First U.S. Uterus Transplant Has Failed

(WASHINGTON) — The Cleveland Clinic says the nation’s first uterus transplant has failed.

A 26-year-old woman received the transplant there on Feb. 24 and had appeared to be recovering well, even appearing briefly at a news conference on Monday. But according to a hospital statement Wednesday, the patient experienced a sudden complication.

Doctors surgically removed the organ on Tuesday.

The hospital is exploring what went wrong, but said its clinical trial that aims to do 10 uterus transplants is continuing.

Other countries have attempted uterus transplants, with some reported failures, although Sweden has succeeded in five healthy births. The experimental treatment might eventually offer an option for women born without a uterus or who lost it to disease.

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Lead Found in Drinking Water at Newark Schools

But lead levels are nowhere near those found in Flint, Mich.

A school district in Newark, N.J. is shutting off its water fountains after testing found lead in building drinking water, according to state health officials.

Drinking water at 30 schools in Newark tested positive for levels of lead higher than the federal standard, according to a joint announcement from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the Newark Public Schools. The Environmental Protection Agency’s action level for lead, the threshold requiring additional action, is 15 parts per billion and drinking water in Newark’s schools ranged from 16-558 ppb.

Of the some 300 water samples taken from the Newark school buildings, 59 were above the EPA’s action levels for testing and no building had more than four samples above the action level. The water in Newark’s schools is nowhere near some of the high levels of lead in Flint, Michigan—one home there tested as high as 13,200 ppb.

Schools remains in session and New Jersey officials are urging parents not to worry, adding in the release: “Parents should have no concerns about students’ water and food consumption at the school while the situation is addressed.”

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Weight Loss Drug Doesn’t Deliver On Claims: Study

A recently approved weight loss drug was touted to also lower risk of heart problems. But the latest study shows that may not be the case

In September 2014, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the weight loss drug Contrave. It’s a combination of naltrexone and bupropion, an antidepressant, that together work to lower appetite. But bupropion is also linked to high blood pressure and increased heart rate, and two previous weight loss drugs with similar effects on the heart had already been removed from the market. That’s why, even though it approved the drug, the FDA required Contrave’s maker, Orexigen, to conduct a trial investigating its possible side effects.

In a study published in JAMA, scientists detail how the release of early results—before the study was completed, and before the results should have been made public—skewed the picture. Early research about Contrave suggested the drug was good for heart health, a message that made its way to the public. The problem, according to the new study, is that as the trial continued, that benefit didn’t hold up. When more data was analyzed, the heart benefit disappeared. In fact, there was almost no significant difference in heart events among the people taking the drug and those taking a placebo.
MORE: This Pill Can Trick the Body Into Losing Weight, Study Finds

“Morally and ethically we could not allow that situation to continue,” says lead author Dr. Steven Nissen, chair of cardiovascular medicine at Cleveland Clinic, of his and his colleagues’ decision to release all of the available data on the trial. “We didn’t believe that the early data accurately reflected the benefits. And sure enough it turned out not to be reliable evidence of benefit.”

Orexigen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The JAMA study sheds light on some of the potential issues wrought by a new approval process adopted by the FDA in recent years. The new process is intended to bring new drugs to market sooner. Normally, accumulating data about side effects like heart attacks, strokes, even death can take five years or more. Now, in order to speed drugs to patients faster, the agency can approve drugs before the full study on its side effects is complete—as long as certain criteria are met. The FDA, the drug maker and the scientists doing the trial must agree on a pre-specified threshold of safety that the drug has to meet. In this case, all parties agreed that the study would have to show that the drug didn’t more than double the number of negative heart-related outcomes.

MORE: Weight Loss Supplements Don’t Work for Most People, Study Finds

The FDA also requires that trials for approval be blinded, so that researchers and the people in the studies are not aware of whether they are taking the drug or a placebo. Of course, some people at the drug manufacturer and at the FDA are privy to—and are required to keep confidential—the results of a trial before it is final. In Contrave’s case, the early finding that the drug was linked to a 41% lower risk of heart events was shared with more than 100 people. And because the results meant it met that agreed-upon threshold for safety, the FDA approved the drug.

It also requested an entirely new study to continue evaluating the drug’s heart safety and shut down the existing trial.

Given the widespread publicity over the preliminary results that showed benefit, however, doctors began prescribing the drug and many people participating in the trial dropped out so they could get the medication from their own physicians.

Orexigen did not respond to requests from TIME and Takeda Pharmaceuticals, which is partnering with Orexigen on Contrave, did not respond to questions about the heart-related safety issues, but said in a statement: “Takeda was not involved in the decision to disclose the interim data… We remain confident in the therapeutic benefits of Contrave and its importance as a treatment option for chronic weight management as an adjunct to a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity.”

For now, the question of whether people taking Contrave are exposed to a higher risk of heart events is still unanswered. The only thing for certain is that it doesn’t double the risk of heart events compared to people taking placebo. Orexigen is now funding a new trial that will deliver a more definitive answer on the heart safety of its drug, which Nissen will lead. But it will take another five years, at least.

“We always hope that weight loss drugs would actually help heart disease,” says Nissen. “But it has to be done scientifically and in a rigorous fashion.”

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Meldonium Use Widespread in Elite Athletes, Researchers Say

A commission looked at the athletes from the 2015 European Games

Meldonium, the banned drug Maria Sharapova recently admitted to taking, may be used quite widely in the athletic community according to new research.

The research, performed by members of the European Olympic Committees Medical and Anti-Doping Commission and published online Tuesday, examined athletes at the 2015 European Games in Baku, which took place in June, before meldonium was banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. They looked at three factors: athletes self-reporting of taking the drug; declarations from medical teams about what drugs they’d taken with them; and results from testing, which found 8.7% had tested positive (though only 3.5% had declared use). Of the medallists or other competition winners, 13 were taking meldonium during the games, as were athletes from 15 of the 21 participating countries.

The drug was banned effective Jan. 1, but Sharapova tested positive for it at the Australian Open later that month. She said she had not read an updated list that included the drug. Meldonium is meant to improve oxygen circulation for patients with heart conditions or vascular disease. Since it also makes users feel more active and improves motor function, it is thought to have performance-enhancing qualities.

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You Asked: How Do I Improve My Posture?

Change starts with your seat.

Experts call it “the turtle.” It’s that neck-bent, shoulders-forward, hunched-over position many people assume when sitting all day at work on their computers or texting on their phones.

Even if you begin the workday sitting ramrod straight—your chin held at an angle that would make Emily Post proud—hours of answering emails and reviewing work documents tend to pull you down into the turtle, says Dr. Alan Hedge, director of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory at Cornell University.

This cramped pose is bad for a lot of reasons, Hedge says. For one thing, it puts pressure on your neck, spine and lower back, which can lead to soreness and injury. This bent-forward posture also pinches nerves in your neck that run down to your arms and hands, which increases your risk for carpal tunnel syndrome and other painful conditions.
And unlike your mother’s warning that making a silly face might make it stay that way, that’s actually true of poor posture.

“Your head weighs 10 or 12 pounds,” says Dr. Mary Ann Wilmarth, former chief of physical therapy at Harvard University and now CEO of Back2Back Physical Therapy in Andover, Mass. Holding it straight engages lots of muscles in your neck and shoulders. But when you spend all day with your head hanging forward, then come home from the office and plop a tablet or phone into your lap, all of those support muscles languish and weaken, she explains.

It won’t happen overnight. But eventually you may find it difficult or uncomfortable to hold your head up and back over your shoulders, Wilmarth says. “You see people who have their heads bent forward, looking at the ground, even when they’re walking down the street,” she says. “This happens because we’re all conforming our bodies and our postures to accommodate our devices, rather than making our devices conform to our bodies.”

So what’s the fix? Both Wilmarth and Hedge stress the importance of a properly arranged workstation.

“The human body is not designed to stay in one position for a prolonged period,” says Dr. Benjamin Domb, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of the American Hip Institute. If you’re spending a big chunk of your day in front of a computer, even small misconfigurations will take a toll, he says. The aim is to be able to sit comfortably and work on your computer without having to crane forward. To do that, you need your monitor at the correct height. “When you’re sitting straight with your head back squarely over your neck and shoulders, the level of your eyes should be an inch or two below the top of your monitor,” Wilmarth says. At the same time, you want your forearms and hands to rest comfortably on your desktop, without having to flex or bend when you type.

People who use a laptop are probably thinking, “How the heck…” And they’re right. Unfortunately, a laptop just isn’t suitable for long stretches of work, Wilmarth says. Raise it up to the correct eye level, and you put your arms and hands in awkward positions that can lead to carpal tunnel and nerve pain. Lower it, and you’re dragging your head forward and down.

Hedge and his team at Cornell have worked out a dozen guidelines for assembling the ideal workstation setup. But both he and Domb say the key to avoiding problems is to change postures frequently. A sit-stand desk configuration or some other arrangement that allows you to switch among a number of different seated or standing positions is one of the best ways to stay out of trouble.

Stretching also helps, Wilmarth says. She recommends taking a break from your computer every hour to slowly rotate your shoulders, squeeze their blades together, stretch your neck, and tuck your chin. All of these help increase blood flow and engage those muscles you neglect when you huddle over your keyboard.

If you spend all day in a car, you want your seat in an upright position that allows your head to sit comfortably and squarely over your neck and shoulders, Wilmarth says. She also stresses the necessity of lumbar support, especially during long drives. “Most people don’t pump that lumbar support up enough,” she says. “You want to feel some pressure on your lower back.”

Finally, what should you do about your phone and other handheld devices to avoid troubles like text neck? You can try to raise those devices up to eye level, but that’s not realistic for more than a few minutes. “Use them less,” Wilmarth says. “That’s about all I can say.”

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Pediatricians Should ‘Screen’ Kids for Poverty, Says Group

It’s not a direct medical condition, but experts say poverty can have a major impact on children’s health, and doctors should be asking families about their financial situation

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is recommending that pediatricians start assessing children for their poverty status. The screening begins with a single question — asking parents whether they have difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month.

One in five U.S. children live in poverty, and the academy says that there is growing evidence that the stress of not having safe and secure housing, regular meals and a stable home environment can lead to significant health problems.

“We know children living in poverty have more chronic disease, more severe chronic disease, and have poor early brain development which can impact them when they get to school, and lead to poor academic performance,” says Dr. Benard Dreyer, president of the AAP. “Pediatricians deal on a daily basis with the intersection between poverty and health and the well being of children. They understand that they actually aren’t separate.”
MORE: Why We Don’t Talk About Rural Poverty

The new recommendation, published in the academy’s journal Pediatrics, formalizes the process and make it easier for doctors who aren’t sure about how to address the issue. The screening doesn’t have to be performed by the doctor, but can be part of a checklist that parents fill out while waiting for their well child visit, or, in larger practices, could be conducted by a quick interview with office staff or social workers.

The recommendation also provides guidelines to help pediatricians connect families who might be struggling to the proper resources, from local housing bureaus to food pantries and job listings. The hope, says Dreyer, is to help the 50% of families who currently qualify for additional support but aren’t getting it to access the resources they are entitled to. “Many pediatricians are already doing this, and helping families who have been evicted or connecting them to local food pantries. What we want to do is to give them more resources,” says Dreyer.

MORE: We Are Measuring Childhood Poverty Wrong

With the recommendation, the academy is also urging state and federal lawmakers to expand existing housing, food and health programs. “In order for kids to thrive, we recognize that the community, family and social aspects of their existence may be even more important than many of the medical things they may be dealing with,” says Dreyer. “Poverty is the most serious non communicable disease that children have — and it’s the most common.”

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WHO: Sexual Transmission of Zika More Common Than Previously Thought

WHO says pregnant women shouldn't travel to countries with ongoing Zika outbreaks

(GENEVA) — The sexual transmission of the Zika virus is more common than previously thought, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, citing reports from several countries.

After a meeting of its emergency committee on Tuesday, the U.N. health agency also said there is increasing evidence that a spike in disturbing birth defects is caused by Zika, which is mostly spread by mosquito bites.

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said “reports and investigations in several countries strongly suggest that sexual transmission of the virus is more common than previously assumed.”

She said nine countries have now reported increasing cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition that can cause temporary paralysis and death, in people beyond women of child-bearing age, including children, teenagers and older adults.

“All of this news is alarming,” Chan said.

Despite the lack of definitive evidence proving that Zika causes birth defects and neurological problems, Chan said officials shouldn’t wait for definitive scientific proof before making recommendations.

“Women who are pregnant in affected countries or travel to these countries are understandably deeply worried,” Chan said.

The U.S. is investigating more than a dozen possible cases of Zika in people who may have been infected through sex.

WHO recommends pregnant women avoid travel to areas with ongoing Zika outbreaks and that if their partners travel to affected countries, they should practice safe sex or abstain from sex for the duration of their pregnancy.

The agency last month said the explosive outbreak in the Americas constitutes a global emergency.

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5 Alternatives to White Pasta You’ll Want to Try

From brown rice to quinoa pasta, here are the best spaghetti substitutes

By now, no doubt you’ve been advised hundreds of times to avoid white pasta. But does that mean you have to give up noodles altogether? No way! These days the pasta aisle is loaded with alternatives. Read on for the lowdown on five different types, and delicious recipes to try with each one.

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Brown Rice Pasta


Travis Rathbone
Pros: It’s gluten-free and a great source of B vitamins.

Beware: Brown rice pasta tends to stick together while cooking, so stir frequently. (Color varies among brands.)

Spring Pea Pasta Salad
Prep: 20 minutes
Cook: 20 minutes
Serves: 6

2 tsp. salt

2 cups fresh green peas, or 1 10-oz. box frozen, thawed

1 cup frozen shelled edamame, thawed (about 5 oz.)

2 cups sugar snap peas (about 6.5 oz.)

3 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

3 Tbsp. white wine vinegar

2 tsp. Dijon mustard

4 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

1 shallot, finely chopped (about ¼ cup)

2 Tbsp. chopped fresh tarragon or dill

½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper

12 oz. tube-shaped brown rice pasta, such as caserecce or penne

½ cup crumbled soft goat cheese or feta

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Have ready 2 bowls of ice water. When water boils, add 1 tsp. salt, peas and edamame and bring back to a boil. Cook until tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon or sieve, transfer vegetables to a bowl of ice water. Add sugar snap peas to pot of water and bring back to a boil. Cook until just tender, about 30 seconds. Transfer to other bowl of ice water, reserving boiling water. Once vegetables are cold, drain well. Cut sugar snap peas into fourths crosswise.
In a serving bowl, whisk together lemon juice, vinegar and mustard. Add oil in a slow stream, whisking until thickened and well combined. Stir in shallot and tarragon. Season with 1 tsp. salt and ½ tsp. pepper.
Cook pasta in reserved pot of boiling water until al dente, about 12 minutes or according to package directions. Drain pasta well and immediately transfer to bowl with vinaigrette. Add vegetables and cheese. Gently toss together until pasta is well coated. Season with additional pepper, if desired. Serve at room temperature.
PER SERVING: 411 Calories, 14g Fat (3g Sat.), 11mg Chol., 6g Fiber, 12g Pro., 57g Carb., 669mg Sod., 6mg Iron, 114mg Calcium

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8 Things ER Doctors Refuse to Have in Their Homes

From guns to swimming pools to ramen noodle soup

Emergency room physicians see all kinds of grisly stuff, which made us wonder: What products do they consider so hazardous they ban them from their homes and yards? Here are the everyday items that scare these accident front-liners the most.

Trampolines

“We see a lot of serious trampoline injuries…upper-body fractures, broken femurs, neck injuries. That’s why most ER doctors I work with won’t buy trampolines for their kids. They’re all trouble. There’s no good kind. Unfortunately parents get a false sense of reassurance; when there’s a net around something, they think their kids will be safe.”–Ferdinando Mirarchi, MD, medical director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Button batteries

“Button batteries are increasingly common in car remotes and portable LED lights but they can be extremely dangerous to young kids. Toddlers like shiny objects and will ingest them. The danger is they can get stuck in the esophagus. When a coin gets stuck, it often passes on its own. But when a button battery gets stuck, the battery acid can eat through the wall of the esophagus, causing lifelong disability.”—David J. Mathison, MD, pediatric emergency room physician and mid-Atlantic regional medical director, PM Pediatrics

Swimming pools

“Unfortunately, every summer we see kids—even ones who can swim—accidentally fall into a pool and drown. For me, it is the fact that drowning occurs so fast, and often silently, that prevents me from ever wanting one at my house. All three of my children are swimmers, and we take them to pools, but I know that where I live I have left that risk behind.” —Dara Kass, MD, assistant professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center

Power washers and extension ladders

“There are two items I don’t keep around: power washers and extension ladders. We often treat people who have fallen off of high ladders, which results in serious and extensive injuries (head trauma, collapsed lungs). The surprising thing I won’t own is a power washer. People end up with penetrating injuries or lacerations from their intense water stream. ” —Seth Podolsky, MD, vice chair of Cleveland Clinic Emergency Medicine Institute

Guns

“I’m Libertarian enough to be conceptually pro-gun, but I’ve taken care of enough teenage suicides and accidental childhood deaths to not even let my kids go to houses where I know there’s a gun.”—Amy Baxter, MD, pediatric emergency physician at Scottish Rite Children’s Healthcare in Atlanta

Ramen noodle soups

“Ramen noodles, or similar soups in styrofoam containers, get extremely hot when microwaved. It’s the most common cause of scald burns in toddlers and infants I see. Parents forget how hot these are when they’re on the counter, waiting to be pulled off by a handsy toddler.”—David J. Mathison, MD

Old pain pills

“People hang onto leftover pills, especially narcotic painkillers because they’re getting harder to get scripts for. But you should always get rid of leftover medication. We’ve had more kids coming in with overdoses from hydrocodone and oxycodone pain drugs [found in Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycontin]. Just one extended-release pill can kill a child.”—Ferdinando Mirarchi, MD

High chairs that pull up to the table

“I work at a pediatric and adult trauma center, but being a dad, most of my biggest issues are with child products. Over half of ER visits for children under 1 are due to falls. I wouldn’t get a high chair that pulls up to the table, because I’ve seen way too many kids use their feet to push against the table and tip their chair over backward. A fall like this from 3 feet can cause a skull fracture.”–Brian Fort, MD, emergency medicine physician at Central DuPage Hospital

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President Obama Orders More Sanctions Against North Korea

(WASHINGTON)— President Barack Obama is imposing new sanctions against North Korea in response to recent “illicit” nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced the president’s decision on Wednesday.

Earnest says the new unilateral sanctions will allow the U.S. to implement sanctions unanimously agreed to by the U.N. Security Council.

North Korea said it tested a hydrogen bomb in January. It followed that with the launch of a ballistic missile last month.

Earnest says the new sanctions are consistent with a longstanding commitment by the U.S. to keep pressure on North Korea. He says the U.S. and its allies will continue to impose costs on North Korea until it meets its international obligations.

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Why Bernie Sanders Won’t Quit

President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court Wednesday to replace the late Antonin Scalia, but don’t expect the judge, seen as a more moderate choice for the court, to begin serving anytime soon. Highly respected and qualified, Garland tests the GOP-controlled Senate’s pledge not to consider any Obama nominee to the limits. Already there are signs of cracking as lawmakers who expressed opposition to any hearings or meetings now changing their tune. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was clear Wednesday that there would be no vote until after the election. And despite his statements to the contrary, that’s just fine with Obama and the White House, who can use the standoff as just another moment to highlight what they view as Republican obstructionism in an election year.

Facing a nearly insurmountable delegate deficit, Bernie Sanders‘ campaign grasped for straws Wednesday in trying to explain why their candidate would push on. Arguing their candidacy would help Hillary Clinton avoid fire from GOP front-runner Donald Trump (that hasn’t worked yet) and that they want to enfranchise every Democratic voter, they maintained that the map gets easier for their candidate as the race progresses—a statement unsupported by polling. Sanders’ strategists also maintained that the hunt for the Democratic nomination wasn’t “a matter of delegate arithmetic,” when that’s precisely what it is—and he’s behind the 8-ball. And in even more striking fashion, the campaign that once complained about the role of super-delegates to the Democratic convention, began floating picking off Clinton backers among the Democratic establishment, as well as potentially overturning voters by winning over delegates pledged to Clinton through caucuses and primaries.

Trump pulled out of Monday’s scheduled Republican debate in Salt Lake City as he reignited his war of words against Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who was set to moderate the debate, and declaring that GOP voters have heard enough from the candidates. Ohio Gov. John Kasich backed out once Trump did, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was looking for a show-down with Trump as he tries to argue it’s a two-man race, resurrected his “Ducking Donald” from when Trump skipped his a debate earlier this year. Feeling confident about his position in the delegate count, Trump is trying to lock in the nomination by simply avoiding giving his rivals a platform on which to appear at his level.

Inside Apple’s fight with the FBI. The Stop Trump campaign looks for a way forward. And a Broadway show may keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.

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Clinton Super PAC Fires Back at Trump For Barking Ad

Hillary Clinton’s Super PAC shot back at Donald Trump just one day after he released an ad attacking her foreign policy chops.

Trump’s ad begins with the words, “When it comes to facing our toughest opponents,” and then shows threatening clips, including one of Vladimir Putin doing martial arts. The video then mocks Clinton and shows a clip of her barking like a dog, and cuts back to Putin laughing.

Clinton’s ad skewers Trump by using the exact same premise and video clips, but instead of the barking clip, it shows one of Trump saying “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain” when asked who he would consult on foreign policy. In this ad, it’s Clinton who is laughing.

The quick back and forth between the two party frontrunners shows how both of them are already beginning to pivot to the general election, making each other the primary targets of online attacks.

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Rabbis to Boycott Donald Trump Speech at Pro-Israel Conference

Over 40 people are taking part in the boycott so far

At least 40 rabbis are set to boycott Donald Trump’s Monday remarks at a conference about Israel.

Boycott organizers at this year’s meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) said they did not want Trump’s participation in the annual conference to lend him any legitimacy, the Washington Post reports.

Some seemed uncomfortable with Trump’s sometimes abrasive rhetoric about immigrants and minority groups. “Jewish history teaches that when hatred is unleashed, it takes on a life of its own,” organizing Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin told the Post.

MORE: Donald Trump’s Complicated Relationship with Jewish Voters

Trump has called himself pro-Israel, but has said he would like to appear “neutral” when it comes to Israel-Palestine peace talks, so as not to endanger any possible “deals.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition, an organizational group of donors, will address its stance towards Donald Trump at its meeting in April this year, the Post reports.

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Kasich Challenges Trump on Twitter Over Riot Remarks

GOP presidential candidate John Kasich on Thursday condemned Donald Trump’s suggestion that riots would result if the Republican Party did not nominate him as its presidential candidate.

“Donald Trump said there could be riots if he’s ‘denied’ the GOP nom in a contested convention,” the Ohio governor wrote in a tweet. “This implicit acceptance of violence is the kind of rhetoric that’s pulling people apart.”

Kasich, who scored his first primary victory in his home state on Tuesday, has sought to strike a positive tone throughout his presidential campaign, but this week he said that his campaign would spend more time challenging Trump.

Kasich said he was unsure whether he could support the billionaire and GOP frontrunner of if he were to win the nomination.

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Harry Reid Blames GOP’s ‘Mindless Behavior’ for Trump’s Rise

"Republican leaders created the drought conditions. Donald Trump simply struck the match."

Harry Reid delivered a blistering speech Thursday morning blaming the Republican leadership for Donald Trump’s rise.

Speaking at the Center for American Progress, the Senate Minority Leader said, “For eight years, [Republican leaders] drained all the oxygen from the policy debate in this country by replacing thoughtful engagement with resentment and hatred… This is exactly the kind of mindless behavior that has hollowed out our political debate and created the conditions for Trump to rise. Republican leaders created the drought conditions. Donald Trump simply struck the match.”

Reid cited a myriad of examples of Democratic policies and proposals over the course of President Obama’s administration that he felt Republicans acted unfairly towards, including the Affordable Care Act, gun control, and most recently, Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

Reid said Republican obstructionism bred “resentment and hatred” in its party. “This resentment and hatred took three main forms,” he said. “First, rendering President Barack Obama “illegitimate.” Second, fear-mongering against Muslims. Third, sowing hatred against Latinos. These forces, which are all now synonymous with Donald Trump’s candidacy, were incubated by Republican leaders for the past eight years.”

In the end, Reid called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to denounce Trump, and for Congressional Democrats to push forward progressive policies.

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Paul Ryan Condemns Donald Trump’s ‘Unacceptable’ Riot Remarks

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday said that it was “unacceptable” for Donald Trump to suggest there would be rioting if he is not chosen as the Republican nominee.

“Nobody should say such things in my opinion because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill.

On Wednesday, Trump said on CNN that if he does not win the GOP nomination at the convention in July: “I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous many, many millions of people.”

For the first time, Ryan, who will be the chairman of the convention…

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4 Reasons Paul Ryan Won’t Be the Republican Nominee

POLITICS 2016 ELECTION

4 Reasons Paul Ryan Won’t Be the Republican Nominee

Jay Newton-Small @JNSmall  March 17, 2016     

Scott Olson—Getty Images

Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and wife, Janna Ryan stand in the balloon drop during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum on August 30, 2012 in Tampa, Florida.

Establishment Republicans unhappy with the prospect of Donald Trump had a surge of excitement on Wednesday when House Speaker Paul Ryan seemed to leave the door open to accepting the nomination in a contested convention.

“You know, I haven’t given any thought to this stuff,” Ryan told CNBC’s John Harwood. “People say, ‘What about the contested convention?’ I say, well, there are a lot of people running for president. We’ll see. Who knows?”

His hedge spiked speculation that Ryan might contest the convention, and sent Ryan’s press staff into overtime trying to tamp down that talk.

While some Beltway Republicans feeling left behind by this presidential primary might like to daydream about it, Paul Ryan isn’t going to be their savior. Here’s four major reasons.

First, Ryan is still trying to get his arms around the last job he didn’t want but was coerced into taking by his party. Just this week, the GOP budget was all but killed by fiscal conservatives at an impasse over funding levels with military hawks. Yes, Ryan, the former Budget Committee Chair cum House Speaker, the man who virtually coined the taunt “No Budget, No Pay,” to shame Senate Democrats for not producing budgets, is likely to fail to pass a budget in his first go around as speaker. This is worrisome on a lot of fronts: Ryan was brought in to bridge the party’s divides. But he seems to be falling into the same traps as his predecessor, John Boehner. If Ryan can’t bring the House Republicans together, how can he heal the even greater rifts of the Party at large?

Second, the folks who did run would freak out. “It has to be somebody in the fight. I was in the fight and every body who was in the fight should say with one voice you’ve got to pick among us, because we’re the ones doing the fighting,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told me on Monday. “A contested convention is different from a brokered convention. If you really wanted to destroy this party, parachute somebody in, no matter how much I would like him, who chose not to run.”

Third, on what planet does anybody think that Donald Trump would go quietly into the night? On Wednesday Boehner suggested that Ryan might win a contested balloting process at the convention. “If we don’t have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I’m for none of the above,” Boehner said. “They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I’m for none of the above. I’m for Paul Ryan to be our nominee.” Trump responded that such a move could lead to violence—even greater violence than seen at some of his rallies of late. “I wouldn’t lead it,” he told CNN of the potential unrest. “But I think bad things would happen.”

While Ryan continues to say that he wouldn’t accept the nomination, on Thursday he fanned the flames of the idea of a brokered convention. “We’re getting our minds around the idea that this could very well become a reality, and therefore, those of us who are involved in the convention need to respect that,” Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill. Ryan also scolded Trump for his warning of violence. “Nobody should say such things, in my opinion, because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable,” he said.

Fourth, such a move would almost assuredly lose the Party the general election. Trump followers would be outraged and he could potentially peel off and run as a third-party candidate. And it would take at least a month, if not longer, to unite the party. That’s crucial time not spent campaigning against the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

All of which is to say: Boehner and all those Republicans dreaming of a President Ryan, dream on—at least until 2020.

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President Obama Urged Democratic Donors to Rally Behind Clinton, Reports Say

Obama spoke at a private Democratic fundraiser

President Obama recently urged Democratic donors to rally behind a single candidate in the race to replace him—and implied that the candidate should be Hillary Clinton, according to reports.

The New York Times and Politico, citing anonymous sources, report that donors at a private Texas fundraiser took Obama’s remarks as a signal that the President wanted the party to unite behind his former Secretary of State. Attendees at the fundraiser told the Times Obama’s tone was urgent as he spoke of the need to halt the rise of leading Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The event occurred ahead of Clinton’s strong performance in the March 15 primaries, in which Sen. Bernie Sanders struggled. Obama spoke at the March 11 Texas fundraiser after reporters were ushered out, so the remarks were not immediately reported publicly.

The White House dismissed the reports on Thursday and said Obama did not indicate whether he preferred one Democratic candidate over the other, but just urged the party to unite. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that as Democrats move through the primary process, their “success will depend on the commitment and ability of the Democratic party to come behind our nominee.”

“The President did not indicate or specify a preference in the race,” Earnest said.

The President does have a preference; he voted absentee in the Illinois presidential primary. The White House has not, however, publicized the President’s ballot.

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Simpsons Writer Says Trump Presidency Prediction Was ‘A Warning to America’

"It was consistent with the vision of America going insane"

The writer of a 2000 episode of The Simpsons that predicted a future Donald Trump presidency said the episode was “a warning to America.”

“That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom,” writer Dan Greaney said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane.”

The episode, titled “Bart to the Future,” aired 16 years ago, on March 19, 2000. In the episode, Bart Simpson glimpses his bleak future. His sister Lisa is the “first straight female president” of the U.S., succeeding Trump’s presidency.

“As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” Lisa says during a meeting in the Oval Office, as a secretary in her administration holds up a chart depicting steep decline. “The country is broke? How can that be?”

At the time the episode aired, The Apprentice was still four years from premiering. Trump is now the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary race, and Greaney said he has received more positive feedback about the episode because of its Trump reference.

“What we needed was for Lisa to have problems that were beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that’s why we had Trump be president before her,” Greaney said. “The Simpsons has always kind of embraced the over the top side of American culture … and [Trump] is just the fulfillment of that.”

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Marco Rubio Says He’s Leaving Government

Marco Rubio said Thursday that he plans to leave the government after the end of his Senate term, and that he’s not interested in being anyone’s Vice President.

“I’m not going to be Vice President,” the Florida Senator told reporters Thursday. “I’m not running for governor of Florida, I’m going to finish out my term in the Senate over the next 10 months… and then I’ll be a private citizen in January.”

Rubio suspended his presidential campaign on March 15 after losing his home state of Florida to businessman Donald Trump.

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Conservatives Grasp for a Plan to Stop Trump

Still no clear plan as activists' meet Thursday

Conservative activists determined to stop Donald Trump huddled in Washington on Thursday, but left without formulating a clear plan to derail the runaway Republican front-runner’s candidacy.

At the top of the agenda was the creation of a GOP “unity ticket” designed to unite the right against Trump. “If that unity ticket is unable to get 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, we recognize that it took Abraham Lincoln three ballots at the Republican convention in 1860 to become the party’s nominee and if it is good enough for Lincoln, that process should be good enough for all the candidates without threats of riots,” Erick Erickson, a conservative blogger who helped convene the group, wrote in a statement after the meeting.

No candidate has a viable shot to amass the outright delegate majority required to clinch the nomination except Trump, who is more than halfway there already. And there is no indication that Trump’s two remaining rivals, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, are inclined to join forces.

Conservative activists are also sketching plans for a furious floor fight at July’s Cleveland convention that could deny Trump the nomination if he falls short of the delegate threshold. To that end, the group is urging former Republican candidates who oppose Trump “to unite against him and encourage all candidates to hold their delegates on the first ballot,” rather than release them and allow Trump to pounce.

Another option anti-Trump activists are discussing is the prospect of a third-party challenge. In this scenario, anti-Trump forces would coalesce around a consensus conservative and use their money and organizational muscle to run that candidate on a third-party ticket. This scenario would pose logistical challenges. Obtaining ballot access in all 50 states is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor that would need to begin swiftly.

Under this scenario, the goal would be for the conservative third-party candidate to pick off a few key states — enough to deny both Trump and likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency.

Under the Constitution, the outcome of the election would then be determined by Congress. The House of Representatives would select the President from among the top three candidates, with each state delegation getting one vote, while the Senate would choose the Vice President from the top two candidates. Both chambers of Congress are controlled by the Republican Party, so the conservative third-party challenger would stand an excellent shot at becoming Commander in Chief, though they might end up with Trump as their Vice President in exchange.
That’s the best-case scenario. If the plan goes bad — indeed, if the group can even get it off the ground — it could cannibalize Trump’s candidacy and boost Clinton’s chances of getting elected, while infuriating Trump’s loyal band of supporters in the process. The party’s fault lines would split even further. That’s why even Erickson, a proponent of developing a plan to run a conservative on a third-party ticket, calls it “kind of the last lifeboat option.”

As Trump draws nearer to the nomination, such discussions will intensify. “The issue of Donald Trump is greater than an issue of party,” Erickson wrote Thursday. “It is an issue of morals and character that all Americans, not just those of us in the conservative movement, must confront.” The question is whether they can confront him in time.

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Is Tighter Pentagon Spending Killing Troops?

Reduced training leads to increased fatalities, experts maintain

Ever since Congress and the White House put caps on federal spending starting in 2013, there have been calls to lift them for the Pentagon. The military’s pain has so become acute, both lawmakers and generals are now warning the cuts could kill more American troops in wartime—and already are killing more in peacetime, because of a lack of training.

“Our nation will deploy young Americans into battle without sufficient training or equipment to fight a war that will take longer, be larger, cost more and ultimately claim more American lives than it otherwise would have,” Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the armed services committee, said Thursday.
But it’s also a peacetime problem, far from the danger zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last year, 12 non-combat helicopter crashes killed 30 troops. Twelve more perished in January when two Marine CH-53s collided off Hawaii during a night-time training mission. Most of the deaths, including those in Hawaii, occurred during training missions. Funding for such missions has been cut in recent years as money has been funneled to units readying for deployment to war zones instead.

The Marine Corps’ Class A mishap rate—any crash that has injured or killed someone, or destroyed an aircraft—has jumped from 2.15 per 100,000 flying hours for much of the past decade to 2.67 in 2014 and 3.96 so far in 2016. Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Armed services committee, asked General Robert Neller, the Marine commander, about the rise at a Wednesday hearing. “We track this very closely,” Neller told him. “The simple fact is that we don’t have enough airplanes to meet the training requirements for the entire force.”

The Army faces a similar problem. “Aircraft accidents have increased and we are very concerned about it,” General Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, said at the same hearing, according to Stars and Stripes. The service wants to boost monthly flying hours per pilot from 10 to 12 to increase training. “Ideally we want them [boosted] to 14-15 hours per month, but we can’t get there with the budget.”

The generals aren’t crying wolf, according to Alan Diehl, a long-time military-aviation accident investigator. “I think the generals are correct about funding limitations being a factor in their increased mishap rates,” says Diehl, a former Air Force Safety Center research psychologist. “Most of these mishaps have involved helicopters and have occurred during night ops, and require skills that can quickly deteriorate when not frequent practiced.”

A retired Navy aviator agrees, and says civilian leaders—both in Congress and at the White House—are to blame. “The Army and Marine Corps general officers are siding squarely with their subordinates, and laying the blame for the increased mishap rates directly at the feet of the civilian authorities,” says Chris Harmer, now an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. Commanders are cutting training in favor of procurement and combat, he says, and as long as that continues, “we will see excess pilot mortality in the short term, and increased risk of inadequately-trained and -maintained forces in the long term.”

Using the prospect, or fact, of dead Americans is a long-standing tradition in Pentagon budget wars. But when you’ve got 1.4 million troops training with huge machines moving at high speeds, there are going to be casualties. The Pentagon always insists that any peacetime death is unacceptable. But the military routinely deploys weapons that could be made safer, or funds training at lower levels that makes operating aircraft and other weapons more dangerous.

The key question always has been when do those levels become unacceptable, and to what degree can more spending make such operations safer. The caps were imposed by Congress and the White House, and can be lifted by them, as well. But enough lawmakers believe the spending limits are the only thing restraining the growth of the national debt, which now stands at $19 trillion.

On Thursday, McCain criticized Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for endorsing defense budgets that are sapping U.S. military readiness. Dunford, nicknamed “Fighting Joe” for his command of the 5th Marine Regiment during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, countered with a rhetorical jab of his own. “We have made the best decisions that we can,” he said, “within the top-line that we were given from Congress.”

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Republican Delegates Prepare for Donald Trump Convention Battle

Stella Kozanecki has never run for elective office. But in four months, she will pay her own way to Cleveland to cast her ballot as a delegate at the Republican National Convention, just possibly making her one of the most powerful people in the country.

The 80-year-old retired insurance executive from Mount Vernon, Ill., is one of the first delegates to have been named for what could be the first contested national convention in generations. If Donald Trump fails to secure 1,237 pledged delegates — a tall order requiring him to win about 53% of the remaining delegates in a three-way race — it will be up to the convention to pick the GOP nominee in multiple rounds of balloting. And who the delegates are may be just as important as who they are bound to support, because in most cases the delegates will be free to vote for whomever they want to become the nominee.

Six weeks after the Iowa caucuses more than 1,440 delegates have been pledged to the convention, but fewer than 100 of them — aside from the 168 automatic delegate members of the Republican National Committee — have actually been named. And the race to influence those delegate selections is in overdrive, with the Trump and Ted Cruz campaigns forming teams to track who is in the running for delegate positions, jockey for their preferred candidates, and identify potential crossover supporters. Nearly all delegates are bound for the first ballot, and most are released on subsequent rounds under state or party rules, meaning Trump is depending on the loyalty of his delegates to stay with him through multiple votes.

In interviews by TIME with 10 delegates who have already been named, Trump appears to be doing well so far. Trump supporters like Kozanecki say they are loyal to the end. Bound through the first ballot under state and party rules, Kozanecki said she “will not change” her vote on subsequent round, and called the “Stop Trump” movement “despicable.” But those delegates pledged to his opponents are readying to do anything they can to block him.

Pat Brady, the former Illinois GOP chair, was elected in Illinois on the ballot as a pledged delegate to Ohio Governor John Kasich. He says he’s committed to helping win over as many possible delegates at the convention to Kasich. “There’s no way in hell I’ll ever vote for Donald Trump,” he says. “Not ever.”

Brady, who was a delegate in both 2008 and 2012, says that “the responsibility is completely different this year,” with there being a chance that delegates will have the ability to shape the outcome. “Last time, it was a voice vote at 5 p.m. I’m not even sure how many people knew what they were doing.”

Becoming a convention delegate has long been a reward for committed party donors and organizers, or reserved for home state pols. Delegates elected directly on ballots are a rarity. In most states, conventions or party committees handle the process weeks, or even months, after primary and caucus votes are cast, and often long after the emergence of a presumptive nominee. What has traditionally been an overlooked part of the process is taking center stage.

The GOP’s best hopes of picking off Trump delegates won’t come from people like Kozanecki, who had to collect 100 signatures to qualify as a delegate, but from places where party committees wield influence, like South Carolina and Tennessee. In Tennessee, for instance, the state chairman offers a slate of delegates for confirmation by the state’s executive committee. That means anti-Trump delegates could theoretically be selected with a commitment to vote for Trump only on the first ballot. In South Carolina, delegates had to be placed on a slate in 2015 — well before Trump’s team began organizing.

In New Hampshire, where campaigns submitted slates of delegates, Trump sought to ensure loyalty by sending campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, a native of the state, as a delegate. But those pledged to other candidates include state party chair Jennifer Horn, who was outspoken in her criticism of Trump and is one of the three delegates pledged to Jeb Bush in the state. (Bush delegates will be released should he formally withdraw his candidacy.)

In Washington, D.C., where Marco Rubio won the vote days before dropping out and Kasich came in second, every delegate contacted said their delegation is unified against Trump. “I ran as a never-Trump person, so I won’t be supporting him,” says Rich Counts, a 2012 delegate pledged to Rubio. “I’m open to anyone on the second ballot, but him.”

Kris Hammond, a delegate elected in the District of Columbia on Saturday on an anti-Trump platform, says even if Trump wins the nomination, his opponents’ fight won’t end there. “We can all show up with anti-Trump paraphernalia,” he tells TIME. “We could walk out.”

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You Could Spend an Evening With Clinton and the Clooneys

An evening with the Democratic frontrunner and George and Amal Clooney is being raffled as part of a series of campaign events

George and Amal Clooney will be sponsoring a series of campaign events for Hillary Clinton in California next month. You can join them, if you’d like: People reports that the Clinton campaign is running a raffle that will give her supporters the opportunity to spend an evening with her and the Clooneys.

The raffle is open now — supporters in the U.S. can text CLOONEY to 47246 to throw their hats into the ring — and the event, which will center around dinner and cocktails at the Clooneys’ home, will take place in April.

George Clooney has been an outspoken supporter of Clinton’s campaign, pledging last summer in an interview with Fusion to offer “whatever she wants, whatever way I can help” to get the former Secretary of State into the White House. He has also condemned Republican front-runner Donald Trump as a “xenophobic fascist” whose suggestion that the U.S. close its borders to Muslims is a “massively stupid idea.”

Clooney’s voice has been politically influential in the past. In 2012, he held a fundraiser for President Barack Obama during his campaign for reelection; the event grossed $15 million.

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POLITICS TED CRUZ Romney Backs Cruz in Effort to Block Trump

The only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful'

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Friday he will vote for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in an effort to block GOP front-runner Donald Trump from the nomination.

Romney, who has become the highest-profile member of the GOP’s emerging “Never Trump” movement, wrote in a Facebook posting that the race for the Republican nomination has become a contest between “Trumpism and Republicanism,” and urged the residents of his now-home state, and states beyond, to follow him in voting for Cruz.

Utah’s caucuses, scheduled for Tuesday, award convention delegates proportionally unless a candidate earns greater than 50% of the vote. The non-Trump vote is favored in the state, but is currently split between Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is spending Friday campaigning in Utah. Romney’s statement is designed to shift as many Kasich votes as possible to Cruz to help him ensure Trump doesn’t secure more delegates on a day when he is likely to win 58 in the winner-take-all Arizona primary.

Neither Cruz nor Kasich have a mathematical chance of reaching the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination on the first ballot, and Romney explained that the name of the game is now keep-away, rather than shifting votes to a preferred candidate.

“The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention,” Romney wrote. “At this stage, the only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible.”

Earlier this month, Romney delivered an unprecedented speech by a party’s former nominee saying he believed Trump’s candidacy to be a danger to the country and called on Republicans to vote for whomever was best-positioned to take delegates from Trump. He spared no words in his critique of Trump Friday. “Through the calculated statements of its leader, Trumpism has become associated with racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence,” Romney wrote. “I am repulsed by each and every one of these.”

Romney, who campaigned in Ohio for Kasich on Monday, did not formally endorse Cruz, but encouraged all Republicans to vote for Cruz in hopes of forcing a contested convention. “A vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail,” he wrote.

“I will vote for Senator Cruz and I encourage others to do so as well, so that we can have an open convention and nominate a Republican,” he added.

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Donald Trump’s Son Receives Threatening Letter in the Mail

The letter called for Donald Trump to drop out of the race—or else

Authorities in New York are investigating a threat Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, received in the mail.

Eric Trump’s wife opened the letter Thursday night at their Manhattan apartment and discovered a powdery substance inside, according to the Washington Post.

The letter had a Massachusetts postmark and a warning that if Donald Trump did not drop out of the presidential race soon, harm could come to the family’s children, according to an unnamed source cited by CBS News.

A preliminary test of the substance inside the envelope indicated that it was not hazardous, but it has been sent to a lab for testing, CBS reported.

Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has been running an anti-establishment campaign with outspoken views on everything from immigration to the economy.

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Paris Terror Suspect in Custody After Brussels Raids

Police in Brussels cornered and wounded the last Paris attacker known to have survived the Nov.13 assault on Friday, ending Europe’s biggest manhunt in years, but also raising troubling questions about whether a plot for another terror attack was in the works.

A spokesman for the Belgium federal prosecutor’s office said on Friday evening that five people were being held after the raids, according to the Associated Press, including Salah Abdeslam, a French national who is believed to have helped plot the attacks.

French President François Hollande warned Friday night that there were likely several other jihadists still at large, and that the network was “wide, extensive.” “Our fight is not finished,” he told reporters in Brussels, where EU leaders had been holed up all day discussing Europe’s migrant crisis.

He said French officials would “imminently” request Abdeslam’s extradition to France. Shortly after the arrest, President Obama called Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to congratulate them on the arrest.

For Belgian and French police, Friday’s massive raid and capture came as a major relief. Abdeslam, 26, who grew up in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, had been on the run since November 13, when 10 gunmen-suicide bombers aligned to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) launched an assault on Paris, killing 130 people and wounding hundreds of others.

Abdeslam had not been seen since—a fact that has deeply frustrated French and Belgian officials, and embarrassed their intelligence and police services. Anti-terror police converged on Molenbeek on Friday, in an operation that continued for hours after Abdeslam’s capture, and which resulted in two other arrests.

SWAT teams in ski masks and bullet-proof helmets and masks converged on the narrow streets of Molenbeek, a low-income neighborhood largely populated by North African immigrant families. The French network BFM reported hearing three explosions in the neighborhood, although it was not clear whether they were detonated by police or those inside the buildings. Police shot the fugitive in the leg during the raid, according to Belgian media.

Abdeslam—whose older brother Brahim blew himself up in the Paris attacks—fled Paris on the night of the attacks, while the city was reeling in shock and chaos. He sent a text message to friends in Molenbeek, saying he was “in the s**t” and asking them to come rescue him from the French capital.

Read more: What to Know About Salah Abdeslam, Europe’s Most Wanted Man

His friends drove 300 miles south to collect him and drive him back to Belgium, and according to Belgian sources cited in the media there, and then passed unimpeded through three French police roadblocks on the way back, despite a national state of emergency. An abandoned suicide vest was found days later in Paris suburb, suggesting that Abdeslam might have originally intended to commit suicide during the attacks.

Five days after the Paris attacks, French police fought a fierce gun battle in the city’s suburb of Saint-Denis, killing the suspected ringleader of the November 13 assault, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27. That left Abdeslam as the only Paris attacker left alive.

The first clue that Europe’s most wanted man was still in the Brussels area came on Tuesday, when Belgian police raided an apartment in the southern suburb of Vorst, killing Mohammed Belkaid, 35, an Algerian living in Belgium illegally, while two other men fled the scene. Inside police found a large cache of ammunition and an ISIS flag, as well as the fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam. They also found a videotape featuring a nuclear scientist in Belgium, suggestion that the group might have been planning other operations.
There was a sense of victory among Belgian officials on Friday after Abdeslam’s capture. Within minutes, Belgium’s Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Theo Franckens tweeted, “We got him,” an echo of President Obama’s announcement of the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. The tweet was later deleted.

Still, the fact that Abdeslam was captured in the Belgian capital—despite a four-month police hunt—raised worrying questions about whether there might still be a strong network of terror operatives in Brussels, who were able to offer him support. “It means he had a lot of people he could fall back on,” Alain Winants, former intelligence chief for Belgium’s State Security Service, told TIME by phone on Friday. “If he has been apprehended, all the better.”

The capture raises questions too about Belgium’s capability in dismantling terror networks that have installed themselves in the heart of Europe’s capital. At least four of the 10 Paris attackers came from Molenbeek, just seven Metro stops from the E.U. headquarters. When TIME spent a few days in the neighborhood in January, numerous locals said they knew the Paris attackers well, and had long been aware of their increasing radicalism. In the aftermath of the raid, France’s Hollande commented that there were more people involved in the Paris attacks than initially believed.
Despite that, Molenbeek’s police chief and its mayor told TIME in January that they did not have the staff or the funds to track ISIS suspects who lived just steps from their office. The mayor’s office, in fact, looks directly across the square into the Abdeslam family apartment. “We did not have the means to prevent November 13, or the means to avoid other attacks,” Molenbeek police chief Johan Berckmans said.

Abdeslam is thought to be one of the only living attackers from two Paris assaults last year—the Charlie Hebdo attacks last January, and the November attacks. As such, he could provide a gold mine of crucial information to investigators about ISIS’s networks in Europe, and about what the organization might be plotting. Belgian officials estimate about 500 of their citizens have fought with jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, and about 130 of those are believed have returned to Europe—including some of the Paris attackers.

Read more: Belgium Races To Plug Its Holes In The War Against Terror

EU officials and intelligence experts have said over the past few months that they fear that the Paris attacks might be a prelude to a bigger operation. “What we expect is a multicity, multitarget attack at the same moment,” Claude Moniquet, a retired veteran of France’s external intelligence service DGSE, who is based in Brussels, told TIME last January. That, he said, “will have terrible consequences.”

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Secret Service Investigating Claims That Anonymous Hacked Donald Trump

investigating claims by hacker activist movement Anonymous that it uncovered personal information about Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the Internet postings of Candidate Donald Trump’s personal information,” a spokesperson for the Secret Service confirmed to TIME. “We are working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in this matter.”

In an animated YouTube video, an Anonymous member denounces Trump, comparing him to Adolf Hitler and saying that he would “promote an agenda of fascism and xenophobia.” The member then says Anonymous has released the Trump’s Social Security number, cell phone number and other personal details.

In the video, Anonymous also announces the beginning of what the group calls Operation White Rose, a nonviolent protest of Trump’s presidential campaign. Members will wear a single white rose to Trump rallies, a symbol of the White Rose Society, an anti-Nazi group known for its activity during Hitler’s regime.

Anonymous is a loosely affiliated group of hackers and Internet users that came to prominence during the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in 2011.

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FBI Warns of Car Hacking Risk

Cars may be “increasingly vulnerable” to hacking, according to a bulletin released Thursday by the FBI and U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“The FBI and NHTSA are warning the general public and manufacturers—of vehicles, vehicle components, and aftermarket devices—to maintain awareness of potential issues and cyber-security threats related to connected vehicle technologies in modern vehicles,” the agencies wrote in the bulletin.

The rise of “smart” cars has made it easier for hackers to infiltrate their computer systems. The statement from federal authorities echoes previous warnings from researchers.

While there have not been any recorded incidents of a hacker taking control a moving vehicle, according to a report by CNBC, there have been several recalls in the last two years over safety concerns.

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Fire-Breather Accidentally Sets Himself on Fire at High School Pep Rally

South Florida school officials said Friday that they’re investigating whether any administrator knew fire-breathing would be part of a high school pep rally Thursday, after the stuntman accidentally set himself on fire.

Video filmed in the gym at Atlantic Community High School in Delray Beach, Fla., shows the performer, Ricardo Charles, 52, engulfed in flames while sitting on an inflatable structure with a basketball hoop behind him after another stuntman jumped over him to make a dunk.

“I was shocked,” Robert Avossa, superintendent of the School District of Palm Beach County, said at a press conference Friday morning. “You don’t bring that kind of activity into a building … [especially] a school.”

Avossa said that the school district’s policy prohibits the use of pyrotechnics inside school buildings, and officials are investigating whether the principal knew that part of the pep rally would include pyrotechnics.

Charles suffered second-degree burns to his face, leg, and an arm, but is expected to be released from Delray Medical Center either Friday or Saturday.

In a press conference at the hospital Friday morning, he apologized and claimed full responsibility for the accident, saying he had not practiced enough with a new fluid he bought for the act, which unexpectedly blew back into his face: “This is what happens when you play with fire,” he told reporters.

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Amazon Kindle Owners Should Download This Update Immediately

Kindle lovers, beware: there’s a mandatory update to your beloved e-reader, and if you don’t install it by March 22, you’re going to end up with a blank slate.

The update is necessary for downloading books from the cloud, accessing the Kindle Store, and use other Kindle services moving forward.

“The update will ensure their device is operating with the latest software, and that it remains compliant with continuously evolving industry standard,” says Amazon spokesperson Kinley Pearsall.

The update doesn’t affect every Kindle model. Only models from 2012 and older will need to upgrade their software. If you act before March 22, installing the upgrade is no big deal. Kindle models from 2007 through 2009 can be updated via the devices’ wireless connections before then, and models from 2010 to 2012 can update their software via Wi-Fi.

But if you miss the March 22 deadline, it will be a bigger headache. You’ll need to install the update to your e-reader manually. That means not automatically via wireless or Wi-Fi, but rather by downloading the proper software version to your computer and connecting your Kindle to your PC via a USB cable.

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Watch a Panda ‘Attack’ a Video Camera

There is always a live-stream at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China’s Sichuan province, and this week, 30 seconds featuring a panda cub lunging (playfully) at a video camera has been captured and shared by China’s largest newspaper People’s Daily. Perhaps this cub swatted away the lens because it was fed up with the constant surveillance and just wanted a little bit of privacy? We will never know. But the footage of the bear, and its playmate, is good viewing for a Friday (or any) afternoon.

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Tyler Perry on The Passion, the Election, and the Oscars Controversy

The actor and director, whose films often touch on explicitly religious themes, digs into his faith with The Passion, a live musical special, airing Sunday night, that follows the last days of Jesus’ life on earth. As host and narrator, Perry joins a cast that includes Jencarlos Canela as Jesus, Trisha Yearwood as Mary, and “Kiss from a Rose” singer Seal as Pontius Pilate; the broadcast will include a procession of extras carrying a cross through the streets of New Orleans.

This live special marks something of a splashy comeback for Perry; though he appeared in the 2014 hit Gone Girl and has been writing, producing and directing his Oprah Winfrey Network series The Haves and the Have Nots, For Better or Worse, and If Loving You is Wrong, he’s been slightly less visible than usual thanks to a two-year hiatus from directing. That changes with the release of Boo! A Madea Halloween in October, and promises to change more radically as the result of what Perry describes as an artistic evolution brought on by the birth of his son.
Perry spoke to TIME about Sunday night’s TV broadcast, the controversy over the Oscars, and whether or not he’ll be making a Presidential endorsement.

What goes into hosting a story of this magnitude? Do you feel the need to put on a little extra gravitas?

For me, I’ve been doing a lot of stage work for a long time. I’m going to do my best, and be myself as much as I can to move the story along.

Talk a little bit about why this is happening in New Orleans.

I don’t know of a better backdrop than New Orleans. This city literally rose again from a liquid grave. So to have the story of Jesus Christ’s suffering and resurrection told in this city, I just thought it was perfect. And that was one of the deciding factors to me saying yes to the project.

Live TV events, from live musicals to this project, seem to be bigger than ever. As someone with a theater background, do you find this exciting?

I do find it exciting. I’m very excited about all of the shows that have come to television, from Grease to The Wiz to The Sound of Music, and now having an opportunity to do this Passion story. We were doing passion plays in church every Easter Sunday. For me, it’s the big kid in me getting a chance to go back to my youth.

Portraying Jesus and Mary onscreen would seem to have its pitfalls. How do you make sure you don’t end up inadvertently crossing a line and offending some of the faithful?

I wasn’t worried about anything other than being true to the actual story in the Bible. And once I read the script, I knew it was accurate, and once I sent it to many pastors and they saw it and thought that it was accurate, I was in. That is what is always important to me, to make sure it is true to the word of God.

Elsewhere on TV, your shows on the Oprah Winfrey Network are incredibly high-rated, more so than anything else on the channel. What, if anything, are the differences in outlook between you and Oprah?

The great thing about working with her from day one is that she is very aware of my audience and my ability to speak to my audience. She’s been to many of my shows, she knows it very well. And I think the brilliance about who she is is clearly allowing me—we talked about it early on, and she said “I just want you to do what you do. You do what you do, and I’m completely fine with that.” And that’s been great to have a partnership and a situation where there is no other expectation, other than for me to be myself. She’s been more than I can say, as far as a boss. We’d never worked together, but it’s been really wonderful; I have absolutely no complaints.

In the age of Empire and black-ish, do you have any aspiration to produce a broadcast TV show?

I tried that early on—I had a show with Chuck Lorre, right before Two and a Half Men we were working on a show. When I found out how broadcast worked, I knew that wasn’t a system that I wanted to be in. I knew that wasn’t something that would work for me. What I found is that the vision I have and the way I speak to my audience is very unique. They know my voice, and that’s why they show up by the millions. To Oprah’s credit, she understands that. To go into broadcast and have that kind of restriction on what’s being said and what the messages are, I know that wouldn’t work for my audience. The stories would not work at all.

In the past, you’ve fundraised for President Obama. Are you planning to endorse this time around?

At this point, I’m watching very, very closely. When I endorsed and got behind him, I was so excited about what was going on in politics—it was fresh, it was new, it was exciting. I’m completely disgusted by what’s going on now. It’s going to be very, very interesting to see what happens here, and who actually ends up running. I’m disgusted by the division and the hatred and the darkness, and, even if I don’t want to endorse, it would definitely make me choose the better side. To play on people’s fears and to speak to division and inequality—I’m disgusted by it.

The two-year break from movie directing you took before the upcoming Boo! A Madea Halloween was sizable, for you. What filled the gap?

Most of that was about my son [Aman, born in late 2014], and adjusting to being a father, and making sure that I had a plan and that we knew each other from birth. But what television provides me as a storyteller is great, because I get to tell the same stories for a long, long time. I just got a cake yesterday from my folks that celebrated 800 episodes of television, which was really shocking to me, because I had no idea it had been that many. Television provides this long line of storytelling, which I really love. I miss film, and even though this is a Madea movie, after working with [David] Fincher, I thought, “Wait a minute, there’s a whole other level here that I need to be paying attention to.” I felt like I went to school, working with him. You won’t be able to see it in Boo!, but in the future, you’ll see it.

I think people would be surprised that someone as hardworking and productive as you took, effectively, a paternity leave.

It was life-changing. And everything that I thought mattered didn’t. This little boy has been my healer. He has completely made me stop and see myself; I see every bit of me in him growing up. And it’s been very important for him to not only be a productive, amazing citizen, but also someone who knows the love of his father, very well and very strongly, no matter where he is and no matter where I am.

In light of the ongoing debate over diversity at the Oscars, do you feel as though any of your movies ought to have been nominated?

I don’t! Here’s my whole thing. I think the Academy should be able to vote the way they want to vote. None of that matters to me. I know there are a lot of people in Hollywood whose work depends on there being changes. But I’ve never been one to knock on the door and say, “Please let me in.” I have always tried to make my own way. I’m not really the person to speak to that because I’m not inside the system asking to be nominated or asking for anybody to pay attention to what I’m doing. What is important to me is the stories that I tell, and making sure they resonate with the audience I’m speaking to. Whether that’s important to anybody else is not really that important to me. I get it, and I completely understand how difficult it is for a lot of people of color to work in Hollywood. I 100% get it. But I do not think change comes from asking people to let you in. I think change comes by becoming owners of studios, owners of projects, owners of content.

In two of your movies, characters contract HIV after misdeeds. How do you respond to criticism of this trope?

I guess you’re talking about Temptation, and my whole thought with that was I think the point was missed. If you focus on the woman contracting HIV after being unfaithful to her husband and I was punishing her, which I’ve heard, I never once thought that. What I thought was, this is a character who was in a movie, and this was her outcome, like it has been for many people. I chose, in that situation, to tell the story. My hope in that was that it was a cautionary tale, where anyone who found themselves in that situation would think first before they threw their whole lives away. That was my point and my purpose. My intention is always from the good, no matter what other people find in it. I know that my intention is always for the good.

Does putting on an elaborate TV spectacular about the life and death of Jesus contradict Jesus’ own teachings about humility?

This may be presumptuous of me, but I think that if Christ were here in this day and age, to get his message across, rather than traveling for three years from village to village when you can get online or the internet, I think he’d be using all these tools. For me, the medium of television is being used to spread this word, and I think it’s all good and all wonderful. It’s going to be great.

What’s a lesson you’ve learned from a project that didn’t connect the way you wanted it to?

For me, I haven’t had anything that has failed. I know that may sound ridiculous, but, for me, even the ones that didn’t do as well as the others at the box office, I haven’t had one that failed in the sense that every one of them was something I was passionate about and felt very good about. If I’m telling the story, if I’m passionate, if I put it out there, and it lives and it breathes and it finds its way, I’ve found success in it.

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Two Customers Are Suing Starbucks for Allegedly Underfilling Lattes

Starbucks is being sued by two California residents who claim the coffee chain knowingly underfills its lattes. Siera Strumlauf and Benjamin Robles have filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of Starbucks lattes stating that the beverages are “approximately 25% underfilled” based on the sizes listed on the company’s menu, reports Eater.

The complaint alleges that Starbucks’ standardized latte recipe results in beverages that are smaller than the size customers are purchasing. It also says the cups themselves aren’t large enough to contain the number of fluid ounces promised. “By underfilling its lattes, thereby shortchanging its customers, Starbucks has saved countless millions of dollars in the cost of goods sold and was unjustly enriched by taking payment for more product than it delivers,” the suit says.

Read More: Starbucks Is Selling a Cherry Blossom Frappuccino

A Starbucks spokesperson told Eater that the claims are unjustified: “We are aware of the plaintiffs’ claims, which we fully believe to be without merit. We are proud to serve our customers high-quality, handcrafted and customized beverages, and we inform customers of the likelihood of variations.”

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