We do a lot of thinking about people here. It is our job, to ponder the people and their actions and the words that they say. Because of this, we are uniquely able to discern who is worthy of being shortlisted for the official VICE Person of the Year award – for which there is no actual award, just a shortlist.

So without further ado, here it is: VICE Person of the Year 2016.

Leo (Image: Creative Commons via Wiki)

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

He is the man who captured our hearts making eyes at yung Claire Danes through a fish tank. He is the premium actor who has never been in a bad movie his whole career – a couple of moderate films but that statement is fact; IMDB it. He sort-of adopted a South African baby girl and sends her monthly pay checks and speaks to her on the phone. He openly supports and donates to the non-evil politicians that we like.

This year has been the year of Leonardo DiCaprio. Until this year the world loved Leo and he loved the world – bar one thing. It would not allow him an Oscar. Finally, in 2016, he was blessed this gift. For learning a language, having his character be mauled by a bear, tortured repeatedly and almost killed numerous times for 196 on-screen minutes, it was his.

After thanking everyone in that ponderous, repellently modest way famous people do when they win, he used his speech to talk about climate change, which resulted in serious engagement with the issue across the globe. Throughout the rest of the year, Leo has continued to achieve gains for the planet by proving himself to be the man with the greatest conservationist influence on the planet. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation awarded the largest portfolio of grants in its history – a total of $15.6 million to wildlife and habitat conservation, ocean conservation, to protect indigenous rights and to combat climate change. He released his climate change documentary Before the Flood in association with National Geographic and had it on YouTube so people without subscriptions could watch it. And because he is truly heaven sent, a few weeks ago he met with Trump, the terrifying climate change denier, to convince him that climate change is real and America needs to pull its weight. If anyone won 2016 it was Leo, and if anyone can save 2017 it is Leo.

– Hannah Ewens

HONEY BUN BABY

Have you ever seen something so pure that it makes you scream? Not the thing where people write "S C R E A M I N G" in response to a friend's WhatsApp when they're actually sat at their desk in total silence. I mean a strangled cry, or even one of those in-your-throat squeals. I mean the sort of scream I let out when I first saw Honey Bun Baby. For those of you who don't know black people on Twitter, Honey Bun Baby – born Ashton Howell – is the smirking 22-month-old boy in a beanie whose photograph became the reaction meme this year needed. The original photo was taken by his 18-year-old uncle without Ashton's mum's knowledge – for which she seems to have forgiven her brother – and inexplicably made the rounds online in late November. And so Honey Bun Baby is my person of the year, for being one of the only images of a human being that's made me happy in the latter half of 2016. He's stupidly adorable, like a 2016 version of 2012's "famous cute cats on the internet" trope. This year has practically turned into an adjective, shorthand for incredibly shite – "that's so 2016" etc – but Honey Bun Baby's pulled through. And this beats screaming in frustration any day.

– Tshepo Mokoena

Massive love for the sesh (Image: @humansofthesesh, via Twitter)

THOSE TWO SESH GREMLINS WHO WROTE THE MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE

Known only as the "sesh gremlins", or "Dan" and "Dan" to their mums, they were the Will Smith and Bruce Willis of the apocalypse movie that was this year, sent to save us from ourselves with wit, ingenuity and a fucking load of gak. Their saga (specifically that they got unreasonably on it and decided to write a message in a bottle, which was later found by a kid convinced it came from pirates but who quickly had his dreams destroyed) has everything. It's a tale of intrigue, humour and a child's crushed innocence – but it's also something of a bigger picture achievement in the context of 2016. The story broke on the 7th of October: just enough time after the hot, restless summer of Brexit had cooled to a greying, apathetic autumn, and almost exactly a month before the US election. Punctuating the hellish events of this year, the heartening moral at the centre of all this – that no matter how bad the world gets, there will always, always be two lads named Dan who are well up for just having the banter – spoke to young people like no politician ever could, in a true testament to the human predilection towards responding to multiple crises by getting mashed. May we all follow the example of Dan and Dan, patron saints of the sesh, and be out our nuts in 2017.

– Lauren O'Neill

Laura Jane Grace (Still via YouTube)

LAURA JANE GRACE

Thank god for Laura Jane Grace, lead singer of punk band Against Me! and trans rights activist. Since she announced her transition in 2012, Laura Jane Grace has been outspoken, defiant and vocal about living as a trans woman: "However fierce our band was in the past, imagine me, six-foot-two, in heels, fucking screaming into someone's face," she said at the time.

This year, not only has she written a book and released another record, she took her activism to the next level in one of the most punk rock acts ever committed to film. Protesting North Carolina's transphobic bathroom law, which requires trans people to use the bathroom that matches the assigned gender on their birth certificate, Grace took out her birth certificate on stage and burned it. Just set that shit on fire.

"As if a birth certificate is some kind of eternally binding document," she said on Twitter. "I never had any say in what was put on it. No one asked me." Or, more succinctly, in the words she used when she took a lighter to her birth certificate: "Goodbye, gender."

– Emile Reynolds

Mums (Image by ZIPNON, via Pixabay)

MUMS

As this planet moves to resemble a substantial collection of shit, its oceans depleted of livestock and important looking sea anemones, its crust packed with decaying plastic bags and split condoms, its sidewalks replete with immovable concrete and the shoes of self-serving narcissists who walk upon it, I am certain the future is something I do not want to be in. Then I remember the 15 stages of hell preceding my arrival into this world. Despite what the brain and its memories may tell us, mums think, feel, and do things just like the rest of us. Ultimately, though, a vast portion of them put themselves through hell to give us life.

I am proud of my mum for growing old with grace, for dealing with life and all the little piles of sick I would leave on the floor, for going through this world and inspiring me to do it too. Your mother may also be great, she may be like a character in an HBO show who only ever gets referenced by name. Whatever the case: we're here because of them and we should at the least probably aspire to become something better or else the whole process was useless.

The mother is the person of the year, every year. Without them, every celebrity on this list would be little more than a non-existent thought process in the computer simulation Elon Musk has decreed to be life. Fuck you, 2016, but also thank you to all the mothers.

- Ryan Bassil

Old Jew, Larry David (Image by Angela George, via Wiki)

OLD JEWS

I guess my heroes are always old Jews, and this has been a big year for the top three old Jews of all time. In third place, Larry David spent his year pretending to be Bernie Sanders on SNL, which basically involved him just being Larry David. In second place, a disturbingly handsome Jon Stewart came back and did the only good jokes of the US election. In first place, Leonard Cohen, who released his best albums in years, did a moving and honest New Yorker interview and then died, which obviously wasn't great news, but I think he was old and had lived the best life he could have lived. Also I think he'll really like it in the afterlife (Olam Ha-Ba), there's probably a lot of religious imagery there, of which he was a fan.

– Sam Wolfson

Zac Goldsmith (Image by Yui Mok PA Wire/PA Images)

ZAC GOLDSMITH

Zac Goldsmith wasn't the Tory we needed this year, but he was the one we deserved. As 2016 choked-out our concepts of decency and democracy, Goldsmith was there with us, pummelling his own face like a trust-fund Tyson Fury.

When it seemed like any coiffured cunt could ride our worst impulses to power, Goldsmith straddled a racist horse and rode it straight into the rails. His main problem, aside from running an Islamophobic campaign in multicultural London, was that he didn't know who he was.

Was he pansexual? No. Was he a fan of Bollywood films? Nah. Was he a person who could drink a pint like a normal human with opposable thumbs? Oh, most certainly not.

So what was Zac Goldsmith? Frank Zacharias Robin Goldsmith was the only person in 2016 to face the consequences of being a piece of shit. For that reason, he is my Person of the Year.

– Alex Horne

SORRY, NO ONE

Nobody gets to be Person of the Year this year, sorry. No. We have all been appalling. None of us are without sin. There were moments, this year, that undulated dangerously close to being Actually Good – Frank Ocean did a 24-hour live feed of him making a fucking big desk, delaying the much-anticipated launch of the album of the year with the most agonising act of trolling in human history, millions of people, myself included, keeping an occasionally motionless videofeed of him doing it live in an extra browser window, just watching, waiting, and for making me do that, for that alone, Frank almost gets the nod.

Those kids out of Stranger Things were quite good; the Chicken Connoisseur, that perfect beacon of pure and innocent chicken wing love, is almost PotY worthy, but then like so many memes this year (Damn Daniel happened this year! Chewbacca Mom was this year! Harambe only happened seven months ago!) I am waiting with half-nervousness for it to turn out Chicken Connoisseur is Actually Bad, and am wary that maybe I am just grabbing on with two firm hopeful hands to arguably the only good thing to come out of 2016 just because it is good, and I am startled by the alien-ness of that, and so don't want to commit to a PotY nom. Sorry everyone, but no. Nobody was good this year. Let's all please try harder in 2017.

– Joel Golby

More on 2016:

VICE Albums of the Year

We Answered Google's Most Asked Questions of the Year

2016 Is a Lie and This Is Proof

The first time I heard about cuffing season was from a girl I was seeing in first-year university. She told me she didn't want anything serious, because she didn't want to get "caught up in cuffing season like a basic bitch." I obliged, and we permanently parted ways over a plate of peanut curry chicken at a Thai restaurant the next week.

To me, the idea of cuffing season—a concept in which people get locked into relationships during the winter months to stave off loneliness, only to dump their victim when it gets warm out—has always seemed like a sensible concept taken too far. Like, sure, in colder climates, it makes practical sense: you're going to be indoors more, and are therefore going to be meeting people less. Why not have a reliable fuck buddy/someone who can give you regular emotional buffing until it gets warm enough to hit the clubs again?

But it also reeks of being a fable for fuckboys and party girls to add meaning to meaninglessness—a hyperbolic and self-deprecating meme, opposite to that of being "forever alone," so that the drama of a spring breakup can be fuel for Instagram captions in the summer to come. Besides, as bad as my generation may be with monogamous dating, the concept of people being caught in a seasonal cycle of fucking like rabbits during the summer, only to enter mini-marriages for the winter, is too depressing of an idea for me to invest in.

One of the main things immediately suspect about Cuffing SZN is that it pretty much appeared out of thin air. On the internet, it's widely agreed that the first mainstream publication of the term was on Urban Dictionary (UD) in 2011 (an endlessly-useful database of slang and made-up words that are input by people who are usually cripped off the gas.)

"During the Fall and Winter months people who would normally rather be single or promiscuous find themselves along with the rest of the world desiring to be "Cuffed" or tied down by a serious relationship. The cold weather and prolonged indoor activity causes singles to become lonely and desperate to be cuffed," the entry reads.

Since then, hundreds of think pieces and a handful of songs have been written about the subject ("Told these hoes I'll call back in June," Fabulous eloquently rapped in 2013), but they usually dodge the core question: is cuffing season an evolutionary trait of humans trying to find a mate for the cold winter months, or is it a product of social influence—one brought on by decades of holiday movies and ads romanticizing the idea of being with your OTL during the winter?

Michelle Couto, a Toronto psychotherapist, told me Friday that—contrary to my own belief—cuffing season is undoubtedly a legitimate term, and not just something invented as a trend.

"It is a real thing that people oftentimes feel lonelier during this time of year," Couto said, noting the increase in social pressure around the holiday time to be in a relationship (IE. when your grandparents ask you if have a girlfriend for the 50th time).

"There's no human mating seasons [like other mammals,] whereas women—we're fertile all year long. If there was a mating season, you could call it cuffing season—more people are lonely in the colder weather, and more people want to mate consistently."

Despite years of studies looking at loneliness in colder climates and the trend of more babies being born in July, August, and October (nine months from November, December, and January), maybe the most truthful catalysts for surveying the modern dating climate are porn sites and dating apps—may. Data from these services does indeed show a correlation between winter months and increased usage.

Last year, VOGUE reported that dating app Hinge surveyed 1,000 users and found men to be 15 percent more likely to want a relationship during the winter, and women 5 percent more likely. In the warmer months, those numbers dipped by double digits. Similarly, usage of Hinge in general spiked massively during the Juno snow storm that swept New York City and New Jersey in 2015—rising 47 percent during the day of the storm, and 27 percent as the storm rolled in.

On PornHub, searches for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" porn spiked 92 percent from June 21 to December 6 of this year, according to data provided to VICE. Similarly, searches for "cuddle" and "couple" videos rose 9 and 11 percent respectively. It's not clear if other categories experienced as much growth.

What Couto says all of this boils down to is a need to feel loved, and a lack of options people have for mates in the winter. In the summertime, Couto says it's less likely for people stay in relationships they don't fully feel invested in for the simple fact that everyone wants the most compatible match—which is why people tend to date and fuck so much when it's warm out.

With all of this in mind, Couto says the idea of getting cuffed is a decision that shouldn't be taken lightly.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, @champagnepapi—otherwise known as Drake—snatched 2016 with ease.

With neither a caption nor context, Aubrey Graham posted a photo to Instagram of him and J Lo (yes, Jennifer Fucking Lopez) snuggled on a coach—his head buried in her hair; her head in his lap. Almost immediately afterward, J Lo posted the exact same shot to her own Instagram, which caused Rihanna—Drake's star-crossed lover and multi-time ex—to unfollow her.  

This event—normally a mere humblebrag in the world of celebrity dating—wouldn't be so impactful if it didn't come at the tail end of a year that saw Drizzy cemented his title as the world's biggest hip-pop artist/Twitter rapper (even if VIEWS, his fourth studio album, failed to deliver on the hype set by many fans and critics.)

Here's a condensed list of his achievements in 2016:

• VIEWS, released in very-late April (to just "meh" reviews), still went multi-platinum in record-breaking time. Up until the Weeknd rampaged through the Billboard charts with his own album, Drake was the first and only artist to achieve 1 billion streams on Spotify and Apple Music. (He was also crowned Spotify's most-streamed artist of the year.)
  
  
• He dated Rihanna for the summer and together they made two of the year's biggest hits—"Work" and "Too Good." Between a slew of concerts and two separate tours, Drake and Rihanna built the Aubrih brand to a new level of rabid fandom—mostly thanks to constant videos posted to social media of the two grinding the fuck out of each other on stage at every show.
  
  
• Drake reportedly dated Serena Williams for a brief period of time, and was quickly blamed for being a distraction in her life by fans—a distraction so big that he might've have contributed to her stunning loss at the US Open semifinals.
  
  
• Drake now officially has more number one singles than the Beatles, which makes him the GOAT ("I JUST HIT THE BEAT AND FLOAT").
  
  
• He might have had a fling with Taylor Swift.
  

Now, here we are: after a week of "ARE THEY DATING?" rumours (which started after the Queen of early-2000s R&B and the Toronto Don were spotted getting friendly last week), the duo has decided to light the internet's powder keg with no remorse.

There is speculation whether Drake—who flirts and sends romantic gestures to just about every major female celebrity in existence—is playing this for publicity, perhaps for a joint venture between the two artists, but it's also hard to ignore the fact that Drake is literally the posterboy for teenage fantasies being fulfilled.

Think about it: despite how bad this year was for just about everything and everyone, this is truly a light in the darkness. J Lo is 47, Drake is 30. That means that a 10-year-old Drake would have been sitting in front of his TV, drooling over a 27-year-old J Lo, probably thinking about (like many of us have before) the bittersweet feeling of having a childhood crush that's way too old for us.

Today, however, Drake showed us that anything is possible. He brought us hope, and for that, Aubrey 'Drake' Graham has won 2016.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Crystal meth never became a daily thing for me. I never had a four-day bender, not even once. But I did it enough to fear that I might have a problem. And as the language of recovery goes, if you think you might have a problem, you have a problem.

I started smoking crystal meth around August 2015, when I was living in Los Angeles. My life was a perfect storm for starting a bad habit: I had gotten my dream internship at my dream publication, so I was stressed every day about doing well and impressing my co-workers. I didn't know anyone in the city, and I wasn't putting much effort into making friends, since I had a relationship to maintain with a man on the other side of the country. Then, all at once, my relationship fell through, the internship ended, and the family members I lived with decided to move back east, leaving me scrambling to find somewhere to stay. I started couchsurfing and relying on the generosity of gay men I knew to stay in the city, and I began casually escorting and hooking up to keep my mind off my ex. One night at a sex party in West Hollywood, I smoked meth for the first time.

By the time I left LA in January, I was smoking every weekend. I was having all the intense, kinky sex I had always dreamed about—20-guy gangbangs that last all night (and well into the next day), fisting, sex-club marathons, XL toys. For years, I had wanted to bottom better. When I was high, I was able to take dick easily, even brutally. I remember spotty, gray glimpses of bathhouse rooms and random bedrooms across the city, my legs in the air as guys I don't remember slid massive toys up my ass, and I took them all, no problem. Fisting, something I had only done a few times before, became much easier, but only when I was high.

Then the problems began. I had used many drugs before and put them all down for months at a time without a second thought. But for the first time in my life, I began having cravings. At midday, unprovoked. When I thought about sex, I suddenly had a desire to smoke. And I did.

I would later learn that meth releases incredible amounts of dopamine in the brain—nearly four times as much as cocaine. That can lead to anhedonia, or a diminishing ability to enjoy simple human pleasures without being high; the drug establishes a dependency on meth in order to enjoy sex. Many in recovery are forced to abstain from sex for a while (for some, many years) until they find a way to experience sex again without the urge to use. It's something some addicts never accomplish.

As for me, I left LA for the East Coast to patch things up with my ex—which failed—and to quit meth. I thought that all I needed was a change of scenery, and for a few months, a change of scenery was enough. Then, on a particularly erotically charged night, when I was mourning the loss of my former relationship, I smoked again. And then a few weeks later, I did it again. And again. Suddenly, my old habit was back.

After a bad relapse last month, just as dawn broke and I started coming down, I texted a friend: "I fucked up again. I have a problem." He told me to go to a gay men's Crystal Meth Anonymous meeting near my town that night.

I've been at it for 36 days now. Crystal Meth Anonymous is based on Alcoholics Anonymous, and before I entered the program, I thought that group recovery in that vein had to be weird—a creepy, cult-like approach to facing an addiction. I still think that, actually. But the handsome faces of everyone else in the room and the important conversations we've been having have helped keep me going. And I'm glad I did.

It took me until day 12 to accept that I have a problem, and that's been the hardest part of the process so far. It feels a lot like learning you have HIV, an ordeal I've already been through. Accepting your addiction means realizing that your entire life will be different from that point onward. An addiction like this never goes away, no matter how long you've been sober (after all, taking one hit takes you right back to square one), and it changes the way you date and hook up, your relationship to sex clubs and gay bars, the way you plan for pride events and erotically charged gatherings like the Folsom Street Fair.

But here's one beautiful upside: After a few weeks in the program, you come to realize just how strong your network of friends really is. It's easy to trash the gay community for its (many) flaws, but by day 15, I took a step back and saw how many of my queer brothers and sisters, both sober and non-sober, had come out of the woodwork to support me since I announced I was in recovery. Homos at my gym with whom I'd exchanged little more than small talk stepped forward to say hello and offer support. I can hardly get friends I've known for months to text me when they go out, yet suddenly people in my program who I barely know are inviting me to movies and gatherings.

Meetings still have that cult-like feeling. Each one starts with the same ritualistic script: Someone reads the 12 traditions, reciting the same introduction over and over. The meeting leader typically reads from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which gets treated with as much reverence as the Bible. I'm an atheist, so I struggle with the text's more spiritual aspects. But then again, I've met other atheists in the program who have found strength by simply believing in the group itself.

In 2015, the Advocate reported that meth use is five to ten times more common in urban gay and bisexual men than in the general US population, citing 2006 data released by the International Antiviral Society. And approximately 85 percent of meth users use the drug chronically. I can't count the number of times I've heard the phrase "silent epidemic" since I entered CMA. It's hard to understate how little meth addiction is talked about in the media, and how much stigma still surrounds it in the queer community. HIV and STDs get a disproportionate amount of press and media attention compared to addiction. But speaking anecdotally, meth directly or indirectly affects every gay man I know. For me, that observation is as comforting as it is sobering.

Follow Alexander Cheves on Twitter.

On this edition of Behind the Instagram, two Toronto sisters have reportedly been arrested and detained in Lagos, Nigeria after being accused of attempting to extort a Nigerian billionaire while trying to fund their brands.

Jyoti and Kiran Matharoo have been arrested and accused of trying to extort billionaire businessman Femi Otedola after claiming to have evidence of him cheating on his wife. They allegedly operated and used a website called NaijaGistLive, an apparent clone of NaijaGist.com and other social media accounts in an effort to allegedly blackmail several wealthy men, the Toronto Star reports.

NaijaGist.com regularly posts the latest in Nigerian celebrity—or "Nollywood"—gossip. It reported that the sisters operated the knock-off website as a "gossip mill where they manufacture stories" and "went as far as sleeping with big Nigerian politicians and recording their sex tape secretly to extort millions of Naira from them."  

READ MORE: Quebec Women Charged in Massive Coke Smuggling Bust Documented Whole Trip on Instagram

According to a court document posted by Politics Nigeria the sisters' various platforms, including the fake site, were allegedly used "for the humiliation and cyber bullying of some 274 persons."

The document also shows that Jyoti Matharoo listed an address in Etobicoke, Ontario and a Toronto-area phone number. Her Instagram account boasts over 40k followers that are tuned into her lavish lifestyle, which includes artsy shots of toes in sand, obligatory bowls of sushi, and fake-deep sunsets.

Global Affairs Canada issued a statement acknowledging that "consular services are being provided to the Canadian citizens who have been detained in Lagos, Nigeria," the National Post reported.

The sisters were arraigned in Yaba Magistrate Court on December 23 and will remain in custody before their case is heard on January 26.

Follow Lisa Power on Twitter.

As we all know, 2016 has been a total drag. With New Year's festivities rapidly approaching, you may find yourself wanting to overdo it with one more glass of champagne at the party or one more 40 in the park near your parents' house (depending on whether you're still home for the holidays). But before you drown your sorrows in gallons of nog and head out to a shitty bar in your hometown, you might want to remind yourself that drinking has all sorts of consequences, including potentially serious legal ones.

It goes without saying—or it should—that you should never drink and drive. But there are other paths that go from the bottle of a glass to the floor in a jail cell, mostly having to do with the country's patchwork of public drunkenness laws.In an effort to help people make it through the rest of 2016 without ending up in the drunk tank, I spoke with Los Angeles–based criminal defense attorney Diana Aizman, who specializes in DUI and drug laws, about various hypothetical situations and which laws your drunkenness could run afoul of.

VICE: Let's say you're out with friends, walking from one bar to the next, and you've had a few drinks. What kind of behavior can get you arrested for public intoxication? What do cops typically look for?
Diana Aizman: They're looking for a few things. One is if you're just unable to take care of yourself, if you're obviously stumbling or having trouble maintaining control of your faculties. I've had clients who have been arrested for just sitting on the curb and looking like they're about to pass out or have passed out. That's something that they will probably arrest you for. And then the other thing is if you're just belligerent, loud, obnoxious, in people's faces, in the police officer's face. Basically, if you're posing a danger to yourself or to anyone around you and you're unable to care of yourself in a reasonable fashion, a police officer has the discretion to arrest you for being drunk in public.

Do cops have to prove that you are drunk, or can they charge you for just "appearing" to be drunk or high?
If the officer believes that you're drunk and you happen to not be, then that's something that you take up later with a prosecutor or a jury trial, if necessary. If he or she genuinely believes that you are under the influence and unable to reasonably take care of yourself, or if you're engaging in anything that is destructive, then they can arrest you, and that's for you to defend yourself later.

Do they have to give you a breathalyzer test?
No, they don't, and they usually won't. They usually just base it it off of their own testimony.

What should you say to an officer if one stops you while you are drunk in public? Should you try to talk your way out of a ticket?
No! Keep your mouth shut and your head down. The worst thing you can do is try to talk yourself out of any situation with law enforcement because the only thing you're going to do is make it worse. If you're being suspected of being drunk in public, say absolutely nothing. Everything you say is going to be used against you, that's not just something you hear on TV. That's true.

Basically, what they're going to do is they're going to say that your speech is slow and slurred, that you reek of an alcoholic beverage, that you're unable to form sentences, that you were incoherent. The less you say, the better off you are. Easier for your defense attorney later on.

Can cops come into a bar and arrest you for being drunk?
Usually it's after you leave the premises, but [the law applies to] any public place, so it could be inside of a bar. It's rare that law enforcement would actually go into an establishment and arrest you for being drunk in public. Usually they'll wait for you to come out.

If you get too drunk on a plane, which state laws are you under the jurisdiction of?
It's wherever the plane has landed if you're already drunk after takeoff. So if you land in LAX, you're under the jurisdiction of Los Angeles. If you're on a plane and you're traveling to New York, once you arrive in New York, if you're drunk and disorderly, that's going to be under New York state law.

Obviously people should not drive drunk. But can you get charged for riding a bike, scooter, hoverboard, or skateboard while intoxicated?
Yes, absolutely. We call them BUIs here in California. It is a misdemeanor to ride a bicycle under the influence of alcohol. I'm sure that that would extend to other modes of transportation. I'm not sure about a skateboard, but I'm sure about a bicycle. Most likely a hoverboard or a scooter, anything that's motorized, that's for sure. Normally we recommend taking an Uber.

What does a public intoxication or a drunk and disorderly charge usually result in? Is it easy to fight? Can you face jail time?
It's a misdemeanor to be under the influence in public or drunk and disorderly. You can face jail time. I believe it's six months in California. And usually it results in what's called a diversion—if it's the only thing on your record and you're eligible for it, you can earn a dismissal if you have a lawyer who knows what they're doing. It's easy to fight if you know how to challenge the objective symptoms of intoxication, which is what the officer is going to be going off of when they're trying to establish your level of intoxication.

Let's say you commit another crime while you are drunk in public—vandalism, assault, theft—could you face a lesser charge because you were drunk at the time?
Yes. Voluntary intoxication is a defense to what are called specific intent crimes. If you provide testimony that you were so intoxicated that you could not have possibly formed that level of intent, it could be a defense. For example, attempted murder is a specific intent crime. Whereas battery is not. I had a case that started out as an attempted murder, but my client was so drunk that we were able to get a reduction to assault.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Lauren Messman on Twitter.

As TV becomes more streamlined into easily binge-able seasons, more unconventional and single-serving narrative options are harder to come by. One recent example is HBO's cult hit High Maintenance, which follows the trials and tribulations of a low-level chill-bro weed dealer and his oddball roster of NYC customers. Similar in tone but less talked-about is Netflix's Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, which is anchored on Japanese comfort food.

Based on a best-selling Japanese manga, the show's aired for three seasons and has culminated in a film adaptation featuring many of the series's actors. The first season was recently added to Netflix and is perfect viewing for those who want to watch stories about real people connecting. Each story is based on people bonding over a specific dish and begins the same way: The proprietor—also known as the Master (Kaoru Kobayashi)—prepares the eponymous diner for operation from midnight until 7 AM.

There are slow, neon-lit shots of Tokyo at night, a Japanese folk singer croons a somber tune, and the Master explains that he will make anything diners request, as long as they bring in their own ingredients. Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories follows new characters in and out of the diner—even to other countries—in each episode, always culminating with a joyful ending where the characters wave goodnight to the audience and give tips on how to make the episode's thematically pertinent dish.

Similar to a bartender, the Master mainly functions as a psychiatrist-cum-chef—someone for characters to project their insecurities onto or mull over their problems with. He mainly nods and grunts, seemingly relishing the act of cooking and keeping the place bumping through the night. When characters ask for him to interfere in their lives—like when a lonely, unmarried man asks him to throw away his porn after he dies—the Master is reluctant to get involved; he'd rather just clean dishes or smoke a cigarette in the back of the kitchen. The only time we really see him interfering in a situation with his customers is when two characters—a master comedian and his apprentice—start to fight. The Master pours alcohol over their heads, insisting that they take it outside, and it's a significant moment: For the Master, the restaurant is a sacred place of food and bonding.

In Midnight Diner, the characters have small epiphanies about growing up through their interactions in the diner. Mostly, these epiphanies form organically and slowly: One guest can't stand the diner's take on sour plum—a sort of dumpling—and realizes it's because his mom makes them better. This causes him to muse on the fact that he misses his mother, eventually leading to the thought that he will one day die alone. In response, the show's gossipy Greek chorus of recurring customers advises him to find a romantic partner while he's still alive.

In another episode, a radio host recognizes a cab driver at the diner as a daytime television actress from a TV show he watched when he was younger. He asks to interview her on his show, which leads to the discovery that another guest at the diner was also an on the same show and has since transitioned into a woman. Some of the episode structures are a bit more fanciful, such as a bizarre story-within-a-story where a character hallucinates that there's something haunting the restaurant.

Throughout, Midnight Diner advises to reflect carefully on life as we grow older, as well as to allow ourselves to have bits of joy in our daily routines. It focuses on feelings as much as it does on specific plot points: In a scene where patrons eat fresh watermelon and remark on how it brings a summer feeling, the Master sets out mosquito repellant on the counter to add scent to the mood—a small and effective touch.

There are little philosophical asides in the series, sometimes simplistic ("One good day must follow a bad one") and sometimes related to the food: Referring to a New Year's Eve tradition, one character muses, "We eat buckwheat noodles because they are easier to cut... this is to cut off the misfortunes of the past year." After a particularly odd year where people felt more divided than ever, it's moments like these that remind how it's more important than ever for people to connect and bring joy to one another's lives.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

We're living in a golden age of surveillance. Even as the debate around populations "going dark" rages on in both the UK and US (i.e. citizens using encrypted messaging and the difficulty law enforcement can have when trying to obtain personal data), pretty much everyone carries a tracking device in their pocket—one they'll go to great lengths to keep fully charged at all times—and many seem eager to hand over more and more data about themselves.

Next year isn't looking great for the privacy-conscious. Here are just a few of the ways spies, cops, and companies may snoop on you in 2017, as well as a few examples of the stuff UK censors may block, too, just for an extra bit of fun.

Your Browsing History

In November, the UK passed a highly controversial surveillance law called the Investigatory Powers Act. As part of that, certain internet service providers (ISPs)—companies like Vodafone or BT, for example—will be forced to store a year's worth of all customers' browsing data, in what the government has dubbed Internet Connection Records (ICRs). In other words, your ISP is going to know every site you visit and every web service you use. Your email checking habits, a scroll through a drug support forum, and those frequent visits to your porn site of choice will all be collated.

This vast swath of data will then be available to a slew of government agencies. This includes the usual roster of security and law enforcement agencies, but also some pretty obscure ones, such as the Foods Standards Agency.

Automatic Numberplate Recognition used by the Met Police

The Porn Sites You Visit

Not only will the government and ISPs know which porn sites you're into, they may also block access to some of them. Under the Digital Economy Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, ISPs would be forced to restrict sites from hosting various types of content.

The power is included in the section of the bill dealing with age verification checks, which are supposed to stop children from accessing pornographic websites. In short, the bill would ban any sex act being made available online, which wouldn't ordinarily be available on a commercial DVD. (In the UK, certain sex acts, like face-sitting and fisting, are illegal to depict in porn.)

MPs recently also suggested blocking access to sites that encourage self-harm or give advice on how to commit suicide, but it's not clear yet if that plan will have any movement.

Your Phone, Computer, and Social Media Accounts

Also included in the Investigatory Powers Act was explicit authorization for police to hack suspects' phones or computers. So-called equipment interference can range from a police officer using someone's Facebook email address and password to log into an account, right up to offensive software that takes control of a device.

Of course, the country's spies also hack, too, and in the act, they were given the ability to apply for "bulk" equipment interference warrants. These don't concern any one particular person, or even a group of people, but can be used to indiscriminately hack devices in, say, a given area, potentially also hitting innocent users' devices.

All That Mass Surveillance They Were Doing Before, Though Now It's Legal

The last main bit of the Investigatory Powers Act was that it gave a much stronger legal footing to the country's bulk powers, including some of those revealed by Edward Snowden back in 2013. These include hoovering up emails, Facebook posts, and more. Although courts have found that the UK was using these powers unlawfully for over a decade, the act conveniently makes all of that stuff totally legal.

The UK's powers also include "bulk personal datasets," databases of information gleaned from various sources—medical records, travel plans, passport information—which security and intelligence agencies can then exploit. According to the government's own documentation, these datasets contain information on people, "the majority of whom are unlikely to be of intelligence interest".

Your Phone Location and All of Your Texts

In the US, there is plenty of evidence of cops buying and using IMSI-catchers, briefcase-size devices that sweep up the unique identification code of a phone (the IMSI), and, in some cases, text messages and calls as well. Until recently, there were only a couple of reports about UK police forces purchasing the same sort of key.

That changed after a VICE News investigation in January 2016, and last month with an investigation published by local media outlet the Bristol Cable, which found that many more police forces had bought the gear than previously thought. According to a document published in February of this year detailing the Metropolitan Police's major contracts, the force spent more than $1.2 million on IMSI-catcher related equipment; clearly, police forces are still going to use this technology, even if they're not super keen on talking about it.

Your Emails, Probably

When IMSI-catchers aren't enough, law enforcement might start turning to "app interception systems." These are similar devices, but instead of working on the cellular network, they attack your smart phone over WiFi, hoovering up social media passwords, emails, and more.

It's not clear who has bought them yet. The FBI recently refused to say whether it had forked out the cash for one earlier this year. But according to glossy brochures published by companies pushing the hardware, police could deploy them in, say, airports or on border crossings.

And All That Stuff You're Willingly Giving to Private Companies

Surveillance is not just about the police, of course. Private companies are collecting and have access to more data on you than ever, and the idea that some employees may misuse it is not some far-fetched conspiracy theory. Indeed, Uber employees have helped men stalk their ex-girlfriends, as well as politicians and celebrities.

So what's going to happen with all that extra stuff that people will soon be sending off to companies, if they aren't already? Voice-focused devices such as Amazon Echo are likely going to proliferate—the Wynn Las Vegas just announced that an Echo will be in every hotel room to allow guests to control devices verbally. Who knows: Maybe "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" will soon be a cute vestige of a simpler time.

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Enter the words "Florida man" into Google, and you'll be treated to a plethora of wacky crime headlines, often involving lewd acts, disproportionate displays of anger, and fast food. This is, after all, the state where a man high on bath salts ate another man's face off.

Enter Calgarian Richard Hogh, 27, who, while at the Orlando airport over the holidays, decided to embrace the shit out of the Florida man trope.

Hogh was arrested last week after he took a stolen luggage tug on a pantless joyride along the airport's tarmac. When he was released from Orange County jail this week, he explained his actions to reporters with the following warning: "Don't ruin your life kids. Don't do crystal meth."

The saga began on Dec. 23—an extremely busy day for any airport—when Hogh boarded a United Airlines flight destined for Chicago, a stop on his way back to Calgary.  According to the Orlando Sentinel, after getting on the plane, Hogh sat down in a first class seat that didn't belong to him. When he was called out, he claimed he was a pilot and that he "wanted to sit in the pilot jump seat," according to arrest records. Airline staff kicked him off the flight because he was "behaving erratically," an airport spokeswoman told the Sentinel.

When an airline staffer tried to book him a different trip, Hogh took off, leaving his luggage at the gate. He then went onto a service elevator with an employee who noticed he didn't have the right security badge. That employee told him to leave, at which point he "got out, took off his pants, and walked away," the Sentinel reports.

Now on the ground floor, a half-naked Hogh hopped onto the passenger seat of a luggage tug. The operator reportedly got freaked out by Hogh—who said he had to catch a flight—and got off the luggage tug, at which point Hogh started driving it, right down a taxiway.

He never made it onto any runways, though the flights near him were briefly put on "ground hold."

Finally, a firefighter a ran up to the luggage tug, jumped aboard and physically detained Hogh. He was charged with grand theft and trespassing.

Marijuana advocates were jubilant last November in the days after Justin Trudeau became prime minister with a promise to "legalize, regulate and restrict" the drug. "We're dancing in the streets," said Don Briere, one of Canada's most notorious marijuana entrepreneurs, at the time.

But the road toward legalization hasn't been smooth. And as the country gears up for the next crucial juncture — legislation that will legalize recreational marijuana expected this spring — momentous changes that have already occurred this year provide clues for what's to come, and who will be left out.

Read more on VICE News Canada.

Carrie Fisher—the actress, writer, geek culture matriarch, Hollywood sage, and mental health advocate—was first introduced to America as a daughter. At first, she was the child of actress Debbie Reynolds and pop singer Eddie Fisher, but after Fisher scandalously left the family for Elizabeth Taylor, it was Carrie and Debbie. It's easy to forget now, but for a while the showbiz mother-daughter association was so strong that Fisher, in character as the child of a wealthy Beverly Hills housewife, had to definitively declare that she was "nothing like her mother" in Shampoo, her film debut.

As it turns out, Fisher, who died this week in Los Angeles at the age of 60, carved out an indelible identity for herself. She did this not only on the screen through other people's mythologies, but through her own—in how she mined the ups and downs of her sometimes chaotic life for wisdom and humor. She was vocally skeptical of celebrity culture from the start of her career while existing at the heart of it in the 70s and 80s. All this made her a reassuringly wry documentarian of the surrealities of fame, addiction, and mental disorder, which she did over the course of three nonfiction books and five novels, including her groundbreaking debut Postcards from the Edge.

In this week of Fisher's death, there is a bit of Star Wars over-saturation in the air, and thus an understandable desire to downplay Princess Leia as the centerpiece of her legacy—and there's so much else to highlight in her filmography: When Harry Met Sally…, The Burbs, The Blues Brothers, all just as seared into the collective pop culture memory. Fisher herself was openly ambivalent about the iconic role, even as the image of the twin buns and white gown followed her through multiple book covers and promos—a stubborn little specter she'd long since disembodied that still hung over all she did.

But perhaps the reason it stuck—aside from the immense popularity of Star Wars—is that the character was as much Fisher's creation as George Lucas's; in the six years she spent playing her, Fisher likely thought more critically and deeply about who Leia needed to be than any of the original trilogy's credited writers. In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, she digs out her copy of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment to explain the subliminal power of a strong, aspirational figure like Leia. "You can play Leia as capable, independent, sensible, a soldier, a fighter, a woman in control—control being, of course, a lesser word than master," she said. "But you can portray a woman who's a master and get through all the female prejudice if… you're dealing in fairy-tale terms. People need these bigger-than-life projections."

That doesn't sound like the typical "so happy to be a part of this journey" interview that an actress would give for a major film series—it's as if Fisher was trying to do all she could to counteract the bikini-clad object of fantasy on the cover. (Fisher famously detested the bikini: "It wasn't my choice," she told PEOPLE in 1983. When [Lucas] showed me the outfit, I thought he was kidding and it made me very nervous.") But it also belies her writer's mind, which never shut off and was already working in her early 20s, when she made the script notes that ended up as final dialogue in The Empire Strikes Back.

In these notes, you can see a writer who knows how to get to the point, recognizes bullshit as soon as it's under her nose, and doesn't waste any time disposing of it—the mind of a jaded child of Hollywood as much as of a humorist and mental health advocate. Fisher became a highly sought-after script doctor in the 90s, though she was never credited for her work on Hook, Lethal Weapon 3 or The Wedding Singer; while she helped Hollywood men make millions at the box office, she also became a kind of guru to Hollywood women. She offered dating advice to Courtney Love and advised Whoopi Goldberg to handle the contentious production of Sister Act by sending a hatchet to then-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg for him to bury. (She did, and Katzenberg sent back a pair of brass balls: message received.) Reading the tweets of celebrities reacting to her death gives the sense that she was a regular, stabilizing presence in brainy, post-middle-age circles of Hollywood that perhaps still privately struggled with the insecurities of waning celebrity that Fisher spent so much of her writing career looking in the eyes.

Fisher is survived by her mother, who Fisher was close to her entire life. And somehow, it still makes so much sense to think of Fisher as part of a mother-daughter dynamic—not as a docile caretaker or a fragile child on the edge, but as an empowering figure, a nurturer, the wise old General Organa handing off the lightsaber to a younger generation of self-possessed women.

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Few things beat Christmas when you're a kid (if your family adheres to it). Getting up early, surrounding the tree with your loved ones and of course, opening presents. This is the big moment, that gift from Santa—that money gift—the toy you've waited all season for is finally yours.

Then that magical toy says, "fuck me."

That's what at least one family experienced around the Christmas tree this year. Sarah and Nik Galego, a couple in Victoria, BC bought a Hatchimal (one of the season's hottest toys) for their six-year-old son and when unwrapped, the little thing started to channel Linda Blair from the Exorcist.

"Fuck me," it says repeatedly, among what can only be described as moans.

Hatchimals are sophisticated little toys that arrive in eggs, then hatch when played with enough and once out of their eggs, can learn how to talk, walk and all sorts of other neat stuff. The toy doesn't have a preset foreign language for it to speak when hatched but learn their own personalized one, which is where the mistake could be originating from. The thing is, the Hatchimal isn't supposed to talk while hatching, but this one came out of its egg swearing like a sailor.

"It was doing its hatching process and it fell asleep, and we both looked at each other and we're like, that's not what it's saying, is it?" Sarah told CTV.

Others have noticed the problem as well and uploaded similar videos to YouTube.

As the Furbies of 2016, Hatchimals sold out of stock before Christmas and the toy, with a suggested retail price of almost $90, was being sold on E-bay and Kijiji for upwards of $400. Spin Master, the company behind the toy, said that they "sincerely apologize" to anyone having issues (other Hatchimals just didn't work) and have increased their customer care team upped their hours.

"While the vast majority of children have had a magical experience with Hatchimals, we have also heard from consumers who have encountered challenges," Spin Master told VICE in a statement. "We are 100% committed to bringing the magic of Hatchimals to all of our consumers."

As for the parents who bought the foul-mouthed little toy in particular, well, they're pretty darn chill about the whole thing.

"It's good at teaching him responsibility. It's been really cool watching him take care of it," Sarah told CTV. "I found our little flaws with the Hatchimal pretty hilarious.

"We're not going to return it or file any complaints with it. It's pretty funny."

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter .

Immigrants in the US, and abroad, are under attack. In spite of this, these 12 immigrant authors have contributed some of our best books of 2016. (Numbered without ranking.)

Though immigrant authors make essential contributions to so many cultures (I was especially sorry to leave off deserving books by Helen Oyeyemi, Saleem Haddad, Neel Mukherjee, and Sunjeev Sahota), I've limited the list to focus on stories by immigrants to America in a year where an anti-immigration candidate rode a virulently xenophobic campaign to the White House. Some of these books feature experiences that deal directly with immigration while others do not. The topics range from gun control to adoption, race, gender, class, orientation, "political correctness," music, body image, and sports—in other words, the myriad experiences and negotiations of being in the world. These writers are doing some of the absolute best writing in America on these issues and more.

1. Unbearable Splendor by Sun Yung Shin

In Sun Yung Shin's third book of poetry, she explores the mystery of selfhood through the near-human and almost-human, through ghosts and guests and myths: cyborgs, the minotaur, the adoptee. Shin's hybrid prose pushes boundaries as it leads us to the question, among others, of what language can possibly make of who we are. About her writing, Shin has said: "I don't know that I would be a writer if I weren't an Asian American immigrant, and a person of color raised in a white family. Because growing up and still now, there's no language to express my experiences."

2. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

A New York Times bestseller, Homegoing begins with the story of two sisters, one sold into slavery and one a slave trader's wife. The novel covers enormous ground and takes on the making of America through the slave trade and its legacy as it follows the descendants of the sisters. The epic scope of the book is balanced by an attention to significant details, all told at a breakneck pace. You'll find ambition here that never compromises.

3. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

In sharp, beautiful, often funny sentences, Mona Awad tells the story of a young woman growing up in a culture of body shaming and online dating, trying to find her way to self-definition. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (excerpted in the VICE Reader) won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. The 13 chapters are both stories and "ways of looking at a fat girl." You won't be able to put this book down.

4. Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue

Difficult to describe, Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death (excerpted in the VICE Reader) centers on a tennis match between the painter Caravaggio and the poet Francisco de Quevedo (which also serves as a duel). Like watching a tennis match, your attention is pulled back-and-forth in associative volleys that make up the game of history. Cortés and La Malinche, Anne Boleyn, the Virgin Mary, Gallileo come and go. Beautifully and painstakingly translated by Natasha Wimmer (translator of Roberto Bolaño's 2666), Sudden Death is fun and audacious and erudite.

5. Look by Solmaz Sharif

In this National Book Award finalist poetry collection, Solmaz Sharif insists, "Let it matter what we call a thing." Look takes on the calling and the things, urging closer inspection. Throughout are words and phrases from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. Language invades language. In an interview with the National Book Foundation, Sharif says: "I wrote Look for the dead. For the displaced. For myself and my own outrage and perceived powerlessness."

6. Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith's fifth novel, Swing Time, is about friendship, race, class, dance, singing, education, fame, and freedom. Its narrator befriends two talented women, one whose inherited inequality limits her success and one whose privilege, money, and success breed a reckless expansiveness. Defined and defining herself by her relationships with these two larger-than-life women, the narrator of Swing Time observes her world with a kind of Fred Astaire–like quality, dancing lightly with a beautiful, floating, intelligent prose.

7. Mercury by Margot Livesey

In Margot Livesey's Mercury, her first novel set in America, a marriage falls apart due to secrets, horses, guns, and changing ideologies. The couple at the heart of Mercury seem to find themselves married to strangers, though perhaps the true strangers are themselves. Donald is an eye doctor who misses what is happening right in front of him, and Viv is an ambitious rider who has finally found the right horse to the neglect of her family. Livesey shows us both sides of this marriage in equally magnetic prose, and the effect of being in the middle is one of gripping tension.

8. Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong leaves his heart on the page in his debut collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which won him a 2016 Whiting Award. These are the kind of poems often called "raw," because they are powerfully emotional, but they are crafted with a close attention to language and the rhythms of the body and the line, turning "bones to sonatas." The New Yorker writes "Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion."

9. The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine

The Angel of History begins with Satan interviewing Death and continues pushing the imagination as it develops the mind of its protagonist, Jacob, a gay Yemeni-born poet living in San Francisco at the height of the 1980s AIDS epidemic. The novel takes place in a single night in the waiting room of a mental-health facility. Dark humor and an intelligent political consciousness drive the book into fascinating territory.

10. Driving Without a License by Janine Joseph

Winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, Driving Without a License follows an undocumented immigrant speaker through 20 years of life. The book includes text from naturalization forms and newspaper articles about immigration, plays with multiple forms and lays claim to each. While the speaker is hiding in plain sight, the book is a "coming out" that doesn't shy away from its politics.

11. Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Nicole Dennis-Benn captures three generations of Jamaican women in her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun. Dennis-Benn's sure-footed, rhythmic prose explores sex, colonialism, tourism, class, race, and gender. Some of the most compelling writing here is around desire and the questions of how far one would go to get what one wants and how much desire is informed by culture.

12. Style by Dolores Dorantes

Dolores Dorantes's prose poems are magic. Bilingual, with English translations by Jen Hofer, Style employs a plural feminine voice that insists "this book does not exist." War, pain, and dispossession run through this exploration of the styles and systems and borders that shape who we are. The collection was written while its author was awaiting political asylum in 2011.

Follow Matthew Salesses on Twitter.

Illustration by Jessica Saesue

Compassion acts like society's glue. Empathy with the experiences, desires and demands of the mosaic of people that make up any polity plays a key role in creating the conditions for cohesion in society. Today, what are often complex, multinational and multi-level polities are facing serious global challenges in financial, environmental and human terms. Addressing these challenges then makes empathy with the lived experience and with mental framing of other people vital.

Social cohesion is a major concern for governments and policy-makers. At an individual level, a sense of connectedness has been strongly linked to creating a feeling of personal well-being. For wider society, the question of what creates a sense of belonging or a willingness to invest in a community carries an important weight.

This year has been an interesting one for both empathy and compassion in politics. The UK's EU referendum campaign and the recent US Presidential campaign highlighted the growing distrust of "others"; immigration, fear of terrorism, even a wider fear of foreigners took central stage. The campaigns also highlighted the depth of internal divisions – between ethnic and religious groups, rich and poor, young and old, educated and less educated – within the US, within the UK and across parts of the EU.

A growing sense emerged that groups with different perspectives rarely interact. Shouting over one another and repetitive sloganising rather than discussion and debate became the norm. As losers refused to accept the positions of the winners – marching and petitioning to overturn results, questioning the intelligence and personal qualities of opponents – the extent of these divisions and the lack of mutual comprehension was put into sharp relief.

Future policymakers will have to contend with what constitutes "us" and "them" in existing societies and how we collectively create a sense of group belonging. For the UK and its devolved institutions in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, for example, this question applies as much at home as abroad. When we imagine these transitions, we have to try to get inside the minds of others and understand what a sense of belonging means to them. We've got to consider what belonging means for different individuals, groups and nationalities.

WATCH: Why Did England's North Vote to Leave the European Union?

Now that we've decided to leave the EU we'll need to understand what shapes a sense of societal belonging to come to terms with the future of the wider EU and to the UK's relations with it. This relates not only to managing the status quo, but also to understanding how to prevent wider contagion effects and further departures from the EU, if the European project is to continue.

Even though the UK has voted Leave, we're left with a core question for policymakers at home: whether and how the wider UK public can be encouraged to understand what others (including a majority in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland) value in the EU, and why? You might think this is an impossible task, believing the wider UK's island mentality is too profoundly entrenched, but there's evidence that such feelings can change.

Empathy for someone else's happiness or suffering requires recognition that the other person is equally human – effectively, that they have a mind with the same capacity for thought, emotion, desire, intention and self-awareness as ourselves.

Though reminiscent of a bad 1970s pop song, the ability to make complex recursive judgments about the knowledge of others and about their knowledge of our knowledge – the ability to get inside someone else's head, basically – is fundamental to how we function socially. These empathic processes oil the wheels of social relations, whether between individuals, or at an aggregate level between groups or states. Dehumanising another person allows us to downgrade their demands and to build a false perception of the virtue of our own position. Demonising or stigmatising others makes dialogue impossible.

But learning more about empathic behaviours and about how to encourage and inculcate them in policy practice would have profound implications for future international and internal national relations. In the meantime, a little empathy goes a long way to making us all feel heard and valued – a fundamental step in shaping a society in which we can all feel we have a place and a voice that counts.

Laura Cram is Professor of European Politics and Director of NRLabs Neuropolitics Research at Edinburgh University.

More on VICE:

This Is Why Women Only Want to Be Friends with Empathetic Men

When and Why the UK Gets Loud About Its Racism

Why Did South Asians Vote for Brexit?

Never get between a man and his dog.

That's what one cougar learned on boxing day after going after an Alberta man's dog outside of a Tim Hortons—because this is Canada and this is what we have to deal with up here. Nevertheless, it doesn't matter if you're a massive feline built for death and destruction, if you attack a man's dogs you will, most likely, get socked in the goddamn head.

William Gibb, a 31-year-old Red Deer man, was traveling through Whitecourt on Boxing Day with his brother on their way to some contract work when they decided to meet a friend for coffee. They pulled into the local Tim Hortons and Gibb let his two dogs, Sasha and Mongo, out to pee.

"Within about 30 seconds Sasha started to crying out and I didn't know what was going on, I thought maybe she got something in her paw so I went running," Gibb told VICE. "As soon as I went around the tree I saw something wrapped around her and instinctively ran up and punched it in the side of the head."

The head he just smashed belonged to a cougar and even when Gibb realized that fact it didn't matter, because anger took over and he had to protect his pup.

"Fear wasn't even a thought on the radar, I knew I was going to get hurt when I attacked it but it wasn't going to dissuade me from getting ahold of the cougar and hurting it," Gibb said. "My first punch where I connected with the head it actually bruised my knuckle, it was solid contact."

After dummying the cougar, it backed off his dog. Gibb saw Sasha lying on the ground bleeding and scooped up his beloved husky. But even though he safely had his dog, the fight wasn't over yet. With his pooch in one arm, Gibb continued to throw heat at the feline who tossed some back his way.

"It came towards us slightly. You know when boxers square off and their throwing test jabs? [We were] basically doing that, between me and the cougar, we wanted to stay the hell away from each other."

Gibb's brother and friend arrived to help with the dogs, leaving time for Gibb to find the nearest weapon, a large stick, and chase the cougar into the tree.

The trio called a vet for Sasha who suffered emergency treatment for some wounds and the RCMP who immediately dispatched a team and killed the cougar for obvious reasons. Sasha suffered a couple lacerations and some puncture marks on her neck but will make a full recovery however, as Gibb says, she is "a little worse for wear."

As for Gibb, well, he now has a story for the ages.

"I always had the knowledge that I might have to face off with one but I was at least hoping that I would have some sort of weapon to even the odds," he said.

"I never thought I would go after one with my bare hands."

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter .

For years, we have been fumbling for how to talk about sexual violence in America. In 2016, it seems like we finally found the words.

This year, we saw a 60th woman accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault. We saw Stanford swimmer Brock Turner walk free three months into a six-month jail sentence. We saw the soon-to-be leader of the free world brush off his hot-mic boasts of sexual assault as "locker-room talk" and the voters who carried him to the White House cheer the death of political correctness, where "political correctness" is the social barrier between America's 156 million vulvas and Donald Trump's tiny hands.

But somewhere in the Texas-size trash vortex of the last 12 months, we also saw a tidal shift in the way our culture understands sexual violence, and the degree to which we as a society are willing to accept things as they are. The misogynist tsunami that swept a handsy Cheeto to power left #notOK and the Women's March on Washington in its wake, with more fights sure to follow inauguration day.

It "was a crazy year in many ways, but it was also a year that presented a tremendous opportunity for us in the field," said Rebecca O'Connor, vice president of public policy for the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). "Honestly, when it comes to sexual violence, America's at a tipping point."

Yes, if 2016 taught us anything, it's that even acid rain clouds sometimes have silver linings. What follows is a non-exhaustive review of the state of sexual assault awareness in America, with thoughts on what's to come and how to get involved in the new year.

Among the least celebrated of this spring's Supreme Court decisions was Dollar General Corporation v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, which (thanks to an equally divided court) upheld damages awarded by a Tribal Court against a non-Indian alleged to have sexually assaulted a Native teen in a store on treaty land. While the court's split decision had more to do with legal sovereignty than sexual assault, it carries important implications for Native survivors of domestic violence, whose ability to prosecute (some) non-Native abusers in Tribal Court was only established in 2013, and whose rights were threatened by the suit.

Native survivors will be among those who benefit from the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, which President Obama signed into law in October—although to fully appreciate its impact, you have to reckon with just how lousy victims' legal protections were before. The new law eliminates fees for collecting and storing rape kits and gives survivors broad rights to access the information in their case files, among other protections so basic it's shocking they didn't exist until now. But the new law only covers federal court.

"Our theory was that we have to do this on the federal level so that it would be visible," said Amanda Nguyen, the founder of Rise, a nonprofit dedicated to codifying civil rights for survivors like her. "The majority of the rights need to be passed on the state level."

Some of the most egregious abuses happen in the states and localities you might least expect: Women in Chicago have been hounded over the cost of their rape kits, while some jurisdictions in New York destroy untested evidence in just 30 days, according to Nguyen. If she and her allies succeed in their 2017 state house campaign, targeting legislatures in "key battleground states" across the country, authorities would be forbidden from tossing that forensic evidence for 20 years, or until the statute of limitations runs out, whichever is shorter.

That latter technicality—the statute of limitations—itself became a topic of intense mainstream debate this year, and ironically, we owe change on that front to Bill Cosby. Or rather, we owe it to to the courageous women who have come forward to accuse him of rape and sexual abuse. Their stories have upended not only how Americans talk about sexual violence, but how it's reported and handled by police. To wit: Several major cities saw a spike in rape reports since 2014, many of them years and even decades old, a phenomenon former New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton dubbed "the Bill Cosby effect."

A secondary "Cosby effect" is now being felt in state legislatures, several of which have enacted dramatic extensions, and even the outright elimination of the statute of limitations for sex crimes. Colorado and Nevada both stretched their statutes by a decade or more this year, both partially in response to Cosby accusers. California, meanwhile, scrapped its statute of limitations entirely, and several more states seem poised to follow in 2017.

"In Washington State, they're having very serious conversations about this topic," said RAINN's O'Connor. Like Rise, the network plans to spend next year pushing nationally modeled reforms in state legislatures, which figures to be where most of the action is given the history of the man who will soon occupy the Oval Office. "Everybody wants to have the strongest law, but in some states, the political climate may dictate that they take on a piecemeal approach," O'Connor said.

There are lots of simple ways for supporters to help their efforts, from urging state and local representatives to support survivor civil rights and statute of limitations reform to taking action against the rape kit backlog.

In that fight and others, the stories of everyday survivors have become a critical tool. Brooklyn's Black Women's Blueprint brought them to bear during a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on black women and sexual assault at the UN this spring, an effort they have pushed to see recognized by President Obama before he leaves office. Both Rise and RAINN are collecting stories for their legislative campaigns. And Emily Doe, Brock Turner's victim, moved the world when she shouted her story from a California courtroom.

Without Doe, there would likely have been no public outrage over the "soft timeout" for convicted felon Turner, the former Stanford swimmer who served just three months of a six-month jail sentence after he was found guilty of assaulting her behind a campus dumpster while she was unconscious. Her 12 page victim-impact statement was published in its entirety by several news outlets and read aloud in its entirety on the House floor by 18 members of Congress, spurring a petition to recall Judge Aaron Persky and a new mandatory prison sentence law covering sexual assault of an unconscious person in California.

Meanwhile, San Diego rapist Alex Smith was sentenced to eight years in prison by a judge in California. Smith was convicted of a 2013 gang assault largely on the basis of his own sick boasts on the internet, which his victim dredged from PUA websites after police failed to act on her report.

"If I could give you more time I would," San Diego Superior Court judge Jeffrey Fraser told Smith at his December sentencing, according to the Daily Beast.

Not everyone sees these legal developments as victories, of course, and opponents aren't confined to men's rights activists. For example, those fighting mass incarceration generally oppose mandatory sentences and lengthy prison stays, and some fear that a recall effort could scare judges into handing down excessive punishment. Nor are all laws purporting to protect against sexual violence necessarily good ones, as the transfolk victimized by North Carolina's infamous HB2 and its many copycat "bathroom bills" can attest. But the past year has inarguably seen a subtler, more nuanced and more survivor-centered conversation.

Consider ex-Oklahoma City police officer and convicted rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who was sentenced this February to 263 years in prison for assaults on 13 black women, many of whom had criminal records and feared they would never be believed if they sought help from police. That sentence was recommended by a jury comprised almost solely of white men — undoubtedly a testament to the extreme nature of the case, but also evidence that the myth of the perfect victim may be losing its stranglehold on the American imagination.

So too with the pernicious fiction of women who "cry rape." Movie star and rape survivor Gabrielle Union wrote movingly about the struggle to reconcile her role in the critically acclaimed Birth of a Nation with allegations against the film's auteur, Nate Parker. The filmmaker claimed that he and his then-roommate/now-writing partner Jean Celestin had consensual sex with an 18-year-old woman who accused them of assault in 1999 and later took her own life. While Parker was acquitted and Celestin's conviction later vacated, many have openly questioned whether the result would have been different if the trial were held today.

"The Birth of a Nation controversy surrounding Nate Parker did not come as a surprise to us," said Sevonna Brown, gender justice and human rights project manager for the Black Women's Blueprint, who called the episode "a classic case of victim blaming." But she also said organizations like her's are looking beyond the criminal justice system in the year to come.

"We're talking about what does justice actually look like?" she said of their 2017 agenda. "Survivorship is one thing, but how does survivorship intersect with reproductive health? How does it intersect with economic justice? Survivors are not just survivors."

Or, as Emily Doe put it in Glamour, "Survivors are going to be doing a hell of a lot more than surviving."

Friends and family members of Rachael Longridge, a 21-year-old University of Alberta nursing grad who was killed last week—allegedly by her mother Christine—will gather for a vigil in Edmonton Wednesday night.

Christine Longridge, 50, was charged with second-degree murder and possession of an offensive weapon.

Rachael was found in her Sherbrooke home on the afternoon of Dec. 23. According to the CBC, police sources say her 18-year-old brother Michael found their mother stabbing Rachael with a knife. She died on scene and an autopsy is scheduled for Thursday.

A Gofundme page set up to cover funeral costs has raised more than $29,000. It says Rachael and Michael's father died of cancer last year. A photo of Rachael and her father on Facebook says "RIP daddy" and lists the day he died as Dec. 1, 2015. 

Glen Dobranski, one of Michael and Rachael's cousins, wrote on the Gofundme page that Christine had an ongoing battle with bipolar disorder over the last 18 years.

"[Rachael] spent her last hours on this earth caring for her mother," he wrote. "The last moments of her life  were filled with compassion and care. Her mother's illness was something that she understood and accepted."

The CBC reports a psychiatric examination of Christine has been requested.

Rachael Longridge had just graduated from nursing school. Photo via Facebook

It makes sense for Rachael to be described as caring. She was set to start a registered nursing job at the intensive care unit of the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute next week. It was her first full-time gig; she graduated from nursing earlier in December.

Rachael's vigil will be held at the Edmonton Clinic Health Academy, where she trained while getting her degree.

On a post on the Facebook event page for the vigil, an organizer wrote about Rachael's accomplishments in her short life, including graduating at the top of her class.

"During this hard time, I want us all to gather and remember Rachael for the kind-hearted, caring, and loveable person she was," the post says. "She had spent countless hours roaming the halls of [Edmonton Clinic Health Academy] in her journey to become a nurse, meeting so many people and creating an unimaginably huge impact not only on her patients, but everyone she met."

Rachael's childhood soccer coach Sandra Hansen told VICE Rachael was funny, friendly, and popular.

"She liked to goof around a lot and was a good player. She had also talked about wanting to travel and do lots of things with her life," Hansen said.

She noted that Christine's mental health had never come up, but said, "Chris was very helpful to the team and was always involved in the community activities. She was very friendly and kind."

Rachael's friend Danielle Bourque, who is co-organizing the vigil, told CBC losing her father cemented Rachael's desire to become a nurse. She even attended a clinical immediately after his death, Bourque said. 

"It just speaks to who she was as a person, that she showed up to clinical the next day when her father died." 

Tributes have been pouring in on Rachael's now memorialized Facebook page.

"You were one of my Mom's favorite home care nurses. Her heart is overcome with sadness over the news," wrote David Palfenier.

Her cover photo is her recent graduation proof from nursing school, while her last visible status is an update about her new job. But instead of "congratulations," the comments beneath mostly say "Rest in peace."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

It's normal to do a round-up of the big trends of the year. But 2016 wasn't a normal year, and while it did produce a load of new phenomena, trends and crazes, it also had a tendency to kill them off within minutes of their coming into existence. Not since junior school have fads been so transient, new heroes so quickly out of vogue. As such, here are all the things that happened in 2016, and then very quickly stopped happening.

January: Oh my god, Serial's got a second season!

Now: I feel like the guy's name was Bo something?

Casey Fiesler via Flickr

The most sucessful podcast of all time returned at the end of last year, and people were hyped. Serial's suspenseful first season, full of cliffhangers and real crime, had raised expectations. But the story in this season, of Bowe Bergdahl's desertion in Afghanistan, was already widely known, and while the journalism Koenig and her team did was thorough and thoughtful, it was also super boring. Show me anyone who made it to the last episode, and I will show you a liar.

January: Jack Garratt is the Sound of 2016 and Brits Critics' Choice

Now: No one in Britain can name a Jack Garratt song

Jack Garrat

At the start of the year Jack Garratt was heralded as the great new hope of British music, winning the BBC Sound poll and the Brits Critics; Choice award, effectively doing the music industry "double" when it comes to big music tips. People felt certain about him because he was a bit soul-y and a bit electronic-y, but then his debut (and only) single peaked at number 67 and his album dropped out of the charts after a month.

He wasn't the only one, though – other big tips like Izzy Bizu and Frances also had very poor commercial performances this year, suggesting that basically no one in the music industry or music press has any idea what they're talking about.

February: Britain gets a new newspaper. Print is saved!

Now: Britain lost two newspapers. Print is dead!

New Day/Trinity Mirror

In February, the publishers behind the Mirror announced they were launching a new newspaper – not like those other stinking newspapers with all their gloom and reality; this was going to be a good newspaper that gave people what they wanted: a break from all that bad news, just the nice stuff – a New Day! Except it turned out this wasn't what they wanted and, after a huge TV ad and marketing campaign, circulation fell continually. The paper folded in May, joining The Independent, which also went online only this year.

May: Leicester City is the most successful team in Britain

Now: Leicester City isn't even the most successful football team in Leicester

Peter Woodentop via Wikicommons

In a normal year, we'd probably all still be talking about Leicester's 5000-1 Premier League triumph. In the spring, it seemed physically impossible for them to lose a game, eking out victories over opponents big and small. Flash forward to now and they're stuck between Burnley and Middlesborough, 15th in the league. At this point they could learn a thing or two from Leicester Road, the amateur team round the corner from the club. They're currently first in Division One of the Midland Football League.

July: Pokemon Go was going to move us into a new era of augmented reality.

Now: Pokemon Go is a thing you deleted off your phone some time ago

Pokemon Go

Remember the news stories? Pokemon Go wasn't just an iPhone game, it was a world event: people were getting run over, robbed, leaving the house for the first time, overcoming their agoraphobia. Everyone was talking about this being the video game to change everything, to turn the world into a kind of Tron-like megaplex where everything you saw and touched could win you points. And then? Well, the gameplay was clunky and rinsed all your battery, and within three weeks Pokemon returned to being a thing for adult nerds who haven't fully processed some kind of childhood trauma.

October: Ken Bone is the one good thing about the US election

Now: Ken Bone is weird dude

C-Span grab

During the US election, as a brief respite from the normalisation and eventual election of a misogynistic, racist demagogue hell bent on dragging America back several decades, everyone on the internet got rather excited about Ken Bone, a member of the public who asked a question at one of the debates. They liked him because he was squidgy and wore a silly red jumper. After the debate the world went Ken Bone crazy – there was a "sexy" Ken Bone Halloween costume, he was offered a role in a porno, Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers even inquired whether he was single. Hahaha, what fun.

It was all going so well until Bone did a Reddit AMA and users dug up his Reddit history – where he said the killing of Trayvon Martin was "legally justified", admitted to looking at the leaked photos of Jennifer Lawrence and called pregnant women "beautiful human submarines" in a subreddit called "PreggoPorn". Suddenly cuddly Ken turned into just another flawed human and was left to hang.

Tough break, but as we were reminded in 2016: that's life. You're riding high in April, shot down in May (or in Ken's case, riding high in October, shot down in October).

@samwolfson

More on VICE:

The VICE UK Podcast: Christmas Special

The Politics of Style in 2016

Here's Every Present You're Going to Get This Christmas

Since summer of this year, the number of people in the UK googling "xanax" has almost doubled. Overall, 2016 saw more searches for "anxiety" from British IP addresses than ever before. On YouTube, over 350,000 anxiety-related videos have been uploaded this month alone.

In the real world, fewer musicians used the age-old excuse of "exhaustion" when cancelling their tours; instead, the likes of Zayn Malik and Selena Gomez openly shared the fact it was anxiety that prevented them from continuing. And those tour-stunted artists who did use "exhaustion" as a vague pretext were mostly subject to Twitter diagnosing them with mental illness anyway.

Then there were the headlines: one in six adults in the UK has a common mental disorder like anxiety – a number that rises to one in five among young women. Worse yet, more than one in three teen girls is suffering from anxiety or depression. And the general public has noticed, or been helped to notice: in the recent VICELAND UK Census, 81 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds said they think that mental health coverage in the media has increased in the past year.

Even if all that has passed you by, you'll have noticed that, in 2016, it's become much more socially acceptable to say you have anxiety IRL – especially when compared to other mental health issues, like depression – and even more so online.

Anxiety thrives at the convergence of powerlessness and uncertainty, and 2016 served us a large dose of both of those, while social media and the 24-hour news cycle made it difficult to take a break from significant and particularly anxiety-inducing world events.

Just after the EU referendum, Eleanor Morgan wrote how the leave vote might affect young people with anxiety disorders. During the US presidential campaign, women who'd been victims of sexual assault watched the Republican candidate – and now president-elect – brag about sexually assaulting women. Before the US election, 52 percent of Americans reported that it was a "very or somewhat significant source of stress" in a poll conducted by the American Psychological Association.

Therapists were worried about the effects a Trump presidency would have on the mental health of women and minorities. Since he won those fears have become very real, with access to contraception and abortion potentially restricted, and the racism his campaign tapped into normalised and the people who preach it emboldened. It's a similar story in the UK; this year, NSPCC Childline had a 35 percent increase on 2014-5 when it came to calls related to anxiety, with an average of 36 a day. Many of these were tied to world events such as Brexit, Trump and the conflict in Syria. Even Mumsnet had a post-Brexit anxiety thread.

Online, in both niche and mainstream spaces, anxiety became the most relatable joke: both the set-up and the punchline. The meta-ironic tone started pre-2016 with Twitter accounts like So Sad Today – who kickstarted the miserable one-liners about panic attacks and anxious self-loathing – and joke anxiety Twitter accounts, but was fully adopted across social media and Twitter in particular this year.

You don't have to be an LA-based Vine comedian to tweet a weak "me/also me" anxiety opus and get 1,500 retweets, just a young media type with a blue tick. And you don't need to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder to retweet; you just require the ability to laugh and nod your head in recognition of the vague sense of unease that pervades your life. Are you anxious? Probably.

Illustrators on Instagram – like @rubyetc and @filthyratbag, who both became hugely popular for their artwork putting poor mental health at the centre of the young person's experience – are launching art careers off the back of depictions of personal anxiety. Memes have followed. Anxiety and depression starter packs; evil Kermit memes; the bingo boards of symptoms – they've all shown that no mental health issue is so complex that it can't be analysed succinctly, reduced to a meme and shared by thousands who relate.

How we talk about mental health on social media has changed. The word anxiety is followed by a lol; the discussion of its symptoms ends with an implied crying laughing emoji. This tone and format has come out of a frustration – particularly felt by young women, people of colour and minority groups – that their anxiety is not being acknowledged, and their experiences going untold in mainstream mental health narratives.

Is all this irony detrimental? Does it help to see your existential fear reflected back at you in weak memes and tweets, or does it make you wallow? Does it – and this is very likely – make you apply a veil of irony to your own mental health in a way that could be read as positive or negative? In my experience, it's a relief to see other people feeling the way you do. A relief to be able to laugh at what burdens you.

@hannahrosewens

More on anxiety:

Why We Need to Stop Saying We're All Mental

How Young People Feel About Mental Health

Should You Tell Work About Your Mental Health Condition?

US News

Obama to Announce Retaliation Against Russia
President Barack Obama is expected to outline retaliatory moves against Russia for interference during the recent US presidential election, possibly as soon as today. Measures reportedly include expanded sanctions and the naming of individuals behind the effort to use hacked Democratic National Committee emails to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign. -CNN

John Kerry Condemns Israeli Settlements as Threat to Peace
Secretary of State John Kerry has offered his harshest criticism yet of close US ally Israel, calling settlement building in the Palestinian territories "a threat to peace." Kerry warned that "the settler agenda is defining the future in Israel." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Kerry's remarks a "deep disappointment." –The New York Times/VICE News

Chicago Cops to Get Body-Cameras in 2017
All police officers in Chicago will be wearing body-cameras by the end of 2017, said the city's mayor Rahm Emanuel. Chicago cops were slated to get the cameras in 2018, but the rollout has moved up a year as a way to improve the department's image with the community. A series of controversial shootings and misconduct incidents have heigtened tensions between the department and the city's black population especially. –Reuters

Trans Boy Asked to Leave Cub Scouts
Joe Maldonado, an eight-year-old boy from New Jersey, said he was asked the leave his local Cub Scout troop because of his trans status. "I'm way more angry than sad," he told a local paper. "I would let every person in the world go in. It's right to do." The Boy Scouts of America said the Cub Scouts program is only for those listed as male on their birth certificate. -AP

International News

Putin Announces Ceasefire Deal for Syria
Russian President Vladimir Putin said a nationwide ceasefire deal, beginning at midnight Thursday, has been reached with rebel groups in Syria. Syria's state news agency said the deal did not include ISIS or the Islamist group formerly known as al-Nusra Front. Putin said the ceasefire would lead to talks between Bashar al-Assad's government and rebel representatives to be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. –Al Jazeera

Duterte Threatens to Throw Officials Out of Helicopters
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte claimed to have thrown a Chinese man accused of rape and murder out of a helicopter midair, and threatened to treat corrupt officials the same way. "I have done this before, why would I not do it again?" Duterte later waffled when asked if he had really done that, saying, "If that is true, I will not admit it." Duterte has launched a nationwide campaign of violence against drug users and suspected drug dealers, with many killed without a trial. -Reuters

50 Dead Following Floods in the DRC
At least 50 people have been killed after the Kalamu River flooded in the city of Boma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The result of torrential rain pushing waters two meters above normal levels, the flood left thousands homeless after their houses were destroyed. –BBC News

German Police Detain Man Connected to Anis Amri
German police raided the Berlin home and workplace of a 40-year-old Tunisian man who is being questioned about his ties with Anis Amri, the man who drove a truck into a Christmas market and killed 12 people. Police discovered the 40-year-old man's number on Amri's cellphone, and prosecutors said "further investigations indicate that he may have been involved in the attack." The authorities will decide by the end of today whether to arrest him. –The Guardian

Everything Else

Debbie Reynolds Dies
Actress Debbie Reynolds has died at the age of 84 following a severe stroke, just one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher. Reynold's son Todd Fisher said his sister's death had been "too much" for her. "She's with Carrie," he said. –The Hollywood Reporter

Obama Protects Desert Land
President Obama has designated two new national monuments: Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada, making 1.65 million acres federally protected. Obama said this move would safeguard "lands considered sacred by Native American Tribes." –CBS News

"Games of Thrones" Most Illegally-Watched Show of 2016
For the fifth successive year, HBO's Game of Thrones was illegally downloaded more times than any other TV show, according to BitTorrent data. The Walking Dead came in second place, followed by Westworld. -TorrentFreak

George Michael Documentary Set for March Release
George Michael was working on a film called Freedom before his death, a documentary about the making of his second album set to air in the US and UK in March 2017. Narrated by the singer, it also features interviews with Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and Tony Bennett. –Noisey

Security Experts Warn 2020 Election Could Be Hacked
Leading computer experts at the Chaos Communication Congress, a gathering of hackers, have called for a complete overhaul in US voting machine security lest the machines be targeted directly. "Even if the 2016 election wasn't hacked, the 2020 election might well be," warned professor J. Alex Halderman. –Motherboard

Faulty Christmas Toy Asks Kids to "Fuck Me"
A British Columbia couple who bought their six-year-old son a Hatchimal for Christmas discovered the toy repeatedly said "Fuck me." Other parents who bought the popular toy noticed the fault and uploaded videos to YouTube. Manufacturer Spin Master was forced to "sincerely apologize" for the defect in some toys. -VICE