It's been called "the free speech issue of our time."

But many Americans may not realize just how important net neutrality—the internet's open access principle—is for economic growth, civic empowerment, and political activism.

Net neutrality is the concept that every website and online service should be equally accessible to all people. That means everyone—from consumers to innovators to activists—has open access to the internet.

From a consumer perspective, net neutrality means that users can access a giant over-the-top online video product like HBO GO just as easily as they can reach a smaller service like Vimeo. It also means that internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon can't favor their own video or communications tools at the expense of rivals.

One month into the Trump presidency, net neutrality is under attack by the Republicans who run Trump's FCC and the GOP lawmakers who control Congress. To do this, these officials intend to hand the broadband industry a gift on a silver platter, by dismantling the legal basis for the policy, which relies on Title II of the Communications Act and classifies ISPs as "common carriers," thereby requiring them to maintain open access to the internet.

Read more on Motherboard

Senior government officials said they were "unaware" of any significant intelligence results from the military raid in Yemen that left Navy SEAL Ryan Owens dead, NBC reports. The officials' statements contradict the Pentagon and Sean Spicer who have said that the terror raid brought in "actionable intelligence" that could "prevent the potential deaths or attacks on American soil."

At the beginning of February, the Pentagon released a video it claimed was recovered from the raid—which also killed Yemeni civilians and children and wounded three other SEALs—only to pull it offline after BuzzFeed News pointed out that the video has been available since 2007.

The father of the SEAL who died in the raid, Bill Owens, spoke out against the military action in an interview with the Miami Herald last weekend after refusing to meet President Trump.

"Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn't even barely a week into his administration? Why?" Owens said. "For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen—everything was missiles and drones—because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?"

The White House, which initially touted the raid as a success and show of strength from Trump's administration, has backpedaled somewhat following Owens's statements. Sean Spicer admitted Monday that the raid was not "100 percent successful" because of the SEAL death, and Trump tried to blame the whole thing on Obama during a Tuesday interview on FOX & Friends.

"This was a mission that was started before I got here," Trump told FOX & Friends. "This was something that was, you know, just—they wanted to do. And they came to see me, and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected... And according to General Mattis, it was a very successful mission. They got tremendous amounts of information."

Apparently some senior officials would disagree.

In his first morning TV interview since becoming president, Donald Trump sat down with FOX News to talk about the Oscars, blame Obama for the current wave of leaks and town hall protests, and explain his decision to opt out of attending the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.

"I just thought in light of the fact of fake news and all of the other things we're talking about now, it would be inappropriate," Trump said of attending this year's event. He added, "I have great respect for the press, I have great respect for reporters and the whole profession. With all of that being said, I just thought it would be better if I didn't do the dinner. That doesn't mean I'm not going to do it next year."

Trump announced via Twitter on Saturday that he would not be attending the annual scholarship dinner—which was started in 1921 in an effort to recognize quality political reporting and foster relationships between the press and the president's administration—a day after numerous major news outlets were barred from the daily White House press briefing.

He'll be the first president to sit out of the dinner since Ronald Reagan did in 1981. Though Reagan was recovering from an assassination attempt at the time, he still managed to make remarks by phone, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Trump's self-proclaimed "running war" with the media has raised questions about whether or not the dinner would even happen this year. While multiple news outlets have already canceled their parties around the event, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) has said that it will go on as usual.

"We look forward to shining a spotlight at the dinner on some of the best political journalism of the past year and recognizing the promising students who represent the next generation of our profession," WHCA president, Jeff Mason, said in a statement.

What if there was a way to visualize catharsis? That's what artist Peyton Fulford has done in her university town of Columbus, Georgia by turning breakup texts and notes on heartbreak into paper banners. Individual letters, cut from 8" x 11" card stock, are strung together and photographed. In this way, Fulford delivers closure to those seeking confirmation that their feelings are real with the ultimate validation: art.

Fulford's series Abandoned Love began as a school project in 2015 and has been recently revived—albeit with some changes. Her public call for "brief phrases from your diary, text messages, etc. that are related to themes of love and melancholy/heartbreak" generated submissions from over 30 different countries, even while the project was inactive. The artist says she was inspired by Learning to Love You More by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, as well as London artist Klaudija Visockyte's Please Don't Leave Me. The hardest submissions to receive were from unused suicide notes, says Fulford.

Read more on Creators

(Top photo: giraffes at South Lakes Safari Zoo. Photo: Shaun Woods, via)

A zoo in Cumbria is facing calls for its license to be removed after it was revealed that nearly 500 animals died in its care in less than four years.

A report from zoo inspectors into conditions at South Lakes Safari Zoo in Cumbria found that 486 animals in total died of causes ranging from emaciation to hypothermia between December of 2013 and September of 2016. A spokesman for owner David Gill said: "The current arrangement sees the entire zoo site leased to Cumbria Zoo Company Limited under a six-month lease. Mr Gill remains the licence holder, but otherwise has stepped away from all trading and management activities connected with the zoo."

Animal deaths in zoos have been shocking before – let us never forget Harambe – but the revelation that 12 percent of the animals in the care of South Lakes Safari Zoo died on average each year is something to choke on. Among the grim list of animal deaths reported are those of a tortoise which was electrocuted on electric fencing, a squirrel monkey found rotting behind a radiator and two snow leopards who were discovered partially eaten in their enclosure in 2015.

This isn't the first time conditions at the zoo have been called into question. In June last year, the zoo was fined £255,000 for health and safety breaches after zoo keeper Sarah McClay was mauled to by a Sumatran tiger in 2013. South Lakes Safari Zoo Ltd also pleaded guilty to contravening the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 on two earlier hearings, after another zookeeper fell from a ladder while preparing to feed big cats in 2014.

The report has been published ahead of a meeting of Barrow borough council on the 6th of March, which will review an application by the zoo for the renewal of its licence.

In part 2 of our series, host Michelle Yee heads out to photograph her favourite parts of Toronto for the tasting data experiment at Future Food Studio. There, her collaborator and flavour hacker, Irwin Adam Eydelnant, deconstructs the images by turning each data point into different ingredients for a custom cocktail. Together, they find out what Toronto really tastes like.

Presented by Mercedes-Benz Canada.

Let's face it, we knew our healthcare was going to change under a Donald Trump administration, but perhaps we didn't realize how much. (Tonic has you covered with a list of all the moves that could affect your health under this new leadership.) Doctors and healthcare experts have been paying close attention and some have taken to leading medical journals to denounce some of Trump's most divisive policies.

Here are the strongest criticisms from the health and science community so far:

On repealing the Affordable Care Act

The backstory: Trump made it a part of his platform to repeal and replace the ACA. Hours after his inauguration, he signed an executive order to begin unravelling the program. But the realization that people might lose their healthcare has slowly dawned on both Trump voters and Republican lawmakers.

The case against it: As lawyers Timothy Stoltzfus Jost and Simon Lazarus point out in the New England Journal of Medicine, Trump's executive order can't repeal the ACA but as various federal agencies take steps to undo its components—like halting enforcement of tax penalties for not complying with the individual mandate to have health insurance, which is already happening—the market will come crashing down.

The journal burn: "Precipitous changes in the enforcement of the law would severely disrupt insurance markets, with political, no less than policy or humanitarian, consequences. The Congressional Budget Office projects that gutting the law would lead to comparatively healthy people to drop coverage, forcing insurers to raise premiums or withdraw from markets altogether. Such actions would, in turn, further shrink the insurance pool, raise premiums, and reduce insurance availability—resulting in an increase of 18 million in the number of uninsured Americans by 2018. Mulling such prospects, Republican strategists, both in and outside the administration, are reportedly already having second thoughts about precipitously sabotaging the ACA."

Read more on Tonic

A group of researchers from the University of Alberta have found a way to measure just how much urine is floating around in pools and hot tubs, and the answer is: a lot more than you'd like to think.

It's historically been hard to quantify exactly how much pee you're getting up your nose when you dive into any given pool. But NPR reports that the researchers, led by chemist Xing-Fang Li, finally cracked the code. Li and her team took samples from public and hotel pools in Canada and tested the water for an artificial sweetener called acesulfame K.

Artificial sweeteners are chemically built to pass through your body and be expelled through your pee, and acesulfame K is basically everywhere in foods and drinks, so it's a safe bet that if you've found acesufame K in a pool, you've found piss.

Li discovered that a standard, commercial-size pool that you'd dive into at the YMCA or whatever contains around 20 gallons of urine. That's not a lot percentage-wise, since those pools hold about 220,000 gallons in total, but 20 gallons of pee is still 20 gallons of pee.

Sure, every third grader in the world knows that you can drink pee, but NPR points out that urine in a pool can react with chlorine to create some "potentially toxic compounds."

"I view it like secondhand smoke," Ernest Blatchley III, an environmental engineer at Purdue University, told NPR. "It's disrespectful and potentially dangerous."

Look, just stop peeing in the pool, alright? Thanks.

(Top photo: Roni, Liv and Becky. All photos by Nick Warner)

For 15 years, Nick Warner has been documenting the lives of the people working at the Hippodrome Circus in his hometown of Great Yarmouth. Opened in 1903, it's the only circus building left in the UK still being used for its original purpose, and it's become something of a local rite of passage for teenagers from around the way to train there for shows during the summer.

We had a chat with Nick about the importance of the circus to the people of Great Yarmouth, and the continual cultural impact it has.

VICE: Hi Nick. Can you tell me about the circus building, because I don't think I've ever come across that before as a concept. I always thought circuses were roving tents.
Nick Warner: Yeah, it's pretty crazy actually – that it's there and no one really knows about it. It's an 850-seater and it's owned by my best friend from school. It's been in their family for three generations, so I sort of grew up spending my time there. Me and all my friends did, so we knew it quite intricately. It's a pretty insane building – the ring itself is like a wooden-floored ring, as you might imagine, and underneath the ring is a pool of water. Half-way through the show the ring drops through the water so that the whole thing becomes a swimming pool. I think it's one of three in the world that do that. It's a really crazy place and it's just one row back from the seafront in Great Yarmouth, which is my hometown. It's a huge deal in that part of Norfolk, but outside of that, very few people know it's there.

Is this like a Saturday job for the teenagers you photographed, or are they fully engrossed in it, like a proper job?
They do four [seasons of] shows a year now at the Hippodrome, up from two. So they have a summer show and a Christmas show, and they have an Easter and a Halloween show. Yarmouth is like Blackpool – a holiday town. For a large part, in regards to the younger guys that work there, they're not in school or college while they're working. It's pretty intense – two shows a day, seven days a week. And the summer show is, I think, about 11 weeks they're on it. It's a really immersive job. The Halloween show, for example, is much shorter – it's like 10 days or something. So yeah, they're working there full-time.

Sounds intense. How long do they have to train for each performance?
I mostly shoot the dancers. They all work with a choreographer that's based there, and I think they're probably a month or so in rehearsals. They're at each show from inception to opening, with a month or so for the actual rehearsals. But obviously it's much longer than that in the making. I actually spoke to Jack [Jay, the venue owner] today, and they're putting the groundwork in for the summer show, which starts in June. But they've got to do – between now and then – the Easter show, which requires planning and choreographing and stuff like that. So it's a full-time operation – any time there's not a show on there they're training and prepping for the next show.

It sounds a bit like quite an outlandish youth centre in a way. Sort of taking people in and teaching them something that isn't drinking Lambrini in a park or smoking 40 tabs up a tree.
I think it very much is something that local people are quite proud of and quite drawn to. It's amazing, because while circus on the whole is just dying on its arse, somehow in Yarmouth this show is flourishing. Since Jack took over we've gone from two shows a year to four shows a year. They're sinking a lot of money into more ambitious set design and stuff like that. And very few people from outside of Norfolk come to see the show. It's the same people going every year because it's this community effort to support it and see it flourish. Part of that is because so many young people are going through there, and there's a great prospect for people who are working. There's a guy called Tom Gaskin who grew up at the circus here as well, and went to London and studied at the National Centre for Circus Arts in Hackney. Now he's gone on to become a world class circus artist, he's been back and done a season as the lead clown in a Hippodrome show, too.

"Yarmouth as a town is worse than it's ever been. But somehow, at the circus specifically, business is booming."

It sounds like it's almost a community safe haven in a way. Somewhere you can go and have a chance at doing something that isn't depressing when you're living in a fucking dying seaside town.
Exactly. I don't know what the demographic is specifically within the town itself, but there's a very large migrant community in Yarmouth, so there's a lot of Eastern Europeans and Europeans coming in, and they have their own circus culture. It's mad, because the cost of putting on something like that isn't cheap and, like everywhere else, tickets aren't that cheap. For what you're getting it's good, but tickets are £20 – and yet people are going, in Yarmouth. People who've got very little will go because it's important to them that it keeps going.

It must be one of the biggest attractions there, right?
Yarmouth as a town is worse than it's ever been. You go along the seafront and you walk through the town centre... compared to what it was like when I grew up there, it's way worse. A lot of the shops are boarded up. There's no one there. People go to Norwich if they need to shop or if they want to go out. The golden mile, which is the seafront, down where the circus is, where all the arcades and all the tiny sort of beach stuff is – a lot of that is closed down. But somehow, at the circus specifically, business is booming. I don't know if you ever appreciate how big of a deal that is – that it's selling out loads, all seasons, in Yarmouth. There's loads of shows in London that aren't selling out, ever.

Sounds fantastic – long live the circus. Thanks, Nick!

See more photos below:

Liv and Miles

Roni

Charlotte

Liv

Roni, Becky and Tonie

Becky

Liv and Tonie

Miles

Photographs: @nick_fotograph
Make up: @meglindow
Production: @natachalacey
Location: @hippodromegy

@joe_bish

More from VICE:

Stupid Fucking Cat Circus

The Horrifying True Story of the Black Brothers Forced to Become Circus Freaks

The Love and Struggle of Producing a Left-Wing Circus

US News

Trump Vows to Create Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Immigrants
Speaking at his first joint address to Congress, President Trump said he'd create a new office to assist victims of crimes committed by immigrants. VOICE—Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement—will operate within the Department of Homeland Security. Trump also said he would look to introduce a "merit-based" immigration system.—CNBC News

White House Considers Pulling Iraq from Travel Ban
The Trump administration is considering removing Iraq from the list of Muslim-majority countries impacted by a reworked travel ban, according to US diplomats. Both the Pentagon and the State Department have reportedly encouraged the White House to drop Iraq from the ban, given the military ally's role in fighting ISIS.—CBS News

FBI Reportedly Made Deal to Pay Former British Spy
The FBI is said to have reached a financial deal with the former British spy who compiled a dossier on Trump's alleged ties to Russia. According to multiple sources, the deal with former MI6 agent, Christopher Steele, would have had him continue his work on behalf of the feds but ultimately fell apart.—The Washington Post

Uber CEO Caught on Camera Arguing with Uber Driver
Travis Kalanick has apologized after a video emerged showing the Uber boss arguing with one of his own drivers. Driver Fawzi Kamel is heard complaining about falling rates on the dashboard recording, to which Kalanick responds, "Bullshit… Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit." Kalanick now says he's "ashamed" of his behavior.—Bloomberg News

International News

Iraq Forces Said to Have Blocked ISIS Escape Route
Government forces have reportedly cut off the last major route out of Mosul as they battle ISIS for control of the western section of the city. A highway leading to the ISIS stronghold of Tal Afar, 25 miles west of Mosul, has been blocked near the village of Badush, according to an Iraqi paramilitary source.—BBC News

Russia and China Veto Syria Sanctions at UN
Russia and China have both blocked a UN Security Council resolution drafted by the UK, US, and France to slap sanctions on the Syrian government over its suspected use of chemical weapons. Russian president Vladimir Putin said sanctions would be "completely inappropriate" while peace talks were taking place in Geneva.—Al Jazeera/Reuters

French Officer Accidentally Shoots Two at Hollande Speech
A judicial investigation has been launched after a security sniper shot and wounded two people listening to a speech by French president François Hollande in Villognon. The police officer is said to have fired twice, by accident, though the incident left the two victims with just minor injuries.—AP

Duterte Signs Paris Agreement on Climate Change
Firebrand president Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has signed the Paris Agreement, the landmark pledge to cut carbon emissions and stop global temperatures rising more than 3.6 degrees. If the Senate now ratifies, Philippines will have committed to a 70 percent cut in its carbon emissions by 2030.—Reuters

Everything Else

The Obamas Sign Huge Book Deal
Penguin Random House has agreed to a publishing deal with Barack and Michelle Obama—reportedly worth in the neighborhood of $60 million—with the power couple set to write a book each. CEO Markus Dohle said the books would be "of unprecedented scope and significance."—The Guardian

Lady Gaga to Replace Beyoncé at Coachella
Lady Gaga is set to step in and headline Coachella after Beyoncé pulled out on the advice of her doctor. Gaga tweeted an updated lineup with the message: "Let's party in the desert!"—Billboard

Comedy Superstars to Headline New Festival
Kevin Hart, Sarah Silverman, and Jerry Seinfeld will headline a new three-day comedy festival in San Francisco this June. Hannibal Buress and Broad City stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer will also perform at the first Comedy Central Presents Colossal Clusterfest.—Rolling Stone

Kanye Drops 17-Minute Slow Jam
Kanye West has released a 17-minute slow jam on Soundcloud. The track is a looped rework of J. Holiday's song "Bed" and was used during the recent Yeezy Season 5 fashion show in New York City.—i-D

Feds May Try to Shut Down Cannabis Cup
A federal prosecutor has apparently warned the Native American tribe hosting this year's Cannabis Cup festival that marijuana is still illegal under federal law. The Moapa Paiute Tribe is trying to smooth things out before this weekend's event.—VICE

Hundreds poured out of two buildings at Concordia University in Montreal on Wednesday after it was evacuated due to bomb threats against Muslim students in the midst of Islamic Awareness Week.

In a letter sent to a number of media outlets, and obtained by VICE News, a group calling itself the Council of Conservative Citizens of Canada threatens to "DETONATE once per day, a small artisanal amateur explosive devices … where Moslems (sic) hang out."

"Now that President Trump is in office south of the border, things have changed," writes the group, which appears to be an offshoot of an American white supremacist group.

The letter goes on to say that the bombs "are not meant to kill anybody. The only aim is to injure some Moslem (sic) students. Unfortunately some non-Moslems (sic) might be collateral damage."

Read more at VICE News

Talk-show monolith and meme queen Oprah Winfrey says that she's toying with the idea of running for president now that Trump's proven you don't need experience to get elected.

In an interview with Bloomberg's David Rubenstein on Wednesday, Winfrey said she never thought about running for office in the past, but following Trump's election, she started to chew on the idea.

"Have you ever thought that, given the popularity you have—we haven't broken the glass ceiling yet for women—that you could actually run for president and actually be elected?" Rubenstein asked.

"I never considered the question even a possibility," Oprah says, "but then I thought—Oh."

"Because, it's clear you don't need government experience to be elected president of the United States," Rubenstein continues.

"That's what I thought. I thought, I don't have the experience, I don't know enough... And now I'm thinking—Oh."

I guess we can add her to the growing list of celebrities who want to be president now that Trump has completely wrecked the integrity of our political system. Watch the full clip from The David Rubenstein Show below.

Tuesday night, Donald Trump stood before Congress and delivered a speech that, by his low standards, was presidential as hell. He didn't talk about his dick or restart his feud with Rosie O'Donnell—he even opened the address by referencing Black History Month and denouncing the recent wave of anti-Semitic bomb threats and the racist shooting of two Indian men in Kansas. Trump and his speechwriters decided that rather than doubling down on the "American carnage" grimness of his inaugural, it'd be more media-friendly to talk about dreams and jobs and veterans, the anodyne stuff of public political discourse.

So yes, Trump read the speech well. He told Americans to "seize this moment and believe in yourselves, believe in your future." But if you put all the hopey-changey stuff to one side and focus on the policy prescriptions Trump made in the speech and that his administration has put forth in the past week, the picture is stark. When Trump says he'll make America great again, he means he'll give more money to the military, restrict immigration (including legal immigration), crack down on drugs (including legalized weed), and defer more to cops and prosecutors. The police will not be policed. The government will not fight to keep the air and water clean, or alleviate the effects of climate change. Corporations will be left to do what they will. Those who gained access to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act may have their insurance taken away. It's small government, in other words, except when it comes to men with guns.

The theme of the speech was that Americans have "watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries," that the US has supported globalism at the expense of its own citizens, that the country's infrastructure has withered and its economy has failed many people. The "families of all colors and creeds" who voted him into office, Trump said, "just wanted a fair shot for their children and a fair hearing for their concerns."

This was a sort of retconning of Trump's presidential campaign, a coherent ideology that he wasn't quite able to articulate when he announced his candidacy nearly two years ago by rambling about China and Mexico and rapists. But it makes sense, as a diagnosis of the economic misery inflicted on the towns and counties that delivered Trump to the White House.

So, what will Trump do for those towns and counties?

Mostly the answer seems to be slashing "job-crushing regulations" and reducing taxes on corporations—standard Republican fare. Trump also spoke about imposing taxes on foreign companies, making life easier for American businesses. The idea is that these policies will trickle down to the workers and the unemployed—lower taxes mean companies can hire more employees and pay them better, less foreign competition means more American firms will stay in business.

But Trump has never indicated that he'll help workers directly. He does not appear interested in raising the minimum wage; his administration seems downright hostile to unions.

Instead, Trump framed his crackdown on illegal immigration efforts as a way to "raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions of dollars, and make our communities safer for everyone." The idea that immigrants take jobs is disputed, but even if we accept Trump's positioning of immigration as a purely economic issue, it's striking that this is how Trump wants to lift up workers—not by protecting or expanding their wages and benefits, but by tearing down their presumed competition.

Trump promised—again—to build that wall. He announced the creation of a new DHS agency called VOICE: Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement; its sole purpose will be to publicize the crimes of immigrants—already a hobbyhorse for many conservative-media outlets. Immigration authorities have already begun aggressively detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, even those who have not committed crimes while in the US, targeting restaurants and even church shelters.

For every problem, Trump has a solution, and the solution is the same: More militarization, harsher penalties, and more authority for cops. On Tuesday, he decried a drug trade that was "poisoning our youth," but while he did promise expanded treatment, his attorney general Jeff Sessions is gearing up for an expansion of the war on drugs—which could even target legal weed businesses. Trump denounced the poverty and violence affecting American inner cities, particularly Chicago, but he doesn't seem to care about policing abuses that often plague those communities. The president said Americans should "work with—not against—the men and women of law enforcement" and denounced "disunity and division." Meanwhile, Sessions has more or less dismissed reports on the terrors inflicted on Chicago and Ferguson by cops.

Even when he talked about infrastructure spending, one of the major ways Trump breaks from the GOP, he described roads and bridges as being "financed through both public and private capital"—presumably describing public-private partnerships that can go very wrong and don't represent a significant investment by government.

Finally, Trump said he was calling for "one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history." It's a $54 billion increase, to be specific, which he has said he'll couple with equivalent cuts to other parts of government. Though Trump (and other Republicans) have complained that the military is weak, the US defense budget continues to dwarf that of other countries—and, of course, America is currently not involved in a major war.

Shrinking the size of government has long been a Republican goal, and one Trump agrees with—except when it comes the functions of government that involve arresting people, deporting immigrants, prosecuting drug users, or adding missiles and ships to America's massive arsenal.

"Think of the marvels we can achieve if we simply set free the dreams of our people," Trump said near the end of his speech. "Cures to illnesses that have always plagued us are not too much to hope. American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream."

It's a nice thought—but if Americans want to achieve those dreams, they'll have to do so by themselves. Despite Trump's nice words, it seems clear he's not going to help.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

The first time I really devoted myself to amateur sleuthing I was 11 and a neighbour in his mid-20s had fallen from the 15th floor and landed in front of our apartment. My family lived on the ground floor of a high-rise and while we were at school, my mom watched him make impact in front of our balcony after he leapt from his own. By the time we got home most of the evidence of this tragedy was gone, save for some remaining red-coloured snow. I remember peppering my mom with a million questions and being overly fascinated with the physical reminders of this person along with the whys. When the snow melted my sisters and I went on a search for clues about what was left of this mystery man who had left such a mark on our last days of winter.

We bagged and tagged a few things, a tooth, some bone fragments, which we very soundly, according to our young minds, kept in the freezer in some Ziploc. It was being held there in case it turned out he had been pushed and somehow these forensic keepsakes would be the keys to closing the case. Eventually, though, spring turned into summer and I forgot about the bones in the freezer and all the leftover red snow was gone and the memory of that man was relegated to the occasional school yard brag about that one time I almost saw a real life dead body.

That was also the summer I became acutely aware of my vulnerability as a young woman. There had been a note about an abduction attempt in the neighbourhood and not long after that note I was followed by a rust-covered car on a foggy afternoon. I'd stayed late at school finishing up a project and when I finally left the usually bustling building, the five or six blocks home were completely empty. The fog was so thick I couldn't see more than a few kid-sized steps in front of me. At first it made the boring walk home seem magical. The park between school and my house became enchanted, enveloped in a thick, white mist that made everything surreal and beautiful instead of regular and dull. Then on the final stretch of sidewalk before our house I heard a honk. I slowed but didn't stop. Another honk. Finally, I turned to look and saw an older car with an older man, waving me over. In the fog, it seemed like the car had merely appeared like in a dream or through osmosis. I hadn't heard it following me. For a small moment I wondered if it was one of my relatives coming to find me because I'd been so late getting home. But the face in the windshield didn't make sense to me. So I ran. I don't know if I made a single sound or took a single breath all the way home, I just remember running.

It felt like something important that demanded the same kind of circumstance and ceremony as the dead body that had been on our patch of grass not that long ago. But we called the police, they took a report over the phone and that was it. Everything stayed the same except for me. Suddenly, I was very aware of the strangers around me. Conversations between my parents and their friends were no longer just garbled adult nonsense, but ominous hints at the dark world of grown-ups. I would hear them talking to each other about the dad who maybe lingered too long at the park. About which teacher they never did quite trust. About sleepovers and the safety of small bodies and slowly I felt like the fog of childhood, the belief that we're impervious to the destruction of life that surrounds adults, had permanently lifted.

The vulnerability of our female bodies, once discovered, never leaves us. It's why I took that early interest in collecting bones and finding clues and turned it into an obsession with true crime, with the goriest tales of murder and madness and the banality of man-made evil. It's why I've committed every single episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to memory, devoured every season of Forensic Files and taken in every CSI spinoff, even the wildly boring CSI: New York. If I could figure out the formula, the random chaos that separated me from these fictional victims, then maybe I could avoid what seemed like any woman's fate.

Still from the TV show, 'Bones'

To be a woman is to never take one's safety for granted. And it's this awareness, this need to understand what's hiding in the shadows and the fog that drives our attachment to serialized death.

A few years ago Time Magazine asked if "murder shows are the new soap operas" after the launch of specialty cable channel Investigation Discovery, devoted to blood and gore. It quickly became clear women were driving ID's immense viewership. Since then podcasts like Serial, My Favourite Murder and Missing Richard Simmons have capitalized on that obsession. As have classes like, "How to Identify a Body" recently hosted at Toronto's Action Potential Lab, a science and art lab which focuses on teaching a variety of sciences through immersive art. The course on body identification was taught by Dr. Tracy Rogers, a nationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist who worked on the Pickton murders as well as the recent Tim Bosma case. I signed up for the class immediately, expecting a handful of other weirdos to attend. Instead I found nearly 20 other women, as immersed in sleuthing as I was, all trying to understand their own vulnerabilities.

"I think part of it is that we know our own lives are more at risk than men are so it's almost like a self-education, what can I do to prevent a crime? What do I need to know to outwit the predators that are always coming after me, at all times? Or maybe it's like a sick obsession with a dark future that could but hopefully will not happen to you," Paige Dzenis, a fellow attendee told me, as we poked and prodded at human skulls, learning all the ways the police will try to identify your body if you go missing and only part of you turns up.

Read more: 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit' Offers Women Justice and That's Why I Love It

And we're not just consumers of these shows, as Dr. Rogers pointed out, women are also leading the way in the field as well. "It's a trend we see in the forensics science programs, most of my fourth year course is women. I've thought about it at various points, about why that might be. I think one of things in particular that women are interested in are stories. And cases are stories, the story of somebody's life, the story of somebody's death. There's a whole story there waiting to be told if you know how to read the evidence," she said.

And while the pretense of that body identification class may have seemed macabre, a course in how to find and name the missing, the reality of it was almost a clinical class in how to be found. I learned I need to update the information on my driver's license, tell people who my dentist is, so that if the worst were to happen I could at least hope to make my story known.

They are stories we've told each other since we could talk. In hushed tones, in murmurs, we tell our friends, our sisters, how to stay safe, who to avoid. Who will have one too many drinks and suddenly raise their expectations of your friendship. Who will pledge their solidarity only to turn around and label you a bitch, a prude, a psycho if you reject them or defy them. And so in these dramatic retellings of rape and assault and murder, we play out the worst-case scenarios of our stories and we say, "see." See us, see what can happen to us, see what you have done to us. And we feel less crazy and less alone.

Follow Amil on Twitter

An unwritten rule for most Canadians is pointing out x celebrity is Canadian at any given opportunity. This rule sadly applies even if the celebrity in question is very publicly Canadian like Drake or Rachel McAdams. While it's becoming increasingly cooler to be Canadian (especially because it's getting cooler to not be American) this embarrassing behaviour will likely never go away. I myself am not above it. On a trip to New York I found myself saying, "Did you know they are Canadian?" multiple times without even realizing what I was doing—it's a hardwired behaviour. It's even worse when you consider how Canada as a whole directs the majority of their thirst for a celebrity who really doesn't give a shit, Ryan Gosling.

Any Canadian millennial has known Gosling way before he made it to the American mainstream. Before The Notebook he famously began his career on the Mickey Mouse Club alongside Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Britney Spears. But Canadians really know Gosling from Saturday afternoons watching YTV and catching Breaker High, a show about a bunch of American kids (played mostly by Canadians) on a cruise ship high school. Gosling played Sean Hanlon, truly the farthest thing from the heartthrob he is today and apparently when he first adopted his Brooklyn accent. We knew him before he was really anything, when he was just a skinny kid from Ontario meaning, we OWN HIM.

Peak Breaker High Gosling. Photo via Screenshot

Canada thirsts for Gosling like no other star right now, not even the other Ryan (Reynolds). Canada's Walk of Fame (note to Americans, it's real) currently doesn't have a star for Gosling maybe because he doesn't give a shit. But I bet you anything if they could swing it, they would replace Glenn Gould so that Gosling's name could rest right beside Robert Goulet's. During this past award season, Canadian entertainment media was especially Gosling heavy, hoping perhaps our brightest star would win an Oscar and finally make us legit and (in our wildest dreams) shout out the Great White North.

Any time he's interviewed by Canadian press, they somehow find a way to bring it back to Canada even if it has nothing to do with us. In a recent interview with CBC while promoting La La Land, the interviewer asked him "You're from Canada, how does that perspective inform the way that you live this life?" What life? What is she even asking? What does being wildly successful have anything to do with him being Canadian? Graciously, Gosling responded in the best way he could to such a nonsensical question. Saying "uh" approximately 15 times, Gosling explained being from Canada helped him remember there's a world outside of Hollywood or something.

The thing is, Gosling doesn't actively or publicly hate Canada or Canadians. He just isn't all Drake about it. As far as A-list celebrities go, he's super private (nobody knows what his two children look like) meaning the most visibly Canadian he's been is dating Rachel McAdams and being photographed visiting his family in Ontario. He's never commented on Canadian elections, but interestingly enough has participated in American voting PSAs and even endorsed Hillary Clinton—and he's not even an American citizen. But while he's made no allusions to being ashamed of Canada—he certainly doesn't reciprocate the embarrassing thirst Canadian media seems to have for him.

You know who thirsts back? Ryan Reynolds. He reciprocates, he LOVES us. He's always in Vancouver doing shit, and yeah maybe it's because he's arguably the lesser Ryan but he still cares! It's a nice little relationship we have with Reynolds, even though his movies other than Deadpool have consistently flopped ( The Green Lantern, RIPD, and Self/Less are just a few) we still believe in him for some reason, and in return he loves us back.

Canada needs to start treating Gosling more like a high school crush. We need to start taking advice from teen magazines on how to win your crush over. According to a 2011 Seventeen Magazine guide the key is to flirt a bit, but not TOO much and then get him to walk us home somehow (??). It's not an exact science but we'll figure it out. Until then, we should all agree to stop reminding him he's Canadian at any chance we get.

Follow Sarah Hagi on Twitter.

According to multiple sources, the FBI reportedly planned to pay Christopher Steele (the ex-MI6 spy who compiled that explosive dossier about Trump's alleged ties to Russia) to continue to dig up information on the then Republican presidential nominee, the Washington Post reports.

Although the bureau did not ultimately end up paying Steele for his services, the deal—which was reportedly made last October—suggests that the government was taking his reporting at least somewhat seriously and was interested in investigating his findings.

The partially unverified dossier, which was published in full on BuzzzFeed in January, alleged that Trump's associates colluded with Russia on the DNC hacks and the country had compromising information that could have made him susceptible to blackmail. After the report was made public, Trump dismissed the findings as "fake news."

"It's phony stuff. It didn't happen," Trump said in January. "It was a group of opponents that got together—sick people—and they put that crap together."

Steele, a former British spy with 20 years experience, turned over his findings to the FBI in July after originally working for anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats during the campaign, NBC News reports. The bureau then reached out to Steele in September and brokered a deal in October, offering to pay him to continue his work. At the time, the FBI was beginning to probe Russia's alleged involvement in the 2016 election.

Steele, who has now gone into hiding, reportedly pulled out of the deal after the New York Times reported in late October that sources in law enforcement said they hadn't yet found a "conclusive or direct link" between Trump and Russia. In February, CNN said that US investigators had been able to verify some aspects of Steele's dossier, specifically surrounding "conversations between foreign nationals."

According to the traditional story of the founding of Mormonism, after Joseph Smith received the golden plates containing the text of the Book of Mormon from the angel Moroni, he had to guard them from his covetous neighbors, going to great lengths to hide them and refusing to let anyone see the ancient language inscribed upon them.

Now Republicans in the House of Representatives are basically doing the same thing, except instead of a mystical set of artifacts it's a healthcare plan. And instead of worrying about the jealousy of yokels in 19th-century upstate New York, the plan's GOP authors are concerned that nearly everyone will hate what they've come up with. So Republican leaders have placed this top-secret plan in an office building basement—really—near the Capitol in Washington, DC, and only allowing Republicans who are members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to see it.

Congressional Republicans have been working toward repealing the Affordable Care Act—a goal of theirs since Donald Trump was just a guy playing a rich man on TV—for months, but have been stymied by their own inability to agree on what should replace it. Conservatives and libertarians want to peel back government involvement in healthcare; Republican governors who expanded Medicaid under the ACA don't want to have to take insurance away from their constituents; some Republicans floated a "repeal and delay" plan that would allow them to vote against the ACA before they came up with a replacement; there are conflicting plans floating around the Senate; Trump himself has sent confusing signals.

For weeks, House Speaker Paul Ryan—famous for his attention to policy—has been teasing a plan to replace the ACA, though he's kept it vague because whatever gets proposed will be politically unpopular. The Ryan plan is expected to replaced ACA subsidies people can use to pay for insurance with tax credits and roll back the Medicaid expansion, in other words making it harder for the uninsured to buy insurance and kicking some poor people off the government rolls. More broadly, if Republicans want to replace the ACA with something that requires less government spending, it's going to involve some people losing benefits they have now, a point made obvious from the details of a recently leaked draft of House GOP legislation.

Obviously, liberals and Democrats will hate whatever Ryan and his crew come up with. But a lot of conservatives also hate the details of the plan that have leaked because it involves too much government spending. On Thursday, informed about the whole secret-plan-in-a-basement idea, libertarian-ish Republican Senator Rand Paul took to Twitter to denounce the plan as falling short of the #FullRepeal he and other hard-liners want. "I will not vote for Obamacare Lite nor will many of my colleagues," he said. Though Paul is in the Senate and therefore doesn't have any direct influence on what happens in the House, that sentiment has been echoed by the House's far-right Freedom Caucus. (Some of what the Freedom Caucus wants in a repeal package, like cutting funds to Planned Parenthood, will likely be opposed by moderate Republicans in the Senate.)

By Thursday afternoon, demands from politicians from both parties to see the bill had degenerated into an absurd spectacle, as reporters followed those politicians around as they searched for the bill. Paul found the room with the bill, but was barred from seeing it as the press looked on:

For now, no one knows what's in the basement except for those few legislators who have seen it. Reportedly, the economic impacts of the plan won't even be scored by the Congressional Budget Office before the committee votes on it. But sooner or later, the plan will have to be made public and Ryan will have to defend it publicly. That the speaker is putting that day off for as long as possible likely indicates that he knows just how impossible his situation is—and maybe, he knows just how unlikely it is that that top-secret document will become reality.

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Katelin, from Philadelphia, is absolutely certain she doesn't want children. No way. Not a chance in hell. "I honestly don't like kids – they're germ-y and annoying and gross," the 19-year-old explains. Which is a fair point: humans under five are messy, unpredictable things. But, then again, most adults never quite grow out of that stage either.

What's different for Katelin is she's so sure kids are off the table she's considering sterilisation. The procedure isn't something to be taken lightly: it involves blocking the fallopian tubes, which then prevents the woman's eggs from reaching sperm and, yeah, you know the rest. In the UK it can be carried out on the NHS under local anaesthetic, but, most importantly, it's permanent (or difficult to reverse, at the very least).

Some might argue this is a particularly extreme option for someone so young, but Katelin is unwavering in her opinion. "I'm old enough to vote, play the lottery, drive and go to jail – why can't I decide I don't want kids?" she asks. It's a good argument, and she's not alone in feeling like this: there is a growing number of men and women, in the UK and US, who are permanently altering their fertility. This phenomenon, known as the "child free movement", is the subject of a new BBC Three documentary, Young and Sterile: My Choice, exploring why teenagers and 20-somethings are advocating childlessness by choice, despite not already having children of their own.

Today, one in five British women will never have kids, up from one in ten in the 1970s. And despite the number of vasectomies falling nearly two-thirds in the last decade, men are also vocal about their child-free choice. Like 29-year-old Paul Pritchard, for example, whose vasectomy is actually filmed live during the documentary. "I've never thought of myself as a father," he explains. "Children have never factored into any of my long-term life plans."

How's he feeling after the procedure? Any side effects?

"This might sound a bit graphic… but the only unusual thing is now that my sperm ducts are in two sections; I have four sensitive areas [rather than two]. I've had no other long-term issues, though, and I've been able to have sex afterwards. It all works perfectly normally, you know?"

People who choose to be sterilised are doing so for a whole bunch of reasons, not just out of fear of becoming accidentally pregnant or a father. Genetics is a key factor. Katelin has mental health problems and a serious heart defect she doesn't want to pass on (though she also enjoys her "vagina exactly the way it is".) Equally, Pritchard has suffered from depression throughout his life and lives with Type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes: "It would be cruel of me to enforce a child to suffer the same," he says.

Andie (left) and their partner

For 28-year-old Andie, who chooses not to identify as a specific gender (and uses the pronoun they), the choice stems from something stronger. "My mother was a really violent person and I was excommunicated from her at a young age," says Andie. "I'm scared of having kids and turning into her, because motherhood was quite a cruel thing for me. I wouldn't want my kids to go through the same experience."

Andie was sterilised last year and says it's the best decision they've ever made. "It's massively improved my mental health and [body] dysphoria. No one ever stops people from having children so why would you stop someone who doesn't want children?"

But finding a doctor who will actually agree to the procedure is where the difficulty starts. It took Pritchard 11 years before the NHS gave in to his requests. As a man in his twenties, he's considered old enough to be the father of unlimited children without checking with anyone first. But tell the NHS you genuinely don't want that, ever? It becomes a rejected, defeated world of long-term contraception – an assortment of tablets, injections and devices – to achieve the same ends.

"My first doctor, who has now retired, definitely fed me some bullshit, made-up statistics about how 90 percent of people who have a vasectomy regret their decision," explains Pritchard. "It's like, you're just telling me that because I'm 18 and you don't believe a word I'm saying."

"This idea that women have to settle down, get married, have children – it's quite a moral thing, isn't it? Life isn't just about reproduction."

The stigma around simply not wanting children is huge, but it seems to be worse for women. There's societal pressures, sure, but a woman lacking any maternal instinct? That's a step too far for some – it's weird, heartless and, well, outright selfish. For Andie, who was born a woman, other people felt as strongly about their decision to be sterilised as they did. "People judge you," they explains. "I've been back to hospital, unrelated to my procedure, and female doctors have lectured me on something I've already had done."

Andie believes this resistance is a symptom of defined gender roles. "This idea that women have to settle down, get married, have children – it's quite a moral thing, isn't it? Life isn't just about reproduction. For me it goes back to this patriarchal idea that gender is binary and, within that, you have to comply with set or 'normal' roles. I'm very much against that."

Becoming a parent isn't totally ruled out for Andie because, as they succinctly point out, "there are other ways to have children that don't involve pushing them out through your uterus". Andie mentions adopting or co-parenting, where two or more people join forces for the sole reason of having a kid. For Pritchard, there's no turning back. "At the end of the day I'd rather come to the end of my life and regret not having children than have children and regret my decision," he says. Although Katelin doesn't have to worry about contraception until her IUD needs replacing in four years, she's 100 percent sure she'll get the procedure done: "I just don't have a motherly bone in my body."

What would they say to people who think 19, or even 29, is too young to make a decision so final? That this is a narcissistic lifestyle choice designed to hold onto their not-quite adult status?

Katelin assuredly disagrees. "I want time alone, time with my partner and time to travel and spend money on luxury. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that," she says. "My generation live in a broken world. We come from broken homes and have broken minds and bodies. Many of us just don't want to reproduce. It's my life, and I'm not hurting anyone."

@louisedonovan_

Young and Sterile: My Choice is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

More on VICE:

Meeting the Doctor Who Runs the Only NHS Clinic for Trans Children

Things You Need to Do in Your Twenties to Prepare Yourself for Parenthood

Inside the Facebook of Sperm Donors

Dan Bryant is a Melbourne photographer who loves the genuine expression on someone's face when they wonder why their photo is being taken. It's this love that's drawn him to his latest, somewhat provocative series—people sitting in their cars at traffic lights. In the world of privacy, the car is a grey area. People sitting at the traffic lights often sing, pick their noses, put on makeup, and sometimes even talk to themselves. They feel as though they're in a private place—along with all the other people clustered together in windowed cars.

Dan's work highlights this inconsistency by creating a direct interaction between the subject and viewer. The results are people captured in a moment of total vulnerability and delightful, hilarious confusion. We asked Dan to talk us through the how and the why—and also the ethics of this particular project.

VICE: Hey Dan, there's a lot of discomfort in your photos. Is it accidental or something you deliberately draw out?
Dan Bryant: It's deliberate because, the thing is, as soon as you ask permission to take someone's photo their expression changes. So when you don't ask permission, you get a look like, What the fuck, are you taking my photo for? or a really awkward, confused expression. And I just love that.

What do you love about it?
There's a weird, intimate moment between the photographer and the subject. I like that and, technically, it's not very "street photography." Street photography for the purist means candid moments where the subject is unaware. This is where I'm a bit different, because I enjoy those interactions. If the subject is looking at the camera then they're looking at the viewer and it means more engagement, but there's also an aspect of interference. That's where pure street photographers don't agree with what I do.

Totally. You can see that moment of realisation: Shit, he's taking a photo!
Yeah, and I'm firing my flash at people as well. That's even more invasive.

Is this ethical though? Are there people you won't shoot?
I never shoot homeless people. Homeless people, disabled people, and anyone who can't defend themselves I'm not interested in. There's too much street photography of homeless people as it is, so I don't feel the need to document it. But when it comes to suits and elite looking people, it's all fair game. Having said that, I want to stress that I'm never trying to do anything negative. I'm never intentionally trying to paint people in a negative light. I'm just really passionate about reality, that's the main thing. I only want real, I don't want any fake interactions.

Yeah I can see that. With the photos of the police though, what are you trying to achieve with those?
It's kind of like they're me, but on the other side. I'm obviously never going to hit or attack a police officer. But what I can do is take their photo, and that's kind the next best thing. I don't mean it in a violent way at all. If I can't do anything other than take a photo, I'll take a photo or a portrait up really close, and try to at least get under their skin a bit.

Do you think police see you as a threat?
Yeah, they see everyone as a threat, and that's half the problem. Pepper spray is a first resort these days. I remember when they didn't have pepper spray, they used to have to talk to people. The cops don't bother talking now, they just pepper spray you cause you're resisting and that's it.

Let's zoom out a bit. All your photos are taken in the middle of the CBD. Do you think you'd be able to get the same photographs out in the suburbs? Somewhere that isn't so fast-paced?
Well, that kind of works in my favour, the density of people really helps. It's like a "safety in numbers" type deal. I've done a little bit of street in places like Clayton but you're way more exposed. Like, I'm out on my own.

Did you move into the city specifically to take photos like these?
Yeah, I was living out of the suburbs at my mum's place. Ideally, for shooting what I shoot, living in the city is perfect... It's like hunting. I hunt people—not literally though. It's like going on safari and I'm trying to get a great shot. I realised every day I go out I could take a photo I might look at for the rest of my life. Each time I go out I think that, right now I've got about five top, great photos that I love.

Words by Ashley Goodall. See more of Dan's work on Instagram.

Despite his overwhelming lack of experience for the role, the Senate voted to confirm retired neurosurgeon and former sleepy-eye presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Politico reports.

A majority of Republicans, joined by a few Democrats including Sherrod Brown from Ohio and Mark Warner from Virginia, voted 58–41 to confirm Carson in the role. The job will give him a budget of nearly $50 million to oversee public housing programs and guarantee mortgages through the Federal Housing Administration.

Although Carson has never run a major company, has no experience with housing policy, and didn't grow up in public housing, he apparently managed to reassure members of the Senate Banking Committee during his (otherwise very strange) confirmation hearing.

"I'll give Dr. Carson the benefit of the doubt. That's why I am voting for him," Brown, the committee's top-ranked Democrat, told Politico. "He made the commitment under oath to our committee that he would fight discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation."

Before agreeing to take on the role, Carson said that he was worried he may feel like a "fish out of water" as a federal bureaucrat, so it's a good thing then that Trump has allegedly roped in Steve Harvey to help the retired neurosurgeon tackle "situations in the inner cities."