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[The secret life of Kim Jong Un's aunt, who has lived in the U.S. since 1998]

The secret life of Kim Jong Un's aunt, who has lived in the U.S. since 1998
from The Washington Post


Kim Jong Un's maternal aunt and her husband, known in North Korea as Ko Yong Suk and Ri Gang, pose for a portrait in New York's Times Square on April 23. They have been living in the United States since 1998, and run a dry-cleaning store. (Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)

Wandering through Times Square, past the Naked Cowboy and the Elmos and the ticket touts, she could be any immigrant trying to live the American Dream.

A 60-year-old Korean woman with a soft perm and conservative clothes, she's taking a weekend off from pressing shirts and hemming pants at the dry-cleaning business she runs with her husband.

But she's not just any immigrant. She's an aunt to Kim Jong Un, the young North Korean leader who has threatened to wipe out New York with a hydrogen bomb.

And for the past 18 years, since defecting from North Korea into the waiting arms of the CIA, she has been living an anonymous life here in the United States, with her husband and three children.

"My friends here tell me I'm so lucky, that I have everything," Ko Yong Suk, as she was known when she was part of North Korea's royal family, told The Washington Post on a recent weekend. "My kids went to great schools and they're successful, and I have my husband, who can fix anything. There's nothing we can envy."

Her husband, previously known as Ri Gang, chimes in, laughing: "I think we have achieved the American Dream."

This is the story of how one family went from the top of North Korea to middle America.

Breaking their silence in the United States, Ko and Ri spent almost 20 hours talking to two Washington Post reporters in New York City and then at their home several hours' drive away. They were nervous about emerging from their anonymity; after all, there are Americans who analyze North Korea for a living and do not even know that the couple are here.

They asked The Post not to publish the names they use in the United States or to reveal where they live, mainly to protect their grown children, who live normal professional lives.

Ko bears a striking resemblance to her sister, Ko Yong Hui, who was one of Kim Jong Il's wives and the mother of Kim Jong Un, the third-generation leader of North Korea. And she had a particularly close relationship with the man now considered one of the United States' top enemies: She took care of Kim Jong Un while he was at school in Switzerland.

But in 1998, when Kim Jong Un was 14 and older brother Kim Jong Chol was 17, Ko and Ri decided to defect. Ko's sister, their link to the regime, was sick with terminal breast cancer — although she did not die until 2004 — and the boys were getting older. The couple apparently realized that they would not be needed by the regime much longer and fled, concerned about losing their privileged status.




The Kim family has ruled North Korea for 70 years, through a repressive system built on patronage and fear. The royal family and top cadres in the Workers' Party benefit from this system — and have the most to lose if it collapses, or if they run afoul of the regime.

So the couple decided to flee — not to South Korea, as many North Koreans do, but to the United States.

They have worked long hours running their dry-cleaning store, and their three children have come of age here, going to good colleges and getting good jobs.

The family home is a large, two-story house with two cars in the driveway, a huge TV in the living room, a grill on a rear deck. They've been to Las Vegas on vacation, and two years ago went to South Korea, where Ko enjoyed visiting the palaces she had seen in TV dramas.

They look like a normal family.

But look closer. That photo of her eldest son on a jet-ski? It's at Wonsan, where the Kim family has its summer residence. That girl in the photo album? It's Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's younger sister, who runs the propaganda division of the Workers' Party.

And the house? It was bought partly with a one-time payment of $200,000 that the CIA gave the couple on their arrival, they said.

Even though Ko and Ri have not seen Kim Jong Un in almost 20 years and do not appear to have held official positions, U.S. intelligence on North Korea is so thin that this couple still represents a valuable source of information on the family court.


Kim's aunt at work in the business on April 24. In North Korea, she is known as Ko Yong Suk and her husband as Ri Gang. In the United States, they guard their privacy carefully, declining to show their faces for these photos. (Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)

Kim Jong Un's uncle, the husband of Kim's maternal aunt, is seen April 24 at work at the dry-cleaning that he and his wife operate. They have been living in the United States since 1998. (Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)

They can reveal, for example, that Kim Jong Un was born in 1984 — not 1982 or 1983, as has been widely believed. The reason they're certain? It was the same year that their first son was born. "He and my son were playmates from birth. I changed both of their diapers," Ko said with a laugh.

Sometimes, operatives from the CIA's national clandestine service come to town to show Ko and Ri photos of North Koreans and ask who the people are.

The CIA declined to confirm or comment on any of Ko and Ri's claims. Some parts of the couple's history can be verified but other parts cannot, or seem incomplete.

Even today, Ri in particular is sympathetic toward the North Korean regime and is trying to get approval to visit Pyongyang. And both are careful in what they say about their powerful nephew, to whom they repeatedly refer as "Marshal Kim Jong Un."

But what they will say about their former charge paints a picture of a man who was raised knowing that he would one day be king.

In 1992, Ko Yong Suk arrived in Bern, Switzerland, with Kim Jong Chol, the first son of Ko's sister and Kim Jong Il, who in two years would become the leader of North Korea. Kim Jong Un arrived in 1996, when he was 12.

"We lived in a normal house and acted like a normal family. I acted like their mother," Ko said about her time in Bern. "I encouraged him to bring his friends home because we wanted them to live a normal life. I made snacks for the kids. They ate cake and played with Legos."

Traveling on a diplomatic passport, Ri went back and forth between North Korea and Switzerland, sometimes ferrying their youngest daughter and Kim Jong Un's younger sister back and forth.

The family spoke Korean at home and ate Korean food but also enjoyed the benefits of an expatriate family in an exotic locale. Ko took the Kim children to Euro Disney, now Disneyland Paris. Kim Jong Un had been to Tokyo Disneyland with his mother some years before — and her photo albums are full of pictures of them skiing in the Swiss Alps, swimming on the French Riviera, eating at al fresco restaurants in Italy.

Kim Jong Un loved games and machinery, trying to figure out how ships float and planes fly. He was already showing personality traits that would later become much more evident.

"He wasn't a troublemaker but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance," Ko recalled. "When his mother tried to tell him off for playing with these things too much and not studying enough, he wouldn't talk back but he would protest in other ways, like going on a hunger strike."

Kim loved going home for the summer, spending time in Wonsan, where the family has a huge beachfront compound, or at their main residence in Pyongyang, with its movie theater and plenty of room to hang out.

"He started playing basketball, and he became obsessed with it," his aunt said of the young Kim, who was a Michael Jordan fan and later hosted basketball player Dennis Rodman as a guest several times in North Korea. "He used to sleep . . . with his basketball."

He was shorter than his friends, and his mother told him that if he played basketball, he would become taller, Ko said.

Later, at their house, Ri produced a never-publicly seen photo, laminated and stored in an envelope, of a slightly built Kim, aged 13, and his older brother among a team wearing basketball uniforms after a tournament in Pyongyang. Ri is sitting in the front row, while Ko is standing in the back. Kim is holding a gold trophy.

The world did not know that Kim had been anointed his father's successor until October 2010, when his status was made official at a Workers' Party conference in Pyongyang. But Kim had known since 1992 that he would one day inherit North Korea.

The signal was sent at his eighth birthday party, attended by North Korea's top brass, the couple said. Kim was given a general's uniform decorated with stars, and real generals with real stars bowed to him and paid their respects to him from that moment on.

"It was impossible for him to grow up as a normal person when the people around him were treating him like that," Ko said.

From a humble background, Ko was catapulted into the top echelons of North Korean society when her sister, a performer, caught the eye of the princeling Kim Jong Il, and she became his third partner in 1975.

"I was very close to my sister, and it was a tough job to be the wife, so she asked me to help her. She could trust me because I was her own blood," Ko said.

Kim Jong Il personally selected Ri to marry his sister-in-law. They all lived in a compound in Pyongyang, with Ko looking after her sister's and her own children for several years.

"We lived the good life," Ko said. Over a sushi lunch in New York, she reminisced about drinking cognac with sparkling water and eating caviar in Pyongyang, about riding with Kim Jong Il in his Mercedes-Benz.

Then came the charmed years in Europe. But in 1998, Ko's sister discovered she had breast cancer and underwent treatment in Switzerland and France.

This is where Ko and Ri's version of events starts to become opaque. Given that Ri is trying get back into Kim Jong Un's good graces, he has reason to present their defection as nothing but altruistic.

The way Ri and Ko tell it, the cancer treatment in Europe was not working, so they decided they should travel to the United States to try to secure treatment for Ko's dying sister. Their defection was all about trying to save Kim Jong Un's mother, they say.

Stories about the couple in the South Korean news media have suggested that they sought asylum in the United States because they were concerned about what could happen to them after either of Kim Jong Un's parents died. This was their link to the royal family, and without that link, what would happen to them?

Walking through Central Park on a bright Sunday morning, Ko seemed to imply that this was a concern.

"In history, you often see people close to a powerful leader getting into unintended trouble because of other people," she said. "I thought it would be better if we stayed out of that kind of trouble."

They had reason to be scared, given Ko's sister's position, said Michael Madden, editor of the North Korea Leadership Watch website.

"Ko Yong Hui was an ambitious woman — she wanted her sons to be promoted, and she made enemies in the process," Madden said. "If you were her sister or her brother-in-law, you would feel threatened. Someone could easily make you disappear."

The dangers persist today. Just look at the case of Jang Song Thaek, the uncle who also lived in the Pyongyang compound with Ko and Ri. He apparently built up too much power. In 2013, Kim had him executed.

So one day in 1998, Ri and Ko and their three children took a taxi to the U.S. Embassy in Bern. They said they were North Korean diplomats and wanted asylum. After several days, during which time a Korean speaker flew in from Washington, they were taken to a U.S. military base near Frankfurt.

They stayed in a house on the base for several months while they were questioned. It was then that Ri and Ko disclosed their family connections.

"The American government didn't know who Kim Jong Un was, that he would become the leader," Ri said.

The U.S. government did not tell its ally South Korea that it had Ko and Ri until they were on American soil, apparently infuriating the government in Seoul.

For U.S. intelligence agencies, which struggle to get reliable information about the inner workings of the North Korean regime, the defection must have seemed like hitting the intelligence jackpot.

But Ri insists they did not know much. "They thought we must know some secrets, but we didn't know anything," he said. "We were just looking after the children and helping them study, so of course we saw a lot of their private lives, but we had nothing to do with defense. We didn't know any nuclear or military secrets."

Madden said the pair would have had limited intelligence value. Alexandre Mansourov, a North Korean leadership expert who once studied at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, agreed.

"Yes, they understand the system very well," he said. However, "they missed the famine and the recovery, the transition to the new leadership, and all the events of the last five years. In that sense, they're living in the past."

When they landed in the United States, the family spent a few days in the Washington area — not far from the CIA — before moving to a small city where a South Korean church had offered to help them, as it did for others who escaped the North.

"The people at the church kept asking us questions. They knew we were from North Korea, but they told us we didn't look like North Koreans. They kept asking us questions," Ko said.

So the family moved to a different city with very few other Koreans, or even other Asians.

"Life was hard at the beginning. We had no relatives and we were working for 12 hours every day," Ri said. He worked as a builder, then did maintenance in an apartment house, jobs that were easy to do without English.

Ko was frustrated at not being able to work and contribute. "The only thing I could do without speaking the language was dry cleaning," she said in Korean. Ri speaks reasonable English today, but Ko's is still basic.

So they opened a small store and began working long hours, Ri at the machines and Ko doing alterations. They soon hit their stride. "Seeing my kids doing well in school and my husband working so hard gave me the strength and energy to carry on," Ko said.

Their children have no interest in Korea, North or South, she said. Their oldest son is a mathematician. Their second son helps out in the business, while their daughter works in computer science.

They have a comfortable existence but certainly do not appear to be living large. Stopping at a gas station for lunch on the way back to their home, Ko remarked that bottled water was very cheap and was disappointed that the Dunkin' Donuts was out of burritos. It's a long way from cognac and caviar.

So why are they breaking their silence now?

Ri says he wants to visit North Korea and has come out of their deep cover to dispel what he calls "lies" being peddled about them and their wider family in North Korea by regime critics in South Korea.

Last year, Ri and Ko moved to sue three high-level North Korean defectors who had been on South Korean television accusing them of a variety of activities including having plastic surgery and stealing millions of dollars from the Kim regime. The couple hired a celebrity lawyer, Kang Yong-seok, to pursue a defamation case, but it was thrown out on a technicality.

Even after the years the couple has spent in the United States, North Korea still has some pull.

Ri, who is particularly careful around reporters not to speak ill of the regime, is positioning himself as the person to bridge the widening gap between Washington and Pyongyang.

"My ultimate goal is to go back to North Korea. I understand America and I understand North Korea, so I think I can be a negotiator between the two," he said. "If Kim Jong Un is how I remembered he used to be, I would be able to meet him and talk to him."

Mansourov described Ri's hopes to return to North Korea as "ridiculous."

"He has a nice life in the U.S. Why would he want to go back? Unless he's ready to 'go upstairs'," he said.

Ko said she misses her home town — the pull of the home town cannot be underestimated in Korean culture — but does not want to go back. Nor does she want Ri to visit. "But how can I change my stubborn husband's mind?"

Luckily for Ko, that decision is Kim Jong Un's. And he's not showing any interest in having an intermediary anytime soon to help him improve relations with the United States.

[Study in rats reignites debate over cell phones and cancer]

Study in rats reignites debate over cell phones and cancer
from USA Today

A study released Friday found an increased risk of certain cancers in animals exposed to cell phone radiation, a conclusion that could reignite concerns over the safety of the widely used devices.

However, some scientists expressed serious concerns about the study, noting inconsistencies in its results. Even officials at the National Toxicology Program, which conducted the research, said the report fails to provide the clear answers many seek.

Researchers found small increases in rare cancers in the brains and hearts of male rats exposed to nearly constant, high doses of radiation from cell phones, compared to rats that weren't exposed. There was no increase in cancer among exposed female rats, according to the study, which represents "partial findings" of a larger project that includes experiments in mice.

The rats were exposed to "whole body" cell phone radiation for a total of nine hours a day for two years. Between 2.2% to 3.3% developed malignant gliomas, a type of brain tumor. Between 1.1% and 6.6% developed a type of tumor called a schwannoma in the heart.

None of the rats in the control group, which wasn't exposed to radiation, developed either type of tumor. Yet, in a surprising finding, those animals lived shorter lives than the ones exposed to the cell phone radiation.

The low-frequency radiation emitted by cell phones has long raised concerns that the devices may cause brain tumors, especially near side of the head where people hold their phones. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, classified mobile phone use "as a possible carcinogen" in 2011.

However, the radiation given off by cell phones is fundamentally different than the ionizing kind known to cause cancer. Unlike the kind given off by atomic bombs, the non-ionizing radiation emitted by phones is too weak to damage DNA. That's led many scientists to dismiss the notion that cell phones could cause cancer.

Some cancer experts predict the new study will change that thinking. The study represents a "paradigm shift in our understanding of radiation and cancer risk," Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, said in a statement.

"The findings are unexpected; we wouldn't reasonably expect non-ionizing radiation to cause these tumors," said Brawley, who wasn't involved in the research. "This is a striking example of why serious study is so important in evaluating cancer risk."

The CTIA, which represents the cell phone industry, said the study's findings conflict with other medical evidence. In a statement, the group noted there's been no increase in brain cancer since the 1980s, when people first began using cell phones.

Authors of the study acknowledged its limitations.

Cancer rates among rats in the control group were far below what's typical in lab animals, which could skew the results, authors noted in the study. The unexposed rats also may not have lived long enough to develop brain tumors, they noted.

The unusually low brain tumor rates among unexposed rats could also create the illusion of a difference in cancer risk that doesn't actually exist.

Some scientists rejected the study's conclusions. In written comments published with the study, Michael Lauer, a researcher with the National Institutes of Health's office of extramural research, said the study may have been too small to produce reliable results and doesn't prove that cell phones cause cancer.

John Bucher, associate director of the National Toxicology Program, said it's not clear what, if anything, the animal study reveals about cell phone use in people. People who hold cell phones near their ears probably get the greatest radiation exposure on one side of their skull. The animals in this study were exposed to cell phone radiation across their entire body.

"It may have relevance," Bucher said. "It may have no relevance."

Brawley noted rats in the study were exposed to extremely high signal strengths that were "near but below levels that would cause animal tissue to heat up."

"Additional research will be needed to translate effects at these high doses to what might be expected at the much lower doses received by typical or even high-end cell phone users," Brawley said. "Cell phone technology continues to evolve, and with each new generation, transmission strengths have declined and with it radio frequency exposures."

[150 experts say Olympics must be moved or postponed because of Zika]

150 experts say Olympics must be moved or postponed because of Zika
from The Washington Post



More than 100 prominent physicians, bioethicists and scientists from around the world posted a letter Friday urging WHO Director-General Margaret Chan to exert pressure on Olympic authorities to move the Olympics from Rio de Janeiro or delay the games because of public health concerns over the Zika virus.

Brazil, which is hosting the Olympics and the Paralympics, is at the epicenter of the rapidly evolving mosquito-borne epidemic.

The letter is signed by 150 individuals from more than a dozen countries, including Brazil, Japan, Israel, Russia, Sweden, South Africa and the United States. It calls on the WHO to convene an independent group to advise it and the International Olympic Committee, and for authorities to reconsider the decision to hold the Games in Rio.

"We are doing it to ask for an open, transparent discussion of the risks of holding the Olympics as planned in Brazil," said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University and one of the letter's four authors, in an email explaining the reasoning behind the letter.

The group of scientists is not seeking "general assurance" from the WHO, Caplan said. Instead, they want "a frank discussion among independent experts," he said.

"If Rio is going to happen, the world deserves a full discussion of why and at what potential risks and liabilities," Caplan said.

The other authors are Lee Igel, an associate professor at New York Univesity; Amir Attaran, a biologist and law professor at the University of Ottawa; and Christopher Gaffney, a senior research fellow at the University of Zurich who studies the impact of major sporting events on urban populations.

Each author has published articles in recent weeks and months calling for the games to be postponed because of Zika.

In the open letter posted Friday on Twitter and Facebook, the authors said evidence shows that Brazil's Zika strain has more serious medical consequences than researchers previously knew, that Rio de Janeiro is one of the hardest hit areas of the epidemic, and that Rio's mosquito-killing efforts are not meeting expectations.

Zika infections during pregnancy can cause serious fetal brain abnormalities, including microcephaly, which is characterized by abnormally small heads and severe developmental problems. The virus has also been linked to neurological disorders in adults. Zika is primarily transmitted through mosquitoes but can also spread through sexual contact.

In the most recent letter, the authors say that Rio's public health system is so "severely weakened" as to make a last-minute push against the mosquito that transmits Zika impossible. Citing government data, the letter notes the increasing number of cases of dengue, a related virus spread by the same mosquitoes, that is considered a proxy for Zika.

In the specific neighborhood of the Olympic Park, Barra da Tijuca, there have been more dengue cases in the first quarter of 2016 than in all of 2015, the letter said.

"It is therefore imperative that WHO conducts a fresh, evidence-based assessment of Zika and the Games, and its recommendations for travelers," the letter said. "Given the public health and ethical consequences, not doing so is irresponsible."

The IOC insists that the Games will go forward as planned. Earlier this month, the WHO urged athletes and travelers planning to attend the competitions to take measures to protect against infection, but it did not call for the Olympics, which start Aug. 5, or the Paralympics, which begin Sept. 7, to be canceled or postponed.

U.S. Olympic Committee officials have said the decision to attend the Games is up to individual athletes.

The authors say the estimated 500,000 foreign tourists from all over the world who are expected to attend the Games represent an unnecessary risk because they could potentially get infected and return home to places where the virus can become endemic.

"Should that happen to poor, as-yet unaffected places (e.g., most of South Asia and Africa) the suffering can be great," the authors wrote. "It is unethical to run the risk, just for Games that could proceed anyway, if postponed and/or moved."

U.S. health officials disagree with that assessment.

In an interview this week, Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said: "We don't see from a public health standpoint any reason to cancel the Olympics."

"There's been some claims that if the Olympics happen, it's going to disseminate the virus everywhere, it's going to amplify it," Frieden said. "Well, we looked at the numbers. The Olympics account for less than one quarter of 1 percent of all travel to Zika-affected areas."

Frieden has said the risk to Olympians is "very, very low." About 100 athletes, coaches and staff of the U.S. Olympic delegation are already being monitored for the virus as they begin to go to Brazil; up to 1,000 are expected to be monitored as the Olympics and Paralympics begin.

He said it was "unfortunate" that Major League Baseball recently decided to scrap a two-game series in Puerto Rico and move it to Miami amid concerns over the Zika virus.

CDC and health officials across the globe have advised women who are pregnant to avoid traveling to regions where Zika is prevalent, and they have advised women who are trying to become pregnant, and their male partners, to use condoms or abstain from sex during their stay for months after and after returning home.

The CDC is also conducting a risk assessment for each of the approximately 180 countries with athlete delegations. More than 10,500 athletes are expected at the Olympics and about 4,350 are likely to be at the Paralympics. Analysts are looking at the expected number of athletes and travelers likely to go to Brazil, the susceptibility of those countries to epidemic diseases, and the potential for how added travel might accelerate the spread of Zika.

But in Friday's letter, the authors say the many uncertainties about Zika "currently make it impossible for mathematical models to predict the epidemic's course accurately."


Here's a full list of the 150 people who signed the letter, in alphabetical order, and represent individuals, not their institutions:

1. Prof. Akira Akabayashi, Department of Biomedical Ethics, School of Public Health, The University of Tokyo Faculty of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan
2. Prof. Paul S. Appelbaum, Director, Division of Law, Ethics & Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, USA
3. Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Department of Philosophy, NYU Law, New York University, New York, USA
4. Prof. Thalia Arawi, Founding Director, Salim El-Hoss Bioethics & Professionalism Program, Faculty of Medicine, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
5. Prof. Amir Attaran, School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Community Medicine and Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada
6. Ms. Stephanie Augustine, Researcher, Department of Maternal Fetal Medicine, North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, USA
7. Prof. Robert Baker, Bioethics Program of Clarkson University & The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Schenectady, USA
8. Dr. Alison Bateman-House, Division of Medical Ethics, Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, USA
9. Prof. Frances Batzer, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA
10. Prof. Angelica M. Baylon, External Relations Director, Maritime Academy of Asia, Kamaya Point, Philippines
11. Prof. Solly Benatar, Founding Director, University of Cape Town Bioethics Centre, Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa 12. Prof. Cecilia Benoit, Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
13. Mr. Edward J. Bergman, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
14. Prof. Kenneth Berkowitz, Department of Population Health and Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, New York University, New York, USA
15. Prof. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Canadian Institutes of Health Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health Human Resources Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
16. Prof. Marie A. Bragg, Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, USA
17. Dr Berit Bringedal, Senior Researcher, Institute for Studies of the Medical Profession, Oslo, Norway
18. Prof. Amy Brown, Maria Fareri Children's Hospital at Westchester Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, New York Medical College, Valhalla, USA
19. Prof. Arthur L. Caplan, Division of Medical Ethics, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
20. Dr. Rhyddhi Chakraborty, Researcher, Philosophical Bioethics, Global Public Health and Social Justice, American University of Sovereign Nations, USA.
21. Prof. Theeraphap Chareonviriyaphap, Department of Entomology, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand
22. Prof. Cheryl Cline, Office of Bioethics, Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
23. Dr. Catherine Constable, Instructor, Department of Medicine, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
24. Prof. Glenn Cohen, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, USA
25. Prof. Patrick Derr, Chair, Department of Philosophy, Clark University, Worcester, USA
26. Prof. Débora Diniz, Faculty of Law, Universidade de Brasília, and Bioethics Program, FIOCRUZ, Brasília and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
27. Prof. Ames Dhai, Director, Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
28. Dr. Hasan Erbay, MD. PhD., Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, Afyon Kocatepe University Faculty of Medicine, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey.
29. Prof. Eric Feldman, Health Policy and Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, USA
30. Dr. Holly Fernandez-Lynch, Executive Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, Harvard University, USA
31. Prof. Chris Feudtner, Department of Pediatrics and Department of Medical Ethics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
32. Dr. Christopher Gaffney, Department of Geography, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
33. Prof. William Gardner, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
34. Prof. Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
35. Prof. Grover Gilmore, Dean, Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA
36. Prof. Moti Gorin, Director, Jann Benson Ethics Center, Colorado State University, USA
37. Prof. Linda Granowetter, Department of Pediatrics, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
38. Prof. Abhik Gupta, Ph.D., Professor and Dean, School of Environmental Sciences, Assam (Central) University, Silchar, India.
39. Prof. Sally Guttmacher, College of Global Public Health, New York University, New York, USA
40. Prof. Negin Hajizadeh, Department of Medicine, Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine, Hofstra University, Hempstead, USA.
41. Mr. George Halvorson, Chief Executive (Retired) Kaiser Permanente, and Chair, InterGroup Understanding, Sausalito, USA
42. Prof. Deborah S. Hamm, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, USA
43. Prof. Alice Herb, Division of Humanities in Medicine at State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, New York, USA
44. Prof. Søren Holm, Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, School of Law, University of Manchester, UK.
45. Prof. Lee H. Igel, Tisch Institute for Sports Management, Media, and Business, New York University, New York, USA
46. Prof. Judy Illes, Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
47. Dr. Mahmood-uz- Jahan, M.D., PhD., Director, Bangladesh Medical Research Council, Dhaka, Bangladesh
48. Prof. Dale Jamieson, Chair, Department of Environmental Studies, New York University, New York, USA
49. Prof. Yeremias Jena, M. Phil., M.Sc, Professor of Medical Ethics at Atma Jaya School of Medicine, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia.
50. Prof. Steven Joffe, Vice-Chair, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Department of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, USA
51. Prof. Ken Johnson, School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Ottawa, Canada
52. Prof. Nora Jones, Associate Director, Center for Bioethics, Urban Health, and Polic, Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA
53. Prof. Therese Jones, Associate Director, Center for Bioethics and Humanities, Director, Arts and Humanities in Healthcare Program, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Denver, USA
54. Prof. Matthias A. Karajannis, Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
55. Prof. Douglas I. Katz, Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Braintree, USA
56. Prof. Ralph V. Katz, Professor of Epidemiology, Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology F.A.C.E.), and Founding Chair, Department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion, New York University, New York, USA
57. Ms. Lisa Kearns, Research Associate, Division of Medical Ethics, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
58. Prof. Aaron Seth Kesselheim, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology & Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Boston, USA
59. Dr. Abbas Kharabi, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
60. Dr. Robert Klitzman, Professor of Psychiatry, Director, Masters of Bioethics Program Columbia University, New York, USA
61. Prof. Craig Klugman, Chair, Department of Health Sciences, DePaul University, Chicago, USA
62. Prof. Adam Kolber, Center for Health, Science, and Public Policy, Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn, USA
63. Prof. Craig Konnoth, Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, USA
64. Prof. Ralph A. Korpman, School of Medicine, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, USA
65. Dr. Ronald L. Krall, Center for Bioethics and Health Law, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
66. Prof. Sheldon Krimsky, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning, Department of Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, USA
67. Prof. John Lantos, Director of Pediatric Bioethics, Department of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, Kansas City, USA
68. Prof. John Last, School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
69. Prof. Stephen Latham, Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University, New Haven, USA
70. Dr. Thuy Le, Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, Oxford University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
71. Prof. Arthur Leader, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
72. Mr. Leonard leBlanc, Research Fellow, Eubios Ethics Institute, Japan.
73. Prof. Trudo Lemmens, Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
74. Prof. Betty Wolder Levin, School of Public Health and Health Policy, City University of New York, New York, USA
75. Prof. Bruce Levin, Department of Biostatistics, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, USA
76. Prof. Ariane Lewis, Department of Neurology and Department of Neurosurgery, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
77. Dr. Ana Lita, Director, Global Bioethics Initiative, New York, USA
78. Prof. Julian Little, Director, School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
79. Prof. Sergio Litewka, Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, USA
80. Prof. Alex John London, Director, Center for Ethics and Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
81. Prof. Darryl Macer, Ph.D., Hon.D. President, American University of Sovereign Nations, Arizona, USA; Director, Eubios Ethics Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand
82. Prof. Tim Mackey, Director, Global Health Policy Institute, Department of Anaesthesology and Public Health, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, USA
83. Prof. Ruth Macklin, Department of Epidemiology & Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, New York, USA.
84. Prof. Cheryl Macpherson, Bioethics Department, St George's University School of Medicine, True Blue, Grenada
85. Prof. Brian Martin, Director, Graduate Program in Public Health, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, USA
86. Prof. Thomas Mayo, Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, USA
87. Mr. Michael Mawadri, Emergency Coordinator with Action for Development (AFOD) in South Sudan, South Sudan
88. Prof. James McCartney (Reverend, Order of St. Augustine), Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, Villanova, USA
89. Prof. John Merz, Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
90. Mr. Alan Milstein, Sports Attorney, Sherman, Silverstein, Kohl, Rose & Podolsky, Moorestown, USA
91. Prof. Christine Mitchell, Executive Director, Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
92. Prof. Jonathan D. Moreno, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
93. Prof. Dr. Martin Müller, Department of Geography, University of Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
94. Prof. Carin Muhr, Department of Medical Science, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
95. Prof. Anna Nolan, Department of Environmental Medicine , Department of Medicine, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
96. Prof. Stjepan Oreskovic, Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, University of Zagreb School of Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia
97. Prof. Brendan Parent, Division of Medical Ethics and Co-Director NYU Sports and Society Program, New York University, New York, USA
98. Prof. Shamina Parvin Lasker, Head of Department of Anatomy, Samorita Medical College; Secretary General, Bangladesh Bioethics Society, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
99. Prof. Pasquale Patrizio, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
100. Prof. Sean Philpott-Jones, Department of Bioethics, Clarkson University, Schenectady, NY
101. Dr. Carolyn Plunkett, Division of Medical Ethics, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
102. Prof. Stephen G. Post, Department of Family, Population & Preventive Medicine, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Stony Brook, USA
103. Prof. Kathleen Powderly, Director, John Conley Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, USA
104. Prof. Duncan Purves, Environmental Studies and Bioethics, New York University, New York, USA
105. Prof. Vojin Rakic, Founding Director, Center for the Study of Bioethics, Head of the European Division of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics, University of Belgrade, Serbia
106. Prof. Vardit Ravitsky, School of Public Health, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
107. Prof. Avad Raz, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er-Sheva, Israel
108. Prof Kathleen Reeves, Director, Center for Bioethics, Urban Health, and Policy, Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA
109. Prof. Donald R. Roberts, Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, USA
110. Dr. Philip Rubin, Principal Assistant Director (Retired), Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Executive Office of the President of the United States, New Haven, USA
111. Prof William Ruddick, Founding Director, Center for Bioethics, New York University, New York, USA
112. Prof. Maya Sabatello, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, USA
113. Dr. Mojgan Saleuhipour, Faculty of Biomedicine, South Baylo University, CA, USA
114. Prof. Judit Sandor, Director of the Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
115. Prof. Pamela L. Sankar, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
116. Prof. Arthur Schaefer, Founding Director, Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba, Canada
117. Prof. Udo Schuklenk, Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics, Department of Philosophy, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
118. Prof. Evan Selinger, Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, USA
119. Dr. M. Selvanayagam, Professor, Dean of Research and President of India Association of Bioethics, India
120. Prof. Seema K. Shah, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, USA
121. Prof. William S. Silvers, University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Denver, USA
122. Prof. Peter Singer, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, Princeton, USA; and School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
123. Prof. Maria Fiatarone Singh, Chair of Exercise and Sport Science, Faculty of Health Sciences, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Australia
124. Prof. Daniel Skinner, Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Department of Social Medicine, Ohio University, Dublin, USA
125. Raquel R. Smith, Ph.D., Prof. Of Clinical Psychology, American University of Sovereign Nations, Arizona, USA; Community Emergency Response Team (FEMA) Instructor and Manager
126. Prof. Robert Smith?, Department of Mathematics and Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
127. Prof. Jeremy Snyder, Faculty of Health Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
128. Prof. Robert W. Snyder, Esq. Attorney at Law, Professor of Healthcare Management and Finance, American University of Sovereign Nations School of Medicine, USA.
129. Prof. Martin Strosberg, Bioethics Program of Clarkson University & The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Schenectady, USA
130. Prof. Eileen Sullivan-Marx, Dean, School of Nursing, New York University, New York, USA
131. Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health, Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK
132. Prof. Henk ten Have, Director, Center for Healthcare Ethics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA
133. Ms. Ananya Tritipthumrongchok, General Manager, International Peace and Development Ethics Centre, Kaeng Krachan, Thailand.
134. Prof. Duunjian Tsai, M.D., PhD., Professor, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan.
135. Prof. Connie Ulrich, Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia, USA
136. Prof. Erick Valdés, Universisad del Desarrollo, Chile
137. Prof. Robert M. Veatch, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
138. Prof. J. David Velleman, Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics, New York University, New York, USA
139. Dr. Ford Vox, Brain Injury Medicine, Shepherd Center, Atlanta, USA
140. Dr. Gary I. Wadler, Past Chairman, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List Committee, Recipient of the International Olympic Committee's President's Prize in 1993, Manhasset, USA.
141. Mr. Wendell Wallach, Lecturer, Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, New Haven, USA
142. Prof. Vivian Welch, School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
143. Prof. Bruce Wilcox, Faculty of Public Health, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
144. Prof. Benjamin Wilfond, Director, Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Seattle Children's Research Institute, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
145. Prof. Loren Wissner Greene, Department of Population Health and Bioethics, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, USA
146. Prof. Wendy L. Wobeser, Division of Infectious Diseases, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
147. Prof. Paul Root Wolpe, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Bioethics and Director, Center for Ethics, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
148. Prof. Sanni Yaya, School of International Development and Global Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.
149. Prof. Boris Yudin, Department of Humanitarian Expertise and Bioethics, Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
150. Dr. Diana Zuckerman, President, National Center for Health Research, Washington DC, USA

[Prince, an Artist Who Defied Genre, Is Dead at 57]

Prince, an Artist Who Defied Genre, Is Dead at 57
from The New York Times



Prince, the songwriter, singer, producer, one-man studio band and consummate showman, died on Thursday at his home, Paisley Park, in Chanhassen, Minn. He was 57.

His publicist, Yvette Noel-Schure, confirmed his death but did not report a cause. In a statement, the Carver County sheriff, Jim Olson, said that deputies responded to an emergency call at 9:43 a.m. "When deputies and medical personnel arrived," he said, "they found an unresponsive adult male in the elevator. Emergency medical workers attempted to provide lifesaving CPR, but were unable to revive the victim. He was pronounced deceased at 10:07 a.m."

The sheriff's office said it would continue to investigate his death.

Last week, responding to news reports that Prince's plane had made an emergency landing because of a health scare, Ms. Noel-Schure said Prince was "fighting the flu."

Prince was a man bursting with music — a wildly prolific songwriter, a virtuoso on guitars, keyboards and drums and a master architect of funk, rock, R&B and pop, even as his music defied genres. In a career that lasted from the late 1970s until his solo "Piano & a Microphone" tour this year, he was acclaimed as a sex symbol, a musical prodigy and an artist who shaped his career his way, often battling with accepted music-business practices.

"When I first started out in the music industry, I was most concerned with freedom. Freedom to produce, freedom to play all the instruments on my records, freedom to say anything I wanted to," he said when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. In a tribute to George Harrison that night, Prince went on to play a guitar solo in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that left the room floored.

A seven-time Grammy winner, Prince's Top 10 hits included "Little Red Corvette," "When Doves Cry," "Let's Go Crazy," "Kiss" and "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"; albums like "Dirty Mind," "1999" and "Sign O' the Times" were full-length statements. His songs also became hits for others, among them "Nothing Compares 2 U" for Sinead O'Connor, "Manic Monday" for the Bangles and "I Feel for You" for Chaka Khan. With the 1984 film and album "Purple Rain," he told a fictionalized version of his own story: biracial, gifted, spectacularly ambitious. Its music won him an Academy Award, and the album sold more than 13 million copies in the United States alone.

In a statement, President Obama said, "Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent."

He added, "He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer. 'A strong spirit transcends rules,' Prince once said — and nobody's spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative."

A Unifier of Dualities

Prince recorded the great majority of his music entirely on his own, playing every instrument and singing every vocal line. Many of his albums were simply credited, "Produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince." Then, performing those songs onstage, he worked as a bandleader in the polished, athletic, ecstatic tradition of James Brown, at once spontaneous and utterly precise, riveting enough to open a Grammy Awards telecast and play the Super Bowl halftime show. He would often follow a full-tilt arena concert with a late-night club show, pouring out even more music.

On Prince's biggest hits, he sang passionately, affectionately and playfully about sex and seduction. With deep bedroom eyes and a sly, knowing smile, he was one of pop's ultimate flirts: a sex symbol devoted to romance and pleasure, not power or machismo. Elsewhere in his catalog were songs that addressed social issues and delved into mysticism and science fiction. He made himself a unifier of dualities — racial, sexual, musical, cultural — teasing at them in songs like "Controversy" and transcending them in his career.

He had plenty of eccentricities: his fondness for the color purple, using "U" for "you" and a drawn eye for "I" long before textspeak, his vigilant policing of his music online, his penchant for releasing troves of music at once, his intensely private persona. Yet for musicians and listeners of multiple generations, he was admired well-nigh universally.

Prince's music had an immediate and lasting influence: among songwriters concocting come-ons, among producers working on dance grooves, among studio experimenters and stage performers. He sang as a soul belter, a rocker, a bluesy ballad singer and a falsetto crooner. His most immediately recognizable (and widely imitated) instrumental style was a particular kind of pinpoint, staccato funk, defined as much by keyboards as by the rhythm section. But that was just one among the many styles he would draw on and blend, from hard rock to psychedelia to electronic music. His music was a cornucopia of ideas: triumphantly, brilliantly kaleidoscopic.

Runaway Success

Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis on June 7, 1958, the son of John L. Nelson, a musician whose stage name was Prince Rogers, and Mattie Della Shaw, a jazz singer who had performed with the Prince Rogers Band. They were separated in 1965, and his mother remarried in 1967. Prince spent some time living with each parent and immersed himself in music, teaching himself to play his instruments. "I think you'll always be able to do what your ear tells you," he told his high school newspaper, according to the biography "I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon" (2013) by the critic Touré.

Eventually he ran away, living for some time in the basement of a neighbor whose son, André Anderson, would later record as André Cymone. As high school students they formed a band that would also include Morris Day, later the leader of the Time. In classes, Prince also studied the music business.

He recorded with a Minneapolis band, 94 East, and began working on his own solo recordings. He was still a teenager when he was signed to Warner Bros. Records, in a deal that included full creative control. His first album, "For You" (1978), gained only modest attention. But his second, "Prince" (1979), started with "I Wanna Be Your Lover," a No. 1 R&B hit that reached No. 11 on the pop charts; the album sold more than a million copies, and for the next two decades Prince albums never failed to reach the Top 100. During the 1980s, nearly all were million-sellers that reached the Top 10.

With his third album, the pointedly titled "Dirty Mind," Prince moved from typical R&B romance to raunchier, more graphic scenarios; he posed on the cover against a backdrop of bedsprings and added more rock guitar to his music. It was a clear signal that he would not let formats or categories confine him. "Controversy," in 1981, had Prince taunting, "Am I black or white?/Am I straight or gay?" His audience was broadening; the Rolling Stones chose him as an opening act for part of their tour that year.

Prince grew only more prolific. His next album, "1999," was a double LP; the video for one of its hit singles, "Little Red Corvette," became one of the first songs by an African-American musician played in heavy rotation on MTV. He was also writing songs with and producing the female group Vanity 6 and the funk band Morris Day and the Time, which would have a prominent role in "Purple Rain."

Prince played "the Kid," escaping an abusive family to pursue rock stardom, in "Purple Rain." Directed by Albert Magnoli on a budget of $7 million, it was Prince's film debut and his transformation from stardom to superstardom. With No. 1 hits in "Let's Go Crazy" and "When Doves Cry," he at one point in 1984 had the No. 1 album, single and film simultaneously.

He also drew some opposition. "Darling Nikki," a song on the album that refers to masturbation, shocked Tipper Gore, the wife of Al Gore, who was then a United States senator, when she heard her daughter listening to it, helping lead to the formation of the Parents' Music Resource Center, which eventually pressured record companies into labeling albums to warn of "explicit content." Prince himself would later, in a more religious phase, decide not to use profanities onstage, but his songs — like his 2013 single "Breakfast Can Wait" — never renounced carnal delights.

Prince didn't try to repeat the blockbuster sound of "Purple Rain," and for a time he withdrew from performing. He toyed with pastoral, psychedelic elements on "Around the World in a Day" in 1985, which included the hit "Raspberry Beret," and "Parade" in 1986, which was the soundtrack for a movie he wrote and directed, "Under the Cherry Moon," that was an awkward flop. He also built his studio complex, Paisley Park, in the mid-1980s for a reported $10 million, and in 1989 his "Batman" soundtrack album sold two million copies.

Business Battles

Friction grew in the 1990s between Prince and his label, Warner Bros., over the size of his output and how much music he was determined to release. "Sign O' the Times," a monumental 1987 album that addressed politics and religion as well as romance, was a two-LP set, cut back from a triple.

By the mid-1990s, Prince was in open battle with the label, releasing albums as rapidly as he could to finish his contract; quality suffered and so did sales. He appeared with the word "Slave" written on his face, complaining about the terms of his contract, and in 1993 he changed his stage name to an unpronounceable glyph, only returning to Prince in 1996 after the Warner contract ended. He marked the change with a triple album, independently released on his own NPG label: "Emancipation."

For the next two decades, Prince put out an avalanche of recordings. Hip-hop's takeover of R&B meant that he was heard far less often on the radio; his last Top 10 hit was "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," in 1994. He experimented early with online sales and distribution of his music, but eventually turned against what he saw as technology companies' exploitation of the musician; instead, he tried other forms of distribution, like giving his 2007 album "Planet Earth" away with copies of The Daily Mail in Britain. His catalog is not available on the streaming service Spotify, and he took extensive legal measures against users of his music on YouTube and elsewhere.

But Prince could always draw and satisfy a live audience, and concerts easily sustained his later career. He was an indefatigable performer: posing, dancing, taking a turn at every instrument, teasing a crowd and then dazzling it. He defied a downpour to play a triumphal "Purple Rain" at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2007, and he headlined the Coachella festival in 2008 for a reported $5 million. A succession of his bands — the Revolution, the New Power Generation, 3rdEyeGirl — were united by their funky momentum and quick reflexes as Prince made every show seem both thoroughly rehearsed and improvisational.

A trove of Prince's recordings remains unreleased, in an archive he called the Vault. Like much of his offstage career, its contents are a closely guarded secret, but it's likely that there are masterpieces yet to be heard.

[This Tiny Mushroom Could Pave The Way To Curbing World Hunger]

This Tiny Mushroom Could Pave The Way To Curbing World Hunger
from The Huffington Post



Prepare for prettier produce, people.

In the future, you may notice that your white button mushrooms stay fresh-looking longer and take more time to turn brown. That's because last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed it will not regulate the sale of white button mushrooms that have been genetically altered using a technique called CRISPR.

The Washington Post reports this marks the first time a CRISPR-altered food is on the path to being sold to and eaten by the public.

The CRISPR technique edits the mushroom's DNA, allowing it to resist bruising and browning over time in a way that other mushrooms can't. Because altering the mushroom doesn't include introducing foreign DNA from other organisms — its own browning enzyme is simply "turned off" — it isn't subject to the USDA's standard regulations on genetically modified foods.

When used correctly, CRISPR could go far beyond a prettier box of fungus. The uber-targeted technique allows scientists to cheaply and easily adjust a crop's own DNA, thereby possibly creating foods like drought-resistant corn or healthier tomatoes or foods that don't require pesticides during production. It can theoretically make crops that resist disease, harsh conditions and climate change, which as previously reported by The Huffington Post could help majorly curb world hunger by providing more usable food for the planet.

In other words, CRISPR could be the pathway to cheaper, healthier, more abundant crops for all. The new white button mushrooms in particular could help reduce waste because fewer would be bruised in production, and consumers would be able to keep them for use — and out of the trash can — for longer periods of time.

The USDA confirmed their mushroom decision in a letter to the researcher at Pennsylvania State University who developed the white button variety.

But while plant scientist Yinong Yang now has USDA clearance to sell his new 'shroom, there's no guarantee it will hit stores anytime soon, according to MIT Technology Review. Consumers are generally wary of genetically modified foods despite scientific consensus that they're safe, and the mushroom company that helped fund Yang's research is "afraid of negative response regarding GMO from consumers," he said. It's a hot button issue that may keep the mushrooms out of grocery stores for a time to come, and Yang told Science News he would voluntarily seek FDA approval before any attempt to sell it.

If the mushroom ever does become mainstream, though, it could be a huge leap forward for food engineering... and maybe, eventually, even world hunger. Though there's a long way to go in the public opinion of genetically modified organisms, science is on the right track — a track could be paved with mushrooms.

['And then we wept': Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached]

'And then we wept': Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached
from The Washington Post

The conclusions from a series of scientific surveys of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching event — an environmental assault on the largest coral ecosystem on Earth — are in, and scientists aren't holding back about how devastating they find them.

Australia's National Coral Bleaching Task Force has surveyed 911 coral reefs by air, and found at least some bleaching of the vast majority of them. The bleaching was the worst in the reef's northern sector — where virtually no reefs escaped it.

"Between 60 and 100 percent of corals are severely bleached on 316 reefs, nearly all in the northern half of the Reef," Prof. Terry Hughes, head of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said in a statement to the news media. He led the research.

Severe bleaching means that corals could die, depending on how long they are subject to these conditions. The scientists also reported that based on diving surveys of the northern reef, they already are seeing nearly 50 percent coral death.

"The fact that the most severely affected regions are those that are remote and hence otherwise in good shape, means that a lot of prime reef is being devastated," said Nancy Knowlton, Sant Chair for Marine Science at the Smithsonian Institution, in an email in response to the bleaching announcement. "One has to hope that these protected reefs are more resilient and better able to [recover], but it will be a lengthy process even so."

Knowlton added that Hughes, who led the research, is "NOT an alarmist."

Here's a map that the group released when announcing the results, showing clearly that bleaching hit the northern parts of the reef the worst:



Hughes tweeted the map above, writing, "I showed the results of aerial surveys of #bleaching on the #GreatBarrierReef to my students, And then we wept."

"This is, by far, the worst bleaching they've seen on the Great Barrier Reef," said Mark Eakin, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch, which partners with the Australian National Coral Bleaching Taskforce. "Our climate model-based Four Month Bleaching Outlook was predicting that severe bleaching was likely for the GBR back in December. Unfortunately, we were right and much of the reef has bleached, especially in the north."

Responding to the news Wednesday, the Australian government's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority put out a statement from its chairman Russell Reichelt. "While the data is incomplete, it is clear there will be an impact on coral abundance because of bleaching-induced mortality, mainly in the far north," the statement said in part.

Coral bleaching occurs when corals are stressed by unusually high water temperatures, or from other causes. When this happens, symbiotic algae, called zooxanthellae, leave the corals' bodies. This changes their color to white and can also in effect starve them of nutrients. If bleaching continues for too long, corals die.

There already have been reports of mass coral death around the Pacific atoll of Kiribati this year — and widespread coral bleaching worldwide, a phenomenon that scientists attribute to a strong El Niño event surfing atop a general climate warming trend.

Tourism involving the Great Barrier Reef is worth $5 billion annually, and accounts for close to 70,000 jobs, according to the news release from the Australian National Coral Bleaching Taskforce.

Recently, journalist Chelsea Harvey reported that some scientists think coral bleaching this extensive could be a sign of "dangerous" climate change caused by humans.

The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, just after saying that countries should avoid such dangerous interference with the climate, adds that atmospheric greenhouse gas levels should be stabilized "within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change."

Indeed, recent research suggests that although Great Barrier Reef corals have a mechanism to protect them if waters warm up beyond normal, but then cool down again before a second warming that crosses the bleaching threshold. However, as oceans continue to warm, it found, that pattern will be less prevalent, meaning that corals will be less able to cope.

Past global coral bleaching events have occurred in 1998 and 2010. In 1998, scientists ultimately documented through much follow-up research that 16 percent of the world's corals died in that event. The full toll of the current global bleaching event has not been determined.

[Shadow Complex Remastered Gets a May 3 Release Date for PS4 & PC]

Shadow Complex Remastered Gets a May 3 Release Date for PS4 & PC
from Playstation Lifestyle

Released earlier this year for Xbox One, Shadow Complex Remastered is coming to PlayStation 4 and PC on May 3 in North America and Europe, Epic Games announced today.

An action side-scroller, Shadow Complex Remastered promises a 10+ hour single-player campaign that takes you across a variety of non-linear levels. Additionally, there's the Proving Grounds mode, which offers side challenges to "help hone the skills needed to become the ultimate Shadow Complex master."

Creative Director Donald Mustard says, "Gameplay centers around exploration and fast-paced combat, challenging you to gather power-ups to overcome obstacles, thwart enemies, and delve into a mysterious and challenging world."

For this remastered version of Shadow Complex, all of the original game content is included, complete with graphical enhancements, additional Master Challenges, and dynamic melee take-downs.

Mustard also talked about how they developed Shadow Complex:

Our initial goal in designing Shadow Complex was to create a game reminiscent of the classic nonlinear 2D side-scrollers we'd always loved — games like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. This beloved genre provided some of our most memorable gaming experiences, but was abandoned for more than a decade in favor of new games pushing 3D graphics. We love our modern games, but also longed for something new with the flavor and simplicity of something old. We hoped that others shared our passion for this genre and that Shadow Complex might help to reinvigorate it!

It's been an amazing experience to watch fellow gamers embrace Shadow Complex with such enthusiasm and we've enjoyed playing some of the other new side-scrollers that have since followed.

If the PS4 version of Shadow Complex Remastered is the same as the Xbox One version, expect it to cost $14.99.

[Dunk on your friends in the new 'Rocket League' update]

Dunk on your friends in the new 'Rocket League' update
from Mashable

The layup, bank shot and alley-oop all just got real weird.

After a month of teases on social media, Rocket League's developers announced its Hoops mode, turning the popular "cars meets soccer" game into "cars meets basketball."

The free downloadable content adds Hoops Mode to the original Rocket League, setting the goals above the ground on both halves of the arena. Players will then have to focus on aerial shots — or driving along walls — to get the oversized ball in the hoop.

There's also a new Dunk House stage in the free update, along with a licensed "NBA Flag Pack," which brings 20 team logos to car flags for $1.99.



If you're ready to master dunking in Rocket League, you'll be able to snag the free update on April 26.

[White Americans Are Dying Younger as Drug and Alcohol Abuse Rises]

White Americans Are Dying Younger as Drug and Alcohol Abuse Rises
from The New York Times

Life expectancy declined slightly for white Americans in 2014, according to new federal data, a troubling sign that distress among younger and middle-age whites who are dying at ever-higher rates from drug overdoses is lowering average life spans for the white population as a whole.

The new federal data, drawn from all deaths recorded in the country in 2014, showed that life expectancy for whites dropped to 78.8 years in 2014 from 78.9 in 2013. Men and women had declines, but because of statistical rounding, the decline did not appear as sharp among men.

Life expectancy for women fell to 81.1 in 2014 from 81.2 in 2013. The average life span for men also fell, but not enough to sink below 76.5 years, their life expectancy in 2013.

"The increase in death in this segment of the population was great enough to affect life expectancy at birth for the whole group," said Elizabeth Arias, the statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics who analyzed the data, referring to whites from their mid-20s to their mid-50s. "That is very unusual."

Dr. Arias, who is preparing a larger study of mortality trends over the past 15 years, said drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide were the main drivers of the gloomy trends among whites in recent years, a pattern also found by other researchers.

Life expectancy for whites had been rising for decades, but it has stagnated in recent years. It inched up in 2010 and 2011, and was flat in 2012 and 2013.

Recent research has documented surprising increases in death rates among less educated whites. Last year, a paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented rising death rates among middle-age white Americans, particularly those with no more than a high school education. Other research has found rising rates among younger whites.

The pattern had puzzled demographers, but the recent analyses have pointed to suffering and anxiety among working-class whites.

In contrast, life expectancy for blacks rose to 75.6 in 2014 from 75.5 in the previous year. Blacks have gained more than a year of life expectancy since 2008. Black men had the biggest increase of all the groups in 2014, rising to 72.2 from 71.8.

For Hispanics, life expectancy jumped to 81.8 in 2014 from 81.6 in 2013. Hispanic women had even more pronounced gains, with life expectancy rising to 84 years from 83.8 in 2013. Overall, Hispanics, like blacks, have gained one year of life expectancy since 2008.

The overall life expectancy for Americans, 78.8, remained unchanged.

The last time life expectancy for whites dropped was in 2005, around the time of a particularly severe flu season, though it is not clear that flu caused the decline.

The most recent dip before that was in 1993, around the time of the AIDS epidemic, when there was a decline in life expectancy for the entire United States population. The drop was steepest among blacks, whose life expectancy dropped to 69.2 from 69.6 in one year.

Typically, most of the deaths in the country occur among people in their 60s or older. Deaths in people who are younger or middle age are relatively rare and do not usually affect overall life expectancy. A surge in death rates at those ages is sometimes analogous to a generation of men going to war or a wave of mothers' deaths in childbirth.

"There is the expectation that life expectancy will go up every year, and that has been realized just about every year over the past century," said Samuel Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania.

[Jennifer Aniston Is PEOPLE's 2016 World's Most Beautiful Woman!]

Jennifer Aniston Is PEOPLE's 2016 World's Most Beautiful Woman!
from People

Jennifer Aniston may be one of the most gorgeous stars in Hollywood, but she was still humbled and "very, very flattered" when she first heard the news that she was being named the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. "I thought, 'Oh my God,' " she tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. "There was this sort of very excited, teenage-y kind of moment."

The actress, who says she's learned to embrace her appearance over the years, insists she feels her best when she's healthy and strong.

"It's funny, it's a really quick transition from not a care and now all of a sudden, we've got to really be mindful of what we put inside our bodies," she adds. "And how we sleep and take care of ourselves. You can get away with a lot in your 20s."



Aniston, 47, was first motivated to start taking care of herself early on in her career after an agent told her she didn't get a part because she was "too chubby."

"I was like, 'What?!' But my diet was terrible," she says. "Milk shakes and French fries with gravy [laughs]. It was a good thing to start paying attention."

Now the actress mixes it up by exercising at least six days a week for about an hour each day and watching her diet. But that doesn't mean she won't indulge in her favorites. From chips and guacamole to her husband Justin Theroux's pasta carbonara, which they make together every couple of weeks, "I'm not as strict as I was," she says. "It was always sort of a monitored watch. Then I thought just give yourself moderation."

Besides cooking and exercising with her husband, Aniston says just being married to Theroux brings her the greatest joy. "He makes me laugh. He's so interesting and so interested," she says. "He's unbelievably talented in more areas than one and he's just a good man."

As for her natural look, the actress gives full credit to her glam squad for teaching her "everything that I know! Whatever was happening before was just unfortunate," says the star, adding that she now knows how to contour her cheeks and blow out her hair. "When I was in my 20s, my face was almost a complete circle. So I really needed contouring. And now I'm slowly chiseling away, wishing I had that round face back."

If she could magically try any new look and instantly go back, Aniston says she'd be game to check out a pixie cut. "If I knew I could instantly push it back. I'm very curious to see what I would look like with really short hair," she says. "But I'll never do it. Never. I'm a long hair girl. It's like a security blanket."

So how does Aniston define beauty? "Inner confidence. Peace. Kindness. Honesty. A life well-lived," she says. "Taking on challenges and not feeling shame for things that haven't gone the way you felt they should have. And not feeling like a failure or allowing people to critique your life and make you feel like you've failed at something. That's just toxic noise."

[Achievement locked: Microsoft ceases Xbox 360 production]

Achievement locked: Microsoft ceases Xbox 360 production
from ArsTechnica



Xbox chief Phil Spencer took to the company's primary blog to make a hardware announcement on Wednesday, but it had nothing to do with recent rumblings about the future of the gaming console. Instead, Spencer came to bury its past.

"While we've had an amazing run, the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us," Spencer wrote in his announcement that Xbox 360 system production has officially ceased. Remaining 360 consoles will continue to be sold in stores, and Xbox Live-related services and connectivity for current 360 users will continue to function, but if you're looking to buy a brand-spanking-new 360 system, your time is limited.

Spencer's announcement didn't go so far as to announce how many 360 systems have sold in its nearly 11 years of life—which is probably because recent Xbox-related announcements from Microsoft have lumped in sales figures for both the 360 and the One to make the latter sound better. Still, we know the platform has at least surpassed the 84 million sales mark announced in 2014.

Zephyr? Dangit!

What's probably most notable about the 360 hardware is how much Microsoft couldn't leave not-so-well-enough alone. Most home electronics enjoy under-the-hood changes in their lifespan, to coincide with parts dropping in price or changing suppliers, but a major overheating debacle made the Xbox 360's revision process a much more public one than consumers might be used to.

The Xbox 360 received a significant "slim" redesign in 2010, but its hardware actually went through a few major revisions over the years. For starters, the Xbox 360 was the first major home gaming console to launch in multiple configurations—mostly so that Microsoft could advertise a cheaper, lower-memory "Arcade" option to soften the blow of the $399 "Premium" model. Xbox 360 systems remained available in multiple memory configurations throughout the line's 11-year lifespan.

Once Microsoft acknowledged widespread Xbox 360 overheating in 2007, there was also a tenuous span of time in which shoppers didn't know exactly which motherboard they were getting if they purchased a Premium configuration. The first major motherboard revision, the Zephyr, was designed to rectify overheating issues while adding HDMI support, but the problem wasn't wholly fixed until Microsoft rolled out the later-2007 motherboard revision dubbed Falcon, which moved the CPU to a 65nm process.
Before the wider rollout, you could only guarantee that you got a Falcon if you opted for the pricier, higher-memory Elite model; if you were more frugal, you had to roll the dice in terms of which mobo your Premium system came with. In this author's case, a 2007 hunt for a Falcon-powered Xbox 360 Premium proved fruitless, and my first, Zephyr-powered 360 red-ringed just in time for the Xbox 360 S's 2010 launch—which came with a very welcome 802.11n wireless adapter (and a built-in Kinect port, which reduced the required cabling for that accessory when it launched later that year).

That model persevered until this week's announcement, with the only major hardware revision coming the following year with a revised power supply and a tweak to block a "reset glitch" hack that enabled unsigned code—and a 2013 front-face tweak, dubbed "E," that removed optical-out functionality. (Thanks to Ars reader solomonrex for the reminder on E!)

Even if you didn't find yourself buying new hardware variants, your Xbox 360 still offered surprises over the years thanks to a seemingly endless run of software "dashboard" updates, which saw the console's interface transition from a "blade" series of panels to an avatar-dominated, Metro-loaded mess of logos and advertisements. Throughout those years, the Xbox team tried to find the right balance between enabling a whole new era of digital-download purchases and making its Xbox Live software less of a pain in the neck to actually locate.

For many owners, that didn't matter, since the Xbox 360 was the first major living-room box to support Netflix on-demand streaming, and the system wound up being used more for video streaming than online multiplayer. That revelation has led us to wonder if the Xbox 360 would ever see a shrunken, Roku-like rebirth at a lower price point as a streaming box.

With today's Spencer announcement, however, that's not likely. We may very well get a shrunken Xbox One with such functionality later this year, but the 360 hardware has officially ringed its last red.

[Mitsubishi Motors Admits Manipulating Fuel Consumption Testing]

Mitsubishi Motors Admits Manipulating Fuel Consumption Testing
from NASDAQ

Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (MMTOF.PK, 7211) has admitted manipulating fuel economy data for about 625,000 vehicles sold in Japan.

"In connection with the certification process for the mini-cars manufactured by MMC, we found that with respect to the fuel consumption testing data submitted to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism or MLIT, MMC conducted testing improperly to present better fuel consumption rates than the actual rates; and that the testing method was also different from the one required by Japanese law. We express deep apologies to all of our customers and stakeholders for this issue," Mitsubishi Motors said.

The applicable cars are four mini-car models, two of which are the "eK Wagon" and "eK Space" which have been manufactured by Mitsubishi Motors; and the other two are the "Dayz" and "Dayz Roox" which have been manufactured by Mitsubishi Motors and supplied to Nissan Motors Corporation

Nissan Motors requested Mitsubishi Motors to review the running resistance value set by Mitsubishi Motors during tests by Mitsubishi Motors. In the course of internal investigation upon this request, Mitsubishi Motors said it learned of the improper conduct that Mitsubishi Motors used the running resistance value for testing which provided more advantageous fuel consumption rates than the actual rates.

Mitsubishi Motors has decided to stop production and sales of the applicable cars. Nissan Motors also has stopped sales of the applicable cars, and Mitsubishi Motors and Nissan Motors will discuss compensation regarding this issue.

During its internal investigation, Mitsubishi Motors has found that the testing method which was different from the one required by Japanese law has been applied to other models manufactured by MMC for the Japanese domestic market.

Mitsubishi Motors noted that it will also conduct an investigation into products manufactured for overseas markets.

Mitsubishi Motors plans to set up a committee consisting of only external experts. It will publish the results of its investigation as soon as it is complete.

[The 'deep and disturbing decline' in global press freedom]

The 'deep and disturbing decline' in global press freedom
from The Washington Post

For the first time in more than a decade, the press is freer in Africa than in the Americas. Yet a global "climate of fear and tension" continues to erode press freedom around the world, according to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

The group's 2016 World Press Freedom Index reveals a "deep and disturbing decline in respect for media freedom at both the global and regional levels." Global press freedom violations are up 14 percent since 2013, according to its scoring system.

"The climate of fear results in a growing aversion to debate and pluralism, a clampdown on the media by ever more authoritarian and oppressive governments, and reporting in the privately-owned media that is increasingly shaped by personal interests," the group's secretary general, Christophe Deloire, said in a statement. "Journalism worthy of the name must be defended."



Overall, press freedom eroded in two-thirds of the 180 countries tracked since last year, resulting in a roughly 3.7 percent decline in press freedom. Europe's news media is freest, by far. Africa is next, followed by the Americas, where violence against journalists is on the rise, according to the report. Asia and Eastern Europe are next, followed by North Africa and the Middle East.

"The survival of independent news coverage is becoming increasingly precarious in both the state and privately-owned media because of the threat from ideologies, especially religious ideologies, that are hostile to media freedom, and from large-scale propaganda machines," the report's authors write.

Tajikistan and Brunei fell the most in the ranks, each sliding 34 spots to 150th and 155th in this year's rankings. That plunge was driven by rising authoritarianism in Tajikistan and self-censorship fueled by the growing weight of sharia law and threats of blasphemy charges. Poland fell from 29th to 47th because of the ultra-conservative government's seizure of the public media, the group reports.



Eritrea's news media is the least free, followed by North Korea's. Turkmenistan is next, followed by Syria and China. Finland is home to the world's freest news media, followed by the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and New Zealand.

The infrastructure indicator of Reporters Without Borders, which measures access to the Internet and government destruction of media property, has fallen 16 percent since 2013. Another indicator that measures self-censorship and anti-press laws was down 10 percent.

The index is based on 87-question surveys administered in nearly two dozen languages to experts around the world. It has been reported annually since 2002.

[Queen Elizabeth II to mark 90th birthday on Thursday]

Queen Elizabeth II to mark 90th birthday on Thursday
from USA Today



You would think that upon reaching the age of 90 on Thursday , Queen Elizabeth II would sit back and put her feet up in her castle with a cuppa and a corgi. But not this nonagenarian sovereign.

The queen, accompanied by her husband Prince Philip, who turns 95 in June, will be working on her birthday, just as she has worked on most of her birthdays and on most days since becoming queen in February 1952.

Expect to see these two aged-but-still-fit royals on a walkabout outside Windsor Castle on the day, greeting well-wishers (many of whom will have camped out overnight to see her) after unveiling a plaque marking the Queen's Walkway, a four-mile walking trail in Windsor, the town surrounding the 930-year-old castle.

Not only that, today  the duo will be carrying out two other public appearances in Windsor of the sort that have filled her diary for more than six decades: She will visit the Royal Mail office in Windsor to mark the 500th anniversary of the postal service, and meet schoolchildren when she opens a new bandstand at the riverside Alexandra Gardens.

Because that's the way she rolls — she's a woman devoted to duty, says CNN royal commentator Victoria Arbiter, who grew up around royals because her father is a former press secretary to the queen.

Arbiter says reaching 90 is a happy achievement for anyone but it's no excuse for slacking off in the view of the duty-conscious queen, who vowed service to her country at age 21 and has never retracted it.

"She's doing engagements in Windsor on her birthday," Arbiter says, which shows what kind of model the queen is for her royal heirs. "She has provided the single greatest blueprint of any other monarch. She is a study of how it's done, in every capacity — she is a study in how to be queen."

Later on the day, she will be joined by members of her family, including grandson Prince William and his wife, Duchess Kate of Cambridge, for a private celebration at Windsor Castle in the evening.

And on Friday,  she will host President Barack Obama for a private lunch at Windsor.

It's a big deal that the queen is turning 90 — it marks another record for a record-setting royal. No other of the previous 40 British or English monarchs before her ever reached that age. And no other monarch before her reigned for a record 64 years; She passed that mark, set more than a century ago by her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria, in 2015.

She celebrated her Diamond Jubilee (60 years on the throne) in 2012, and looks to be headed for her Platinum Jubilee in 2022; after all, her mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, lived to be just short of 102.

But the big whoopee for the queen's 90th will be celebrated by the British mostly in May and June, when the weather is better and the queen's birthday is normally marked at the Trooping the Color, the annual parade of horses and troops in scarlet uniforms and tall bearskin caps in central London.

For three days starting on May 12, Windsor Castle will be the setting for a 90-minute extravaganza with 900 horses and more than 1,500 riders, actors, bands and dancers from around the world, who will tell her story from the birth through to World War II, her marriage, her coronation and her reign. The queen will attend on the final evening.

On June 10, her birthday will be marked with a televised Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral in London. (June 10 is also Prince Philip's birthday but he doesn't want any public celebration.)

The following day will be the Trooping the Colour ceremonies (horse-drawn carriages, colorful uniforms, waving from the Buckingham Palace balcony), and the day after that, June 12, will be the Patron's Lunch, to celebrate the queen's patronage of more than 600 charities and organizations.

This event, organized by the queen's eldest grandson, Peter Phillips (son of her only daughter Princess Anne the Princess Royal) will be unprecedented. The Mall in London is to be transformed into a giant street party and picnic for 10,000 paying guests, with entertainment by street performers and circus acts, while the queen and her husband watch from a specially-built platform on the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace.

[500 Feared Dead After Migrant Boat Sinks in Mediterranean]

500 Feared Dead After Migrant Boat Sinks in Mediterranean
from Time

As many as 500 migrants are feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean while attempting to reach Italy from Libya by boat last week, the United Nations refugee agency said on Wednesday.

The shipwreck is one of the deadliest to take place in in the Mediterranean in months and illustrates the ongoing regional migration crisis facing European authorities.

One group of between 100 and 200 people from various African countries departed Libya, near the eastern city of Tobruk in "a large, unseaworthy vessel," according to survivors who spoke to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.

Once at sea, smugglers brought more people on board using a second, smaller boat. As a result, the overloaded vessel sank. The agency said 41 people survived, drifting at sea on the smaller boat until they were rescued on April 16 and taken to the Greek island of Kalamata.

The 41 survivors came from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt, the agency said. They included 37 men, three women, and one three-year-old child. They are currently being housed in a stadium in Kalamata.

If confirmed, the incident would raise the total number of people who have drowned while attempting the sea crossing to Europe to over 1,000. Last year more than 3,770 people drowned or went missing en route to Italy, Greece, and other European countries. Last week's disaster comes a year after 800 people drowned in the Mediterranean's deadliest shipwreck in recent history,

Europe is continuing to grapple with the vast numbers of people arriving on its shores. In 2015, more than a million people arrived in Europe, the vast majority fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The European Union recently began implementing an agreement with Turkey in which refugees arriving by sea in Greece are deported back to Turkey. In exchange, the deal offers some refugees the ability to fly to Europe in a one-in one-out arrangement.

The EU-Turkey arrangement does little to address the longer and more dangerous sea routes from Egypt and Libya.

"Our concern has always been that when you police borders, you press desperate refugees and asylum seekers onto still more dangerous and longer routes," said Andrew Gardner, a researcher on Turkey at Amnesty International. "The route from Libya to Italy is much more deadly than the Aegean route."

The route from Libya usually serves a different population of refugees than the route from Turkey to Greece. Critics of the EU-Turkey deal argue that the agreement will push migrants to attempt riskier routes across the Aegean or the Black Sea.

The UN statement on Wednesday ends days of speculation about the disaster. Initial reports of the shipwreck surfaced over the weekend. Some had incorrectly reported that the boat had departed from Egypt.

[Apple's March 21 event: 9.7-inch iPad Pro instead of Air 3, iPhone SE, Watch bands]

Apple's March 21 event: 9.7-inch iPad Pro instead of Air 3, iPhone SE, Watch bands
from Inferse

Apple might be looking to revive sales in the tablet segment with the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro at the March event, which could also be in response to the fast evolving two-in-one hybrid tablet segment as well. 

It seems Apple has some elaborate plans in place with its 9.7-inch iPad what with new reports on this claiming the tablet might be merged into the iPad Pro range.

If that is how things indeed shape up in the next few week, then it would mark a significant upgrade of the ubiquitous iPad that we have known so far. As such, the report also indicates the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro to have almost the same features and specifications as its bigger sibling.

That would mean the same combo A9X processor and RAM as the 12.9-inch model making into the new smaller iPad Pro. That is not all as the display technology of the bigger model too has to be ported onto the 9.7-inch iPad Pro to make it compatible with Apple Pencil.



Further, the smaller iPad Pro will have the same onboard storage options as the 12.9-inch model, which stands at 32 GB and 128 GB for the Wi-Fi only versions. The cellular model of the same is only available with 128 GB of storage.

Among the other bits that the new member of the iPad Pro family will be picking up from its bigger avatar include quad stereo speakers as well as a new smaller version of the Smart Keyboard to go with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

The rumored tablet was previously believed to yield a new iteration of the iPad Air, tentatively named iPad Air 3 at the March 15 event. But now, the new smaller iPad Pro is slated for launch sometime in the third week of March. According to BuzzFeed's John Paczkowski, Apple's media event will now take place on Monday, March 21, likely at Apple's Town Hall in Cupertino.

As it is, the iPad Air marked the first big transition for the iPad that we have known since 2010. And now with the tablet set to be inducted into the iPad Pro family, this will mark the biggest transformation the Apple tablet has had so far.

However, how much of an advantage the 9.7-inch iPad will have post its Pro makeover can also be a topic of debate given that sales of the bigger 12.9-inch iPad Pro has slowed down lately.

With demand for tablets itself slowing down considerably, this could also be seen as a desperate attempt on the part of Apple to infuse some excitement into the segment that seems to show signs of settling down into a slow groove off late.

The arrival of 9.7-inch iPad Pro can also be in response to the fast evolving segment comprising of two-in-one or hybrid devices that typically have a detachable keyboard and serve both as a laptop and a tablet. However, most of the hybrids out in the wild run Windows where the additional keyboard is justified for productivity roles the OS supports.

The above might not be applicable to the new smaller iPad Pro given that it is based on iOS which is being considered to be oriented more towards data consumption than productivity. That, unless Apple goes for what can be considered quite unthinkable, porting Mac OS on to the iPad range.

In any case, Apple is also expected to launch a new smaller 4-inch iPhone dubbed as iPhone SE at the March event along with new colorful Apple Watch bands.

Further, sources also mention the iPad Mini 2 and the first-gen iPad Air might drift into oblivion once the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro is launched.

[Could the next PlayStation be a glove and a visor?]

Could the next PlayStation be a glove and a visor?
from CNBC



Sony has been awarded a patent for a glove which can interact with games in virtual reality (VR) and outlined plans for a cloud-based gaming system, which could be a competitor to its own PlayStation consoles.

The Japanese electronics giant was granted the patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on February 25 and it outlines how a "glove interface object" with sensors on it to track the movement of the hand, could connect with a processor and head mounted display. The hand would be rendered in virtual reality with a user able to see it via the headset.

"A growing trend in the computer gaming industry is to develop games that increase the interaction between the user and the gaming system. One way of accomplishing a richer interactive experience is to use wireless game controllers whose movement is tracked by the gaming system in order to track the player's movements and use these movements as inputs for the game," Sony's patent said.

Sony's concept is similar to the "Power Glove" released by the Nintendo in 1989, which could be used to control games on a screen. It had several buttons on it.

This is only a patent so it doesn't necessarily mean Sony will be making the product. But it does highlight the company's intent to try and innovate in the VR world against competitors such as the HTC Vive and Facebook's Oculus Rift.

'Cloud gaming'

Sony is set to release the PlayStation VR headset this year which will be an add-on for its PlayStation 4 console. It clearly has scale for the venture to be successful, with a PS4 install base of 36 million. But its new patent highlights a different direction for the company, one in which the headset could be a standalone product.

The image shows a "cloud gaming" module which connects to a network, then to the computer and then to the headset and gloves. But Sony's patent says that the computer could be a "network device, such as a router", meaning that a person could access game via the cloud on the headset and gloves without the need for a PlayStation console.

Sony currently has a subscription service called PlayStation Now which allows users to stream games on-demand without owning the disk or downloading a copy of each title. Experts said that if Sony's patent becomes a reality, the standalone headset and gloves could use PlayStation Now as the cloud platform for users to access games. A console won't necessarily be required.

Would PlayStation suffer?

But this does have the potential to cannibalize future PlayStation sales, whereas the current PlayStation VR offering is an add-on to consoles. So why would Sony want to bring this to market?
"You could argue, why should they establish a competitor to its already existing and well running PlayStation business, especially in the current generation? Sony is clearly winning against its rivals," Serkan Toto, chief executive of game industry consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC by phone.

"But PlayStation Now is already a competitor to PS4 as it can be used on the PS4, but also on the PS3, PS TV and on a lot of Sony TVs out there. They already have two different platforms and ways to entertain people," Toto said, explaining that the console and cloud gaming system could work together if it comes to market in the form of the glove and new headset.

Of course, for this to be a success, Sony will need to vastly improve the games available on PlayStation Now. Most of the titles featured are older games from the PS3 and PS2 and none are compatible with VR.

"The content has to be tailor made for this new device which Sony is apparently looking at. The catalog that PlayStation Now has is mostly old titles and not compatible with the power glove device."

[Today's the day you can preorder an HTC Vive]

Today's the day you can preorder an HTC Vive
from CNET

Want to be one of the first people to walk around and grab things in virtual reality? Get your wallet ready. Today, you can pre-order the HTC Vive starting at 10 a.m. ET, 7 a.m. PT, 2 p.m. UK, 1 a.m. Tuesday AEST.

The price: $799, £689 or AU$899. The first batch of headsets will ship in early April, and you can order one right here.

Why so much money? There's a good reason: The HTC Vive is the first "room-scale" virtual reality experience you can buy.

Developed in partnership with Valve, the company behind the Steam gaming platform (not to mention popular games such as Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress and DOTA 2), the Vive is the first VR headset to come with a motion-tracking system that lets you walk around a room-sized chunk of virtual reality instead of standing still or sitting in a chair.

Like the $599 Oculus Rift -- its closest competition -- the Vive needs to be physically tethered to a powerful gaming PC (not included) to transport you to another world. But where the Oculus Rift will ship with only a standard Xbox One gamepad to control your games and a camera to mirror the movements of your head, the Vive comes with two wireless motion controllers to let you reach out and grab things in virtual reality and a pair of Lighthouse base stations to keep you from bumping into walls. (Oculus also has a set of motion controllers, known as Oculus Touch, but they won't be available till the second half of the year.)

The Vive also comes with three free VR titles to start: Fantastic Contraption, a game where you solve puzzles by building zany mechanical objects; Job Simulator, a tongue-in-cheek take on the year 2050 when robots have replaced human workers; and Tilt Brush, a program where you can create beautiful 3D art by painting with light.

Here are the specs of the PC you'll need to build or buy to get an optimal experience:



You can also try Valve's official SteamVR Performance Test benchmark to see if your PC is ready.

Neither Valve nor HTC have promised a huge slate of titles for the Vive quite yet -- unlike Oculus, which claims it will have 100 titles available by the end of 2016, including around 20 titles which Oculus is producing and financing itself. That said, many early VR developers are already committing to several VR platforms, with games like Job Simulator coming to the Oculus Rift and even Sony's PlayStation VR.

Speaking of the PlayStation VR, it could be a cheaper way to get into virtual reality gaming if the Oculus and HTC prices are scaring you away. While we don't know what it costs quite yet or precisely when it might ship, it only requires a relatively inexpensive ($350, £300, AU$480) PlayStation 4 instead of a gaming PC.

And if you don't need to be quite as immersed in virtual reality, there's always Samsung's inexpensive Gear VR, which lets you transform a Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, Note 5 or the upcoming Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge into a surprisingly capable headset.

But if you want to be on the bleeding edge of virtual reality, the time is now. Will you buy a Vive? A Rift? Neither? Both?

[Starbucks To Open First Store In Italy]

Starbucks To Open First Store In Italy
from TIME

For many, it feels like there is a Starbucks everywhere—except not in Italy.

The coffee chain announced the opening of it's first Italian cafe in Milan next year, reports the New York Times.

Starbucks has hesitated to open a cafe in Italy, given the country's strong coffee shop culture. But Starbucks chairman Howard D. Shultz made the announcement at Milan Fashion Week, telling the Times that company was finally ready to introduce itself in Italy.

Shultz says Starbucks will adhere to local coffee traditions.

"There will definitely be a bar," Shultz told the Times. "We're not coming here to teach Italians to make coffee — nothing like that at all...We have to earn the respect."

[Refugees Try to Breach Greece's Border With Macedonia]

Refugees Try to Breach Greece's Border With Macedonia
from The New York Times



Riots erupted on the Greek border with Macedonia on Monday, as angry refugees broke down a razor-wire fence separating the two countries with a battering ram after the Macedonian authorities sealed the frontier to prevent them from passing.

The conflict surged as the Greek government warned that tens of thousands of people could be trapped in the country within a month, adding to fears that it would be turned into a giant holding center for migrants, and as aid groups cautioned that a humanitarian crisis was growing.

Greece has requested emergency aid from the European Union to help it deal with the crisis, which shows little sign of abating, and on Sunday, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that Greece could not be allowed to succumb to that threat.

"Do you seriously believe that all the euro states that last year fought all the way to keep Greece in the eurozone, and we were the strictest, can one year later allow Greece to, in a way, plunge into chaos?" she told the public broadcaster ARD.

Macedonia recently closed its border with Greece, a major stop on the migrant trail, to thousands of Afghans after reclassifying them as economic migrants rather than refugees, a move that denied them the right to apply for asylum.

That policy, which was effectively a response to an Austrian decision to put a daily cap on the number of people allowed into the country, left thousands of Afghans with nowhere to go. It also promoted fear among Syrians and Iraqis, who worried that they might also be unable to travel further north if similar restrictions were imposed.

The Balkans have served as the main passageway for migrants, most of whom hope to reach Germany, which has accepted far more asylum seekers than any other country. Germany's warmer welcome has led to tensions with other European countries, and last week Austria and nine Balkan states agreed to put in place several measures to choke off the flow of refugees, effectively imposing their own response to the migrant crisis.

As a result, many migrants in Greece have effectively been trapped — they cannot move on, and they cannot return home — and officials in the country said they expected the problem to worsen.

"We estimate that we will have a number of people trapped in our country which will be between 50,000 and 70,000," the minister for migration, Ioannis Mouzalas, told the Greek TV channel Mega, Reuters reported.

Mr. Mouzalas said that he believed those numbers would be reached in the coming month, and that 22,000 migrants were already in the country.

Greece is the most popular entry point into Europe for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. More than 111,000 migrants have already arrived in the country this year, far ahead of the pace of last year, according to the International Organization for Migration.

The European Union has been grappling with how to deal with the spiraling challenges as thousands from the Middle East and Africa, seeking to flee civil war and other conflicts, continue to come to Europe in search of better lives. Many make perilous journeys, crammed into in boats with other migrants that have capsized along the way.

More than 400 migrants have died this year while trying to cross the Mediterranean, the organization reported, including 321 on the heavily traveled route between Turkey and Greece.

But countries across the European Union have struggled to agree on who should shoulder the burden, and the influx has been particularly tough on Greece, which is still trying to deal with the aftermath of a punishing debt crisis.

The sporadic imposition of border controls by countries including Austria, Denmark and Sweden over the past few months has dealt a serious blow to the Schengen agreement, a cornerstone of European integration that allows the free movement of people across much of the bloc's internal borders.

[U.S. student detained in North Korea confesses to 'hostile act']

U.S. student detained in North Korea confesses to 'hostile act'
from CNN



North Korea has allowed the world to get its first glimpse of Otto Frederick Warmbier, an American student at the University of Virginia, two months after his arrest.

Warmbier is accused of trying to steal a North Korean banner, containing a political slogan that was hanging from the walls of his Pyongyang hotel.

A North Korean official with direct knowledge of Warmbier's case says the 21-year-old held a press conference "at his own request" on Monday morning at the People's Palace of Culture in Pyongyang.

The event provided insight into the bizarre charges the 21-year old is facing in the secretive Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), including allegations he was encouraged to commit the "hostile act" by a purported member of an Ohio church, a secretive university organization, and even the CIA.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of media reports the U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea but declined to comment further "due to privacy considerations."

New details of alleged 'hostile act'

In a video supplied to CNN, North Korean guards escorted Warmbier into the room. He was not restrained, and was wearing dark trousers, a light-colored blazer, shirt and tie.

Appearing to read from a statement, Warmbier said: "I committed the crime of taking down a political slogan from the staff holding area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel." It is not known if the student was forced by the DPRK to speak, or whether he was coerced.

"I apologize to each and every one of the millions of the Korean people and I beg that you see how I was used and manipulated," Warmbier said. "My reward for my crime was so much smaller than the rewards that the Z Society and the Friendship United Methodist Church get from the United States Administration."

Warmbier is also seen in the video sobbing and pleading for forgiveness, and bowing deeply to apologize.

"I never, never should have allowed myself to be lured by the United States administration to commit a crime in this country. I wish that the United States administration never manipulate people like myself in the future to commit crimes against foreign countries. I entirely beg you, the people and government of the DPRK, for your forgiveness. Please! I made the worst mistake of my life!"

North Korea's allegations

North Korea accuses Warmbier of surfing the Internet to study different DPRK political slogans and plotting to steal one by folding it up on a thin rectangular metal sheet, and concealing it in his suitcase.

The official says Warmbier put on "quiet shoes" he brought from the United States and just before 2 a.m. on January 1, 2016, entered the staff-only second floor of the hotel intending to steal a sign or banner with a political slogan.

"The slogan was bigger than he had thought. So he couldn't take it away and turned it upside down and deserted (it) on the floor when he had pulled it from the hangers," the official said.

Warmbier, a third-year business major at the University of Virginia originally, was detained on January 2 as he was about to board a plane and leave the country, according to Young Pioneer Tours, the China-based travel company that organized his trip.

A North Korean official with direct knowledge of the case tells CNN Warmbier is accused of meeting last year with a member of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio -- a small suburb of Cincinnati.

"[The church member] emphasized that North Korea is an anti-Christian communist state and that communism should be ended," said the North Korean official, who CNN has agreed not to identify.

According to the same official, the church member allegedly encouraged Warmbier "to take an important political slogan from North Korea in order to weaken the ideological unity and motivation of the North Koreans" and promised to give him a "$10,000 used car" if the "mission" was successful.

CNN spoke with the church's Senior Pastor Meshach Kanyion who did not know the purported church "deaconess" named by North Korean officials. He said Warmbier is not a member of the church, which has a congregation of around 500 people.

"I've never met his family. Clearly there are some people who know him and went to school with him. If his family went to our church, we would've been much more involved [in pushing for his release]," Kanyion said.

Z Society distances itself

North Korea also alleges Warmbier met last year with a member of Z Society, a secretive philanthropic organization at UVA which is known to paint their symbol "Z" around university grounds. Warmbier was allegedly told he could gain membership to the selective organization if he carried out his "mission." North Korea alleges that the Z Society has links to the CIA.

A member of the Z Society at UVA told CNN the organization sought to anonymously recognize students who contributed positively to the university. The source said the group had never had any contact with Warmbier and he'd never been approached to be a member.

The source also dismissed suggestions the group had any affiliation with the CIA.

"There's just not even the semblance of a relationship between a group of undergrads who get together to eat hummus and write nice things about people, and the CIA," the Z Society member said.

When contacted by CNN, a University of Virginia spokesman said: "The university is aware of recent media reports and remains in close contact with Otto Warmbier's family. We will have no further comment at this time."

American tourists as political pawns?

Warmbier's arrest has once again raised questions about the safety of American tourists traveling to North Korea. Some have accused the regime of using detained U.S. citizens as political pawns.

Days after Warmbier's arrest in January, Pyongyang claimed to test its first H-bomb. The provocative act, followed by a satellite launch weeks later, has resulted in even further isolation of the North. An upcoming U.N. resolution intends to impose heightened sanctions on Pyongyang, which its powerful neighbor and benefactor China has vowed to carry out.

DPRK observers believe the timing of Warmbier's press conference, with new sanctions on the horizon, may be a deliberate move by the regime.

North Korean travel agencies stress nearly all Americans who travel to the DPRK return home safely. But there have been several incidents of American tourists detained in recent years.

In September 2014, CNN was granted a surprise interview with Matthew Miller and Jeffrey Fowle in Pyongyang after they were detained, along with Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae.

Miller admitted to tearing up his tourist visa upon entering the country and Fowle admitted to leaving a Bible in a local club while on a tourist trip -- a criminal offense in North Korea. Both men, along with Bae, were subsequently released after U.S. intervention, including a visit to Pyongyang by U.S. spy chief James Clapper.

On its website, the US State Department "strongly recommends against all travel to the DPRK" citing the "risk of arrest and long-term detention due to the DPRK's inconsistent application of its criminal laws."

[Oscars 2016: Leonardo DiCaprio Reacts to Standing Ovation]

Oscars 2016: Leonardo DiCaprio Reacts to Standing Ovation
from ABC News

When Leonardo DiCaprio took to the stage Sunday night to accept the Academy Award for his performance in "The Revenant," the first-time winner received something not all winners do: a standing ovation.

"I was very moved," DiCaprio, 41, told "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts backstage at the Dolby Theatre.

"He deserved it," added Alejandro González Iñárritu, the man who directed DiCaprio in "The Revenant."

Iñárritu took home the Best Director Oscar for "The Revenant" on Sunday night. Iñárritu's second Best Director Oscar win in a row marks the first time that has happened since 1950.

"I'm just here maybe as an accident, I guess," Iñárritu said of the honor. "I'm just so happy and so honored, you know."

The Mexican director-screenwriter, 52, received praise from DiCaprio for creating such a "unique" movie-making process with "The Revenant." In the film, DiCaprio portrays the real-life frontiersman Hugh Glass, who was attacked by a bear then left in the wilderness, trekking about 200 miles to find the men who deserted him.

"The Revenant" led in Oscar nominations this year with 12.

"We literally rehearsed for two weeks just for the opening sequence of this movie," DiCaprio told Roberts. "It was so unique it in its approach."

"But more than that, you know, as an actor your dream is to be able to collaborate with the director you work with and actually onsite transform the film into something even more profound," he said. "I feel that is what the movie became to me."

DiCaprio's Best Actor win for "The Revenant" also struck a chord with viewers. Twitter announced the star created the most-tweeted minute ever during an Oscars telecast, overtaking even the famous group selfie tweeted by Ellen DeGeneres in 2014.

Twitter reported there were more than 440,000 tweets per minute posted when DiCaprio accepted his Oscar.

DiCaprio used the high-profile moment to talk about a cause near to his heart, climate change.

"Simultaneously, while I was doing this movie, I did a film, I've been doing a documentary for two years about climate change," DiCaprio told Roberts. "As I said in the speech, it is the most urgent crisis that we've ever faced as a civilization and the more people that talk about this and get involved and, as I said, vote for leaders who really want to make a difference, you know, we can actually tackle this problem.

"We have the capacity to go 100 percent renewable using existing technologies, we just have to have the political will," he added. "Our very existence is at stake."

[Rumor: Facebook Working on OS X Messenger App]

Rumor: Facebook Working on OS X Messenger App
from PC World

Somewhere, somehow, there's a spy in Facebook. Or, at least, some Facebook employee was foolish enough to leave his or her screen just open enough for anyone to see and take pictures of, which is exactly what someone did. The reason? Facebook Messenger for OS X. Such an app does not yet exist for public consumption, but it's allegedly something that Facebook is working on—or so the photograph sent to TechCrunch indicates.

You're probably wondering why this even matters, especially if you're one of the many, many people who use Facebook the conventional way: You open a Web browser, you browse around the site, and you chat with your friends using its built-in messaging features. Easy as that. If you're especially crafty, you might even just use good ol' messenger.com if you want to be able to chat with your friends without being tempted by any of Facebook's other distractions.

Well, it's also convenient to load up a third-party app instead of opening your Web browser at all, especially if you're the type who doesn't want to have to switch back and forth between tabs to reply to conversations. Windows has a Facebook Messenger app that you can grab through the Windows Store (which apparently isn't very good). Apple fans, however, have no official option from Facebook that they can use—not yet, at least.

According to TechCrunch, said mystery app on the Facebook employee's screen apparently had its own special Messenger icon within the Facebook user's OS X dock, and the app itself was called "Messenger"—go figure—in its menu bar. In the provided picture, the app appears to have a navigation tab bar in its lower-left corner that looks a lot like the tab bar you'd tap on within Facebook's iOS app. The options are allegedly the same too: Recent, Groups, People, and Settings. Facebook also doesn't appear to be testing this app in any kind of public way just yet, as said employee was logged into Facebook's VPN when the picture was shot.

The downside to all of this sleuthing—aside from the obvious problem that it's a pretty jerk move to take a picture of someone's screen when they aren't looking—is that Facebook might not release any kind of OS X app for Messenger whatsoever. Whatever it's working on or testing might just end right there: as a test, or even an internal product, but not an official public release. The company has previously dabbled with a desktop Messenger app for Windows, but the app didn't last very long. Facebook killed it rather unceremoniously after two years.

That said, there are still a number of third-party apps you can use to access Messenger in OS X right now, if you don't want to wait for Facebook's solution—or don't think it'll ever launch.

[Lifetime Xbox One Sales Reportedly Top 18 Million While PS4 Nearly Doubles That Figure]

Lifetime Xbox One Sales Reportedly Top 18 Million While PS4 Nearly Doubles That Figure
from Hot Hardware

For anyone keeping score of the modern generation console wars, it appears that Sony winning the battle of sales against rival Microsoft, as has been the case since the beginning. What's interesting is not just that Sony's sold more PlayStation 4 consoles than Microsoft has of its Xbox One, but that the disparity might be as high as 100 percent.

It takes a bit of jumping around the web to arrive at that conclusion. The assumption also requires a reliance on unofficial information, which is to say you should take all this with a few grains of salt (at least a pinch). And rounding our disclaimer about the information obtained, some explaining is involved to put it in context.

Let's start with the Xbox One. In an appearance on TWiT, it was revealed by Mary Jo Foley, a freelance contributing writer for ZDNet, that Microsoft's tally of Xbox One sales might be around 18 million units (hit the source link below and skip to the 8m50s mark).

Foley was actually commenting on Microsoft's recent claim of there being over 200 million active Windows 10 users, a figure that includes not only PCs like desktops and laptops, but devices like the Raspberry PI and, yes, the Xbox One (following the New Xbox One Experience, or NXOE, update). Foley cited a source as saying that about 18 million of those belong to the Xbox One.

To extrapolate the data even further, Microsoft's accounting of an active device is one that's been active in the last 28 days. It's a short time period, though it also means that some Xbox One sales over the holiday period might not be included in the 18 million figure. Still, it should be close.

Meanwhile, Sony announced it sold 5.7 million PlayStation 4 consoles over the holidays, bringing the total number since launch to 39.5 million units as of January 3, 2016. That's more than double the assumed Xbox One sales tally.

"We are absolutely delighted that so many customers have selected PS4 as the best place to play throughout this holiday season and that the PS4 community is growing more than ever," said Andrew House, President and Global CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "We remain steadfast in our commitment to deliver innovative entertainment experiences, and look forward to bringing an unprecedented games portfolio from third party developers and publishers and SCE Worldwide Studios, including UNCHARTED 4: A Thief's End, New Hot Shots Golf (working title) and The Last Guardian, this coming year."

It's a big lead, though not necessarily cause for concern. Microsoft doesn't need its Xbox One to outsell Sony's PS4 to be successful, and with a strong lineup of games slated for 2016 -- Halo Wars 2 and Gears of Wars 4, to name just a couple -- things are looking good for Microsoft. Just not as good as they do for Sony.

[Whatever North Korea Tested, Its Nuclear Ambitions Remain Clear]

Whatever North Korea Tested, Its Nuclear Ambitions Remain Clear
from Bloomberg

North Korea is the only country known to have conducted a nuclear test this century. While defense experts are skepticalof Pyongyang's claim that it detonated a hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, they agree the latest test still advances its ambition to mount a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile.

Here's a look at why joining the nuclear club has become an obsession of North Korea's leaders from founder Kim Il Sung to his grandson, Kim Jong Un.

Survival

North Korea has called its weapons a "precious sword of justice" against invaders. It has drawn comparisons with former dictatorships in Iraq and Libya, arguing that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi fell because they gave up on developing nuclear arms.

It's also aware of the presence of the U.S. military south of the border. The U.S. has almost 30,000 troops in South Korea, where it houses superior weaponry such as Apache attack helicopters and F-16 fighter jets.

"The North Korean leadership has convinced itself that its existence as an autonomous state derives directly from its possession of nuclear weapons," Jonathan Pollack, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, wrote in a paper last week.

Economic Concessions

North Korea has a history of using nuclear crises to extract economic concessions. In the early 1990s, it began removing spent fuel rods from its nuclear reactor, potentially to prepare them for use in weapons, compelling the U.S. to consider a military strike on the facility. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter intervened and brokered negotiations that led to U.S. energy aid and security assurances.

After North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, multinational disarmament talks led to a promise of economic and energy aid in exchange for the shutdown of its nuclear facilities. Pyongyang has since exited the negotiations and restarted the site.

"They like to create a crisis before having any kind of opening-up," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu.

Legitimacy

Kim Jong Un had little time to be groomed as successor before the death of his father Kim Jong Il in 2011, and has sought to justify his power with adherence to his predecessor's "songun," or military-first policy. Believed to be just over 30, he carried out half of North Korea's four nuclear tests and has revved up his father's program to develop a long-range ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S.

"Kim isn't being immature but smart when he's making nuclear arms," Chun Yung Woo, a former South Korean nuclear negotiator, said in comments e-mailed by Seoul's Asan Institute for Policy Studies. "Securing a deterrent is more important even though it leads to greater isolation."

Falling Behind

North Korea has fallen behind its southern neighbor in its ability to wage conventional warfare as the gap between their economies has widened.

[Got Allergies? Blame Neanderthals]

Got Allergies? Blame Neanderthals
from Discovery News



Humans can thank their Neanderthal ancestors for giving them the genes that fight diseases, but also for their allergies, new research suggests.

Genetic variants found in modern humans that originally came from Neanderthals may predispose the human immune system to overreact to environmental allergens, according to two new studies published today (Jan. 7) in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

But these Neanderthal loaner genes may have had a silver lining. The studies also found that interbreeding with Neanderthals may have helped ancient humans, who came from Africa, get a head start in settling Europe.

"Neanderthals, for example, had lived in Europe and western Asia for around 200,000 years before the arrival of modern humans. They were likely well-adapted to the local climate, foods and pathogens," Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said in a statement. "By interbreeding with these archaic humans, we modern humans gained these advantageous adaptations."

Interspecies love

Neanderthals interbred with humans when humans first emerged from Africa into Europe, about 50,000 years ago. Studies suggest the last Neanderthal-human mating could have occurred as recently as 37,000 years ago.

As a result of this interbreeding, genetic studies suggest, as much as 2.5 percent of the DNA of today's Europeans came from Neanderthals, while other research suggests that up to 6 percent of modern DNA originated with ancient hominins. That group includes both Neanderthals and a mysterious set of human ancestors that lived in Siberia, called Denisovans.

Past research suggested that many of the genes that modern humans inherited from Neanderthals play a role in the modern human immune system, though the exact roles remain unclear.

In the new study, researchers trawled through a vast trove of modern DNA from the 1000 Genomes Project. The scientists compared this modern human DNA with genomes from ancient hominins, focusing on about 1,500 genes that have previously been found to play a role in the body's first line of defense against bacteria and viruses, called the innate immune system.

Next, the team constructed a time line of when changes in some of these genes became widespread in the population, also determining whether those changes had been inherited from ancient hominins such as Neanderthals.

The researchers found that most of the changes in these genes occurred between 6,000 and 13,000 years ago, which was not surprising, given that humans transitioned from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural lifestyle in this time period. However, three genes had seemed to change before that, right around the time that humans first encountered Neanderthals.

These genes contained the instructions to build a family of proteins called Toll-like-receptors (TLR). These proteins — TLR 1, 6 and 10 — sit on the cell surface and bind to foreign invaders such as bacteria and fungi. This, in turn, mobilizes the rest of the immune system to fight an infection.

Separately, Kelso's team searched for the stretches of DNA that were the most similar among humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. This hunt similarly led the team to the TLR 1,6 and 10 genes.

The researchers also showed that, in humans, people with the archaic versions of these genes had a more robust response to microbes such as Helicobacter pylori than did people with other variants.

"What has emerged from our study as well as from other work ... is that interbreeding with archaic humans does indeed have functional implications for modern humans, and that the most obvious consequences have been in shaping our adaptation to our environment — improving how we resist pathogens and metabolize novel foods," Kelso said.

That hypervigilant immune response, however, may have a dark side. Studies in large populations have found that people with the archaic versions of the gene are more likely to have allergic diseases, which occur when people's bodies respond to normal environmental triggers as if they are dangerous threats.

[Kanye West Finally Reveals Due Date For New Album]

Kanye West Finally Reveals Due Date For New Album
from Forbes



After much speculation and what seems like an eternity of waiting for some, it appears that Kanye West is finally gearing up to release his new album, Swish.

On Friday, the superstar rapper tweeted a short, simple, and not-so-cryptic message out to his almost-17 million followers: "Swish  February 11 16". That was all, but it was enough to send his fans and the hip-hop world in general into a frenzy. As of writing, Kanye's album announcement tweet has been retweeted at least 120,000 times and favorited at least 100,000 times.

A February 11th release date makes a lot of sense for West, who was probably waiting to find the perfect time to drop what will surely be another masterpiece. By that time, Adele's 25 may be ready to let go of its stranglehold of the top of the Billboard 200, if it hasn't already. Kanye doesn't seem like the type of artist that would want to have to compete for a number one position, and while there aren't many acts that could best him, Adele is one of them.

Swish has been expected for some time now, but until yesterday, no date had been given, leading many to speculate that a surprise album drop (à la Drake last year) might have been in the works. While the release date was just announced, the world knew that the seventh LP was coming soon, as West has been releasing single after single for some time now, and he has some high-profile performances coming up, including the just-announced Governors Ball in New York City this coming summer.

So far, West has dispatched at least two official singles from Swish—the Paul McCartney-featuring "Only One", and the not-safe-for-TV "All Day"—and a third cut, the Rihanna and McCartney collaboration "FourFiveSeconds", might end up on either his new record or Rihanna's, though it isn't clear where it lives just yet. On top of that, West has been dropping album cuts left and right over the past year or so, including "Facts", "No More Parties In L.A. (ft. Kendrick Lamar)", and "Wolves (ft. Sia and Vic Mensa)". Unless Swish is especially lengthy, it is likely that we have already heard at least half of it by this point.

Swish is easily one of 2016's most anticipated releases, and while West has set the bar rather high, the record is shaping up to be one of the year's most exciting (and best, depending on who you're asking) albums.

['Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Falls To 2nd Place On Friday, Still Topping $800M]

'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Falls To 2nd Place On Friday, Still Topping $800M
from Forbes



Star Wars: The Force Awakens may or may not win the weekend box office in its fourth frame of release. But for one night it's the second place film, which says more about the over-performance of Leonardo DiCaprio's The Revenant than anything to do with Star Wars. The Walt Disney sci-fi blockbuster earned $10.76m yesterday, down a not-unreasonable 67% from last Friday (which was New Year's Day). That's a drop similar to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on its fourth Friday. This gives J.J. Abrams's sequel a $781.14m domestic total, with the film passing $800m either today or at worst tomorrow.

Yes it fell to second place last night since The Revenant earned around $14.5 million yesterday, and that film should end the frame with a 2.625x weekend multiplier for a $38m weekend. The various Lord of the Rings and James Cameron December smashes had 3.8x weekend multipliers in their fourth respective weekends, so The Force Awakens should get to around $41m for the frame. If it doesn't quite make it to $50.3m for the weekend, and at this point it presumably won't, it will have to settle for the second best "frame four" of all time. Obviously if The Revenant over-performs and The Force Awakens doesn't quite fly as high on Saturday/Sunday, then yeah the DiCaprio film may yet top the weekend.

Obviously this is all trivia, but it shows that the film is going to play here on out more like a Lord of the Rings film (presumably minus major Oscar attention, but we'll see) versus the likes of Titanic and Avatar. For the record, Star Wars may make in its fourth weekend what Avatar made in its fifth weekend.  The big news will came from China, where it debuted with a whopping $32.1 million, the third biggest opening day for an import.

Obviously, that's the second biggest movie market and it will be interesting to see to what extent Chinese audiences respond or care about what was arguably a distinctly American myth. Let's just say very few moviegoers in China are going to well up when Han Solo enters the Millenium Falcon and intones "Chewie, we're home!" I only bring this up to remind everyone that we shouldn't panic if the film merely does "really well" in China and not perhaps Furious 7/Monster Hunt well.

Of course, the last time I urged caution for the box office fortunes of a Star Wars movie... well, you know how that went. To be fair, my "optimistic" box office prediction from back in September turned out to be pretty accurate, if only by accident. And moreover, I didn't see any of the people swearing that it would to $300m domestic/$600m worldwide apologizing.

The film crossed $1.6 billion today worldwide and will likely end the weekend with a total over the $1.669b gross of Jurassic World, putting it number 3 on the all-time list for global box office. A strong performance in China will both possibly vault it over Titanic ($2.186b) worldwide and over Furious 7 ($1.162b) overseas to make the film the second biggest movie ever worldwide, the third-biggest movie ever overseas, and the top grosser of all time in America.

It's interesting that there will be such a difference in those rankings. That the film arguably over-performed in America is not a problem presuming foreign audiences liked what they saw in what for some of them was their first real exposure to Star Wars in a movie theater.  And that's enough Star Wars domestic news for one day. Check back tomorrow to see how quickly it topped $800m and/or if it topped Jurassic World globally.

[Microsoft Promises Xbox One Update To Fix Stuttering Video Playback Issue]

Microsoft Promises Xbox One Update To Fix Stuttering Video Playback Issue
from Tech Times

Microsoft recently released a new system update for the Xbox One. No new features were added to the gaming console from the system update, but according to Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, it included fixes for some "behind the scenes" bugs.

It is not clear what the system update is looking to fix, and on which systems or functionalities the fixes will be applied to.

In addition to the tweet that announced the system update, Hryb replied to a question by another Twitter user that there will be no release notes for the fixes.

However, one thing that was not fixed was issues on video playback that were leading to stuttering videos.

A Twitter user asked Hryb in the same tweet on whether it includes a fix on the stuttering videos issue for movies and television programs watched on the Xbox One. Another Twitter user echoed the first user's question, as he has also been experiencing the same problems, adding that the issue started after the New Xbox One Experience update.

The first Twitter user eventually replied to the same tweet that the update does not fix the issue.

Xbox engineer Mike Ybarra, however, took notice of the tweets and said that the Xbox team is aware of the problem and are currently working on solving it.

"We'll fix soon. Sorry about this," Ybarra tweeted.

Some users discussed the stuttering problem on the official Xbox Support forums, with one user describing the stuttering as a slight pause, sudden catch up or freezing of the video, while the audio is not affected. The incident randomly occurs and could last anywhere from one second to three seconds.

Other users reported the same issue, with the problem not present in all movies and television programs being watched.

In the same thread, a forum administrator suggested that users should try to uninstall the Xbox One's Blu-ray player and power cycle the gaming console. Once the Xbox One is turned off, all its cords should be unplugged and left like that for a few minutes. The cords of the Xbox One should then be re-connected and the gaming console turned on, and then the Blu-ray Player re-installed.

Xbox Support also has a page dedicated to troubleshooting tips for stuttering videos on the Xbox One, with the first thing to try is restart the Xbox One.

If that does not work, users are recommended to try the HDTV calibration tool that can be accessed through the Settings menu of the gaming console. The tool can be found after choosing the Video Output option in the Display & Sound menu, with users selecting the Calibrate HDTV option. The user should then follow the steps onscreen to finish the calibration.

For users with audio-video receivers, or AVRs, connected to the Xbox One, they can try powering up the TV, then the AVR and then the Xbox One in that order. Afterwards, they can change the Input of the TV away from the AVR source and then back again, and then restart the AVR. Users should then set the TV connection of the Xbox One to HDMI, which can be done in the TV Connection list under the Video Output option under the Display & Sound menu.

The user that described the stuttering on the official Xbox Support forums, however, said that even while trying all the troubleshooting tips provided, the issue persists.

[Germany Discusses Tighter Laws on Migrants After Cologne Assaults]

Germany Discusses Tighter Laws on Migrants After Cologne Assaults
from TIME

Chancellor Angela Merkel's party on Saturday proposed stricter laws regulating asylum seekers after a string of New Year's Eve sexual assaults and robberies in Cologne blamed largely on foreigners.

Merkel said the proposal, which will be discussed with her coalition partners and would need parliamentary approval, would help Germany deport "serial offenders" convicted of lesser crimes.

"This is in the interests of the citizens of Germany, but also in the interests of the great majority of the refugees who are here," Merkel told party members in Mainz.

The reports of the Cologne attacks on women by groups of men described by police as predominantly Arab or North African in origin have fueled calls for tighter controls in Germany, which received nearly 1.1 million migrants in 2015.

"If people act outside the law... naturally there must be consequences," Merkel said.

Of 31 suspects temporarily detained for questioning following the New Year's Eve attacks, there were 18 asylum seekers but also two Germans and an American among others, and none were accused of specifically committing sexual assaults and the investigation is ongoing.

Cologne's police chief was dismissed Friday amid mounting criticism of his force's handling of the incidents, and being slow with releasing information.

Merkel said local authorities must not be perceived to be withholding information and urged that the case be "fully clarified."

"Everything has to be put on the table," she said.

The proposal passed by party leaders would strengthen the ability of police to conduct checks of identity papers, and also to exclude foreigners from being granted asylum who had been convicted of crimes and sentenced to terms even as light as probation.

"Serial offenders who consistently, for example, return to theft or time and again insult women must count on the force of the law," Merkel said.

Merkel has steadfastly refused to agree to establish a cap on newcomers, but the CDU proposal did note that "a continuation of the current influx would overwhelm the state and society even in a country like Germany in the long run," the dpa news agency reported.

[Mexican officials chipped away at 'El Chapo's' network to recapture him]

Mexican officials chipped away at 'El Chapo's' network to recapture him
from The Washington Post



From the moment six months ago when Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán popped out of his tunnel and was whisked to a pair of waiting Cessnas, Mexican authorities chipped away at the vast network of accomplices that helped the billionaire drug lord escape from maximum-security prison.

They arrested corrupt prison guards and officials, relatives who handed out bribes and oversaw tunnel construction, and his trusted pilots who flew him to safety in his home state of Sinaloa. Those accomplices, plus Guzmán's apparent vanity — he had contacted producers and actresses about starring in a biopic based on his life — helped authorities ultimately recapture the chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel in a roadside motel.

Mexican Attorney General Arely Gómez González provided these details in her account of Guzmán's capture at a news conference Friday night. After weeks of investigation and military and police operations in the region, Gómez said, authorities had an understanding of Guzmán's properties and vehicles, including planes. In October, they tracked him to a ranch house in the town of Pueblo Nuevo in the western state of Durango. But as Guzmán fled — he would fall and injure his face and leg — he was accompanied by two women and a young girl, and soldiers circling above in a helicopter didn't want to fire and kill the others, Gómez said.

By late December, authorities suspected that Guzmán had gone to the coast. They began to focus on a white concrete house in an upscale neighborhood of Los Mochis, a city in northern Sinaloa, where they suspected he was hiding out. By Friday morning, commandos from an elite Mexican Marine unit raided his house, setting off a gun battle that left five people dead. Guzmán and one of his top lieutenants, Ivan Gastelum, used one of their signature moves, fleeing through the sewer system, something Guzmán has used before to escape. They popped up through a manhole cover and stole a car but were ultimately pursued to a motel about five miles north, where Guzmán was captured unharmed.

Gómez said Guzmán would return to Altiplano, the same prison where he escaped six months ago. It is unclear whether he will be extradited to the United States.

"Mission accomplished: we have him," President Enrique Peña Nieto wrote Friday on Twitter. "I want to inform the Mexicans that Joaquín Guzmán . . . has been captured."

The news was an immediate boost to Peña Nieto, who has struggled with corruption scandals, drug violence and the humiliation of the escape last year by Mexico's most famous prisoner. Peña Nieto, speaking later Friday in a televised address from the national palace, shared the credit with Mexico's armed forces and intelligence services.

"Day and night, they worked to accomplish the mission I gave them, to recapture this criminal and bring him to justice," Peña Nieto said. "Months of intense and careful intelligence work and criminal investigation allowed them to detain this criminal and dismantle his network of influence and protection."

With Guzmán's capture, the president said, 98 of Mexico's 122 most wanted criminals had been killed or captured.

Extradition to U.S.?

It seemed likely that U.S. officials would press to have the former fugitive handed over. After Guzmán's last arrest, in 2014, the U.S. government wanted him to face a multitude of pending charges in American courts. But Mexican authorities refused, considering it a point of pride for them to interrogate and prosecute their most important criminal in their own judicial system.

For a year and a half before his escape last year, Guzmán had been held in Altiplano prison outside Mexico City, supposedly the nation's most secure detention center, where he lived in a tiny concrete cell with a hole in the floor for a toilet. His accomplices cut through the floor of his shower stall and ferried him into a mile-long tunnel equipped with a motorcycle. Several prison officials have since been accused of facilitating his escape.

In a statement Friday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Guzmán's capture represented "a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States, and a vindication of the rule of law in our countries." She later called her Mexican counterpart, Gómez, to congratulate her.

It is unclear what role the United States played in the capture, but U.S. officials have lately been praising their security partnership with the Mexican government. Guzmán's capture in Mazatlan in 2014 was due in part to extensive U.S. wiretapping and intelligence work to track the kingpin's bodyguards.

Since the billionaire drug lord escaped last year, he had grown into a fugitive of epic proportions in the public imagination. He had broken out of a Mexican prison twice in the past two decades and seemed capable of outwitting authorities at every turn. During his latest period on the lam there were only sporadic reports of his whereabouts, including rumors that he had injured his leg fleeing one of many military operations to find him.

The arrest confirmed what many Chapo-watchers assumed, that he would not flee Mexico but would return to his home state, where he would have protection from residents, corrupt local police and his extensive cartel network. Around his home town, in the remote Sierra Madre mountains of eastern Sinaloa, checkered with plots of marijuana and opium poppy, residents have often praised Guzmán for his ­largess, which included giving them jobs and medical care and even air-dropping bags of money from Cessnas into peasant ­villages.

But like the first time he was recaptured, in a 2014 raid on his condominium in the beach resort city of Mazatlan, he was caught on the coast Friday — this time after a battle near a two-story white house on a residential street of Los Mochis, with a palm tree out front, televised images show.

Early-morning gun battle

A neighbor who lives about two blocks from the house, in an upper-middle-class subdivision, said by telephone that the commotion started about 3:40 a.m. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns, the neighbor said she heard gunfire and what she assumed to be bombs, and rushed to a windowless room inside her house for safety.

The gun battle lasted for about an hour, stopped for 15 minutes, then resumed, she said. Neighbors exchanged a running commentary on the WhatsApp messaging app, she said, that informed her there were frequent military and police patrols driving with their lights off, while helicopters circled overhead.

The neighbor added that authorities were searching storm drains and that she believed that some of the suspects escaped through them.

Mexican news outlets reported that Guzmán escaped the house and fled through a sewer but was ultimately captured at the Hotel Doux, about five miles north of the house. A person who answered the phone at the hotel declined to comment.

Five suspected gunmen were killed in the raid, including one of Guzmán's top lieutenants, Gastelum, a.k.a. "El Cholo Ivan," authorities said. They reported recovering four vehicles, two of them armored, plus at least nine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said.

By Friday afternoon, Guzmán had been flown to the navy hangar in Mexico City, the same place where he was dragged before news cameras after his last arrest. Pictures circulating online showed him in a disheveled tank-top, a less flattering look than his last perp walk, in a crisp white dress shirt.

In the murky world of Mexican drug trafficking, it is unclear how much the Sinaloa cartel suffered during Guzmán's last incarceration — or changed while he was out of prison.

"We don't know whether the Sinaloa cartel will simply continue to operate as usual under El Mayo Zambada and other cartel leaders or if it will eventually devolve into smaller groups," said Andrew Selee, a Mexico expert at the Wilson Center in Washington. "And if the Sinaloa cartel does fragment, will it produce more violence or lower the death toll?"

On Friday morning, the news coursed through a euphoric Mexican government.

"We are very happy," Education Secretary Aurelio Nuño, who was Peña Nieto's chief of staff when Guzmán fled prison, said in an interview.

Nuño noted that the first time Guzmán slipped out of federal prison, in 2001, he managed to stay on the lam for more than a decade, while this time he was free for less than a year.

"To achieve this for a second time ultimately speaks to the determination of this president, of this government, and a growing capacity of the Mexican state in terms of intelligence," he said.

[Tensions High on Korean Border as North Raises Threat of War]

Tensions High on Korean Border as North Raises Threat of War
from Bloomberg

Tensions remained high on the fortified border dividing North and South Korea as the resumption of propaganda broadcasts prompted Pyongyang to raise the risk of war, overshadowing diplomatic efforts to respond to North Korea's surprise nuclear test.

South Korea turned on the powerful loudspeakers on Friday in retaliation for the nuclear test conducted on Wednesday. The South Korean military also fortified its positions near the huge banks of loudspeakers that can broadcast miles into North Korea. The broadcasts risk pushing the two sides "toward the brink of war," Yonhap News cited North Korean Workers' Party Secretary Kim Ki Nam as saying at a rally in Pyongyang.

Threats of war are routinely issued by North Korea. Still, the Kim Jong Un regime has become particularly belligerent over the broadcasts that offer troops and civilians near the border a rare glimpse of the contrasting realities between the two Koreas. Tensions are spiking as South Korea and the U.S. seek to build international support to punish Pyongyang for the test. The success of that effort may hinge on how willing China is to try to bring its unruly ally to heel.

"North Korea's fourth nuclear test could become a true test of the collective will of the global community to deal with a common security challenge," Scott Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said in a report. "Escalation of a crisis with North Korea would likely open a Pandora's box of difficult geopolitical, humanitarian and potentially military challenges."

Negotiations Needed

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung Se by phone on Friday that efforts should be made to pave the way for negotiations to end North Korea's nuclear arm program, according to a text message from South Korea's foreign ministry on Saturday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China on Thursday to support a more aggressive approach with Pyongyang.

The international community needs to work together to draft additional United Nations sanctions, Yun told Wang. Previous rounds of UN sanctions have failed to convince North Korea to reverse its arms development and return to the disarmament talks that broke down in 2009, leading Pyongyang to revive and accelerate its production of nuclear devices.

Kerry also said that China's policy of propping up the regime with economic support while trying to coax it back to the negotiating table had proven to be a failure, and China needed to turn up the pressure. China provides almost all of North Korea's imported energy, and Chinese food goods have helped the Kim regime limit the effects of famine and shortages. China accounted for 79 percent of North Korea's trade in 2014, the most recent year available, up from 56 percent in 2010.

China Pushback

China has begun pushing back against the notion that it holds the key to resolving the Korea crisis.

"China is not the cause and crux of the Korean nuclear issue, nor is it the key to resolving the problem," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing in Beijing on Friday. "Nevertheless, having in mind the international nuclear non-proliferation regime as well as peace and stability of Northeast Asia, the Chinese side has been calling for and seeking proper settlement of different parties' reasonable concerns and fundamental approach to enduring peace on the peninsula."

In an editorial, China's official Global Times newspaper blamed the "hostile policy" of the U.S. toward North Korea for prompting the nuclear tests. North Korea has repeatedly said that its weapons program is defensive and the only way to prevent a U.S.-led invasion of the country.

Each of North Korea's three previous atomic tests has resulted in a tightening of international sanctions. As United Nations diplomats work toward a new Security Council resolution, the world is looking to China to convince its unruly neighbor to stop its nuclear arms development.

"China had a particular approach that it wanted to make and we agreed and respected to give them the space to be able to implement that," Kerry told reporters on Thursday. "But today in my conversation with the Chinese I made it very clear that has not worked and we cannot continue business as usual."

The second nuclear test since Kim came to power four years ago may have angered China President Xi Jinping, who in October sent a high-ranking envoy to Pyongyang with a handwritten letter seeking deeper cooperation. China wasn't informed in advance of the detonation and is "steadfast in its position that the Korean peninsula should be denuclearized," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

Still, China may be reluctant to crackdown hard on North Korea for fear of destabilizing the Kim regime, which could send millions of refugees across China's border, or lead to an eventual unification with the South, leaving a well-armed U.S. ally on China's frontier.

"Beijing's concern is first and foremost about North Korea's stability," said Liu Ming, director of the Korean Peninsula Research Center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. "It didn't, and still doesn't want to see the regime collapse, which would cause unimaginable chaos on the borders."

[Everything Samsung announced at CES 2016]

Everything Samsung announced at CES 2016
from VentureBeat

Another year, another CES, and the annual Las Vegas tech extravaganza is once more shining a light on a myriad of weird and wonderful products emerging from the world's innovators.

As in previous years, Samsung has been the talking point for many, with a fairly eclectic range of new offerings. Here's a quick recap of everything the Korean tech titan has announced at CES 2016.

Smart fridges and washing machines

Perhaps the biggest headline-grabber of the show was Samsung's interesting new, erm, fridge. The Family Hub connected cooler has a 21.5-inch HD touchscreen on the door that can be used like any other screen... you can control your music, shop online, watch TV, and so on. It also has sensors that can detect and automatically order food that's running low, and you can remotely view the contents of your fridge thanks to the interior cameras.

Elsewhere in the kitchen appliance realm, Samsung also re-introduced the world to AddWash, the company's smart new approach to loading washing machines. First announced at IFA in September, Samsung's new AddWash spinners let you add items of clothing to the main cycle mid-wash... no need to drain the machine first.

Samsung wasn't the only washing machine to launch at CES —  Marathon Laundry demonstrated a machine that can both wash and dry in the same drum. It is also connects to the Internet.

PCs, tablets, & wearables

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy TabPro S — a 12-inch, Windows 10-powered tablet that's apparently looking to take on Apple's iPad Pro and Microsoft's Surface Pro.

One selling point for Samsung's incarnation is that it comes bundled with its own keyboard and cover. This was Samsung's second TabPro-branded device (the first one ran on Android).

Samsung also introduced two new laptops — the Samsung Notebook 9 series, available in 15-inch and 13.3-inch versions. Perhaps the biggest selling point of these new machines is their size and weight. The 13.3-inch version weighs just 0.84kg (1.85 lbs) and is 13.4mm at its thickest, while the larger sibling comes in at 1.29kg (2.84 lbs) and is just 14.5mm.

Samsung announced a new Chromebook at CES 2016. The laptop, which uses Google's cloud-focused Chrome OS as its operating system, is similar to Samsung's previous Chromebooks in many ways, but this one promises (up to) an impressive 11.5 hours of battery, compared to the measly 8.5 hours of the Chromebook 2.

In addition to laptops and tablets, Samsung unveiled two new colors for its Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch: gold and platinum. The company also used CES to reveal two interesting tidbits regarding the timepiece — support for iOS is coming in 2016, while its Apple Pay competitor, Samsung Pay, will be brought into the fray, too.

TV & audio

Samsung is a major player in the smart TV realm, and the company used CES to show off its latest smarts.

Indeed, Samsung's 2016 lineup of SUHD TVs will feature quantum dot displays, with the "world's first" bezel-less curved design. You will be able to control more than 200 smart devices in your home thanks to integration with the SmartThings Hub.



Additionally, the TVs will also have a universal remote for controlling all devices connected to your TV, including games consoles, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.

It's not just about the TVs, though. Samsung also lifted the lid on the HW-K950 Soundbar, the company's first speaker system to feature Dolby Atmos technology.



The Soundbar sports a trio of forward-facing speakers and two upward-facing ones, and it connects wirelessly to the subwoofer and rear speaker units. It can also connect to Samsung's Wireless Audio 360 system, which means you can control the audio from your computer or mobile device.

In development...

Alongside its new products, Samsung also lifted the lid on a handful of works-in-progress. One of these was Samsung Media Square, software that works with your TV to help connect multiple people in the same room for a shared big-screen experience — for example, friends with smartphones and smartwatches could queue up songs, photos, videos, or games from their own devices.

Samsung is also demoing a trio of prototypes from its creative lab, known as Samsung C-Lab. These are all early-stage products, and no timescale has been given for when they'll go to market... if at all.

There are smart fridges, smart washing machines, smart vacuum cleaners, so why not have smart belts? Samsung's Welt is a "discreet" device that you wear around your waist like a belt. It can monitor waist size, eating habits, and steps taken, while serving up a range of weight-management plans.

Rink, on the other hand, is touted as an "advanced hand-motion controller for mobile VR devices." It lets you control virtual reality content through your head-mounted display using just your hands, eliminating the need to grip the device.



Elsewhere, TipTalk lets you listen to sounds from connected devices such as phones and smartwatches by touching your ear with your finger. No headphones are required, but you will need to attach the TipTalk device to your watch strap.



CES is always awash with a slew of new products — some of them will be hits, others may never see the light of day again. But by looking at Samsung's array of products gives a broad insight into some of the key trends of the moment. The so-called Internet of Things is clearly a major driving force in development labs around the world, even though things like connected fridges may reaffirm some people's notion that it should be called the Internet of Shit.

As gimmicky as such things are, we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture. We're still in the early days of true connectivity. It may transpire that people don't want an Internet-connected refrigerator and washing machine, but there is little question that homes and societies of the future will be far more connected than they are today.

[See Volkswagen's Funky New All-Electric Bus]

See Volkswagen's Funky New All-Electric Bus
from TIME



Volkswagen, reeling from its emissions scandal, unveiled Tuesday what it surely hopes will be a symbol of brighter days ahead: An electric Microbus concept called the BUDD-e.

The German automaker says the BUDD-e could get up to 373 miles of range on a single charge, while the battery system would reach up to 80% charge in a mere 15 minutes (that range estimate is based on a European metric that's on the generous side).

The bus is built around what Volkswagen is calling the "Modular Electric Toolkit." That's essentially a method of building electric cars that keeps all the important make-car-go stuff as close to the front and rear as possible, creating more space for human and non-human cargo alike.

That's all fine and dandy. Where the BUDD-e really shines is in the design, both exterior and interior. On the outside, you've got a sleek rethink of VW's classic vans. Inside, Volkswagen's engineers have blended the infotainment systems and driver dashboards on an "information hub" that resembles a panel from Star Trek's Enterprise.

The BUDD-e concept is already being well-received among automotive fans. But it's hard to predict if it will be enough to resurrect Volkswagen's tarnished brand. U.S. sales of the automaker's cars fell 25% in November after it was revealed the company was cheating on emissions tests with millions of its diesel vehicles. Another 9% drop followed in December, while the U.S. Justice Department this week joined a long list of parties seeking financial damages over the fiasco.

Still, there is opportunity in crisis, as the old saying goes. Volkswagen's smartest move may be going all-in on automotive's greener, cleaner future. The BUDD-e looks to be a step in that direction.

[Chipotle hit with subpoena in federal criminal investigation over norovirus]

Chipotle hit with subpoena in federal criminal investigation over norovirus
from Fox News

Chipotle was served with a federal grand jury subpoena as part of a criminal investigation tied to a dangerous norovirus outbreak this summer at one of its restaurants in California, the company announced Wednesday.

The subpoena, received last month, requires the company to produce a broad range of documents tied to the restaurant in Simi Valley. The investigation is being conducted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration, the company said.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has been reeling since an E. coli outbreak linked to its restaurants in late October and November, which was followed by a separate norovirus outbreak at a restaurant in Boston in December. The cases have received far more national media attention than the norovirus outbreak in California.

Chipotle said sales plunged 30 percent in December. The company expects sales to fall 14.6 percent at established locations for the full fourth quarter, marking the first decline since the company went public in 2006.

People can get norovirus from an infected person, contaminated food or water, or by touching contaminated surfaces, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus is very contagious and can spread quickly in places such as daycare centers and cruise ships, the agency says. Each year, it causes 19 to 21 million illnesses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the outbreak of E. coli tied to Chipotle has sickened at least 52 people in nine states. The first cases were reported at the end of October in Oregon and Washington. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has more than 1,900 locations, primarily in the U.S.

A Chipotle spokesman, Chris Arnold, said in an email the company does not discuss pending litigation, but that it intends to cooperate fully with the investigation.

To rehabilitate its image, the company has taken out full-page ads apologizing to customers in dozens of newspapers around the country. It has also vowed changes to step up food safety at its restaurants.

[North Korea says it successfully conducts hydrogen bomb test]

North Korea says it successfully conducts hydrogen bomb test
from CNN

Sticking it to its foes, North Korea on Wednesday celebrated what it called a successful hydrogen bomb test -- a milestone that, if true, marks a colossal advancement for the reclusive regime and a big test for leaders worldwide to determine what to do about it.

"Make the world ... look up to our strong nuclear country and labor party by opening the year with exciting noise of the first hydrogen bomb!" read a document signed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on state television.

Pyongyang has been very vocal about its nuclear ambitions, pressing on despite widespread condemnation, sanctions and other punishments. Having a hydrogen bomb -- a device far more powerful than the plutonium weapons that North Korea has used in three earlier underground nuclear tests -- ups the ante significantly.

Still, is this boast legitimate? The purported underground test, which happened at 10 a.m. (8:30 p.m. ET Tuesday), corresponded with a magnitude 5.1 seismic event centered 12 miles (19 kilometers) east-southeast of Sungjibaegam, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That's comparable (but not bigger, as you'd expect with a hydrogen bomb) to readings from North Korea's most recent plutonium test in 2013.

Norsar, a Norway-based group that monitors nuclear tests, noted both fact and estimated, based on the seismic readings, a blast equivalent to less than of 10,000 tons of TNT -- smaller than those of the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and far less than thermonuclear weapons that typically are as potent as millions of tons of TNT.



"We won't know for another few days or weeks whether this was (a hydrogen bomb)," said Martin Navias, a military expert at King's College London. "It doesn't look like one; ... one would have expected it to be greater if it was an H-bomb."

An answer may come from U.S. or South Korean analysis of the atmosphere for "trace elements [of] radiation," though Mike Chinoy, a fellow at the University of Southern California's U.S.-China Institute, noted that "we may never know 100%."

Count Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst with the nonpartisan research group, among the skeptics. He said North Korea has had trouble "mastering even the basics of a fission weapon," so it's a big leap to think it could create an even more complicated hydrogen bomb.

"Unless North Korea has help from outside experts, it is unlikely that it has really achieved a hydrogen/fusion bomb since its last nuclear test just short of three years ago," Bennett said.

U.N. Security Council to convene meeting

Whether or not it's true, North Korea's claim -- which Kim hinted was coming a few weeks ago -- got the world's attention. And that may be Pyongyang's main aim.

"If there's no invasion on our sovereignty, we will not use nuclear weapons," North Korea's state news agency reported. "This H-bomb test brings us to a higher level of nuclear power."

The United Nations Security Council will hold a closed-door meeting starting at 11 a.m. ET Wednesday on this topic at the request of the United States and Japan. The question is: What can be done, and will it make a difference?

Past U.N. resolutions have included arms, nonproliferation and even luxury good embargoes, a freeze on overseas financial assets and a travel ban. None of these have stopped North Korea from continuing its nuclear program.

With discord raging over things like Syria's civil war, the Shiite-Sunni Muslim divide, Ukraine, migrants and much more, it's rare nowadays to get unanimity on anything. Yet North Korea's hydrogen bomb bluster appears the exception, drawing harsh criticism from the likes of Russia, NATO, China and beyond.

The anger and danger were felt most in South Korea, which split from the North more than six decades ago.

"This is clearly a provocation and threatening the lives of people and safety," South Korean President Park Geun-hye said. "We have been continuously warning that [North Korea] will pay a price for conducting a nuclear test."

Test puts U.S. 'on the spot'

Pyongyang singled out the United States -- or, as it called it, "a gang of cruel robbers" and "hideous nuclear criminal that has constantly posed nuclear blackmail for more than 70 years, seriously endangering mankind" -- in its highly charged official reports around the time of the test announcement.

North Korea not only has a "legitimate right" to have nuclear weapons, they're needed as a deterrent to Washington's "deep-rooted, harsh and ... hostile policy," according to these reports.

"The spectacular success ... in the H-bomb test [is] a historic event of ... national significance as it surely guarantees the eternal future of the nation," the KCNA story stated.

Chinoy pointed out that three of North Korea's four nuclear tests -- in 2009, 2013 and now -- have taken place during the tenure of U.S. President Barack Obama, who's made inroads toward curtailing Iran's atomic aspirations but not North Korea's. This latest one, in particular, "puts the U.S. on the spot," according to Chinoy.

"Will any of their steps do anything to restrain North Korea?" the analyst mused. "My guess is probably not."

A heavy militarized state

Combined with its secrecy and seclusion, North Korea's us-against-the-world perspective and the fact it doesn't play by traditional rules makes it unpredictable at best and dangerous at worst. Add nuclear weapons to the mix -- even if they aren't thermonuclear -- and Pyongyang could unleash devastation of a sort not seen in over 70 years.

That's when U.S. forces used atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II. Minuscule in power compared with H-bombs, the two blasts nonetheless killed about 200,000 people.

While it's done little outwardly to develop its economy, North Korea has put a lot of focus on its military carrying a huge standing army of 1.2 million active soldiers plus 7.7 million reservists (in a country of 25 million people).

"If a nuclear device has been detonated... it underlines the very real threat that North Korea represents to regional and international security," British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said.

Expert: Hard to prove N. Korea wrong

But its conventional weaponry is dated, with limited effectiveness. That's one reason, experts speculate, Pyongyang has sought nuclear weapons -- to project power internationally.

Last May, North Korea claimed it had the ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons, a development that would allow it to deploy nuclear weapons on missiles. A U.S. National Security Council spokesman responded at the time that the United States did not think the North Koreans had such a capability.

David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, told CNN last year that Pyongyang could already have 10 to 15 atomic weapons, and that it could grow that amount by several weapons per year.

He believed then that Pyongyang had the capability to miniaturize a warhead for shorter missiles, but not yet for intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.

Albright called the latest nuclear test "largely a mystery," surmising that North Korea didn't test "a two-stage H-bomb. But he said it's possible "another thermonuclear weapon design" was tested, noting there "are many types of such weapons" that "can achieve very high explosive yields."

"While awaiting success, North Korea can bluff," said Albright, the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security. "It can claim that it now knows how to achieve high yields with thermonuclear concepts. It is difficult to prove it does not."

[Why Barack Obama Needs To Target ISIS Leadership]

Why Barack Obama Needs To Target ISIS Leadership
from TIME

President Obama’s Sunday night address from the Oval Office has done little to quell calls from Republicans that he needs to do more to defeat ISISâ€"and has done even less to calm unease among Americans fearing terrorism at home. But neither politicians nor public, beyond that exhortation to “do more,” seems to have a credible list of options.

Surely, the U.S.-led air campaign could be stepped up, but that’s already happening. Allied warplanes dropped 3,271 bombs and missiles on ISIS targets in November, nearly double the June count, Bloomberg reports.

The enemy always gets a vote when it comes to war. That means the U.S. and its allies have to ensure that whatever action they take doesn’t make things worse. That’s whyâ€"unlike the 2003 invasion of Iraqâ€"the U.S. is pursuing a “light footprint” strategy designed to grind down the territory occupied by ISIS and choke off the oil flow and other revenue sources it has been using to carry out, and inspire, jihad among its members and sympathizers.

Any large land army, especially one from the West, would give ISIS what it wants: a Crusaders-like clash of civilizations that could engulf the Middle East in war for years. That’s why the Pentagon has stressed its campaign is one of persistenceâ€"or “strategic patience,” in Pentagon parlanceâ€"designed to crush ISIS slowly without triggering a bigger war.

But, as the recent attacks launched in ISIS’s name show, its message and murder have spread beyond the swaths of Iraq and Syria it now occupies.

Hundreds have been killed in ISIS’s name in Beirut, Egypt, France and California. ISIS’s Yemen affiliate claimed responsibility for a bomb blast Sunday that killed the governor of Aden, grabbing, at least temporarily, the Yemen terror crown from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. ISIS said it detonated a car crammed with explosives as General Jaafar Mohammed Saad’s convoy passed by, killing him and five others. In a statement, ISIS declared more such attacks against “the heads of apostasy in Yemen.”

Such increasingly widespread and disparate attacks heighten the sense of vulnerability felt by many. That is the feeling that Obama failed to ease Sunday night. As ISIS continues to strike, all the dropped bombs in the world won’t erase the perception that it is shrugging off those attacks and continuing to kill at will.

That’s why, sooner or later, the U.S. is going to have to attack the ISIS redoubt of Raqqa, the Syrian city that serves as the capital of ISIS’s self-declared caliphate, and kill ISIS kingpin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. His continuing survival is the oxygen that ISIS breathes.

It doesn’t make any difference whether they do it with smart bombs married to good intelligence (that’s how the U.S. killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, arguably the father of ISIS, in Iraq in 2006), or special-ops teams on the ground (which is how the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011).

It’s critical that the U.S. show that ISIS can’t keep attacking with impunity. The U.S. and its allies will have to kill those who rise to replace al-Baghdadi and his top lieutenants. And then do it again, and again. Ultimately, they’ll get the message.

Easier said than done, of course. Pentagon officials have made clear they have been hunting for al-Baghdadi for more than a year. But each attack makes it increasingly clear that time is running out. The U.S. military has to destroy the ISIS leadership either before, or after, they kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. There is no other choice.

[FBI: Both San Bernardino attackers ‘were radicalized and have been for some time’]

FBI: Both San Bernardino attackers ‘were radicalized and have been for some time’
from The Washington Post

Authorities now believe that the two attackers who killed 14 people here last week were both radicalized and had been for quite a while, an FBI official said Monday.

“Both subjects were radicalized and have been for some time,” David Bowdich the assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles Field Office, said at a news conference.

Bowdich touched on the question of whether one of them guided the other down the path of radicalization, saying that police did not know yet when or how this occurred.

“How did that happen and by whom and where did that happen?” he said. “I will tell you right now, we don’t know those answers at this point.”

He added that it was possible there was no “whom” responsible for this, but said investigators were still exploring all possibilities.

Investigators have found evidence of “pre-planning,” Bowdich said. Both attackers went to shooting ranges in the Los Angeles region for target practice, including one such visit just days before the shooting, he said.

The federal investigation â€" which Bowdich described as “massive in scale” â€" has involved more than 400 interviews, he said.

County officials had said earlier Monday they were returning to work in an attempt to resume normal business, five days after 14 people were killed in a massacre at an event for government workers.

The only exception is the Division of Environmental Health Services, where work will be suspended for at least another week, county officials said at a news conference. One of the two killers, Syed Rizwan Farook, was a department employee.

In an effort to help employees cope with the effects of last week’s violence, the county has established a counseling center and hotline, and managers in county government have been asked to look for signs of stress among their staff.

San Bernardino has already taken steps since the Dec. 2 shooting at the Inland Regional Center to enhance security in county facilities, including increasing the number of armed guards at certain facilities, and is considering additional measures.

County officials and physicians from hospitals that treated shooting victims stressed that San Bernardino would seek to remain united and would rally around those affected by the massacre.

“The purpose of terrorism is to make ordinary people afraid to do the ordinary things that make up their lives,” said Janice Rutherford, a member of the county Board of Supervisors. “We can’t be afraid of our lives, of our community, of our neighbors, of our coworkers.”

Of six victims who were admitted to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center after the attack, five have gone home.

The wide-ranging investigation into the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001, continued Monday, as officials sought answers about the attack, the suspects and any ties they may have to other people.

Law enforcement agents on Sunday again searched the home of a man suspected of providing Farook with the military-grade rifles he and his wife used to gun down 14 people.

A team of three officials spent about 30 minutes inside the home of Enrique Marquez, a former neighbor of Farook’s, and left carrying a large cardboard box. The box’s contents were unknown, and the officials declined to identify themselves or their agency to reporters outside.

The search at the modest suburban home, the second in two days, took place as new details surfaced about Marquez, who officials say bought the DPMS and Smith & Wesson AR-15 rifles that Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, used in the Dec. 2 rampage.

Marquez, who works as a Walmart security guard, checked himself into a mental health facility Friday; it is not yet clear whether he has already been questioned by authorities or if he will be charged.

On Monday, Bowdich said he would not comment on Marquez’s status.

A picture has begun to take shape of the couple’s past and their apparent radicalization even as their lives followed a seemingly ordinary course: work, marriage, child. The couple’s daughter, born in May, is in the care of child protective services.

The Marquez and Farook families lived next door to each other on the quiet residential street in Riverside, Calif., for years. Like Farook, Marquez, 29, attended La Sierra High School. Both young men shared a love of cars.

Neighbor Jared Rork said Farook and Marquez would sometimes be seen working on cars and listening to music in one of their garages. “They seemed like everyday, normal Americans,” he said.

One of his coworkers at Walmart, who asked to go only by his last name, Dandy, said Marquez had worked at the store only a few months.

When he heard about Marquez’s possible role in supplying the weapons used on Dec. 2, Dandy was shocked.

“I was just blown [away], man,” he said. “I couldn’t believe something like that could come here.”

Friends and family described Farook, who was born in Illinois and grew up in California, as devout and conservative. Those who prayed with him at local mosques said the 28-year-old spoke about his personal life to few people.

On Sunday, Italian publication La Stampa published an interview with Farook’s father, also named Syed, in which he said his son had harbored anti-Semitic animosity. Reached at his son Raheel’s home on Sunday morning, the elder Farook said his views differed from those of his son.

“He was going towards [conservatism],” he told reporters through the gate of the home. “His views were conservative, my views were liberal.”

He also said that Syed Farook had quarreled with a Jewish coworker. One of the fellow county health inspectors killed in the attack was Nicholas Thalasinos, who converted to the Messianic Jewish movement of Christianity three years ago and who frequently posted online about Israel and politics.

Kuuleme Stephens, a friend of Thalasinos’s, said she had spoken with him by phone about two weeks before the attack, reaching him when he was having a conversation with Farook about the nature of Islam and Israel’s place in the Middle East.

But she played down the significance of the conversation. “It wasn’t an argument,” she said. “No one was raising their voices.”

Investigators are also working to determine what other attacks the couple may have planned. The rifles they used had been altered to make them more lethal, and a major arsenal was found in their two-story townhome, including what authorities said were a dozen pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

On Monday, Bowdich said authorities had found 19 pipes that could have been used for pipe bombs, rather than the dozen pipe bombs previously described.

During an appearance on Fox News on Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said investigators are trying to establish where the couple got the money to buy their weaponry.

“There’s a serious investigation ongoing into what she was doing in Pakistan and in Saudi,” McCaul said. “We think that she had a lot to do with the radicalization process and perhaps with Mr. Farook’s radicalization from within the United States.”

“The wild card here is the wife, Malik,” he added.

One of the few known clues about Malik’s beliefs was a posting she made on Facebook around the time of the attack, pledging loyalty to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Islamic State has described the couple as followers but has not expressed the same close association with the attack that it has with other recent examples of violence, such as the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.

On Sunday, Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters that his government was investigating Malik’s past.

He said Pakistan was offering the United States “all possible legal assistance” but added that Pakistan should not be held responsible for the actions of a single person.

“Such heinous acts also lead to serious difficulties for millions of Muslims who live in Western and other countries, and the extremists and nationalist elements in those societies look at Muslims with suspicions,” he said.

So far, the Pakistani government has not found any links between the 29-year-old Malik, who was born in Pakistan, and extremist groups, he said.

Reporters’ ability to look into Malik’s roots was made more difficult by the presence of intelligence agents at sites she is known to have visited in the town of Multan, where she lived with her mother and sister while undertaking her college studies. The family moved in 2014, one neighbor said.

On Sunday, three professors at Bahauddin Zakariya University, which Malik also attended, told Reuters that security agencies had told them not to speak to reporters. A professor, who was not identified, told Reuters that security officials had removed records and pictures of Malik from the university Saturday.

A former college roommate, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said she stayed in touch with Malik after she moved to the United States in the summer of 2014, but gradually lost touch.

“She was initially responding to our calls and Facebook messages,” the woman said in a text message. “But then [she] stopped replying to our messages after December 2014.”

A local cleric, Attaul Manan, who runs a madrassa and mosque near Malik’s former home, said the Malik family largely stayed to themselves. “The people have been discussing how [Malik] had lived there, but no one ever saw her because the Malik family did not mix with others in the street,” he said.

But even the most basic facts of Malik’s background remain disputed.

While Pakistani officials say she lived in Saudi Arabia on and off for 25 years, the Saudi government on Sunday said she had spent little time there.

According to the Associated Press, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said she had spent less than six months there in two visits in 2008 and 2013.

[/warp Christmas]

The annual Christmas land has returned! Visit /warp Christmas to leave gifts for your friends under the Christmas tree!

To make sure your presents are safe, lock the chest by doing /cprivate and punching the chest. Then, Shift + Right-click with a sign to put a label on the chest so you don't lose it!

Please limit yourself to three chests to save room for everyone who wants to give!

[New Xbox One Backwards Compatibility Games Will Be Announced Monthly]

New Xbox One Backwards Compatibility Games Will Be Announced Monthly
from Ledger Gazette

Two games are coming for Xbox 360 and the other two will be for the later-version, the Xbox One.

It sounds like it will be monthly announcements to look forward to much like the Games with Gold lists are revealed every four weeks as well.

On to the details of the freebies, MajorNelson.com said that Xbox One, Xbox Live Gold members can download and install for free the action-adventure indie game from NeocoreGames, “The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing“. Thief is a reboot of a 1998 game, and the player controls Garrett in a steampunk Victorian world as the stealth game focuses on stealing from the rich. The game is available from December 15 to January 15. CastleStorm and Sacred 3 are regularly priced at $9.99 and $19.99, respectively.

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer revealed on Twitter earlier this week that announcements for new Xbox One backwards compatibility games will be done on a monthly basis. “Xbox One owners can download their free Xbox 360 Games with Gold from Xbox.com/GameswithGold or from their Xbox 360 console”, explained the post. Originally sold at $9.99, the game will be made available from Dec. 16 to the end of December.

For the rest of December, Xbox 360-owning patrons will be able to do some hacking and slashing in the classic arcade brawler “Sacred 3“. Users who have an Xbox 360 can redeem these titles and then take them and their game saves to the Xbox One without having to pay for a game upgrade or any game extras. Members with Gold subscription will be availing the title “Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising” for free from December 16 to 31.

Titles are available as free downloads for qualifying Xbox Live Gold subscribers in all markets where Xbox Live is available. With Xbox One Backward Compatibility play multiplayer with your friends no matter which console they’re on and enjoy Xbox 360 games with the advanced features of your Xbox One, including Game DVR, Screenshots, and in-home streaming to Windows 10.

[Volkswagen knew fuel usage in some cars was too high a year ago]

Volkswagen knew fuel usage in some cars was too high a year ago
from Reuters

Volkswagen's top executives knew a year ago that some of the company's cars were markedly less fuel efficient than had been officially stated, Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag reported, without specifying its sources.

VW in early November revealed that it had understated the level of carbon dioxide emissions and fuel usage in around 800,000 cars sold mainly in Europe.

The scandal, which will likely cost VW billions, initially centred on software on up to 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide that VW admitted was designed to artificially suppress nitrogen oxide emissions in a test setting.

The Bild am Sonntag report contradicts VW's assertion, however, that it only uncovered the false CO2 emissions labelling as part of efforts to clear up the diesel emissions scandal, which became public in September.

A VW spokesman declined to comment on whether VW had knowledge already a year ago of overstated fuel efficiency.

Months after becoming aware of excessive fuel consumption, former Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn decided this spring to pull one model off the market where the discrepancy was particularly pronounced, the Polo TDI BlueMotion, the paper cited sources close to Winterkorn as saying.

The paper did not separately cite its sources for saying that top executives knew about the fuel usage problem a year ago, however.

VW at the time cited low sales figures as the reason for the withdrawal. The paper said that VW did not inform Polo TDI BlueMotion owners of the high fuel consumption, which was 18 percent above the nameplate value.

The VW spokesman reaffirmed the previously cited reason for the withdrawal.

"The offering of the Blue Motion TDI Polo was suspended in all markets due to subdued demand. We are currently testing all models built from 2012 for differences in CO2 levels from the listed values."

Winterkorn stepped down as CEO in September, following VW's admission that it had deceived U.S. regulators about diesel-car pollution.

[Russian air strikes kill at least 30 in stepped up raids in northwest Syria]

Russian air strikes kill at least 30 in stepped up raids in northwest Syria
from Reuters

Air strikes believed to have been carried out by Russian jets killed at least 30 people in the town of Ariha in northwestern Syria on Sunday, rescue workers in the rebel-held area said, part of an escalation of Russian strikes near the Turkish border.

In separate air strikes closer to the frontier with Turkey, jets believed to be Russian hit a truck depot that was also struck on Thursday, destroying 10 trailers and killing five people, a rebel in the area said.

Officials at the Russian defense ministry could not immediately be reached for comment. Syrians in rebel-held areas of northwestern Syria near the Turkish frontier have reported intensified air strikes in the days since Turkey downed a Russian warplane near the border.

The air strike on Ariha in Idlib province wounded dozens more people, striking a market place, the rescue workers said. Mohamed Queissi, a rescue worker with the Civil Defense service which operates in rebel-held areas, said the bodies of 31 people had been identified, with 12 more awaiting identification.

"The vendors were shouting loudly as people were buying and selling and suddenly we heard the sound of the planes and in less than a second the jets struck and there was deadly silence.

"I saw people thrown in the street, strewn corpses and terrified children crying and shouting for their parents," said Mohamed Amine Qurabi, 25, a second Civil Defense worker.

Both were contacted by Reuters and spoke from Ariha.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on the war, gave an initial death toll of 18 people including four children and "a leading opposition" member. It said the toll was likely to rise, with a total of 60 killed and wounded.

Ariha fell to rebels in May during an advance that resulted in the whole of Idlib province falling to the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad. Rebels in Idlib include the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. The province is not a stronghold of the Islamic State group that controls wide areas of eastern Syria.

Russia began a major aerial campaign on Sept. 30 to help its ally Assad, who suffered a series of setbacks earlier this year including the loss of Idlib province and areas near the coast which is of crucial strategic importance.

Moscow says its target is Islamic State but the overwhelming majority of its strikes have been against other opponents of Assad.

The Syrian army, backed by Iranian and Hezbollah fighters, have in tandem launched ground offensives across areas of western Syria that are mostly controlled by insurgents other than Islamic State, including groups backed by Assad's foreign enemies, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

One of these offensives is south of Aleppo, around 50 km (30 miles) east of Ariha, where government forces backed by Iranian fighters are seeking to advance westwards toward the main Damascus-Aleppo highway. Ariha is located on the main road linking Aleppo to the coast.

Residents and rebels say warplanes believed to be Russian have stepped up raids on residential areas in several major cities in northwestern Syria that are within a radius of 10 to 30 km from the Turkish border.

These towns, where Turkish goods are sold, have helped to sustain the economy of rebel-held northwest. They are also home to functioning hospitals and councils that run the rebel-held areas. Towns hit in recent days include Sarmada and Dana, and others in the northern and western Aleppo countryside near the Turkish border such as Azaz and Atareb, residents say.

The targets have included areas close to two main border crossings between the rebel-held northwest and Turkey.

The Syrian army said on Saturday that Turkey had increased weapons supplies to rebels recently, saying that they were being smuggled into the country in shipments claimed to be humanitarian aid.

[Kobe Bryant announces he will retire after this season]

Kobe Bryant announces he will retire after this season
from the LA Times

Lakers All-Star guard Kobe Bryant announced that the current NBA season will be the final one of his storied career.

"This season is all I have left to give," writes Bryant on The Players Tribune in a letter he opens directly to the sport itself with the words, "Dear Basketball."

Bryant is in his 20th season, all with the Lakers since a draft-day trade in 1996 that sent Vlade Divac to the Charlotte Hornets in return for a 17-year old kid taken with the 13th overall pick.

Bryant won five NBA titles. He was still playing at an elite level until April 2013 when he tore an Achilles' tendon.  Knee and shoulder injuries have limited Bryant the last two seasons.

"My heart can take the pounding, my mind can handle the grind, but my body knows it's time to say goodbye," writes Bryant.

"I'm ready to let you go," he continues.  "I want you to know now, so we can both savor every moment we have left together.  The good and the bad.  We have given each other all we have."

Bryant, 37, is struggling this season, averaging 15.7 points a game while shooting only 31.5% from the field and 19.5% from three-point range.

The Lakers are currently in last place in the Western Conference with a 2-13 record.

"You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream, and I'll always love you for it," writes Bryant.  "But I can't love you obsessively for much longer."

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver issued the following statement regarding Kobe Bryant’s announcement:

“With 17 NBA All-Star selections, an NBA MVP, five NBA championships with the Lakers, two Olympic gold medals and a relentless work ethic, Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest players in the history of our game. Whether competing in the Finals or hoisting jump shots after midnight in an empty gym, Kobe has an unconditional love for the game.

“I join Kobe’s millions of fans around the world in congratulating him on an outstanding NBA career and thank him for so many thrilling memories.”

The Lakers still have 67 games left to play this season, with the regular-season finale on Apr. 13 at Staples Center against the Utah Jazz.

Miami guard Dwyane Wade empathized with Bryant's struggles earlier Sunday.

"It's tough to see one of the absolute greatest competitors go through this,” Wade told the Associated Press before Bryant made his announcement. “You can put a team around a guy to help a guy, especially late in his career.

"They're just not in position right now to do that. He's won five championships, so no one feels bad for him from that standpoint. But from a standpoint of seeing one of this era's greatest players go out in a rebuilding process, it's tough.”

[Suspect spoke of 'baby parts' after Planned Parenthood shooting]

Suspect spoke of 'baby parts' after Planned Parenthood shooting
from CNN

What moved a man to kill three people and wound nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado has not been disclosed. But the suspect accused of carrying out the shooting spree, Robert Lewis Dear, made remarks about "baby parts" to investigators after his surrender, a law enforcement official told CNN.

Dear, 57, told them he has anti-abortion and anti-government views, but that doesn't mean those opinions were his motive for allegedly shooting up the Colorado Springs clinic on Friday, the official said. It's too early to tell, as investigators are still processing evidence.

After a nearly six-hour bloody standoff that left three people dead and nine others wounded, the accused shooter dropped his gun when a SWAT team drove up in an armored police vehicle, a BearCat, and cornered him, the official said.

Law enforcement officers found propane tanks in the area of Dear's car in the parking lot and believe he was trying to shoot them to cause an explosion, the official said.

'Crime against women'

In the absence of an announced motive, public officials in Colorado and beyond are drawing their own conclusions about the attack.

It was a "crime against women receiving health care services," said Attorney General Loretta Lynch. She pledged the full resources of her office to investigate.

"You can certainly infer what (the motive) may have been in terms of where it took place and the manner in which it took place," Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers told CNN.

Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, went beyond an inference, saying the shooter "was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion."

A hermit's shanty

Dear is being held without bail in a Colorado Springs jail, according to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. He is due to appear in court Monday afternoon.

Shown in police photos with dark hair and a fluffy white beard, the suspect appears to have lived a long time in rural solitude in the Carolinas, then more recently in Colorado. Over a decade ago, he had some run-ins with the law while living in South Carolina but was never convicted.

In 1997, Dear's wife accused him of domestic assault, although no charges were pressed, according to records from the Colleton County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina.

In 2002, Dear was charged with being a peeping Tom; those counts were dismissed.

In 2003, he was arrested and charged with two counts of animal cruelty, but he was found not guilty in a bench trial.

He later made his home in a hermit shanty in the mountains of North Carolina, CNN affiliate WLOS reported. It published a photo of a small, basic cabin in the woods of Buncombe County.

The Sheriff's Office there knew Dear from a single civil citation issued in 2014 for allowing his dogs to run wild.

Anti-Obama brochures

About a year ago, Dear chose the crossroads community of Hartsel, Colorado, as his home, according to public records. It is nestled in grassy plains and rolling foothills framed by Rocky Mountain ranges and is about an hour and 20 minutes' drive from Colorado Springs.

Dear bought a spread -- 65 miles west of the Planned Parenthood clinic -- for $6,000.

Zigmond Post, a neighbor, said Dear brought him some anti-Obama pamphlets once. "That's about all I've run into him," he said.

It's safe to say that few people knew who Dear was until he walked out of the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood after allegedly shooting 12 people and terrorizing many others.

Scanners relay police plans

Conversations captured over the police scanner gave glimpses into the drama inside the clinic as well as the strategic debate about how to stop the suspect and get his hostages to safety at the same time.

Joan Motolinia's sister was among those inside. She called him Friday afternoon, and he could hear the shooting in the background, he said.

"She couldn't say much because she was afraid," Motolinia said, tearing up as he recounted the call.

Victims: Officer, veteran, mother

Officer Garrett Swasey died along with two civilian victims in the hail of bullets. He was an elder in his church and a former figure skating artist.

Swasey was a University of Colorado-Colorado Springs officer who rushed to the clinic to offer his assistance. "There was no way any of us could have kept him here," said UCCS Police Chief Brian McPike. "He was always willing to go. ... He had an enthusiasm that was hard to quell."

The Melrose, Massachusetts, native "found his calling as a police officer," according to a statement from his family.

"Helping others brought him deep satisfaction and being a police officer was a part of him. In the end, his last act was for the safety and well-being of others and was a tribute to his life," it said.

As of early Sunday afternoon, a fundraising page set up for Swasey's wife of 17 years, Rachel, and his two children -- Elijah, 10 and Faith, 6 -- had reached more than $70,000 of a stated goal of $100,000.

Ke'Arre Stewart, 29, and Jennifer Markovsky, 35, were also killed in the shooting, officials said Sunday.

Stewart was a U.S. Army veteran who'd served in Iraq, his sister, Temprest Lloyd, told CNN. He was the father of two daughters.

Lloyd, who's spoken with police and the coroner about the shooting, said her brother called 911 during the attack and told others at Planned Parenthood to take cover.

"He was able to save a lot of lives and stop other people from possibly losing their lives, and I'm proud of him for that," she said.

Stewart's wife told CNN affiliate KKTV that their family is seeking justice.

Markovsky's father, John Ah-King, told KKTV that he was heartbroken.

"I couldn't believe it. I just messaged her Thursday to say Happy Thanksgiving," he told The Denver Post.

Sister-in-law Julia Miller told the Post that Markovsky was a stay-at-home mom who was devoted to her two children.

"She's just a really sweet woman that would do anything for everyone," Miller said, according to the newspaper.

Obama: 'Enough is enough'

In a statement on Saturday, President Barack Obama offered praise for Swasey, condolences to the families of the victims and condemnation of the attack as another example of gun violence.

"This is not normal. We can't let it become normal," Obama said. "If we truly care about this -- if we're going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience -- then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.

"Period. Enough is enough."

Planned Parenthood videos

Planned Parenthood has recently endured intense political and social opposition.

Eight undercover videos released over the summer by anti-abortion activists have stirred caustic criticism against the reproductive health clinic. The controversy has reached the halls of Congress, where conservative politicians have demanded the group's defunding.

Planned Parenthood has said the videos, which alleged illegal fetal organ sales, were heavily edited and inaccurate.

At least three of the organization's buildings have been vandalized since September, not long after the last video appeared.

['Good Dinosaur' and 'Creed' can't beat 'Mockingjay -- Part 2' at the box office]

'Good Dinosaur' and 'Creed' can't beat 'Mockingjay -- Part 2' at the box office
from Los Angeles Times

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 2” proved to be a tough competitor at the holiday box office, as the finale of the young adult movie series led ticket sale for a second weekend and beat newcomers "The Good Dinosaur" and "Creed."

Lionsgate’s “Mockingjay -- Part 2” grossed an estimated $75.8 million in the U.S. and Canada over the five-day Thanksgiving break. Although analysts had expected the film to tall to second place, the film held onto No. 1 by having the best second-weekend hold (ticket sales down just 50%) of any of the four films in the franchise. The picture, based on Suzanne Collins’ novels, has grossed more than $198 million domestically and more than $440 million worldwide. It is said to have cost $175 million to $200 million to make.

Coming in second place was "The Good Dinosaur," Walt Disney Co.’s new Pixar offering. Grossing an estimated $56 million, the prehistoric animated feature fell short of projections of more than $60 million. Nonetheless, “Dinosaur” landed as the fourth highest five-day Thanksgiving opening in industry history. It joins fellow Disney titles in the top five, listed in order: “Frozen,” “Toy Story 2,” “Tangled” and “Enchanted.”

“It’s always a good week when we’re putting a Pixar movie into theaters,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s executive vice president of theatrical sales and distribution. “Pixar has always been a brand that is for all audiences. The idea of having a film that can be as fun for dad as it is for daughter, that's what these guys do best.”

According to audience polling firm CinemaScore, "The Good Dinosaur" received an A grade from moviegoers. It tracked well with families (79% of the audience) and kids under 12 (40% of the audience). Critics also reviewed the movie favorably; 81% of those on the Rotten Tomatoes website gave it positive rating.

“Dinosaur” pushed the other animated film in theaters, Fox’s “The Peanuts Movie,” to fifth place with an estimated $13.6 million. Charlie Brown and Snoopy have grossed $116.7 million domestically since the film's Nov. 6 launch.

The new MGM and New Line Cinema-financed “Creed” rounded out the weekend’s top three with $42.6 million. The $37-million spinoff from the popular “Rocky” movie series by director Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”) beat its $35-million projection.

Distributed by Warner Bros., the film stars Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone and Tessa Thompson. It broke an industry record for Tuesday shows before Thanksgiving weekend, grossing $1.4 million.

“Here you have a young director who had a passion for this project,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. executive vice president of distribution. “He inspired Michael B. to give an incredible performance and really captured what Sly is all about.”

Critics and audiences alike have agreed, raving about Jordan’s performance as Adonis Creed, son of Rocky Balboa’s opponent-turned-friend Apollo Creed. Stallone returns in the role of Balboa while Thompson plays young Creed’s girlfriend, Bianca.

The first film in MGM’s boxing franchise since 2006, “Creed” scored an A with CinemaScore audiences. Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it a 93% positive rating.

Audiences skewed male (66%) and older than 25 (62%). The film also did particularly well among African American and Latino communities.

Rounding out the larger new releases was 20th Century Fox’s “Victor Frankenstein,” the latest take on the story of a scientist playing God. The movie, starring Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy, finished significantly lower than projected with only $3.4 million and did not crack the top 10.

In limited release, Focus Features’ “The Danish Girl” opened on four screens to $185,000. The biographical film about the gender transition of artist Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) has found itself in conversation about potential awards recognition.

According to studio surveys, the film did well attracting its target audience of older women: 58% of the audience was female, and 67% was older than 40. “The Danish Girl” will begin expansion to more markets Dec. 11.

Other limited release pictures continued to perform well as they expanded locations. Open Road’s “Spotlight” grossed $5.7 million on fewer than 900 screens. The Tom McCarthy-directed drama about the Boston Globe’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of sexual abuse by priests is in the top 10 for a second weekend in a row, this time at No. 8.

Also of note is Fox Searchlight’s “Brooklyn,” which posted $4.9 million on fewer than 850 screens, finishing ninth. Directed by John Crowley, the cast is led by Saoirse Ronan as a young Irish girl who finds herself and love while in America.

Propelled by Oscar buzz not only for stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara but also director Todd Haynes, Weinstein Co.’s “Carol” was the per-screen average leader for the second weekend in a row. The picture took in $276,000 on four screens for an average of $69,000. The film has been nominated for best picture by the Indie Spirit Awards, Gotham Awards and British Independent Film Awards.

[Gates to Announce Multibillion Dollar Clean-Energy Fund]

Gates to Announce Multibillion Dollar Clean-Energy Fund
from Bloomberg

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, and fellow philanthropists on Monday will unveil a multibillion-dollar fund for clean-energy technology that’s key to combating climate change, according to an environmental group briefed on the announcement.

The effort, described as the biggest clean-energy research commitment in history, is intended to boost United Nations talks on climate change set to begin in Paris on Sunday, said Jake Schmidt, international program director at New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council. He was briefed on the partnership by U.S. and French government officials.

It’s expected to involve Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., and other wealthy philanthropists committing their own money to support new research and development, he said. They will collaborate with research programs in the U.S., India and about 10 other countries. The U.S. may commit to doubling funding for clean-energy research and other countries may also increase their support, Schmidt said, adding that he’s not been given the full details.

“There’s going to have to be a number of things set in motion in the coming years to put us on that trajectory,” Schmidt said by phone on Sunday. “We know we’re going to have to drive down the costs of technology deployment and maybe even create some new technologies.”

U.S. Support

More than 140 world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Xi Jinping of China, will meet in Paris for talks aimed at producing an agreement that for the first time binds all nations, rich and poor, to cutting pollution from burning coal, oil and gas that’s blamed for a rise in global temperatures. Convincing developing nations of the merits of phasing out fossil fuel remains a sticking point in the negotiations.

“The idea is to show that these countries and these entrepreneurs are going to step up their effort to help speed up the kinds of emissions cuts we’re going to need,” Schmidt said.

Breakthroughs in solar technology and battery storage will be critical if developing countries are going to meet their energy needs while weaning off fossil fuels, according to Jennifer Morgan, climate-director at the World Resources Institute, a Washington advocacy group.

Paris Boost

“It’s going to give the Paris negotiations a boost right from the beginning,” she said. “If we don’t get the technology right and moving fast enough in the right places, we won’t get there.”

The partnership and Gates’ role was first reported Nov. 27 by the online news organization ClimateWire. Messages to Gates’ think tank, BgC3 LLC, were not returned over the weekend. A White House spokesman didn’t immediately respond to questions seeking comment.

Gates, who has an estimated net worth of $84.6 billion, said in a July blog post that he would devote $1 billion of his own money to clean-energy research over the next five years and called on governments to boost their spending as well.

“If we create the right environment for innovation, we can accelerate the pace of progress, develop and deploy new solutions, and eventually provide everyone with reliable, affordable energy that is carbon free,” he wrote. “We can avoid the worst climate-change scenarios while also lifting people out of poverty, growing food more efficiently, and saving lives by reducing pollution.”

[90 million-year-old fossil shows how snakes lost their legs]

90 million-year-old fossil shows how snakes lost their legs
from India TV News

Snakes lost their limbs when their ancestors evolved to wriggle through burrows, and not in order to live in the sea, according to a new analysis of a 90 million-year-old reptile fossil skull.

Comparisons between CT scans of the fossil and modern reptiles indicate that snakes lost their legs when their ancestors evolved to live and hunt in burrows, which many snakes still do today.

The findings from University of Edinburgh in the U.K. show that snakes did not lose their limbs in order to live in the sea, as was previously suggested.

Scientists used CT scans to examine the bony inner ear of Dinilysia patagonica, a 2-metre long reptile closely linked to modern snakes.

These bony canals and cavities, like those in the ears of modern burrowing snakes, controlled its hearing and balance.

They built 3D virtual models to compare the inner ears of the fossils with those of modern lizards and snakes. Researchers found a distinctive structure within the inner ear of animals that actively burrow, which may help them detect prey and predators.

This shape was not present in modern snakes that live in water or above ground.

[Adele smashes records with 3.38 million first-week U.S sales of '25']

Adele smashes records with 3.38 million first-week U.S sales of '25'
from Reuters

British singer Adele's new album sold a record 3.38 million U.S. copies in its first full week, Nielsen Music said, becoming the biggest-selling album of 2015 in an astonishing feat for an era when artists rarely top 1 million.

In just seven days on sale, "25", the first album in four years by the Grammy-winning singer, easily outsold the entire year's figures for country-pop superstar Taylor Swift's hit album "1989", according to official figures released by Nielsen on Saturday. Swift's album has sold some 1.76 million U.S. copies in 2015.

The figures for "25" were the biggest single-week sales tally for an album since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991.

The first week numbers for "25" put the sultry singer at the head of an elite club of artists, including Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Eminem and Lady Gaga, whose albums have debuted with more than 1 million U.S. copies.

Last week, it took just four days for the album to break the 15 year-old first-week sales record held by NSync's 2000 album "No Strings Attached."

"25" also broke records in Canada and Britain, where its 800,307 copies sold were more than the last 19 No. 1 albums in Britain combined, the Official Charts Company said last week.. Worldwide figures were not available.

The sales numbers reflect the wide appeal of the emotional and personal ballads by the 27 year-old British singer, as well as the decision by her independent record company XL Recordings not to make the album available for streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Google Play. Fans were therefore obliged to pay for the physical CD or to download it from services like iTunes.

However, it is available on U.S. online radio service Pandora although fans cannot choose what tracks or times they can listen.

Adele last week announced a stadium tour of Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, starting in February 2016. No plans have yet been announced for North America or Asia.

[New Buzzword “Li-Fi” 100 Times Faster Than “Wi-Fi”]

New Buzzword “Li-Fi” 100 Times Faster Than “Wi-Fi”
from Times Gazette

A new method of delivering data, which uses the visible spectrum rather than radio waves, has been tested in a working office.

Li-fi can deliver internet access 100 times faster than traditional wi-fi, offering speeds of up to 1Gbps (gigabit per second).

“We’re now carrying out a few pilot jobs within different companies where we can employ the VLC (visible light interaction) technology”, Deepak Solanki, CEO of Estonian tech firm, Velmenni, advised IBTimes UK.

With a 100 times speedier internet delivery, Li-Fi (Life fidelity) works at a 1GB speed per second by using an LED bulb, internet and photodetector as a source. So Li-Fi is a blessing for all the internet savvy people and will also be a much cheaper option.

The term was first introduced by Professor Harald Haas of Edinburgh University and is now being tested in Europe. The laboratory tests confirmed a speed of 224GBps with Li-Fi. The data was received by a binary code by flashing LED lights on and off â€" creating a Morse code. Today, professionals took Li-Fi out of the research for that first time, screening it in offices and professional situations. Li-Fi was made available in an office environment where workers we able to access the Internet in a commercial setting.

Just like Wi-Fi, Li-Fi too uses similar 802.11 protocols, but it uses visible light communication instead of the radio frequency waves.

You will find more benefits than pace. Specialists, however, do not believe that this may phaseout Wifi. Radio signals need permissions and were limited, and thus the LED light technology could be explored. For instance, it can not be deployed easily outdoors under direct sunlight as that would interfere with the signal. Li-Fi is a subset of optical wireless communications (OWC) and can be a complement to RF communication (Wi-Fi or Cellular network), or replacement in contexts of data broadcasting.

[Why an iPhone 7 without a headphone jack should not surprise you]

Why an iPhone 7 without a headphone jack should not surprise you
from VentureBest

The latest Apple rumor is a fun one: The next iPhone reportedly won’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Instead, iPhone owners will have to use an all-in-one Lightning connector, according to a “reliable source” cited by Japanese website Mac Otakara (via Macrumors).

As far as iPhone rumors go, this one doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Mark my words: Apple is working on replacing the headphone jack with Lightning.

The report claims the new same-sized Lightning connector will support Lightning-equipped headphones, and have digital-to-audio (DAC) converter for backwards compatibility with wired headphones using standard 3.5mm stereo jacks. In other words, you’ll have to buy a 3.5mm-to-Lightning adapter, which Apple will happily sell you, if you want to use wired headphones, earbuds, or even Apple’s current EarPods.

And that’s the first thing that jumps out at me regarding this rumor: Apple introduced its EarPods in September 2012, first shipping them with the iPhone 5 (they are sold independently for $29). A refresh is long overdue. When the next iPhone lineup arrives, it will have been four years since the EarPods were released.

What has Apple done in those four years to suggest a new set of headphones to accompany its products is on the way? Oh, not that much. The company only acquired Beats Electronics, launched Apple Music (including on Android), and opened up its MFi (Made For) licensing program to include headphones which use its proprietary Lightning port.

That’s right: As of June 2014, third-party manufacturers have been able to create headphones that connect to iOS devices via a Lightning cable. Aside from Philips, not many have jumped on this bandwagon. Once Apple removes the headphone jack, that will change very quickly.

And of course, the rumor also says Apple is planning to release its own Lightning-equipped EarPods, which would likely ship with the iPhone 7 (and presumably be sold separately as well). Eventually, Apple would phase out its current EarPods, once all other iOS devices lose the headphone jack as well.

But I’m going to go further and say Apple will also release Beats-branded headphones that use the Lightning port. Maybe they won’t be ready for the iPhone 7, but it would be silly for the company not to offer more premium (and expensive) headphones that work with the latest iPhone.

If you still think this is unlikely, let me remind you that Apple has done this before. Again, in 2012 with the release of the iPhone 5, the company retired its proprietary 30-pin dock connector in favor of the smaller Lightning connector.

There was naturally a lot of controversy surrounding this, but Apple did it to make its device slimmer (and the story with the iPhone 7 will be the same). The removal of the headphone jack, which will mean the Lightning connector is used for charging as well as audio output, will be arguably more controversial since the 3.5mm jack is standard in all audio products. Apple’s 30-pin connector was already proprietary.

So iPhone fans will be doubly angry. Not only will none of their existing Apple headphones no longer work with the new iPhone, but almost no existing headphones will work.

And yet, this won’t stop Apple. Maybe it won’t happen with the iPhone 7, or even the iPhone 7s, but Apple is definitely experimenting with killing the headphone jack. There is precedence for such a move, and it lines up perfectly with the company’s style of removing ports and simplifying its devices. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens with the iPhone 7.

Apple will kill the 3.5mm headphone jack. It’s inevitable.