Enlarge this image Pastor Earnie Lucas of Friendship Baptist Church in Appomattox, Va., posted this message on his church sign around the same time that President Trump tweeted that four Democratic members of Congress — all women of color — should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." Sarah McCammon/NPR hide caption toggle caption Sarah McCammon/NPR Pastor Earnie Lucas of Friendship Baptist Church in Appomattox, Va., posted this message on his church sign around the same time that President Trump tweeted that four Democratic members of Congress — all women of color — should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." Sarah McCammon/NPR This is a story about two small-town Virginia churches with the same name, but two very different congregations. They've each found themselves caught up in controversy tied to President Trump's racist rhetoric. NPR's Sarah McCammon recently visited both congregations. Enlarge this image Pastor Earnie Lucas said he has gotten threats of violence, even death, since putting up the sign. He also got letters of support, including some donations, from around the country. Sarah McCammon/NPR hide caption toggle caption Sarah McCammon/NPR Pastor Earnie Lucas said he has gotten threats of violence, even death, since putting up the sign. He also got letters of support, including some donations, from around the country. Sarah McCammon/NPR A welcome sign on the way into town reads "Historic Appomattox: Where Our Nation Reunited." But here in Appomattox, where the Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, there are still reminders of division. History 'Go Back Where You Came From': The Long Rhetorical Roots Of Trump's Racist Tweets Not far away, a sign posted in front of Friendship Baptist Church reads "AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT."Pastor Earnie Lucas said he posted that message on his church sign several weeks ago. It was around the same time that President Trump tweeted an attack on four Democratic members of Congress — all women of color — saying they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."Lucas, 85, is white and has been a pastor in this community for decades. He defends his sign and expresses anger about the response it has received online and in news reports."Don't talk to me about that flag out yonder, or that sign out yonder!" he thundered from the pulpit. "This is America! And I love America!"Lucas asks if anyone in the small, all-white congregation is "from Yankee land." No one raises their hand."The letters that came from north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I am sorry to say, those folk don't know how to talk," Lucas said. "You're talking about some vile, wretched language. And where they told me to go, and how long to stay — they were filthy in their conversation."Lucas said he has gotten threats of violence, even death, since putting up the sign. He also got letters of support, including some donations, from around the country.Local media initially reported that several members of the congregation had staged a walkout in protest — or out of fear of the backlash. But last weekend, Lucas said most of the regulars had returned."I had no ill intent against anyone — around here or in the state of Virginia," Lucas said. "I was talking about people who have come over here illegally and want to tear the place up."During the service, he mentioned the recent mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead. But afterward, he said he doesn't believe news reports that the white shooter was targeting Latinos. Lucas also said he does not believe analyses suggesting that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than others living in the United States.Lucas doesn't see his words, or the president's, as racist."I think this idea of racism has been blown out of proportion," Lucas said. "I really do. We've got some sorry people, black and white ... but I don't pay any attention to that. If a man comes to me and behaves himself, we get along good together, I'll go to bat for him, any way I can.""I don't want any Muslims in America" Enlarge this image Dianne Cook, a member of Lucas' church, says she agrees with the sign's message. Sarah McCammon/NPR hide caption toggle caption Sarah McCammon/NPR Dianne Cook, a member of Lucas' church, says she agrees with the sign's message. Sarah McCammon/NPR One of Lucas' church members, Dianne Cook, 69, said she agrees with the message on her church sign, and with her pastor. She said Trump was right to criticize the four Democratic congresswomen, who include the first two Muslim women elected to Congress."Where'd their parents come from? Are they Americans?" Cook asked. "Just because she was born in America does not make her American.""Doesn't it?" I asked. "Doesn't it legally, though, under the Constitution?""Under the Constitution, yes," Cook acknowledged, then paused. "But I don't know how to express that, to make you understand that I wish she, I wish they, well — I don't want any Muslims in America.""We are not that church" Enlarge this image Norwood Carson, pastor of Friendship Baptist Church of Hopewell, Va., and his staff have fielded calls from people angry about the sign. They tell callers, "We are not that church that says, 'America Love it or Leave it.'" Sarah McCammon/NPR hide caption toggle caption Sarah McCammon/NPR Norwood Carson, pastor of Friendship Baptist Church of Hopewell, Va., and his staff have fielded calls from people angry about the sign. They tell callers, "We are not that church that says, 'America Love it or Leave it.'" Sarah McCammon/NPR Two hours away in Hopewell, Va., is another Friendship Baptist Church. The congregation is predominantly black, and the members are experiencing this moment very differently from the Friendship Baptist congregants in Appomattox.Sitting in his church office, Pastor Norwood Carson said his secretary has received angry calls from people confused about their name."We gave a standard response to all of them," Carson said. "'You are calling the Friendship Baptist Church of Hopewell. The church that loves God, loves others, and serves the community. We are not that church that says, 'America Love it or Leave it.' "Carson, 59, said the meaning of that sign is clear. "Obviously, it's a racist statement," he said. "But to find out it came from a church just really took me for a loop."Carson said he'd like to talk to Pastor Lucas at Friendship Baptist in Appomattox, and try to understand more about what motivated that sign. Lucas said he's open to the conversation. Enlarge this image Elaine Thomas is a longtime member at Friendship Baptist Church in Hopewell, Va. She says she and her husband had no idea they would have to worry about their family being exposed to the kinds of things they saw and heard during the civil rights era. Sarah McCammon/NPR hide caption toggle caption Sarah McCammon/NPR Elaine Thomas is a longtime member at Friendship Baptist Church in Hopewell, Va. She says she and her husband had no idea they would have to worry about their family being exposed to the kinds of things they saw and heard during the civil rights era. Sarah McCammon/NPR "This is not who we are"Elaine Thomas, 70, is a longtime church member at Hopewell's Friendship Baptist Church. She was a teenager growing up outside Richmond, Va., at the height of the civil rights movement."My husband and I were looking forward to [having] peace, security, watching our grandchildren grow — now our great-grandchildren," Thomas said. "And we had no idea that we would have to start to worry about them being exposed to the types of things that we saw and that we heard when we were young."Thomas said President Trump is responsible for stoking renewed racism in America."This is not who we are," Thomas said. "This may have been how we were at some point. ... But this is not who we are right now. We've come too far to turn around and go back, and we're not going back."

President Donald Trump halted peace talks with the Taliban Saturday in a series of tweets in which he denounced the group’s continued attacks during the peace process. The president also claimed he’d arranged a secret meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David — a meeting he said he decided to cancel following a Taliban attack that killed a US soldier and at least 11 other people in Kabul last week. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019 ....an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019 ....only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019 The tweets seemed to signal at least a temporary end to a would-be deal between the US and its main adversary in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. That deal would have seen the US withdrawing troops from the country it has occupied for nearly two decades in exchange for the Taliban cutting ties with extremist Islamist groups and playing an active role in ensuring terror groups could not operate within Afghanistan. Afghan critics took issue with the US proceeding with the peace talks with limited input from the Afghan government; the Trump administration pushed back against this complaint, claiming its talks with the Taliban were designed to set up a path for the militant group to begin its own peace negotiations with the Afghan government. And many, including Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, have been openly skeptical about the proposed deal, arguing it omitted a crucial commitment: The Taliban would not have been required to stop attacks on Afghans or the Afghan government’s military. The Taliban doesn’t recognize the Afghan government, and the group’s insistence on only committing to peace with the US was major problem during negotiations, according to CNN. As Vox’s Zeeshan Aleem reported, critics closer to home had similar issues with the peace process, concerned US withdrawal would create a dangerous security vacuum: Afghanistan’s government has not been involved in negotiating the agreement, and the deal as currently drafted does not grant the Afghan people any protections from Taliban attacks. Critics, including military officials and congressional Republicans, have argued that in having failed to extract a commitment of protection from the Taliban, US negotiators are leaving innocent people to die. Ghani’s administration had similar security concerns, particularly given a recent spate to violent terrorist attacks against civilians largely blamed on the Taliban. Due to these concerns, Ghani postponed a planned summit with Trump next week, according to Afghan officials. What comes next is not entirely clear. While the Afghan government hasn’t responded directly to Trump’s tweet, a spokesperson for Ghani said, “We have always said that a real peace is possible only when the Taliban stop killing Afghans, accept a ceasefire and start direct negotiations with the Afghan government,” adding that the government “appreciates the sincere efforts of its allies” to bring peace in the country.A spokesperson for the Taliban called Trump’s decision “a political issue,” and told the Associated Press the future of the deal is still up in the air: “We are waiting for our leaders and will update you.” On Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos a troop withdrawal could still happen, but that “the president hasn’t yet made a decision on that.” Pompeo also told CNN’s Jake Tapper that if the Taliban can make a “significant commitment” towards restoring the Trump administration’s trust in the group, peace talks could resume. However, the secretary tempered that by saying, “If the conditions aren’t appropriate on the ground and proper to protect America, we’re not going to enter into any deal.”In calling off the peace deal, Trump indicated a deadly attack near the US embassy in Kabul that left an American soldier dead was the tipping point to stop negotiations. “What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” he tweeted.But Afghanistan has borne multiple fatal attacks throughout the conversations — including some that claimed the lives of US servicepeople. Some of those attacks were claimed by the local ISIS affiliate, but many were claimed by the Taliban itself. Throughout the summer, the Taliban has carried out multiple attacks that have killed dozens of people. In early July, it killed around 40 people, including children, in the capitol city. Clashes between Taliban and Afghan government fighters have killed hundreds more. Vox’s Alex Ward found two reasons the attacks continued during the negotiations: One is that the insurgents hope to put pressure on the US by eroding its will to stay in the country. The other is that there remain factions inside the Taliban that don’t want to negotiate peace and therefore continue to exact violence in the capital and elsewhere. As of now, it’s unclear which theory best explains the timing of this attack.It’s not certain whether the talks at Camp David were actually set to happen, as many others who are usually in the know — including US officials, foreign diplomats, Afghan officials, and Taliban representatives — had given no indication that the administration had set up the secret meeting with the militant group, NBC reported. However, it’s clear the cancellation of all peace negotiations came as a surprise to those involved, and to US allies. A Taliban official told NBC Trump’s tweet “not only shocked us, it made us realize the people we were talking with were not sincere in peace talks.” Trump’s tweet came hours after some of his top officials, including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, were out promoting the agreement. And Norway, which also has troops in Afghanistan through the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, had also begun preparations for the anticipated negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. In the short term, the cancelled talks mean that little is likely to change on the ground. The fundamentalist group will continue to ravage Afghan communities and US troops will largely remain. Whether there is a path forward for negotiated peace in the country — which US forces entered 18 years ago — remains to be seen.

Keyser said she didn’t recognize Kavanaugh from high-school photos. She did recognize and remember Judge, whom she said she had dated once or twice and bumped into at a recovery meeting in Potomac in the mid-aughts. It is possible that Ford’s account is wrong and that Keyser’s lack of recollection is proof of that. But experts say that many memories of insignificant people and places in our lives aren’t stored. In the months after the confirmation battle, Keyser continued to appear perturbed by her unexpected role in it, indicating in a text message to one of us late in March that she believed she was being surveilled at home, possibly by people related to the Kavanaugh matter.We looked for the house where Ford alleges the assault happened; Ford has said it was located somewhere between hers, in Potomac, and the Columbia Country Club. She has described the layout: barely furnished, containing an upstairs level, and, perhaps most critically, featuring a narrow set of stairs with walls on both sides. She said that Judge in particular seemed possessive of the place, suggesting that it belonged to him, a friend, or a relation.Working with those parameters, we looked for family members whose house Judge might have accessed, with or without its inhabitants’ permission. We ruled out his older siblings, who, according to his brother, Michael, were not living in that area at that time. We also ruled out his grandmother, who had lived on the Washington side of Chevy Chase, with her adult daughter, Anita—Mark and Michael’s aunt. The two women rarely went out in those days, according to Michael. (The layout of that house, which was sold years ago and was recently rented by Mike Pence before he became vice president, also didn’t match.)Eventually, we generated a short list of two possibilities, one belonging to a Judge family friend in Potomac and the other to a Georgetown Prep classmate in Bethesda. Both houses have been renovated, and floor plans and other housing documents in Montgomery County from before 1986 are scarce. Ultimately, because the houses’ layouts from 1982 couldn’t be firmly established, Ford could not make clear determinations on whether either resembled the one she remembered.Using Martha’s common-sense test, the claims of Deborah Ramirez, while not proven by witnesses, also ring true to us. Ramirez, who was a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s, said he drunkenly thrust his penis at her during a party in their freshman-year dormitory, Lawrance Hall. The people who allegedly witnessed the event—Kavanaugh’s friends Kevin Genda, David Todd, and David White—have kept mum about it. Kavanaugh has denied it. If such an incident had occurred, Kavanaugh said, it would have been the “talk of campus.”Our reporting suggests that, in fact, it was. At least five people have a strong recollection of hearing about the alleged incident with Ramirez long before Kavanaugh was a federal judge. Their Yale classmates Kenneth Appold and Richard Oh recall hearing about it immediately after it happened. Ramirez’s mother, Mary Ann LeBlanc, recalls being told about it by her daughter—without specifics—during Ramirez’s college years. Michael Wetstone, a graduate-school classmate of Appold in religious studies, recalls being told about the incident by Appold within a few years of when it allegedly happened. A fifth person—an unidentified friend of Ramirez’s who said in a recent affidavit that she’d heard about the incident in the 1990s—remembers being told about it within a decade of its alleged occurrence. And two other people from Kavanaugh and Ramirez’s Yale class, Chad Ludington and James Roche, vaguely remember hearing about something happening to Ramirez during freshman year.

Enlarge this image The Nasdaq composite index, which includes many tech stocks, has lost nearly 7 percent since March 12. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images The Nasdaq composite index, which includes many tech stocks, has lost nearly 7 percent since March 12. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Tech stocks were a growth engine for the market when the economy was tepid, but recently they've been sputtering and their troubles are helping drag the entire market lower. Some of the biggest names in technology have been swooning.Facebook is mired in a scandal over a breach of its user data, leading to calls for stricter government regulation of the social media giant. Since the beginning of February, its shares have dropped from $193 to $159 — a nearly 18 percent dive.Amazon has been targeted in tweets by President Trump. On Thursday, he said the online retailer pays "little or no taxes" and is "putting many thousands of retailers out of business." Amazon's shares are still up a lot for the year, but they're down by more than 9 percent since March 12.Apple, which faces questions about its growth strategy, is down about 8 percent since the same date. The Two-Way Facebook Down $80 Billion In Market Value; Playboy, SpaceX, Tesla Hit Delete The downturn has swept through the tech sector, dragging down companies that include IBM and Microsoft. The Nasdaq composite index, which includes many tech stocks, has lost nearly 7 percent over the same period. By comparison, the broader Standard and Poor's 500 index is down 5.5 percent."The market has a psychology right now of, 'When in doubt, get out. We'll figure out later what happened,' " says Julianne Niemann, a financial analyst at Smith Moore.The slide is remarkable because tech stocks have long been seen as growth leaders, and investors have for the most part eagerly piled into them."If you think about social media, if you think about e-commerce, basically technology is the backbone for all of those different things, and for these corporations it's driven incredible profit growth," says Sameer Samana, global equity and technical strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.For investors searching for growth stocks in an economy that sometimes seemed anemic, stocks such as Facebook and Apple could look like lonely outposts of promise."Tech stocks have been the dominant area," Niemann says. "This is one thing that investors have jumped all over, simply because they can understand them. They love these stocks." Business Facebook's Data Scandal Latest Blow To The Company's Reputation This tech downturn matters, because those stocks occupy an outsize place in the market — making up about 25 percent of the S&P 500, and they make up a big share of the stocks in retirement funds and mutual funds. Loading... Niemann sees the recent turmoil as temporary, noting that conditions are considerably different than they were during the last big market downturn, in 2007-08."This is entirely different. We have not had a meaningful correction in a long period of time," she says. "There's so much cash available on the sidelines to invest that everybody keeps jumping in and chasing it back up again.""The economy is still OK," she adds. "The market doesn't take down the economy."Samana says the tech industry is still relatively young, and some hiccups are inevitable."We're still trying to figure out how things like social media fit into our lives and how data should be managed and all those different things. And so I think this is just part of the growing pains of, 'How do we regulate these companies?' "But for now, investors are reassessing whether tech is as promising as it once appeared, and their new caution is being felt throughout the market. The Two-Way U.S.-China Trade War Fears Send Global Stock Markets Tumbling

Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s headlines. If you’d like to receive this briefing by email, sign up here.The Senate judiciary committee will this morning go ahead with a vote to decide the fate of supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a day of high emotion and low politicking on Thursday, in which Kavanaugh’s accuser gave an emotional account of her sexual assault and he angrily rebutted her allegations.Christine Blasey Ford provided powerful, precise testimony, insisting that she was “100%” confident in her telling of the high-school trauma. Describing her appearance before the committee as a “civic duty”, the 51-year-old psychology professor recalled the “laughter” of Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge during the alleged attack, saying the memory was “indelible in the hippocampus”.Kavanaugh was less measured but no less passionate in his denials, raging at “the left” for besmirching his reputation as “revenge on behalf of the Clintons”, and decrying the process as a “national disgrace”. It is still unclear whether the few wavering GOP senators were sufficiently convinced to vote for his confirmation, but one viewer was satisfied: Donald Trump tweeted that Kavanaugh was “powerful, honest and riveting”.- Unbalanced and unhinged. Richard Wolffe argues that Kavanaugh has lost all credibility. However the Senate votes now, the result is bound to further deepen America’s partisan divide, writes David Smith in Washington.- Shock and awe. Women across the US responded to Dr Ford’s heroic testimony with a mix of anger and deep admiration, as Luke O’Neil reports.President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has admitted for the first time that he authorised “extrajudicial killings” as part of his brutal approach to the war on drugs, in which some 4,500 people have been killed by police. Duterte made the confession in a speech on Thursday, while attacking critics of his government. “I told the military, what is my fault? Did I steal even one peso?” he said. “My only sin is the extrajudicial killings.”- Under investigation. The remarks will add fuel to an ongoing investigation into the killings by theinternational criminal court, amid reports that the true death toll from Duterte’s war on drugs could be up to 12,000.- Darkness and evil. Duterte’s most prominent political critic, Philippines senator Antonio Trillanes IV, was arrested this week, saying: “Darkness and evil have prevailed in the country.”The SEC is suing Elon Musk and Tesla for fraud over the entrepreneur’s unfulfilled promise to take his electric car company private. Musk tweeted in August that he had the necessary funding secured, only to backtrack sending investors scrambling. Musk said he was “deeply saddened” by the lawsuit, which could end with him being banned from leading a public company, insisting he has “always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors”.- Diving suit. Musk is also facing a $75,000 defamation lawsuit from the British diver Vernon Unsworth, after Musk accused him of being a paedophile.- The New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, was met with thunderous applause at the UN for a speech urging global cooperation widely seen as a rebuke to Trump.- Japanese robots have sent back their first video images from the surface of the moving asteroid known as Ryugu.- A Van Gogh scholar has suggested the Dutch painter’s celebrated Starry Night was inspired by The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the famous print by Japanese master Hokusai.Robyn returns to rescue pop music – againRecord executives have spent years searching for the next Robyn. Now the Swedish singer is returning to save them the trouble with her first solo album since 2010. On the brink of a breathlessly awaited comeback, Laura Snapes met her in Ibiza.Peru’s last Incan city reveals its secretsExplorers and archaeologists are busy clearing the sprawling ruins of Espíritu Pampa, thought to be the last capital of Vilcabamba, an Incan state that survived for decades after the onslaught of the conquistadors. Laurence Blair trekked to see the site for himself.The Ohio mother living in a church to escape deportationEdith Espinal has spent the past year living inside the inside the Columbus Mennonite church in Ohio to avoid the deportation orders that would separate her from her family. Espinal’s is one of 51 public cases of sanctuary across America, Dalia Hatuqa learns.What A Star Is Born tells us about fame, fear and feminismThe gender politics of A Star is Born have remained surprisingly intact from its first film incarnation in 1937 to the third remake, released next week, writes Hadley Freeman: “They all suggest that the woman’s success emasculates, even feminises, the man.”Donald Trump doesn’t stand alone in his skepticism of the transatlantic alliance; his views reflect America’s collective drift away from Europe, writes Timothy Garton Ash. Now more than ever, the wider American congregation is turning away from international commitments and entangling alliances to address its own pressing domestic concerns. As the Ryder Cup gets under way, Tiger Woods’ health remains in question. Find out whether his back holds up, and follow the rest of the action from Le Golf National, on our live blog.Chelsea and Liverpool will face each other for the second time in several days on Saturday, following their midweek Carabao Cup clash. Here’s what to watch out for during the weekend’s Premier League action.The US morning briefing is delivered by email every weekday. If you are not already receiving it, make sure to subscribe.We’d like to acknowledge our generous supporters who enable us to keep reporting on the critical stories. If you value what we do and would like to help, please make a contribution or become a supporter today. Thank you. Topics US morning briefing news

Against that backdrop, Mr. Leahy said that Judge Kavanaugh’s “expansive view of executive power and executive immunity” may have intrigued Mr. Trump, while also noting that the president over the weekend attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions for permitting the Justice Department to indict two Republican congressmen ahead of the midterm election.“You’ve taken the unorthodox position that presidents should not be burdened with a criminal or civil investigation while in office. Now we have a president who has declared in the last 24 hours that the Department of Justice shouldn’t prosecute Republicans,” Mr. Leahy said. “Now, it’s — it’s Alice in Wonderland. And I find it difficult to imagine that your views on this subject escape the attention of President Trump, who seems increasingly fixated on his own ballooning legal jeopardy.”Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, picked up that line of attack, focusing on what he said were convenient inconsistencies in Judge Kavanaugh’s views on whether sitting presidents can be questioned in criminal investigations. As a lawyer working for Mr. Starr, Judge Kavanaugh urged his superiors to question Mr. Clinton in graphic detail.After serving as Mr. Bush’s staff secretary, though, Judge Kavanaugh’s views evolved.“I believe that the president should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship while serving in office,” he wrote in 2009 in the Minnesota Law Review. Among those burdens, Judge Kavanaugh wrote, were responding to civil lawsuits and criminal charges.Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, can always be counted on to criticize Mr. Trump, and on Tuesday he did not disappoint.Mr. Flake began his opening statement by praising Judge Kavanaugh as a good family man and a fine athlete — the judge runs marathons. But then he pivoted to express serious concerns over how Judge Kavanaugh will deal with a president who does not seem to respect the institutions of government or the rule of law.After reading aloud Mr. Trump’s weekend tweet attacking Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Mr. Flake said, “That is why a lot of people are concerned about this administration and why they want to ensure that our institutions hold.”

'Who else knows that the president did this?,' asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during her grilling of Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen. The Democratic congresswoman's line of questioning seemed to be aimed at getting names of people who could back up Cohen's testimony or further the investigation into Trump's finances. 'Who would know the answer to those questions?' she asked, and, 'Where would the committee find more information on this?' By the end of her question time, Ocasio-Cortez had a list of names of people who could help uncover any potential financial misdealings of Donald Trump

编者按：Magic Leap发布了首款产品之后，引发了大量的讨论。许多业内人士表示，与它获得的大量融资和进行的大量宣传相比，它的产品并不算好。日前，Oculus的联合创始人帕尔默·拉基(Palmer Luckey)在个人博客上发表了一篇文章，对Magic Leap首款产品的控制器、计算设备、头戴设备、操作系统、销量以及采用等方面进行了分析指出，Magic Leap就是一个悲剧。这篇评论文章的标题是经过慎重考虑的，而不是为了吸引眼球随便瞎起的。我想要对虚拟现实和现实中所有其他技术来说，什么是最好的现实——虚拟连续体进行讨论，包括Magic Leap。不幸的是，他们目前的产品是一种悲剧，尤其是当你考虑到他们获得的庞大的资金和精心制作的宣传如何占据了AR领域的所有生存空间时，这种感觉尤其强烈。它不是一个实用的开发工具包，而是一个浮夸的宣传工具，几乎没有人能够真正以有意义的方式使用它，他们的许多设计决策似乎都是由这个现实驱动的。它几乎没有兑现任何允许他们垄断AR投资社区资金的承诺。在这一点上，有很多关于ML1的概述，所以我将集中讨论一些没有被广泛讨论的具体问题。如果你想了解一个大致的概述，这个测评视频是一个很好的开始。如果你想了解他们的内部构造和工作方式，可以看一下iFixit对ML1的拆解。追踪表现很差。没有其他任何方法能够证明它不错。控制器响应速度很慢，到处漂移，并且在大型钢铁物体附近基本上不可用——如果你想在用木棍做成的房子里使用它，这很好；如果你想在任何类型的工业环境中使用它，是不行的。就算是在最好的情况下，磁跟踪也很难成功，但这可能是我见过的向公众发布的最糟糕的产品。对于熟悉Polhemus等系统的虚拟现实爱好者来说，他们知道标准在哪里。来自Magic Leap的开发者手册：“6自由度跟踪在慢动作中是稳定的。在快速或突然运动(例如拳击或类似钓鱼的运动)的情况下，它也会快速恢复和重新定位。”我知道，Magic Leap想要一个不需要视线线路的控制器。但是这是一个可怕的权衡，尤其是对于需要一个能够正常工作的控制器的开发者来说——没有其他公司有充分理由决定走这条路。像把控制器放在你背后这样的小把戏是很有趣的，但是ML1可以也应该使用任何其他类型的跟踪系统。其他几家公司在没有Magic Leap公司数十亿美元资金的情况下，成功实现了内外光学跟踪，如果他们不能做到这一点，他们肯定可以使用一个具有外部参考的系统来实现这一目标。就目前情况来看，他们的很多软件和用户界面限制似乎是由糟糕的控制器驱动的。与竞争对手的设备不同，它的触控板是不可点击的。Steam Controller、HTC Vive、Oculus Go、联想幻影Solo等都有一个可点击的触控板，设计师们非常依赖这一功能。即使是Playstation 4控制器也有一个！这实际上意味着通过触摸板进行选择需要抬起来，并进行敲击(对精度来说很糟糕)或者按住扳机(对精度来说也很糟糕)。这也意味着他们不能使用触控板来模拟按钮或其他选择模式。业内其他人都在使用来自ALPS (伟大的BTW公司)的组件，他们应该打电话给他们，告诉他们他们需要一款带有有趣RGB LEDs的定制触控板。关于控制器的最后注意事项：与大多数磁性跟踪系统不同，发射端在控制器中。这意味着有一个巨大的铁芯缠绕着铜线，正好悬挂在扳机上方。为了平衡，Magic Leap不得不在控制器底部安装金属配重。这确实让控制器一开始有一种“高级”的感觉，但对于长期人体工程学来说，这确实很糟糕。他们称之为“Lightpack”。这基本上是你系在腰带上的超大平板电脑的“内脏”。这是迄今为止该设备最好的部分，我会给A +的评价！我本以为Magic Leap会做一些比较紧跟潮流的事情，把他们所有的渲染硬件和电池电源都放在头戴设备上，让它看起来更漂亮，但是一些理智的人似乎已经认识到，如果你想让人们在任何一段时间内都戴着你的产品，把你最重的组件放在身体最敏感的部位是一个坏主意。但是数据显示，当你要减轻HMD的重量时，你需要变得残忍。这种方法还允许他们使用比他们塞进头戴设备中更强大的芯片。缆绳很结实，拖拽你后脑勺的重量实际上有助于平衡一些东西。他们应该让电池可以更换，但是除了收藏家之外，没有人会使用他们的ML1足够长的时间，来保存所谓的AR和VR的历史。他们称之为“Lightwear”。这是近年来大力炒作的部分，没完没了地谈论“光子光场芯片”（Photonic Lightfield Chips）、“光纤扫描激光显示器”（Fiber Scanning Laser Displays）、“将数字光场投射到用户眼中”，以及解决聚散-调节冲突的承诺，这一问题困扰了HMD几十年——换句话说，确保你的眼睛的焦点始终与他们的聚散相匹配，这是Magic Leap宣称的避免“永久性神经缺损”和脑损伤的关键。对于AR来说，这比VR更重要，因为你必须将数字元素和真实世界中始终正确的元素混合在一起。所谓的“光子光场芯片”只是波导，配有反射式顺序彩色LCOS显示器和LED照明，这是其他人多年来一直使用的技术，包括微软在他们的最新一代HoloLens中使用的技术。ML1不是“光场投影仪”，也不是任何广泛接受的定义所指的显示器，作为双焦点显示器，它只能解决人为演示中的聚散性调节冲突，这种演示将所有用户界面和环境元素置于两个焦点平面之一。值得一提的是，一个坏的时钟每天还显示两次正确的时间。更详细地说：ML1使用六个波导，所有波导都堆叠在一起，在两个不同的焦平面上，每个RGB颜色通道三个波导。你可以把它看作是双焦点显示器——一种显示系统，它可以基于眼睛跟踪在两个不同的值之间移动显示器的焦点，两者之间没有变化，这不同于连续可变焦点显示器，如Oculus半穹顶或Nvidia的真实光场显示器。我还没有精确的测量值，但是看起来近平面聚焦在大约0.75米，远平面聚焦在大约5米。如果他们坚持使用这种技术(我没有看到任何迹象表明他们还能做其他任何事情，尤其是他们大肆宣传的光纤显示器)，每个额外的聚焦平面将需要更多的波导堆叠和不可思议的高帧频(每个平面从时间预算中消耗至少60hz )。我认为这不会在合理的重量、图像质量和成本限制下发生。不止一个平面是好的，别误会的意思！它允许开发者避免与非常近或非常远的对象极端不匹配。也就是说，用无法兑现的承诺来兜售和垄断投资对整个 XR 产业都是不利的，而不仅仅是Magic Leap。硬件制造商有责任向开发者清楚地传达他们硬件的功能，即使能力达不到它们想要的水平。头戴设备的其他部分:与AR / VR行业的大多数其他玩家相比，跟踪效果很好，但比包括Hololens在内的大多数优质的产品比起来更差如果你想要一个比较，差不多在PS VR和Rift之间的一半。啮合系统很好，但速度不如Hololens快。这与那些资金数量级少的公司，比如 Stereolabs 非常相似。除了双焦能力，图像质量是可以接受的。你看到Hololens了吗？想一想，就是视野稍微大一点。尽管吸引了足够的能量来保持头戴设备的美观和温暖(说真的，如果你在温暖的房间里，很难触摸到镁质外壳)，但是显示器太暗了，无法在户外使用。这太可惜了，因为透明度和一副深色太阳镜差不多——不完全是室内材料。眼球追踪是如何工作的？说不准，因为没人用它。这并不是一个很好的指标。真正的飞跃应该是一个足够宽的FOV，这是有用的，如果Magic Leap优先考虑用户体验，而不是满足设备尺寸的预期，它可以做到这一点。一个很好的例子是，看看90度的Dreamworld——跟踪是完全不可比的，但是体验非常令人兴奋。Magic Leap宣称，他们已经“建立了一个全新的操作系统”，叫做LuminOS，以利用他们的“空间计算系统”。它实际上只是安卓系统，上面有定制的东西，这与大多数人声称他们已经构建了一个完整的操作系统时所采用的方法是一样的。这一部分我不会写太多。我希望Magic Leap将来会做一些酷的事情，但是现在的用户界面基本上是一个安卓手表的菜单，它会浮在你面前。菜单是由平板制成的，只能通过前面讨论过的不可点击的跟踪包进行交互。眼球跟踪和控制器的旋转/位置被忽略。你可以将Windows 8风格的应用程序窗口扔得到处都是，漂浮在空间中，甚至连墙壁都可以！这很棒，大部分都没用，也正是微软大约三年前开始炫耀的东西。这是手机用户界面中最糟糕的部分，也是虚拟现实用户界面中最有噱头的部分，我希望开发者能在不久的将来创造出更好的东西。Magic Leap的订单系统在发布后的最初几天里非常容易理解。我从朋友那里收集了一些订单号码，并比较了他们下订单的时间，我对预测第一周的销售非常有信心。不幸的是，在我发推文后不久，他们改变了系统。据我所知，第一周他们卖了大约2000套，前48小时有很大偏差。如果我不得不猜测的话，此时我会把总销售额远远低于3000台。这很不幸，原因显而易见——我认识一百多名拥有ML1的人，几乎没有一个是AR开发人员。大多数是技术高管、“大V”，或者是在这个行业工作但没有计划实际构建AR应用程序的早期采用者。这在早期的虚拟现实行业中是一个大问题，在销售的成千上万个开发包中，有成千上万的开发者遇到了这个问题！将这个问题乘以几个数量级对于Magic Leap来说将是非常困难的。为了证明过去几年宣传的合理性，Magic Leap需要真的给人们惊喜。他们推出的产品是相当可靠，但与他们大肆宣传的产品相去甚远，并且有几个缺陷，阻碍了它成为开发AR应用程序的广泛有用的工具。这对XR行业不利。从某些方面来说，它比Hololens略好，从另一些方面来说，它略差，一般来说，比三年前的先进水平稍差一步——这比消费者AR 1.0更像Hololens1.1。没有进步，消费者领域的AR就不可能发生，而且似乎这些进步将来自其他公司。当然，Magic Leap有可能给我们惊喜；也许真正的交易就在下一幕后面！但过去的经验告诉我们，事实不是这样的……上图是几年前《连线》杂志上发表的一篇关于Magic Leap的故事种的配图，当时他们还在大肆宣传扫描光纤显示器。看到好看的高科技灯光了吗？他们什么也没做。这只是发光的电线。对于随便的观察者来说，这看起来很棒，但是并不经得起知情人的任何审查。如果你想尝试用它来装扮你自己的服装、游戏电脑或价值数十亿美元的宣传机器，你可以花20美元买一个不错的产品组合。更新：在我发布这篇文章大约45分钟后，Magic Leap的首席执行官在Twitter上分享他对电视剧《最后的气宗》(Avatar:TheLastAirbender)的热爱。他还指出，照相立体镜发明于1838年，非常有趣！编译组出品。编辑：郝鹏程

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Walmart Inc’s (WMT.N) urgency to stem market share losses to rivals around the world is driving it to partner with local players in the UK and India, even as it scales back in some other markets like Brazil. The world’s largest retailer is in talks to merge its UK arm ASDA with J Sainsbury Plc (SBRY.L) in which it will hold a minority stake. Walmart is also looking to acquire a majority stake in India’s leading online retailer Flipkart for $10 billion to $12 billion after years of underperformance there. FILE PHOTO: A Walmart store is seen in Encinitas, California, U.S. on April 13, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File PhotoThe moves underscore Walmart’s renewed focus on catching up with competitors, ranging from grocer Aldi Inc to Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), in key international markets. The retailer’s underperforming international business contributed less than a quarter to its total revenue of $500.3 billion in fiscal 2018. “Walmart has simply been too slow to react when it comes to their overseas business,” said Burt Flickinger, managing director, Strategic Resource Group. “They have finally started taking corrective action and are now dedicating their resources to where they think they can grow,” he said. It also marks a shift in Walmart’s traditional approach of building a business on its own. “Walmart is clearly moving away from trying to crack tough foreign markets by itself to striking partnerships because it realizes that is the fastest way to bridge the gap with competitors,” said Laura Kennedy, vice president, retail sales and shopper practice at Kantar Consulting. A Walmart spokesman declined to comment on the negotiations in the UK and India. Overall, sales from Walmart International, which runs about 6,300 stores globally, stood at $118.07 billion in the fiscal year ended 2018, down nearly 14 percent from $136.5 billion in 2014. This was in large part due to adverse currency movements, which hurt the money repatriated from its foreign arms, but also because of a series of missteps in major markets around the world. In an effort to fix its international performance, Walmart in January appointed Chief Operating Officer Judith McKenna to run its international unit and has indicated it will focus on its core North American markets and growth markets like China and India. Walmart’s international woes have been exacerbated by slow decision-making over the years and even initial talks with India’s Flipkart began as far back as 2016. Walmart initially entered the Indian market in 2007 through a joint venture with India’s Bharti Enterprises, years before Amazon debuted there. That joint venture was called off in 2013 and its presence in India has remained largely static since then, at least in part due to restrictions around foreign investment in physical retail in India. Meanwhile, Amazon jumped in with a less regulated online marketplace offering, retail consultants and investors said. Amazon now holds about 27 percent of India’s burgeoning e-commerce market, according to Euromonitor, where Walmart remains a footnote and only operates 21 cash-and-carry wholesale stores in the country that sell to businesses. Walmart’s slow-footedness means if a deal is announced, Flipkart could be Walmart’s largest acquisition to date, potentially at a steep premium to what SoftBank Group (9984.T) paid for a stake in the company less than a year ago. Walmart’s international moves over the years have involved a series of blunders. For example, Walmart bet on an unprofitable, second-tier online retailer in China in 2011 and has since been behind Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N). In 2016, Walmart sold its online business in China to pick up a stake in China’s no 2 retailer JD.com. In Brazil, Walmart has struggled to gain traction after a decade, while in the United Kingdom it has been unable to stem market share declines to hard discounters like Aldi Inc and Lidl. Now, Walmart is trying to offload a majority stake in its Brazilian operations to private equity firm Advent International. And on Saturday, Sainsbury said it and Walmart’s British unit Asda are in talks to create the country’s biggest supermarket group. Slideshow (2 Images)Their combination, which some said shows Walmart’s retrenching in the market, would surpass Tesco’s (TSCO.L) grocery market share and be worth up to 15 billion pounds ($20.7 billion). Whether Walmart’s latest moves will turn Walmart International into the growth engine it once was remains to be seen, consultants said. For now at least, investors have largely supported the decisions to jumpstart global growth made by Chief Executive Doug McMillon as exemplified by the market reaction to the talks in India. “In the short term, the Flipkart deal may look pricey, but the markets haven’t punished Walmart because investors realize this is probably their best chance to have a fair fight with Amazon in India,” Ken Murphy, portfolio manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments, said. Walmart’s shares fell 20 percent from an all-time high in January largely due to concerns around its online performance in the United States. They have, however, risen 27 percent in the past year, outperforming the wider S&P 500 index, which rose 12 percent during the same period. Reporting by Nandita Bose in New York, Editing by Vanessa O'Connell and Cynthia OstermanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

在围观了不少外媒记者上手体验Magic Leap One（一下简称ML One）后，雷锋网记者也亲身体验了ML One。9月15日，灵犀微光举办了一场ML One现场体验活动，雷锋网受邀进行了体验。在Magic Leap最先开始公布Magic Leap One的渲染图时，其蒸汽朋克式的外形就被严重吐槽，最糟糕的评价曾说其看起来像苍蝇眼睛。不知道是不是因为已经看了很多次了，在看到真机时，雷锋网编辑并没有觉得眼镜外形难看，眼镜整体设计看起来很流畅，有种高级感。不过，本人戴起来并不好看，有些心塞。首先说一下佩戴，ML One比HoloLens轻不少，佩戴起来也更舒服。不过ML One眼镜电池部分发热明显，佩戴十分钟左右鼻翼处就会有一些汗水出现，倒没怎么影响体验。雷锋网编辑体验了Magic Leap中的《Helio》、《Create》、《Tonandi》，Magic Leap宣传最多的射击游戏Invader还没有上线。为了进行直接对比，还体验了HoloLens的《Fregment》。进入Magic Leap后，眼前会看到一个圆环形的操作界面，滑动控制器的圆形触摸按键可以进行选择。Magic Leap的控制器比Google Daydream的控制器要厚重一些，控制器上主要有圆形触摸按键、Home健，下方有一个扳机键，这三个键操作简单，很容易上手。与HoloLens一直需要用两个手指轻碰来进行操作的体验相比，Magic Leap的控制器使得操作轻松了很多。进入任何一款游戏/内容之前，ML One需要进行的第一个步骤是感知周围环境，构建数字地图。ML One的环境感知功能的界面设计明显要比HoloLens更好。ML One在开始环境扫描时，眼前立即能看到一大片密密麻麻的数字网格，覆盖在真实的空间和物体之上，然后ML One会用一个小的箭头方向提醒你向该方向转动头部，随着你转动头部，更多的网格会出现在你视线经过的地方，当你头部转动到合适的位置时，会有一个双重圆形提醒你注视一段时间，以完成这个区域的环境扫描。以上动作会持续进行，直到ML One已经识别出地面、天花板、墙面、已经环境中的所有物体。对比来看，《Fregment》也是一款需要感知大面积环境后才能玩的游戏，在扫描环境的过程中，HoloLens会ml发出语音指令，让你把目光看向地面、天花板、墙面等地方，然后会有大片大片的蓝色图形出现，看起来识别的精度不如ML One，交互也稍微没那么流畅。完成环境扫描后，就可以开心地玩起来啦。Create是一款类似于《我的世界》（Minecraft）的创造类游戏，其会显示出一个数字橱窗，上面有各种各样的物体，你可以用圆形触摸键选择，选中后按住扳机键，将其拖到你想要放置的地方。Create这款游戏展示了ML One诸多强交互内容。第一，虚拟物体与环境的交互。当你在桌面上放置了一个小机器人时，机器人走着走着会掉在桌子下面去。第二，虚拟物体与虚拟物体的交互。当你把红色机器人和蓝色机器人放置在同一个位置时，他们会直接打起来，直到其中一个机器人被杀死。如果你放置了蛋糕和恐龙，恐龙会吃掉蛋糕。第三，人与虚拟物体的交互。这一点在其实是《Create》中不明显，但是《Tonandi》却有很明显的展示。《Tonandi》是一个很炫酷的数字图形展示内容，有漂浮的大片海草、音符等数字内容，当这些内容出现在环境中时，你可以用手去触碰它们。比如，随着你手的触碰，海草的漂浮方向会随着你手移动而改变。灵犀微光创始人郑昱认为，从以上三点来看，ML One可以说做出了很大的创新，并不如很多人评论所说ML One毫无新意，令人失望。雷锋网编辑也感觉到，ML One的内容设计和交互确实都在HoloLens之上。ML One的视场角是水平40度，垂直30度，只比HoloLens的水平35度视场角大一些，但是从体验来看，却大了不少。首先HoloLens的内容暴露了其视场角小的缺陷，在体验《Fregment》时，由于是一款场景和内容都较为复杂的解密游戏，其内容总是超出其视场角的显示，你不得不退后很远才能看到完整的画面，不断调整距离让人感到有些累人。而ML One目前体验的内容都在其视场角内。其次，ML One的显示边框比较暗，HoloLens的边框更为明显，所以感觉ML One视场角大很多。不过，雷锋网编辑也注意到，HoloLens的显示比ML One更亮。HoloLens的体验台在亮光下，内容显示依然亮度足够，而ML One即使在昏暗的区域体验，仍然感到没有HoloLens的亮度高。当然，Magic Leap最让雷锋网编辑好奇的是其通过六层光波导实现的近处和远处两个距离的动态焦距调节，因此体验时特别注意了一下。不过，确实如很多外媒记者所言，动态调焦效果并不明显，无法感受到有两个不同距离的图像。雷锋网(公众号：雷锋网)编辑多次尝试把视线在近处和远处两个点转换，但是也没看到变化。在不经意间，似乎有感受到数字内容跳动了一下。当天，现场体验的人似乎也并没有感受到这个效果。不过ML One的动态调焦功能的好处在于，不戴眼镜也可以看得清楚。总体来看，ML One的体验是让人感到舒服的，只是，确实已经没有惊艳的感觉。相关文章：Magic Leap One上手体验：虽然令人失望，但依然是最好的？雷锋网原创文章，未经授权禁止转载。详情见转载须知。

Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device Video A new reality? Putting Magic Leap One to the test Magic Leap's new mixed reality headset is available to developers in the US - but how does the device compare to what's already available?Our North American technology reporter Dave Lee put Magic Leap's new mixed reality headset to the test. Produced by: Cody Melissa Godwin

When a UN-backed Syrian ceasefire was announced on Saturday, residents of Ghouta again took cover, fearing that what would come next would be anything but peace.Nearly two days later, with more bodies dug from the ruins, more slain children wrapped in burial shrouds, Russian and Syrian warplanes still menacing the skies and claims of another chlorine attack, it’s clear the so-called ceasefire has barely led to a lull. As has been the case throughout the war, the UN again failed to prevent the suffering of Syria, or even to slow it down. In Homs and Aleppo, Zabadani and Madaya, Idlib and now Ghouta, international will has been trampled by the protagonists of a war without restraint. The unchecked savagery of Syria’s disintegration has become so routine that those trying to prevent it have effectively become its underwriters.Russia, a party to the UN security council resolution, breached its intent within hours, sending its warplanes to drop more bombs as Syrian and Iranian-backed troops launched ground incursions into the opposition enclave. And this to a binding resolution – not a gentle nudge.On Monday, Vladimir Putin announced a five hour pause in the bombing, purportedly to allow in aid. The move, if honoured, sidelines the UN as a decision maker – as the Russian leader has tried to do throughout the crisis – setting up him and his military as ultimate arbiters of who gets fed, or killed. The pretext for the ongoing assault was in the resolution’s wording, which was debated for days before being passed and ended up allowing continued strikes on armed groups deemed to be terrorists.In Ghouta, that meant a cell of several hundred members of the al-Qaida-aligned group known by the initials HTS. It runs an area on the outskirts of the enclave – a large outer neighbourhood of Damascus that was central to the uprising against president Bashar al-Assad in its early days and has remained an opposition stronghold in the eight years since.Resentment towards HTS inside Ghouta is almost as strong as the rage against the UN. Residents and members of the two main opposition groups, Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman, say the jihadists among them do not hold sway, and have no direct links to their heartland in Idlib province, much of which is run by al-Qaida. Both groups had been parties to earlier ceasefires signed with Russia during de-escalation talks in Astana. Neither are designated as terrorist organisations.“HTS consists of barely 300 fighters here in eastern Ghouta,” said local resident Mohammad Bakr. “They are outcasts and not wanted – they cannot pressure us in any way even if they tried. Two years ago when they had power over us it was suffocating – they would tax the farmers, confiscate their lands and take over the houses of civilians who have left. They did nothing but wreak havoc and burdened us Syrians and our revolution.”“They consist of about 240 men here,” said Mohannad Mahmoud Qassem, 33, another resident. “Although they are trying to implement the same scenario as in Idlib, the chaos and the Islamisation, they have no power or choice in Ghouta. Faylaq al-Rahman are the ones with the upper hand here.”Over the past six months, attempts to expel HTS and their families have failed because a passage out of the besieged area has been unable to be negotiated with regime forces that surround it. Such deals have been made elsewhere in Syria, along the border with Lebanon, and in Aleppo as forces supporting the Assad regime were storming the opposition-held east of the city in late 2016. They have often involved population shifts – fighters leave first, and then communities have been moved en masse where they have been forced to blend in with the jihadists. Soon there will be no distinction. For the regime and its backers, in whose eyes the uprising was all about global jihad in the first place, things will have come full circle.Aleppo marked a seminal shift in battlefield momentum away from the loose array of opposition groups that had until late 2015 been prevailing in northern Syria. As Russia and Iran doubled down on Assad to prevent his fall, the civilian toll increased, as did the exodus. Then, as now, the UN could do little to stop the country’s collapse. Blocked by Russia and China at every attempt to denounce Assad’s actions and stymied repeatedly when they attempted to deliver aid, UN officials have been forced to beg for mercy. “While there is zero deterrence and total impunity, there will be no mercy coming, I can assure you,” said a senior western official. “The global order is shifting. There is no longer a price tag on bad behaviour. And the messaging – this is important – from Trump is that the US doesn’t care. That’s a soundtrack for tyranny everywhere.”As bombs fell throughout Monday in Ghouta, resident Mayada Sobhe said: “Nothing can stop our tragedy. Why would we have faith in the world coming to save us? Those who kill us know that no one will criticise them.”Meanwhile in another part of the suburb, Mohannad Mahmoud Qassem awaited his fate. “The UN decision was useless,” he said. “It was nothing but a green light to kill us all here. The international community has sanctioned our deaths.” Topics Syria Middle East and North Africa Russia analysis

For the TV producer or the newsroom editor it must be, as they say, a no-brainer that the crimes of a billionaire convicted sex offender – and each new revelation about his behavior, most recently his plans to repopulate the world with his own scientifically engineered offspring – is a grabbier story than the death of a Guatemalan child. There was never any doubt about which of these items got top billing when Jeffrey Epstein’s initial arrest occurred around the same time as the child’s bereaved mother testified before Congress. Epstein got the headlines and led the broadcasts, while the mother, Yazmin Juárez, was the sixth or seventh item into the program, the night I watched. Still, let’s give the network some credit for allowing her to tell her story: for listening to her at all.Make no mistake. I’d be glad to see the creepy, privileged Epstein go down. Like most people, I don’t like the idea that the rich are above the law, though we hardly need Jeffrey Epstein to remind us that the US has parallel legal systems operating according to the race and income level of the accused. Who doesn’t love a scandal? We can’t help it, we’re human. And each new chapter – now the news of the celebrated scientists he courted to advise him on his bizarre eugenics program – continues to seize and hold our attention.But on the same day he was arrested on sex trafficking charges, the day I couldn’t look at my phone without seeing Epstein’s face, I saw, on the evening news, a short clip from the testimony at a congressional hearing: Juárez described the death of her 19-month-old daughter, Mariee, after they were imprisoned by Ice at the border in a room she called “the Icebox” – locked in with thirty other people, sleeping on the cold concrete floor. During her interview with Ice, Juárez was told by an official that this country was for Americans, that Trump was his president, that they could take her baby away from her and lock her up in jail.Transferred to Texas’s notorious Camp Dilley detention center, Mariee fell ill, and her illness failed to respond to the prescribed Tylenol and honey. Even after Mariee had lost 8% of her body weight, she was treated for an ear infection. After six weeks in the hospital, ultimately on a ventilator, Mariee died, “slowly and painfully” of a treatable viral lung infection. “My daughter is gone; the people who are in charge of running these facilities and caring for these little angels are not supposed to let these the things happen to them.”Among the conclusions that the clearly moved Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew from Juárez’s testimony is that what happened to Yasmin and her daughter in the detention center reflects a wider “a culture of cruelty” in these camps and in our treatment of migrants, in general. And these deaths continue to happen while we await new revelations about how vile and delusional Epstein was.What connects these two stories is that they are both about suffering and about the culture of cruelty, about cruel abuses of power. Both stories concern the abusive mistreatment of children.But there is one more connection, which is Donald Trump. Along with the agents of Ice, Trump has Mariee’s blood on his hands. Trump is also a former friend of Epstein’s. Their friendship soured, but Trump has been widely quoted as saying Epstein is a fun guy who shares his love of beautiful women, “some of them on the young side”.Some of them on the young side.To be alive at this moment is to be in a constant state of denial, ignoring all sorts of things, among them the fact that the president of the United States is an accused rapist and a man who thinks that the sex trafficking of girls “a little on the young side” is a joke. Locker-room stuff, people said, when he boasted about grabbing women’s pussies. He continues as president, even as the list of sexual misconduct charges against him threatens to rival Bill Cosby’s, and as other men are disgraced for much less serious offenses.I and many Americans are in a state of stunned disbelief that this is who we have become. A culture’s values trickle from the top down, and what’s trickling down from Trump and his oligarch friends is the idea that cold-blooded cruelty to the weak and defenseless is not only justified but energizing and exciting. A turn-on.When I hear the “strategic” argument that we should wait and defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box in 2020, all I can think of is how long that time – the days and hours and weeks between now and October 2020 – will seem to the children in cages, the families in mourning, the parents looking for lost kids. We can’t forget them for a moment, no matter how avidly we follow each new detail of the Epstein case – while Mariee is all but forgotten except by those who loved and continue to mourn her. Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Topics US immigration Opinion Trump administration US politics Jeffrey Epstein Donald Trump comment

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s strategy for the U.S.-Mexico border includes mobilizing the National Guard, the White House said on Tuesday, after Trump had earlier spoken publicly to reporters about “guarding our border with the military” to stop illegal immigrants. U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for the Easter service at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas The White House statement was released after Trump met with Defense Secretary James Mattis, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other officials on border issues. It gave no details on whether or when Trump’s strategy might be implemented. The National Guard, part of the U.S. military’s reserve forces, has been used in recent years for surveillance and intelligence on the border, but not direct law enforcement. The president’s earlier remarks sharpened his recurring anti-immigration rhetoric. He said he wanted to deploy U.S. military forces until his long-promised border wall is built. “Until we can have a wall and proper security we’re going to be guarding our border with the military,” Trump told reporters at the White House, lamenting what he called “horrible” U.S. laws that left the southern border poorly protected. Trump railed against a “caravan” of Central American migrants traveling from the Mexico-Guatemala border in the last 10 days toward the United States, journeys that have occurred annually since 2010 in an effort to draw attention to the plight of people fleeing violence in their countries. On Tuesday night, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Twitter that the caravan “dispersed gradually and at the decision of its participants.” Mexican officials say privately that they believe Trump has exaggerated the caravan’s importance to renew pressure on Mexico over the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. After 14 months in office, Trump still hammers regularly on an anti-immigration theme that helped to energize conservative Republican voters who helped him win the presidency in the 2016 election. Trump took a hard line on illegal immigration during the campaign and has also sought to curtail legal immigration. His efforts have thus far failed to produce a comprehensive overhaul of America’s immigration laws or full funding for his border wall in the Republican-led Congress. No major legislation was expected before November’s congressional elections. His latest comments immediately raised questions in Congress and among legal experts about troop deployments on U.S. soil. The Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law on the books since the 1870s, restricts using the U.S. Army and other main branches of the military for civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, unless specifically authorized by Congress. But the military can provide support services to law enforcement and has done so on occasion since the 1980s. Under Republican President George W. Bush, the National Guard between 2006 and 2008 provided border-related intelligence analysis, but had no direct law enforcement role. In 2010, President Barack Obama sent National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support to U.S. Border Patrol agents. Some specific statutes authorize the president to deploy troops within the United States for riot control or relief efforts after natural disasters. “The details really matter here,” said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “The real question is going to be if the president is serious about this, what kind of legal arguments do we get out of the White House and the Pentagon for such a deployment.” A senior Republican aide in the U.S. House of Representatives said key lawmakers had not been briefed on the White House plan. The aide said there was no indication that a specific plan had even been formulated yet. Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexico’s ambassador in Washington, said he had spoken to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about Trump’s remarks on the border and that Mexico had formally asked the U.S. government to clarify them. “It’s certainly not something that the Mexican government welcomes,” Gutierrez told CNN. Nielsen, who took part in the meeting with Trump, said in a Twitter message late on Tuesday that she had been told by Mexican officials “the caravan is dissipating.” In southern Mexico, officials screened the dwindling number of hundreds of largely Central American migrants on Tuesday. At a campaign rally, Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is leading most polls by double digits before the July 1 presidential election, said that if the U.S. government militarizes the border, thousands of his supporters would protest by forming a “big human chain of Mexicans for peace.” Some members of Congress said they were uncomfortable with the idea of using the military at the border. Democratic Senator Brian Schatz said Trump should have to seek approval from Congress for any such troop deployment. “We should put that new law to a vote in the Senate,” he said on Twitter. “I predict fewer than 20 votes.” In a Twitter post earlier on Tuesday, Trump said the caravan “heading to our ‘Weak Laws’ Border, had better be stopped before it gets there. Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!” Congress is on vacation until next week. Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Makini Brice, Amanda Becker, Richard Cowan, Eric Beech, Mohammad Zargham and Phil Stewart in Washington; Karen Freifeld in New York and the Mexico City newsroom; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Grant McCoolOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

After the presentation at Apple’s education event in Chicago on Tuesday, I bumped into a senior Apple executive whom I’ve known for a long while. I was so happy about the classroom role Apple had defined for itself during the morning’s keynote that I gave him a Paul Hollywood Handshake.For those of you who don’t watch The Great British Bake-Off–and what the hell is wrong with you, anyway?–this handshake is a dignified but powerful acknowledgment that the recipient has met or exceeded the giver’s expectations almost across the board. I didn’t have to explain it to the exec, as he was familiar with the show … once again confirming that Apple is on the ball.Before I explain why I was in such a good mood, let’s deal with the sour stuff. If you were hoping that Apple would unveil new hardware, software, and strategy that would allow iPads to compete with Chromebooks toe-to-toe for classroom market share … well, that did not happen. It seems like an unrealistic goal to begin with. The market for classroom computers, software, and services is unique and somewhat bizarre, and Apple is uniquely ill-suited to compete in terms of raw market share. (One study said that Chromebooks had 60% of the K-12 market in the U.S. last year; iPads and Macs took 15% between them.)A school system needs computers to be inexpensive, so they can buy as many as they need. Teachers and admins need to have the power of an Old Testament God over the hardware and software. They need open systems that can be customized, automated, and controlled. School computers need to be built like Soviet washing machines, so that they can absorb many Gs of dropping force and many ounces of spilled milk and keep right on going. If a computer does break, the school needs to pop off the plastics and fix it, using available parts.Schools want to shop from among multiple suppliers, for competitive bids and better pricing, and to choose hardware that’s the best match for their particular needs. A couple of years after they buy these machines, the school needs the option of reconfiguring them (perhaps even with a whole different operating system) to pursue educational goals that didn’t exist when the school first bought them.Overall, does this sound anything like any kind of device Apple is interested in–or even capable of–making?Tim Cook presents at Apple’s education event in Chicago. [Photo: Andy Ihnatko]Stacked DeckEven if Apple is up for it–and judging from its Chicago unveilings, it sure seems to be–the educational deck is stacked against the company. It can’t possibly design and build iPads in enough configurations and styles to satisfy the individual needs of so many school systems and it’s never going to license other companies to handle the job. Consumers will adapt to design bummers like “no headphone jack on the iPhone” or “MacBook Pro keyboard that’s only a slight improvement over typing on a grid of squares drawn on a paper towel.” Schools can’t. They shouldn’t. Each one’s needs are different, and hammering hardware and software into the best shape and consistency to best serve their students is a big part of teachers’ and IT departments’ jobs.iPads are often aced out of a school simply because of hardware standards defined and required by a core curriculum. Honestly, I could have just written “iPads don’t have keyboards” and rested my case. It doesn’t matter that an iPad’s touch and Apple Pencil input are more interesting and maybe even more powerful than a laptop keyboard. It’s a different culture. Schools overwhelmingly insist that the HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t really a computer. They say it could become one if somebody attached a keyboard to it. The goals of educating kids on computers include getting them to write with keyboards.“Big deal,” you say. “I use a Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad all the time.” Ah. But it’s an extra expense. And many schools won’t accept them. Clever kids can use wireless keyboards to swap answers with each other during exams. I told you: education is a whole different world.Related: Apple Should Have Cut iPad Price More For Schools, Say AnalystsWell, I’ve already brought myself down so why not pile on some more: it’s way easier to find and hire staff who know how to administer and develop apps for Chromebooks than iOS devices using Apple’s way-less-popular classroom and school management tools.Despite all these ugly realities, Apple used its Tuesday event to clearly explain a comprehensive and well-considered plan for the value that iPads and Apple software could add to education. There was none of the (dare I say) jaunty 1800s missionary “meet your new god” swagger that I sensed in the earlier “iPads for schools” push. Apple certainly didn’t say “Chromebooks are a huge success in education because they’re practically perfect for that world,” but it seemed to acknowledge that reality.Apple’s new stance seems to be that kids can interact with iPads in ways that are unique. iPads have a point of view on education. And while not every school–or even most of them–can choose the iPad as its classroom computer, Apple is motivated to remove every obstacle that it can, making the experience as valuable as possible for the kids who use them and the educators who help the kids.It’s a familiar vibe from Apple. Its aspiration isn’t market share. It’s profitability and delivering “best experience” for their users. On that basis, Apple thinks it’s okay for Macs to own just 12% of the desktop market so long as those 12% of users are way, way happier with their Macs than the users in that much larger part of the pie chart are with their Windows machines.Apple’s customers have self-selected as people whose needs (or even just desires) aren’t being met by the market leader. Give them special attention and scratch them behind the ears, and they’ll be loyal customers.Apple introduced an array of new software to help schools manage its products on Tuesday. [Photo: courtesy of Apple]The iPad’s strengths in an educational setting aren’t far afield from those it offers consumers. Has Apple ever done an iPad commercial with people using spreadsheets? Naw. The ads are about this compact mobile device that you can use to make drawings, photos, 4K videos, and handwritten notes. A Chromebook is a compact, durable notebook, but its personality is still consistent with a desktop: you sit down before it, as if it were a piano. An iPad, by contrast, enters your personal space. It’s in your hands as you stand and write notes, or it lays flat on the table during a meeting, instead of interposing itself between you and the room like a Battleship game.All of this came through during Apple’s event. The onstage presenters were eager to show off iPad courseware, sure, but Apple seemed to want to present an image of kids taking iPads out into the world, coming back with notes and pictures and videos, and then building presentations so that they could share what they saw and learned with the rest of the class. You can do all of that with Chromebooks–or Windows laptops–but it’s not quite the same and Apple can do it way better.The iPad’s advantages as a personal creativity tool remain irrelevant if Apple doesn’t have the features whose absence educators consider a dealbreaker. Apple’s new software, services, and features address many (or maybe even most) of the important complaints that educators have shared with me about iPads in the past month. Classroom iPads are now multiuser. A kid can grab any iPad off of a rack, tap the picture of his or her face, enter a passcode. After a brief wireless interlude with the cloud, this random device will be restored to the state the kid left another random iPad in at the end of yesterday’s class. Admins can set up new devices and new students in bulk, and do it fast. They have the power to create Apple IDs (which link students with their individualized apps and creations, as well as identifying them for messaging) on the fly and remove them just as easily. The same cart of iPads can be completely reconfigured for a different classroom’s needs in less time than it takes to wheel it from the art room to the physics lab.A teacher at the front of the room is armed with the full range of supernatural power over a class’s iPads. When guiding a lesson, he or she can make every device open the same content in the same place, while simultaneously locking all of those iPads down so that the kids can’t do anything except turn the pages and read along as directed. When the lesson is complete, the teacher can have the kids’ iPads launch into the proper assignment in an interactive workbook. While they work, the teacher’s iPad can show an overview of the kids in the class, revealing in interactive detail the progress each of them is making in the assignment. If a couple of kids seem to be making heartbreakingly slow progress, the teacher’s iPad can dive deeper, revealing where they’re having trouble and comparing performance with previous assignments as well as with the performance of the rest of the class, making it easy to single out the students who need extra attention.There’s much more, of course, but that gives you an idea of how much Apple has benefitted from talking with educators—and from hiring many teachers who have added their battle-won insights to the mix.Last year, when Apple released the first 9.7″ iPad ($299 for education-only pricing; for us civilians, it’s $329), it was notable in and of itself. It’s not as cheap as a cheap Chromebook, but it’s in the same ballpark (in a box seat, behind the dugout). The 2018 edition has the same price and appears to be physically identical, but it’s a milestone product.Unlike last year’s model, there’s nothing about the new iPad that telegraphs “budget iPad.” The screen is retina-quality and lovely; if I wanted to be a party pooper, I would point out that the display isn’t laminated at the surface of the glass, as with premium iPads. That would’ve been nice; it sells the psychological illusion that you’re directly interacting with what you see on the screen.But who cares? The only tip-off comes when you’re writing or drawing with an Apple Pencil; the tip floats a millimeter or so over the pixels. It doesn’t affect drawing or writing in the least.Heck yeah, this $299 tablet works with the $99 Apple Pencil! Every Pencil app for the iPad Pro will operate on this tablet that costs a third as much. The processor has been bumped to Apple’s A10 Fusion, the same as the iPhone 7’s. During my time with a demo iPad, I tried furiously to get it to drop frames or stutter or choke in any way. But nothing doing. It still felt as fluid as my 12.9″ iPad Pro.The new iPad retains Apple’s emphasis on creativity above all else. [Photo: courtesy of Apple]Whither The Educational Mac?The new iPad’s hardware upgrades will be a big help in education. The fast chip means the cheap iPad can handle augmented reality scenes with as much grace as any other model, and the Pencil puts it on an equal level as a creative tool. But I’m pleased with this new tablet for a different reason. My big disappointment with Apple’s hardware lineup has always been its apparent “No Poors Allowed” message. Great technology is useless to people who can only admire it academically … and I keep chewing on the question “If a great company lacks the desire or the skill set to create brilliant, beneficial technology to everybody, can I truly think of them as great?”I’d still love to see Apple develop a $400 desktop Mac or a $600 MacBook. The Mac Mini–Apple’s affordable desktop Mac — has been ignored for years. Has Apple already canceled the product, and just not told anybody? Consumer-grade iMacs haven’t received much love, either. Apple won’t even sell you a MacBook with a straightforwardly conventional keyboard and array of ports if you don’t want the MacBook Air. It’s a lovely notebook, but in 2018, it looks like a crashed Cold War bomber that’s just been regurgitated by retreating Arctic ice.Related: Sorry, Silicon Valley Won’t Save Your Kids From Tech AddictionBut though the $299 iPad isn’t as broadly useful as a good notebook, its feature set is so far beyond its price point and are so empowering to the user that I’ll grant Apple a mulligan. If the company wants to respond to the question “What about a budget Mac?” by pointing to the $329 general-consumer Pencil-compatible 9.7″ iPad, I’ll sign off on that choice.In the end, the Chicago event confirmed a longstanding belief of mine. During a public presentation, Apple is completely unable to fake any excitement about a product that it couldn’t care less about. Like, any Mac whatsoever that’s not powerful enough to build software for iOS devices. “We love the Mac,” the Apple executive who drew the short straw backstage sighs. “It’s still a tremendous focus of our passion and interest. And to prove it, I’d like to show off a new stickers feature we’re adding to the Mail app.”But in the same way, Apple is also unable to conceal its delight in a product that it’s truly excited about. Like a new iPhone. Or the HomePod. Or—most relevant right now—its educational ecosystem and the entry-level iPad that will serve as that ecosystem’s hardware backbone.The company didn’t turn its education offerings around on a whim. What we saw on Tuesday required years of research, assessment, reflection, reinvention, and hard work. That’s the kind of effort that the company puts into a product line that it finds exciting.Education feels like it’s as deeply rooted in Apple’s DNA as research is in Google’s. The sounds of all of those Apple IIs booting up in school libraries back in the ’70s and ’80s continue to reverberate throughout the halls of Apple’s new headquarters. And if at times–all right, maybe even for years on end–that sound has been distressingly faint, it generates a resonant frequency in Apple’s collective consciousness.It’d be a damn shame if Apple ever stopped wanting to be a uniquely positive force in education. An unequivocal sign of commitment like the show it put on Tuesday comes as a relief.“Andy Ihnatko is a veteran technology journalist. He is also the longtime co-host of the MacBreak Weekly podcast on the the TWiT network and a regular contributor to WGBH Boston radio.

PARIS—French authorities took the rare step of challenging an Islamic State claim of responsibility after a man stabbed his sister and mother to death on Thursday.Police arriving at the scene of the stabbing, southwest of Paris, shot the assailant dead after he emerged from his family’s home wielding a knife. A third person, whom police didn’t identify, was wounded in the stabbing.The...

Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to special legal status for certain immigrants from Liberia, thousands of whom escaped the violence of war and have lived in the United States for decades. They will now face the prospect of deportation, with the law that will end their protection coming into effect next year. The president cited improved conditions in the west African country. “Liberia is no longer experiencing armed conflict and has made significant progress in restoring stability and democratic governance,” said a memorandum signed by Trump and released by the White House on Tuesday. There had been trepidation among Liberian communities in the US because the deadline for the administration to extend their protections was due on 31 March and there had been an ominous silence from the White House. On Tuesday, Trump confirmed their worst fears.Some Liberians have been eligible for either Temporary Protected Status or Deferred Enforced Departure since March 1991 due to civil war, fragile political and economic conditions and an Ebola virus outbreak in 2014 in Liberia, the memorandum said.“Liberia has also concluded reconstruction from prior conflicts, which has contributed significantly to an environment that is able to handle adequately the return of its nationals,” Trump said. A 12-month “wind-down” period starting 31 March 2018, will allow the Liberian government to prepare to reintegrate returning citizens and give time for affected Liberians to “make necessary arrangements”, said the memorandum, which was addressed to the US Department of Homeland Security. The Liberian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Homeland security did not immediately respond to a request for the number of immigrants who will be affected. Trump previously included three other African countries – Chad, Somalia and Libya – among several nations whose citizens were blocked from entering the United States. African politicians and diplomats blasted Trump in January after he described African countries, Haiti and El Salvador as “shitholes” during an Oval Office meeting. Topics US immigration Liberia Donald Trump Africa news

Its much-vaunted caliphate has gone, crushed by the might of Russian, Syrian and US warplanes, Iran-backed militias, Kurdish forces and armies launched by Damascus and Baghdad. But while 2017 might have seen the end of Islamic State’s dream of ruling over its twisted vision of an ideal society, the year ended with an ominous sign that its deadly international campaign against the many people and faiths it sees as spiritual foes has gathered new energy.Last Thursday, dozens of civilians in Kabul were killed in a suicide attack that targeted a Shia cultural centre in the Afghan capital. The assault was the latest in persistent attacks by an affiliate of Isis, which has proved to be resilient despite a relentless campaign against it in recent months.According to the Isis-linked Amaq news outlet, three blasts were detonated at the compound, which also houses a news agency. A bomber then blew himself up among crowds in the Tebyan cultural centre. At least 41 people were killed and 90 others were injured.The attack comes despite an intensifying campaign by the US and Afghanistan to uproot the twin threats emanating from Isis and the Taliban, especially since Donald Trump took office in January. Striking inside the Afghan capital, despite the surge in security and military measures, has also raised fears about the enduring ability of the group as the caliphate it once established in Iraq and Syria has collapsed.In April, the US even dropped the “mother of all bombs” on an Isis base in Afghanistan, an indication of the ferocious campaign against it. But this relentless campaign failed to root it out. In recent months, experts and officials pointed to a successful effort by the Isis affiliate to build roots for itself inside the capital, recruiting dozens of local members, including children.In Afghanistan, Isis has done so much with so little. In Libya, for example, the group had hundreds of local battle-hardened fighters with experience stretching back to the early years of the Iraq war and who played a pivotal role in early Isis efforts in Syria in 2014, but its fortunes have dwindled over the past two years.The Afghanistan affiliate, in contrast, has competition from resurgent Taliban militants who have deeper links to the country, but it has managed to deepen its presence. Striking inside the capital suggests that the group has successfully evolved from a largely foreign-led organisation to an increasingly localised one.Aside from its persistence in Afghanistan, the nature of Thursday’s attack is a harbinger of what is to come as Isis loses its caliphate in Iraq and Syria. In its statement about the assault, the Isis media outlet claimed that the cultural centre was bankrolled and sponsored by Iran. “The centre is one of the most notable centres for proselytisation to Shiism in Afghanistan,” the statement added. “Young Afghans would be sent to Iran to receive academic studies at the hands of Iranian clerics.”Isis has sought to tout itself as the defender of Sunnis across the region and the choice of words in its statement is designed to drive that message. The sectarian theme is likely to be the group’s main focus in the coming years, as it retreats from a caliphate to an insurgency. The sectarian narrative helps the group present a “contiguous ideology” from Afghanistan to Syria, in place of the caliphate it seems to have lost; its message to its followers is that the victims of its attack were potential soldiers in the army that Iran is forming everywhere.Presenting itself as the last line of defence against Iran will ensure that its localised operations have a general regional theme, even as it has lost the global caliphate. This has been a recurrent theme since its rise in 2014, but the group has increasingly focused on sectarianism, not just against the Shia but also against Christians and other religious minorities.The group’s attack inside Iran in June was designed to achieve this objective and attacks that it portrays as directed against Iranian interests, such as the one in Kabul, serve a similar purpose. By doing so, it seeks to tap into a market in which even al-Qaida and the Taliban cannot compete with the same vigour, as they tend to focus on a relatively less sectarian struggle in their rhetoric. In October, suicide bombers linked to the group killed at least 57 worshippers in a Shia mosque in Kabul. Isis’s sectarian focus makes its persistence even more troubling for the country and the wider region. A day after the Kabul assault, the group also claimed responsibility for a militant shooting on a church in Cairo, killing about a dozen people, one of several attacks targeting Coptic civilians and churches in the country in recent years.The lesson from such attacks is that the group can still be deadly regardless of its contraction in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, its territorial demise might even exacerbate insurgencies elsewhere, if militants safely flee the battlefields to fill up the ranks of affiliates in other countries. Reports of militants escaping the collapsing caliphate have emerged recently. Earlier this month, for example, Agence France-Presse reported that French and Algerian fighters travelled to Afghanistan from Syria to join the Isis branch there. Similar trends were reported in Egypt and Libya. An African Union official also warned this month that many of the 6,000 who had travelled to Syria in 2014 may be returning home.Such fighters could replenish and revitalise insurgencies scattered across the region in a way they could not when the group’s focus was its core in Iraq and Syria. The branches of Isis that sprung up remained limited in size and some weakened as the pool of militants had been small. This could change as former fighters make their way out of Syria and Iraq to countries in the region, where it is easier to link up with existing affiliates than if they travelled to their homelands, such as in Europe and Britain. The group thrives on polarisation and religious minorities present it with soft targets to turn people against each other. These targets also enable it to recast itself in opposition to al-Qaida and other Islamist groups. In addition to political stagnation and persistent conflicts, sectarianism will continue to provide the group with growth opportunities in a region beset with ever deepening divisions and amid the increasing role of Iran in the Middle East.The group hopes the narrative will maintain its appeal among those who see Iran as the usurper of their lands and the domineering sectarian power in the region. The territorial demise of the caliphate might reduce threats against the west, but for the immediate region, where it can move more easily, Isis will continue to exploit social divisions and political stagnation to regroup and entrench itself.Hassan Hassan is co-author of Isis: Inside the Army of Terror and a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy Topics Islamic State Opinion Middle East and North Africa Afghanistan Syria Iraq South and Central Asia Iran comment

In the parallel moral universe known as the tech industry, the MIT media lab was Valhalla. “The engineers, designers, scientists and physicians who constitute the two dozen research groups housed there,” burbled the Atlantic in a profile of what it called the Idea Factory, “work in what may be the world’s most interesting, most hyper-interdisciplinary thinktank.” It has apparently been responsible for a host of groundbreaking innovations including “the technology behind the Kindle and Guitar Hero” (I am not making this up) and its researchers “end up pollinating other projects with insights and ideas, within a hive of serendipitous collaboration”.That was written in 2011. In the last two weeks, we have discovered that some of this groundbreaking work was funded by Jeffrey Epstein, the financial wizard who took his own life rather than face prosecution for sex trafficking and other crimes. It should be pointed out that most of those researchers were entirely unaware of who was funding their work and some of them have been very upset by learning the truth. Their distress is intensified by the discovery that their ignorance was not accidental.A scarifying investigation by the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow revealed that the vaunted “idea factory” had a deeper fundraising relationship with Epstein than it had previously acknowledged and that it went to great pains to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. Dozens of pages of emails and other documents obtained by Farrow “reveal that, although Epstein was listed as ‘disqualified’ in MIT’s official donor database, the media lab continued to accept gifts from him, consulted him about the use of the funds and, by marking his contributions as anonymous, avoided disclosing their full extent, both publicly and within the university”.After the New Yorker story was published, the lab’s director, Joi Ito, resigned from his post and his professorship and MIT’s president announced the usual “independent” inquiry by a fancy law firm.As with everything dodgy, the key to understanding this scandal is to follow the money. The media lab was an offshoot of MIT’s architecture school, founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte, a man for whom the term “effortless superiority” could have been invented. At a stormy meeting of the lab’s members last week, he reportedly said that he prided himself on “knowing over 80% of the billionaires in the US on a first-name basis”, which is how he first got to know Epstein and had accepted donations from him many years ago.From the outset, the funding model of the lab was unusual. It rests on corporate sponsorship – about 70 companies pay an annual subscription that entitles them to share in the lab’s intellectual property without paying licence fees or royalties. (Its researchers generate about 20 new patents a year.) This arrangement gives the lab its annual operating budget of $75m (£61m) and its researchers the freedom to do whatever they want. It also generated its hallowed techno-utopian aura.Ito’s response to the crisis followed the tech industry template. First of all, profound and anguished apologies, followed by an admission that mistakes had been made and the declaration of a firm resolve to learn from them. He announced his intent to stay at the lab and begin a process of “restorative healing”, if you please.These laudable aspirations quickly evaporated when Farrow revealed the duplicity involved in concealing the extent of Epstein’s involvement in the lab, which left some of Ito’s academic colleagues, including Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain, who had circulated a message of support, high and dry. As for those sentiments to do better in future, we have heard them before from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg.We shouldn’t be taken in by this cant. The ethical bankruptcy of the tech world rivals that of investment banking. “This story of looking-the-other-way morals,” wrote Kara Swisher in her New York Times column, “should not be seen as an unusual cautionary tale of a few rogue players. These corner-cutting ethics have too often become part and parcel to the way business is done in the top echelons of tech, allowing those who violate clear rules and flout decent behaviour to thrive and those who object to such behaviour to endure exhausting pushback.”She’s right. The most prestigious universities on the planet have morphed into hedge funds with nice academies attached. (The top 10 universities in the US now have a combined endowment of $200bn.) They have accumulated much of this wealth by being nice to billionaires, some of whom use them to launder their reputations. If this can happen at MIT, then it can happen anywhere. Time to stop regarding these outfits with awe and remember that behind many a fortune lies a crime. Photography in focusEven before last week’s announcement of new triple-lensed iPhones, camera sales were falling sharply. An insightful blog post by Om Malik at om.co asks why.Which way for AI?In April, a Politico article by Janosch Delcker noted that the EU had an AI dilemma: should it prioritise ethics or innovation? The bloc’s appointment of the impressive Margrethe Vestager to a second term as competition commissioner suggests the former.Selfie analysisFinding the Self in a Selfie, a nice 2015 New Yorker essay by Adam Gopnik, traces the history of the self-portrait from Weegee to Instagram. Topics MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Opinion Jeffrey Epstein University funding US education Higher education policy Higher education comment

Two much anticipated congressional briefings on the FBI’s use of an informant in the investigation into potential Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016 featured an unusual guest on Thursday: Donald Trump’s lawyer Emmet Flood.Flood, along with the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, attended two separate briefings. The first was held at the Department of Justice initially for two top Republicans, Devin Nunes, the chair of the House intelligence committee, and Trey Gowdy, the chair of the House government oversight and reform committee.However, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, eventually joined them after an outcry that the meeting would be partisan. In particular, the presence of Nunes, who was forced to step aside from oversight of the Russia investigation for much of 2017 after an ethics complaint over disclosure of classified information, raised concern from Democrats. In addition to Schiff being invited to the first meeting, a second meeting was held in the Capitol for the Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group that includes party leaders in each chamber of Congress and on both the House and Senate intelligence committees.However, the presence of Flood, Trump’s White House lawyer for the Russia investigation raised eyebrows. “Emmet Flood’s presence and statement at the outset of both meetings today was completely inappropriate … his involvement – in any capacity – was entirely improper, and I made this clear to him,” Schiff said.In a statement, the White House said that Flood and Kelly went to the Department of Justice and Capitol Hill “to facilitate meetings between Members of Congress, DOJ, FBI, and DNI. Neither Chief Kelly nor Mr Flood actually attended the meetings but did make brief remarks before the meetings started to relay the President’s desire for as much openness as possible under the law.” The statement from the White House added: “They also conveyed the President’s understanding of the need to protect human intelligence services and the importance of communication between the branches of government. After making their brief comments they departed before the meetings officially started.”In an interview with Politico, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is also representing Trump, said that information from the meeting could help accelerate the investigation. “We want to see how the briefing went today and how much we learned from it,” said Giuliani. “If we learned a good deal from it, it will shorten that whole process considerably.”The FBI director, Christopher Wray, deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, conducted the briefing about the informant’s contacts with the Trump campaign. Trump has seized on the FBI’s use of an informant to accuse what he calls the “criminal deep state” of spying on his campaign. Through tweets and media surrogates he has alleged that the Mueller investigation is on a “witch-hunt”.Trump escalated his offensive against the inquiry on Sunday when he tweeted: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!” That tweet was followed on Monday by a White House meeting with Wray, Rosenstein and Coats where they agreed to allow Kelly to arrange Thursday’s meetings with congressional leaders.Democrats left the meeting unimpressed. In a joint statement, the four who attended the second briefing said: “Today’s Gang of Eight briefing was conducted to ensure protection of sources and methods. Nothing we heard today has changed our view that there is no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a ‘spy’ in the Trump campaign, or otherwise failed to follow appropriate procedures and protocols.”The House speaker, Paul Ryan, who attended the first meeting after a scheduling conflict meant he could not go to the second one, defended it in a statement. “As always, I cannot and will not comment on a classified session. I look forward to the prompt completion of the intelligence committee’s oversight work in this area now that they are getting the cooperation necessary for them to complete their work while protecting sources and methods,” said the Wisconsin Republican. Topics Trump-Russia investigation US Congress Trump administration US Senate House of Representatives Republicans Democrats news