In the early weeks of February, thousands of people from around the world flocked to New York City to take in the latest shows at Fashion Week. Over the course of seven days, designers from countries like Germany and India dressed models hailing from Jamaica and Ghana in collections produced in countries like Italy and Japan. The bi-annual event, which is also held in other cultural capitals like Paris, London, and Milan, is the perfect encapsulation of the global nature of fashion.

But, since Trump won the election in November, many Americans in the fashion industry see his presidency is a serious threat to their business. Since the start of his presidential campaign, Trump has embraced a platform rooted in hyper-nationalism from his economic policies to his crackdown on immigration, but fashion is not an industry that can be contained by borders. As France's minister of culture Audrey Azoula recently explained, "populist powers" are "absolutely incompatible with the idea of fashion and freedom."

Historically, we've seen this type of hyper-nationalism and the detrimental effects it can ultimately have on a country's fashion industry. Adolf Hitler's obsession with Germany's self-sufficiency was in fact a driving force behind the downfall of Berlin's once thriving fashion business. Of course, Trump is not a fascist, but there are similarities worth noting in regards to the way his economic and cultural perspectives and policies endanger the US's $343 billion garment industry.

Hitler and Trump have both used nationalistic fervor to unite citizens against a common enemy. Hitler insisted that the Jews were to blame for Germany's economic problems, which he used to justify the horrific mass genocide of 6 million people. While Trump is certainly not a perpetuator of genocide, he has used xenophobia to target immigrants by claiming that they are stealing US jobs and committing serious crimes. These stereotypes have been employed to justify his push for the deportation of immigrants.

Before Hitler came to power in 1933, Berlin was an acclaimed fashion capital known for its impeccable ready-to-wear. Its success was fueled by hard-working Jews, who had been mastering their craft since the early 1700s. At it's peak, Germany was home to approximately 2,400 Jewish clothing firms.

"[Jews] often times had these very fine salons, whether inside larger department stores or self-standing businesses," Dr. Irene Guenther, author of Nazi Chic?, explained to me over the phone. "They were known not just for their design, but also for the meticulous tailoring. Because they had been in the industry for so long, many of them also became very important for manufacturing buttons, zippers, and fabric."

In the US, immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have a related deep-rooted history in the fashion industry. In the early 20th century, a surge of European immigrants came to New York City, where they set up shops and worked in factories. Many of these European immigrants were Jews fleeing the Nazis in the same way that refugees from Syria to El Salvador are seeking asylum here today. They brought with them their expertise in design and garment manufacturing, which helped make the US a global fashion powerhouse.

The integration of immigrants in the fashion industry has continued ever since. In 2005, over 75 percent of the garment industry workers were immigrants with their influence spanning from manufacturing to modeling. Despite the fact that immigrants are often working in unsafe conditions and for lower wages, garment factories continue to be one of the top employers for new immigrants in the US, especially for those who have come to the US illegally. According to a 2012 study by PEW, 20 percent of the apparel manufacturing workforce in America is undocumented.

When Jews were targeted under Hitler, it proved extremely detrimental to the German fashion industry. In 1933, Hitler attempted to Aryanize the industry and rid any Jewish-influence. His efforts were supported through boycotts and illegal-buyouts of Jewish businesses. The Nazi's also founded an organization called Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutsch-arischer Fabrikanten der Bekleidungsindustrie (ADEFA) to promote the purchase of Aryan-made products.

By January 1939, the Nazi's had eliminated the Jews from fashion. "Because of the Jews's century-old integral role in establishing the German fashion world... the purge had taken six full years, longer than any other economic sector in Nazi Germany," author Lisa Pine's explained in her book Life and Times in Nazi Germany.

Under Trump, a significant portion of the industry is now under siege due to his recent executive order on immigration that requires the "expedited removal" of illegal aliens" who he believes disregard the "rule of law and pose a threat" to people across the US. Research has already estimated that the deportation of the 11 million undocumented immigrants would cost the American government $114 billion. But, it's not just the work they do that enriches this country, it is also the culture they bring that helps make the American fashion industry so successful.

"They are coming from somewhere else with different cultural practices and histories that they can overlay onto American fashion and make it something completely different and exciting, whether that is Raf Simons or Diane von Furstenberg," explains Dr. Guenther. "That was the short-sightedness of the Hitler regime, their xenophobia ruined their exports and pushing the Jews out meant pushing out the majority of the best designers, but it also meant that there would be no new injection of vision and entrepreneurship, or even color and arrangement of textiles."

Trump has also pushed Americans to "Buy American, Hire American." The president recited this nationalist slogan during his inaugural address in January, implying that the US should focus on exporting, but not importing goods. He's also proposed terminating the North American Free Trade Agreement and has abandoned Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership, which could threaten the trade deals designers and retailers have with other countries.

"We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs," Trump told the crowd during his inaugural address. "Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."

Mussolini shared similar goals for creating a self-sufficient Italy, which included the domestic production of apparel and textiles. "[To produce garments in Italy, the Mussolini] regime required approval, a textile produced in Italy, but also a trademark or warranty that it was Italian," Eugenia Paulicelli, author of Fashion Under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt, explained to me. "The idea was to convince Italian women to spend their money in the Italian couture instead of going to France."

As K. Ferris writes in her book, Everyday Life in Fascist Venice 1929-40, "supporting local and Italian businesses through increased spending was the new mark of the patriotic consumer."

"Hitler in a way cut off his own nose because he was desperate for export dollars, but he was occupying all of Europe, so Belgium is occupied and the Netherlands are occupied—they couldn't buy German fashion, and certainly the US wasn't going to buy German fashion," said Dr. Guenther. "So it is all fine and good to say 'America First,' but already in the 40s that wasn't working."

To further discourage American companies from producing around the globe, Trump has suggested a border-adjustment tax that would eliminate tax breaks for American companies that produce overseas. As Thomas Naskios explains in The New York Times, should the tax reform be passed, designers will be faced with three options: close up shop, pay more to produce domestically, or push the extra cost onto consumers, with the latter being most likely.

Earlier this month, the National Retail Federation, who strongly opposes the GOP's proposal, aired a commercial warning about the effects of a border-adjustment tax. The infomercial, a parody of those over-the-top Oxiclean ads, claimed that the BAT would make "disposable income disappear" through its tax on items like clothing.

According to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, in 2014 the US imported 97.5 percent of its clothes. Despite efforts to keep fashion production in the US, many small brands and retail giants continue to turn to overseas manufacturing in countries like China and India due to the lower production costs. Even Trump has a history of outsourcing items for his clothing line "Donald J. Trump Collection" from sport coats to cufflinks that were made in countries like South Korea and Bangladesh.

"In fashion you have to be free. Today we have an economic industry, but they want to promote the American industry, the Italian industry, and so forth," explained Paulicelli. "There is always this sort of ambivalence that you want to promote a national brand, but fashion is something that has no nationality."

Lead Photo: A model walks the runway for the Anniesa Hasibuan show during New York Fashion Week. ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images

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Killer Mike, rapper, civil rights activist and potential future President of the United States, was honoured by the Georgia Senate yesterday. The State recognized both Mike and his semi-namesake tunnel-boring drill, Driller Mike, were recognized as "outstanding ambassadors of the City of Atlanta's commitment to providing clean, safe drinking water."

Speaking to WSB-TV, Mike said that it was "an honour to be able to speak on behalf of fair and equitable treatment and making sure all of us have clean water."

His speech on the Senate floor, however, was far broader. "Our children deserve decent housing. Gentrification should not make children poor," he said. "Our school systems deserve more attention. Our teachers deserve more money. Our firemen deserve more money. And our policemen deserve more than new guns. They deserve to have enough cops on the street to be involved in the community."

Read more on Noisey.

(Top photo: Stuart Horner, 27, from Wythenshawe, Manchester, protests on the roof of HMP Manchester, over prison conditions. Photo: Peter Byrne/PA Archive/PA Images)

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.

Stuart Horner, who's serving a life sentence for murder at Strangeways prison, appeared in court last week, charged with criminal damage and affray after staging a 60-hour rooftop protest at the Manchester jail in September of 2015. Addressing the court to explain the reasons behind his protest, he made the claim that there would be less violence in prisons if prisoners were allowed to have sex with their partners via conjugal visits, a practice that is permitted in countries such as Denmark and Canada but is not currently allowed in the UK.

I teach in a prison and recently asked the prisoners in my class to talk to me about their thoughts and – as it turns out – experience of sex in prison.

SPOT ON

Gary, 38, has spent well over half of the last decade in prison, serving a variety of relatively small sentences, ranging from theft to common assault. He is married to his childhood sweetheart and they have four children together – each one having been born during a period when he was serving a sentence. I ask him whether he thinks conjugal rights are a good idea.

"Yes, mate, of course," he says. "Who in their right mind wouldn't think it was a good idea? That fella was fucking spot on. Let prisoners have a bit of time with their women and you'd halve the amount of aggro in here straight away."

I can see how Gary may have a point, but I ask him whether, based on his experience, he thinks that a monthly visit from a partner is actually going to stop prisoners kicking off when a prison officer has just taken the TV out of their cell? "Probably not," he laughs. "To be honest, I've got enough kids to last me a lifetime. At least being in here means I can't get landed with any more!"

BASE NEEDS

Raymond, 39, is serving the final months of an eight-year sentence for his role in an armed robbery. He agrees that conjugal visits are a good idea, but is worried about the cost of building facilities to accommodate this, and also the extra prison staff that would be required. "Look," Raymond says. "I'm not saying I wouldn't take them up on it if it was an option – far from it – but all that money it'd cost I'd rather they spent it on better beds, proper mattresses, shitters that don't block, chicken baguettes with actual pieces of fucking chicken in them. Imagine that: a baguette that has chicken to go with the single lettuce leaf and half a tomato slice inside it."

So food and comfort are a higher priority than sex? "Yeah, absolutely. Most men can go without sex – you get used to it. But fucking basic decent living conditions are a lot harder to live without. To be honest, I don't think sex would get in a top 20 list of things prisoners would like to see improved in jails. You just accept it's something you'll be doing without until you're back on the out again. This isn't an 18-to-30 lads holiday to Magaluf."

RISKY BUSINESS

Zack, 29, has been in custody for the majority of his adult life. Currently on remand, a string of drug offences have led him to now be looking at a sentence of around ten to 12 years if convicted of his most recent charge. He is as indifferent to the possibility of conjugal visits as Raymond and Gary appear to be, but makes the claim that plenty of sex is going on inside prisons anyway. I ask him to explain.

"The amount of nurses who've been boffing prisoners here, there and everywhere is fucking jokes, bro. They like the bad boys, innit. As long as you're not a dirty smackhead you've got just as much chance with a nurse in here as you would down the pub. Fair play – this lad I was twoed up with [cellmate] a few years back ended up moving in with the nurse he was seeing. Photos of them on Facebook on holiday, all that shit. Standard."

I've heard talk of this before, but have always been suspicious. It's always sounded a little too much like wishful thinking on the part of the prisoners, yet everyone in the room backs up what Zack is saying. I ask Zack whether he has ever witnessed anything going on between officers and prisoners.

"Bro. Different thing, different thing. Nurse gets caught with a prisoner and she gets sacked: do one, don't come back. Officer gets caught with man's dick in her hand and she's looking at time herself." So you've never heard of it happening? "Nah, it does happen. Just nowhere near as often, and it's kept proper on the down low."

I suggest there is also the potential for a prisoner-prison staff hook-up to go badly wrong. Zack laughs and starts talking to the rest of the class about a prisoner called Jackson. A few of the other men seem aware of who Jackson is, and when I can get a word in edgeways I ask Zack to explain.

"Right, there was one lad on my last sentence, Jackson, proper cocky bastard. He'd had a thing with a screw, pure took advantage of all the perks that came with it. Gets out and mugs her off straight away. Comes back inside and gets put straight back on her wing. His cell gets spun [searched for drugs or other illicit materials] every other week, his canteen order never arrives, no mail, all the shit under the sun. Forget it, bro. Forget. It."

§

Zack's cautionary tale of prison romance aside, the general feeling among the room throughout the discussion is one of ambivalence. Every single person is able to list a series of changes they feel could be made in order to improve the prisoner experience, and sex doesn't feature in any. There's even a suggestion that they'd rather not bring sex into the equation at all.

Having not said much during the discussion, Steve, a 32-year-old builder serving time for assault, bluntly sums up the prevailing mood. "Like, I'm happy having a quick wank every night after Family Guy. Sex and women is another drama I don't need in here. I just want to ride my sentence as easy as I can."

More on VICE:

We Asked Prison Inmates How to Deal with a Lengthy Crisis

We Spoke to Prisoners About Their Failed Escape Attempts

What Inmates Think About Rising Murder and Suicide Rates in British Prisons

This story appears in the March issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Ah, friends. They're like family but cooler. Fully customizable. Fall and one of them will be right there to pick you back up. But as great as friends can be, they also do a lot of really stupid stuff. Stuff that blows your mind. Like, sometimes it seems crazy that you even hang out with people who make such crappy decisions. Stuff that, were it to get out, would be mortifying for anyone with even a shred of self-respect. Lucky for your friends, they've got you to ask their deepest, darkest questions for them. And lucky for you, we started this column to answer those most embarrassing of queries.

The scenario: Your friend is into BDSM stuff and likes to have his mouth and nose covered during sex. He's alluded to a curiosity about choking too. What? It gets him off.

What you're afraid of: That your buddy will die happy, but way too early, in the throes of kinky sex.

A little background: Choking and breath play are "are possibly the single largest causes of permanent harm and death within the BDSM scene," says Barak*, co-owner of adventuresinsexuality.org, and an ER Nurse. (*We've omitted Barak's last name at the request of the medical institution he works for.)

Continue reading on Tonic

(Top photo: BBC)

Simon Amstell was flying home from Thailand once and a monk was on the plane.

"I decided that he seemed like he had a calm that I could do with, and thought maybe it was Buddhism. When I got home I read a book about the religion but didn't become an actual Buddhist because it seemed like a lot of work, so I just stopped drinking alcohol and eating animals instead."

Did that work? Did he feel calmer? "Well. I'm in therapy, which helps," he laughs, loudly.

We're in the BFI cafe ahead of a screening of Amstell's new BBC vegan mockumentary Carnage, and he's understandably nervous, prayer beads in hand under the table. Whether he found calm in becoming a straight-edge vegan or not, I doubt he'd have had as much insight into what he's been writing about had he not. Take, for instance, the plot point involving men meeting women in dark alleyways to pay for breastmilk after animal products have been outlawed.

Some context: Carnage is a mockumentary set in a utopian 2067, full of enlightened young people disgusted at the idea that their grandparents ever ate meat and drank milk. Almost everyone is vegan. By looking back at Britain's bloodbath of a past, the documentary makers aim to break the taboo of talking about a time when eating animals was normal, while also showing compassion for the complicit masses – poor grandad, he just ate beef because society told him to – who didn't know any better. The obvious comparison is drawn to our awkward relationship with war atrocities and those who committed them.

The cast is a who's who of British TV legends, featuring Joanna Lumley, Lorraine Kelly, Vanessa Feltz and Eileen Atkins, among others, as well as a cameo from JME, a vegan. In short, it's extraordinary and, perhaps surprisingly, to non-vegans and veggies, so hilarious you might cry.

"I had to watch myself at parties because I was ending up quite unpopular. If at any point Carnage became on paper preachy or annoying, we made sure something really funny was really near to that bit so people would be laughing rather than feeling judged."

"I watched a film called Earthlings years ago and it helped to upset me into veganism, so I thought what I could do was direct a film that was funny about the same subject so that people could watch it and feel wildly entertained as well as feeling mildly upset," Amstell laughs again. "I had to watch myself at parties because I was ending up quite unpopular. If at any point Carnage became on paper preachy or annoying, we made sure something really funny was really near to that bit so people would be laughing rather than feeling judged. It is quite a compassionate film."

After setting the scene in this woke new era with ethereal young people being touchy feely and kind to each other, it jumps back to real footage of the first British vegans, daring to be different. They're twee, country-dwelling, carrot-munching dweebs – everything the old vegetarian stereotype used to conjure. "Looking through the 70s archive it became apparent that vegans trying to convince people to be vegans was very funny, and so we realised that we needed to take the piss out of vegans more than anything for this to work. So if you are a person who currently eats animals and you think vegans are ridiculous, then this is the film for you."

The young vegans in 'Carnage' being touchy feely (Still via BBC)

The film pans through decades of adverts, TV shows and cultural artefacts, which – in the context of this new vegan world – look very strange. One standout moment is a clip of Nigella Lawson preparing a chicken; she makes a smiley comment about admiring and respecting the bird, then casually smashes her weight down onto its body, making a horrible loud crunch. From there on, the film explores Amstell's imagined cultural and economic battleground, where the vegan movement grows in Britain and manages to overthrow a country that's always adored its meat-and-two-veg. The furious middle-class white man who feels unsettled in a changing world is played brilliantly by James Smith, AKA The Thick of It's Glenn Cullen, who livestreams himself ranting and going into vegan cafes, saying stuff like, "So depressing, the first thing I see is a lentil," mocking the customers with: "Does this make you interesting?"

Regardless of Carnage not being judgmental, I wondered how he convinced the BBC to let him do a film about veganism – which, for all its laughs, does make consuming animal products look completely ridiculous and, at times, gross. Turns out the BBC invited him. Producer Janet Lee asked if he had anything in his bank that would be suitable for a film that was peculiar and daring enough to cause a fuss. "Years ago I had a bit in my stand-up where I talked a bit about being frustrated with living in the present, and how I'd rather be in the future looking back at this time so I could rant about all the things that I find upsetting or appalling or horrific. I remember when I wrote that thinking, 'Well, this is a good angle for something at some point.'"

And so Carnage's year 2067 was born.

"If you don't feel empathy for the cow or the pig who is having its throat cut or being shot in the head even though these are animals which definitely feel pain, then I just don't know"

What does Amstell think it would take to make this utopia a reality? In the fake history, the final push in a changing climate is a technological advance that allows animals to speak to humans (in Joanna Lumley's prerecorded mechanised voice). It takes something as drastic as having to hear their pain in the English language coming from their lips for Brits to not be able to ignore what they are doing any more. "Is that what it will take?" he muses. "I hope not. I hope that by the point we have Joanna Lumley saying, 'Why do you keep trying to make me ejaculate?' it is already so obvious that this bull's sexual preference would not be to be masturbated by a human male. Will Joanna Lumley saying that be enough?"

He's laughing so much to himself that he's forgotten the question, but has a more serious point to make – as sincere as the footage of slaughter houses sparingly dropped in among the laughs. "If you don't feel empathy for the cow or the pig who is having its throat cut or being shot in the head, even though these are animals which definitely feel pain... if you don't feel that and aren't concerned or upset by what is happening on a mass scale, then I just don't know. I think that a lot of the world's problems could be resolved through empathy, through letting go of the idea that you are the most important person in the world. Which is a very difficult thing to do because we definitely think we are. The answer is, most definitely, compassion."

Carnage is available from 19 March, 9pm, BBC iPlayer.

@hannahrosewens

More on veganism:

Clean Eating Is Giving Veganism a Bad Name

Some Important Advice For Everyone Doing Veganuary

There's Nothing Pretentious About Being a Vegan

(Top photo: @aleia / Aleia Murawski / Prestel)

Your deleted Instagram pictures aren't just deleted on a whim. Someone has deliberated over whether the image adheres to the platform's Community Guidelines, meaning real people – known as "commercial content moderation" workers – make decisions to determine whether your boob selfie is too boob-y. Banned images like these, which range from the explicitly nude to close-up knickers shots with pubic hair on show, have been compiled by artists Molly Soda and Arvida Byström into a new book: Pics Or It Didn't Happen.

With over 220,000 followers combined, they put out an open call for submissions on Instagram and received thousands of images. The final book features roughly 250 photos that were removed from the platform, many of which are NSFW, but demand readers to ask why some bodies – primarily white-passing, thin, hairless, cisgender – are acceptable on social media, while others aren't. Together they've created an archive – or a memorial – for our banned photos of Instagram. I gave the artists a call to find out more.

@isaackariuki / Isaac Kariuki / Prestel

VICE: Why did you decide to make this book?
Molly Soda: We'd noticed a pattern of people complaining about their images being removed from Instagram. Arvida and I had publicly complained about it, too, so we decided do something about it. But it felt important that Pics Or It Didn't Happen elevates those images that have been removed from social media.

It's obvious why some pictures are banned, but others – like the woman using her hijab to hold her phone to her ear – less so. Where's the line?
Arvida Byström: It depends on the context. These people – the content moderation workers who are tasked with making the decision about what can be removed – look at what else is going on in the feed. Some people have semi-nude accounts, and they have them up for months, but then maybe one picture gets reported and all of a sudden its like: "Wait, this can now be read as a porn account," and they shut the whole thing down.
Molly: I also think it depends on whose body it is. Certain bodies are going to be more sexualised than other bodies purely because of the way we're used to seeing them.

@bloatedandalone4evr1993 / Molly Soda / Prestel

In what way?
Arvida: Instagram says what is safe, right? But a lot of things are [viewed] as sexual. You can have the tiniest underwear on and you'll be shaved and that's a pass, but, in some ways, that is culturally more sexual than having an unshaved pubic area. So I think it's a mix of what people straight-up think is disgusting and what is sexual. We had more white people sending pictures into us, but I think that's because white people feel more entitled to display their bodies like that.

American writer Chris Kraus – of I Love Dick fame – wrote the forward in your book. Why did you choose her?
Arvida: Our publisher really wanted us to have a person outside of our circle to write the forward. We thought of Chris Kraus and she just felt weirdly relevant. In I Love Dick she talks a lot about women in the art world and not being taken seriously. There's many differences between us, but we do have some common ground with Chris; I feel like me and Molly have been very unrepresented in books, and yet books are what's seen as classical art and art history.
Molly: Yeah, this whole [being viewed as an] "internet girl" thing, and not being respected. Also, the way I Love Dick wasn't very well received in the beginning. When it came out it wasn't relevant, but now it's so relevant to our generation. So it made a lot of sense.

@appropriatingwhiteculture / Bea Miller / Prestel

The majority of the images in the book feature women: in the bath, on the toilet, in their underwear. What does it say about our attitude to the female body?
Arvida: This is how society treats femme bodies, so we wouldn't expect Instagram to do anything else.
Molly: Even reading comments on people's posts that show a semi-deviant body, like armpit hair, is crazy. The fact that anyone cares about armpit hair at this point is bafflingly to me. But it's still a thing.

Have we got better, though? Are there things that wouldn't get banned now that definitely did a couple of years ago?
Arvida: Yeah, I get maybe one comment on my hairy armpit where I used to get hundreds of comments.
Molly: I do think it's evolving. I still get it, but it's not as bad. But any socially deviant body, in any way, is going to get backlash. It makes sense, though, because Instagram is no different to the rest of society: everyone's body that isn't read as a male body is in conversation with sex, no matter what. I could be wearing a big shapeless dress and a shower cap and I would still be sexualised, no matter what.

@verajorgensen / Vera Jørgensen / Prestel

If you could change Instagram's guidelines, what would they say?
Arvida: Instagram needs more coherency between bodies. They also need to stop taking down things just because it socially might be a little bit disgusting. Like pubic hair, for instance. They need to try and be more specific. Right now, bodies are being treated differently, and that is dangerous.
Molly: But I wouldn't totally get rid of them. We need guidelines – I don't want to see dick pics and beheadings.

What would you like people to take away from the book?
Arvida: That censorship is a really complicated issue. But it's interesting to archive these thoughts and where we're at today. In 20 years this might feel really old and stupid. I think certain people probably already think it is, but what can you do?

Pics Or It Didn't Happen: Images Banned from Instagram by Molly Soda and Arvida Bystrom is out now, published by Prestel.

@louisedonovan_

See more photos below:

@c.har.lee / Lee Phillips / Prestel

@ser_sera / Ser Brandon-Castro Serpas / Prestel

@stinawolter / Stina Wolter / Prestel

The Kenya Wildlife Service is an internationally celebrated conservation body at the forefront of the global fight against poaching. It has the backing of Western NGOs and celebrities, and has stabilised elephant levels in Kenya, in part thanks to the hard line it takes on poachers.

The KWS has a "shoot to kill" policy. Armed rangers, trained and equipped by the British and US military, are authorised to kill any suspected poachers who set foot inside Kenya's national parks.

But is there another side to this organisation? Investigating a string of mysterious disappearances and deaths in the communities around the country's national parks, VICE takes its findings to the very top of the organisation, culminating in a tense exchange with globally renowned conservationist Dr Richard Leakey.

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

US News

Trump Runs Up Against Congressional Deadline on Wiretap Evidence
The House Intelligence Committee has asked the Trump administration to provide any evidence phones were tapped at Trump Tower by the end of Monday, according to congressional aides. A letter stating the deadline was sent to the Department of Justice and FBI boss James Comey by the committee chairman, Republican Devin Nunes, and ranking Democrat Adam Schiff.—NBC News

Steve King Tweet Condemned as Racist
Iowa congressman Steve King has been condemned for a tweet praising far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, stating: "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo tweeted, "What exactly do you mean? Do I qualify as 'somebody else's baby?'" The Council on American-Islamic Relations' Iowa director, Miriam Amer, said the tweet was "racist."—The New York Times

Man Accused of Arson Wanted to 'Run Arabs Out of Our Country'
A Florida man has been charged with first-degree arson, accused of trying to set a convenience store in Port St. Lucie on fire because he thought it was owned by Arabs. Richard Leslie Lloyd, 64, told police he wanted to "run the Arabs out of our country." The store owners are, in fact, of Indian descent.—CNN

Gunfire Heard at Ferguson Protest
Shots were reported at a protest outside the Ferguson convenience store visited by Michael Brown before he was shot and killed by a police officer in 2014. No one was injured, but police were said to have made some arrests. The protest followed the release of documentary Stranger Fruit that shows new footage of Brown before his death.—New York Daily News

International News

At Least Six Killed in Car Bomb Attack in Somalia
At least half a dozen people are dead after a car bomb attack in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. The explosion outside the Weheliye hotel Monday morning also left at least four wounded, according to police. No group has yet claimed responsibility. Hours earlier, a minibus exploded at a police checkpoint, wounding two people.—Al Jazeera

Turkey Steps Up Beef with the Netherlands
Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has accused the Netherlands of being "the capital of fascism" after he was stopped from holding a controversial rally in the Dutch nation. At issue are political rallies designed to bolster President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's controversial referendum bolstering his own powers. For his part, Erdogan has warned that the Netherlands is behaving like a "banana republic."—Deutsche Welle

Bird Flu Virus Causes Another 61 Deaths in China
The H7N9 bird flu caused 61 deaths in February, the Chinese government has announced. It brings the number of deaths caused by the virus this year to 140, the highest annual total since the 2010 outbreak of the H1N1 strain. The number of deaths is expected to drop with the end of winter.—Reuters

Australia Mulls Preschool Ban on Unvaccinated Children
The Australian government is considering a ban on unvaccinated children entering preschool and childcare centers. A few states already have "no jab, no play" rules, but PM Malcolm Turnbull is said to covet a unified national policy. A survey of almost 2,000 parents showed roughly 5 percent of kids were not fully immunized.—BBC News

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'Kong' Movie Grabs $61 Million at Box Office
Kong: Skull Island has stormed to the top of the box office, taking $61 million in its opening weekend. Logan was pushed into second place, taking $37.9 million in its second week, while Get Out is third, taking another $21.1 million.—AP

Ed Sheeran to Star in 'Game of Thrones'
British singer Ed Sheeran will have a small role in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones, the show's producers have revealed. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss said they approached Sheeran because actor Maisie Williams was a big fan.—Vanity Fair

Texas Lawmaker Proposes $100 Fine for Masturbation
Texas representative Jessica Farrar has proposed a "satirical" regulation that would fine men $100 for masturbating and require a rectal exam for Viagra. Farrar wants to "make people stop and think" about women's struggles to access healthcare.—The Texas Tribune

Drake Reveals 'More Life' Release Date
Drake has teased a release date for More Life, a new project he has been working on for Apple Music. According to a video post on Instagram, it will be out March 18.—Noisey

Pedophile Hunter Sued for Defamation
Ryan LaForge, president of a Canadian chapter of pedophile hunter group Creep Catchers, is being sued for defamation. A video posted by LaForge's group accusing the plaintiff of pedophilia was seen more than 56,000 times.—VICE

Up to 15 Percent of Twitter Accounts Fake, Say Researchers
As many as 15 percent of active Twitter accounts are bots driven by algorithms, according to new analysis by computer scientists at Indiana University and the University of Southern California. It means there could be around 48 million fake Twitter accounts.—Motherboard

Roger Stone, President Trump's longtime adviser, has admitted to exchanging what he claims are "completely innocuous" messages with the hacker or hackers who claim to have infiltrated the DNC during the 2016 presidential campaign. He told the Washington Times that he corresponded on Twitter with "Guccifer 2.0," the self-described "hacktivist" from Romania who claims responsibility for the breach of the DNC's email servers last summer.

Stone wrote an article about the hacks for Breitbart in August of last year. On Saturday, Stone dismissed his contact with the hacker as "cursory," and having taken place "after he releases the DNC stuff." Stone is under investigation for his connections to the Russians.

Innocuous or not, Stone's disclosure adds to an ever-growing list of Trump campaign officials and allies linked to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

Continue reading on VICE News

Members of Vancouver's feminist community gathered in a small artist's studio the evening of February 3 for the opening of the Vancouver Women's Library, a feminist reading room and salon.

It's probably safe to assume those who would attend such an event would have hoped for, at best, a rousing speech and a generous pour of opening-reception wine.

They would have been surprised, then, when nine protesters hijacked the congratulatory speeches to deliver their own indictment of the library and those who had brought it into being.

Protesters handed out a pamphlet that said: "This library is run by women who hate other women."

One protester ripped down a poster for the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, published by Valerie Solanas in 1968, the year she shot Andy Warhol.

The fire alarm was pulled, police were called.

It was the latest, if somewhat ill-advised, skirmish in a decades-old battle on the front lines of feminism: What is the role of transgender women in the movement?

"There has always been a segment of the feminist community that has been uncomfortable with including trans women in their movement," says Brenna Bezanson, a transgender woman and community liaison at the PACE Society, a Vancouver organization that provides support and services for sex workers.

"I would not say that that represents the majority of feminism, but it does represent a very vocal segment of the feminist community," Bezanson told VICE.

Indeed, the role of what were then called "transsexuals" has been in dispute since at least the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1970s.

Though the debate has waned as transgender women have won hard-fought rights, there remain a stream of self-described "radical feminists" that view being raised a girl in a misogynistic society as central to the female experience.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie set off a social media shitstorm on the weekend over her comments on transgender women in an interview with a British TV program.

Gender is about experience, said the bestselling feminist author.

"It's not about how we wear our hair, or whether we have a vagina or a penis, it's about the way the world treats us," she told Channel 4 News.

"And I think if you've lived in the world as a man with the privileges the world accords to men, and then sort of changed, switched gender, it's difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are."

"And so I think there has to be—and this is not, of course, to say, I'm saying this with a certainty that transgender should be allowed to be. But I don't think it's a good thing to conflate everything into one. I don't think it's a good thing to talk about women's issues being exactly the same as the issues of trans women, because I don't think that's true."

Critics said Adichie's comments ignored higher rates of violence against trans women, and were rooted in belief that trans people are not who they say they are.

The Michigan Women's Festival, the largest festival for women in North America, folded in 2015 mired in controversy over its "women born women" policy.

In 2007, following more than a decade before the courts, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal from a transgender woman, upholding the right of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter to reject her as a counsellor for raped and battered women because she was not born and raised a girl. The BC Supreme Court and BC Court of Appeal had previously ruled that Vancouver Rape Relief had not discriminated against Kimberly Nixon.

"And now we have this library," Bezanson told VICE.

One of the founders of the library, Em Laurent, is a supporter and former volunteer at Vancouver Rape Relief. Among the protesters' demands is that Laurent end her involvement in the library.

Laurent defends her views, saying there has been over the past 30 years a "conflation of what a woman is." Women's issues and trans issues are equally important, she said, but there are "strict and specific delineations between them."

"I've taken on a few dissident positions but that doesn't mean you get to burn the witch," she told VICE. "It's about conversation and there are political disagreements that are genuine and that are real and there will always be differences."

In a statement, protesters made six demands, including the release of information on library funding and the election of a new board that is not exclusively cisgender and white.

They have a list of books they want banned and demand a greater array of books by women of colour, sex workers, incarcerated women, and trans women.

Bezanson was not one of the protestors but she said the dispute arises from a history of "anti-sex work rhetoric and anti-trans rhetoric" on the part of some of the library organizers. It has played out largely online and has included "outing" of transgender sex workers, not by library organizers but by their supporters.

"The protest that happened, I don't know that that is how I would have held that protest," Bezanson told VICE. "But there were many, many weeks of marginalized people being silenced by people who have harmed them and being ignored and I don't know how it could have gone anywhere but such a visible cry of frustration and hurt."

Bezanson was among 101 groups and individuals signatories of an open letter that voiced support for the library protestors, and decried the space "opened by individuals with a history of transphobic and anti-sex worker practices."

"We strongly condemn a radical feminism that perpetuates violence on women's bodies through the discrimination of trans women and sex workers," the letter reads. "People who gaslight, exclude, misgender, and troll trans women and sex workers are not feminists in our eyes, but bigots. Projects that welcome support from these groups and their hate-lobbying leaders endanger the lives of sex workers and trans women."

The debate is far from over, even as the Vancouver Women's Library reopened Saturday in a new space.

Organizers felt it best, in the wake of the protest, to vacate the original location in an artist studio shared with other artists and artisans, not all of whom were affiliated with the library. The landlord agreed that was best.

The new Downtown Eastside location was released shortly before the opening, in an effort to curtail a similar confrontation.

"I'm a seasoned protester myself, and it's people's right to express their disagreement," said Bec Wonders, one of the founders.

But "it was very aggressive and hostile," she said. "I don't mean to sound like we're doing everything right. We do welcome constructive feedback and we definitely welcome book donations if people feel certain things are missing but this was simply an act of vandalism."

The library has a trans literature section and has not, nor never intended, to censor trans voices, Wonders said.

The library founders say they would welcome a public discussion about the issues but they will not ban any books.

"That was one of their biggest demands and it just goes against what we aim to do, as a library that values intellectual freedom," Wonders said.

Follow Dene Moore on Twitter.

(Top phot: Pixabay/jeonghwaryu0)

If you caught one thing from the UK's Budget announcement on Wednesday, it was probably the Chancellor's decision to slap the 15 percent of the UK's working population who are self-employed with higher national insurance contributions, or more tax.

Chancellor Philip Hammond pledged to increased Class 4 national insurance for self-employed people twice in the next two years, from 9 percent to 11 percent on income up to £45,000. He justified this by saying self-employed people use public services in the same way, "but are not paying for them in the same way".

For 2.5 million people, that translates to an annual increase in national insurance contributions of £240. Some of these people may decide that it's not worth being self-employed and get a contract. But many will not have the choice. Couriers, drivers and higher education workers are among those forced into self-employment through agency or app-based work.

"The self-employed are among the lowest paid and most vulnerable people in our society. To target them by increasing their national insurance contributions is picking on the weak," said Ursula Huws, Professor of Labour and Globalisation at the University of Hertfordshire.

As traditional (PAYE) wages have stagnated and companies have become less willing to offer full-time positions, self-employment is on the rise, with the total considering themselves self-employed up 45 percent since 2008. The UK has more self-employed people than anywhere else in Europe.

Businesses that rely on self-employed workers tend to paint this situation as a workers' utopia, where more people are liberated from the soul-crushing routine of the nine-to-five. But the reality for most people is not loafing around writing blog posts in their pyjamas and eating peanut butter straight out the jar.

Research shows that self-employed people earn 40 percent less on average. Lower earnings mean people pay less taxes, and that's opened up a massive £5 billion hole in the government's tax revenue this year alone. That's the main reason the Chancellor is pushing for higher taxes for the self-employed, to raise an extra £1 billion for the Treasury in the next five years.

"We did this survey about agency work and self-employment and found that it was most common in social care, hospitality and teaching, which are not really the sectors you think about for automation. These sectors have tight cross margins that are being forced onto workers, who are forced to take on more risk," said Kate Bell, head of economic and social affairs at the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

"The government is painting its raising of self-employment NICs as 'levelling the playing field', but really the move is further punishing some of the country's most economically-vulnerable people."

According to the TUC, 1.5 million employed people are at risk of missing out on family-friendly rights, including rights to maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave (including the right to return to their jobs after time off), an increase of 700,000 compared to a decade ago. They calculate another 1.7 million self-employed people also lack access to these rights and are paid so poorly they cannot protect themselves if something goes wrong.

Low paid self-employed people are more likely to be male, people of colour and working in construction, administration, transport and storage. The majority of those on zero hours contracts are women, people of colour and young, between the ages of 16 and 24.

The government is painting its raising of self-employment NICs as "levelling the playing field", but really the move is further punishing some of the country's most economically-vulnerable people. There are other ways for the government to improve tax revenue – for example, by raising the minimum wage so people are earning more and pay out relatively more in tax. Instead, by adding to the tax burden on the self-employed, the government risks pushing more people into poverty and deeper insecurity.

"There is abundant scientific evidence that being in precarious employment increases psycho-social risks and is damaging to individual wellbeing and social cohesiveness," Professor Huws says. A World Health Organisation report found that temporary workers had higher mortality and worse mental health.

Working from coffee shops seems like a small consolation for missing out on key rights and protections at work and the anxiety that comes with not having enough money to protect yourself.

Kate Bell said one way self-employed people can protect themselves is by joining unions to ensure they have some protection if things go wrong. Professor Huws points to the increase in workers' co-operatives, democratic organisations owned by members that can offer financial and non-financial benefits, training and mutual support.

Self-employment should be a choice. When it is, it can offer higher levels of job satisfaction. But more often than not, employers are choosing not to offer benefits to workers to minimise costs. By raising taxes, the government is contributing to a toxic environment where those with precarious work feel even less secure.

@hazelsheffield

The internet is a land of unending cruelty and unbridled imagination, a place where we can find almost all the information mankind has ever known at a fingertip, and sometimes—when everything lines up perfectly—it will deliver us something we never knew we needed.

This time the delivery came in the form of a cut down, film-like version of Breaking Bad.

The film, aptly titled Breaking Bad: The Movie, was uploaded by a mysterious user a week ago and sits at a runtime of two hours, seven minutes, and ten seconds—a far cry from the two days and 14 hours that the series runs if you try to binge-watch the entire thing. Disclaimer: the 62 hours is totally worth it for the show because it's fucking Breaking Bad.  

The brilliance of Vince Gilligan's show aside, the amazing thing about this project is, well, it changes some things up.

"It's not a fan-film, hitting the highlights of show in a homemade homage, but rather a re-imagining of the underlying concept itself, lending itself to full feature-length treatment," reads the description under the film.

"An alternative Breaking Bad, to be viewed with fresh eyes."

Earlier in the description, the mysterious recutter states that this was a "study project" that turned into "all-consuming passion." Which is reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh's 110-minute recut of 2001: A Space Odyssey (RIP). It apparently took the cutter and their team two years for the final project to finish the project.

We're living in the golden age of television—a brilliant age that never seems to end— Game of Thrones, Atlanta, Stranger Things, Sherlock, Fargo, Review, Mr. Robot, Veep, Hannibal, House of Cards, the list goes on. So with all that to consume there is no wonder that, you know, we might miss out on some amazing television—mysterious recutter, you're doing the world a favour.

Please do The Sopranos next.

Follow Mack    on Twitter.

On Sunday, Trump advisor and unofficial clothing spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway made an interesting claim on top of Trump's unfounded tweets insisting that Obama spied on his campaign during the 2016 primaries.

During an interview at her home in Alpine, New Jersey, Conway lofted the idea that Trump's wiretapping allegations may be even wider in scope, explaining that hackers can watch people through "microwaves that turn into cameras."

"What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other," Conway said. "You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets—any number of ways." She added, "We know this is a fact of modern life."

Although Conway didn't offer up any actual proof to back up the surveillance claim—a claim that has been heavily criticized from Democrats and Republicans alike—she tweeted Monday that she was "pleased" the House and Senate Intel committees were investigating. She also pushed back on media reports that she had suggested Obama had hacked Trump's microwave.

The House Intelligence Committee has asked the White House to fork over actual evidence about the surveillance claims by Monday, so we'll have to wait and see if Obama really was watching Trump scarf down Hot Pockets through a secret camera on his microwave or whatever.

Does It Suck? takes a deeper look at pop cultural artifacts previously adored, unjustly hated, or altogether forgotten, reopening the book on topics that time left behind.

Now that Prince is back on Spotify, countless fans will likely be revisiting his catalog in the coming weeks. It's a safe bet that several of those trips down Nostalgia Road will lead to one inevitable destination: Purple Rain.

Despite having released 39 studio albums over the course of his absurdly prolific career—most of them well after he'd bowed out of the fight for the title of World's Biggest Pop Star—Purple Rain is still the go-to subject matter when talking about Prince. It makes perfect sense if we're discussing his work in the recording studio. Only a few albums in history can honestly be described as "flawless," and Purple Rain is absolutely one of them. The movie, however, is an entirely different matter.

At the time of its release, the film version of Purple Rain seemed like a monumental achievement, and for good reason. The world hadn't seen a music act release a film that was capable of standing alone as a separate piece of work from the songs that inspired it since the Beatles released A Hard Day's Night in 1964.

This achievement doesn't necessarily mean Purple Rain is a good movie, though. If you were one of the millions who flocked to theaters when it was re-released after Prince's untimely death, you'd be straight up lying to yourself if you said it still holds up today.

For starters, the acting is nearly across-the-board terrible. Sure, Prince is as charming as ever, but his performance is goofy and stiff and makes what is supposed to be a film set in the real world seem approximately as believable as most horror flicks. The only real saving graces on the acting front are Morris Day and Jerome Benton from the Time. While we're supposed to be fascinated by the brewing romance between Prince and Apollonia, the already well-established bromance between Morris and Jerome steals the show at every turn. Watching the two of them together is a goddamn delight in almost every way.

Almost. A key scene involving those two also perfectly highlights another gigantic flaw in Purple Rain. At its core, it's a movie about how Prince needs to be better to the women in his life, but it takes sitting through lots of scenes of women being treated like garbage, both figuratively and literally, to get to that message. In one of the most memorable scenes, Morris and Jerome are confronted by a woman who's angry that Morris hasn't returned her calls, and they respond by tossing her in a dumpster.

In another scene, Prince smacks Apollonia, sending her flying across the room, simply because she insulted him. It's cool, though, because he fixes everything in the end by jamming out to "Purple Rain," which makes everything OK again for everybody.

Basically, Purple Rain is a really great concert film with a mostly bullshit drama wrapped around it. You'll still find lots of enjoyment in the music scenes, but the rest is unspeakably cringeworthy.

What's even worse is how mightily Purple Rain overshadows the other entries in Prince's filmography. He released four over the course of his career. One of them, Graffiti Bridge, the official "sequel" to Purple Rain, is total nonsense that you can avoid without worry of missing anything worthwhile. The other two, however, deserve way more attention than history has given them up to this point.

After the runaway success of Purple Rain, Prince was given free reign to do whatever the hell he wanted. What he delivered was Under the Cherry Moon, an absurd comedy set at an undetermined point in the past. It's about two scheming brothers, played by Prince and Jerome, who have designs on marrying into the upcoming $50 million inheritance of a young French woman. That role is filled by eventual Academy Award nominee Kristin Scott Thomas, a fact that, by itself, makes this movie worth checking out—even if audiences vehemently disagreed at the time of its release.

Prince followed Under the Cherry Moon, the closest he'd ever come to making an "actual" movie, by releasing his first and only big-screen concert film: Sign o' the Times. Rest assured, in keeping with his general aesthetic, it's weird as shit and includes some scripted moments that you'll wish weren't there, but for the most part, it's just Prince onstage at the height of his creative powers. Which makes it all the more frustrating that tracking down a legitimately released, high-quality copy of it today is next to impossible.

What's most valuable about these two relatively forgotten moments in Prince's career is that they're both far better examples of the two things that made the Purple Rain movie the box office success that it was. In Under the Cherry Moon, Prince's goofy attempts at comedy are way more at home than in the film that preceded it. Morris Day is definitely missed, but the interactions between Prince and Jerome Benton are genuinely charming and funny. The "wrecka stow" scene rivals Purple Rain's "Lake Minnetonka" bit for the funniest moment in Prince movie history.

It's a completely fictional comedy that doubles as a perfect demonstration of the real life charisma that went a long way toward making Prince into the icon that he became. (And it helps that not a single woman gets beat or thrown in a dumpster.) Also, weirdly enough, the fact that it's set in the past and filmed in black and white makes it feel significantly less dated than Purple Rain.

As for Sign o' the Times, it's Prince at his creative peak, in concert, without all of the awkward drama that makes up half of Purple Rain. You could argue all day about which set of songs featured in the two films are better, but there's no denying that Sign o' the Times is a more accurate representation of what seeing Prince in concert was actually like. In Purple Rain, the songs were played pretty much as you hear them on the album, whereas Sign features tunes that are reworked and extended to display the off the charts musicianship that was a hallmark of Prince's bands and live performances.

Of course, none of this is meant to imply that Purple Rain should be skipped or forgotten. Its place in the history of one of the greatest artists of all time is undeniable. But if you're looking for a film that explains the mystique of Prince the personality or Prince the performer, in either case, you can do a lot better.

Follow Adam Tod Brown on Twitter.

A new documentary about the 2014 officer-involved shooting death of Michael Brown led to protests and gunfire in Ferguson late Sunday night. Stranger Fruit, which premiered at South by Southwest on Saturday, questions the narrative presented by police about what happened before the teenager was killed by former cop Darren Wilson, and has the potential to impact the still-active federal lawsuit filed by the teenager's family.

The new controversy revolves around a bit of previously unseen footage culled from a security cam inside the store Brown was accused of robbing the night before he was killed. In it, the 18-year-old is seen handing a package to a clerk, who then appears to smell it before passing the parcel around to his co-workers. The employee and Brown then seem to pass a box of cigarillos back and forth before that box ends up behind the counter.

Video previously released to the public only showed Brown taking the cigarillos, ostensibly illegally, on the day he was killed. Family and supporters argued it could have prejudiced a grand jury against indicting Wilson. But the filmmaker of Stranger Fruit argues in his documentary that the new material shows Brown traded weed for the cigarillos, left them behind the counter for safe keeping, and came back to retrieve them just before his death. He says that without both videos, we are left with the mistaken impression that Brown just took the merchandise without paying.

The video is actually consistent with one initial account offered by Ferguson's police chief in August 2014: that Brown was stopped for being in the middle of the road, not alleged theft. But when he testified to a grand jury that same year, Officer Wilson said he would not have come into contact with the teenager if cops weren't looking for someone who had stolen cigarillos from a local market. Brown's friend Dorian Johnson seemed to corroborate that latter narrative in court, saying that the store owner tried to block Brown from leaving after he took the cigarillos––a fairly clear indication that they were not his.

Regardless, Protestors gathered at the store in question on Sunday night for a demonstration that took a turn for the violent when shots were fired. No one was reported injured, but cops hid behind their cars and at least one man was charged with attempting to cause catastrophe after he allegedly tried to light a napkin on fire in a cop car's gas tank.

Meanwhile, Jay Kanzler, who represents the store, holed up inside. The lawyer says that the package Brown passed to his clients that night smelled like marijuana to them, but that the footage omitted a portion in which they handed it back. He claims that he will release a more complete version sometime on Monday to counter what he told the Daily News was a "practically shameful" stunt.

"This is all great publicity for this filmmaker," Kanzler said, according to the paper. "But there's real lives at risk. Police officers were shot at. There were threats to burn down the store. All because some guy wanted to promote a documentary."

There is reason to believe, however, that the footage could find its way into a courtroom––publicity stunt or not. Brown's mother, who appears in Stranger Fruit, is a plaintiff in a federal civil suit filed against Wilson, his former boss, and the city of Ferguson itself. That case is set to go to trial next year.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

After a thirteen-year hiatus, the mind-blowing animated series Samurai Jack made its return Saturday night on Adult Swim—so long to the kids' show veneer it had to wear during its days on Cartoon Network—and unlike so many reboots, this new version feels like an improvement upon its predecessor. The beautifully animated action sequences that helped Jack win four Emmys back in the early 2000s are still here in full force, but whereas the Jack of old was a more or less unperturbed ronin, this new and final season takes us down a dark road into its hero's tortured psyche. From the outset, we're told that Jack has wandered for fifty years without aging, his temporal stasis a side effect of the time travel that kicked off the original series. And with all the time portals to the past supposedly destroyed, Jack believes there's no longer a way for him to defeat the evil Aku, whose reign over the world remains unabated and complete.

Now, the cartoonish fun hasn't been totally sapped from the show. Saturday night's premiere featured a delightful battle between Jack and Scaramouch, a jazz-loving robo-assassin who uses a magical flute to command a rock monster. But on the whole, this final stretch of the Samurai Jack story is set to motor down a forbidding, lonesome path toward Jack's ultimate salvation, whether that be victory over Aku or the sweet escape of death.

We spoke with series creator Genndy Tartakovsky and musical director Tyler Bates—who has also composed the scores for Guardians of the Galaxy, John Wick, and every Zack Snyder film from Dawn of the Dead through Sucker Punch—about how they created a fresh sonic aesthetic to fit the new season of Samurai Jack.

Continue reading on Noisey.

Taking a page from Legally Blonde—where Elle finally shows she's earned her place at Harvard Law by making the case during class that "any masturbatory emissions, where the sperm is clearly not seeking an egg, could be termed reckless abandonment"—a satirical bill filed in Texas on Friday aims to make a statement about women's reproductive rights.

House Bill 4260, titled "Man's Right to Know Act," would require men to pay $100 fee for masturbating each time; require someone seeking a vasectomy, Viagra prescription, or colonoscopy to receive an informational booklet (complete with artistic illustration of each procedure), undergo a digital rectal exam and rectal sonogram and wait 24 hours to get the prescription or procedure; and allow health professionals the right to withhold treatment based on "personal, moralistic, or religious beliefs."

The bill intentionally draws from anti-abortion laws in Texas, including legislation mandating a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion and the requirement that during their initial consultation, women receive an error-filled booklet about the risks associated with the procedure.

Continue reading on Broadly.

The second season of Love—Judd Apatow and Paul Rust's Netflix comedy about two Los Angelenos navigating the ups and downs of a new relationship—picks up exactly where the first left off: Gus (Rust) and Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) standing in a gas station parking lot, trying to figure out what to do next after the former interrupted the latter's admission to struggling with sex and love addiction with a passionate (and questionably appropriate) kiss.

From there, Love's sophomore bow finds its characters stumbling (and occasionally succeeding) through matters of the heart, all while balancing extra romantic concerns ranging from addiction-treatment programs, to professional struggles, to dogs shitting on expensive rugs. The show's scope expands, too—Mickey's roommate Bertie (a scene-stealing Claudia O'Doherty) is given a romantic plot of her own—but Gus and Mickey remain at the center, growing as lovers and adults with a distinct lack of grace that feels all too real.

VICE caught up with Apatow, Rust, and Jacobs last month in New York City. Read on for our conversation about how the show deals with substance abuse, the notion of "unlikable" TV characters, and the ever-changing face of comedy.

VICE: Something that sticks out in this season is how the show tackles addiction and treatment. It's a more progressive approach than I've seen in the past.
Judd Apatow: We're not satirizing it. There's a way to do it where it's funny and everyone's breaking all the rules, but early on we just said, "This is good. You can take from it what you will." There are all sorts of messes that happen when you put a lot of people together who are struggling with a similar problem, but we wanted [the season] to be more about [Mickey's] struggle to be consistent in her behavior.

I spent the entire season asking myself, "OK, so when is Mickey going to relapse?" It didn't happen, which was surprising to me. It made me kind of feel bad that that's what I've been trained to expect from TV and movies in general.
We didn't want the show to be about falling on and off the wagon. It's more about the type of person and the type of wounds that Mickey's bringing into a relationship. Even though Gus isn't an addict, he might have a whole different set of behaviors and neuroses. At first, you're like, "She's the messed up one," and the more you watch, you're like, "They're perfectly balanced in how fucked up they are."

There are many moments in this season where Gus and Mickey are equally at fault.
Paul Rust: We're always making sure that you understand why a character is doing what they're doing—whether you agree with them or not. I remember Larry David saying about Curb Your Enthusiasm, "The best arguments are the ones where you see both sides of the argument—and you agree with both of them." I remember talking to people who had seen [the first season episode, "Magic,"] and they were like, "I guess I'd take both of their sides? Even though both of them are wrong?"

In the writer's room, we're just trying to write what we think would be authentic, so when the response is, "That was such a cringe-y moment," I'm always like, "It was?" We're just trying to show what it would be like to go to a party and be the first person there—we aren't thinking, "How are we going to make people uncomfortable with this?" It's honestly a surprise to hear people are uncomfortable. I'm like, "Hmm, I guess my experiences are very uncomfortable for people."

I think some of that discomfort comes from the fact that there are no characters on the show that are explicitly good or bad. It reminds me of the scene in Knocked Up where Seth Rogen's character is yelling at the doctor in the hospital, his stomach gurgles, and there's that moment where the two of them are like, "Alright, now we're just going to move on."
Judd Apatow: It's exactly like that. That's literally the most truthful moment in that movie.

Paul Rust: When I saw Knocked Up in the theater, I remember the scene with Craig Robinson as the bouncer was so exhilarating to watch. You're like, "OK, I've seen this type of scene where the bouncer has to be rude to people," but with Judd's touch, it goes a little bit longer, and you find out that this bouncer hates that he has to do this. The bouncer is suddenly as complex as everyone else. We try to do that as much as possible.

Gillian, your performance as Mickey is very empathetic. How do you approach your portrayal of the character?
Gillian Jacobs: I really enjoyed this season because you see a lot of Mickey's vulnerabilities. She has a hard exterior and can come on strong to people, but underneath that is someone who desperately wants to be liked and is worried that maybe she's not that interesting of a person. I find that endearing because I've felt similarly myself. I also enjoy the fact that you see her try really for the first time at work, instead of coasting by on charm and an "I don't give a fuck" attitude. It was refreshing.

Paul, I saw you on a panel yesterday where the moderator called the show "a comedy without jokes," which seemed really reductive.
Paul Rust: Yeah, when he said that, I was like, "Hey!"

But there are a lot of different types of "funny" lately, and I think that confuses audiences as we see more different types of comedies airing on TV.
I mean, I love stuff like Airplane, too—where it's hard jokes, and I'm laughing from beginning to end for 85 minutes. It's the best thing in the world. But we chose this tone, which I obviously love.
Judd Apatow: It's like Say Anything. When I saw that movie as a kid, I thought, Oh, that's the vibe I love. It's funny, and the characters are very colorful, but they really just care about the truth more than anything.
Gillian Jacobs: I didn't start out in comedy, so it's been fun for me to discover all these different types of comedy as I've worked with different people. What's fun about it for the audience is to be like, "Oh, that's this person's point of view on the world." It's great to have a lot of different types of comedy on TV, because not everybody finds the same things funny. As a kid, there were the sitcoms on the major networks, and if that wasn't your cup of tea, you really had to seek it out. I envy kids growing up now that have access to all these different shows.

Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.

In a Facebook video posted last November, Danna Henderson makes a tearful plea to parents as she watches her young daughter Dānnalee dance and sing alongside other children at a restaurant. Her daughter is the only one in the crowd using a walker to stand.

"Our children lead by example… Tonight is one of those moments where people were rude to my daughter and it hurts," says Henderson as she talks into the camera, beginning to cry. "And it's not a nice thing to go through, to have my daughter look so hurt at things being said to her. I just wanted to tell you that as a parent, please try to promote inclusion."

Dānnalee is only five years old and inclusion is not the only thing she's been fighting for in her short life. Dānnalee was born with Spina Bifida, a birth defect that affects her ability to walk. She wears a shunt, a catheter that must be changed four times a day, and suffers from seizures. But that hasn't stopped the young girl from progressing from a wheelchair, to a walker, to now using crutches to help her walk.

"I'm just amazed. She has a lot of determination and perseverance that I don't know where she gets it from. But she is determined to be like any other child. And that's the greatest thing," Henderson told VICE.

Henderson lives on Pasqua First Nation with Dānnalee and her other two children, aged four and one. For the past few years she has been tirelessly fighting with Pasqua First Nation and Indigenous Affairs to get both information and access to funding and programs she needs to get an education. Services like access to a driver to get Dānnalee to and from school, or a school nurse to change her catheter. Because Dānnalee has also been diagnosed with a learning disability, she requires an educational assistant.

Henderson says Pasqua First Nation had neither a driver, EA, or nurse to equipped to help Dānnalee—nor the insurance to cover if something happened to her—so she drives her daughter to the nearest town every second day so she can go to school.

"It was based on staff qualifications," Henderson said. "There was no staff qualified to deal with her."

Left: Dānnalee attending Wascana Rehabilitation Facility in Regina. Right: Dānnalee meets PM Justin Trudeau.

Henderson's SUV isn't equipped to accommodate her wheelchair and with Dānnalee's growth spurts—taking her around can be time consuming and physically demanding.

"It's just because she's on a reserve and she's status," she told VICE. "Mind you, if she was non-status living on the reserve the province would go on the reserve and pick her up. It's kind of mind boggling. Oh, because she's First Nations, she doesn't fit that bill."

For more than a decade, Cindy Blackstock and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society have argued that the lack of education and health resources on reserves, coupled with the in-fighting over who funds those programs, amounts to racial discrimination against children—a system Blackstock has called "separate and unequal." Last year, a federal court judge agreed.

Read More: Charged With Racial Discrimination, Canada's Government Fought Dirty and Lost

Henderson and her husband are committed to making sure their daughter gets the same education and health care as she would off-reserve, which has meant constant fighting with Indigenous Affairs over "jurisdiction." Henderson has made it her life's work to get to the bottom of which governments and agencies are responsible for ensuring her daughter gets comparable health and education, so that other on-reserve parents won't have to go through the same thing.

"I kind of feel like I'm in a bind. My husband decided he's not going to work and he's going to take over the duties while I go to work. We don't mind taking her—but it's the principle of her not getting that service."

Pasqua First Nation Chief Todd Peigan told VICE the band has committed to getting Dānnalee the supports she qualifies for by this fall. Henderson says this comes after months of emails and letters going back and forth between Indigenous Affairs, Pasqua First Nation, and herself. In the emails, Henderson says it's evident that people are "passing the buck" and not taking responsibility for vulnerable children like Dānnalee.

"It's mostly frustration because I'm constantly on the phone and I'm trying to get answers. I've learned how to navigate the different levels of government from the province, to the reserve, to Indian Affairs. So now when I have issues, I go to Indian Affairs and they really can't help. 'It's up to your reserve,' and the reserve says, 'Oh, we don't have any money.' Or lately what they've been saying is: 'We're working on it,'" said Henderson.

The Canadian government has been under fire for only spending "a fraction of money" dedicated towards helping children like Dānnalee. Last month Blackstock said the government is shortchanging First Nations children on-reserve and in foster care.

Henderson is a registered nurse, has a journalistic background and is activist in her own right, having traveled to Standing Rock and taken up other Indigenous rights causes. She is vocal about her daughter's case, knows how to be an advocate, and ask questions in the health industry. She says she sees other parents struggling like she is, but often don't know the questions to ask or may not be well-versed in how to navigate the systems which Blackstock called "racially discriminatory" to children like her daughter.

"I worry for those children that are literally falling through the cracks because… their parents don't know what recourse to take," said Henderson. "I had to learn all on my own."

Lead image of Henderson and her three children via Facebook.

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The only time I've seen him up close, Preet Bharara, the Indian American federal prosecutor who was fired by Donald Trump this weekend, was speaking at a forum in Manhattan about putting corrupt politicians in prison. It was March 2015, and Bharara had long before made a name for himself prosecuting Wall Street fat cats for insider trading while serving as the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, generally regarded as among the most powerful law enforcement jobs in the country. It's a role that, by virtue of America's media capital falling within his jurisdiction, comes with plenty of attention—the prosecutor has been covered rather flatteringly not once but twice in the New Yorker. When I saw him do his thing for an audience of a few dozen attorneys, law students, and journalists, Bharara was riding especially high, still basking in the glow of the recent arrest of State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who would be convicted on corruption charges and become the shiniest pelt on Bharara's metaphorical wall. (Silver is still appealing his case.)

Despite long-standing complaints about the "swamp," it remains relatively rare to see high-profile politicians actually charged with corruption in America. But Bharara not only went after them, he won cases that meant long prison terms for Democrats like Silver and Republicans like Dean Skelos, the former leader of the State Senate. (Skelos is also appealing.) Bharara was the closest thing New York—and, arguably, the country—had to a genuine corruption buster with a national profile.

Bharara's firing, which came after he refused to resign along with many of his fellow US attorneys on Friday, marks the end of a chapter during which he has been out to prove that yes, corruption matters, and Americans actually do care about it.

"It's important because elected officials have power—state legislators have power, people in the executive branch have power, federal officials have power," Bharara told that room two years ago. "It's important also because public corruption, when it becomes pervasive, especially, undermines peoples' faith and confidence in democracy. It's hard, I will tell you, to overstate how corrosive it is, the fact that corruption and the perception of corruption over time. Because real people, real people who are supposed to be represented fairly and honestly, care about it. Our public corruption cases have more resonance than perhaps people even in this room might realize."

It's safe to say Preet Bharara did not see Donald Trump coming.

Back then, it seemed like a businessman with myriad potential conflicts of interest and a history of dubious corporate dealings and several allegations of sexual assault stood no shot at winning the presidency. The idea of a president enriching himself, or a top aide hawking the president's daughter's clothing brand with the power of the Oval Office, was still virtually unfathomable at that point. Seventy-five percent of Americans, according to a Gallup poll released around the time of Bharara's speech, believed there was widespread corruption across government—a sentiment that Trump, ironically, tapped into with all his talk of "crooked Hillary" and denunciations of DC.

It's normal for an incoming administration to get rid of the previous crop of US attorneys. But Bharara was prominent enough that his firing can be see as a declaration that taking on political corruption will be even less of a priority from here on out.

"You have somebody [in Trump] who bragged about bribing public officials," Eugene O'Donnell, a former Brooklyn cop and prosecutor, says of Trump firing Bharara. "For rank and file law enforcement people, what a terrible ethical message the guy is sending out, which is the government is there to be used and abused. Business can contribute and leverage its contributions for personal benefit. This is what the president has said. The president has said that. So I don't find it shocking that—probably one of the few US attorneys in the country who's systemically dismantling a state that's been rife with corruption—that he would remove the guy."

Watch our profile of a former British undercover cop who worked police corruption cases.

Part of why Bharara's removal became such a big story is that he met personally with Trump after the election and was reportedly asked to stay on. After all, the prosecutor's office is still set to go to trial against some of Governor Andrew Cuomo's top former aides and is also investigating alleged corruption on part of New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. These are Democrats, and men Trump personally might enjoy seeing fry. Then again, Trump has a fairly flexible policy when it comes to promises.

"The way he was fired—after being promised the job—that's a direct assault on the norms that hold us together," Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham law professor who literally wrote the book on corruption in America and was in the audience for Bharara's speech that day, told me in an email.

Of course, there's still a lot we don't know here, the most obvious thing being whether Bharara's office was investigating Trump himself. After all, if the president's wild Twitter tirade about being wiretapped in his Manhattan home were actually true, Bharara—as the relevant federal prosecutor—likely would have been aware of it. Some outlets have quickly run with that angle, leaning on a tweet Bharara fired off a few hours after his removal that suggests he was prevented from finishing his job. But leaving Trump himself aside, some of the most powerful people in New York may have just gotten off the hook. Roger Ailes, for instance, has been wrapped up in a probe of FOX News for alleged spying and sexual harassment; according to a New York report this weekend, a grand jury had been impaneled and was mulling charges against executives.

One thing's for sure: Bharara's firing is a victory for people with lots of money and something to hide.

"There's probably more champagne being consumed in Albany and New York City than in Wrigleyville in October [after the World Series]," O'Donnell said.

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