over a brief mid-credits scene. But while it is indeed very brief — and dialogue-free, for that matter — that scene actually tells us a whole lot about Crazy Rich Asians. Specifically, it tells us that a certain secondary character isn’t so secondary after all; that this film is even more indebted to Jane Austen than you may have thought; and that the producers of Crazy Rich Asians are already betting on at least one sequel — and possibly two. How can we tell all that from a single shot? To break it down, we have to spoil the scene in question, so don’t read unless you want to know more! The film’s end credits briefly pause to give us a blip of a scene in which our secondary heroine, Astrid (Gemma Chan), makes lingering eye contact with a random man at a lavish party. The man, played by Glee’s Harry Shum Jr., goes unidentified, and the film gives no context for the heated glances they share before continuing to roll the credits — which place Shum’s name unusually high for such a brief appearance. So what was that about? To understand the full context of those glances, we have to dig into the rom-com heart at the center of Crazy Rich Asians’ heavily stylized opulence. In the midst of the film’s fabulous romance about Rachel (Constance Wu) winning true love with her billionaire boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding) as she visits his megarich family for the first time, the film gives us two other couples at various stages of their relationship: Nick’s best friend Colin (Chris Pang), who’s getting married to wealthy heiress Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno); and Astrid and her husband Michael (Pierre Png), who cheats on her over the course of the film. Now, you might think those other two relationships are there to reflect the issues of class and cultural differences surrounding Rachel’s relationship with Nick. And you’re not wrong. But there’s more going on — at least where Astrid is concerned. You see, the real main romance of Crazy Rich Asians — or at least Kevin Kwan’s novel Crazy Rich Asians and its two sequels, China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems — is between Astrid and that guy you see at the end of the film for a hot second. His name is Charlie Wu. And if you thought Nick and Colin were rich, dreamy boyfriends, well, strap in, because Charlie? Charlie will blow your mind. Throughout Crazy Rich Asians the novel, Astrid is presented as sort of the modern Asian Audrey Hepburn: She just has it. But alongside her glamour and mystique, her warm, down-to-earth personality makes her one of the series’ few deeply relatable characters. The books are sharply satirical, and even Astrid, as nice as she is, is presented as a girl who needs to learn to embrace her proper role as the fashion princess of Singapore’s unofficial ethnic Chinese royal class. In both the book and the film, her tendency to tiptoe around her wealth is a major factor in the shame and unhappiness Michael brings to their unequal marriage. But waiting in the wings for Astrid as her marriage to Michael falls apart is an old boyfriend who, imagine it, has always loved her unconditionally, without expecting her to change for him. That’s Charlie, and he loves Astrid enough to take her just as she is: rich, beautiful, and goddess-like. Throughout the book, we learn snippets of Astrid and Charlie’s backstory before Charlie ever appears on the scene, and they have quite the history: They dated as teenagers, and Charlie essentially popped Astrid’s fashion cherry — that is, he took her on a guided tour of Paris for the very, very rich. There, he taught her to enjoy spending her bottomless well of money on fashion, jewels, and luxury, and set her on the path to becoming the style icon she is today. However, teenage Astrid was very impressionable, impetuous, and tempestuous. And as the film makes clear, her family (the mighty Shang/Tsien clan) isn’t exactly approving of relationships that fall outside of their highly exclusive, ultra-elite circles of influence and power. So despite Charlie’s considerable new-money wealth, Astrid’s family pressured her into breaking up with him. (Specifically, she threw a Frosty at him in the parking lot of a Wendy’s. It sounds legendary.) Her marriage to Michael — who had no money but lots of social clout, and thus was an “acceptable” choice — followed not long after and is heavily implied to be a rebound for Astrid. As the book unfolds, Astrid, facing divorce and looking back, is able to admit she was horrible to Charlie all those years ago. But Charlie, in a totally understandable, deeply relatable instance of torch-bearing, never stopped loving Astrid. (I mean, have you met Astrid? She’s amazing.) Instead, he grew up and became a tech magnate, turning his family’s already voluminous fortune into something truly astronomical. Armed with the wisdom gleaned from years of life experience, and a computer empire, he returns from the hinterlands of Taiwan to make an appearance at Colin’s wedding. There, he steps in and helps Astrid deal with Michael in a manly, sexy way that involves his many tech resources, as well as dumping a lot of money to help bail out her marriage — for now. All of this side plot was originally intended to make its way into the movie adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians: There are two juicy blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Charlie/Astrid tidbits that appear in each of the movie trailers, featuring them dancing, which does not happen in the final film. Fortunately, Tumblr fans were all over it: Crazy Rich Asians owes a deep debt to British satirists — particularly Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray — in the way it lampoons the excesses of the rich while indulging in its own opulence, as well as its presentation of the cross-cultural messiness of modern postcolonial Asia. The movie doesn’t really pull hard on either of these threads, but they’re major themes of the novel. For starters, Nick and Rachel occupy roles that will be instantly recognizable to fans of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: They each contain shades of the snobbish Darcy and the penniless Elizabeth, and the novel frames them that way. Perhaps most notable here is the book’s description of the first time Rachel sees Nick’s grandmother’s house, which is a mirror of the famous description of Elizabeth seeing Darcy’s estate, Pemberley, for the first time. Over the course of the next two books, Rachel may have to become a bit more like Thackeray’s scheming Becky Sharp, of Vanity Fair, as she navigates the crazy rich world around her; but for now, she’s the girl who wins true love by convincing her soul mate to turn his back on class prejudices. As for Astrid? Her plot is straight out of another Austen novel: Persuasion. That novel’s heroine, Anne, famously rejects the eligible young Wentworth, even though she loves him desperately, because her family disapproves of him despite his upward mobility. Years later, Anne is a spinster who’s never really recovered from her heartbreak at losing Wentworth — and then he turns up in the neighborhood once more, now a rich, successful military captain with his eye on a completely different girl, even though he still loves Anne. Persuasion is perhaps Austen’s most overtly romantic book, in that while it’s about the perniciousness of family pretension and classism, it’s also about two people who never stop loving each other despite getting in their own way. There are also definite shades of Austen’s Emma in Charlie’s dynamic with Astrid, as he, like Emma’s Mr. Knightley, waits faithfully for his heroine to mature and realize they’re soulmates. All of this deepens Crazy Rich Asians’ commentary on colonial narratives, even as it indulges in familiar romance tropes. The film isn’t just a riff on Austen, after all; it’s a conscious reclamation of Westernized storytelling devices that have, for centuries, marginalized Asian figures rather than incorporating them in those narratives. But these days, Singapore is a major international city-state, and the use of these familiar English-authored tropes (along with its title) reflects the book’s awareness that this modern postcolonial society is now empowered, for better and for worse, to colonize right back. Over the course of the next two books, Charlie gradually maneuvers himself back into Astrid’s life, while she deals with her marriage to Michael and realizes she’s still in love with Charlie after all this time. It’s a delicious slow burn, and Charlie is pretty much a dreamboat the entire time. Of course, unless you read the book, you wouldn’t know about any of this without that mid-credits scene where Charlie shows up out of the blue. So the fact that he does is very telling. The Crazy Rich Asians filmmakers could have simply axed the Charlie-Astrid side plot completely — but instead, they left in the credits scene as a huge Easter egg for fans of the books. That tells us that they were always banking on the movie being enough of a hit to justify at least one sequel, and perhaps two, that would allow that mid-credits tease to play out more fully. That’s looking like an increasingly safe bet: following the film’s stellar opening-weekend performance, reports surfaced that Warner Bros. is currently developing the sequel, with the same filmmaking team in place, and that the studio has the rights to Kwan’s entire trilogy and has a plan for two more films. So if you’re a fan of the books, you’ve got a good shot at seeing Charlie and Astrid find love on the big screen at some point in the future. And if you’re just discovering their relationship through the film, congratulations — you’ve got a brand new romance for the ages to discover.

Entertainment

Television

Earlier today Wiz Khalifa indicated that he was not a fan of Kanye changing his album title from Swish to Waves—the wave is Max B’s territory, not Ye’s—but that wasn’t what got Ye’s goat. Instead, Kanye’s advanced Kardashian targeting computer set its sights on a Wiz tweet reading, “Hit this kk and become yourself.”  Wiz pretty much only tweets about smoking weed and quickly indicated that “kk” in this instance meant weed (presumably king kush), not Kim Kardashian, but it was too late: Kanye went in. Check West’s feed for the full Twitter essay (he didn’t link the tweets, so he could probably learn a thing or two from Jeet Heer), but here are a few of the best tweets from Hurricane Yeezy. (UPDATE: Kanye deleted all the tweets knocking Wiz and replaced them with some sappy shit about how Planet Earth is made of rainbows. The ghosts of said tweets can be seen below. Also, Amber Rose just absolutely ethered Kanye.)  Oh niggas must think I’m not petty cause I’m the best that’s ever made music Bro first of all you stole your whole shit from Cudi Second, your first single was corny as fuck and most there after You have distracted from my creative process I went to look at your twitter and you were wearing cool pants I screen grabbed those pants and sent it to my style team #Wizwearscoolpants 7th I am your OG and I will be respected as such 17th I think you dress cool I wish I was skinny and tall maybe I couldn’t be skinny and tall but I’ll settle for being the greatest artist of all time as a consolation

Entertainment

Television

Op-Ed Contributor With a new administration taking office this week, it is natural to assess the inheritance it will receive from the old. There are some who see nightmares wherever they look and insist that the entire global system is unraveling and that America’s position as world leader is in precipitous decline. As the departing secretary of state, I cannot claim objectivity. But I will leave office convinced that most global trends remain in our favor and that America’s leadership and engagement are as essential and effective today as ever. A major reason is that President Obama has restored assertive diplomacy as our foreign policy tool of first resort and deployed it time and again to advance our security and prosperity. This is evident, first of all, in our campaign to defeat the Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym, Daesh. Two and a half years ago, these murderers were on the march across Iraq and Syria. Instead of rushing into a unilateral war, we responded by quietly helping Iraq form a new and more inclusive government, and then assembling a 68-member coalition to support a rehabilitated Iraqi military, the Kurdish Peshmerga and other local partners to liberate territory once occupied by Daesh. We are engaged in a climactic effort to free the largest remaining strongholds in Iraq (Mosul) and Syria (Raqqa). These military steps depended on the diplomatic cooperation we brokered to cut off Daesh’s finances, slow its recruiting and rebut its poisonous propaganda on social media and within the region. President Obama took office with Iran’s nuclear program racing ahead and our nation under mounting pressure to take military action. While making clear we would do whatever it took to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, we started with diplomacy, building the strongest international sanctions regime the world has ever seen, and testing whether Iran would negotiate a deal that could ensure its nuclear program was exclusively peaceful. As a result, without firing a shot or putting troops in harm’s way, the United States and our partners reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which blocked Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon and made our nation, our allies and the world safer. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the United States could have responded as we had six years earlier, when Russian intervention in Georgia was largely met with rhetoric alone. But having repaired diplomatic ties badly damaged by the Iraq war, the Obama administration was able to defy skeptics by working with our European Union partners to impose sanctions that have isolated Russia and badly damaged its economy. We also bolstered NATO with a major expansion of our security assistance to allies in the Baltics and Central Europe. Throughout, we continued to work with Russia when it was in our interest to do so. But because we have stood firm, Russia is now — despite the boasts of its leaders — plagued by dwindling financial reserves, a historically weak ruble and poor international relations. President Obama has made clear to our allies and potential adversaries in Asia that the United States will remain a major force for stability and prosperity in their region. We have rallied the world behind unprecedented sanctions against a menacing North Korea, increased our naval presence in the Pacific, worked with regional actors to support the rule of law in the South China Sea and forged a strategic partnership with India. We also united key partners behind a landmark, high-standard trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that we still believe should be ratified by Congress — all while maintaining an often mutually beneficial relationship with Beijing. When President Obama took office, efforts to protect our planet from the catastrophic impacts of climate change were going nowhere, stymied by decades of division between developed and developing countries. But our outreach to China led to a series of breakthroughs that made last year the most consequential in the history of climate diplomacy. Building on, rather than backing away from, that progress would allow a historic shift toward clean energy and a chance of saving the planet from the worst ravages of climate change. The fruits of this administration’s diplomacy can also been seen in our own hemisphere, where we strengthened our position by normalizing relations with Cuba and helped end Colombia’s decades-long civil war. In Africa, we gained friends by training young leaders and led a successful global effort to contain Ebola. Obviously, we haven’t solved every problem, particularly in the chronically combustible Middle East. But the United States was absolutely justified in stressing the need for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. I also remain convinced that the formula we pursued to end the agonizing conflict in Syria was, and remains, the only one with a realistic chance to end the war — using diplomacy to align key countries behind establishing a nationwide cease-fire, providing humanitarian access, marginalizing terrorists and promoting Syrian-led talks on creating a constitution and democratic government. The response of the international community to the tragedy in Syria will long be debated. For years, United States officials had those same debates in the Situation Room. Some options, such as an enormous deployment of ground troops, were rightly dismissed. Others, including deploying additional special forces in limited operations, were closer calls. Month after month, we weighed the deteriorating conditions and uncertain benefits of intervention against the very real risks, including deeper involvement in a widening war. While I did not win every argument — no policy maker does — I can testify that all viable ideas received a fair hearing. I am not a pacifist. But I learned as a young man who fought in Vietnam that before resorting to war, those in positions of responsibility should do everything in their power to achieve their objectives by other means. I just returned from Vietnam, where smart and sustained diplomacy has accomplished what a decade of war never could: developing a dynamic capitalist society, opening an American-style university with the promise of academic freedom and, perhaps most improbably, strengthening ties not just between our people, but also between militaries that once saw each other as enemies. Looking ahead, my hope is that the turbulence still evident in the world does not obscure the extraordinary gains that diplomacy has made on President Obama’s watch or lead to the abandonment of approaches that have served our nation well. Diplomacy requires creativity, patience and commitment to a steady grind, often away from the spotlight. Results are rarely immediate or reducible to 140-character bites. But it has helped build a world our ancestors would envy — a world in which children in most places are more likely than ever before to be born healthy, to receive an education and to live free from extreme poverty. The new administration will face many challenges, like every administration before it. But it will take office this week armed with enormous advantages in addressing them. America’s economy and military are the strongest in the world, and diplomacy has helped put the wind at our back, our adversaries on notice about our resolve and our friends by our side. OpinionAdam Shatz

Politics

Foreign Policy

Of all the ridiculous and unlikely things to happen in 2016—and there have bee A LOT, from Justin Bieber putting a cigarette out on Post Malone, to Donald Trump becoming a chosen candidate for actual president of the United States—human joke with no retweets James Corden becoming genuinely good and entertaining arguably tops the list. In the latest episode of Carpool Karaoke, he cruises around with (apparently ageless) pop queen Gwen Stefani, singing "Don't Speak," "The Sweet Escape," and "Rich Girl," then having her impersonate all the emojis before explaining that the eggplant is internet code for dick. Just at the point when you start to think, yeah, this episode is maybe the best yet—at least as good as that time Adele absolutely bodied Nicki Minaj's "Monster" verse—George fucking Clooney and Julia Roberts show up out of nowhere and sing "Hollaback Girl," which Clooney takes a moment to drop a mini thinkpiece on: "If some guys are on a construction site, and they're yelling at a girl, she's not going to turn back, she's not that kind of a girl." Then they talk about Love, Actually for a bit and belt out Queen's "We Are The Champions," making them the least expected definition of "squad goals" thus far.

Music

Hip Hop

The markets were fairly quiet midday, with traders focused on the public flaying of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf in Congress, when a report from Bloomberg on Deutsche Bank dropped the markets. It wasn't much. The outlet reported that some hedge funds that clear derivatives trades with the bank had withdrawn some positions, "a sign of counterparties'" mounting concerns about doing business with Europe's largest investment bank. Not much, but it revived long-dormant memories of 2008. Deutsche Bank's U.S.-traded shares dropped 7 percent. European banks that trade in the U.S. fell roughly 3 percent. The shed 15 points in a matter of minutes. U.S. banks dropped, as well. JPMorgan Chase lost 1.5 percent. Wait a minute. What do (possible) issues at Deutsche Bank have to do with JPMorgan? And why would the entire market drop? Everything dropped: consumer staples, consumer discretionary and health care. Even Whirlpool fell $2. What's Whirlpool got to do with Deutsche Bank? On the surface, not much. But in the post-financial crisis worldview, it doesn't take much. The logic goes like this: You get the point. A slightly paranoid worldview is still very prevalent about banks that have trouble. Paranoid, but not completely absurd. But what about the rest of the market? Why exactly did, say, Whirlpool drop $2? First, the market trend in many sectors (health care, consumer staples) was already down before the story came out. But the more important reason is that today's trading action is dominated by traders who will pull bids when there is market uncertainty. When you have heavier volume with fewer bids, prices drop to attract buyers. Throw in trend following programs and that will more than adequately explain how stocks that are not correlated could drop together.

Finance

Banking

Yesterday, Zendaya showed off some flats from her Daya by Zendaya line on Instagram. And while the image is all about fashion, the caption might be more about shade than shoes. "A "ballet" flat," the actress wrote under the photo. An innocent enough description of the footwear. That is until you consider the ballet-related drama Kendall Jenner has dealt with this week. Recently, Jenner has faced criticism for a Vogue España ballet-themed video she starred in. Professional dancers weren't impressed seeing Jenner don dance wear, without any real training. They felt the video disrespected all the hours they've committed toward perfecting their relevés. The quotes around ballet in Zendaya's caption seems to strongly suggest this was shade, though why she would want to call out Jenner is unclear. Perhaps she felt some solidarity with the ballerinas as a fellow dancer?

Fashion

Clothing

(Reuters) - India’s Tata Steel Ltd (TISC.NS) said on Friday it had completed the acquisition of a 72.7 percent stake in Bhushan Steel Ltd BSSL.NS, which was in bankruptcy court over unpaid loans. As part of the deal, a unit of Tata Steel is paying 352.33 billion rupees ($5.18 billion) to Bhushan Steel’s creditor banks. It will also pay Bhushan Steel’s operational creditors, such as vendors, another 12 billion rupees over 12 months. The Tata Steel unit will raise a bridge loan of 165 billion rupees to help fund the acquisition, while Tata Steel is investing the remainder in the unit, Bamnipal Steel. Bamnipal has appointed members to Bhushan Steel’s board, Tata Steel said in a statement. Bhushan Steel, which was among a dozen companies pushed to bankruptcy court last year amid a government drive to clear a mountain of bad loans choking credit at Indian banks, has an annual steel making capacity of about 5.6 million tonnes. Taking over Bhushan Steel will help Tata Steel to increase its capacity in India and gain an edge in the fast-growing automotive steel market. Reporting by Jessica Kuruthukulangara in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu

Other

Other

Some Democratic presidential candidates are upending the conventional playbook for online outreach, building out digital operations that give their campaigns more agility and control in an acknowledgement that the 2020 election will largely be waged online. Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden Panel: Jill Biden's campaign message MORE’s (D-Mass.) campaign has kept its content creation and digital ad-buying operations in-house, while Sen. Kirsten GillibrandKirsten Elizabeth GillibrandCastro qualifies for next Democratic primary debates The Hill's Morning Report - Trump searches for backstops amid recession worries 2020 Democrats react to NYPD firing of officer in Garner case: 'Finally' MORE’s (D-N.Y.) team began taking similar steps in May. Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' The exhaustion of Democrats' anti-Trump delusions Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden MORE (I-Vt.) has created a digital media juggernaut pivoting on live video and an organizing app designed to allow a massive community of volunteers and supporters to feed information to the campaign’s voter database. The efforts underscore how eager the candidates are to stand out online, especially in a crowded Democratic primary field in which more than two dozen candidates must compete for attention, support and, perhaps most importantly, donations. “If you want to move voters, you need to reach them where they are, and they’re spending more and more time online,” said Alex Kellner, a managing director at the Democratic digital firm Bully Pulpit Interactive and a veteran digital campaign strategist. He said that Warren’s team was among those with a standout digital strategy. “Elizabeth Warren has across every department scaled up aggressively,” he said. “Her field team is one of the biggest, her comms team is really senior and built out. They’ve made an investment in building their operation early.” Warren’s team is holding its digital operations close, creating digital advertisements and online content in-house and buying ad space themselves as it looks to move away from the traditional model of contracting out such work to consulting firms. The goal is to give the campaign more direct control over the content it puts out online by tasking staffers working exclusively for the candidate with spearheading online messaging and ad-buying efforts. Tara McGowan, the CEO of the progressive digital organization ACRONYM, said that handling digital ad-buying in house comes with its advantages. Unlike employees at outside consulting firms, in-house staffers are involved with the campaigns “day in and day out” and may have a deeper understanding of the voters they’re trying to reach. “We’ve been encouraging campaigns and organizations alike to bring their digital ad buying in-house for a long time now and are thrilled to see more campaigns take this approach,” McGowan, a former digital director for the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, said. “Even the best consultants have to juggle multiple clients at a time, splitting their attention in ways that can make their campaigns more expensive and less effective,” she added. Gillibrand, likewise, started taking steps earlier this year to move her campaign’s digital and ad-buying operations in-house and began phasing out the role of Anne Lewis Strategies, the digital firm where she spent more than $825,000 in the first quarter of 2019 – more than a quarter of the roughly $3 million she raised in that time frame. Meredith Kelly, her communications director, told The New York Times in May that the campaign had seen its daily donations increase by 1.5 times since April following the move. Some strategies, however, are skeptical of the movement towards in-house digital production and ad-buying, arguing that while some campaigns are capable of hiring the talent needed to run such complex operations, others are eschewing the experience that often comes with hiring an outside consultant. “Can I go get editing software and take it in-house? Sure,” one Democratic consultant, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the candidates’ strategies, said. "The quality of what you really want to in our business is the quality of the editor. If you’re going to bring this stuff in house, can you get the quality of editors that we have?” Warren and Gillibrand also aren’t alone in handling at least some digital content production internally. “On the digital side today, all of the campaigns are going to have an in-house social media, digital component,” the consultant said. Sanders, meanwhile, has largely built his digital strategy on a long-held idea that the most effective way to communicate with voters is directly, his aides say. In addition to investing heavily in digital ads – his campaign spent roughly $1.5 million on them in the first quarter of the year – Sanders’s team is embracing live content on platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitch, the online video site known for video game streaming. That Sanders has sought to bypass traditional media channels to reach voters isn’t new for the Vermont senator. As the mayor of Burlington in the 1980s, Sanders created and starred in a public access TV show dubbed “Bernie Speaks with the Community.” And the Vermont independent has long employed editors and videographers in his Senate office to create direct-to-voter content. “This has been Bernie’s project throughout his entire political career going back to the 1980s when he had his public access show,” Josh Miller-Lewis, Sanders’s digital communications director, said. “If we can elevate the voices of everyday Americans who often aren’t seen in the corporate media.” “The live streaming and Twitch brings another element into it, which is not only are we talking to voters, but we can have a conversation with voters,” he said. For Sanders and others, the internet has also emerged as one of their best organizing tools. Earlier this year, Sanders’s campaign rolled out BERN, a desktop app that allows supporters and volunteers to log the names and background information of people they talk to about Sanders. Miller-Lewis said the campaign will eventually roll out a mobile version of the app. The central concept behind BERN, Miller-Lewis said, is to help digitize the senator’s distributed organizing operation, which seeks to organize supporters in places where there is no paid campaign staff. That strategy was key to Sanders’s early success in the 2016 Democratic nominating contest. Another 2020 hopeful, Sen. Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden Sanders leads Democratic field in Colorado poll MORE (D-Calif.), launched an online program in May, dubbed Camp Kamala, intended to train young supporters on how to use the campaign’s organizing tools. Her team said on Friday that some 16,000 volunteers had completed the program earlier this week. There’s another factor looming over the Democratic candidates’ digital push: President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE, whose social media presence and focus on digital advertising helped power him to victory in 2016. Trump’s campaign manager heading in 2020 is Brad ParscaleBradley (Brad) James ParscaleMORE, who ran the campaign’s digital marketing strategy in 2016. And now, as president, Trump has an even more influential platform online. “You cannot defeat Donald Trump if you can’t compete with him on digital,” Miller-Lewis said. “And Bernie Sanders is, I think, in the unique position right now to compete with Donald Trump in that space.” --Updated on July 15 at 8: 12 a.m. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Government

Alexandra Cameron Hay Shorall and Colin Padraig Kelly were married Nov. 3 in Pittsburgh. The Rev. Leslie G. Reimer performed the ceremony at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, with the Rev. James R. Conroy, a Roman Catholic priest, taking part. Mrs. Kelly, 32, is a vice president in the fiduciary client group, in New York, at Sotheby’s, the auction house. She graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a daughter of Suzanne G. Friday of Edgeworth Borough, Pa., and John G. Shorall of Scottsdale, Ariz. The bride’s father retired as the associate city solicitor for Pittsburgh. Her mother is the owner of Friday & Genter Interior Design in Edgeworth Borough. Mr. Kelly, also 32, is the vice president for business development in New York for Obscura Digital, a subsidiary of the Madison Square Garden Company that creates custom video content, large-scale interactive displays, installations and projection mapping. He graduated cum laude from Harvard. He is a son of Ginna Boyle Kelly and Richard S. Kelly Jr. of Stamford, Conn. The groom’s father is a senior managing director for mergers and acquisitions, in the New York advisory group of Mizuho Securities, a Japanese investment bank. The couple met in 2016 through the dating app the League and had their first date in New York.

Weddings

Ceremonies and Receptions

Half of the web’s traffic is now encrypted, according to a new report from the EFF released this week. The rights organization noted the milestone was attributable to a number of efforts, including recent moves from major tech companies to implement HTTPS on their own properties. Over the years, these efforts have included pushes from Facebook and Twitter, back in 2013 and 2012 respectively, as well as those from other sizable sites like Google, Wikipedia, Bing, Reddit and more. Google played a significant role, having put pressure on websites to adopt HTTPS by beginning to use HTTPS as a signal in its search ranking algorithms. This year, it also ramped up the push towards HTTPS by marking websites that use HTTP connections for transmitting passwords and credit data as insecure. HTTPS, which encrypts data in transit and helps prevent a site from being modified by a malicious user on the network, has gained increased attention in recent years as users have woken up to how much of their web usage is tracked, and even spied on by their own government. Large-scale hacks have also generally made people more security-minded as well. A number of larger players on the web also switched on HTTPS in 2016, like WordPress.com which added support for HTTPS for all its custom domains, meaning the security and performance of the encryption technology became available every blog and website it hosted. Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Google made HTTPS connections the default in May 2016 for all the sites on its Blogspot domain, after having made HTTPS optional in fall 2015. More recently, the U.S. Government has made strides toward ditching HTTP, with the news that all new executive branch domains would use HTTPS starting in the spring of this year. Another report on the federal government’s adoption of HTTPS from January found that of roughly 1,000 .gov domains, 61 percent enforce HTTPS. And on the mobile web, Apple told iOS developers that HTTPS connections were required for apps by the end of last year, though it later extended that deadline. Many major news organizations have also moved forward (including us!), while efforts like the Let’s Encrypt project have helped pushed others, including WordPress, to take advantage of the technology. The EFF also has its own tool, Certbot, that is being used to help webmasters – even those running smaller sites – make the switch. The EFF noted that the average volume of encrypted web traffic varies depending on which browser maker is reporting their metrics. However, Mozilla recently said that more of its traffic is encrypted than unencrypted. Google’s Chrome, which is widely adopted, is more in line with the “50%” figure, the EFF found, as it said that over half of web pages are protected by HTTPS across different operating systems. Not all sites support HTTPS or have it as the default, of course. The Chrome extension HTTPS Everywhere can help with the latter, but more efforts still need to happen to get the other half the web encrypted as well.

Technology

Privacy

Whether you're a football fan or not, there's a good chance you'll be watching the Super Bowl... or at least be one of the 100 million people near a television playing the Super Bowl while you eye a platter of hot wings and snack on seven layer dip. About 100 million people tune in every year. If you are someone more prone to the latter situation, you might find yourself glancing up at the TV now and then and going, "So, who's that dude?" And if you're hoping to avoid a sports fan's judgemental "ugh," just know that a major one of those "that dudes" will be San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. Garoppolo is far more than a "that dude" to many, many fans out there, and those many, many fans are not reading articles explaining who he is, so let's stick the basics here. Twenty-eight-year-old Garoppolo has been a quarterback for the 49ers since October 2017. Before that, he was a backup quarterback to Tom Brady on the New England Patriots, starting when he was drafted in 2014. During his time on the Patriots, Garoppolo went to two Super Bowls, both of which the Patriots won. And before the Patriots, Garoppolo played in college at Eastern Illinois University in his home state. So, that's the brief career rundown. As for his personal life, he has three brothers, he likes golf, he likes fancy cars, he doesn't use social media a whole lot — I mean, the guy's a very busy athlete at the top of his game. There's not all that much he puts out there, really. He spends most of his time playing football. As star quarterbacks tend to do. When they're going to the Super Bowl. For the third time. And as for his personal personal life, Garoppolo appears to be single at the moment. He's made tabloid headlines for dates in the past, though, particularly when he went on a date with adult film star Kiara Mia in 2018. Garoppolo was asked about this during a press conference and simply talked about how his life has changed since he's been in the spotlight. "Life is different now,” he told reporters, according to the New York Post. “My life off the field, I’ve never really been big on being very public with things. Even social media, I’m not out there a ton. My life’s looked at differently. I’m under a microscope." Prior to this, he was photographed on what appeared to be a date with a woman named Alexandra King, but it seems it was pretty casual. In an interview with Bleacher Report, he said that when his friends brought up the relationship that was being reported by TMZ, "It was news to me." And that's that on "that dude." Enjoy your dip and your newfound football knowledge. Related Content:

Sports

Football

ACCRA, July 14 (Reuters) - The Bank of Ghana said the yield on its weekly 91-day bill rose to 12.55 percent at an auction on Friday, from 11.67 percent at the last sale on July 7. The bank said it had accepted 877.17 million cedis ($199.5 million) worth of bids out of the 928.95 million cedis tendered for the paper, which will be issued on July 17. For full details, click here: here.pdf ($1 = 4.3965 Ghanaian cedis) (Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Editing by Tim Cocks)

Finance

Economics

A new version of the popular game Plague Inc will soon be available, where people can save the planet from a pandemic instead of destroying humanity. In addition, game developers Ndemic Creations have pledged to give $250,000 to fight the new coronavirus.It comes after the game rocketed to the top of the App Store charts, curiously around the time the novel coronavirus started to spread."Eight years ago, I never imagined the real world would come to resemble a game of Plague Inc," said James Vaughan, creator of Plague Inc.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Plague Inc, a game that lets users destroy the world with a novel pathogen, has created a new version of the game, in which players can save the world from a virus.The game, which has occupied a position on the App store charts ever since it was created in 2012, reached new levels of international popularity in 2020, curiously at the same time the novel coronavirus started to spread.But as it spread, and was officially declared a pandemic on March 12, players reached out to game developer Ndemic Creations to see if a new version of the game, in which the world could be saved instead of destroyed, could be designed.In the new game mode, players will control world governments, boost healthcare systems, impose quarantines and shut down public services to prevent the infection from spreading."Eight years ago, I never imagined the real world would come to resemble a game of Plague Inc. or that so many players would be using Plague Inc. to help them get through an actual pandemic," James Vaughan, creator of Plague Inc, wrote in a press release. Vaughan also announced that his company would be donating $250,000, evenly split between the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the World Health Organization's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.  As the threat of COVID-19 grew, many players reached out to the developers of Plague Inc for answersPlague Inc tends to see a spike in users every time there's a threat of an outbreak, from Ebola to the flu. But when it came to COVID-19, so many people reached out to ask the creators of Plague Inc questions about the new coronavirus that the company was forced to issue a statement, saying: "Plague Inc. is a game, not a scientific model, and that the current coronavirus outbreak is a very real situation.""It's certainly possible that people are playing [Plague Inc.] as a way to work through anxiety or put things into perspective," mental health researcher Michelle Carras Colder, who has published research on video games with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, previously told Business Insider.In 2013, Vaughan gave a talk at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The game was praised by Ali S. Khan, then the assistant surgeon general at the CDC, for its use of a "non-traditional route to raise public awareness on epidemiology, disease transmission, and diseases/pandemic information."Previously, in medical journals Science, Epidemiology, and Lancet Infectious Disease, epidemiologists suggested role playing video games could be a successful at modeling an outbreak and teaching people how viral infections work. In January, on the Chinese social media site Weibo, one Plague Inc. player said the appeal of the game lay in "pretending to occupy the position of the perpetrator." By the end of February the game was banned in China. Ndemic announced that they been informed that the game 'includes content that is illegal in China as determined by the Cyberspace Administration of China.' Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, an analyst an Nike Partners, noted that other virus-related games have remained available for playing in China. On Twitter, he theorized that the removal may be because in the game the virus always starts in China in Plague Inc, or because Ndemic is working on a fake news update to their game, that allows people to spread misinformation.The new update, which is still being developed, will be free for all players. Ndemic Creations has not replied to Business Insider's request for comment.  Loading Something is loading. Get the latest coronavirus analysis and research from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses. window._taboola = window._taboola || []; window._taboola = window._taboola || [];

Science

Medicine

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday after reports that the United States Department of the Interior had grounded its fleet of Chinese-made drones that it hoped Washington would “stop abusing the concept of national security” and provide a non-discriminatory atmosphere for Chinese companies. Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang made the comments at a daily news briefing after reports that the U.S. Department of Interior had grounded all Chinese-made or part-made drones as part of a review of its entire drone program. On Thursday leading Chinese drone maker DJI said it was aware of the reports but could not confirm them. (The story corrects after DJI says it is aware of reports of grounding of Chinese-made or part-made drones, not that it has confirmed with U.S. authorities the grounding of them.) Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Hugh Lawson

Technology

Telecommunications

The number of Americans without kids has been increasing steadily for decades, with the percentage of women ages 15 to 44 who are childless nearing 50% as of the last Census report. At first glance, childlessness may seem to be the trend that bodes the best for financial stability, especially for couples — a family structure known as "DINKs" for double income, no kids. This logic is based on the simple fact that kids are expensive. A child costs over $245,000 to raise until age 17, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a sum of money the childless, in theory, could use to fund retirement. But while Gregory Hammer of Hammer Financial Group acknowledged being childless can make a time horizon for retirement more predictable, he was quick to add that people without kids often have other things that are costly in their day-to-day lives — more travel, for instance — while other retirement planning differences are negligible. One difference he did emphasize is that childless couples must be sure to prepare for the death of a spouse, since they don't have children to rely upon. "When the first spouse passes away, income usually goes down, more times than not tax liabilities increase, and expenses either stay the same or increase," he explained. Childless couples especially should crunch the numbers on such a scenario to see what gaps in income would exist. From there, either be prepared to return to work, or take out a life insurance policy to cover the difference. Along the same lines, long-term care insurance is a smart bet for childless couples. Policies aren't cheap, costing $2,000 to $4,000 annually for a couple in their mid-50s. Buying coverage earlier rather than later means lower premiums, though. And while it may be hard to imagine eventually being frail or dependent enough to need it, it's smart to have the policy in place for a worst-case scenario. Really, though, this kind of planning should take place even when children are in the picture, especially if parents don't want to burden their kids down the line. As Sally Brandon of Rebalance IRA put it: "Everybody needs to plan for themselves and care for themselves whether they have children or not. Who knows if your kids will have the wherewithal to take care of you anyway?" Unfortunately, one similarity between DINKs and their DEWK (double earners with kids) counterparts is that such planning is often neglected. "A lot of people have this sense that it's all going to work out (but) have never gone through the exercise of really understanding what the numbers look like," she added. So for DINKs and DEWKs alike, the importance of foresight can't be understated. Take the time, crunch the numbers and put plans in place for everything from retirement income to long-term care. As Brandon summed it up: "Being aware, as with anything, is half the battle." Here are five simple steps to get started:

Finance

Investing

Following multiple admissions last year that it had been misreporting some of its ad numbers, Facebook just announced that it has committed to an audit by the Media Rating Council “to verify the accuracy of the information we deliver to our partners.” The mistakes that Facebook revealed last year seem relatively minor, but collectively, they probably have added momentum to calls from the ad industry for better data from Facebook, as well as more third-party verification of that data. In the blog post announcing the MRC audit, Facebook also says it will be providing more details about how long (down to the millisecond) an ad is actually on-screen, as well as how long 50 percent and 100 percent of the ad is on-screen. So hopefully, advertisers will wonder less about whether they’re paying for ads that aren’t actually seen. In addition, Facebook says it’s now working with 24 independent partners for ad measurement. Plus, it will be adding new video ad-buying options — for example, advertisers could only pay for videos that are viewed in their entirety. “As a partner to over four million advertisers across a wide range of organizations and objectives, we want to provide transparency, choice, and accountability,” Facebook says.

Technology

Social Media

Another significant change in HHS' program integrity rule: The department wants insurers to send consumers separate bills for medical coverage and whatever coverage they might provide for abortion. How it works: Federal law says federal funding — including premium subsidies under the ACA — can't be used to cover abortion, and requires insurers to segregate the money they use to provide coverage for abortion services. That segregation will need to include a whole separate billing process if this proposed rule is finalized. HHS said insurers should "send an entirely separate monthly bill to the consumer for only the portion of premium attributable to abortion coverage" — which, according to earlier policy outlines, could be as low as $1. On a similar note, HHS also finalized rules yesterday making it easier for employers to opt out of the ACA's contraception mandate if they have religious — or, in some cases, moral — objections to birth control. Small businesses, schools, insurance companies and individuals can claim either a religious or moral exemption. Large, for-profit employers do not appear to be able to claim the moral exemption, but non-profits and small businesses can. The other side: ACA legal expert Nicholas Bagley has argued that the exemption for moral objections is illegal.

Politics

Pro-Life

Dovish words from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday caused a rush to so-called "risk assets" and have left traders contemplating whether the U.S. dollar will trend lower for the rest of the year. "We are looking at the dollar weakening through quarter-end and even in the beginning part of April as well," Richard Cochinos, the head of European FX strategy at Citi, told CNBC Wednesday. Kit Juckes, global head of foreign exchange strategy at Societe Generale, went one step further. His immediate reaction after Yellen's speech was that the sun was setting on the dollar's rally in a way that recalled its last big uptrend in the late 1990s which was reversed by a "sharp fall in real yields as the Fed eased too much in 2002/2003." "For now, I'd rather stick to a description of the 'trade in currency wars' and a range-bound dollar rather than a bear trend. But that could easily change," he said in a note on Wednesday morning. The dollar's rise has been one of the key investment themes in the last few years since the U.S. central bank decided to ease back on the monetary stimulus it had pumped into the economy following the financial crash of 2008. Its rise compounded a slump in commodities - which are traditionally priced in dollars. It has also coincided with emerging market weakness which had seen large inflows after the 2008 crash with investors seeking yield overseas. But a new chapter could be in the offing for the dollar in 2016 with the Fed now widely expected to spend most of the year on the sidelines and curb the amount of rate hikes it performs. "QE may well be back upon the table; monetary expansion is indeed upon the table. The dollar, in Yellen's opinion, has been far too strong and has been cast off from the table," closely followed market watcher Dennis Gartman said in a morning note on Wednesday. He highlighted that the Canadian dollar, the and the New Zealand dollar have been the real beneficiaries of the greenback's weakness and added that this would continue "relentlessly." Speaking to the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday, Yellen noted in prepared remarks that it is appropriate for policymakers to proceed "cautiously." Many traders have underlined that the risks for the Fed are from outside influences which would mean that decent data for the U.S. in the coming months would do little to change the central bank's policies. On Tuesday, the dollar index - the greenback measured against a broad basket of currencies - lost 0.84 percent and saw its worst performance in nearly two weeks. "The U.S. dollar stands at risk of facing additional headwinds throughout 2016 especially as the central bank head shows a greater willingness to further delay the normalization cycle," David Song, a currency analyst at forex firm DailyFX, said in a research note.

Finance

Currency