Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
'Moonlight' Wins Best Picture After Unprecedented Mix-Up Moonlight picked up the prize for Best Picture at the Oscars, but only after La La Land was mistakenly announced by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the winner and its producers and cast had taken the stage. Casey Affleck won Best Actor, Emma Stone won Best Actress, and Damien Chazelle won Best Director.—NBC News
Trump Pick for Navy Secretary Pulls Out Philip Bilden, President Trump's choice for Navy secretary, has announced he no longer wishes to be considered for the role, citing concerns over his business interests. Bilden said he would not be able to satisfy the Office of Government Ethics' requirements without "materially adverse divestment of my family's private financial interests."—AP
Father of Fallen Navy SEAL Refuses to Meet Trump The father of a Navy SEAL killed in a recent operation in Yemen is demanding an investigation into his son's death. Bill Owens had previously refused to meet President Trump after the body of William "Ryan" Owens arrived at Dover Air Force Base. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she believed Trump "would be supportive" of a probe.—The Washington Post
Press Secretary Warns Staffers on Using Secure Messaging Apps In a bid to stop leaks to the press, White House press secretary Sean Spicer has reportedly told staffers that using encrypted messaging apps might violate the Presidential Records Act. Spicer has also apparently asked staffers to place their phones on the table for a "phone check" at meetings.—Politico
International News
Rainstorms in Chile Leave Millions Without Clean Water The contamination of the Maipo River in Chile has left some 4 million people in the capital of Santiago without clean drinking water. Officials cut water services after rainstorms and landslides sullied the supply, and at least three people have died in flooding caused by the heavy rains.—BBC News
Iran Runs Naval Drills in the Gulf Iran has begun a series of naval exercises in the area where the Gulf meets the Indian Ocean. The drills are designed to help "the fight against terrorism and piracy," said Iran's rear admiral, Habibollah Sayyari.—Reuters
Ten Attacks a Day on Migrants in Germany, Report Says A report by Germany's interior ministry shows there were 3,533 attacks on migrants, refugees, and refugee shelters throughout 2016—almost ten attacks a day. At least 560 people were injured in the attacks, including 43 children. The interior ministry said people seeking protection in Germany had "the right to expect safe shelter."—AFP
South Korea Brings Corruption Probe to an End South Korea's acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, has decided not to extend the mandate of the special prosecutor investigating possible corruption on part of impeached president Park Geun-hye. But the opposition is crying foul, with one faction opposed to the decision labeling it an "example of tyranny."—Al Jazeera
Everything Else
Philadelphia Jewish Cemetery Vandalized Authorities in Philadelphia have discovered at least 100 headstones toppled over at a Jewish cemetery in the city. A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel said the incident, which comes close on the heels of a similar attack on a Jewish cemetery in Missouri, is "shocking and a source of worry."—AP
Chance the Rapper Buys Out Tickets for Peele Movie Chance the Rapper paid for all the tickets for multiple showings of Jordan Peele's new movie, Get Out, at the Chatham Theatre in Chicago Sunday. He tweeted, "it's free I just want you to see it."—Pitchfork
Remy Ma Drops Minaj Diss Track New York rapper Remy Ma has released a new seven-minute track going after Nicki Minaj called "shETHER." The upstart accuses the star of starting the beef between Meek Mill and Drake, among other outrages.—Noisey
Syrian Filmmaker Denied Oscar Moment Syrian cinematographer Khaled Khatib was denied the chance to attend Sunday night's Oscars due to murky questions about his US visa. The 21-year-old worked on The White Helmets, which won Best Documentary Short.—VICE News/Al Jazeera
Studio Ghibli Animator to Make One Last Movie Celebrated Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki has come out of retirement to make one last animated movie for Studio Ghibli. Producer Toshio Suzuki said Miyazaki was "hard at work" on the new project.—i-D
Urban Dictionary defines a Thirst Trap as "a sexy photograph or flirty message posted on social media for the intent of causing others to publicly profess their attraction." A couple of times a day on my timeline a post will show up that features a friend in little to no clothing. I'm generally a fan of the pics, even if they make browsing feeds at my day job a risky proposition, but always wondered about the rationale behind posting these types of photos publically. Who were the photos posted for? Were people affirming self-love or looking for outside approval? Was the attention that the thirst traps received worth the societal hang-ups they came along with?
To answer some of these questions I asked a handful of friends and acquaintances on my social media why they post the photos and what they get out of it. Their answers are below.
In athletics shirts are always optional. I'm half kidding of course, but in reality, much of my time at the "office" is either spent sweaty or shirtless. It's part of the job and any photos I post are going to reflect that. As far as what I get out of it, attention, follows and likes are all part of it. But more importantly, because I am aware of my following, I get to maximize my results. For example: my Twitter is 70/30 comprised of male followers and Instagram is 65/35 female. The basic analysis: men like to hear me speak, while women like to look at me. Duh.
I'm not just a fighter, I'm a brand. In many ways, I am selling the brand that is myself. I think most fighters fail to understand that at their own peril. Two things I've been very successful attaching myself to are live UFC events adding commentary and dubbed as "The Official Unofficial Commentator of The UFC." Receiving a constant flow of seven million plus impressions a month. The second thing obviously being my hair. I'm the proud owner of "The Best Hair in Combat Sports" to be exact. That obviously came with how I present myself, photos included. In many ways they are connected. Both titles were built over time and are now paying off greatly. "If you build it they will come" and my social following proves that. Of course I get some hate, but overwhelmingly most of the outreach is positive. I sleep fine regardless.
Confidence can be perceived as "cocky." The fact I am confident in myself, how I look, and my ability as a fighter can come off negatively to people that want to preserve it that way. In reality, I am very aware I am in a very humbling sport. They day you think you know everything, is the day you can get your ass kicked on (inter)national TV. Those that criticize don't understand the game we are competing in. For better or worse, it's not only how good you are, but rather how many asses you can put in seats. Fighting (and competition in general) was created to fill our natural desire for competition. A fight is much more than just a fight, it's a story, and the fans have two sides to choose. My side or my opponent's.
The best and worst thing that has come from social media would have to be the direct contact with fans and others. That includes an organic conversation with Pert Shampoo and conditioner, which became my marquee sponsor to date. I am the first UFC fighter to receive such an endorsement. The ongoing campaign has been HUGELY successful for both parties and furthers my narrative and brand. First is king in marketing. Negativity or weird messages are sometimes a bummer, but to be honest, I don't really ever sweat too. It's sometimes even a powerful tool, allowing my to dive into the physiology of an Twitter egg or picture-less profile and better understanding their comment to be an extension of their hurt / sad world view. To quote the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "Ignore The Nay Sayers".
I have an incessant need for external validation and strangers on the internet always come through for me. Some people might call that thirst. I don't think there's anything wrong with embracing that. It's why I love the term thirst trap and it's why I post the pictures I do. I'd like to think most of my followers are there for my wit and social commentary, but when I am not dissociating I know that isn't the case. Social media is actively rewarding my mental illness. I use thirst traps to suppress my neuroses. The attention distracts me from the void and makes me feel worthy of existing. That feels like self care but I know it isn't. I keep doing it anyway and I keep getting more attention. My therapist loves it. The attention I get has its ups and downs. Recently an incredible body positive artist I admire, Chelsea Donovan, drew one of my Instagram photos and I love it so much I am getting it tattooed. Women who follow me regularly tag me in their own thirst traps and it's always extremely validating. At the same time I want to publish all of my instagram DM requests in a book called Yes All Men. Every single message is the worst thing that's happened to me. I don't understand how anyone can be upset about a woman choosing to pose in her underwear when the earth is literally dying.
Anyways, I've been trying to be proactive with how I respond to DMs. A couple of days ago I posted a photo with a flower emoji covering my breast. A man messaged me asking: how many retweets for you to remove the emoji?I replied: Paypal me $100. The interaction made me laugh so I tweeted a screenshot of it with a link to my Paypal and…. men are ridiculously thirsty. Five hundred dollars thirsty. I want to be clear that I didn't remove the emoji for anybody. Nobody who paypalled me even reached out. I paid my overdue phone bill and donated the rest of it to Planned Parenthood.
I've posted a lot of photos online in various states of undress. When people ask me why I do it there are a bunch of different answers. I do it because I like to. I do it because being looked at turns me on. I do it because I'm a performer and attention succubus and sometimes it makes me money, honey. Everybody has causes that rile them up and the destruction of body shame/modesty culture is one of mine. I want people to stop associating being naked or sexual with a morality compass! People should respect other people's choices, whether they cover up or strip it off, but for me what it comes down to is that I enjoy being active in queer nudie spaces. That includes being naked on the web.
Posting the photos can be fun, and it can be sexy, but like anything else it's easy to tie it into larger ideas about how we are absorbing each other's images. You can't talk about this without talking about how important the representation of diverse bodies is online. I'm trans and will soon be making surgical/hormonal changes to my body. Personally, I dig the idea that once I have top surgery scars and different bone structure posting photos becomes even more radical, since I will have a body that exists beyond the gender binary. I'm sure that those photos will be a shock to the system for all those straight dudes who throw a heart up on my pictures or dismiss them as thirst traps. The term itself is rooted in a sexist interpretation of selfie culture. It's been used to demean (mostly) women's reclamation of their images. So you posted a photo of yourself, you dig it, and it turns people on. Why is that something to be admonished? You should flatter yourself and do what makes YOU feel sexy. I'm privileged in that I have the comfort of not caring who sees me and knowing that it won't affect any of my career/professional choices but I think if you have the chance, get out there however you want to! Don't cater it to what you think wants to be seen, and I promise there are people who will be into it no matter what.
What do I get out of doing it? A lot of likes on Instagram. When I post a photo of course it's for attention. You don't come around to that type of thing if you're not looking for attention. And attention feels good. I don't know how else I'm supposed to break that down.
I work in a lingerie store and so photos have become commonplace for me. I don't feel like they're scandalous because I'm taking pictures of myself and other girls in lingerie all the time. It's part of my work, but it's also an excuse to do it, it's like: I can post a picture of myself in this bra because it's a fancy bra from work! It's like: I feel great in this! I look great in this! Everyone should see how great I look in this!
The other day a friend of mine told me that they tried to take a selfie and it was horrible. They said it was only then they realized how much time I must spend on getting good photos. Of course it takes time. And practice. Angles can make or break a photo, if you don't know your angles it can get pretty sad. Lighting is also really important, and the self-timer has been a game changer. But that practice can definitely pay off.
Graham Isador is a writer living in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter.
A few days ago, I had just stepped off a podium at a cancer conference when a 50-year-old woman with a family history of breast cancer approached me. I had been discussing how my laboratory, among hundreds of other labs, was trying to understand how mutations in genes unleash the malignant behavior of cancer cells. She told me that she carried a mutation in the BRCA-1 gene—a mutation that she had likely inherited from her father.
Diagnosed with cancer in one of her breasts when she was 30, she had undergone surgery, chemo, radiation and hormonal therapy. But that grim sequence of diagnosis and treatment, she told me, was hardly the main source of her torment. Now, she worried about the development of cancer in her remaining breast, or in her ovaries. She was considering a double mastectomy and the surgical removal of her ovaries. A woman carrying a BRCA-1 mutation has nearly a 60-70 percent chance of developing cancer in her breasts or ovaries during her lifetime, and yet it's difficult to predict when or where that cancer might occur. For such women, the future is often fundamentally changed by that knowledge, and yet it remains just as fundamentally uncertain; their lives and energies might be spent anticipating cancer and imagining survivorship—from an illness that they have not yet developed. A disturbing new word, with a distinctly Orwellian ring, has been coined to describe these women: previvors—pre-survivors.
This year's Oscars ceremony was generally pretty bland and over-Kimmeled—at least until that monumental Best Picture screw-up that tore a hole in the very fabric of the event.
The dust is still settling surrounding the gargantuan gaffe that mistakenly announced La La Land as the winner instead of Moonlight and how the whole thing could have happened. Warren Beatty swears it wasn't his fault and the vote counters have apologized, but the mistake is already cemented in the pantheon of memes, to be preserved for eternity.
While that drama might be dominating the ceremony news, there were some surprise wins in categories that weren't Best Picture. Here's a rundown of every movie that took home statues last night.
This article was published in partnership with the Trace.
On December 19, 2016, Brenda Herron received a phone call that made her heart plummet. Michael, the teenage boy she had been taking care of for the past three years, had been shot. The 15-year-old and his three siblings live with Herron in DuPage County, just outside Chicago. But that day they had been visiting relatives on the city's South Side.
The kids were out of school for Christmas break, and they were going to visit their family—their grandfather was terminally ill. Around 3 o'clock, the dad gave Michael permission to go to McDonald's. I'm from that area, but Michael didn't know there's been an on-going war out there for years. On his way back to his dad's house, a car pulled up. They shot Michael four times—one time in the chest, one time in the stomach, and two times in the side.
After learning of the shooting, Herron, who is a healthcare worker at a nursing home, jumped in her car and raced to Comer Children's Hospital. The Level 1 pediatric trauma center treated 51 children who were shot last year. All were 15 or younger.
When I first walked in, Michael was sedated, tubes running in and out of him. I was crying, and the kids were crying. I was having migraine headaches, throwing up.
The doctors told Herron that Michael was lucky to be alive—his breastbone had protected his heart from a bullet. As his primary caregiver and legal guardian, Herron would be responsible for helping him through his recovery.
Herron says she and Michael's three sisters spent Christmas Day keeping vigil in the intensive care unit.
He stayed on life support for about two weeks. It was about 30 days before he was even able to drink water.
The drive to and from Herron's suburban house and the hospital took an hour, sometimes longer with traffic, and the costs quickly began to add up.
For like the first month, we were running back and forth to the hospital every day. Traveling, parking, paying for gas, paying for the tollways that money goes fast. We were either eating out somewhere, like McDonald's or Chinese food, or in the hospital cafeteria.
Michael, 15, was shot four times while visiting his parents and grandfather in Chicago in late 2016. After a long recovery, he plans to return to school in March. Photo by Alyssa Schukar for the Trace
For low-income families, a sudden calamity like a shooting can rupture an already-fragile safety net. Last year, On the Media interviewed Margaret Smith, an Ohio woman whose teenage son was shot outside her house. He lived, but the shooting set off a domino effect: Smith lost her housing and her job, relocated to a shelter, and was forced to spread her kids among relatives.
Herron was already struggling to support Michael and his three sisters. She is also supporting her own daughter, who is in her first year of college at nearby Aurora University. Michael's injuries have further deepened her financial stress.
I work at a nursing home, and I make $13.50 an hour. When Michael got shot, I took off work for six weeks. I have to work 60 hours or more a week just to keep my head above water. I usually do doubles on the weekends, 16-hour shifts.
All four kids have learning disabilities, and one of Michael's sisters receives a disability check in the amount of $735. Besides that and food stamps, I don't get any cash assistance from the state to support these kids.
After Michael's shooting, my cousin made a GoFundMe page. I raised like $9,700. I had to use it as catch-up money—for all the food and travel when we visited the hospital, or for babysitters to watch the other kids when I had to run to the hospital on a moment's notice, because I was worried about Michael. That money is gone.
I had just bought Michael a brand-new coat, but when he was shot, the paramedics had to cut it off him. There was so much blood on it, I threw it away. I got him a different style. I didn't want it to bring him memories.
Once gunshot victims leave the hospital, they often face an arduous recovery. Many return to the same high-crime neighborhoods where they were shot. Many have trouble accessing extensive medical or mental healthcare, according to Jooyoung Lee, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who studied the lives of young black men critically wounded by gunshots in Philadelphia.
After spending more than a month in the hospital, Michael returned to Herron's home at the end of January. Herron used some of the GoFundMe money to upgrade his bed from a twin to a double, so he could be more comfortable. When she's working at the nursing home, Herron's mother or fiancé watch the kids. But when she returns home, it's like she's back on the clock.
It's like taking care of a newborn baby. If he's in pain, I have to wake up out of my sleep to give him pain meds. Right now he has a JP Drain, which drains the fluids off the wounds as they heal. He needs his bandages changed every three days. He takes medications three times a day, a strong antibiotic so he doesn't get infections.
The bullets damaged his abdominal area, so the doctors had to remove part of his stomach and pancreas. He has lost so much weight, and he doesn't have an appetite. Right now he can only eat soft food, like jello. We have to give him Boost protein milk to help him gain weight, but the insurance doesn't pay for that. You can get it on sale, $7.99 for a six pack, but he drinks three or four in a day. I've bought like $300 in milk already.
Check out the VICE News Tonight short on gun violence in Chicago last year.
In states that opted to expand the Affordable Care Act, gunshot survivors were able to access treatments, surgeries, and specialists they previously could not. Illinois is among the 32 states that have expanded coverage since 2014. Last year in Chicago alone, the shooting-victim tally exceeded 4,300. The vast majority of those victims—80 percent—survived.
While some gunshot victims have benefitted from the healthcare expansion, the system still has gaps. Between ministering to Michael's wounds and portioning out his medication, Herron is also navigating a bureaucratic labyrinth of insurance and healthcare providers to secure the care Michael desperately needs.
Michael is able to walk, but when he first came home, he was walking bent over because he was in a hospital bed for so long. He needs outpatient physical therapy, but we have crappy insurance. The kids and I have Medicaid. The cost of insurance through my job is too high. You have to make a choice: Do I pay health insurance, or do I eat?
When the hospital discharged him, they gave me a referral for a physical therapist, but I have to find the places that will actually accept our insurance. Right now I'm just trying to do the best I can as far as giving him home therapy. I'll tell him, "You need to walk up and down the stairs ten times." Sometimes he's short of breath; sometimes he can only go three times.
Exposure to violence can also harm the way young people learn, behave, and relate to others. Research shows that young victims can develop psychological issues like anxiety, withdrawal, and post-traumatic stress, as well as chronic health issues including asthma, hypertension, and substance abuse. The emotional trauma can hamper their performance in school and spur them to commit violent acts themselves.
For the past three years, Herron has been supporting Michael and his sisters, the children of a family friend who was unable to care for them. She says that, before they came to live with her, they were "living like gypsies"—struggling in school, going hungry, and sleeping in cold places.
"When they came with me, they were able to have some structure," she said.
She took them to the doctor and got them enrolled in school in DuPage County.
"These kids went from straight Fs to honor roll students," Herron said.
Michael, an honor roll student, now spends days at home. According to Herron, because it's flu season and he still has open wounds, the doctor doesn't want him to go back to school until March. He may have to attend summer school to make up for missed class.
The shooting has shaken the whole family, rattling the sense of stability and security Herron had worked so hard to provide.
Michael is healing, but it's bothering him mentally. He's nervous. He wasn't able to identify his attackers. The perpetrators are still out there.
You know how school buses back up and make a "pow"? He heard that recently, and he was scared. He don't even want to go outside. He want to just be in the house. Michael said every time Christmas comes around, he'll think about the shooting. He said, "This is going to be with me for the rest of my life."
This has been a nightmare for me and these children. They were doing so good. But now that all my attention is on Michael, his sisters are acting out. One of them got in trouble at school and got suspended. Not only does he need counseling, the whole house needs counseling.
It's wearing me down. It's been days where I say, I can't do it, I gotta give em back, let them be the state's problem. But if I give 'em back, they're gonna split 'em up four ways. My heart won't let me do that. I'm all they have.
A version of this article was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Trace on Facebook or Twitter.
The film awards season is back, along with its annual headlines about gender inequality and lack of representation. Women have barely been recognized at this year's Oscars, with 80 percent of the nominations in non-acting categories going to men. But behind the statistics lie the personal stories of women who are frustrated by the lack of progress in their industry, and many of them now feel compelled to take action and speak out.
Action movie actress Yancy Butler, Artemis Women In Action Film Festival co-founder Melanie Wise, director and spearhead of the American Civil Liberties Union's investigation into Hollywood's discrimination Maria Giese, and Orange Is the New Black star Alysia Reiner, have all had wildly different experiences throughout their careers. However, their encounters share much in common.
Since the 2014 Sony email hack revealed that Jennifer Lawrence was being paid less than her American Hustle co-stars Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper, the subject of gender inequality often focuses on the abyss in pay. But this conversation still remains taboo within the industry. "People don't talk about their salaries, and I don't know why it's such a shameful thing," Yancy Butler says.
The actress' filmography is dominated by action roles where she's performed her own stunts. Since the start of Butler's career in the 90s, she has fought, parachuted, and somersaulted alongside Wesley Snipes, Jean Claude Van Damme, and more recently in both Kick-Ass movies. "In one particular instance I happened to work with a guy several times and I just straight up asked, 'I'm very curious what they're paying you?' It was double the amount they were paying me for something he was doing less work on. It was disheartening."
A Calgary man was badly burned Friday night after an e-cigarette battery exploded in his right pocket.
Terrence Johnson, 32, had been out downtown for dinner with his wife Rachel Rex and was just leaving the restaurant when something in his pocket burst into flame. A Global News video shows Johnson standing outside with his wife and a restaurant staffer when all of a sudden a huge flash comes from his right leg.
A lithium e-cigarette battery in Johnson's pocket had reportedly come into contact with with coins, causing it to overheat and explode, which can happen when the circuitry inside the battery is damaged.
Johnson was taken to Foothills hospital. He has third-degree burns on this leg, where his polyester underwear melted and fused to his thigh, and second-degree burns on his right hand, which he used to try to stop the flames.
His wife told Global he will likely need a skin graft.
"We had heard about the actual devices exploding but never knew the risk of the batteries," she said. "It was horrific and needless to say, his vaping days are over."
According to a GoFundMe page, both Johnson and Rex are now off work due to medical reasons.
Johnson isn't the only Albertan to fall victim to an e-cigarette related accident.
Last year, an e-cigarette exploded in the face of teenager Ty Greer when he went to light it, leaving him with second-degree burns and broken teeth. Greer's father said his son "wanted to die" from the pain.
The vaping industry has been criticized for its lack of regulations, something the federal government has said it plans to amend.
The day was oddly peaceful for Jamie Kvamme. She read a book, had a cup of coffee, and walked down to the dock near the lake house she and her husband had rented for a few days. It was an odd juxtaposition to what had happened exactly one year ago to the day, when she lost most of her left leg in a motorbike accident.
"Today was uneventful in the best way," Kvamme, 31, wrote on Instagram below a sunny selfie from the dock, a fishing rod balanced on her above-the-knee prosthesis. "My heart is full. My heart is thankful."
She signed the post with #ampuversary.
If you search that hashtag on social media, you'll find plenty of others commemorating the day they lost their limbs. The stories are simultaneously heartbreaking and inspiring—and many choose to remember the day as the time they received a second chance at life.
"It is a day of nostalgia, to see how far they have come," said Dr. Catherine Atkins, a psychologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, who assists amputees with mentally adjusting to their new body and life. "[Last year] just getting to the bathroom might have been difficult, and now they are riding a bike."
There are about 2 million Americans living with limb loss. A little over half of amputations are the result of vascular disease and diabetes; about 45 percent are like Kvamme's, with a limb or limbs lost through trauma. Another 2 percent of amputations are due to cancer. While it is unclear who coined the term "ampuversary," the Amputee Coalition has welcomed the term. The coalition is now planning a campaign during April, Limb Loss Awareness Month, to encourage the community to share their ampuversary stories.
For Saul Bosquez, 32, who lost part of his left leg and two toes on his right foot while serving in Iraq, each ampuversary is different. Like many people in the military, he refers to it as "alive day," referring to the fact that he lost his limb but not his life.
Bosquez wasn't sure how he wanted to commemorate his first anniversary. He was still at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, DC. He was running on a prosthetic leg about three months after the roadside bomb ripped into the side of his humvee, but he still struggled psychologically. In the end, he chose to commemorate his first year as an amputee alone, enjoying a steak dinner, poker, and a few cigars.
On other ampuversaries, he's played a round of golf; this year, his tenth, he said he and his wife are planning something special.
Others have taken the celebration even further. When Angela Wojtaszczyk, 33, a baker in Hampton, Virginia, received an order for an ampuversary cake in October last year, she assumed it was for Halloween. After emailing with the customer, she discovered the cake's purpose was very different.
"I was curious if that would make [an amputee] feel happy or sad? How does someone feel about celebrating the day they lost their limb?" Wojtaszczyk told me. She drew her inspiration from a gruesome "amputated leg" search on Google. It resulted in some detailed work with a cross section of a leg that included skin (fondant and chocolate), flesh (red velvet cake), and bone (more fondant and chocolate). She chiseled tiny lines in the icing to give the illusion of hair. "It was really fun to make, but I'm not sure how I would feel about eating it," she said. Wojtaszczyk was relieved when the person of honor, an extremely upbeat amputee, came to get the $175 cake.
Priscilla Sutton celebrates her ampuversary each year by having dinner with her closest friend. One year, someone made her a brooch decorated with a leg. Photo courtesy of Priscilla Sutton
It wasn't until Priscilla Sutton's 11th ampuversary that a colleague made her a cake in the shape of the leg she lost. The Skittles-covered cake mirrors her colorful disposition, which is reflected in the sentences that sums up her ordeal.
"Basically, chronic pain from birth and chopped it off to start again. Greatest decision of my life," said Sutton, 38, who was born with multiple health defects, including toes that were "bundled together." As she talked on the phone from Brisbane, Australia, she told me she still has her leg: It was cremated rather than disposed of as medical waste.
"Every year, I really want to respect [my aputated leg], how hard she worked for 26 years," Sutton told me.
A huge range of factors can determine how people cope with limb loss, according to Atkins from the medical center in New York. Did they lose a limb through diabetes? That could lead to self-loathing if they weren't diligent in managing their disease to avoid amputation. Did their amputation cost them their career? Do they have a history of alcohol and drug abuse? What about the state of their finances? Regardless of the feelings, ampuversaries should take a measured approach.
"How do we translate it into a celebration while balancing it with the reality of the loss?" said Atkins.
The posts on social media that are positive to the extreme can be misleading for how the amputee community copes as a whole. Numerous studies show that depression and anxiety disproportionately impact that community.
For many years, Peggy Chenoweth represented those statistics. Just after college, a computer crushed her foot (it was 1998 and well before the MacBook age). She spent almost five years and 20 surgeries trying to save it. The day of her amputation, she told me, "was one of the hardest of my life. I remember waking up in the morning and looking down and knowing it was the last time I would see my biological toes."
For years, she felt like this body with its missing foot wasn't her own. Chenoweth, 42, who now has a podcast based on amputee life, tried to lace the first few ampuversaries with celebration. "I faked it for a lot of years," she said. "It was a doubled-edge sword: So many people telling me I was strong, but I felt like a fraud because I knew I wasn't doing well."
A friend eventually confronted her on the distance between her façade and her true mental health. Now, July 3, her ampuversary, is commemorated with a lot of reflection, perhaps a jog, and sometimes a cake.
"You're not going to forget the date" she said. "You kind of have no choice."
On Sunday, Philadelphia police discovered around 100 toppled gravestones at the Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery, just one week after roughly 170 gravestones were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in Missouri, the New York Timesreports.
Police responded to the scene Sunday morning after receiving a complaint from a man who said that three of his relatives' headstones had been knocked over. They discovered that about 100 gravestones had been vandalized in total, but weren't ready to disclose whether or not they had a suspect in mind or had identified a motive.
The Philadelphia mayor and the Pennsylvania governor have already condemned the incident, as well as local Jewish leaders. According to the Times, advocacy groups are offering a combined pool of $13,000 for anyone who might have information regarding the vandalism.
"We are doing all we can to find the perpetrators who desecrated this final resting place, and they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement. "Hate is not permissible in Philadelphia."
Last Monday, 11 Jewish community centers around the country reported receiving bomb threats before police found roughly 170 damaged headstones at a Jewish cemetery in University City, Missouri, though it's not clear if the threats were connected to the vandalism. Tarek El-Messidi, a Muslim activist, launched a fundraiser in response to the Missouri vandalism and has raised $130,000 as of Monday, the Washington Postreports.
Naomi Adler, the chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, has launched her own fundraiser to raise money to clean up the damage at Mount Carmel, estimating that it will cost between $450 and $500 to repair each headstone.
"It's horrific," Alder told the Times. "It's a desecration of a sacred Jewish space."
When you're driving down the West Coast Highway on Vancouver Island, it's hard not to be in awe of the surrounding natural beauty. The 100-km stretch of highway that runs from Victoria to Port Renfrew is flanked by the sprawling Pacific Ocean on one side, and lush rainforest on the other. Scattered between the trees and ocean are a plethora of beaches where people hike, surf, swim, and camp; it's a paradise for outdoor enthusiasts.
But beneath the pristine wilderness there's a global epidemic slowly infiltrating Canada's oceans and beaches. Garbage.
On a typical wet-winter west coast afternoon, I drove out to Sombrio Beach, located approximately 20-km south of Port Renfrew, to see first-hand the impact garbage is having on our ocean and beaches. I spent the afternoon with an international group called the Surfrider Foundation whose mandate "is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches through a powerful activist network."
Surfrider started as a small grassroots movement in California during the 1980s and now boasts over 50,000 members with roughly 80 chapters around the globe, including three in Canada. Every month the Vancouver Island Chapter has a beach cleanup, where volunteers put on work gloves, rubber boots, and pick-up garbage.
On this particular day, there are a couple of dozen volunteers scattered across the beach, piling discarded bottles, cigarette butts, plastic straws, beer cans, flip flops, and an assortment of other trash into white pails. Ultimately, the group dumps the garbage onto a giant blue tarp where it's sorted and carried out to a truck for proper disposal. After the trash is gathered and weighed, the volunteers on Sombrio will have picked up approximately 650-lbs of garbage, including a substantial bundle of gigantic wire that's washed ashore.
It's a problem that has locals taking action.
"I've been coming out to this beach since I was kid," said Jamie McKay, Chairperson of the Vancouver Island chapter of Surfrider and lead organizer of the Sombrio cleanup. McKay added that he eventually started coming out to cleanups with Surfrider and before he knew it, he was helping lead the local chapter.
Surfrider has a variety of initiatives and campaigns focusing on beach access, coastal preservation, clean water, ocean protection and plastic pollution. Garbage and plastic pollution has become a global epidemic, one that Surfrider is working hard to combat.
In September of last year, more than 40-tonnes of garbage was pulled from the beaches of Vancouver Island alone. A good portion of the garbage is alleged to have come from the Japanese tsunami from 2011. However, the problem is not limited to just Vancouver Island; in 2015 a study estimated that the ocean contained 5.25-trillion pieces of garbage and counting. Some even estimate there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.
There have been reports from around the globe about the impact plastic pollution is having on both coastal marine environments and the wildlife that inhabit these regions. Recently, a whale off the Norwegian coast was found with more than 30-plastic bags in its stomach. In Canada, researchers have warned that plastic is affecting birds and smaller marine life. For a country with the largest coastline, it's a problem that's not getting better.
"The amount of plastic on [the] beaches is getting worse," said Gillian Montgomery, Chapter Manager of the Vancouver Island Surfrider. Montgomery elaborated, adding that from what she's seen, plastic pollution has only gotten worse the last few years and it's not getting any better. It's a frustration echoed by her colleague McKay, "The government does not publicly say plastics are a problem because we have recycling they just assume recycling takes care of everything."
The BC government did not respond to a multiple requests for comment.
A good portion of this plastic pollution is attributed to "throwaway" culture. Coffee cups, water bottles and plastic bags are just some of the biggest culprits that often end up in the ocean and on the beach. Some of these plastics, once they're in the ocean, break down into microplastics. In its simplest form, plastics shred into smaller particles as sunlight makes them brittle and the waves break them up, leaving them adrift to be ingested by marine life.
"Most of the oceans now contain some amount of microplastics," Marcus Eriksen, co-founder and Research Director of the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit group "that empowers action against the global health crisis of plastic pollution through science, art, education, and adventure," told VICE.
The research on the impact of microplastics is relatively new; as a result, authoritative data is mostly incomplete. However, Dr. Marie Noel, Research Manager of the Ocean Pollution Research Program at the Vancouver Aquarium, said in one study they found "…3,000 particles of microplastics per cubic meter of seawater…which is a significant amount." A few papers have been released on the impact of microplastics, but Noel hopes to have a full report out sometime in the near future.
Noel added that the pollution program is also studying the effects of plastic and garbage on killer whales, mussels, zooplankton and is doing a broad monitoring of pollution on the BC coast. Locally, Surfrider is working with the City of Victoria to try and establish a plastic bag ban in stores, with the hopes of getting consumers to switch to reusable bags. In Tofino, a small coastal town on the west coast of Vancouver Island, a Surfrider led initiative has several businesses who have voluntarily agreed to stop using plastic straws.
Surfrider's Montgomery said people can do other things like stop using single-use plastics like water bottles, refuse a plastic straw when at a restaurant, and instead of using plastic bags bring your own reusable bags when you shop and bring your own coffee mug when filling up your beverage.
Ultimately, many think actual policies are needed for people to change their consumer habits.
"It's a long-term effort to get rid of the single use throwaway culture," Eriksen said. He added that legislation would help place responsibility on the consumer and their habits. But ultimately, change can start with the an individual's habits and consciousness of what they're buying.
"The biggest first step anyone can take is when they're at the grocery store shopping is thinking about what they're purchasing," said McKay.
Not on Canada as a whole—he did that a while ago, but he's back now—no, O'Leary bailed on the bilingual Conservative Party leadership debate taking place in Edmonton tomorrow. I know what you're thinking: Well, Mack, maybe this has something to do with the fact that the Kev-o-nator can't speak French?
Well, my fair reader, you would be wrong.
The stylin', profilin', limousine ridin', jet flyin', kiss-stealin', wheelin' n' dealin' son of a gun dropped out, short notice, because the debate format is dumb.
"I said from the beginning that it is bad format to have fourteen people on stage answering the same question with no back and forth," reads a statement from Canada's future king. "It allows no time for ideas to be explained, or any real debate to transpire."
He then praised the debate format that happened at the Manning format this past weekend (which, to be fair, was far superior). O'Leary said that he lobbied the party to change the format and that all but one candidate agreed, but to no avail. "I am obviously disappointed," reads the statement.
Obviously the O'Lear Jet took some (undeserving) heat on social media over his decision even though it totally had nothing to do with the fact he can't really speak French. Fellow leadership candidate Lisa Raitt called O'Leary a chicken on twitter.
"Format is irrelevant. Presence is mandatory," reads another tweet by Raitt. "Suck it up and play by the rules."
Another leadership candidate, Kevin Peterson, said he calls "BS" on O'Leary's excuse and his claim that he tried and change the debate format.
This isn't the first time K-Money's lack of French has been questioned. He entered the Conservative leadership race in early 2017, shortly after the French debate and was accused of attempting to avoid that debate because well, you know, he can't speak a lick of the language.
This time, there is a good chance the Dragon will be fined upwards of $10,000 by the party for his sudden exit from the Edmonton debate.
Nevertheless, O'Leary said that he will be holding a separate event, an "intimate fireside chat," in Edmonton at the same time, saying he looks "forward to speaking directly with Albertans."
The event, most likely, will be held in English—but that totally has nothing to do with it, you guys.
Last night, millions across the globe witnessed history taking place on television: For once, the Oscars were actually worth watching until the very end. The massively embarrassing and awkward envelope snafu that took place when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land instead of Moonlight as the night's Best Picture winner was, without regard for the feelings of those involved, a delicious slice of television and pop-culture history—something that anyone who was watching will remember for years, maybe forever. It was also a moment that sadly overshadowed the titanic upset and, one hopes, anticipated industry sea change that Moonlight's win represented.
In a social and political climate where conspiracy theories are more prevalent and cleared for discussion than ever, last night's mix up was pure candy for the Infowars die-hards and Brangelina truthers alike. Was it Beatty's fault? What about Dunaway's? Did Leonardo DiCaprio have a hand in this? Was this yet another prank by the prank-loving host Jimmy Kimmel? Or was it just an honest, once-in-a-thousand-lifetimes goof by an unlucky stagehand? (I'll refrain from making the obvious jokes about Russia.)
No matter how many versions of the truth we receive in the weeks to come in regards to what, exactly, happened on February 27 at 12:15 am, it's going to be hard to not let our imaginations run wild. Regardless, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers—which typically (and, usually, smoothly) guards the Oscar envelopes up until the very moment they're brought on the stage—was quick to issue a statement of contrition for whatever went wrong: "The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred."
PricewaterhouseCoopers has handled its duties with the Oscars for 83 years now, and last night's gaffe was, to say the least, a first. It's tempting to read some symbolic meaning into the spectacularly unexpected moment, since the last six months have seen many large-scale surprises, shake-ups, and total upheavals of what people perceive as "normal."
There was, of course, the 2016 US election; then, the first-ever Super Bowl to go into overtime, resulting in a surprising comeback and win from the New England Patriots after spending most of the game lagging behind the Atlanta Falcons; and earlier this month, Beyoncé fans were stunned as she lost the Album of the Year Grammy to Adele for 25. (Those who closely follow the trends of the music industry probably weren't as surprised by Adele's win—but public perception rules all.)
It has indeed been a ridiculously crazy time for public spectacles—likely chalked up to coincidence in the end—but following the Grammys' lead, this year's Oscars were somewhat more mishap-prone than usual. If you don't believe that, just ask Jan Chapman: The Australian film producer's image was mistakenly shown alongside the name of deceased costume designer Janet Patterson during the ceremony's In Memoriam segment. Chapman is very much alive, and her not-immediately-obvious inclusion in the annual Hollywood death scrum was far more egregious than not being able to work in legendary actor Bill Paxton, who passed away over the weekend due to complications during surgery, at the last minute.
However, a truly human moment took place when, while introducing the In Memoriam segment, Jennifer Aniston choked up while mentioning Paxton's passing—a crack in the seams that represented one of a few times that unique and distinct emotional gestures broke through the night's otherwise safe and somewhat tedious proceedings. Viola Davis's Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech for her commanding, complex turn in Denzel Washington's August Wilson adaptation Fences was powerful enough to warrant its own award; and Manchester by the Sea writer/director Kenneth Lonergan's speech while accepting the award for Best Original Screenplay was as poignant and heartbreaking as the film it was attached to. The giggles that came with the roundly maligned Suicide Squad taking home an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling quickly subsided when one of the winners, Alessandro Bertolazzi, grabbed his trophy and proclaimed loudly, "This is for all the immigrants."
Politics and the general state of the world hovered over this year's Oscars, as they have hovered over pretty much everything in the last 18 months. There was much speculation as to how much of a role politics would play in this year's ceremony, and perhaps you could say it was a little less present than you'd expect—but a number of the acceptance speeches were the vessel for the night's strongest and most potent political and emotional outpourings. In his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay, Moonlight's Barry Jenkins directly shouted out the ACLU: "...All you people out there who think there's no mirror for you, that your life is not reflected, the academy has your back. The ACLU has your back. We have your back. And for the next four years, we will not leave you alone. We will not forget you."
Yet, perhaps the strongest statement of the night was delivered by someone who actually wasn't in attendance: Iranian director Asghar Farhadi—who took home his second Best Foreign Language Film Oscar last night for The Salesman—chose not to attend "out of respect for the people of my country and those of the other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the US." Anousheh Ansari, who was the first Iranian to go into space, read a statement from Farhadi that addressed President Trump's disruptive and highly discriminatory travel ban, highlighting the ways in which art can make small steps towards unification through a recognition of cultural differences: "Filmmakers can turn their cameras to capture shared human qualities and break stereotypes of various nationalities and religions. They create empathy between us and others. An empathy which we need today more than ever."
If a good number of last night's acceptance speeches registered positive readings when it came to expressions of humanity, Kimmel's turn at hosting barely moved the needle. His monologue and interludes were neither the cringe-worthy disaster that previous hosts such as Neil Patrick Harris and Seth MacFarlane have perpetrated, nor the mildly humorous stylings of Ellen DeGeneres, the caustic hit-and-miss hilarity of last year's host Chris Rock—nor even the blowing-up-the-hospital nihilism of Anne Hathaway and James Franco's dual turn. Save for a few funny bits regarding his long-running faux feud with Matt Damon, Kimmel's hosting gig wasn't much of anything, really. He hit his beats, made the requisite jokes about the length of the show, gave out some food to the audience, and tried to work some Trump-related humor into the monologue that didn't quite land. (Both his and Grammy host James Corden's similarly awkward attempts to Trump-ify their opening monologues are proof, as ever, that the terrifying times we currently live in don't lend themselves too well to jokey tones.)
Kimmel played it safe for a show that, until its explosive ending, made playing it safe into its own banal virtue—but one bit stood out in the wrong way. His "gag" involving a bunch of unsuspecting tourists walking into the Dolby theater was bewilderingly condescending, awkward in its execution, and—like the Oscars themselves—at least a few minutes too long. It was hard not to writhe uncomfortably as Kimmel tried to make comedic hay out of the tourists' birth names, a truly tone-deaf display of obnoxiousness at a time when Hollywood types are under increased scrutiny for their inability to operate outside their own bubbles of privilege. If this was an attempt to reach across the aisle—to connect with "real people"—it was transparently insincere.
Last year's Oscars was deservedly mired in self-recrimination in regards to the Academy's approach to diversity and general acknowledgment of the world around them—it was a definitive and very public turning point that practically required visibly changing attitudes in years to follow. So this year's ceremony featured steps forward and back: in their statements and in the art they put forth, this year's Oscar winners often displayed a capacity to push the conversation forward regarding changing the world that we live in—but missteps like Kimmel's still serve as obvious reminders that the Oscars' ongoing attempt at self-betterment is far from being fully realized.
Doug Benson is a weed activist, a longtime fixture of the Los Angeles comedy scene, a major player in the world of podcasting, and a dude who is high a lot. The last thing he'd be qualified to do is oversee oral arguments in small-claims court and issue binding judgements. But well, here he is doing just that.
"These are real people who are really upset," Daniel Kellison, executive producer of Comedy Central's new show The High Court, told me in a phone interview. "They're coming into this courtroom situation, and they're legitimately pissed at each other. Then they've suddenly got to navigate this super stoned judge and bailiff, who are laughing." That pretty much sums up the very simple joke at the heart of The High Court.
"I want to show that when someone's high, that doesn't change their morals."
"It was the easiest pitch and sell of my life," Benson recently told me, during a set visit. "It was like 'It's Judge Judy, but me!' And [the Comedy Central executives] were like, 'OK! Let's do that!'"
But TheHigh Court is a better show than it has any right to be, because the moral struggle at its heart isn't the one between the litigants; it's Benson's. "I want to show that when someone's high, that doesn't change their morals. The decision process may be slower, or there may be details that get foggy, but I'd still like to think that I'd make the same decision if I weren't," Benson explained.
And even if the litigants do ham it up for the cameras, it's important to note that the guests on the show did actually try to take their cases to real small-claims court before anyone ever approached them about being on TV. "They're real-ish," Benson told me. "So you have to care about who's gonna win or lose. You can come to it for laughs, or you can come to it wanting to see a case argued and see what decision is made, or hopefully both."
Since the genre was created in 1981, courtroom shows featuring real cases have tried variations on the formula, like making them about kids or making the judges ostensibly "hot," but the winningest formula so far has been "make the judge a huge jerk." I'd rather watch nothing at all than look at Judge Mathis, Judge Judy, Judge Mills Lane, or Judge Joe Brown bark at two people with real problems for being stupid liars. The whole thing gives me a headache.
In contrast, watching a stoned comedian fill that role instead of someone who thinks he's King fucking Solomon is surprisingly rewarding.
Photo by Mark Davis/courtesy of Comedy Central
For instance, in one case that will air during the first season, two women have a dispute over a car. I'll try and give you the play-by-play: (Deep breath) One borrowed a Lexus from the other while the plates were already expired, but she parked it in front of a police station, so it got towed, but then there's also the issue of how it stayed in impound for too long, so in the end, the car got lost forever, after which the friend who borrowed the car actually paid for part of it, but not all of it. As the litigants' emotions heightened, and as the layers of fault kept peeling back like an onion, I kinda lost track.
I know what would happen if this were Judge Mills Lane or Judge Judy. The judge would yell at them, pry apart their stupid, illogical arguments, and try to teach someone a valuable life lesson. But stoners—thank God—don't tend to be so, well, judgmental. "'These people are both full of shit! What do I do?'" Benson recalls thinking in many cases. "The answer is: Get high and just arbitrarily award someone [something], or just go, 'Case dismissed!' and bang my gavel, and just walk out."
And then, yes, the participants on the show have to do the thing the stoned judge just said before banging his gavel. "They sign something that says, 'We'll go with whatever the court decides,'" Benson explained.
"Everyone said, 'Why doesn't Doug pretend to smoke on the stage? Then we could just get these shows done.' Doug, to his credit, said he didn't want to."
But the system prevents his rulings from making anyone broke—or broker—Benson told me. "When one person owes another person $300, in my head, I know they're not paying it because they can't," he said. "When I decide in favor of a plaintiff for an amount of money, I know that to a certain point, our show is going to cover it. In the process, neither person gets mad, because at least the person who lost isn't really paying the money."
But if the fact that the show compensates its losing defendants strains your enjoyment because you hold your TV shows to a high standard for authenticity or something, Benson's integrity in one area is utterly uncompromising: When you see him smoke on the screen, he's really getting high.
Granted, the fact that a comedian smokes weed on a Hollywood TV set is probably the least shocking news you'll read today. What's surprising, then, is that Benson and Kellison had to dig in their heels about the issue to make sure it worked out that way. As production was gearing up, a fire marshall categorically forbade weed smoking on The High Court soundstage, they told me. "Then everyone said, 'Why doesn't Doug pretend to smoke on the stage? Then we could just get these shows done.' Doug, to his credit, said he didn't want to."
"We literally shut down rather than pretend," Kellison told me.
"We pushed back pretty hard," Benson said, "especially in light of [California's] legalization [as of November 8, 2016], but some basic parameters were set up by people at Comedy Central where if anyone on set felt like they got a contact high, we would give them a ride home, and everyone participating signed waivers."
Photo by Mark Davis/courtesy of Comedy Central
On a December visit to the set, I smelled weed when Benson hit a bong—so I can personally vouch for its authenticity—but I couldn't smell it very well, because the crew had used fans and PVC pipe to create an insanely elaborate apparatus for drawing smoke away from the active set, channeling it across the soundstage and blowing it out an exhaust port that led to the outside. I didn't need one of the free rides home.
Technically, according to Benson, "only me and the bailiff can smoke on the set, and I think there's a parameter where we only each do two hits during each deliberation." During the deliberation I watched, he and bailiff Beth Stelling tear that rule to shreds with a series of formidable rips from a camera-friendly—if somewhat goofy—bong.
When the smoke cleared, Stelling looked high, as in: high-school-junior-at-a-planetarium high. The funniest part of the show is when the too-stoned bailiffs have to stand next to the arguing plaintiff and defendant and try to keep it together without getting the giggles. Benson says it's one of the tougher jobs on the entire set. "Most of the bailiffs we got can't just sit there and smoke weed all day like I ended up having to do," he said.
"In all courts, at any level, it feels like there's a lot that a judge can get away with."
But Benson can handle his weed. To make his 2008 documentary Super High Me, he got high every waking second of the day for 30 days, and in no way did it stop him from doing his job—which at the time was telling weed jokes. Being a TV judge is a bit different, he admits, but it's given him insight into the jobs of actual judges. "In all courts, at any level, it feels like there's a lot that a judge can get away with," he said "They can just decide, 'Well, this person has a terrible personality, so I'm gonna teach them a lesson.'"
Consequently, Benson said, the participants on the show do sometimes seem annoyed when things don't work out their way, and even though the money's not an issue, he told me, "People still want to be right." At the end of each segment, the plaintiff and defendant talk about how the proceedings just went, and Benson notes that "more often than not, one of them says, 'That was bullshit!'"
If the ratings are any good, perhaps there could eventually be some kind of appeals process for returning guests. "Maybe we can go Supreme High Court, and I can get together with a bunch of other people, and we can all smoke up and make decisions," he suggested with a laugh.
But until then, Benson mostly wishes these people would just cool it and stop arguing. "It's people who are friends, and people who are relatives. In most of these cases, it's relationships," he told me. "What I'm basically doing is saying, 'We're gonna pay for you to let this go.'
"They probably never will," Benson lamented. "It's probably gonna eat at them for the rest of their lives."
The High Court premieres February 27, 2017, on Comedy Central.
MOGADISHU, Somalia—In the weeks after a historic transfer of power, there is hope in the streets of Somalia's capital Mogadishu as the new president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, begins his term. Civil servants say they expect to be paid for the first time in a year. Residents hope the city can be rebuilt. And foreign troops here from across East Africa fighting al-Shabaab terrorists hope their mandate will finally come to an end.
"The election has been a big confidence boost for Somalis," says Michael Keating, Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General (SRSG). "Somalis have just done something truly remarkable."
But Farmajo's first week has been trying. Al-Shabaab, at war with the Somali government for the last decade, has ramped up attacks on the new government, launching a deadly mortar attack aimed at the presidential palace and taking credit for a car bomb that killed 39 people.
Adapting to al-Shabaab's shifting strategies will be a long-term challenge for the new administration, but the real test will be whether the new government can prevent a looming crisis: the starvation of its people.
Somalia is on the edge of famine, as severe drought threatens the entire country. Humanitarians say if nothing is done, it will be worse than the 2011 famine that killed a quarter-million people.
In an interview with Today, former president George W. Bush told Matt Lauer that the American public "all need answers" regarding Trump's alleged ties to Russia.
"I think we all need answers," Bush said Monday. "I'm not sure the right avenue to take. I am sure, though, that that question needs to be answered."
Bush—in rare form, seeing how he usually avoids commenting on politics—also criticized Trump's stance that the media is the "enemy of the people." A free press is "indispensable to democracy," Bush remarked. "It's kind of hard to tell others to have an independent free press when we're not willing to have one ourselves."
Bush was careful when asked about the bipartisan call for a special prosecutor to probe Trump's alleged ties to Russia and Putin, though. He said he would defer to Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to make that call.
"If [Burr] were to recommend a special prosecutor, then it'd have a lot more credibility with me," Bush said.
One stormy July morning in 2013, 17-year-old R.W.* awoke to use the bathroom and found himself stuck in the throes of an American nightmare. Then an inmate at the Sumter Correctional Institution in Bushnell, Florida, R.W. claims he was attacked by at least six of his fellow prisoners who choked him, cut him with pieces of barbed wire, and raped him with a mop handle. It was part of a ritual known as a "test of heart," a violent tradition some inmates say is common in Florida correctional facilities.
Making things even worse is that an investigation by the Florida Department of Corrections suggests a guard was stationed in view of the attack but did nothing—and never reported it.
According to the lawsuit filed on R.W.'s behalf by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), it was only after a second guard noticed the teenager's wounds—he claims to have been treated only with toothpaste—that R.W. was sent to the infirmary. He says he was then moved to administrative confinement, an isolated room where he was only allowed to leave three times a week to shower and to speak with the prison investigator. The inmate further claims he was subsequently prohibited from attending GED classes or communicating with fellow inmates, and that he never received his personal belongings or mail.
Just a few months after the brutal attack, R.W. was relocated to Lancaster Correctional Institution in Trenton, Florida, where, according to his attorney, he endured another assault.
Though perhaps less common than sensational HBO series like Oz might have you believe, rape behind bars isn't exactly rare in the United States. Roughly one in ten youth had been sexually assaulted during their time in juvenile detention, a 2012 federal study found—to say nothing of the adult prison system. And though R.W. was apparently the victim of fellow inmates, official prison staff commit some 45 percent of sexual assaults on young inmates that get reported. Between 2007 and 2012, juveniles filed nearly 9,500 reports of sexual abuse across America.
Especially during his second term, former president Barack Obama made strides on criminal justice reform, commuting more sentences than any other chief executive in history and ending juvenile solitary confinement at the federal level. But he devoted considerably less attention to the problem of sexual assault in jails and prisons. That made a certain amount of sense given reform was already underway: In 2003, then president George W. Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which instituted new national standards for tabulating and combatting sexual assault in the criminal justice system.
Advocates hope to take things further in the Trump era thanks to the Justice For All Reauthorization Act, which became law in December. The act compels states to more aggressively implement Prison Rape Elimination Act standards by 2022, or else risk losing federal grant money. Previously, states not in compliance with the law were subject to a 5 percent penalty on some prison funds but could avoid being docked if they promised to implement standards in the future.
Although President Trump aggressively positions himself as tough on crime, and criticized his predecessor's clemency policy, he seldom discusses his vision for American prisons. But his new attorney general, former Alabama US senator Jeff Sessions, was a lead sponsor of the original Prison Rape Elimination Act, and while there are many issues—like holding local police departments accountable—where the AG diverges from the Obama administration, combatting sexual assault behind bars doesn't appear to be one of them.
"The nomination of Senator Sessions gives us reason to expect that preventing sexual abuse in detention will remain a DOJ priority," says Chris Daley, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, an advocacy group focused on jailhouse and prison rape.
To be sure, the problem of sexual assault in the system wasn't exactly ignored in the Obama era. But just as the former president's signature healthcare law was implemented unevenly across the 50 states, so have the now well over a decade-old rules to rein in prison rape.
"Some states and facilities have done a really good job of reporting standards, and some haven't done a good job, and some haven't done it at all," says Jason Szanyi, deputy director of the Center for Children's Law and Policy, a public-interest prison-advocacy group. Many states are lax about adhering to the law: As of March, only 11 were in full compliance with the law, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Thirty-seven states sent letters of assurance to Department of Justice that they would complete audits and staff training in the upcoming years. Arkansas and Utah, meanwhile, are the only two states that have opted out completely.
Referring to R.W.'s case, Ashley Cook, the press secretary for the Florida Department of Corrections, insisted the state is striving to maintain PREA standards. In an email to VICE, she maintained that sexual assault victims are examined by mental or medical health professionals "in a timely manner."
If nothing else, the contrast between the status quo and the era before PREA's passage is tangible. Nicole Wolfe's story offers a telling example of the old way: In 1997, while serving time in Central California Women's Facility (CCWF), Wolfe, a former attorney, says she was routinely raped by a nurse and a correctional lieutenant. When she reported the abuse, Wolfe adds, she was placed in administrative segregation (an isolated room) for 30 hours. "I cried the whole time," she told me. "It was like jail inside of a prison."
"With PREA comes heightened sensitivity, awareness, and increased capacity to report," said Dr. Allen J. Beck, senior statistical advisor at the Bureau of Justice Statistics and a chief architect of the PREA reports. "I think victims are more likely to report now than they were in the past."
Some figures bear this out: In 2016, the Bureau of Justice Statistics surveyed more than 92,000 adult inmates and 1,738 16- and 17-year-olds housed in prisons and local jails and discovered that despite a long-term drop in the population at juvenile detention centers, rape allegations rose steadily, from 690 in 2010 to 735 in 2011 to 865 in 2012. In adult facilities, allegations of sexual victimization jumped 11 percent between 2009 and 2011, from 7,855 allegations to 8,763.There has been anecdotal evidence of a similar trend at work among the general population in the United States, with a significant uptick in rapes reported in some cities; former New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton called this phenomenon the "Bill Cosby" effect," suggesting the slow but steady emergence of new sex assault allegations against the disgraced comedian may be encouraging longtime survivors to come forward from the population at large.
Check out TONIC's guide to fixing an impaled object wound.
Wolfe caught a break and eventually was transferred to what she described as the "completely wonderful" atmosphere of the California Institution for Women (CIW), where, she said, "people never once gave me the sideways glance." At CIW, Wolfe helped set up a peer educators program to teach inmates how to safely report sexual assault.
Today, CCWF officials seem to be doing what they can to meet PREA standards. The prison hosts a PREA education program that includes peer support and grief counselors for inmates, according to Michael Dunn, the facility's public information officer.
But no single piece of legislation could possibly lift the overwhelming grip of violence on America's prisons. Transgender inmates, in particular, face unique danger, and advocates aggressively caution against declaring "mission accomplished."
"Prison rape is actually a real tool of institutional control, a money-making opportunity for [prison gangs] that are in control," says Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director of criminal justice reform at the SPLC, suggesting that the economic system in prisons is built on the exchange of goods, money, and sexual assault. Within many juvenile offender prisons in Florida, for instance, gangs force inmates to pay for their tenancy through rape, according to Graybill. "The guards ignore it because they rely on groups of inmates to maintain control of the facilities," she says.
To advocates like her, this system of control is one of the key factors preventing the Prison Rape Elimination Act from being more effective—and perpetuating a cycle of sexual violence in some of America's most forlorn places.
I am a child, nestled in a sleeping bag on our carpeted computer room floor, staring at a 10-inch television. My parents taped a copy of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, edited by ABC for a network audience. In ABC's mind, Jim Carrey violently vomiting into a toilet after discovering the woman he dated was a former field goal kicker fits right in with his animal noises and obsession with flatulence.
He thinks so little of this woman's humanity that as an answer to the film's whodunit, he strips her in front of her superiors with the help of NFL superstar Dan Marino. In these filmmakers' minds, encountering a trans woman is just another slapstick gag, on par with a well-placed banana peel. Could a banana peel ever be respected or loved?
"Would you fuck me? I'd fuck me."
I am a teenager, watching Buffalo Bill dance in front of a camera in The Silence of the Lambs. She is painted as grotesque, wearing an ill-fitting wig and applying makeup beside (not over) masculine facial features to highlight them. It's why she's sewing a suit made of women's flesh: she's meant to be an invader, a predator who has the gall to think she can fit in with the rest of the girls. My eyes turn to the ground, unable to stomach the rest of the scene. I yearn to be a woman, but the films and cartoons I've consumed warn me that even suggesting such a thing could ruin my life. Best to keep it bottled up and continue as usual.
Last month, a team of physicists from UC Berkeley said they'd created a blueprint for a new phase of matter called a time crystal. Their paper, in Physical Review Letters, turned what was once a pretty far out speculation into a practical recipe for cooking up a time crystal in a laboratory.
Indeed, since the preprint paper was published online last year, researchers at the University of Maryland and Harvard University have followed the UC Berkeley recipe and created time crystals of their own using two different mediums: lasers and trapped ions.
A time crystal isn't something you can hold in your hands, and it isn't something you can grow in your kitchen with some table salt and a glass of water. For a long time, the time crystal concept existed only on paper as a mathematical oddity. It's only now that time crystals have been realized in a lab in (quantum) physical form.
Time crystals are an insanely complicated subject and not particularly relevant to 99 percent of the population (at least for now), which is probably why you haven't heard much about them, despite the magnitude of this scientific breakthrough. Indeed, after spending a few hours discussing the matter with a handful of physicists who are on the front line of time-crystallography, I was still only able to grasp the subject at a relatively rudimentary level. Yet thanks to these physicists' near infinite patience and input, I was able to distill the essence of a time crystal into the simplest, most accurate explanation I could muster, and it's still pretty complicated.
During his presidential campaign and even in the early days of his administration, Donald Trump has avoided specifics. He's promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, boost economic growth, build new and better infrastructure, and defeat radical Islamic terrorism in the Middle East—but he was vague on how he'd do all that, or else contradicted himself from one week to the next. But by March, he'll have to submit a budget for Congress's approval, and a budget is nothing but specifics. Candidates can hide behind platitudes and attack ads; presidents have to govern. And this week, as Trump drops hints about what's going to be in his budget, it's becoming clearer where his priorities lie.
On Monday, Trump told a gathering of the nation's governors that he planned to increase the military budget by $54 billion and spend more on infrastructure and law enforcement as well. This would be paid for not by loans or tax increases but by equivalent cuts to other departments. The big question is: What's going to get the ax?
It shouldn't be a surprise that Trump is talking about ramping up defense spending. He's spent a lot of time complaining about how America's incredibly large and powerful military is allegedly falling apart—for instance advocating loudly for a bigger naval fleet, talking about "peace through strength," and complaining (as he did Monday) that America can't win wars anymore. And $54 billion isn't a staggering sum in context. In 2016, the federal government spent $3.9 trillion total—$2.4 trillion was mandatory spending, including payments for entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare. Military spending made up nearly half of the $1.2 trillion discretionary budget, at $584 billion. Adding $54 billion to that is less than a 10 percent increase. (Besides mandatory and discretionary spending, there are also interest payments on the debt.)
But how do you find $54 billion in the rest of the budget to take away? Republicans tend to rag on foreign aid, but it costs the country only $50 billion a year—and is Trump going to stop sending the $3.8 billion in military aid the US gives Israel every year? Or the $1.3 billion that Egypt gets?
Similarly, slimming down the domestic budget involves a lot of incredibly difficult decisions. Last month, the Hill reported that the Trump administration was using a document from the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for its budget. That document promised to cut $10.5 trillion in spending in ten years, a huge amount even by the Brobdingnagian standards of the federal budget. Heritage wonks got there by attacking not just traditional right-wing targets like programs that fight climate change—they advise saving over $3.6 billion a year by eliminating nine such programs—but grants that provide money to local fire departments and cops. The rationale is that states and cities should pay for those services, but can you imagine a politician actually using that logic to defend taking money away from first responders? Other rumored cuts would save the government teensy-tiny amounts—eliminating both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would save only a combined $300 million; privatizing the Corporation of Public Broadcasting frees up less than $450 million.
It's nearly impossible to effectively cut government without enraging people, which is probably why spending has risen under presidents of both parties for decades. And though Trump has argued that he's saved a lot of money already on renegotiating contracts (he said that he trimmed over $700 million off the F-35 project, which is disputed), his budget isn't going to touch the big sources of spending. His administration has promised not to cut entitlements, and he's obviously promising to spend more on the military.
If Trump wants to actually reduce spending, or even just pay for his defense expansion and his promised tax cuts, he's going to have to go after the remaining items in the budget. There is surely fat to be cut here and there, but a lot of those items pay for scientific research, protect clean air and water, provide assistance to the poor, or other praiseworthy aims. The administration will soon have to officially admit it wants to gut these governmental functions entirely, or walk back Trump's promises to fund infrastructure spending, military buildup, and a tax cut. In other words, pretty soon we'll all get to see what "making America great again" actually looks like.
In our current hyper-connected age, there are very few heretofore uncharted spaces left in the extreme metal atlas. By the late 90s, extreme music had permeated, to some extent, most places on earth—but even then, not everywhere had enjoyed the rank privilege of becoming jaded. In some places, local metal heads were only entering the first stage of the equation. Small groups of diehards were starting their first extreme bands, and hosting the first metal nights at pubs whose owners were unfamiliar with the harsh, new style of music, entirely foreign to their ears. They slowly introduced a heavier, faster, eviler, and more dangerous brand of metal to rock fans hungry for something new. One of those places was the landlocked Himalayan nation of Nepal.
"Nepal's extreme music scene started from the end of 90s when Ugrakarma introduced themselves in Kathmandu and Suicide Theory in Hetauda," says Visha Rai, extreme metal promoter in Kathmandu and front man of now defunct Nepalese grindcore band Wakk Thuu.
"Ugrakarma came out with their debut album, Blood Metal Initiation, in the early 2000s. Suicide Theory played few shows. Also, X-Mantra came out with their album, Crying For Peace," Rai says of the early days when Nepalese bands started moving on from putting out demos and singles to releasing the country's first extreme metal full-lengths. In the early days of the Nepalese scene, heavy music was spread the old school way, says fellow promoter Zivon Gurung, who works closely with Rai to promulgate extreme metal in Nepal, he operating out of the city of Pokhara.
