During a game of “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts,” the Jonas Brothers were asked a series of rather tricky questions by James Corden. First up was Kevin who narrowly escaped eating beetles by stating which of his brothers’ albums he’d rather own: a Nick Jonas album or a DNCE album.
Kevin said he’d rather listen to Joe’s DNCE album, and in doing so, betrayed Nick.
Revenge, as it turns out, is best served in a glass of bird saliva.
Nick was next up and chose to dodge a question about celebrities who’ve hit on him by downing a glass of bird spit, and forcing his brothers to do the same.
Customizable touchpad controls • Six hours of battery life • Case charges wirelessly • and you can share power with your Galaxy S10 phone
Not as comfortable in smaller ears • A
Despite some flaws, Galaxy Buds come very close to nailing what makes AirPods great.
Headphone companies have now had nearly two-and-a-half years to try to match the near-perfect simplicity of Apple’s AirPods.
No one has managed to pull it off yet. But, with its new Galaxy Buds, Samsung has come very, very close.
On paper, it’s easy to see why: Battery life for the Galaxy Buds tops out at six hours — one hour more than AirPods. And the case, though a bit bulkier than the tooth floss-sized AirPods case, is still slim enough to fit in pretty much any pocket (and is mercifully smaller than the Gear IconX buds).
The case is much smaller than Samsung’s previous IconX earbuds.
Image: karissa bell / mashable
Image: karissa bell / mashable
Better still, the case charges wirelessly (are you listening Apple?!) And, if you have Samsung’s new Galaxy S10, you can use your phone to wirelessly charge the case if you need some extra juice in a hurry, which is almost enough to overlook the fact that the case itself only buys you an extra seven hours of battery life, compared with the up to 19 hours you get with AirPods.
But, at $130, Galaxy Buds are 30 bucks cheaper than AirPods, which have now gone more than two years without an update. And they come in three different colors: white, black, and a bright, bright yellow.
Not as bulky as they look
One of my biggest concerns with Galaxy Buds was how they’d fit in my ears, as the buds are much thicker than AirPods. I’m cursed with the tiny ears of a small child, and I almost always have issues with in-ear buds. Even with smallest ear tips attached, most buds either don’t stay in my ears, are extremely uncomfortable, or both.
Part of the reason why I always carry a set of wired EarPods in addition to my AirPods is because Apple’s angled design is one of the few that consistently fit well and feel good in my ears for long periods of times. I know this isn’t the case for everyone — plenty of people despise the hard plastic of AirPods — but it’s what works for me.
There’s a small touchpad for controlling playback, answering calls, and enabling ambient mode.
Image: karissa bell / mashable
Galaxy Buds are thicker than AirPods, but don’t extend beyond your ear, making them less likely to fall out.
Image: karissa bell / mashable
So the first thing I did was change out the medium-sized ear tips that come straight out of the box for the smallest tips, which immediately made the Galaxy Buds much more comfortable.
In fact, I was actually surprised at how comfortable they were. Popping them in and out still wasn’t quite as effortless as AirPods — I often pressed the touchpad by accident when putting them in. But the Galaxy Buds stayed snug in my ears for hours at a time. And, because there’s no tip dangling out of my ear, I didn’t have to worry about knocking them out every time I put on a sweatshirt or brushed my hair.
They did become slightly uncomfortable after a couple hours of solid use — as is the case with most earbuds I try out — but I suspect this won’t be a major issue for people with normal-sized ears.
About that “seamless connection”…
Samsung has also tried to make Galaxy Buds as easy to set up and pair as AirPods. I say tried because unlike Apple, which uses a dedicated chip for instantaneous pairing, Galaxy Buds require you to use an app in order to achieve its promised “seamless connection.”
Bizarrely, it’s not the Galaxy Wearables app, which lets personalize your settings, but the SmartThings app that enables the iOS-style “connection pop-ups” when you open the charge case.
You need the SmartThings app if you want to see this popup.
Image: screenshot / karissa bell
It’s not a dealbreaker, but requiring two separate apps and a Samsung account (required to use SmartThings) in order to achieve what’s meant to be a “seamless connection” is a hassle at best. On the plus side, you’re only forced to open the SmartThings app once. You can also opt to just pair them the old-fashioned way in your bluetooth settings.
You will, however, want to the Galaxy Wearables app, which lets you personalize your settings. The app lets you customize the touchpad controls, enable ambient mode, adjust notifications, and fine tune the sound with an equalizer. There’s also a “find my earbuds” feature to help you locate misplaced earbuds.
The Galaxy Wearables app lets you personalize your settings.
Image: galaxy wearables app
With the touchpad controls, I appreciated that there’s more flexibility than what you can do with AirPods. A single tap acts a splay/pause control, a double tap skips to the next track or answers a phone call, and a triple tap skips back to the previous track.
These default gestures can’t be customized, but you can personalize what a long press does for each bud. I opted for “quick ambient sound” on the right, and a Google Assistant voice command (no offense, Bixby) on the left.
You can also use the app to monitor battery life though, frustratingly, it won’t show you how much charge is left in the case.
Indicator lights are the only way to see how much battery is left in the charge case.
Image: karissa bell / mashable
In fact, the only way to judge how much battery is left in the case is via the indicator lights on the the case. A green light means somewhere between 60 and 100 percent, a yellow light 30 and 60 percent, and red 30 percent or less. I guess the red/yellow/green system is supposed to be intuitive, but I really wish Samsung would just put a percentage somewhere in the app.
Maybe this won’t bother other people as much as it annoyed me, but it makes the question of battery life so impossibly confusing I have to wonder if Samsung came up with this strange color-coded system in order to obscure the case’s battery life to begin with (if they did, incidentally, it’d be a very Apple-like move).
How do they sound?
Another big difference between Galaxy Buds and AirPods: because the Galaxy Buds sit deeper in your ears, you get much more of a noise cancellation effect. This may be a good thing if you’re, say, on a plane, but it can be a bit jarring if you’re used to being able to hear ambient noise around you.
There is an “ambient sound” setting, which is meant to make it easier to hear your surroundings, but I couldn’t discern any noticeable difference between when it was on and when it was off. Weirdly, enabling ambient sound shortcut from the touchpad does make a noticeable difference — significantly lowering the volume so you can hear what’s around you, regardless of whether ambient mode is enabled.
The Galaxy Buds seal better in the ears than AirPods, which makes the sound a bit better.
Image: karissa Bell / mashable
If that seems more than a little confusing that’s because it is. Put another way: the most effective way to use “ambient sound” is to enable it from the touchpad directly.
Ambient noise weirdness aside, I’ve now spent several hours listening to music and podcasts with the Galaxy Buds and the sound is. .. fine. Compared with my AirPods, the bass is a little thin, even when I tried to boost it with the in-app equalizer, but the mids and highs sounded a bit better to my ear. (Though, as my colleague Raymond Wong pointed out in his review of Samsung’s Gear IconX buds, this is more likely because the in-ear tips create a better seal with your ear than innate hardware superiority.)
Overall, I’d say the sound quality is about the same as AirPods — pretty good for wireless buds, but these are bluetooth earbuds: don’t expect any miracles.
Turns out, the cast of Game of Thrones was just as excited as we were when the final trailer for the show dropped.
Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister, shared a video of himself on Instagram watching the trailer, and he seemed pretty excited about it.
Coster-Waldau started out filming himself watching the screen, before doing a cheeky little camera flip to his smudged laptop screen.
He even included a little commentary, such as “yes!” “beautiful,” “Ary-a!” (when Maisie Williams shows up on the screen) and “kiss!” (when Missandei embraces Grey Worm).
He also spoke over his own one line in the trailer (“I promised to fight for the living. I intend to keep that promise” to pretty hilarious effect.
The poor selfie angling skills, the smudgy screen, the dorky commentary. Who’d have known Ser Jaime was such a dad when it comes to social media?
Anantnag, Indian-administered Kashmir – Women in Kashmir have suffered immensely as the conflict in the region continues.
Many have lost their husbands, sons or fathers while. There are also around 1,500 ‘half-widows‘ who remain unaware of their husbands’ whereabouts.
“I have lost my three rebel sons. One of them took food for the rebels. He was there when an encounter took place and he was killed,” Nabza Bano, an 83-year-old who lives in small house in the Somdbraide village of South Kashmir, told Al Jazeera.
Bano vaguely remembers the time of death of her sons. She said her life became more miserable after her husband’s death three years ago due to kidney problems.
Kashmir remains a pending dispute between two nuclear nations, India and Pakistan. Both countries have fought two wars over the region and more than 70,000 people have lost their life in past three decades.
Khurshi, 85, mother of Manzoor Ahmed, mostly remains silent inside her half-dark room.
She is unaware of her son’s death who was in the Indian Army and was killed in Sunjuwan attack in the Jammu region in early 2018.
“She keeps asking about him and doesn’t know he is no more,” said Ahmed’s sister. “She keeps waiting for her son’s phone call.”
Arif Magribi Khan, a psychiatrist who also runs an NGO for patients with physiological problems in Srinagar, said they have “witnessed higher patient inflow after the 2016 unrest”.
“The basic cause is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When a woman loses her family member, the (PTSD) remains unattended for months which leads to more serious problem and becomes an uphill task to overcome,” said Khan.
Samsung Galaxy Fold is not the only foldable phone coming from the Korean giant’s workshop. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the company is working on two more foldable phones, each with its own distinctive design.
One of these phones will have a clamshell design — vertically folding, Razr-style — while the other will fold outwards, just like Huawei’s Mate X.
According to the report, the vertically folding phone should come in late 2019 or early 2020. Samsung plans for it to have an extra screen on the outside (just like Galaxy Fold) but the design may change. The outwards-folding phone will come afterwards, and it should be thinner as it’ll have no extra screen. The devices may have an under-the-display fingerprint scanner.
No other details about the design, features or the pricing of these devices are revealed in the report. The Galaxy Fold, Samsung’s first foldable phone, is also the company’s priciest, costing $1,980.
The report does share a few more tidbits about the Fold, though. Samsung is said to be trying to improve the Fold’s display by improving its durability and eliminating the crease that appears on the display after it’s folded around 10,000 times. Interestingly, Samsung is even considering offering free screen replacements to users due to this issue.
I’ve had a chance to see the Galaxy Fold in person, and that crease definitely exists even on a new device. While the crease is invisible in most scenarios, it can be seen when you look at the phone from a certain angle.
Bloomberg says that Samsung forecasts producing at least 1 million foldable devices this year. The Galaxy Fold is officially coming out on April 26; given its exorbitant price, it’ll be interesting to see how well it sells.
Northern Ireland – South of Enniskillen, in a farm on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, John Sheridan whistles while herding dozens of ewes into a cube-shaped, metal ultrasound scanner installed in the middle of hilly green pastures.
Those who aren’t pregnant will be fattened up and sent to the Republic of Ireland for processing, Sheridan explains. From there, they will end up on mostly Belgian and French tables.
Like many farmers, the 57-year-old depends on the frictionless flow of goods, services and people between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which are both part of the EU single market.
But that seamlessness could end if Britain leaves the EU as scheduled on March 29 without a deal.
A so-called “hard Brexit” would see trade revert to WTO rules which would impose costly tariffs and border checks where none currently exist.
That prospect, says Sheridan, threatens the viability of his family farm.
“I’d hoped my sons would get involved, and myself and my wife would take a step back,” he said. “But Brexit has the ability to put us out of business altogether.”
Northern Ireland is highly dependent on trade with the Republic of Ireland, especially farming.
We are going to be sorely affected in this county. Our youngsters will leave. Northern Ireland will become a wasteland.
John Sheridan, farmer
The food and drink processing industry in Northern Ireland is worth approximately £4.4bn, and farming alone supports more than 48,000 jobs.
Nearly 80 percent of Northern Irish farms are cattle and sheep businesses, mostly small to medium-size.
“Each animal is worth around £80 ($105), and the levy would be half of that,” Ivor Ferguson, the president of the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU), told Al Jazeera.
“That would make it too expensive, and 50 percent of our sheep farmers wouldn’t be in business and would have to give up sheep farming. That would have a devastating effect.”
With less than a month to go before Britain’s scheduled departure from the EU, the thorny issue of the future of the Irish border continues to jeopardise an orderly divorce.
Before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement formally ended three decades of violent, sectarian strife in Northern Ireland, the Irish border was heavily fortified with military checkpoints that served as a physical reminder of the ideological divide between largely Catholic republicans, who want to reunite Ireland as one country, and mostly Protestant unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain British.
Both Britain and the EU are keen to avoid resurrecting a hard border in Ireland.
But the proposed solution in Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal has triggered a deadlock in parliament over the so-called “backstop” which would keep Northern Ireland within the EU’s customs and regulatory arrangements until Britain and Brussels reach a comprehensive trade agreement.
Supporters of the backstop view it as a necessary insurance policy to preserve peace in Northern Ireland. Opponents see it as an unacceptable compromise which could tie Britain to the EU’s trade rules indefinitely.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which May relies on to prop up her government, are also opposed to any measure which treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK.
Fears of a hard border
Business groups and organisations such as the UFU, which traditionally represent a unionist base, have publicly expressed their support for May’s deal, while calling for parliament to endorse it.
The prospect of pushing back the Brexit deadline, which has materialised in Westminster, is of little comfort.
“We would like to see the withdrawal agreement signed off so that we can move on to the more important job of working out what our relationship is with Europe in the future. That’s the main job for us,” Ferguson said.
Amid concerns that the return of a “hard border” in the form of checks and physical infrastructure could lead to violence, Westminster has been looking at “alternative arrangements” to avoid physical infrastructure on the border.
But Sheridan, who is from a traditionally Protestant unionist community, said that even if such arrangements were feasible, that still means “those goods are going to have to be checked somewhere.”
That could present significant challenges given the high level of cross-border integration in the sector’s supply chain, which could see products crossing the border more than once on the way to being processed and packaged.
In the absence of guarantees from the government, Sheridan – whose farm counts 500 sheep and 200 cattle – says the best bet is to downsize.
“[We’re going to] sell off two-thirds of the [cattle], and see what happens. But the sheep are different. They were born and bred for this type of terrain. I’m stuck with the sheep,” he sighed.
Northern Ireland currently sends most of its beef to the UK, but Sheridan is concerned that small, local producers like himself could be undermined by laxer regulations on food imports.
Last week, the US published its negotiating objectives for a trade deal with the UK, which include removing barriers on sanitary and physiosanitary standards.
Local producers are concerned that chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef will awash the market as Britain’s consumers will choose price over quality.
Northern Irish farmers are also highly dependent on the much-criticised EU farming subsidy system to survive, with farmers often making more money from grants than from agriculture.
While Brexit is seen by some as an opportunity to reform the system, farmers like Sheridan remain concerned.
The UK has allocated £4.2bn for Brexit preparations since 2016, some £2bn of which is earmarked to prepare for a no-deal scenario.
But a recent impact statement released by the government warned that leaving the EU without a deal could could leave the UK economy up to nine percent weaker in the long run and “affect the viability of many businesses across Northern Ireland.”
“We are going to be sorely affected in this county,” said Sheridan. “Our youngsters will leave. Northern Ireland will become a wasteland.”
Nearly 80 percent of Northern Irish farms are cattle and sheep businesses, mostly small to medium-size [Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera]
There are also concerns that the demise of local agriculture could have environmental consequences.
“We use cattle to graze a lot of our protected sites,” John Martin, a conservation expert at the Northern Ireland branch of Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), told Al Jazeera.
If farmers abandon their lands, he added, “it wouldn’t be managed in the way the environment, the wildlife here is used to. So there would be significant environmental damage.”
On the other hand, experts including Martin say the EU’s common agricultural policy has caused environmental degradation in the UK as a whole, favouring large landowners and incentivising the clearing of land for it to qualify as farmland.
The UK government’s 25-year plan for the environment, published in January, does not apply to Northern Ireland because it currently doesn’t have a sitting government.
It remains unclear, Martin said, how struggling businesses are to cope with any new policy that will be introduced.
“In that scenario what would probably happen is that the government would choose to intervene to keep those businesses afloat, without many strings attached,” Martin said. “And that’s something we want to avoid.”
THIS WEEK, DEMOCRATS will move to pass H.R. 1, which they believe is the kind of good-government bill that sent them into the majority. SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI worked for months to get consensus on the legislation, which had already been delayed due to the government shutdown. The passage of H.R. 1 is the kind of moment that is supposed to define the early part of a House majority.
BUT INSTEAD of a laser focus on that, Democrats are enmeshed in a messy, divisive internecine food fight over support for Israel, which has pitted old-school Democrats like FOREIGN AFFAIRS CHAIRMAN ELIOT ENGEL and APPROPRIATIONS CHAIRWOMAN NITA LOWEY of New York against REP. ILHAN OMAR of Minnesota, and some of her allies in the House.
OMAR has invoked what many see as anti-Semitic tropes in discussing Israel, suggesting lawmakers who support the nation have a dual loyalty. Earlier, she said legislators’ support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby” — a comment she later backed away from.
THE DIVISIONS among Democrats are only getting deeper and more public. The House has already passed one resolution as a result of Omar’s comments, and now a second one is in the offing. A vote on a second resolution to condemn anti-Semitism has been put off, after resistance from the left. (Read about that below.)
THIS CONGRESS IS ONLY 62 days old and, presumably by the end of the week, it will have taken two votes aimed at condemning the words of a member of the majority.
FURTHERMORE, DEMOCRATS SEEM TO BE heading for an extended discussion about America’s support for Israel — something that will certainly split their caucus.
THIS FIGHT isn’t going unnoticed. The NYT put its story above the fold today, and it carries this headline: “Rift Over Israel Has Democrats Divided by Age: Anti-Semitism Motion Rattles the House” (NYT A1). And cable news has been covering it nonstop.
REPUBLICANS ARE WATCHING, AND BELIEVE this is all playing into their hands. The political minds in the GOP have long believed that Democratic support for Israel was shifting, and they see this as the moment they’ve been waiting for — the moment they can peel off pro-Israel Democrats from the Democratic Party.
SO WHAT’S NEXT? OMAR DOES NOT SEEM deterred from talking about Israel, and every time she says something deemed controversial, Democrats erupt. At the moment, one would have to come to the conclusion that this disagreement is easily one of the defining characteristics of the 116th Congress.
— WHERE THINGS STAND: HEATHER CAYGLE, JOHN BRESNAHAN and REBECCA MORIN: “House Dems postpone vote rebuking Omar amid pressure from left”: “A vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism in response to controversial comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar is set to slip past Wednesday amid intensifying pressure from the left both inside and outside the Democratic Caucus.
“Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that the vote would now likely happen Thursday and be updated to include language rejecting anti-Muslim bias. ‘People are working through the draft. Not everyone has seen the draft,’ said Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). ‘I support the notion that we need to respond and we’re figuring out the appropriate way to respond.’
“The debate over if — and how — to reprimand Omar for describing pro-Israel advocates’ ‘allegiance to a foreign country’ has exposed sharp divides within the caucus along generational, religious and ideological lines.” POLITICO
MEANWHILE IN THE SENATE … BURGESS EVERETT and MARIANNE LEVINE: “McConnell preps new nuclear option to speed Trump judges”: “President Donald Trump’s stream of judges is about to become a torrent. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP caucus have long prioritized confirming conservative judges to lifetime appointments. But they’re about to accelerate their ability to unilaterally approve many nominees in dramatic fashion.
“The Senate is on track to confirm the 34th Circuit Court judge of Trump’s presidency in the next week and the GOP has three more ready for floor action; that would give Trump roughly 20 percent of the Circuit Court seats in the country after just two years in office. At this rate, McConnell and Trump could leave few, if any, vacancies there for a potential Democratic president in 2021.
“Even more alarming for Democrats, the GOP is also preparing to pull the trigger on the ‘nuclear option’ and change Senate rules once again with a simple majority to allow much quicker confirmation of lower court judges in the coming months.” POLITICO
— MCCONNELL has long seen his legacy tied directly to his impact on stacking the federal judiciary with conservative judges.
TRUMP’S PARALLEL LIVES … NYT’S PETER BAKER and MAGGIE HABERMAN: “In the Middle of His Official Business, Trump Took the Time to Send Checks to Michael Cohen”: “On a busy day at the White House, President Trump hosted senators to talk about tax cuts, accused a Democratic congresswoman of distorting his condolence call to a soldier’s widow and suffered another court defeat for his travel ban targeting Muslim countries.
“And at some point on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017, Mr. Trump took the time to sign a $35,000 check to his lawyer, who had made hush payments to prevent alleged sexual misconduct from being exposed before the 2016 presidential election.
“It was one of 11 occasions that Mr. Trump or his trust cut such checks, six of which were provided this week to The New York Times. … The dates on the newly available checks shed light on the parallel lives Mr. Trump was living by this account — at once managing affairs of state while quietly paying the price of keeping his personal secrets out of the public eye. The president hosted a foreign leader in the Oval Office, then wrote a check. He haggled over legislation, then wrote a check.
“He traveled abroad, then wrote a check. On the same day he reportedly pressured the F.B.I. director to drop an investigation into a former aide, the president’s trust issued a check to Mr. Cohen in furtherance of what federal prosecutors have called a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws at the direction of Mr. Trump.” NYT
ABC 7 CHICAGO: “Shakeup possible in federal case against ex-congressman Aaron Schock,” by Chuck Goudie, Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Ross Weidner:“[L]ate Tuesday the ABC7 I-Team learned that something … is happening in the case-suggesting an outcome for Schock may be unveiled at the Dirksen federal building.
“The one-time rising star of the Illinois Republican party resigned his Peoria Congressional seat in 2015 on accusations of misspending campaign funds on lavish personal expenses. Since the beginning the case has been laden with problems and it ended up being moved from Urbana to Chicago.
“Now it appears there may be a dramatic shift in things. According to experts a possible scenario is that the government would reduce some of the 22 felonies to misdemeanors and that other charges would be dropped-offering a way out for Schock, that conceivably could allow him a return to politics.” ABC7
Good Wednesday morning. FORMER COLORADO GOV. JOHN HICKENLOOPER’S presidential campaign says it raised $1 million to spend on the Democratic primary since announcing his candidacy two days ago.
DICK GEPHARDT on AOC, via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Chuck Raasch: “‘I am thinking that probably the attention she is getting is a convenient partnership between the media, who kind of likes celebrities, and the Republicans, who want a target,’ Gephardt, who represented St. Louis in Congress for 28 years, said. ‘(Democrats) had a lot of people elected the last election who were from moderate districts. In fact a lot of them were women, and many of them were former military.’” Post-Dispatch
— “Payments to corporation owned by Ocasio-Cortez aide come under scrutiny,” by WaPo’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee: “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)’s chief of staff helped establish two political action committees that paid a corporation he ran more than $1 million in 2016 and 2017, federal campaign finance records show.
“Brand New Congress LLC, the corporation owned by Saikat Chakrabarti, was also paid $18,880 for strategic consulting by Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign in 2017, records show. The following year, he worked as a volunteer to manage her campaign, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“The arrangement, first reported by conservative outlets, left hidden who ultimately profited from the payments — a sharp juxtaposition with Ocasio-Cortez’s calls for transparency in politics. She has called dark money ‘the enemy to democracy.’ … On Monday, a conservative group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the PACs failed to properly disclose their spending.” WaPo
BORDER TALES — “Border at ‘Breaking Point’ as More than 76,000 Migrants Cross in a Month,” by NYT’s Caitlin Dickerson: “The number of migrant families crossing the southwest border has once again broken records, with unauthorized entries nearly doubling what they were a year ago, suggesting that the Trump administration’s aggressive policies have not discouraged new migration to the United States.
“More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high and a strong sign that stepped-up prosecutions, new controls on asylum and harsher detention policies have not reversed what remains a powerful lure for thousands of families fleeing violence and poverty.” NYT
WAPO’S MARC FISHER: “‘Grab that record’: How Trump’s high school transcript was hidden”: “In 2011, days after Donald Trump challenged President Barack Obama to ‘show his records’ to prove that he hadn’t been a ‘terrible student,’ the headmaster at New York Military Academy got an order from his boss: Find Trump’s academic records and help bury them.
“The superintendent of the private school ‘came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends’ and who wanted to keep his records secret, recalled Evan Jones, the headmaster at the time. ‘He said, “You need to go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to them.”’
“The superintendent, Jeffrey Coverdale, confirmed Monday that members of the school’s board of trustees initially wanted him to hand over President Trump’s records to them, but Coverdale said he refused. ‘I was given directives, part of which I could follow but part of which I could not, and that was handing them over to the trustees,’ he said. ‘I moved them elsewhere on campus where they could not be released. It’s the only time I ever moved an alumnus’s records.’” WaPo
SO MUCH FOR THE LOVE LETTERS — “North Korea rebuilding long-range rocket site, photos show,” by NBC’sCourtney Kube, Carol Lee and Andrea Mitchell: “North Korea is pursuing the ‘rapid rebuilding’ of the long-range rocket site at Sohae Launch Facility, according to new commercial imagery and an analysis from the researchers at Beyond Parallel. Sohae Satellite Launching Station, North Korea’s only operational space launch facility, has been used in the past for satellite launches. These launches use similar technology to what is used for intercontinental ballistic missiles.” NBC
AT MAIN JUSTICE — “Trump picks U.S. attorney in D.C. for No. 3 Justice job,” by Josh Gerstein: “President Donald Trump is planning to tap the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jessie Liu, to fill the long-vacant No. 3 position at the Justice Department, the White House announced Tuesday. The associate attorney general slot has been open for more than a year — since the unexpected resignation of Rachel Brand, who took a top legal job at Walmart.” POLITICO
COMING ATTRACTIONS — DARREN SAMUELSOHN and ANDREW DESIDERIO: “The Mueller report no one’s talking about”: “Most people don’t know it, but there’s another Mueller report coming. Around the same time the special counsel sends his Russia investigation findings to the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr must give Congress an account of every instance where Robert Mueller’s supervisors told him ‘no’ during the course of his work.
“The reporting requirement is tucked into the department regulations that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein used when he appointed Mueller. No matter what the memo says, it’s expected to be one of the few items on a fast track for being made public that will be closely scrutinized for insights into the inner workings of the special counsel’s tight-lipped investigation.
“Barr’s report could very well end up being blank, which itself would be a telling reveal that gives President Donald Trump and the leaders of the Justice Department he appointed tangible proof that the special counsel was allowed to carry out his investigation without interference.” POLITICO
2020 WATCH — “Michael Bloomberg Will Not Run for President in 2020,” by NYT’s Alex Burns: “Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who joined the Democratic Party last year to crusade against President Trump, announced he would not seek the White House himself in 2020, discarding plans to mount a maverick campaign that would have tested the party’s openness to a wealthy centrist with a chameleon-like approach to partisan politics. …
“After conducting polling and other research, Mr. Bloomberg’s advisers concluded he would have a real but narrow path to the nomination — and that it could all but vanish if Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president, entered the race.” NYT
— “Trump in trouble in Florida poll,” by Marc Caputo: “Donald Trump is in trouble in Florida, a state that’s crucial to his reelection hopes. Just 40 percent of Florida voters said they believed the president should be reelected, while 53 percent were opposed to a second term, according to a new Bendixen & Amandi International poll.” POLITICO
THE INVESTIGATIONS …
— CNN’S MANU RAJU and JEREMY HERB: “Republicans reject calls to probe Trump role in hush-money payments”: “Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, a senior member of Senate Judiciary who chaired the panel in the last Congress, wouldn’t say if he had concerns about Trump’s involvement in a hush-money scheme.
“‘You always ask me questions that I haven’t studied,’ Grassley said Tuesday. ‘So I can’t say.’ A fellow Iowa Republican on the Judiciary panel, Sen. Joni Ernst, also suggested she wasn’t fully aware of the hush money when asked if the committee should look into the scandal. ‘Possibly at some point — I don’t know enough about it,’ Ernst said.” CNN
— WAPO’S ROZ HELDERMAN and RACHAEL BADE: “Former Trump adviser says he does not plan to cooperate with House Judiciary inquiry”: “The letter from an attorney for Michael Caputo, who worked for Trump during part of the 2016 campaign, represents the first skirmish in what is likely to be broad resistance from Trump aides and associates to new inquiries issued this week by the Judiciary Committee.
“Caputo told The Washington Post that he has already begun talking with four other Trump associates who received requests from the committee this week to begin a joint strategy of resisting requests for testimony. ‘All four are reluctant to appear because they believe it’s a perjury trap designed to move toward impeachment of the president,’ he said.” WaPo
THE JUICE …
— FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO INSTITUTE OF POLITICS is naming its spring quarter fellows. They include: Karine Jean-Pierre, chief public affairs officer for MoveOn; former Education Secretary John King; former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell; former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.); Sue Mi Terry, former National Security Council staff member; the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman; and David Yepsen, host of “Iowa Press” on Iowa Public Television.
TRUMP’S WEDNESDAY — The president will meet with former Yemen hostage Danny Burch and his family in the Oval Office at 2 p.m. He is meeting with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) at 2:45 p.m. in the Oval Office. At 4 p.m., Trump will participate in the “American Workforce Policy Advisory Board Meeting” in the State Dining Room.
DNC CONVENTION UPDATE — MARC CAPUTO: “Top Miami Democrat blasts DNC’s ‘massive’ convention delay”: “‘Everybody should have a concern over this massive delay and how it affects the planning and funding of a convention,’ said Philip Levine, the co-chair of the convention effort and Miami Beach’s former mayor. ‘We were told this would happen in January, and it’s March and we still don’t know where the convention is going to be.’ …
“[T]he delay has increased pressure and attention on Perez. It could even be the first act in a potentially chaotic spectacle in July 2020, when a crowded Democratic presidential primary could culminate in a brokered convention and multi-round delegate fight.” POLITICO
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION — “‘Something very rare’: FDA’s Gottlieb aggressively tackled difficult issues,” by Sarah Owermohle, Sarah Karlin-Smith and Helena Bottemiller-Evich: “FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who shocked Washington with news of his resignation on Tuesday, will leave the agency at the end of this month with a track record of activism and regulatory actions.
“FDA leaders have typically focused much of their attention on a handful of medical topics, but Gottlieb has been active and aggressive on many issues as commissioner without hewing to a strictly conservative or liberal ideology. It’s an approach that’s won him praise from many in the health sector, while garnering criticism from several of the targeted businesses like tobacco companies and the fast-growing e-cigarette industries.
“‘He was able to do something very rare: He never got embroiled in a scandal, never got labeled with a toxic administration brush and had a great relationship with the President all at the same time,’ said one former White House official. Still, his independent streak sometimes stoked tension with others in the administration. Gottlieb pushed regulatory issues under a mandate from a president that pushed deregulation as one of his core goals.” POLITICO
BIRTHWEEK (was yesterday): Ken Lerer turned 67
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY:Jennifer Skyler, chief communications officer at the We Company. A fun fact about Jen: “When she was younger, my sister had a successful run as a model when my family lived in Tokyo, Japan. Witnessing her accomplishments in this field, I thought I would give acting a try to earn some extra money while I was interning at the CNN Tokyo bureau in college. I didn’t fare as well, and the only lead I got was to star in a Japanese horror film that played as you were waiting in line for a scary ride at an amusement park in Tokyo. Playing the bride of Frankenstein was quite an adventure!” Playbook Plus Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: David Bradley, chairman and owner of Atlantic Media … Catherine Wilkins of the White House (hat tip: Cassie Williams) … Alan Greenspan is 93 … John Stossel is 72 (h/t Scott) … Saul Anuzis is 6-0 … Reuters’ Jim Bourg … Armen Keteyian is 66 … former FBI and CIA Director William Webster is 95 … former Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) is 8-0 … Pablo Chavez, VP of global public policy and government affairs for Google Cloud … Blake Gottesman of Berkshire Partners … Theodore Furchtgott … Kara Carscaden, who celebrated with a scuba session in the Dry Tortugas last weekend … Anthony Foti … Jenny Rogers, deputy editor of WaPo’s Talent Network … Jonathan Day, COS for Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) (h/t Blain Rethmeier) … TransCanada’s Alex Stroman is 3-0 … The Baltimore Sun’s Erin Cox … Sandra Salstrom … Eileen Murphy, SVP of comms for NYT (h/t Alex Levy) …
… Brooke Gladstone, co-host of WNYC’s “On the Media” … Bill Huey is 72 … Joe Perticone, politics reporter at Business Insider, is 29 (h/ts AnnaMaria Di Pietro and Mallory Shelbourne) … Michael Sitrick … Anna Kopperud … Joe Alexander … Indiana Supreme Court Justice Mark Massa … Jacqui Newman, COO of the DCCC … Chris Leavitt … Lisa Todorovich Porter … Anna Kopperud … Brendon Plack, COS for the Senate majority whip … Ellen Canale … Emily Leviner, LD and chief counsel for Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) (h/t Brianna Puccini) … Karen Lightfoot … Shannon Moriarty, director of comms at the Doe Fund … Sam Spence … Katy Bayless … Andie Coller … Kathleen J. Becker … Steve Fox … Kim Moxley … Tim Bergreen … Lanon Baccam (h/t Teresa Vilmain)
Love letters are overrated. In 2019, express you undeniable lust through wholesome thirst memes.
Being a teenager is a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and nothing makes you want to shrivel up and crawl into a hole like talking about doing it. But the wholesome thirst memes of Instagram can be the ice breaker for having productive conversations about sex.
The wholesome thirst memes of Instagram are basically very cute, very public sexts for people to send their crushes. Aesthetically, they’re safe for work. If you scroll through the hashtags #saucylovememes and #softmemes, you’ll find an array of cutesy images plastered with heart and sparkle emoji.
As pure as the memes look, the content is absolutely horny.
Aside from confessing a crush (and the desire to hook up) the memes can also encourage young people to have honest, open conversations about sex and boundaries. If you’re inexperienced and just starting to date someone, bringing up sex can be uncomfortable. But these memes can ease partners into a conversation about it.
“I think they’re definitely a safe way to test where you’re at in a relationship or cross another line if it’s ready to be crossed,” the creator of @very.soft.memes said via Instagram DM. They preferred to be called just “S” for this story.
S, who is 17, said they started the account because they used to send wholesome thirst memes to their boyfriend. Their followers use the memes to “bridge the gap between an innocent relationship and third base.”
Sex — and all things associated with it — can be intimidating. When you’re in high school and inundated with health class materials of infected genitals and condom-banana tutorials, being honest about what you want in the bedroom takes a backseat. According to the creators of @bold.yet.wholesome, who are both 16, sending a crush a thirst meme eases nerves about “going at the right speed.”
“Having a serious talk about having sex can be a little daunting,” bold.yet.wholesome said in a DM to Mashable. “Sending a post about it helps break the tension.”
The teenagers of Gen Z are having less sex than millennials and Gen X. According to a 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 47 percent of high schoolers said they had sex in 2005. In 2015, only 41 percent of high schoolers admitted they’ve had sex. As Politico points out, teenagers are “more inclined to focus on the emotional and physical risks of sex, rather than the joys.” The youngest generation of Americans are less risky: they’re less likely to drink, drive, and get laid —which is why confessing feelings and lust through memes is so appealing.
Shan Boodram, a sexologist whose YouTube channel discusses relationships, sex, and self-care, says “it’s easier for people — period — to talk about anything serious through humor.”
Sending someone a meme about wanting to fuck can be an easy icebreaker, instead of just launching into the awkward conversation. During a phone interview, Boodram said the memes act as an “escape route” since you don’t have to “take responsibility for the words.” If it backfires, you can always brush it off as a joke.
“If you’re already stressed out about how to engage in these conversations, having something with a backdoor built in — pun intended — could be nice,” Boodram explained.
Boodram is cautious about calling the memes “wholesome,” though. Nodding to teenagers’ “insatiable need to orgasm,” she says the memes are closer to porn than they are to sweet displays of affection.
“You know when someone insults you, but says no offense first?” Boodram said. “I feel like it’s getting to be as vulgar as you want to but shrouding it with a unicorn tail on top of it.”
Jessica Melendez, a Pleasure Professional at O.school and a sex educator, adds that the memes are a “cause for pause,” depending on the recipient. She’s wary of the intention behind sending images of Pikachu asking to be choked — the sparkles and hearts may soften it, but if you’re sending unsolicited thirst memes to a classmate or friend, it can get slimy.
“The person you’re sending this to,” Melendez questioned. “Do you have a relationship where you can send stuff like that to each other?”
If you’re already dating it’s one thing, but if you’re “trying to get out of the friend zone” — as Melendez puts it — you’re bound to cross a line. She’s especially worried that in some states, sending the memes could count as sexting, which gets blurry when minors are involved. Although it’s an “extreme view,” she notes that if a teenager actually followers though with the meme requesting nudes, it can count as child pornography.
But if everything is safe and consensual, both sex educators see no harm in sending your boo a wholesome thirst meme. While Boodram says most of the memes she’s seen have been “dick-centric,” she’s all for young women expressing their sexual desires — memes asking your significant other to eat you out carry an empowerment you wouldn’t have seen ten years ago.
“This notion that we have to keep people innocent is folly because a majority of people aren’t,” Boodram said, acknowledging that although she thought most of the memes focused on male pleasure, she loves anything that validates girls’ sexuality. “Using their sexual parts for what they’re meant to be used for, if that is a loss of innocence, then I think a lot of people lost [that] far beyond when people think you’re supposed to give teens the talk.”
Despite once being teens themselves, adults are woefully ignorant when it comes to approaching middle and high schoolers about sex. Just look at basic emoji “explainers” that try to decipher sexts. One particularly horrifying explainer in The Times described the eggplant emoji: “One might be forgiven for interpreting the inclusion of this emoji as an invitation to enjoy moussaka. However, the aubergine is also used to indicate an erection.”
Yeah, it’s bad.
While adults may rush to censor and block adolescents from anything vaguely sexual, Melendez says they “miss the big picture” because thirst memes are just another form of expression.
“Young people will draw things, young people will write things,” Melendez said. “Young people might make memes to express their humor [and] say something they really want to say to somebody else.”
The memes are also a side effect of a larger trend: the demand for female pleasure. Boodram credits social media for the rise in what she dubbed “clit culture.”
Melendez says that as a sex educator, getting teenagers to comfortably discuss sex can be challenging, but the popularity of the memes can encourage young women who weren’t raised to be open about it.
“As far as bringing those memes into light, it definitely has shifted the narrative that anyone of any gender can talk about sex, think about sex, [and] can consensually have sex,” Melendez said. “As opposed to what the narrative was maybe eight or ten years ago.”
Is there really a difference between Romeo and Juliet’s romantic innuendoes (Juliet wants Romeo’s daggers in her sheath) and telling someone they give you an “affection erection?” Young love isn’t dead — it’s just on Instagram and extremely horny.
For the next month, our lives are going to be full of nothing but teasing, hype-building press interviews with the cast of Game of Thrones, and honestly, we’re here for it.
Kit Harrington was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where they discussed how the show helped culturally shape the 2010s, and how Joffrey Baratheon’s leadership may have inspired certain politicians.
But the real fun was when Colbert hurled all his finale theories at Harington, who of course gave away absolutely nothing.
Protesters calling for the end of farm murders march in Pretoria [File: Tanisha Heiberg/Reuters]
A South African court has handed lengthy jail sentences to two white farmers who murdered a black teenager while suspecting him of stealing sunflowers in a remote farming community.
Pieter Doorewaard, 28, and Philip Schutte, 35, were found to have killed 15-year-old Matlhomola Mosweu in April 2017 after claiming they caught him taking a plant from a farm in the area.
On Wednesday, Doorewaard was sentenced to at least 18 years in prison while Schutte was given a 23-year term.
Judge Ronald Hendricks said in mitigation of Doorewaard and Schutte’s sentences that “there was no direct intention to kill the deceased”.
“[You are] first time offenders,” he said, giving reasons for not imposing life sentences. “However, the aggravating circumstances of this case far outweigh mitigating [factors].”
Mosweu suffered a broken neck and died after being thrown out of a moving vehicle driven by the pair in a case that sparked rioting and looting of white-owned businesses in the town of Coligny.
The men had claimed that the teen jumped off the truck as they drove him to the police, but it was Schutte who was found to have thrown Mosweu to his death.
‘Disgraceful actions’
Judge Hendricks previously also found the pair guilty of kidnapping and intimidation.
“Murder is undoubtedly the most serious offence that can be committed,” he said. “You picked up the deceased and threw him from the van onto the ground. Your actions that day were indeed disgraceful.”
Family members watched on as the judge announced his ruling – as did members of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters Party which has vigorously opposed racism against the country’s black majority.
Racially charged incidents between white farm owners and managers and poor black farmhands are common in South Africa.
In 2016, two white farmers in eastern Mpumalanga province forced into a coffin a black man they accused of trespassing.
The case sparked outrage after a video of the incident emerged on social media and the pair was handed jail terms of between 16 and 19 years.
White South African farmers found guilty of attempted murder in ‘coffin case’
![Protesters calling for the end of farm murders march in Pretoria [File: Tanisha Heiberg/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/3/6/0c5fb41d102b4ebfa53075b069d3d56e_18.jpg "South Africa jails two white farmers for murder of black teen")
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