FILE - This Sept. 10, 2013 file photo shows actor Ewan McGregor at the press conference for "August: Osage County" at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto. McGregor will make his Broadway debut next year in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing.” Roundabout Theatre Company said Thursday McGregor will play the unhappily married Henry in the play under the direction of Sam Gold. Previews begin next October at the American Airlines Theatre. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - This Sept. 10, 2013 file photo shows actor Ewan McGregor at the press conference for "August: Osage County" at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto. McGregor will make his Broadway debut next year in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing.” Roundabout Theatre Company said Thursday McGregor will play the unhappily married Henry in the play under the direction of Sam Gold. Previews begin next October at the American Airlines Theatre. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — "Star Wars" and "Trainspotting" star Ewan McGregor will make his Broadway debut next year in a revival of Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing."
Roundabout Theatre Company said Thursday that McGregor will play the unhappily married Henry in the play under the direction of Sam Gold. Previews begin next October at the American Airlines Theatre.
McGregor was last seen on the stage in 2008 in London starring as Iago (ee-AY'-goh) opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor's (CHOO'-ih-tel EHJ'-ee-oh-fohrz) Othello at the Donmar Warehouse. He also starred alongside Jane Krakowski, Douglas Hodge and Jenna Russell in the original Donmar Warehouse production of "Guys and Dolls" at the Piccadilly Theatre in London.
McGregor will be seen next in John Wells' film adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play "August: Osage County" opposite Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
TORONTO (AP) — Toronto police said Thursday they have obtained a video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking a crack pipe — a video that Ford had claimed didn't exist and has been at the core of a scandal that has embarrassed and gripped Canada for months.
Police Chief Bill Blair said the video, recovered after being deleted from a computer hard drive, did not provide grounds to press charges. Ford, a populist mayor who has repeatedly made headlines for his bizarre behavior, vowed not to resign.
Speaking outside the door his office, where visitors were free to check out the Halloween decorations, Ford said with a smile: "I have no reason to resign." He said he couldn't defend himself because the affair is part of a criminal investigation involving an associate, adding: "That's all I can say right now." Toronto police discovered the video while conducting a huge surveillance operation into a friend and sometimes driver suspected of providing Ford with drugs.
Ford faced allegations in May that he had been caught on video puffing from a glass crack pipe. Two reporters with the Toronto Star said they saw the video, but it has not been released publicly. Ford maintained he does not smoke crack and that the video did not exist.
The scandal has been the fodder of jokes on U.S. late night television and has cast Canada's largest city and financial capital in an unflattering light.
Ford was elected mayor three years ago on a wave of discontent simmering in the city's outlying suburbs. Since then he has survived an attempt to remove him from office on conflict-of-interest charges and has appeared in the news for his increasingly odd behavior. Through it all, the mayor has repeatedly refused to resign and pledged to run for re-election next year.
But the pressure ramped up on Thursday with all four major dailies in the city calling on Ford to resign.
Cheri DiNovo, a member of Ontario's parliament, tweeted: "Ford video nothing to celebrate Addiction is illness. Mayor please step down and get help?"
On Thursday, Blair said the video of the mayor "depicts images that are consistent with those previously reported in the press."
"As a citizen of Toronto I'm disappointed," Blair said. "This is a traumatic issue for citizens of this city and the reputation of this city."
Blair said the video will come out when Ford's associate and occasional driver, Alexander Lisi, goes to trial on drug charges. Lisi now also faces extortion charges for trying to retrieve the recording from an unidentified person. Blair did not say who owned the computer containing the video.
Blair said authorities believed the video is linked to a home in Toronto, referred to by a confidential informant as a "crack house" in court documents in Lisi's drug case.
The prosecutor in the Lisi case released documents Thursday showing they had rummaged through Ford's garbage in search of evidence of drug use. They show that they conducted a massive surveillance operation monitoring the mayor and Lisi following drug use allegations.
The documents show that friends and former staffers of Ford were concerned that Lisi was "fuelling" the Toronto mayor's alleged drug use.
The police documents, ordered released by a judge, show Ford receiving packages from Lisi on several occasions.
"Lisi approached the driver's side of the Mayor's vehicle with a small white gift bag in hand; he then walked around to the passenger side and got on board," reads one document dated July 30, 2013. "After a few minutes Lisi exited the Escalade empty handed and walked back to his Range Rover."
Another dated July 28 says Lisi "constantly used counter surveillance techniques" when he met with Ford that day.
On August 13 documents say Lisi and Ford met and "made their way into a secluded area of the adjacent woods where they were obscured from surveillance efforts and stayed for approximately one hour."
Ford recently vouched for Lisi in a separate criminal case, praising his leadership skills and hard work in a letter filed with the court. The letter was part of a report prepared by a probation officer after Lisi was convicted of threatening to kill a woman.
Ford said previously that he was shocked when Lisi was arrested earlier this month, calling him a "good guy" and saying he doesn't abandon his friends.
The documents also say that Ford met Lisi through Payman Aboodowleh, a volunteer football coach at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School, where Ford coached the team while also serving as mayor. He told police he was "mad at Lisi because he was fuelling the mayor's drug abuse," the document says.
Ford's controversies range from the trivial to the serious: Walking face-first into a TV camera. Falling down during a photo op while pretending to play football. Being asked to leave an event for wounded war vets because he appeared intoxicated, according to the Toronto Star. Being forced to admit he was busted for marijuana possession in Florida in 1999, after repeated denials. Making rude gestures at Torontonians from his car.
Ford was fired earlier this year from his beloved volunteer job coaching football over disparaging remarks he made to a TV network about parents and their kids at the school.
"The mayor has said there wasn't a video," Toronto councilor Paula Fletcher said. "He has said there is a conspiracy against him. With Chief's Blair's press conference I think that's put to rest."
CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
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CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
###
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]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Brian's back from an exceedingly short vacation (thanks Apple!) and Joseph and Dana have come along for the right. Lots to talk about this week, so grab a beverage, pull up a chair and jump on into the chat after the break today at 3:30Pm ET for a very spooky Halloween edition of The Engadget ...
Moto X users tired of waiting on their laggard service providers for camera updates should be happy to find out that future camera updates to Motorola's latest big deal are bypassing carriers and headed straight for Google Play. The first such update is already available on the Google Play store, as ...
Kofi Kingston vs. Ryback: WWE Main Event, Oct. 30, 2013Santino Marella vs. Heath Slater: WWE Main Event, Oct. 30, 2013The Great Khali vs. Fandango: WWE Main Event, Oct. 30, 2013Los Matadores vs. Los Locales: WWE Main Event, Oct. 30, 2013Kofi Kingston uses his words carefully: WWE App Exclusive, Oct. 28, 2013WWE Hell in a Cell 2013 KickoffKofi Kingston vs. Damien Sandow: WWE Hell in a Cell 2013 Kickoff
TAMPA, Fla. – On the night before Halloween, the WWE Universe was in for an action-packed edition of WWE Main Event. Kofi Kingston did his best to survive against the monstrous Ryback, while Heath Slater tried to avoid the venomous bite of Santino Marella’s Cobra. Fandango came face-to-face with the Frankenstein-ish Great Khali and Los Matadores charged into action with the costumed El Torito by their side.
Ryback def. Kofi Kingston
Kofi Kingston didn’t have to worry about Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees chasing him down on the night before Halloween. He did, however, have a massive monster coming for him on WWE Main Event, in the form of Ryback.
WWE Main Event Photos | Watch Ryback and Kofi Kingston do battle
Furious after back-to-back losses to CM Punk, The Big Guy was looking to get back in the win column Wednesday night. Kingston tried to use his rapid-fire kicks and speed to stick and move against his larger foe, but the monstrous Ryback was able to ground The Dreadlocked Dynamo.
After a series of kicks that wounded his lip, Ryback retreated to the floor. However, that might have been the worst place to go, as Kofi dove over the rope, crashing into his muscular foe.
Though The Wildcat staggered the beast with his stick and move offense, he never truly got a chance to get going. Ryback constantly cut him off, using his immense power to bulldoze the former Intercontinental Champion. He smiled as he brutalized Kingston, making it seem like it was easy.
It wasn’t a cakewalk for Ryback, though. Kingston spun over one of Ryback’s Meathook clotheslines, flooring the monster with devastating DDT. Ryback finally caught the speedy Kingston with a clubbing blow and Shell Shocked his foe to claim victory.
FILE - This Oct. 3, 1940 file photo shows British historian and novelist H.G. Wells arriving in New York aboard the ocean liner Scythia. An essay by Wells will be published in the new edition of The Strand Magazine. The Strand's latest publication, which comes out Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, also features a private letter by Wells that he wrote in 1935. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - This Oct. 3, 1940 file photo shows British historian and novelist H.G. Wells arriving in New York aboard the ocean liner Scythia. An essay by Wells will be published in the new edition of The Strand Magazine. The Strand's latest publication, which comes out Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, also features a private letter by Wells that he wrote in 1935. (AP Photo/File)
NEW YORK (AP) — As Nazi Germany grew ever more dangerous in the 1930s and the Japanese threatened China, science fiction author H.G. Wells wrote up some thoughts about real-life horrors and in 1937 submitted them to a magazine with the widest possible audience, Reader's Digest.
"Democracies need not merely freedom to think and talk, but universal information and vigorous mental training," warned the author of "The War of the Worlds," ''The Time Machine" and other classics.
"Consider China today. An ignorant peaceful population has as much chance of survival now as a blind cow in a jungle."
The British author was known worldwide, but his message was apparently too strong for the conservative magazine, which never published the brief essay. Its debut in print comes more than 75 years later, in the holiday edition of The Strand Magazine, which has rediscovered obscure works by Mark Twain, Joseph Heller and many others.
"He had a very good relationship with them," Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli says of Reader's Digest, "and they occasionally even reprinted his stuff. But this article about democracy seemed to have rankled them."
The Strand's latest publication, which comes out Friday, also features a private letter by Wells that he wrote in 1935. Gulli found the materials among thousands of papers at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Wells was a socialist and often a pacifist whose fears for the planet's fate were well developed in his fiction. But Gulli says the Reader's Digest piece was an unusually strong nonfiction work, a direct call for action that anticipated the current debate about "failed states" in the Middle East and elsewhere.
"Wells was progressive in his views. He belonged to a generation of ardent imperialists, yet his belief was that the great powers should grant their colonies self-determination," Gulli says. "His fear, I think, was that many of these Third World countries would fall prey to demagogues and militia and clerics."
In his article for Reader's Digest, Wells finds that too many countries are "half-literate" and "wholly undisciplined." Democracies should build up their militaries, Wells recommends, but he insists that education is the best weapon.
"The choice is a plain one now," he concludes. "Train yourself for freedom or salute and march."
Wells was a prolific writer and tireless thinker, well demonstrated by his 1935 letter. He writes of a day that begins at 4 a.m.; includes revisions of a book about how "human hope and effort are frustrated"; preparations for a radio broadcast about the evolutionist T.H. Huxley; and several hours of work on a dystopian film he was writing, "Things to Come," that eventually starred Ralph Richardson and Raymond Massey.
That night, the 69-year-old author dined with a Russian friend.
"And we argued about freedom of thought and expression," Wells wrote, "with more particular references to Russia, until it was time to go to bed."
Boston Red Sox fans celebrate after winning the championship over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of baseball's World Series Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013, in Boston. The Red Sox won 6-1 to win the series. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Boston Red Sox fans celebrate after winning the championship over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of baseball's World Series Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013, in Boston. The Red Sox won 6-1 to win the series. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Boston Red Sox fans celebrate in the street near Fenway Park following Game 6 of baseball's World Series between the Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, in Boston. The Red Sox won 6-1 to win the series. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Boston Red Sox fans celebrate in the street near Fenway Park following Game 6 of baseball's World Series between the Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, in Boston. The Red Sox won 6-1 to win the series. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Boston Red Sox fans celebrate after Boston defeated the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of baseball's World Series Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, in Boston. The Red Sox won 6-1 to win the series. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Boston Red Sox fans celebrate after Boston defeated St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of baseball's World Series Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, in Boston. The Red Sox won 6-1 to win the series. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
AMHERST, Mass. (AP) — The Red Sox have now won three World Series in the past decade — but not since the days of Babe Ruth had Boston won a fall classic in its beloved Fenway Park.
The victory sent Boston fans spilling into the streets Wednesday night to celebrate the team's 6-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6. Amid the cheers and high-fives, the white lights of Boston's Prudential Tower read "GO SOX."
"Words cannot describe how I feel," Red Sox fan Sam D'Arrigo said. "This is what being a Boston fan is all about."
The win capped an emotional season for the Red Sox, one heavy with the reminder of the Boston Marathon bombings in April, which left three people dead and more than 260 wounded. Players wore "Boston Strong" logos on their left sleeves and a giant "B Strong" logo was mowed into Fenway's outfield.
"We needed this," said Mark Porcaro of Boston. "They were an easy team to get behind because they stood up for us when we needed them most."
An excited Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted: "Get the ducks ready, we're having a parade." He was referring to the duck boat parades the city had had during previous sports celebrations.
After the game, police set up barriers to funnel the crowds away from Fenway Park and mounted police and officers on bicycles patrolled the area. Some fans were obviously intoxicated. A few young men climbed a pole holding a traffic light.
A large group gathered near the marathon finish line, chanting and blocking traffic until police arrived.
Police said on Twitter that they'd arrested nine people for unruly behavior. Throughout the night, the department had tweeted cautionary messages, encouraging fans to "Celebrate with pride" and "Celebrate responsibly." Police later thanked the "tens of thousands" of Red Sox fans who took their warnings seriously.
There were no reports of serious damage but at least one car was overturned.
Officials at the University of Massachusetts said 15 people — all but one of them students — were arrested after thousands gathered on the Amherst campus to celebrate the Red Sox win. Most of those arrested were charged with failing to disperse and two also with assault and battery on a police officer. No injuries were reported.
In New Hampshire, celebrations turned destructive at several college campuses. In the largest incident, University of New Hampshire officials say police used pepper spray and pepper balls to break up a crowd of several hundred students that had gathered at the Durham campus. Officials said some of the students threw bottles and cans at officers; five were arrested on disorderly conduct charges.
At Keene State College, police also used pepper spray after students flipped over a vehicle and threw rocks, glass bottles and ice. No one was arrested.
Boston has hosted several celebrations over the last decade as the Celtics, Patriots, Bruins and Red Sox have all won titles since 2004, but some of the post-championship partying has caused problems. In 2004, a 21-year-old college student was killed by a pepper pellet fired by Boston police during crowd-control efforts following the Red Sox win in the American League Championship Series. In 2008, a 22-year-old man died after police took him into custody during street celebrations of the Celtics' title.
In St. Louis, fans were disappointed that the Cardinals lost.
Ed Moreland watched the game while cleaning offices at a downtown bank building. "We had a good team. We fought for it," he said. "Boston was just a bit stronger."
At The Dubliner, an Irish pub near the St. Louis Convention Center, bartender David Fitzgibbons suggested that collective excitement in the city dissipated after a 3-1 loss in Game 5 that left the Cardinals needing a two-game sweep in Boston to prevail.
"I don't think people's expectations were that high," he said.
Wednesday's game was a triumphant end to a hectic day in Boston — hours before the game, President Barack Obama delivered a talk at historic Faneuil Hall on his embattled heath care reform.
With the World Series and a presidential visit, police were on high alert. The marathon bombing prompted the deployment of extra dogs and undercover officers.
For the citizens of Red Sox Nation, the extra security, the traffic and the closed streets were a small price to pay for baseball glory.
"Since 1918, no one has experienced this," said Russ Stappen of Rockland, Mass., who shelled out several hundred dollars for his ticket. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be."
City officials planned to announce parade plans later Thursday. Boston Duck Tours tweeted after the game that the celebration would be held Saturday.
___
Associated Press writers Jay Lindsay and Bob Salsberg in Boston and Alan Scher Zagier in St. Louis contributed to this report.
LONDON (AP) — In a blockbuster declaration at Britain's phone hacking trial, a prosecutor said two of Rupert Murdoch's former senior tabloid executives — Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, later a top aide to Prime Minister David Cameron — had an affair lasting at least six years.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis made the disclosure Thursday during Coulson's and Brooks' trial on phone hacking and other charges, the first major criminal case to go to court in the hacking saga that has shaken Britain's political, judicial and media elite.
Brooks, Coulson and six other people are now on trial, including Brooks' current husband Charles. All deny the various charges against them, which range from phone hacking to bribing officials for scoops to obstructing police investigations.
Edis said the relationship between Brooks and Coulson was relevant to the hacking case because it showed they trusted one another and shared intimate information.
"Throughout the relevant period, what Mr. Coulson knew Mrs. Brooks knew, and what Mrs. Brooks knew Mr. Coulson knew," Edis said.
Edis said the affair began in 1998 and lasted about six years. If his timeline is correct, the affair ended before Coulson became Cameron's top communications director, which began after Cameron's election in 2010. Coulson started working for Cameron in 2007, when Cameron became leader of Britain's Conservative opposition party.
The affair covered the period when Brooks was the top editor of Murdoch's News of the World tabloid and Coulson was her deputy. Brooks edited the paper from 2000 to 2003, then went on to edit its sister paper, The Sun, and later became the chief executive of Murdoch's British newspaper division. Coulson edited the News of the World from 2003 to 2007.
The affair covered the crucial period in 2002 when the News of the World hacked the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler. Brooks has long denied knowing about that hacking. When the Dowler hacking case became public in 2011, the outrage in Britain was so great that Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old paper.
Edis said a February 2004 letter from Brooks showed there was "absolute confidence between the two of them in relation to all the problems at their work." He said the letter appeared to have been written by Brooks in response to Coulson's attempt to end the relationship.
"You are my very best friend. I tell you everything. I confide in you, I seek your advice," Brooks wrote, according to Edis. "Without our relationship in my life I am really not sure I will cope."
Edis said the affair was uncovered when police searched a computer found at Brooks' home in 2011 as part of the hacking investigation.
It's not clear whether the letter was ever sent.
Brooks married soap-opera star Ross Kemp in 2002. They later divorced and she married horse trainer Charles Brooks in 2009.
In his opening arguments Thursday, Edis said News of the World journalists, with consent from the tabloid's top editors, colluded to hack the phones of politicians, royalty, celebrities and even rival reporters in a "frenzy" to get scoops.
He said the "dog-eat-dog" environment led to routine lawbreaking that was sanctioned by those in charge of the Murdoch-owned tabloid: editors Rebekah Brooks and Coulson.
Jurors were shown email exchanges involving private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and News of the World news editor Ian Edmondson — one of the defendants — detailing the 2006 hacking of former government minister Tessa Jowell, royal family member Frederick Windsor and one-time Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was the subject of a major kiss-and-tell story from a mistress.
Mulcaire also hacked the phones of two journalists at the rival Mail on Sunday tabloid who were working on their own story about the Prescott affair, the prosecutor said.
"In the frenzy to get the huge story ... that's what you do," Edis said.
Edis also played a recording of Mulcaire "blagging" — seeking information about a voicemail password from a service provider using a false name. He said Mulcaire — an "accomplished" blagger and hacker — made the recording himself, and also recorded some of the voicemails he hacked.
The prosecutor said the emails, the recordings and pages from Mulcaire's notebooks provided "very clear evidence" of hacking so widespread that senior editors must have known about it.
Edis said Mulcaire was paid almost 100,000 pounds a year under a contract that started in 2001 and ended when he was arrested in 2006 for hacking the phones of royal aides. He and the tabloid's royal editor Clive Goodman were briefly jailed and for years, Murdoch's media company maintained that hacking had been limited only to that pair.
That claim was demolished when the Dowler case became public in 2011. Murdoch's company has since paid millions in compensation to scores of people whose phones were hacked.
Rebekah Brooks, Coulson, Edmondson and former managing editor Stuart Kuttner all deny charges of phone hacking. The trial is expected to last roughly six months.
Mulcaire has pleaded guilty, along with three former News of the World news editors.
Edis said there are few records of what Mulcaire was paid to do by the newspaper, but that senior editors must have known of his illicit activity.
"The question is, did nobody ever ask, 'What are we paying this chap for?'" he said. "Somebody must have decided that what he was doing was worth an awful lot of money. Who was that?"
He said Rebekah Brooks, who edited the News of the World when Mulcaire was put on retainer "was actively involved in financial management" and sent editors stern emails about keeping costs down.
Under Coulson, who succeeded her as editor, Mulcaire's fee was increased to 2,019 pounds a week.
Edis said there was no evidence that Mulcaire's fees were ever questioned.
"You would question it — unless you knew all about it," Edis said.
___
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
WASHINGTON (AP) — Obama administration officials defended U.S. efforts in Syria Thursday against blistering criticism from Republicans who claim Washington has goals, but no strategy to find a solution that would end the bloody conflict affecting nations throughout the Mideast.
Robert Ford, U.S. ambassador to Syria, testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States is proud of the humanitarian and other assistance it has provided to the Syrian opposition trying to topple President Bashar Assad's government. He acknowledged that the Syrian people were "deeply disappointed" when the U.S. did not take military action against the Syrian regime, but said the administration is working furiously to arrange a conference in Geneva next month to set up a transitional government and end the bloodshed.
Ford had tense exchanges with two of the committee's harshest GOP critics.
"You continue to call this a civil war, Ambassador Ford," said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. "This isn't a civil war anymore; this is a regional conflict. It's spread to Iraq. We now have al-Qaida resurgence in Iraq. It's destabilizing Jordan. Iran is all in. Hezbollah has 5,000 troops there. For you to describe this as a quote, 'civil war,' of course, is a gross distortion of the facts, which again makes many of us question your fundamental strategy because you are — you don't describe the realities on the ground."
Ford said he does not think that Assad can win militarily and only has the advantage in a few places like around Aleppo in northern Syria. He said Assad has a disadvantage on the battleground in other places, including some in the east and south.
McCain was not satisfied, saying Assad's killing of civilians remained unchecked.
"Come on. ... The fact is that he was about to be toppled a year ago, or over a year ago. Then Hezbollah came in. Then the Russians stepped up their effort. Then the Iranian Revolutionary Guard intervened in what you call a, quote, 'civil war,' and he turned the tide. And he continues to maintain his position of power and slaughtering innocent Syrian civilians. And you are relying on a Geneva conference, right?"
The prospects for an international peace conference in Geneva to end the war are unclear.
Assad told the Arab League-U.N. envoy Wednesday that foreign support for the armed opposition must end if any political solution to the country's conflict is to succeed.
The United States, Russia and the United Nations have been trying for months to bring the Syrian government and the opposition together in Geneva to attempt to negotiate a political resolution to the conflict. After repeated delays, efforts renewed in earnest last month to organize the conference, but the Syrian opposition remains deeply divided over whether to attend, while the government refuses to sit down with the armed opposition.
Meanwhile, fighting continued to rage in Syria. And the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights increased its estimate of the death toll of the war now in its third year. It said more than 120,000 people have been killed since the start of conflict, up from the previous estimate of 100,000. The new estimate said more than 61,000 of the dead were civilians.
"The problem itself is tragic ... and we want to help them," Ford said in one exchange with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the committee. "But ultimately, Senator, Syrians must fix this problem, and ultimately, Senator, it's going to require them to sit down at a table. The sooner they start, the better. But in the meantime, we will keep helping the opposition, Senator."
Corker, who has long been critical of the slow pace of aid to Syria, said he thinks the U.S. assistance to Syrian opposition has been an "embarrassment."
"I find it appalling that you would sit here and act as if we're doing the things we said we would do three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago," said Corker. "The London 11 (group of countries that support the opposition) has to look at us as one of the most feckless nations they've ever dealt with."
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., cautioned that the U.S. should approach the situation in Syria "with a lot of humility, given what we've learned after we intervened in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan; after what we've seen go on in Egypt."
"We should just have a little humility in the United States in terms of our ability to control events on the ground in these countries," he said.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the Foreign Relations panel's chairman, said in prepared remarks that progress toward destroying Syria's chemical weapons was "the only positive note" in the worsening crisis.
He referred to the announcement earlier Thursday by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that Syria had completed the destruction of equipment used to produce chemical weapons, meeting another deadline in an ambitious timeline to eliminate the country's entire stockpile by mid-2014.
But Menendez lamented the worsening humanitarian crisis caused by the war, noting it has created more than 2 million refugees, and he said lack of progress on a negotiated political settlement portends continued bloodshed and suffering.
___
Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.
(As UFC turns 20, we revisit each year from 2013 to 1993 with 20 articles in 20 days)
Since the advent of mustached strongmen, the circus has traveled around on the rails and pitched multicolored tents. Part of the attraction was that the attraction came to you. And part of the UFC’s model is similar -- the idea is to travel around to whatever sector of the globe is ready to embrace it. Instead of a tent, they pitch an Octagon. And unless you live in the Falklands or in upstate New York, chances are the UFC will end up in your general area sooner or later.
When the UFC decided to go to Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi in April of 2010, this felt by far like the craziest thing the promotion had attempted. It wasn’t that they sold off a minority portion of the company to Sheikh Tahnoon, or that it was headed to the Middle East, or that the event would be held alfresco under the wheeling constellations just like Tunney-Dempsey back in 1927 at Soldier Field…it was that there wasn’t a freaking venue in place.
It was that they were going to build a temporary arena to house UFC 112, and then tear it down a week later.
Therefore, "Concert Arena" was erected as nothing more than ephemera, just a glamorized squat house for the UFC’s visit. If that weren’t enough, it was built within something called "Ferrari World." You could practically see the Sheikh using $100 bills as kindling for his fireplace while swirling a glass of Henry IV cognac. Laughing. Laughing. (With the flames dancing in his eyes.)
The event in Abu Dhabi was a catalyst for a lot of things. It told everyone that the UFC meant business in taking the Octagon all over the world, not just ports in Europe and Canada. That night on April 10, 2010, the UFC rolled out two title fights like a lush red carpet, and yet neither of them came off even remotely close to what might be considered "reasonable expectation."
Frankie Edgar fought B.J. Penn in the co-main event, and Anderson Silva -- who was originally supposed to fight Vitor Belfort -- took on Demian Maia for the middleweight crown. Maia and Edgar were of course the sacrifices. I remember beforehand a very well known MMA journalist telling me, while emboldened by his Guinness, "Edgar might be the first fatality in the cage." He was of course exaggerating, but the sentiment was there; Edgar didn’t stand a chance.
Turns out Edgar did stand a chance, and in fact fairly dominated the scorecards en-route to taking Penn’s belt. That was the first "say what?" moment in a night full of eye rubbing. The Silva-Maia nightcap was one of the most bizarre main events to ever have pay-per-view customers screaming for rebates. In it Anderson Silva sort of flew off the handle. He mocked and preened and went into theatrics for much of the five rounds he wasn’t even supposed to need in putting Maia away. The performance was so remarkable for all the wrong reasons that Dana White put out a piece of caution on the Jim Rome Show afterwards that said this: He’d cut Anderson Silva if it happened again. Even the greatest living mixed martial artist in the world wouldn’t be suffered such shenanigans.
(This was the context for Silva and his rivalry with Chael Sonnen, who came along at just the right moment right after. Sonnen breathed life back into Silva, just like Silva became a sort of world stage for Sonnen to reinvent himself).
Zuffa owned the WEC, but at this point had kept the two organizations separate. The WEC had the smaller weight classes. The UFC had everything else. By October of 2010, with the UFC growing and holding more events and needing more star power to carry them, Dana White announced that the promotions would be merging. This was significant for two reasons. One, it meant existing undersized UFC lightweights could fight at 145 pounds without leaving the UFC. And two, it meant people like Cruz, Pettis, Demetrious Johnson, Benson Henderson, Benavidez, Mendes, Lamas and poster boy Urijah Faber would finally showcase their wares for those who avoided eye contact with the WEC’s blue cage.
The WEC would bring over a world of talent to the UFC.
"That was the goal -- it was always to find the best fighters," says Reed Harris, who was the general manager and face of the WEC. "We worked very hard at that. When I came into the office, I never would hear people say, ‘hey the lighting on that show was fantastic.’ Inherently I knew it was all about the fights, and that it’s all about the fighters. So we spent a lot of time looking at them, and went down to Brazil to find Jose Aldo. We did a lot of things that a lot of people didn’t do in trying to find the best people."
Jose Aldo. The man who made Americans figure out the correct order of the vowels in Nova Uniao.
"The first time I saw Jose, he jumped out of the cage, and I took him in back with his manager Andre Pederneiras -- and I’m a guy who rarely raises his voice, because that’s just not who I am -- but I was yelling at him," Harris says. "I read him the Riot Act. Little did I know he didn’t have any idea what I was saying, but he knew I was mad.
"The next show, I was in the cage after he won, and he looked at me, ran towards the door, stopped and then sat down," Harris says. "He looked up at me and smiled, kind of like a f--- you, and ever since then I’ve liked him. Now we’re very close. We spent a lot of time together."
Harris is now the Vice President of Community Relations with the UFC. Aldo is the long-tenured featherweight champion who is hovering the top three space of most pound-for-pound lists. At UFC 142, after Aldo knocked out Chad Mendes, Aldo disappeared into a sea of his countrymen once again. And once again, Harris was right there tapping his foot with his arms crossed.
"I yelled at him to get back in the cage," he says. "That’s his place, right? I wasn’t mad at him for doing it. It was crazy. I actually got punched in the crowd. Not on purpose. The guy who punched me looked at me like he was in shock because he was trying to grab Jose. It was just very chaotic, and I yelled at him to get back in for safety reasons."
That Harris is now scolding Aldo outside of the UFC Octagon instead of outside the WEC blue cage marks the evolution of the times. At some point along the way, Harris knew that the bantamweights and featherweights he’d helped along, not to mention his crop of high-powered lightweights, would all be migrating to the UFC. The thing was inevitable.
"I think at some point it was just decided, look, the UFC is going to be the dominant brand in this sport forever," he says. "Especially when all of us were watching these lighter-weight fights including Dana and Lorenzo and Frank [Fertitta], and they were seeing that they were entertaining and that people were interested. So why not add to the brand? Why not make the brand even stronger?"
On Feb. 1, 2014, at UFC 169 in Newark during Super Bowl weekend, the WEC’s elite will be on display. Renan Barao and Dominick Cruz will unify the bantamweight belts, and Aldo will defend his title against Ricardo Lamas.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The state of Alabama agreed Tuesday to settle the remaining challenges over its toughest-in-the-nation crackdown against illegal immigration, which has mostly been gutted by federal court decisions.
The state and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a proposed settlement that would end a federal lawsuit over the law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011, and the state separately filed documents to end a similar suit filed by the Justice Department. Federal courts later blocked main sections, including a one-of-a-kind provision that public schools must check students' citizenship status.
Courts have blocked key parts of similar immigration laws in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina and other states.
ACLU lawyer Cecillia Wang said the Alabama agreement also means a so-called "show me your papers" provision that allowed police to ask for citizenship documents cannot lead to detentions, as many immigrants had feared.
"Overall this is really a significant win for immigrant families in Alabama and anyone who cares about the rights of immigrants," said Wang, director of the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project.
The agreement permanently blocks sections of the law that were temporarily stopped by courts. The state also agreed to pay $350,000 in attorney fees and expenses for groups that sued to block the law.
Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange has defended the law in court, and Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed the law, and other Republican supporters said it was needed to protect the rights and jobs of legal Alabama residents
Strange said court rulings voided parts of the law, forcing the settlement.
"It is up to Washington to fulfill its responsibility to enforce the country's immigration laws," said Strange.
Bentley had no immediate comment on the agreements.
The deal followed the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year rejecting Alabama's appeal to revive parts of the law, which supporters and opponents billed as the nation's toughest against illegal immigration.
The school checks never occurred because of legal challenges, and many immigrants who initially fled the state in fear of arrest under the document check provision returned to Alabama.
Agricultural leaders were particularly critical of the law, which they said made it difficult to harvest crops because of a lack of migrant labor, but officials say those labor shortages eased as courts struck down sections of the act.
The Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which was heavily involved in the legal challenges, said legislators should repeal the act now that the state has settled the lawsuits.
"We warned the Legislature when they were debating HB 56 that if they passed this draconian law, we would sue in court and win," Kristi Graunke, an attorney with the organization, said in a statement. "That we have done."
Don't look now, but if we learned anything at UFC Fight Night 30, it's that one of the UFC's most exciting divisions is middleweight.
To those who've been watching the sport for more than a few years, this sounds almost comical. To those who've been watching even longer, it could almost be passed off as a pathetic attempting at trolling.
And yet, it's true. There are many ways to illustrate just how lackluster middleweight has historically been, but perhaps the best reminder was the reign of Anderson Silva when he was forced to defend his UFC middleweight title against Patrick Cote, Thales Leites and Demian Maia. Those are all accomplished fighters, but two of them don't even compete in that weight class anymore. The other was cut from the UFC and only recently returned after a mostly successful stint in regional MMA.
Silva's resume is impeccable, but his peers can barely hang onto employment? That's hardly the mark of talent-rich division.
And when he wasn't defending his title against complete non-challengers, Silva was moonlighting as a light heavyweight. There aren't many fighters who force the UFC to give them challenges in different weight classes because the one they're competing in is abysmally thin enough to force boredom.
Remember Silva not doing anything in title fights because he couldn't be bothered to fight competitors that far below his level? That is the scarlet letter middleweight has been carrying around.
Yes, Silva is arguably the greatest fighter of all time. He's going to make most fighters look bad. Even very good ones. But it's one thing for them to look bad at Silva's hand and it's quite another for them to demonstrate the rigors of simply maintaining position in the weight class is too tall an order to handle.
That's all behind us now, however. Now we have a middleweight division with a new champion (Chris Weidman). We have a man some consider the best fighter ever trying to reclaim a title he lost when he was brutally knocked out. If nothing else, that creates intrigue at the top of the division.
We have more than that, though. Today, there's depth in this space. We have an infusion of talent from Strikeforce (Luke Rockhold, Ronaldo Souza and Gegard Mousasi). We have a surging veteran (Vitor Belfort). We also have a former UFC light heavyweight champion dropping down to stake a new claim in Lyoto Machida.
The reality is middleweight isn't just thin in the UFC. It's thin in all of MMA, much as lightweight isn't just strong in the UFC, but other organizations as well. My point is not that these institutional or existential reasons for middleweight not being very good are all of a sudden changed. But right now in this division, there's a reason to enjoy the sudden intrigue that's now there. Maybe the circumstances that have created this are ephemeral, but they're here now. Might as well enjoy them before things change.
One wonders how much Silva being so dominant made things so lackluster. Something similar is happening at light heavyweight with Jon Jones dominating everyone he fights. Yet, Alexander Gustafsson happened and that all changed. Daniel Cormier is also making his way down, which adds to that narrative. Just as things were getting boring, now there's a reason to pay attention.
Perhaps the best thing for any division, be it middle or flyweight, is to have things shaken up when they get stale. Lucky for us, that's exactly what we're getting at middleweight right now. With new blood at the top, middle and bottom and a rearrangement of the division's hierarchy, all of a sudden there's hope.
The middleweight division is dead. Long live the middleweight division.
President Barack Obama smiles after he said that environmental protesters who interrupted his speech were at the wrong event as he speaks at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall about the federal health care law, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013. Faneuil Hall is where former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama's rival in the 2012 presidential election, signed the state's landmark health care law in 2006, with top Democrats standing by his side. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama smiles after he said that environmental protesters who interrupted his speech were at the wrong event as he speaks at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall about the federal health care law, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013. Faneuil Hall is where former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama's rival in the 2012 presidential election, signed the state's landmark health care law in 2006, with top Democrats standing by his side. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Confronted with missteps in his own administration, President Barack Obama has frequently pleaded ignorance, suggesting he couldn't be at fault about things he did not know.
That was the case with the embarrassing healthcare.gov rollout. And, according to a U.S. official, Obama didn't know until recently that the U.S. had secretly monitored the German chancellor's phone for a decade.
It's an argument with benefits but also risks for the White House. Use it too often and the tactic emboldens critics who claim the president is incompetent, detached and not fully in control.
Obama's aides say they deliberate intensively about what to tell the president. They're eager to protect his time and concentration, but want to ensure he has information he needs to make decisions, respond to questions and promote his agenda.
President Obama talks up the Affordable Care Act at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall on Wednesday.
Charles Dharapak/AP
President Obama talks up the Affordable Care Act at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall on Wednesday.
Charles Dharapak/AP
Assuming HealthCare.gov's technical problems are largely fixed by November's end, as Obama administration officials have reassured, Democrats will still face an even headier challenge: They must square with reality President Obama's oft-made promise that the new health care law would allow people to keep existing insurance plans they like.
Yes, most people who get their health insurance through large employers aren't likely to see major changes.
But for the millions who buy their health insurance through the individual market, changes prompted by the Affordable Care Act are definitely happening. Among them: people finding insurance cancellation letters in their mailboxes.
Although the law includes a provision for some existing policies to continue even if they don't meet Obamacare's minimum coverage standards, some insurance companies are dropping such policies rather than claim their "grandfathered" exception. And people who held (and perhaps liked) those minimalist policies and what they cost now must find insurance elsewhere.
In a Boston speech Wednesday partly aimed at rebutting charges that he misled Americans through blanket statements about individuals maintaining coverage they liked, Obama suggested he always played it straight. Any misunderstanding must've come from elsewhere:
"Now if you had one of these substandard plans before the Affordable Care Act became law and you really liked that plan, you were able to keep it. That's what I said when I was running for office.
"That was part of the promise we made.
"But ever since the law was passed, if insurers decided to downgrade or cancel these substandard plans, what we said under the law is, you've got to replace them with quality, comprehensive coverage because that too was a central premise of the Affordable Care Act from the very beginning."
That's obviously the spin the administration landed on; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius delivered a similar message during her House Energy and Commerce Committee testimony Wednesday.
The problem for the administration and congressional Democrats who support the law, however, is that the president has repeatedly made some variation of this simple promise: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it."
Obama may not have intended a bait-and-switch, but the accusations have gained traction because so many people — generally those who bought their own insurance — clearly won't be allowed to hold on to existing policies under the ACA.
Those charges play into the Republican narrative that Obamacare is bad law with terrible consequences for Americans. And Obama's explanation only fueled more Republican criticisms. Attack ads have already started, and conceivably could continue from now until Election Day 2014 if Democrats can't figure out a way to neutralize the problem.
"It's beyond disappointing that, despite the evidence, the president continues to mislead the American people about his health care law. The president promised that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. It wasn't true when he said it years ago, and, as millions of Americans are finding out, it's not true now."
For congressional Democrats already made nervous by the severe technical problems experienced by the federal health exchange website on its launch, the focus on insurance policy cancellations only adds to anxieties as they head into a difficult midterm election year.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., a red-state Democrat who occupies a Senate seat Republicans view as a potential pickup, said Tuesday she planned to introduce a bill to allow people to retain insurance they like.
That is exactly the right move for congressional Democrats, said Steve McMahon, a Democratic political consultant at Purple Strategies.
"If I were in the Senate today, I would go to [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid and say, 'Let's grandfather everybody in as a matter of policy,' " McMahon said. "Let's pass a fix. And then drop it over on the House side."
Of course, Republicans might be loath to fix the law, since their stated goal has been to repeal or defund it and they want to keep its flaws alive as an issue.
"They won't do anything with it," predicted McMahon of the GOP-controlled House. "But it makes their hypocrisy much clearer to everyone."
Democrats "have two choices right now" when it comes to those losing their policies because of Obamacare, says McMahon: "You can either say to them, 'Hey, I'm really sorry about that.' Or you can say, 'We fixed it and the Republicans didn't.' Which would you rather say if you were a Democratic officeholder?"
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Brian's back from an exceedingly short vacation (thanks Apple!) and Joseph and Dana have come along for the right. Lots to talk about this week, so grab a beverage, pull up a chair and jump on into the chat after the break today at 3:30Pm ET for a very spooky Halloween edition of The Engadget ...
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