One moment you're cruising to a halt at a red light; the next, being pulled roughly out of your vehicle by an armed man in a mask. It's every driver's nightmare and the crime that helped Grand Theft Auto become a multi-billion dollar franchise: carjacking.

There are endless depictions of carjacking in popular culture, perhaps tied to the role that the automobile occupies in the American psyche. Certain places like Los Angeles, New Jersey or Detroit are notorious for it, with some incidents linked to organized crime rings who will steal to order and arrange international shipments for their discerning (if unscrupulous) foreign customers.

But the vehicles we drive are changing, as is the way we drive them. As a world of widespread autonomous vehicles moves from the realm of science fiction into near-future possibility, it's important to consider how vehicle crime will change, and how the benefits from the elimination of certain categories of crime linked to vehicles—drunk driving, for example—could be tempered by the growth of other types.

When parked, advances in security have made modern cars far more difficult to steal than used to be the case. But if a thief can stop a car with the driver in it, say by bumping it deliberately with another car, creating a distraction or blocking the road with some kind of physical barrier, immobilizing technology is made irrelevant by having access to the ignition keys and an unlocked vehicle.

Read more on Motherboard

Members of boy bands have historically never been able to present any image other than one of extreme health, hygiene and togetherness. In a way, it's quite a Faustian trade-off. A name is signed on a letter-headed piece of paper from one of the big management companies – where, it can be presupposed, everything from skin-care regimes, apologetic coiffures and the authenticity of a personality are placed in control of suited moneymen – and in return some innocent lad from a market town or a bakery is promised access to unrivalled riches, first-class air travel, unlimited glass bottles of sparkling water and international fame.

From Westlife to Boyzone to JLS to One Direction, Britain's most popular boy band members have rarely strayed too far from a script that adheres to complete and utter wholesomeness in the eyes of the common high-street consumer.

Thus, Robbie Williams sits in a league of his own. Like those aforementioned pop stars, he too has enjoyed placing his buttocks on the comforting leather of a private jet and amassed a fortune to the sum of £145 million, but he's done so in a way that's refused to play by the rules of how record labels expect their pop stars to act. He once released an (admittedly unforgivingly bad) song called "Dickhead"; another time he trundled around Glastonbury with a haircut that can only be best described as a substance-fuelled reinterpretation of Sick Boy in Trainspotting while also missing one of his front teeth.

Read the rest over on Noisey.

(Illustration: Ella Strickland de Souza)

When police shot Yassar Yaqub dead in the passenger seat of an Audi on the M62 in Yorkshire earlier this year, rumour quickly surfaced that he was a player in the local drug trade.

Police had stopped the car, driven by Yaqub's friend, after receiving a tip-off that one of its occupants was in possession of a pistol, later found in the passenger footwell. Yaqub claimed to be a car dealer, but a former "associate" told reporters soon after the shooting that the 28-year-old father of two was a feared crack and heroin dealer. In 2010, Yaqub was acquitted of attempted murder. In 2015 he was treated for shotgun wounds after being ambushed by two hooded gunmen, an incident which prompted him to cover his outside walls in CCTV cameras.

After the shooting, groups of young Pakistani men took to the streets of nearby Bradford to protest at what some branded an "assassination". His funeral took place at the family's local mosque in Huddersfield, and Yaqub's grieving father denied his son was a criminal. Comparisons were made to the case of Mark Duggan, an alleged gang member shot and killed by police while in possession of a gun in a taxi in north London in 2011, whose death led to an unprecedented spate of rioting.

Whatever the truth about Yaqub's involvement in the drug trade and why the police felt they needed to kill him, what is not open to question is the significant role played by British Pakistanis in the drug business in this part of England.

Earlier this month, 35 criminals linked to a Bradford-based drug network caught smuggling heroin into the UK from Pakistan in the lids of pens were jailed for almost 200 years. Last year a West Yorkshire-based British Pakistani gang were jailed after shipping heroin from Pakistan concealed in boxes of tables. In 2014, Mohammed Azam Yaqoob – a millionaire from Dewsbury known as "Mr Sparkles" because of his carwash business – was jailed for nine years for his involvement in a drug smuggling ring. The list goes on, with heroin destined for West Yorkshire from Pakistan seized in everything from Afghan rugs to baby powder and chapatti ovens.

Drug conviction data obtained by a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Justice by VICE reveals that, in Yorkshire and Humberside, more British-Pakistanis (12) were convicted for importing class A drugs into the UK over 2013 and 2014 than white British people (11). At distribution level – while not sole traders in the region's drug market, as some tabloids would have it – British-Pakistani dealers are a major presence in areas such as Bradford, Leeds and Huddersfield. They accounted for a fifth (211) of the 1,058 people convicted for class A drug dealing in Yorkshire and Humberside in 2013 and 2014: four times that of British-Caribbeans (51) and almost half the number of white British dealers, despite British-Pakistanis only making up 4.3 percent of the region's population.

So the question arises: why are such a large number of young men from religiously and culturally conservative Pakistani communities choosing to earn a crust in the distinctly un-Islamic crack and heroin underworld?

Yassar Yaqub, who claimed to be a car salesman – and whose father insisted he wasn't a criminal – but was alleged to be a drug dealer.

Up until now, Britain's Asian drug scene has been little understood. There is no Dewsbury version of Top Boy. But in 2010, criminologist Mo Ali Qasim began a four year project in which he hung out with a close-knit group of young Pakistani Muslim drug dealers in Manningham, a deprived suburb of Bradford.

It is an area, according to Qasim, of "decayed grandeur, disappointed hopes and ever deepening despair". He grew up playing cricket and football with some of the boys, which is why they took him into their inner circle. Qasim, who is writing a book on West Yorkshire's drug trade, wanted to find out what had driven this generation away from the kind of careers their parents followed and into drug selling. How do these young men square their class A drug selling with a religious faith that shuns the use and sale of drugs and demands severe punishments for the crimes they are committing?

Most of the gang moved onto selling crack and heroin at a young age, tutored by older dealers. They did so for the same reason most young people start dealing: as a way of escaping poverty and earning money; locked out of a mainstream economy by a bad education, criminal records and increasingly high unemployment. As it is with young black people, young British-Pakistanis experience a far higher unemployment rate (45 percent) than young white people (19 percent). Joblessness not only breeds addiction, but drug dealing. The boys told Qasim their employment prospects had worsened due to an increase in the negative portrayal of Muslims as Britain's "enemy within" in the media, a factor that also resulted in a rise in police harassment.

Not only did they feel alienated from British society, but some of them felt dislocated from their own parents and previous generations of British-Pakistanis. They had little respect for "back home", seeing Pakistan as corrupt and a place where they were seen as virtual Westerners. They found traditions such as week-long weddings and funerals a drag. It was this outsider mentality, cut adrift from the ties that bound their parents, which made drug dealing a more acceptable way of getting out of a tight economic spot.

While working in factories, corner shops and takeaways was good enough for their parents and cousins, to them these jobs were dead-end and degrading. Instead they aspired to lavish lifestyles, wanting to drive sports cars and wear expensive clothes and jewellery. And selling drugs was the quickest way of doing this.

Their drug selling businesses not only came to the attention of police – the boys were in and out of jail – but the local imams. When they turned up to pray at mosque sometimes their imam would try to deter them in speeches. One time, with the boys at the back of the prayer hall, he told worshippers: "I see brothers using drugs, selling drugs like they are doing nothing wrong. They forget that they are haram, and I swear to you that the money that they are making will not benefit them on the day when they will stand in front of their lord. Trust me, on that day they will plead and ask Allah to forgive them, but no, it will be too late." The imam advised them to attend a talk in a nearby mosque entitled "Do you want to be a bad boy?"

Although alcohol is strictly prohibited under Islam, most of the guys drank it, and some were heavy drinkers. But while they were happy to become involved in drug dealing and taking, in other respects, Qasim saw, they were religiously strict. For example, none of them would touch meat that was not halal, let alone pork. He also noticed that jail time usually strengthened their faith. However, this heightened faith was more likely to lead to them insisting on their sisters wearing hijabs, rather than preclude them from selling drugs.

"They drank alcohol, slept around with girls and were involved with the consumption and sale of drugs," says Qasim. "But the boys considered Islamic faith to be imperative. They were selective as to which of Islam's teachings they adhered to and which they did not want to adhere to. It could be argued that faith was a coping strategy in difficult times."

(Left to right) Nisar Khan, Asim Jhangir and Muzhar Ahmed, three of the = men jailed this year for their involvement in a Bradford-based drug network caught smuggling heroin into the UK from Pakistan.

Essentially, these young drug dealers have adapted the way they follow their faith to suit the situation in which they have found themselves. They are anchored by their religion and family loyalty, but have made up their own rules, where selling drugs is acceptable, because it is the only way they know of providing three essentials for life: money, solidarity and status.

In the drug world, sellers with good connections to the source of a product have a head start against their rivals. Crack selling became a natural money-spinner for British-Jamaican criminals in the 1990s, partly because much of the cocaine smuggled into the UK then came via Jamaica. A similar dynamic applied to Colombian criminals in Britain, for obvious reasons, and north London's Turkish gangs, whose homeland has always been a key waypoint in the trafficking of heroin from Afghanistan into Europe.

The evidence from the courts show that British-Pakistani criminals have for decades taken advantage of their connections back home in order to smuggle heroin into the UK, and it is natural for this to have trickled down to street sellers and money launderers from within the Pakistani community. Nevertheless, as the British drug market has become more of a free-for-all – a vast network of firms with myriad specialisms – ethnic ties have become less important than they were.

Although Qasim's dealers did not discuss their supply in much detail, he was told that importation was down to an older generation, and that the boys sourced their drugs from "Turkish connections down south". The cocaine seemed to be supplied from Liverpool.

West Yorkshire's Pakistani drug dealers are part of the vast tapestry that makes up the British drug trade. Every wave of immigrants who have settled in Britain over the centuries – the Irish, the Huguenots, the Jews, the Jamaicans, the Indians, the Pakistanis and Eastern Europeans – have in some cases had to rely on the criminal underworld to get by. But as government figures for drug dealing, drug production and importing convictions show, the role of ethnic minorities is still dwarfed by that of white British people.

Qasim said that the boys, although sometimes violent, were essentially good people who would thrive if given the chance in mainstream society.

"Though stigmatised and regarded as outcasts by mainstream society," Qasim concludes, "the boys demonstrated many outstanding qualities: not just entrepreneurial skills but intense, if fractious, loyalty, a strong sense of duty to family and a strong, if eclectic, moral code. In many ways the boys are admirable though their good qualities, [which] are rarely visible to themselves and even less often visible to the outside world."

Qasim's book 'Young, Muslim and Criminal' will be published by Policy Press later this year.

@Narcomania

Protesting is so hot right now. It seems as if every week there's a new fundamental human right being trampled, demanding a flood of opposition storming the streets. The Women's March was a shining example of peaceful resistance in action, as somewhere between 3 to 4 million people around the world gathered to protest Donald Trump.

As diverse as the crowds at these marches were, the signage was even more varied and colorful. Some of the signs being waved by protesters were beautiful enough that they could easily hold their own on any art gallery wall. Other signs relied on caustic and razor-sharp humor to get their point across. Some signs, on the other hand, could benefit from a second pass.

As demonstrations are likely to remain popular activities for the next few years—or at least as long as George Soros keeps paying for everyone to attend them—there's a chance you'll find yourself participating in one at some point or another, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum. Before you put on your pink pussy hat and join the throngs of people, it might behoove you to learn some best practices.

With tips like "add glitter" or "decide in advance what your sign will say," the WikiHow for making protest signs treats the endeavor a bit too much like a rainy-day arts and crafts project. The most helpful takeaway from the WikiHow is the suggestion of using hollow cardboard tubing for your sign's handle as wood sticks are "not permitted in many cities." I reached out to experts in the fields of activism, design, and comedy for advice on how to make a sign that isn't yet another cluttered, unfunny, and ineffective mess.

Artist Gabby Gonzales immediately swatted down some of the WikiHow's suggestions, cautioning against adding too much busyness and pizazz to your sign, telling me that "everyone likes glitter and fun fonts, but, in a protest setting, it might not always be the most appropriate."

She also indicated that the WikiHow's raw material suggestions of cardboard and poster board were a tad naïve. Foam-core boards are what the pro-protestors use for both their rigidity and light weight.

Illustration courtesy of Jessica De Jesus

Creative director Jessica De Jesus explained how the visual philosophies that guide professional designers can be applied to sign creation. "I've found that text-based posters had the most impact with a limited color palette," said De Jesus. "That said, a general rule you can follow is that your main text should always be well-contrasted against its background, even if that background is full of color."

She also notes that unsung heroes like kerning play a far greater role than most realize in effectively communicating a message from across a crowd. If someone can't read your sign because you ran out of space and smushed a bunch of letters together, you might as well not be holding a sign at all.

"Do a readability check by walking a fair distance away from your poster. Can you still read it, or did you have to squint?" said De Jesus.

Photo courtesy of Jessica De Jesus

De Jesus encourages experimenting with mixed media so that your sign's message will both literally and figuratively pop off the poster and stick in people's minds. "There's nothing like a flaming red, 3D bush bursting from a 2D drawing of women's underwear to stop strangers in their tracks to applaud you and make everyone's day just a little brighter," she said.

Photo courtesy of Corinna Loo

Graphic designer Corinna Loo echoed De Jesus's sentiments about limited color palates, weighting certain words, and the importance of contrast, but also made it clear that a sign-making endeavor doesn't require a trip to Michael's.

"Get creative with what you have available," said Loo. "For example, the neon-pink tape that held my [above] sign together also added color. And if you don't have enough time to paint a sign, you can type one up in word and tile your poster so that it prints on [letter] paper. That way you can print something huge at home."

Now that we've covered aesthetics and your sign isn't going to make everyone's eyes bleed, let's move on to messaging. Whether attempting to tug at heartstrings, tickle a funny bone, deliver a gut punch, or target some other piece of anatomy, there are dos and don'ts to keep in mind when planning your words.

Hillary Rettig, author of the book The Lifelong Activist, has been protesting since the 60s and, in accordance with her book's title is politically engaged to this day. She told me that those wishing to take a no-nonsense approach with their sign's messaging should keep things succinct—seven words or fewer—for maximum effectiveness.

"Recall one of the most successful political signs of the past few decades," said Rettig. "Shepard Fairey's Obama poster contained only a single word: Hope."

Rettig said that marrying concrete and specific examples with that brevity, like "Obamacare saved my life," adds more personal and emotional weight to a sign than the similar idea of "women for Obamacare."

As we live in a world completely saturated with pop culture, Rettig encourages those who subscribe to a particular fandom to "let their geek flag fly" and drop references in their signs. Dropping nerd shibboleths like "Trump is a Dalek" announces one's belonging to a particular tribe and subconsciously encourage those who would regard themselves as members of the same group to get onboard with the sign's stance.

Whatever you choose to write, Rettig recommends googling or having a friend review it before you take it to the streets, lest you unintentionally say something offensive or suggestive.

On the other hand, maybe you're going for suggestive. Maybe you're going to change hearts and minds with the power of humor. What do people who are actually paid to be funny for a living have to say on the matter of protest sign comedy?

Writer and comedian Lauren Brown found one of her popular tweets (above) being used on signage in the recent Women's March protests. She was flattered to discover that her words were appreciated enough to be transferred to poster board, and she imagines that most other comedians would share her opinion, as protests are typically well-meaning efforts. In a post–Fat Jew era, where comedic attribution is under more scrutiny than ever, Brown feels signs are a forgivable exception for minor comedic plagiarism.

"Using my words for a protest sign when you're fighting for a good cause is cool," she said. "It's totally different than if somebody was stealing a joke from me for their own comedy."

Brown noted that whether you attempt your own comedy, borrow someone else's, or just doodle a uterus on a piece of cardboard, one's participation in the protest is the factor that trumps all others in the equation.

"Making a sign and showing up to a protest is an act of saying that you matter and your voice should be heard. I don't think it matters if it's funny or original or not, it just matters that you're there saying it."

Fellow stand-up Emily Heller agreed with Brown's thoughts that nobody should be discouraged from participation and all comedy, even bad comedy, should be welcomed at a protest.

"A lot of protest signs succumb to dad-level jokes, but the fact is, dads love dad jokes, and I want dads at protests," said Heller. "And I don't know about you, but my dad fucking hates Trump and he could use some exercise, so let's not discourage anyone who wants to carry a 'WE SHALL OVERCOMB' sign or whatever. They say it takes seven years to find your voice in comedy. Let's hope this administration doesn't last long enough for any of us to master cardboard."

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

At the end of her new book, Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism, the journalist L.A. Kauffman notes that she "experienced a good deal of the history recounted here first-hand." For nearly four decades, Kauffman has participated in anti-apartheid rallies, ACT UP actions, dyke marches, Earth First! "backwoods encampments," direct actions against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and massive anti-Iraq War protests in the early 2000s. "I've been an activist, and immersed in multiple worlds of American radicalism, since 1980," she writes. "My first protest arrest was in 1992, and I've planned or taken part in more direct actions than I can count."

That hands-on experience, combined with exhaustive research, lends authority to this wide-ranging survey of protests, tactics, ambitions, disputes, victories, and setbacks on the left in the last 45 years. Readers are taken behind the scenes of the "largest and most audacious direct action in US history" (the Mayday anti-Vietnam War protests of 1971), learn about the 1987 protester who lost his legs while blocking a train loaded with munitions headed for Central America, trace the origins of now-familiar phrases like "intersectionality" and "identity politics," and hear analysis of why the mass protests at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle worked so "smoothly and brilliantly." If direct action is "a laboratory for political experimentation and innovation," as Kauffman argues in the introduction, then this is the lab report. And it couldn't have been released at a better and more timely moment. I recently spoke on the phone with Kauffman about what direct action is, why protest matters, and how her work applies to the era of President Donald Trump.

L.A. Kauffman. Photo courtesy of Verso

VICE: How do you define "direct action"?
L.A. Kauffman: There's not a single consensus on what direct action is. I tend to define it as any form of organizing or activism that's outside the authorized channels of participation in our government. So voting would be the most classic form of authorized participation. And any form of protest, whether it be a simple rally or all the way to a lockdown blockade where people have embedded themselves into lockdown devices and are blocking a bulldozer—I see a huge spectrum covered by direction action.

You can get into a lot of semantics, like, "Is a march where there's a permit from the authorities direct action, or is that an authorized form of protest?" For some people, direct action is very narrowly defined as something that immediately stops an injustice in its tracks. So direct action would be blocking a bulldozer, but it wouldn't be holding a protest outside the office of the representative who voted for the pipeline.

I'm interested in a more expansive view [and] interested in more inclusive and expansive movements. I don't like to define what we're doing so narrowly that only a privileged few who can take great risks can be involved.

Your book ends with Ferguson and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. If you were to write a chapter on the Trump-related resistance, what might you say?
When Reagan took office in 1980, it came after a period of decline on the left. And the contrast with this new president is that he took office after years of rising activism, starting with Occupy Wall Street and the many groups that kind of spun off from the energy of Occupy, including Black Lives Matter [and] the Standing Rock Sioux and the pipeline protests. So what I'm struck by is how much the character of the resistance is shaped by what came before. You have a movement of movements; it's a model of decentralized, networked resistance where there's no single leader or single handful of organizations that people would point to as being primary. There are many, many different groups, and many, many different networks... that are working together and relating to each other in ways that people might not always realize.

For example, when you think about the airport protests [in opposition to the executive orders on immigration and Syrian refugees]. The New York Times said they "came out of nowhere." Wiser reporters reported that there were immigrant rights groups that had been around for a long time that organized them, and called them, and activated their text-messaging loops and so forth. But very few people realized for instance that Black Lives Matter was heavily involved in those protests and mobilized its own network. The Dakota Access pipeline protest networks were mobilized and involved. So there are these many, many different centers of organizing, but it's like a web of resistance.

"People need to think about this as a long-term process and not burn out in the short run."

What are some dos and don'ts that organizers should consider going forward?
There's a way in which people can burn themselves out with activism that's purely expressive, where you're essentially just outside buildings yelling, "No!" And there is a quality to that now where, because we're kind of reeling from crisis to crisis as people are trying to respond to the various actions of the current administration, there's a risk of burnout in keeping the volume of resistance and opposition high, at this fever pitch. So I would certainly give the advice that people need to think about this as a long-term process and not burn out in the short run.

On the other hand, I applaud the fact that there's been enough energy for people to essentially have contributed to the Trump administration being in a state of crisis ever since the inauguration. The basic move of direct action is to create a crisis for decision makers, whoever they are and whatever case and whatever circumstance you're dealing with. And creating a crisis isn't the same thing as, for instance, thinking about how to retake Congress in 2018 or 2010, right? Those are different projects. But right now there's no question that, in creating a crisis for the Trump administration, the resistance movements have already had effects beyond what we can measure.

"The basic move of direct action is to create a crisis for decision makers. In creating a crisis for the Trump administration, the resistance movements have already had effects beyond what we can measure."

If somebody asked you, straight up, if direct action works, what do you say?
Yes. That doesn't mean that every single protest that people have ever organized works. Protests are like tools. There are a lot of different kinds of protests, and some work better for some jobs than for others, the same way that you wouldn't want to use a hammer when you really need a screwdriver. But, by and large, the most basic lesson that I take from looking at the history of grassroots movements is that movements that use bold protest tactics win more and succeed more than movements that don't [and] than movements that limit themselves to things like letter-writing campaigns or polite meetings with their legislator.

One of the most memorable parts of the book is when you describe how after the anti-Apartheid campaigns in America in the 1980s, particularly on college campuses, Nelson Mandela came here and delivered a speech in Oakland in which he said, essentially, "Thank you. You guys played a part in this." It's remarkable to read.
Yeah, it kind of puts chills down your spine. I mean, the ways that direct actions work or the way that protests work, you can't always see immediate cause and effect. You rarely have a case where the people who are organizing the protest are the same people who then will be in, to quote Hamilton, the "room where it happens," the room where the deal is cut and whatever arrangement is made to resolve the crisis. So these moments when there's clarity about that and it's acknowledged are extremely powerful. Because, a lot of times, the people who work out the deals and then claim victory are very different from the people who maybe put the issue on the agenda in the first place. That's part of what you do: You put an issue on the agenda that was on the back burner.

There is a passage in the middle of the book that felt particularly relevant to today. You write, "The activists of this post-60s generation were typically radicalized by the sense that their future was being foreclosed: by the threat of nuclear annihilation, ecological catastrophe, or government insolvency; by the erosion of abortion rights or the ravages of AIDS." Do you think that is, in a sense, a description of what's happening in 2017?
I do. And it's interesting. When I wrote that, I didn't necessarily think that's the way the world was going to look when the book came out. Like many of us, I assumed Hillary Clinton would be elected, and I thought the book would be coming out in a time when people were mobilizing and trying to push her to the left and achieve more on every issue. It's striking that the timing of this book—I read the final proof the day after the election.

And, yeah, the deep resonance of those experiences of dealing with marginalization and defeat over and over again, particularly in the Reagan years, just really hit me hard. That is so relevant now, and that sense of looming catastrophe is mobilizing people in a different way now than it [was], because I think the movements in that period that that passage sums up tended to be in the minority and see themselves in the minority. And a big difference now is I think that this broad, sprawling resistance, in some very fundamental way, represents the majority in this country now. There is simultaneously that sense of possible impending doom and catastrophe, along with the sense that millions and millions of people are with us.

"Movements that use bold protest tactics win more and succeed more than movements that don't."

What a mind-blowing idea, that the resistance can be the majority.
Yeah! That's kind of where we are though, right? Everybody's heard stories of places that are not Berkeley, California, or Brooklyn, where there has been a huge turnout of people to town hall meetings, and people are really angry, and they're being really forceful. There's a sense now of a lot of people who are much more liberal or moderate, who would not consider themselves as radicals of leftists or anything, in the landscape that I write about, who are embracing the broad legacy of nonviolent resistance movements right now out of urgency and desperation.

I was in DC for the inauguration, and there was a [memorable] moment on the 21st [at the Women's March]. I was with a couple of other very longtime organizers, and we had made our way through the crowds and finally gotten to a place in the middle of the mall and got up on top of something. And, between us, one or the other of us had attended all of the largest protests of the last 30 to 40 years. And we stood and we looked around, and there was this moment of realizing, This is a larger crowd than I have ever been in in my life. And I've been in some of the largest in US history. It was just startling.

Even as I talk about the many continuities, the influences I see from the organizing that came before, there's something happening now that is special and different and extraordinary. A lot of other organizers who I know are feeling this same mood now where, at the same time that we're terrified about what's coming down the pike, there's just an extraordinary sense of hope in how many people are stepping outside of their comfort zone—doing things that they've never done before; stretching themselves, politically, organizationally and tactically to fight for our basic rights and freedoms right now. So it's this terrifying and yet incredibly inspiring moment.

Follow Philip Eil on Twitter.

Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism by L.A. Kauffman is available in bookstores and online from Verso.

The Trump Administration revoked Obama-era guidance on Wednesday that sought to protect transgender students under Title IX, seemingly undoing what trans and civil rights advocates had seen as a victory on a major cultural and political battleground.

The departments of Justice and Education jointly rescinded the guidance laid out in 2016's so-called Dear Colleague letter, which was issued by those same departments last May. That letter provided "significant guidance"—in other words, it did not change or augment the language of any laws—in stating that transgender students were protected by Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding.

he decision to revoke the guidance was a contentious one. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, long an outspoken opponent of LGBTQ rights, butted heads with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over the issue, according to the New York Times. The guidance could not be revoked without DeVos's approval, and she was reportedly "uncomfortable" with signing off on it, citing the high rates of suicide among trans students.

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This story is part of VICE's ongoing look at how climate change will have altered the world by the year 2050. Read more about the project here.

By 2050, white Americans will likely be outnumbered by nonwhites. Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies will have succeeded or failed. A wall may or may not be straddling the US-Mexico border. But that will be small potatoes in light of the devastation climate change will have wrought on Latin America's ability to grow food and the migration that will result. Displaced by rising temperatures, millions of people will have only one logical direction to go: north.

"All other things being equal, if you change the climate to make it less favorable in Mexico, you're going to see more of an inclination to move to the United States," said Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton professor of geoscience and international affairs.

In 2003, the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment commissioned a report on the possible national security implications of abrupt climate change. The authors of the report, the futurists Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, made one particularly prescient prediction:

The United States and Australia are likely to build defensive fortresses around their countries because they have the resources and reserves to achieve self-sufficiency. With diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources, the United States could likely survive shortened growing cycles and harsh weather conditions without catastrophic losses. Borders will be strengthened around the country to hold back unwanted starving immigrants from the Caribbean islands (an especially severe problem), Mexico, and South America.

Trump is decidedly attempting to turn the US into a "fortress." But walls won't stop migrants made desperate by worsening conditions. Latin America is home to many farmers, a group that will be particularly affected by climate change. According to the CIA World Factbook, farmers make up 13.4 percent of Mexico's labor force, as well as 31.2 percent of Guatemala's and 27.8 percent of Ecuador's; by comparison, only 0.7 percent of the US population works in the agriculture sector. According to Columbia University's 2009 report on climate change and immigration, drier times are coming for Latin America. By 2080, it says that "runoff in the region will likely decline by at least 5 percent and possibly up to 50 percent, with declines getting progressively worse in the semiarid and arid north." Much of that dryness will have likely taken hold by 2050.

The precise, numerical relationship between migration and climate is still uncertain. Oppenheimer co-wrote a somewhat famous 2010 paper on the topic concluding that 1.4 to 6.7 million Mexican adults would have to relocate by 2080. The math in that paper received something of a pummeling from the peer-review process and in turn a healthy dose of scorn from the climate change denier community. But Oppenheimer published again in 2012, thanking the scientists who spotted the oversight, and arguing that when analysts observe crop yields, temperature change, and immigration data, they'll still see clear "evidence of a climate-migration relationship."

Watch a VICE News Tonight segment on Israel's controversial new settlements:

Others, like the sociologist Raphael J. Nawrotzki of the Minnesota Population Center, have tried to quantify the exact connection and came away hesitant to make a numerical forecast. Last year, Nawrotzki concluded that, among other problems, "data limitations prevented us to account for the influence of broader contextual factors (e.g., structural and institutional)." But like Oppenheimer, he cited "empirical evidence that in some countries, such as Mexico, adverse climate change may strongly increase international migration."

The broader point is that it's pretty safe to project that drier weather, along with the projected 0.8–2.6 Celsius degree global increase in temperature expected by 2050 according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will make farming a lot more difficult in Latin America (among many other places). And that, consequently, will cause people to pull up stakes and find more favorable conditions.

Does that mean they'll come flooding into the US? That's also a safe bet. "What we'll see in terms of migration is going to come about as a result of the US economy and US needs," said Lorenzo Cano of the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of Houston. As the Great Recession demonstrated, the pace of Latin American immigration is indeed tied to economic conditions in the US. According to Cano, "although short-distance, internal migration is a frequent response to environmental change, international migration is likely in the aftermath of droughts, particularly in places with well-established migratory traditions."

As migration to the US becomes more popular, the trip will get more dangerous. The prospect of passing through hundreds of miles of desert along migratory corridors like the one in the Pima Desert, between Nogales in Mexico and Tucson, gets deadlier when temperatures rise. At least 100 bodies get found in that area every year, and as cities like Phoenix turn into postapocalyptic nightmarescapes of unliveable heat, that number isn't likely to decrease.

Predicting this migration is relatively straightforward, but the political consequences of this movement of people are trickier to sort out. According to a Pew report from last year, Latinos are settling in places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania in record numbers, a trend that shook up locals in these previously relatively homogenous communities and ostensibly scared them into voting Trump, according to one hypothesis advanced in a New York Times article.

Meanwhile, climate patterns in 2050 could devastate agriculture in places like California, making the move from Latin America to some parts of the US less appealing. As a 2016 article in Pacific Standard by Jeremy Miller pointed out, the drought in California has decimated the region's agriculture sector for the past few years, driving migrant laborers into the Pacific Northwest. "Would the Oregon state line become like the US-Mexico border?" Miller wondered.

Still, according to Oppenheimer, immigration isn't all about the US being awesome. The US will also just be an escape. "You have to remember that one of the functions of migration across the US border is to relieve the social pressure in Mexico," he told me.

Currently, a great number of companies—including some owned by Trump—take advantage of the H-2B visa program, which brings unskilled guest workers to enter the US to do jobs Americans are unwilling or unable to do. The Republicans who are in charge of the US government seem prepared to scale back this program, but even if it remains robust until 2050, there will likely be lots of Latin Americans who won't be allowed to legally enter the US, creating political problems south of the border.

"If Mexicans are not allowed to come here," Cano told me, "the unrest in Oaxaca, Mexico City, and other places is going to crystallize into a much more radical movement. It will be much more populist and much more left of center than what we've seen in Mexico."

Throughout history, outbreaks of violence in Mexico have driven refugees over the border legally as well—including a flood of refugees from the drug wars. The War of Independence in the early 20th century resulted in political immigration, Cano told me, "including my grandparents who came here to get away from the fighting."

But undocumented workers are generally not looking for a new home. According to Cano, "for the most part, people have come, and then they have returned." Often migrant laborers show up when there's opportunity and slip back into their home country when the time is right. One side effect of building a wall, Cano said, is that "now they're just staying because of border enforcement."

But if they need to eat and faming in their homeland is no longer possible, as Cano told me, "You can't stop them."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Follow illustrator Corey Brickley on Instagram.

We're just three months away from the federal Conservatives selecting the leader who will take them up against Justin Trudeau in 2019. Like the rest of the world, the federal Tories are trying to figure out how to deal with resurgent right-wing populism.

Many of them are leaning into it more or less full tilt; most candidates are against M-103 and a few of them have already sold their souls to The Rebel by appearing at their hate-in earlier this month in Toronto. They generally skew wary of immigrants and several of them are clambering over one another to choke, castrate, and/or murder the CBC. A few have also broached scrapping the federal Indian Act, which is not as outrageous as it sounds—almost everyone acknowledges it's a racist mess of a law—but no one has offered much in the way of what would replace or improve it.

With a crowded field and no clear favourite to win, most of the contest so far has been a protracted battle between the different sub-cultures that live together under the Big Blue Tent. What defines conservatism in Canada? Is it a commitment to the free market, or big business? Ambiguously defined 'Canadian Values'? Parliamentary democracy? The rule of law? The rule of God's Law? (Jesus, I mean. Not Allah, obviously.) Or maybe a little bit of everything?

There are still 14 candidates for some reason. I have no idea why, but here we are. With so many candidates all in such broad agreement with each other, how does each candidate stand out from the other nobodies on stage? I dug through their policy statements to find out what big ideas really set everybody apart.

Chris Alexander

Chris Alexander is all over the place. He wants to take in a ton of new immigrants and refugees, but also took the time out of his busy schedule to chant "lock her up!" at Alberta premier Rachel Notley. He is sorry about the 2015 Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline but also railed against Islam at Ezra's latest publicity stunt in Toronto. Where are you going with this, Chris? The "voice of reason" space is already occupied and so is being the spokesperson for InfoWars North. Just be yourself and emphasize your fun policies, like liberating Cuba, acquiring fat stacks of nuclear-powered Arctic submarines, and starting World War 3 in Syria.

Maxime Bernier

Maxime Bernier is the cool candidate. He's into libertarianism and compromising national security by having sex with bikers. He knows what the kids want: free markets, legal weed, bad memes, and two-tiered healthcare. Nothing will motivate debt-saddled Millennials to succeed in life like creating a country where the poor die in hospital waiting-rooms while that asshole from your Business Communications class with the rich dad injects CRISPR into his dick for fun and profit.

Steven Blaney
If you think Kellie Leitch is too soft on creeping Sharia, Steven Blaney is the man for you. Not only does he back a completely vacuous Canadian Values screening program of his own, but he is also willing to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to ban niqabis from voting, swearing the oath of citizenship, or working in the public service. Never send a dog whistle to do an air horn's job of protecting Canadians from the Islamic threat.

Michael Chong

Against the prevailing winds of the alt-right ascendency, Michael Chong wants to condemn Islamophobia. He believes climate change is real and thinks the federal government should establish some form of carbon pricing. He wants to reduce the power of the Prime Minister so that all MPs are free to debate the issues that matter to their constituents and usher in a golden age of parliamentary democracy. Micheal Chong is the Thoughtful Moderate's Choice for Conservative leader, and therein lies his doom.

Kellie Leitch

Kellie Leitch gets so much negative attention. It's always "Donald Trump's victory is exciting" this and "failure to acknowledge that a mass-murder at a Quebec City mosque was a hate crime against Muslims" that. But let's look on the bright side: in Prime Minister Kellie Leitch's elite- and foreigner-free Canada, any petition signed by 3% of the population (approx. 1.1 million people) is automatically put to a binding national referendum. Looking forward to a future where we are voting on renaming Toronto to "Fuck City" and whether to make Jedi our national religion.

Pierre Lemieux

Pierre Lemieux and Brad Trost are trapped in an arms race of who can be the least progressive candidate. Lemieux wants to reopen the debates on abortion and same-sex marriage in Canada and also wants to put term limits of Supreme Court judges and let parliament vote on whether or not they get appointed. He also has this picture of himself on the policy page of his website:

It is the only picture on the page and it does not specify what he's talking about it. Is it a veiled reference to the clusterfuck in Ontario about the new sex-ed curriculum? Is he going to ban social services? It is a mystery. This image is literally the only noteworthy thing I learned about Pierre Lemieux.

Deepak Obhrai

Deepak Obhrai said he would drop out of the race if Peter MacKay, once and future king of the Progressive Conservatives, wanted to run for leader. I can only assume he spends every campaign stop wishing he'd been granted that sweet release.

Kevin O'Leary

The man is basically a Bay Street Liberal running on the Conservative ticket. He is aggressively socially liberal and is non-reverential about the troops and is weirdly enthusiastic about writing open letters to premiers he doesn't like. He is hoping that you forget all the wild shit he said on TV about how he would make unions illegal and that global poverty was beautiful and that he wants to fuck a big pile of money like an eroticised Scrooge McDuck. It was all a schtick! He was just being a TV jokester. Everyone knows the outrageous shit a celebrity politician says has no bearing on what they'd actually do in office.

Erin O'Toole

Erin O'Toole wants to establish freedom of movement/work/living between Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Britain. He'll also give you $100000 in tax exemptions if you're under 30 when you graduate from college or trade school. That's pretty cool I guess. I would love to knock a hundred grand off my taxes and then fuck off to Devonshire forever. Let's do that.

Rick Peterson

Step 1: eliminate all corporate taxes. Step 2: 15% nationwide flat tax. Step 3: raise the GST to 9%. Step 4: launch the biggest infrastructure project in the history of the North. Step 5: welcome to Bombardier Presents Thunderdome: Iqaluit.

Lisa Raitt

There is literally nothing interesting or funny to say about Lisa Raitt's candidacy, which I guess is her strategy. Sorry?

Andrew Saxton

Andrew Saxton believes in defending the Canadian dream from the sinister forces of social sciences and the arts, which is why he wants to cut off as much government funding as possible to the Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council and, apparently, all magazines. This would be good because I hate magazines [hmph - ed.] and also SSHRC, because they never gave me any money to write a dissertation about French Marxism and Ottawa museums. Fuck you SSHRC. I hope Andrew Saxton buries you, right under CBC Comedy.

Andrew Scheer

Listen buddy. Making cross-country flights cheaper might help you get away for awhile, but you can never get away from yourself.

Brad Trost

Brad Trost's website looks like it was designed by an amphetamine-addled survivalist militiaman sometime in the 1990s. Words are italicised, underlined, and bolded seemingly at random, which really helps capture the vibe of listening to an unhinged pastor yell for 30 uninterrupted minutes in the basement of some rural Saskatchewan church during a pierogi dinner. Which is totally what the guy is going for, and that's great, and he hits all the right notes of Western Canadian conservative psychosis: trans predators in your daughter's bathroom at school, Gender Equality Week is a plot by Cultural Marxists to institute Sharia Law, CBC Radio 2 will turn your unborn children gay in the womb unless it's privatized—the standard-issue bingo sheet. But somewhere in the middle of these rants, Brad Trost notes, as an aside, almost under his breath, that he is committed to repealing any hypothetical anti-spanking laws that Justin Trudeau might pass. 

I like that Brad Trost is pre-emptively on the lookout to defend spanking. I like that Brad Trost has probably spent a lot of time deep in thought, travelling around the country talking to people about the importance of spanking, looking out the window of an airplane flying over northern Ontario thinking about spanking, how beautiful it is, how we need to make sure spanking can continue freely behind the walls of any man's house as God intended, whether as a matter of discipline or as something that consenting, married, heterosexual adults can do in the privacy of their bedrooms, and that's fine, and it's beautiful, and it's the only sliver of carnal pleasure the Lord has seen fit to shine into his otherwise miserable life of staring miserably at the joy of strangers, and it's so bad, living your life by creeping around in the shadows of a permissive society, coveting the enjoyment of others, it's such a naughty way to behave, I should be spanked for it, yes, please crack that paddle against the seat of my pants, and my God we've got to stop Justin Trudeau from ever bringing in a law that would prevent that, yes, where was I, does anyone have a cold wet facecloth or a glass of ice chips, whew, okay. I like that Brad Trost has probably thought very deeply about spanking and had sexy thoughts.

Follow Drew on Twitter.

Netflix has been inking some massive deals with comedians for stand-up specials lately—everyone from Dave Chappelle to Chris Rock to Amy Schumer will debut original specials on the streaming service in 2017—and now we can add Louis C.K. to the list.

Variety reports that C.K. has signed on to release two stand-up specials on Netflix. The first of which, 2017, will hit the site in April. Netflix has streamed C.K.'s stand-up specials before, but these will be the first to debut exclusively on the site.

"Louis has been one of the most innovative comedy voices in this new era of stand-up," Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix told Variety. "He has also been a thought leader in the business of comedy. We have marveled at his creativity and his ability to invent comedically and commercially, and are thrilled that he is bringing his newest specials to Netflix."

Netflix plans to debut 2017 on April 4, with the second on track to drop presumably later this year. A few new Louis C.K. stand-up specials are great and all, but if Netflix really wanted to go big, it'd nab the Horace and Pete rights from Hulu and crank out another season of the comedian's underappreciated masterpiece web series.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Top Trump Officials to Meet Mexican President
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security boss John Kelly will meet President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico Thursday to discuss the Trump administration's new deportation measures. Mexican foreign minister Luis Videgaray condemned a provision to return undocumented immigrants to Mexico who have entered the US via the southern border, regardless of their country of origin. "We are not going to accept it," he said.—The Guardian

Trump Administration Revokes Protection Guidelines for Trans Students
The White House has revoked the Obama administration's guidance to schools asserting the right of transgender students to equal protection under education nondiscrimination laws, most visibly in terms of which bathroom they use. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, despite reportedly disagreeing with the move, said it was "an issue best solved at the state and local level."—VICE News

Dream Act Applications Fall Amid Immigration Fears
The number of California students applying for help under the state's Dream Act has tanked, with officials blaming uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration's immigration policies. Applications by undocumented students to receive financial help have plummeted 60 percent so far this year compared with 2016.—USA Today

Anti-Pipeline Protest Camp Goes Up in Flames
Anti-Dakota Access pipeline activists set fire to some remnants of the protest camp at Standing Rock in North Dakota as part of a farewell ceremony. Protesters left arm in arm, singing and playing drums, before a Wednesday afternoon deadline set by the US Army Corps of Engineers for clearance of the camp.—AP

International News

Iraq Retakes Mosul Airport from ISIS
Government armed forces have seized Iraq's Mosul airport from ISIS, part of an operation to remove the militant group from its stronghold in the city's west. Iraqi troops are also fighting to retake the nearby the al Ghazlani military complex.—BBC News

Shopping Complex Bomb Kills Eight in Pakistan
A bomb attack at a shopping complex in the Pakistani city of Lahore has killed at least eight people and left another 30 injured. Initially, local officials indicated the explosion was caused by an electrical generator, but Punjab police later said there had been a "planted bomb." There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.—The Independent

Security Official Accused of Leaking Info on Polarizing Dutch Politician
Police have detained a security official responsible for protecting far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, accusing him of sharing sensitive details. Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, has been under 24-hour police protection for more than ten years because of his controversial deeply anti-immigrant views.—AP

Syrian Opposition Wants Direct Contact at Peace Talks
UN-sponsored peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition representatives begin in Geneva Thursday, and the opposition has asked for direct negotiation, rather than requiring UN mediator Staffan de Mistura to move between two rooms. "It would save time and be proof of seriousness," said an opposition spokesman.—Al Jazeera

Everything Else

Rihanna Named Humanitarian of the Year
Harvard University has named Rihanna as its 2017 Humanitarian of the Year. The singer paid for a new specialist breast cancer treatment center in Barbados and started a scholarship program for students from the Carribean.—Noisey

Jay-Z Makes Songwriters Hall of Fame
Jay-Z will be the first rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame at a ceremony in June. Other 2017 inductees include Taylor Swift collaborator Max Martin and Motown founder Berry Gordy.—Billboard

Bowie's Son Collects BRIT Award
David Bowie's son Duncan Jones collected the late singer's album of the year prize for Blackstar at the BRIT Awards. Jones said the award was "for all the kooks." Michael C. Hall, who starred in Bowie musical Lazarus, collected his prize for best male solo artist.—Rolling Stone

Louis C.K. Brings Two Specials to Netflix
Louis C.K. has agreed a deal with Netflix to bring two new stand-up specials to the streaming service. The first is entitled 2017 and will be available in April. The comedian is also working on an animated series for TBS called The Cops.—Variety

TRAPPIST-1 Discovery Our Best Bet for Aliens
The star system TRAPPIST-1, 39 light years away, has been found to host seven Earth-sized planets, NASA announced Wednesday. Astronomer Brice-Olivier Demory said the system "is probably our best bet" for finding alien life.—Motherboard

On Wednesday, Motherboard showed how powerful off-the-shelf, $170 spyware really is. For a day, I used a piece of software on my phone to surreptitiously collect GPS location data, intercept phone calls, and silently steal photos.

Although a hacker can only infect a phone if they have physical access to the device, the threat from this type of malware is very real. It is heavily used by, and marketed towards, jealous lovers to spy on their spouses. For around two decades, people have used spyware for this purpose, with many cases ending up in violence or even murder.

What can potential victims of this type of surveillance do to check if they're being monitored? What are some of the best practices to keep in mind to make installing the malware harder? And what can those who are certainly being spied on do?

Unfortunately, this is actually one of the harder information security threats to reliably give advice for.

"The threat model against this is very complicated because you don't know really how much private space the abuse victim has," Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Motherboard in a phone call.

Read more on Motherboard

Mauna Kea's summit is an unparalleled vantage point for astronomers eager to peer deep into the universe.

The mountain's prime stargazing location is no secret to Native Hawaiians, either. The dormant, skyscraping volcano is deeply revered by them: At the top of the 13,000 foot mountain are stone shrines erected by their ancestors that align with constellations piercing the night sky.  

"They're all interconnected and make a star grid. The alignment meant that families were able to connect with those star beings, those star nations," E. Kalani Flores, a professor of Hawaiian lifestyles at Hawaii Community College—Palamanui, told VICE. "It's a divine connection to other life forms on other star systems. Our ancestral knowledge is actually embedded in the sites up there—it's imprinted and can still be activated."

Some Native Hawaiians, like Flores, are perturbed by the "overdevelopment" of Mauna Kea. Its peak is peppered with telescopes—13 of them to date. And there could be an additional one in the future, an unrivaled, hulking piece of machinery called the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) that will be capable of gazing about 13 billion light years into space. According to Flores, the project will mar culturally important sites like the star shrines if it's built.

The $1.4 billion, 18-storey telescope, spearheaded by the TMT International Observatory (TIO), has been in the works for roughly 14 years. In recent years, it's been mired by unwavering pushback from the Indigenous Hawaiian community.

This issue, along with the revitalization of native sovereignty in the state, is the focus of this week's episode of RISE, our VICELAND series about Indigenous peoples across the Americas.

Opposition to the project came to a head in 2015 when "protectors" halted a stream of construction crews and dignitaries from breaking ground. Nerves became frayed and some Native Hawaiians were arrested.

Joshua Lanakila Mangauil, the director of the Hawaiian Cultural Center of Hamakua, helped launch the initial revolt.

"We wanted to get in their cameras and show that this action isn't all hunky dory. Mauna Kea is part of our creation story," he told VICE. "The pinnacle of Mauna Kea is that it is the crown of the aquifer. It was jettisons up into the sky and gives us multiple climate zones that allows for many lifeforms to thrive."

The fight to protect the mountain has circulated through the court system. Currently, there are over 60 people involved in a contested case hearing—Flores being one of the lead parties. The quasi-court process allows opponents to air grievances and will ultimately determine the legal grounds of the project.

This is the second hearing to date. The Hawaiian Supreme Court ordered the state's Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) to host an additional one after it found the department unlawfully voted to issue a permit to streamline construction.

"The Supreme Court affirmed our position and ended up invalidating the permit because they didn't vote to have a hearing first," said Flores. "They didn't follow the process of law."

Kealoha Pisciotta, president of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, a cultural group made up of Native Hawaiians, also delivered concerns to the supreme court after the incident and is likewise involved in the hearing. She is a former telescope systems specialist on Mauna Kea, but now says development on the mountaintop has gone too far.

"It truly does not meet the legal requirements," she told VICE during a hearing recess. "They [the state] has actually exceeded the carrying capacity that was established years ago, which was 11 major and two minor telescopes. This project is so huge it can't even fit on the summit."

The bottom line is "opposing the desecration of the sacred," she said.

"When I worked up there, I didn't necessarily see it as a conflict, as I come from star people. However, where the conflict began is when the landscape began to be dominated by human [constructions] and it was removing the space for sanctity and reverence. Since 2001, our position has been no further development."

The summit is conservation land, so in order for the TMT to be built, not only does it need a permit, but a sublease. This is where the University of Hawaii fits in.

"What the university has done is sublease different parts to various international corporations and entities," said Flores. "As part of this, they wanted to give a sublease to the TMT."

The BLNR was also involved in approving a sublease issued by the university, which Flores and others appealed. A circuit court agreed a revived contested case on the matter should held, he said.

"Right now this project doesn't have a permit and it they don't have consent to a sublease. They're back to square one."

In an October news release, TIO announced it's searching for an alternate site, presumably because of prolonged delays. One location is in Spain's Canary Islands.

"Maunakea continues to be the preferred choice for the Thirty Meter Telescope, and the TIO Board will continue intensive efforts to gain approval for TMT in Hawaii," it says. "TIO is very grateful to all our supporters and friends throughout Hawaii, and we deeply appreciate their continued support."

The board did not respond to an email sent by VICE.

Paul Coleman, an astrophysicist at the university and a Native Hawaiian, conversely explained  the telescope represents "a leap year of new technology and possibilities."

He told VICE that Mauna Kea isn't as sacred as some Native Hawaiians make it out to be. If it is, he added, he wants evidence.

"There are things worth fighting and arguing over," he said. "I just don't think this is one. Astronomy, no matter what form, fits quite nicely into the cultural aspects of Hawaii because I believe Hawaiians are astronomers. That defines us. This is a wonderful thing for the state, particularly Native Hawaiians who can benefit both economically and educationally."

To Mangauil, the fight to protect Mauna Kea is a microcosm of what is happening all around the world in terms of corporate interests encroaching on delicate environments many people have an affinity for.

"We understand as island people you only take what you need and we live on a finite planet with finite resources," he said. "Continental people don't seem to understand that. What's happening on the summit is the same abuse the whole planet is seeing."

RISE airs Fridays at 9 PM on VICELAND. 

Follow Julien on Twitter.

One of the two Quebec women accused of smuggling $30-million of cocaine into Australia via cruise ship will be locked up until her trial starts at the end of August.

Melina Roberge, 23, was arrested with her friend Isabelle Lagace, 28, and fellow Quebec resident Andre Tamin, 64, in Sydney last August, after authorities discovered 95 kilograms of cocaine hiding in their luggage. She has pleaded not guilty to smuggling a commercial quantity of cocaine into Australia.

Roberge's lawyer reportedly has withdrawn her client's bail application, indicating the Roberge will remain in custody.

Roberge's lawyer has argued that her client didn't know there was 29 kilograms of blow stashed in Lagace's suitcase while the pair shared a room aboard a luxury cruiseliner.

Lagace has pleaded guilty and will sentenced in February, potentially facing life in prison.

Prior to being arrested, the pair posted photos to Instagram showing them partying at the cruise ship's various stops, including Peru and the French Polynesia.

At a previous court date, a crown prosecutor said Lagace, Roberge, and Tamine were part of a drug cartel.

Follow Manisha on Twitter.

I, like nearly everyone who inhabits the internet, was temporarily enthralled with the Dr. Phil guest-turned-meme Danielle Bregoli, aka "Cash Me Ousside, How Bow Dah" Girl. For weeks, gifs and videos of Bregoli had staying power on social media and thrust her into fame that led to hoards of paparazzi following her wherever she went.

It all started with a Dr. Phil episode about Bregoli, a 13-year-old whose mom said she was "out of control," stealing her car, and getting violent with her. If you have somehow avoided the following clip, which has been viewed over 31 million times, here you go:

An interview request I sent to Bregoli at the beginning of this month went unanswered until yesterday, when one of her PR people finally replied. After they suggested an email interview and I said I only would do one over the phone, we set it up. It turns out I should have followed Charlamagne Tha God's example and declined because, holy shit, out of the hundreds of interviews I've done, this was surely one of the most painful.

That being said, this girl is 13 years old, and I'm not hating. It has to be hard to become so famous at such a young age, especially via becoming a meme. But with one of her managers jumping in, interrupting me, and being hung up on (supposedly on accident), this shit was just super fucking bizarre.

VICE: How did you end up on the original Dr. Phil episode in the first place?
Danielle Bregoli: Umm… I just ended up there.

Did your mom set it up or?
I have no idea.

What has your relationship with your mom been like since you were on that first episode?
It's been fine.

Can you explain that a bit more to me? Did your relationship improve at all?
Our relationship was always fine. It's a show—shows make up stories and lie.

What was made up on the show?
The whole show basically.

What has been the most challenging part about becoming famous via being a meme?
I don't know. I don't really care much about being a meme. That's not what I want to be known for, as being a meme from 2016. That's not what I'm here for.

So what do you want to be known for?
Acting.

What kind of acting do you want to do?
Just acting, like TV shows and movies.

What is it like to have paparazzi following you around all of a sudden?
I mean, it's kind of crazy. I don't think about it too much.

I mean, how has that affected your life? Are you not able to do the kind of shit you could before?
No, I can't. I can't even go to the mall anymore. I have to bring 17 security guards… or it feels like it.

How do you deal with hate on the internet?
People do it, but I just don't deal with it.

How did you feel going back on Dr. Phil for the second time?
[long pause] I just don't want to talk about Dr. Phil so...

OK, can you talk to me about what happened with the Kodak Black video ?
Manager: Can you ask some more relevant questions?

*Manager and Bregoli have nearly inaudible discussion in the background*

Manager: Do you want to ask any more questions?
Umm, yeah, I guess. What's the deal with what you said about Kylie Jenner? Do you have beef with her?
Bregoli: I don't have beef with her, I just don't like her. She's never said anything to me, so that's not considered beef. I just don't like her. They asked me a question, so I answered it. If they asked me if I like Beyoncé, I'm going to tell you no also. There's people I don't like.

What do you think about Soulja Boy? You also said some comments about him?
Bregoli: [laughs] I didn't say anything to Soulja Boy… My manager did!
Manager: Your other manager, not me!

So you don't actually have beef with him either?
Bregoli: No.

What is real about you then? The shit on Dr. Phil wasn't real, the Soulja Boy shit isn't real… What are you about?
Bregoli: [inaudible except the word "bitch"] I don't know, everything is real about me. What other people do with my name is something else, but what I do… If you hear me say it, unless you physically hear me say it—you see me say it, and you're standing there—don't believe it.

A few moments after this statement, the phone call ended. I can never be sure what exactly happened or if it was intentional, but Bregoli's manager called me back within a minute. He said the phone hung up when she handed it to him. He then complained about the questions I asked, said Bregoli isn't good with phone interviews, and that she hasn't had media training. I said I totally get it, because for fuck's sake she is 13 years old.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Allison Tierney on Twitter .

By a lucky coincidence, Josh Moore was up late watching Underworld: Blood Wars on his phone in the early hours of February 9. He had his earphones in, so he couldn't hear anything but the movie. At around 4 AM, he moved from the couch to the kitchen to grab a drink. That's when looked out the window and noticed a bright orange glow coming from outside, reflected on his neighbour's house.

"I was like, 'No, there's something wrong here,'" Moore, 28, who was staying with his sister, and her son and boyfriend in Sydney, Cape Breton told VICE. "I went back there are sure enough the whole barn was engulfed. There was no way in hell there was saving it."

The barn, which sits about six feet away from his sister's home, was on fire.

"When I went out, a couple things exploded. I couldn't get near the fire," Moore said, noting his teenage nephew's room is situated closest to the barn. "I had to call 911 a third time and tell them to hurry up because if they didn't get here, my house was going."

There's nothing left of the barn, everything inside, his parents' possessions, was torched. The siding of the house and part of the roof melted and two windows broke, indicating that it too was close to catching aflame.

The remnants. Photo submitted

Moore immediately believed the fire had been set intentionally. His suspicions were soon confirmed. Both local police and the fire chief told VICE it was a case of arson. No cause has been determined, though Moore said he believes someone simply poured gas around the perimeter and lit a match.

As of Tuesday, arson investigator Chad Gillard with Cape Breton Regional Police told VICE the cops didn't have a suspect.

But one thing is known—Moore is a bit of an online troll, and in recent weeks he's taken aim at Creep Catchers, a vigilante pedophile hunting movement that's made its way into Cape Breton. The crusade has made Moore a target of online hatred and threats.

In the days leading up to the fire, Moore said the exchanges between himself and Creep Catchers got so heated that he even posted his sister's address online inviting anyone who had beef with him to "come say it to my face."

One of the more intense conversations, between Moore and Edmonton Creep Catchers president John Doep, took place just hours before the fire.

"He has a lot of enemies," said Gillard of Moore. He told VICE he had not yet interviewed any Creep Catchers to ask about their involvement.

Doep has denied any involvement in the fire, and Halifax Creep Catchers president who goes by the alias Missy Katcher told VICE she is not involved either. However she stipulated, "I can't speak on behalf of everyone," and, when asked if it's possible if a Creep Catchers fan was involved in the fire, she said, "I have no idea."

***

Moore, who is short, stocky and speaks with an east coast accent, has a penchant for stirring the pot. He's an admin on the Cape Breton Police Scanner, Cape Breton Rant & Rave, and The Lowdown & Dirty, Facebook groups that give people a chance to discuss local news and air dirty laundry.

He told VICE the beef with Creep Catchers started when a man claiming to be a Cape Breton Creep Catcher posted in Cape Breton Police Scanner, a group with 17,000 members. In the post, the man revealed the name of local child sex offender, despite a publication ban against identifying him.

Moore deleted the post and banned the man from the group. He said the man began sending him threatening Facebook messages. When Moore reached out to Missy Katcher of Halifax Creep Catchers to ask if the man was an associate, the pair reportedly had an argument in which Missy said the man had no involvement in Creep Catchers, according to Moore.

"I was basically told off, disrespected," Moore said.

When asked about Moore, Missy told VICE, "Josh has caused enough drama. He's someone I want zero to do with."

After that conversation, Moore said he was contacted by the poster again, who called him a "rat." VICE has viewed screenshots in which the man used a photo of Moore to create a meme that says "My name is Josh More (sic) from the north side. I like to start with people over the internet then I like to go behind you're (sic) back and complain to people just to start stuff. If you call me a rat or a diddler… you will hurt my feelings." The messages also threaten to expose Moore as a "rat" by posting their conversations.

Moore said he received this message from a man claiming to be a Creep Catcher. Screenshot submitted

Following that, a different screenshot surfaced on Cape Breton Rants and Raves, that appeared to show a conversation between Missy Katcher and the man threatening Moore, in which Missy wrote, "How about we take your profile and make you a pedofile? It will be posted all over cape Breton to see…. Now FUCK OFF AND STOP MESSAGING ME!"

Missy has said the screenshot is fake and that "Framing people is NOT WHAT I DO."

Moore told VICE after seeing that screenshot he began trolling Creep Catchers, revealing the real names of individual vigilantes, who normally go by aliases.

Things came to a head when a group called Cape Breton Confessions decided Creep Catchers would be the topic of their live February 5 podcast.

The woman behind the podcast, who does not want to be named for fear of harassment, told VICE the podcast featured an interview with RL Dakin, who shared the story of Katelynn McKnight, a trans woman in Edmonton who is believed to have died by suicide after she was shamed by Edmonton Creep Catchers.

The podcast producer said the number of people listening to the podcast was unusually high—700 or so as opposed to 300-400.

"We started to get a lot of hateful comments. A lot of the last names were Katcher," the producer told VICE. (Katcher is a typical last name used by Creep Catchers on Facebook.) "Then John Doep started coming in the comments. Him and his group were telling people that if they agreed with [RL Dakin] they were supporters for pedophiles."

She said people started messaging Cape Breton Confessions, saying they were receiving messages from Doep, whose real name is Nigel Woolcox, and that he was harassing them and adding their Facebook friends.  

Doep refused to comment on the allegations other than to call me "evil" and say "I had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. Thank you. I have no time for ridiculous 'allegations'."

The podcast wrapped up at around 2 AM. During it, the producer said a fake Facebook profile featuring the host appeared.

"They had made a fake profile of him and were commenting with it and saying they would make him look like a pedophile," she said. Freaked out, the host quit the podcast.

The next morning, Cape Breton Confessions had been removed by Facebook for "harassment." The podcast and all the comments that were associated with it were gone.

"The only thing we could think of is all of the [Creep Catchers] came together and mass reported it," the producer told VICE, noting she's started a new page.

This behaviour—doxxing and making up fake profiles—isn't exactly out of character for the vigilantes.

After VICE published an investigation on Creep Catchers in January, including Doep's role in Katelynn McKnight's bust, a fake version of my profile appeared on his Facebook wall. Doep had a conversation with the fake version of me on his wall, in which "I" stated that VICE was a "clickbait pretend news site" and that I "took Kaitlyns (sic) death a bit personal as "I am a transvestite as well."

Read more: Predators or Prey? Creep Catchers Accused of Targeting People with Physical and Mental Disabilities

Creep Catchers and their followers tend to have a very low tolerance for voices of dissent. People who disagree with them are quickly labelled "pedos."  This is a lesson Moore subjected himself to repeatedly. And on the night of the fire, Doep and Moore had an inflammatory conversation over Facebook.

The exchange, which has been shared with VICE, began on Feb. 8 at 7:37 PM.

It opens with Doep saying "Can you stop bugging my friends? Don't join there (sic) groups don't comment on their posts. Don't contact them. I am only going to ask this once Josh."

Moore replies, "I'll do as I please."

Doep says this is the only time he's going to ask, and adds "Bud. I'm watching" with a smiley emoji. "This is me contacting you out of regards for your safety. There is ALOT more at play then a couple of women out of line. That is my advisory."

He also says he's "heard things" about Moore's past.

"Oh please do tell," says Moore, "some made up bullshit? Like usual." Moore adds that he's not going to respond to threats. "Bring up what ever your (sic) talking about I'm not scared of you or your made up threats."

Doep signs off "I'm done here. Good luck!"

Eight hours later Moore's garage was in flames.

Arson investigator Gillard told VICE there's a chance we'll never know how the barn was set on fire or who was behind it. In the meantime, Moore has moved back to Edmonton.

He's still moderating his Facebook groups, but says he doesn't talk about Creep Catchers anymore.

Follow Manisha Krishnan  on Twitter.

There is no one way to define Prince. Never afraid to experiment, to buck trends or to swerve left when the world expected him to go right, Prince's long and illustrious career is a testament to his relentless musicianship. Prince was an artist's artist. He was influenced by the greats—from David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix to The Beatles and Joni Mitchell to Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder—and it can be heard in his vast array of albums spanning more than three decades.

Pop, rock, R&B, funk, jazz—even hip-hop. Nothing was off-limits for Prince. His keen understanding and love of different types of music made his own so singular. Here was a man unafraid of pushing himself and twisting conventions (consider his bouncy, apocalyptic rock 'n' roll on "Ronnie, Talk to Russia," or his satirical proto-house on "All the Critics Love U in New York") to write and perform and live freely as a true artist. But if there's a downside to Prince's many accomplishments, it's that his catalogue is almost too vast to approach. Prince has done everything. And now that his music is available across streaming services, all these different facets of Prince are at everyone's fingertips, all at once. So where does one begin with Prince and his staggeringly rich career? Here are five different sides of Prince to explore.

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Republicans in the Arizona State Senate voted Wednesday to pass a new bill that would expand the state's racketeering charges to cover anyone who participates in or plans a protest that ends up turning violent, the Arizona Capitol Times reports.

The bill, which now moves to a house vote, basically makes peaceful protesters guilty by association, should an event they attend or plan turn violent. It would give the government grounds to prosecute anyone at a riot under racketeering charges, even if he or she doesn't cause anyone personal harm or property damage. By lumping rioting in with racketeering charges—usually aimed at cracking down on organized crime—it also means police officers would have the ability to arrest people planning a protest, the Capitol Times points out.

Republican state senator John Kavanagh argued that the law was necessary to crack down on the "full-time, almost professional agent-provocateurs that attempt to create public disorder," echoing the Trump administration's recent rhetoric about "liberal activists" who they believe are being paid to protest at Republican congressmen's town halls.

"Wouldn't you rather stop a riot before it starts?" Kavanagh, a former police officer, said during the state senate debate. "Do you really want to wait until people are injuring each other, throwing Molotov cocktails, picking up barricades, and smashing them through businesses in downtown Phoenix?"

Democrats, on the other hand, pointed out that rioting is already a crime, and individuals who cause property damage and commit assault during protests could easily be prosecuted individually. They argued the bill could infringe on free-speech rights and deter anyone from trying to protest peacefully against the government.

"This idea that people are being paid to come out and do that?" Democratic senator Katie Hobbs said. "I'm sorry, but I think that is fake news."

Steve Farley, another state senator, said he didn't think the law would hold up in court. "This is a total perversion of the RICO process, the racketeering process, and I see major constitutional issues down the line," he said. "I don't think this is going to do anything but get us into more lawsuits."