THE FOLLOWING IS ONE OF THOSE NEWS SMORGASBORDS. READ WHAT INTERESTS YOU. THEY ARE ALL INTERESTING TO ME, BUT THOSE AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE HOPEFULLY HAVE THE MOST IMPORTANT SUBJECT MATTER. THE FIRST IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT WILL GIVE YOU A LAUGH. BELIEVE IT OR NOT, MOST OF THIS CAME FROM CBS AND NBC TODAY. ENJOY!


March 12, 2017


News and Views


STARTING THE NEWS DAY WITH SOME JOY

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/03/10/kids-crash-dads-live-bbc-tv-interview-viral-video
VIRAL Two Adorable Kids Totally Derailed Their Dad's Live TV Interview

PRICELESS VIDEO. GO TO WEBSITE.

A BBC News show went off the rails this morning - in a good way - when two unexpected young guests crashed their dad's serious commentary on South Korea.

Robert Kelly, professor of political science at Pusan National University, was on the BBC show to talk about the removal from office of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye.

As Kelly spoke about the president's impeachment, his two adorable children burst through the door to his home office where he was filming.

Kelly gamely tried to stay focused as a woman frantically burst through the door and desperately herded the noisy little ones away.

Kelly couldn't help but laugh and offer his apologies.

"Robert, many thanks," the host laughed at the end of the segment.

"That's a first time for everything. I think you've got some children who need you!"

Watch the hilarious clip above.



http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brexit-referendum/brexit-scotland-indyref2-appears-likely-uk-divorce-eu-looms-n731676
NEWS BREXIT REFERENDUM MAR 12 2017, 5:30 AM ET
Brexit and Scotland: ‘Indyref2’ Appears Likely as UK Divorce From EU Looms
by ALASTAIR JAMIESON


LONDON — Scotland's leader has indicated a new vote on independence from Britain could be held next year in response to Brexit — and polls suggest support for secession is rising.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says a ballot is "highly likely" after British voters opted to leave the European Union. Scotland voted against Brexit, but the U.K. overall backed it (52 percent to 48 percent) on June 23.

Image: Nicola Sturgeon
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Paul Ellis / AFP - Getty Images
The prospect of Scottish independence means Britain's looming divorce from the EU could also see the break-up of the United Kingdom.

It also raises the pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May as she prepares to trigger formal exit negotiations later this month with the other 27 members of the EU.

Those talks are estimated to take up to two years. The fall of 2018 would therefore be a "common sense" date for a Scottish independence referendum, Sturgeon said in a BBC interview on Thursday.

Hasn't Scotland Decided This Already?
Yes. A referendum on independence — abbreviated to "indyref" — was held in September 2014 and the idea was defeated by 55 percent to 45 percent as voters shied away from ending 300 years of ties to London.

Sturgeon's predecessor had acknowledged that the 2014 poll was a "once in a generation opportunity" for Scotland. However, the 2016 Brexit vote has brought the issue back into play.

What Changed?
The Brexit result swiftly reopened Britain's constitutional wounds. A majority of voters in England and Wales voted to leave the EU but Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay.

Sturgeon says Scots face being forced out of the European single market and customs union against their will because the U.K. as a whole voted to leave, and that Brexit has dramatically changed the political circumstances.

Image: People walk over Westminster Bridge wrapped in Union flags
People walk over London's Westminster Bridge wrapped in Union flags on June 26, 2016. Odd Andersen / AFP - Getty Images
Her pro-independence Scottish National Party senses an opportunity to turn public opinion in favor of separation by capitalizing on anger over Brexit.

Does Scotland Have the Power to Hold Another Referendum?
No, but that's not seen as a major issue. Control of education, health care and a slew of other matters is devolved from London's Westminster to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. But a special authority — known as a "section 30 order" — would be needed in order to hold another referendum.

May is firmly opposed to Scottish independence but hasn't given a clear answer on whether she would veto any request for a referendum. However, doing so would likely be self-defeating since it would play directly into the hands of Scottish nationalists.

What Happens Next?
May and Sturgeon have been performing a political dance in recent weeks. Sturgeon reportedly believes May's official notification of withdrawal from the EU — promised sometime before the end of March — is a key milestone, and that no decision on a referendum would be made until then.

Photograph -- Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in red, stands behind British Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II at the dedication service of The Iraq and Afghanistan memorial at Horse Guards Parade on March 9, 2017 in London. Stuart C. Wilson / Getty Images

However, Sturgeon must address her party conference next weekend and could use that moment as a launch pad for what is already being termed "indyref2."

What Do Polls Say?
Most polls show support for independence in Scotland has barely shifted since the 2014 vote and that most Scots do not relish another bruising national debate.

However, a poll by Ipsos MORI published Thursday showed that, among those likely to vote, support for independence had risen to 50 percent, neck and neck with those who want to remain in the United Kingdom.

That was a two point increase in support for independence compared to Ipsos MORI's last poll. They surveyed 1,029 people by telephone between Feb. 24 and March 6.

Image: Campaigners wave Scottish flags at a 'Yes' campaign rally in Glasgow
Campaigners wave Scottish flags at a "Yes" campaign rally in Glasgow on Sept. 17, 2014. Dylan Martinez / Reuters
In February, a survey by BMG for the Herald newspaper also found the gap had narrowed to 51 percent in favor of remaining in the U.K. versus 49 percent supporting secession.

Nevertheless the margins are narrow and the polls are not yet consistent enough to paint a clear picture.

Scottish politics and polling expert John Curtice wrote last week: "The broader truth is that, in a country that is still so divided on the merits of independence, it is difficult for either side to claim clear majority support in any aspect of the surrounding debate — and that includes the debate on holding a second ballot."

It's the Economy
While Scots expressed a preference for access to the single market and cross-border movement, they might be less persuaded on the economic case for Scottish independence — a subject of intense debate during the 2014 referendum.

Scotland has a population of around 5.3 million, according to the most recent census, slightly more than 8 percent of the United Kingdom's population as a whole.

Photograph --
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LONDON — Scotland's leader has indicated a new vote on independence from Britain could be held next year in response to Brexit — and polls suggest support for secession is rising.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says a ballot is "highly likely" after British voters opted to leave the European Union. Scotland voted against Brexit, but the U.K. overall backed it (52 percent to 48 percent) on June 23.

Image: Nicola Sturgeon
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Paul Ellis / AFP - Getty Images
The prospect of Scottish independence means Britain's looming divorce from the EU could also see the break-up of the United Kingdom.

It also raises the pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May as she prepares to trigger formal exit negotiations later this month with the other 27 members of the EU.

Those talks are estimated to take up to two years. The fall of 2018 would therefore be a "common sense" date for a Scottish independence referendum, Sturgeon said in a BBC interview on Thursday.

Hasn't Scotland Decided This Already?
Yes. A referendum on independence — abbreviated to "indyref" — was held in September 2014 and the idea was defeated by 55 percent to 45 percent as voters shied away from ending 300 years of ties to London.

Sturgeon's predecessor had acknowledged that the 2014 poll was a "once in a generation opportunity" for Scotland. However, the 2016 Brexit vote has brought the issue back into play.

What Changed?
The Brexit result swiftly reopened Britain's constitutional wounds. A majority of voters in England and Wales voted to leave the EU but Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay.

Sturgeon says Scots face being forced out of the European single market and customs union against their will because the U.K. as a whole voted to leave, and that Brexit has dramatically changed the political circumstances.

Image: People walk over London's Westminster Bridge wrapped in Union flags on June 26, 2016. Odd Andersen / AFP - Getty Images

Her pro-independence Scottish National Party senses an opportunity to turn public opinion in favor of separation by capitalizing on anger over Brexit.

Does Scotland Have the Power to Hold Another Referendum?
No, but that's not seen as a major issue. Control of education, health care and a slew of other matters is devolved from London's Westminster to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. But a special authority — known as a "section 30 order" — would be needed in order to hold another referendum.

May is firmly opposed to Scottish independence but hasn't given a clear answer on whether she would veto any request for a referendum. However, doing so would likely be self-defeating since it would play directly into the hands of Scottish nationalists.

What Happens Next?
May and Sturgeon have been performing a political dance in recent weeks. Sturgeon reportedly believes May's official notification of withdrawal from the EU — promised sometime before the end of March — is a key milestone, and that no decision on a referendum would be made until then.

Image: Dedication & Unveiling Of The Iraq And Afghanistan Memorial
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in red, stands behind British Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II at the dedication service of The Iraq and Afghanistan memorial at Horse Guards Parade on March 9, 2017 in London. Stuart C. Wilson / Getty Images
However, Sturgeon must address her party conference next weekend and could use that moment as a launch pad for what is already being termed "indyref2."

What Do Polls Say?
Most polls show support for independence in Scotland has barely shifted since the 2014 vote and that most Scots do not relish another bruising national debate.

However, a poll by Ipsos MORI published Thursday showed that, among those likely to vote, support for independence had risen to 50 percent, neck and neck with those who want to remain in the United Kingdom.

That was a two point increase in support for independence compared to Ipsos MORI's last poll. They surveyed 1,029 people by telephone between Feb. 24 and March 6.

Image: Campaigners wave Scottish flags at a 'Yes' campaign rally in Glasgow
Campaigners wave Scottish flags at a "Yes" campaign rally in Glasgow on Sept. 17, 2014. Dylan Martinez / Reuters
In February, a survey by BMG for the Herald newspaper also found the gap had narrowed to 51 percent in favor of remaining in the U.K. versus 49 percent supporting secession.

Nevertheless the margins are narrow and the polls are not yet consistent enough to paint a clear picture.

Scottish politics and polling expert John Curtice wrote last week: "The broader truth is that, in a country that is still so divided on the merits of independence, it is difficult for either side to claim clear majority support in any aspect of the surrounding debate — and that includes the debate on holding a second ballot."

It's the Economy
While Scots expressed a preference for access to the single market and cross-border movement, they might be less persuaded on the economic case for Scottish independence — a subject of intense debate during the 2014 referendum.

Scotland has a population of around 5.3 million, according to the most recent census, slightly more than 8 percent of the United Kingdom's population as a whole.

Image: Backers of Scottish independence
Backers of Scottish independence pose with their faces painted with St Andrew's Cross during a rally in Glasgow on Sept. 19, 2015. Andy Buchanan / AFP-Getty Images, file

Nationalists say Scotland stands to benefit from remaining on better terms with the rest of Europe amid anger at Britain's decision to leave.

However, pro-Union parties say the global fall in oil prices, and subsequent collapse in revenues from North Sea oil, means the prospects for an economically successful independent Scotland have weakened significantly since 2014.


MACHINE TWEETS RACIST AND SEXIST COMMENTS – PROOF THAT MY FEAR OF “INTELLIGENT MACHINES” IS VALID. MACHINE TWEETS RACIST AND SEXIST COMMENTS – PROOF THAT MY FEAR OF “INTELLIGENT MACHINES” IS VALID. FOR MORE ON ALGORITHM BIAS, GO TO https://www.propublica.org/article/bias-in-criminal-risk-scores-is-mathematically-inevitable-researchers-say. PROGRAMMERS NEED TO CREATE MORE CLEAR-CUT AND DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS. A COMPUTER THAT CLASSIFIES A PHOTO OF A BLACK PERSON WITH GORILLAS IS UNDERSTANDABLE, BUT VERY PROBLEMATIC. USING THIS SYSTEM TO SELECT PEOPLE TO FILL POSITIONS ON THE JOB OR TO DECIDE WHO WILL BE CONSIDERED QUALIFIED TO GET PAROLE FROM PRISON IS REALLY SCARY.


http://www.nbcnews.com/mach/technology/ai-learns-us-we-re-becoming-better-teachers-n731861
MACH MAR 10 2017, 2:17 PM ET
Algorithms Learn From Us, and We’ve Been Bad Parents
by BAHAR GHOLIPOUR

Until a few years ago, computers couldn't tell the difference between images of dogs and ones of cats. Today, computer programs use machine-learning algorithms to study piles of data and learn about the world and its people.

Algorithms can tell a banker whether someone will pay back a loan. They can pick the right applicant out of thousands of resumes. They assist judges to determine a prisoner's risk of returning to a life of crime. These algorithms can improve our decision-making by considering troves of data, and then reducing human error.

But we're also learning that algorithms, like humans, can discriminate. As they learn from real-world data, algorithms pick up sexist, racist, and otherwise damaging biases that have long plagued human culture.

Related: Scientists are Teaching Computers to Predict the Future

The past year has been full of shocking examples: Google's photo app classified images of black people as gorillas. Nikon's smart camera thought Asian people were blinking. Microsoft's AI powered Tay was an innocent chatbot designed to learn by conversing with people on Twitter — in less than a day it sent out such abhorrent tweets that it had to be taken down. Last year, a ProPublica investigation revealed that a software used to determine a defendant's risk of recidivism is twice as likely to falsely flag black individuals.

Most of these incidents are unintentional. Machine-learning is a type of artificial intelligence that instructs, enables, and empowers algorithms to extract patterns found in data. And not all the patterns found are fair or correct.

"We are increasingly seeing machine-learning methods are used to study social processes and make recommendations about, for example, who to hire," said Hanna Wallach, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and adjunct associate professor at UMass Amherst. "In reality, these social processes themselves have a number of structural biases. We definitely don't live in a perfect world."

Play -- our New Favorite Song Has Been Chosen By An Algorithm 2:07

Now that these issues have surfaced, computer scientists and ethicists are looking for ways to detect and fix algorithmic bias and prevent a future in which minorities continue to be disadvantaged by the spillover of prejudice into artificial intelligence. Their efforts may signify a shift of culture in computer science, a field historically focused on making technical tools without having to worry about their social consequences.

"Physics had its ethical moment with the Manhattan project: a very horrifying, crystal clear event," says Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer scientist at the University of Utah. "I think computer science has had more of a slow drip of those moments."

Teaching Machines Not to Be Sexist
Most parents are careful to watch their language in front of the kids. Systems equipped with artificial intelligence may require a similar treatment.

Some algorithms are designed to learn about the world by reading text, and in doing so pick up useful associations between the words. The algorithms learn, for example, that the word king is related to the word man, and likewise, queen is related to woman. But language can be biased. Two years ago, Adam Kalai and his colleagues at Microsoft Research noticed algorithms were learning associations to words that aren't objectively true, but merely reflect historical biases in society. For example, an algorithm learned that a man is related to engineer, whereas a woman is related to homemaker.

Imagine such a system is tasked with finding the right resume for a programming job. If the applicant's name is John, he's more likely to be picked than someone named Mary.

"The good news is that once we detect the bug, we can fix this," Kalai says. "We can remove these biases from the computer and it's actually easier than trying to remove the same bias from a person."

Teaching Fairness to an Algorithm
While most humans have an instinctive idea of what it means to be fair, it's much harder to come up with a universal definition of fairness, turn that into a mathematical expression, and teach it to an algorithm.

“We can remove these biases from the computer and it’s actually easier than trying to remove the same bias from a person.”
But it is possible to find out when an algorithm is treating users unfairly based on their gender or race. Last year, a Carnegie Mellon research team tested Google ads for bias by simulating people searching online for jobs. The team discovered that high-income jobs were shown to men much more often that they were shown to women. These types of problems could be prevented if companies ran simulations internally to test their algorithms, the researchers said.

An international team from the United States, Switzerland, and Germany has developed a toolkit called FairTest, which helps developers check their applications for bias. It looks for unfair associations that the program might inadvertently form and can reveal, for example, biases against older people in a health application or offensive racial labeling in an image-tagging app.

Checking for fairness could eventually become a basic aspect of programing, says Samuel Drews, a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison who works on a similar fairness-checking tool.

"Since the earlier days of computer programing, going back to Alan Turing, people were concerned with developing a proof that the code does what it's supposed to do, that the code is formally correct," Drews says. "So maybe thinking forward, one definition of correctness for algorithms should be that they are fair. That they don't discriminate against people."

Holding Algorithms Accountable
What if someone is refused a loan and suspects it had something to do with the area they live, which happens to include a lot of people with low credit scores?

They may never find out what happened as it's extremely difficult to inquire about the inner-workings of an algorithm or legally challenge it, explains Solon Barocas, a researcher at Microsoft Research.

"It requires a significant amount of insight into how the model is developed, and often people who are discriminated against won't be in a position to learn those things," Barocas says.

Until a few years ago, computers couldn't tell the difference between images of dogs and ones of cats. Today, computer programs use machine-learning algorithms to study piles of data and learn about the world and its people.

Algorithms can tell a banker whether someone will pay back a loan. They can pick the right applicant out of thousands of resumes. They assist judges to determine a prisoner's risk of returning to a life of crime. These algorithms can improve our decision-making by considering troves of data, and then reducing human error.

But we're also learning that algorithms, like humans, can discriminate. As they learn from real-world data, algorithms pick up sexist, racist, and otherwise damaging biases that have long plagued human culture.

Related: Scientists are Teaching Computers to Predict the Future

The past year has been full of shocking examples: Google's photo app classified images of black people as gorillas. Nikon's smart camera thought Asian people were blinking. Microsoft's AI powered Tay was an innocent chatbot designed to learn by conversing with people on Twitter — in less than a day it sent out such abhorrent tweets that it had to be taken down. Last year, a ProPublica investigation revealed that a software used to determine a defendant's risk of recidivism is twice as likely to falsely flag black individuals.

Most of these incidents are unintentional. Machine-learning is a type of artificial intelligence that instructs, enables, and empowers algorithms to extract patterns found in data. And not all the patterns found are fair or correct.

"We are increasingly seeing machine-learning methods are used to study social processes and make recommendations about, for example, who to hire," said Hanna Wallach, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and adjunct associate professor at UMass Amherst. "In reality, these social processes themselves have a number of structural biases. We definitely don't live in a perfect world."

Play Your New Favorite Song Has Been Chosen By An Algorithm Facebook Twitter Google Plus Embed
Your New Favorite Song Has Been Chosen By An Algorithm 2:07
Now that these issues have surfaced, computer scientists and ethicists are looking for ways to detect and fix algorithmic bias and prevent a future in which minorities continue to be disadvantaged by the spillover of prejudice into artificial intelligence. Their efforts may signify a shift of culture in computer science, a field historically focused on making technical tools without having to worry about their social consequences.

"Physics had its ethical moment with the Manhattan project: a very horrifying, crystal clear event," says Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer scientist at the University of Utah. "I think computer science has had more of a slow drip of those moments."

Teaching Machines Not to Be Sexist
Most parents are careful to watch their language in front of the kids. Systems equipped with artificial intelligence may require a similar treatment.

Some algorithms are designed to learn about the world by reading text, and in doing so pick up useful associations between the words. The algorithms learn, for example, that the word king is related to the word man, and likewise, queen is related to woman. But language can be biased. Two years ago, Adam Kalai and his colleagues at Microsoft Research noticed algorithms were learning associations to words that aren't objectively true, but merely reflect historical biases in society. For example, an algorithm learned that a man is related to engineer, whereas a woman is related to homemaker.

Imagine such a system is tasked with finding the right resume for a programming job. If the applicant's name is John, he's more likely to be picked than someone named Mary.

"The good news is that once we detect the bug, we can fix this," Kalai says. "We can remove these biases from the computer and it's actually easier than trying to remove the same bias from a person."

Teaching Fairness to an Algorithm
While most humans have an instinctive idea of what it means to be fair, it's much harder to come up with a universal definition of fairness, turn that into a mathematical expression, and teach it to an algorithm.

“We can remove these biases from the computer and it’s actually easier than trying to remove the same bias from a person.”
But it is possible to find out when an algorithm is treating users unfairly based on their gender or race. Last year, a Carnegie Mellon research team tested Google ads for bias by simulating people searching online for jobs. The team discovered that high-income jobs were shown to men much more often that they were shown to women. These types of problems could be prevented if companies ran simulations internally to test their algorithms, the researchers said.

An international team from the United States, Switzerland, and Germany has developed a toolkit called FairTest, which helps developers check their applications for bias. It looks for unfair associations that the program might inadvertently form and can reveal, for example, biases against older people in a health application or offensive racial labeling in an image-tagging app.

Checking for fairness could eventually become a basic aspect of programing, says Samuel Drews, a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison who works on a similar fairness-checking tool.

"Since the earlier days of computer programing, going back to Alan Turing, people were concerned with developing a proof that the code does what it's supposed to do, that the code is formally correct," Drews says. "So maybe thinking forward, one definition of correctness for algorithms should be that they are fair. That they don't discriminate against people."

Holding Algorithms Accountable
What if someone is refused a loan and suspects it had something to do with the area they live, which happens to include a lot of people with low credit scores?

They may never find out what happened as it's extremely difficult to inquire about the inner-workings of an algorithm or legally challenge it, explains Solon Barocas, a researcher at Microsoft Research.

"It requires a significant amount of insight into how the model is developed, and often people who are discriminated against won't be in a position to learn those things," Barocas says.

Play Meet Baxter, the Friendly Robot You Control With Your Mind Facebook Twitter Google Plus Embed
Meet Baxter, the Friendly Robot You Control With Your Mind 0:58
It doesn't help that most algorithms are like a black box and that their details are closely guarded secrets. This, however, may change soon. The European Union has just introduced regulations that will require algorithms, such as those used by lending banks, to be able to explain their decision-making process, essentially giving people a "right to explanation."

It's also becoming easier to build algorithms that can explain what they do.

"It's computationally hard to build something that's transparent, so most people don't even try," says Cynthia Rudin, an associate professor of computer science at Duke University who works on publically available tools for building transparent algorithms. "But we are now at a stage where the computers are powerful enough so we shouldn't be too scared of those problems."

Related: Self-Driving Cars Will Turn Intersections Into High-Speed Ballet

The next generation of computer scientists may be educated differently, says Venkatasubramanian, who sees a growing trend of courses about developing fair algorithms. "We are working on building educational modules that anyone in data mining and machine learning can use to understand issues of ethics and fairness."

All these efforts could lead to big reward. Algorithms have the potential to become better and fairer decision-makers than humans. We can't expect a recruiter to look at a job applicant and completely ignore his or her gender. But we can carefully shield algorithms from learning the implicit biases that humans find hard to shake off.

Despite the challenges, the future looks promising, Venkatasubramanian says.

"What makes me excited is that just two years ago it was so shocking to see the problems but now we are working on it and have tools. We just have to figure out how to most effectively use them."

BAHAR GHOLIPOUR
TOPICS TECHNOLOGY
FIRST PUBLISHED MAR 10 2017, 2:17 PM ET



THE CHURCHES IN MODERN TIMES

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sxsw-pope-francis-twitter-instagram-accounts-get-help-bishop-n732446
TECH MAR 12 2017, 1:49 PM ET
SXSW: Pope Francis’ Twitter, Instagram Accounts Get Help From This Bishop
by ALYSSA NEWCOMB, JO LING KENT and CHIARA SOTTILE

AUSTIN, Texas — For a guy who has said he isn't very tech savvy, Pope Francis has embraced Twitter and Instagram as powerful tools to communicate with the world.

Bishop Paul Tighe is the man helping the 80-year-old pontiff spread his message to the world on Twitter and Instagram in a handful of languages.

NBC at SXSW: Meet the Man Behind Pope Francis's Twitter, Instagram Accounts Facebook Twitter Google Plus Embed
NBC at SXSW: Meet the Man Behind Pope Francis's Twitter, Instagram Accounts 8:10

"This is real. It's happening now and it is shaping how people think, how they form their ideas, how they get their education," Tighe told NBC News at the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas.

"If we aren't present in that digital world, we are going to be absent from their experience," he said. "We were told by Christ to go out to the whole world, to bring good news to everybody."

And that includes what he said Pope Benedict called the "digital continent."

Related: At SXSW, Tech Takes a Stand For Transgender Rights, Planned Parenthood [THIS ACRONYM STANDS FOR SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST, AN ANNUAL MUSICAL AND FILM VENUE HELD IN AUSTIN TX.]

Benedict, who has been out of the public eye since stepping down and becoming pope emeritus, was the first pontiff to embrace social media when he joined Twitter in 2012.

Pope Francis has shown a desire to understand technology and the way it connects people around the world. In 2016, he held separate meetings in Vatican City with some of tech's most important leaders, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

And after spending time with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom in February 2016, the pontiff followed up the next month by joining the app under the username Franciscus.

One year later and he's already posted 330 times, with captions in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French.

"It's not a separate world — it's integrated," Tighe said. We live digitally and we live our everyday lives concretely as well."



SANDERS NEWS TODAY

RURAL AMERICA

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-plans-to-send-populist-progressivism-back-to-coal-country/
By JOHN BAT CBS NEWS March 12, 2017, 12:20 PM
Bernie Sanders to pitch populist agenda to coal county

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said on Sunday that he will travel to struggling McDowell County, West Virginia, on Monday to pitch his agenda on issues such as health care, jobs and education.

“They have been abandoned by everybody. This is a county where life expectancy is actually going down. People are living shorter lives than their parents. Unemployment is rampant. Healthcare and education inadequate,” Sanders told “Face the Nation” moderator John Dickerson.

“The point of going to McDowell County is to make the point that all over rural America, not just in West Virginia, people have been ignored for too long,” he added.

McDowell County voted overwhelmingly Republican in the 2016 election. According to Politico, President Donald Trump garnered about 75 percent of the popular vote there.

Sanders will attempt to reconcile his progressive proposals with conservative voters next week and talk about infrastructure investments, an issue that Mr. Trump, too, has promised to tackle.

“We need major investments and decent jobs in parts of the area where unemployment is so high,” Sanders said on the program.

Sanders will also likely tout benefits established through Obamacare to a Republican-dominated legislature, which just introduced its own health-care vision last week, the American Health Care Act, which has received mixed reviews among members of the GOP.

“We need to focus on health care. And by the way, the Republican plan would devastate rural America especially states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which have done quite well in lowering the number of uninsured because of the Affordable Care Act,” Sanders said.

This will not be the Vermont senator’s first visit to McDowell County, where unemployment has spiked in over the decades, even between national economic booms and rock-bottoms.

In May 2016, Sanders made a campaign stop at a food bank in Kimball, West Virginia, where he pitched a subsidy bill for Appalachia communities left in the cold by the dissolution of fossil-fuel jobs.

Sanders attempted to distance himself then and establish a variance between himself and another party leader, Hillary Clinton, amidst a competitive Democratic primary.


EASTERN EUROPEAN AND RUSSIAN FAKE NEWS SOURCES – GO ALSO TO GOOGLE AND LOOK UP “SOCK ACCOUNT.” IT’S VERY INTERESTING. MAXIMILIAN GOTTLIEB AT BIENTS.COM IS THE OBVIOUS MOST LIKELY SOURCE FOR TRUMP’S “FAKE NEWS, RATHER THAN CNN, CBS, ETC.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-fake-news-russia_us_58c34d97e4b0ed71826cdb36
POLITICS 03/11/2017 01:54 pm ET | Updated 1 hour ago
Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Faced A Fake News Tsunami. Where Did It Come From?
The trolls set out to distract and divide the invigorated left.
By Ryan Grim , Jason Cherkis

Photograph -- Facebook groups backing Sen. Bernie Sanders were slammed with fake news links last year. SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

WASHINGTON ― Last June, John Mattes started noticing something coursing like a virus through the Facebook page he helped administer for Bernie Sanders fans in San Diego. People with no apparent ties to California were friending the page and sharing links from unfamiliar sites full of anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda.

The stories they posted weren’t the normal complaints he was used to seeing as the Vermont senator and the former secretary of state fought out the Democratic presidential primary. These stories alleged that Clinton had murdered her political opponents and used body doubles.

Mattes, 66, had been a television reporter and Senate investigator in previous lives. He put his expertise in unmasking fraudsters to work. At first, he suspected that the sites were created by the old Clinton haters from the ‘90s ― what Hillary Clinton had dubbed “the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

But when Mattes started tracking down the sites’ domain registrations, the trail led to Macedonia and Albania. In mid-September, he emailed a few of his private investigator friends with a list of the sites. “Very creepy and i do not think Koch brothers,” he wrote.

Mattes and his friends didn’t know what to make of his findings. He couldn’t get his mind around the possibility that trolls overseas might be trying to sway a bunch of Southern Californians who supported Sanders’ run for president. “I may be a dark cynic and I may have been an investigative reporter for a long time, but this was too dark ― and too unbelievable and most upsetting,” he said. “What was I to do with this?”

By late October, Mattes said he’d traced 40 percent of the domain registrations for the fake news sites he saw popping up on pro-Sanders pages back to Eastern Europe. Others appeared to be based in Panama and the U.S., or were untraceable. He wondered, “Am I the only person that sees all this crap floating through these Bernie pages?”

He wasn’t. Bernie supporters across the country had been noticing dubious websites and posters linked back to Eastern Europe long before Mattes did ― and even before The Washington Post reported in mid-June that Russian government hackers had stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee. They had been warning each other that something weird was going on, posting troll alerts and compiling lists of fake news sites.

There is enough real news to fight over, they thought, without arguing over anti-Hillary conspiracy theories from Macedonia.


STEPHEN LAM/REUTERS
Bernie Sanders’ supporters started seeing fake news in early 2016.

Sometimes it was hard to tell who was doing the trolling and for what purposes. Aleta Pearce, 54, who lives in Malibu, California, was an administrator of half a dozen pro-Sanders Facebook groups and a member of many others. In May 2016, she posted a memo to various Facebook groups about the fake news issue, warning of bogus sites.

“The pattern I’m seeing is if a member is repeatedly posting articles that are only from one URL that person is just there to push advertising,” Pearce wrote. “They probably have a sock account with little to no content. They are often from Russia or Macedonia.” (A “sock” or “sock puppet” account uses a false identity to deceive.)

Pearce added, “Please share this with other Bernie groups so we can put an end to this spam bombing that’s filling up our pages and groups. It’s time to chase the mice out of the hen house and send them a message. They don’t know who they are messing with.”

The first tidal wave of spam was mostly anti-Bernie, Pearce recalled, posted by Clinton backers. (David Brock’s Clinton-backing super PAC had likely paid for some portion of those.) But after Clinton became the Democratic nominee in July, Pearce noticed a switch to anti-Hillary messages with links to fake news and to real news with obnoxious pop-up ads.

“Every site publishing those ― you clicked on the article, you would be slammed with ads and strange articles,” Pearce told HuffPost. “It was overwhelming. It was 24/7.”

She kept a list of fake news sites to watch for ― it grew into dozens. There were posts on the Clinton-has-Parkinson’s conspiracy and the Clinton-is-running-a-pedophilia-ring-out-of-a-pizza-shop conspiracy.

On the Sanders campaign, it was Hector Sigala’s job to connect with all the organic Facebook groups. He recalled seeing “a lot of trolls” try to convince people of something “that was obviously fake.”

Many of the interlopers, Sigala said, claimed to be Sanders fans who had decided to vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump or Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general election and tried to convince others to do likewise. “It made it seem like the community as a whole was supporting that, but that wasn’t the case,” he said.

Sigala thinks most of them were just your average internet trolls. He said he found many were members of 4chan, a gathering place for the alt-right, white nationalists and plain old nihilists from which has sprung all manner of mischief.

The Sanders campaign had begun seeing this particular brand of fake news starting in early 2016. “The first time that we kind of fell for it, for like two minutes, was this link from what seemed to be ABC News,” Sigala said. It turned out to be ABC.com.co, a fake site that has no affiliation with the real news network. It had “reported” that the pope himself had endorsed Sanders.

It came in like a wave, like a tsunami. It was like a flood of misinformation.
Bev Cowling, who administered Facebook groups for Sanders supporters
In trying to wade through the flood of fake news, Sanders supporters had some serious trust issues. There was good reason to be skeptical of Clinton and the WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails was real, after all. But a steady diet of stories fabricated out of thin air can also feed into paranoia and flame wars.

Bev Cowling, 64, saw a sudden deluge of requests to join the Sanders Facebook groups she administered from her home in Toney, Alabama. All of a sudden, they were getting 80 to 100 requests to join each day. She and the other administrators couldn’t vet everyone, and the posts started getting bizarre. “It came in like a wave, like a tsunami,” she said. “It was like a flood of misinformation.”

Cowling, a retired postal worker, said some of her Facebook group members were ready to believe the bogus news links. “People were so anti-Hillary that no matter what you said, they were willing to share it and spread it,” she said. “At first I would just laugh about it. I would say, ‘C’mon, this is beyond ridiculous.’ I created a word called ‘ridiculosity.’ I would say, ‘This reeks of ridiculosity.’”

But Cowling got pushback. She was called a “Hillbot” and a Trump supporter. She ended up removing dozens of members who refused to stop pushing conspiracy theories. “I lost quite a few friends,” she said.

Matthew Smollon, a 34-year-old copy editor and page designer based in Knoxville, Tennessee, noticed an influx of posts linking to fake news as early as January 2016. So much of it, Smollon noticed, came from the same accounts. Almost all the sites he traced went back to Veles, Macedonia, which Wired magazine has since dubbed the “Fake News Factory to the World.” There wasn’t a single link he found that went to a pro-Clinton fake news story.

None of the fake stories stood out to Smollon. He described the Facebook groups as “being in a room filled with blasting televisions.” It was hard to pick out the loudest noises. “The ultimate goal of this wasn’t so much misinformation as distraction from valid info,” he concluded.

But Smollon had a hard time convincing other Bernie supporters that they were being played. “No one cared,” Smollon said. “At that point, you were a Hillary shill. It was like an echo chamber of anger.”

Even when pointing out that something like NBCPolitics.org was a fake site ― the real site is NBCNews.com/politics ― he drew criticism. He was eventually removed as a moderator from one of the pro-Sanders Facebook groups. “It’s the closest I’ve been to being gaslit in my life,” he said.

In June, Smollon posted a piece on Medium with the headline, “Dear Bernie Supporters: Stop sharing posts from dumpster fire websites.” He urged his fellow Sanders fans to wake up:

Guys, I sincerely love you. I love your passion. I love your fire. I love all of that. But when 400 people are circle-jerking clickbait links in between wondering how Hillary Clinton is behind the FEMA Earthquake drill that happens on several days with one of them being primary day?

Holy shit.

You are allowing yourselves to be manipulated. Through the practice of taking anything that agrees with your opinion at face value, actively refusing to believe anything but what agrees with your narrative and following that up with blatant disregard for doing two minutes of searching to verify the information: you become the myopic Trump supporter that you so vocally loathe.

Some people “liked” his Medium piece on Facebook and posted it on their walls, he said. Others did not. Smollon later updated his article to say he’d been banned from the group “Bernie Believers” because of it.

“This is a pretty solid case for admins/mods being part of the spam,” he wrote. “Not all of them obviously, but it only takes one person running with an ulterior motive to ensure the whole thing goes to shit.”

SCREENSHOT -- A Facebook user named Oliver Mitov posted dubious news links about Hillary Clinton.
In San Diego, Mattes was intrigued by a Facebook user named “Oliver Mitov” whom he saw constantly posting anti-Clinton propaganda.

Mattes first noticed Mitov posting in his Facebook group in September. But when he searched the page’s archives, he found that Mitov had been in the group since late July. He soon realized there wasn’t just one Mitov but four. Three had Sanders as their profile picture. Two had the same single Facebook friend, while a third had no Facebook friends. The fourth appeared to be a middle-aged man with 19 Facebook friends, including that one friend the other Mitovs had in common.

All combined, the four Mitovs had joined more than two dozen pro-Sanders groups around the U.S., including Latinos for Bernie Sanders, Oregon for Bernie Sanders 2016 and Pennsylvania Progressives for Bernie Sanders. Together, those groups had hundreds of thousands of members.

The Mitov posts would have been explosive if they’d been true. In one Aug. 4 post to Mattes’ page, Mitov wrote, “This is a story you won’t see on Fox/CNN or the other Mainstream media!” He then linked to a post claiming falsely that Clinton had “made a small fortune by arming ISIS.” On Sept. 25, he posted on several pro-Sanders pages a link promising game-changing information: “NEW LEAK: Here is Who Ordered Hillary To Leave The 4 Men In Benghazi!” The link went to a fake news site called usapoliticsnow.com.

The aim of Mitov’s activity seemed pretty obvious to Mattes: to depress the number of Sanders supporters who voted for Clinton in November.

“He was a ringer,” Mattes said.

Mattes tried to friend the various Mitovs and message them. None of them responded, he said. Attempts by HuffPost to reach Mitov were similarly unsuccessful.

SCREENSHOT -- Mitov’s long list of pro-Sanders Facebook pages shows no other outside interests.

Keegan Goudiss, who ran digital advertising for Sanders’ presidential bid, had a different perspective on the trolling. He launched paid campaigns on social media and around the internet, so he was very familiar with the way that money can drive a meme.

Bots and trolls that spread fake news shouldn’t be ignored, he said, but “it’s like pissing in the ocean. There’s a lot of noise online.” One way to help your message cut through the noise is to spend money with Facebook, Google or an ad targeting platform that spreads links all over the internet, often at the bottom of stories. (Scroll down far enough on this page and you’ll probably see some of them.)

Goudiss recalled one telling example of how this worked: A Clinton ad appeared in the middle of a row of links, clearly paid for by a pro-Clinton group targeting potential donors and voters. To its left was a story making bogus claims about an illegitimate Clinton child. To its right was a piece on presidential mistresses. “There seems to have been a concerted effort to tarnish Hillary and people in her campaign’s reputation using paid placement,” he said.

SCREENSHOT -- This screenshot captured by Keegan Goudiss during the campaign shows fake news to the left, Clinton fundraising in the middle and an anti-Clinton story to the right.

He can’t prove who was doing that, Goudiss said, but it’s probably worth trying to figure out.

“Was there a Russian entity supporting those websites that popped up?” he said. “That’s important and people deserve to know who influences our democracy.”

Some level of foreign participation in spreading disinformation about the left was comically apparent. The names of a few suspect Facebook groups reek of poor translation. One group with more than 80,000 members, claiming to be from Burlington, Vermont, is called “Bernie Sanders Lovers” ― the kind of name a non-English speaker might think makes sense, but that sounds wrong to native ears.

SCREENSHOT -- Throughout the campaign, the Bernie Sanders Lovers page saw heavy engagement, and nearly every article it shared was from Bients.com, the pieces posted there by one Maximilian Gottlieb. Gottlieb, in turn, pulled articles from other sources, some more and some less reliable.

SEE BELOW, MAXIMILIAN GOTTLIEB, BIENTS.COM

On Oct. 29, for instance, he put up 11 articles. A few praised Trump or gave Trump’s advisers space to attack Clinton. Others attacked Clinton’s campaign directly: adviser Huma Abedin had ties to radical Islam (false), the DNC email leak was authentic (true), campaign manager Robby Mook had deleted his entire Twitter feed (false).

Since the election, the Bernie Sanders Lovers page has shifted to urging the senator to run for president again in 2020. It no longer shares Bients.com stories. Instead, they all come from ThePredicted.com. Both sites were registered by a person name Hysen Alimi in Albania. (Feel free to check out the sites yourself, but Chrome will warn you your connection is “not secure,” so don’t enter any information there.)

GO TO THIS FAKE NEWS SOURCE: GOOGLE “MAXIMILIAN GOTTLIEB, BIENTS.COM” -- https://bients.com/author/rinori/. LOOK AT THE ARTICLES AND, WORSE, PHOTOGRAPHS ON THIS SITE. GOTTLIEB (IF HE IS A REAL PERSON) IS CLEARLY A TRUMP HATER, BUT MOREOVER, HE TRASHES OTHER PEOPLE TOO. HE’S LIKE THE WRITERS OF SUPER MARKET PAPERS LIKE THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER. HIS ONLY GOAL IS TO MAKE MONEY.



I AM NOW GROWING USED TO THE LACK OF PLANNING, INCONSIDERATE TREATMENT OF HUMANS, AND CONFUSION THAT FOLLOWS TRUMP DECISIONS.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/way-which-u-s-attorneys-told-resign-came-surprise-source-n732176
POLITICS MAR 11 2017, 3:25 PM ET
Way in Which U.S. Attorneys Told to Resign Came as Surprise: Source
by TOM WINTER and PHIL HELSEL

The Trump administration's sudden request on Friday that all 46 U.S. attorneys resign was met with surprise by multiple federal prosecutors, with at least one first finding out about the demand on social media, a source close to the U.S. attorney told NBC News.

"We saw it on Twitter," said the source, who is not the prosecutor and who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

At that point the source says the press office in that district notified the U.S. attorney about the press release from the Department of Justice and tweets from reporters.

Play -- You're fired! Jeff Sessions asks for immediate resignation of 46 US attorneys 1:33

The U.S. attorney was wholly unaware that he was expected to resign Friday and had not been notified about the public announcement prior to the press release being received.

The source says the U.S. attorney and other U.S. attorneys were surprised because on a Thursday conference call with Attorney General Jeff Sessions he concluded the call by telling them "happy hunting!" Sessions, the source says, had given no indication about Friday's announcement.

All 93 U.S. attorneys — the top federal prosecutors in the states — are political appointees. A total of 47 had already stepped down. Some states, divided into separate districts, have more than one.

It has been done before. In 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno demanded the resignations of all 93 U.S. attorneys in the early days of the Clinton administration.

A Justice Department statement said the action was taken "as was the case in prior transitions."

Related: Trump Administration Tells Remaining U.S.Attorneys to Resign

The source said that he was aware that some U.S. attorneys had been told in recent weeks that they would be replaced. However, they were told by Justice Department headquarters that they would have a month or even longer (in some cases until May) to resign.

Later, after the press release was sent out, the source said the U.S. attorney and some of his colleagues heard directly from Washington that they were to resign.

When the U.S. attorney got the call he was told to clear out and submit his resignation by midnight, according to the source.

The source says the U.S. attorney and his colleagues were caught by surprise.

In addition, two sources say that the presumed acting U.S. attorneys who would replace the Obama appointees ‎had not been called by Justice Department as of late Friday evening in multiple districts.

The source says it was not lost on the resigning U.S. attorney and colleagues he says he talked to that there was no customary "thank you" for their service in the Justice Department's press release announcing the move.

The source noted that being asked to resign was not surprising in the least. But the source says the manner in which it happened was both angering and deeply disappointing, according to conversations the source was privy to among several U.S. attorneys.

U.S. Attorney General Preet Bharara of New York announced that he had been fired Saturday after refusing to submit his resignation as requested by the administration on Friday. Bharara said he'd been asked by President Donald Trump to stay on as attorney general after meeting with him in late November.

Bharara was appointed by Obama in 2009 and has a reputation of being tough on corruption and crime involving Wall Street executives.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who represents New York, took exception on Friday to Bharara being asked to resign.

"By asking for the immediate resignation of every remaining U.S. Attorney before their replacements have been confirmed or even nominated, the President is interrupting ongoing cases and investigations and hindering the administration of justice," Schumer said in a statement.



ONE OF THE TEN FUNNIEST DONALD TRUMP PHOTOGRAPHS

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/putin-aide-dmitry-peskov-says-russia-disappointed-with-trump/
Putin aide says Russia is frustrated with Trump administration
CBS/AP March 12, 2017, 10:16 AM

MOSCOW -- The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin is expressing frustration with the inconclusive first two months of relations between Moscow and the Trump administration.

The election of President Trump, who had spoken admiringly of Putin and called for improved US-Russia relations, had raised hopes in the Kremlin. But Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says there are no signs of progress yet.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have a better understanding of when this dialogue can begin,” Peskov said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria broadcast Sunday.

Kremlin-backed media sours on President Trump
Play VIDEO
Kremlin-backed media sours on President Trump

Mr. Trump’s campaign statements on Russia had led to speculation that the United States would drop sanctions imposed on Russia for its interference in Ukraine.

“Russia will never initiate putting this issue on the agenda,” according to a transcript of his CNN interview, Peskov said.

Peskov also reacted to allegations of Russian meddling in U.S. elections, dismissing an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community concluding with “high confidence” that Russia had interfered in the 2016 campaign in order to help Mr. Trump.

“We don’t know what’s the reason for these words. We’ve never seen any evidence, and we’ve never heard something trustful,” Peskov said. “What we have seen -- an open, a public part -- of a report by one of the agencies, special agencies of the United States. And I would humbly say that it’s not a paper of high quality, in terms of being really trustful.”



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/immunotherapy-the-next-frontier-in-cancer-treatment/
CBS NEWS March 12, 2017, 9:15 AM
Immunotherapy: The next frontier in cancer treatment

The effort to unlock the secret within the human immune system is already offering new hope to cancer patients for whom traditional treatments have fallen short. Dr. Jon LaPook reports:

Twelve-year old Ezzy Pineda will tell you what happened to her seems like a miracle.

How is she now? “Feeling great,” she told Dr. LaPook. “I feel like I could do anything.”

Back when she was just nine, feeling weak and dizzy, she was taken to a hospital on Long Island, where doctors gave her a diagnosis she barely understood: leukemia.

“I’m like, ‘Am I gonna die? Am I gonna live? Am I gonna be able to do the stuff I did before?’”

immunology-ezzy-pineda-dr-jon-lapook-620.jpg
Ezzy Pineda, with Dr. Jon LaPook. CBS NEWS
Ninety-eight percent of children with this form of cancer respond well to chemotherapy, so her doctors started there. But after four brutal rounds, Ezzy’s cancer was getting worse.

“It was very scary,” she said. “I was like, ‘What did I do bad so that God could give me this punishment?’”

Desperate and out of options, Ezzy had one last chance. She was enrolled in a clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan for an experimental treatment called CAR-T.

After six weeks, Dr. Kevin Curran, the pediatric oncologist who treats Ezzy, couldn’t find a single leukemia cell … not one. That is a patient who ten years earlier would have been told, “There’s nothing we can do.”

Ezzy is healthy -- just a little puffy from steroids -- because of a promising new frontier in the war on cancer: Immunotherapy, using a patient’s own immune system to find and kill cancer cells.

One of the biggest challenges in fighting cancer has been that cancer cells find ways of becoming invisible to the body’s defenses. And the immune system can’t kill what it can’t see. So doctors, in essence, taught Ezzy’s immune system to “see.”

They took billions of her white blood cells -- cells that normally are good at destroying invaders like bacteria and viruses, but bad at fighting cancer -- and turned them into cancer-killers.

“We can take those cells out of the body, genetically modify them, teach them how to fight cancer, and then infuse them back into the patient,” Dr. Curran said.

“It’s like they’re bloodhounds, and you give them the scent of the cancer?”

“Exactly.”

Traditional therapies like chemo and radiation often damage healthy tissue along with cancer cells. The hope is immunotherapy will be more targeted, usually sparing normal tissue. But there have been serious side-effects, even death.

“Once we knew it could work, we’ve been working around the clock,” said Dr. Steven Rosenberg, who has been a pioneer in the field of immunotherapy at the National Cancer Institute for more than four decades. In 1984, he was the first doctor to cure a dying patient using her own immune system.

But he’ll also be the first to tell you that, all these years later, immunotherapy is still in its infancy.

immunotherapy-dr-steven-rosenberg-national-cancer-institute-620.jpg
Dr. Steven Rosenberg, a pioneer in the study of immunotherapy to fight cancers, at the National Cancer Institute. CBS NEWS
“We’ve gotten to the point now where I think we understand why the patients who are successfully treated experience tumor regression,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “And based on that knowledge, I think we’re going to see dramatic progress in the next few years to come.”

But most patients don’t have years to wait.

Like 29-year-old Burak Guvensoyler, who has a sarcoma -- a cancer in the connective tissue near his spine -- that has spread to his lungs.

Dr. Rosenberg showed LaPook scans of Guvensoyler’s tumors. “These are all abnormal tumors, every one of these. He has many hundreds of different tumors that are in his lung.”

Guvensoyler has already been through two rounds of chemotherapy, and multiple surgeries.

“He came to us, as do all of our patients, having exhausted what modern medicine can offer,” said Dr. Rosenberg. ”And our goal is not to practice today’s medicine, but to create the medicine of tomorrow.”

And that, he believes, would be immunotherapy.

Just as was done with Ezzy, Guvensoyler’s white blood cells were “taught” in the lab to recognize his specific cancer type. A month later, he gets back his juiced-up cells -- 90 billion of them put into battle.

“You can just imagine those cells chewing up the tumor when they go in there,” Dr. Rosenberg said.

“Definitely feeling very hopeful,” said Guvensoyler. “I mean, to draw the lottery and actually be part of this trial is just an incredible opportunity in itself.”

Now he’s waiting to see if those cells did their job.

The highly-personalized treatment that patients like Guvensoyler and Ezzy Pineda received is still only available in clinical trials. But there’s another type of immunotherapy that’s available now in hospitals across the country. FDA-approved drugs called checkpoint inhibitors are being used to fight certain types of cancers of the kidney, bladder, lungs and more, with especially positive results for melanoma.

While effective treatment for widespread (or metastatic) cancer remains elusive, doctors are hopeful they’re at least on the right path.

Dr. LaPook asked, “Right now, in the spectrum of cancer treatment, what percentage can be addressed by immunotherapy?”

“If you look at all cancer patients, perhaps 10 percent can be helped by immunotherapy today,” Dr. Rosenberg replied. “But it’s getting better every day.”

Last Tuesday, Guvensoylar returned to the National Cancer Institute for a first check-up since receiving his cell transfusion five weeks earlier. “I just have that comfort in terms of, like, I’ve done everything I can,” he said.

Dr. Rosenberg went over Guvensoylar’s X-rays: “We compared them to the X-rays that you had before we started the treatment. And there was, as you know, rapid growth of the tumor. But that’s been completely arrested now. The current X-rays are absolutely stable. There’s no evidence of any growth of any lesions. So that’s good news. Now, we want to see these tumors go away. But sometimes that takes time.”

The doctor said the news was reasonable. “Cancer patients deserve optimistic doctors. So, I’m optimistic.”

For now, patients like Ezzy Pineda remain the exception, but Drs. Rosenberg and Curran are hopeful, and continue to explore the boundaries of this new frontier … one previously incurable patient at a time.

Dr. LaPook asked Ezzy, “So you’re lying in bed at night -- what’s going through your head?”

“That the good thing is that I’m still alive,” she replied. “That I could live a normal life again, that I’ll be all better and probably more stronger than have been before.”



RYAN IS OFFERING A PIG IN A POKE. IS IT WORTH IT TO YOU TO GIVE UP YOUR VOTE FOR A BETTER MAN? HE'S A CUTE GUY, BUT NOT HONEST.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paul-ryan-says-he-cant-answer-how-many-will-lose-coverage-under-gop-health-care-plan/
Paul Ryan says he "can't answer" how many will lose coverage under GOP health care plan
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS CBS NEWS March 12, 2017, 11:23 AM

Watch Video – Face the Nation, 3/12/17

As Republicans work to pitch their health care plan, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he can’t say how many people would lose coverage under the new legislation -- and that it will be “up to people” to decide whether they want to purchase coverage.

Asked in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” approximately how many people will lose coverage if the American Health Care Act is passed, Ryan replied: “I can’t answer that question. It’s up to people.”

“Here’s the premise of your question. Are you going to stop mandating people buy health insurance,” Ryan said. “People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”

“So the question is: Are we providing a system where people have access to health insurance if they choose to do so?” he continued. “And the answer is yes. But are we going to have some nice-looking spreadsheet that says, ‘We, the government of the American—the United States, are going to make people buy something and therefore they’re all going to buy it’? No.”

Ryan said he believes the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the bill, which will be available before members vote on it, will find that some Americans will lose coverage.

“The one thing I’m certain will happen is CBO will say, ‘Well, gosh. Not as many people will get coverage,’” he said. “You know why? Because this isn’t a government mandate. This is not the government that makes you buy what we say you should buy and therefore the government thinks you’re all going to buy it.”

“So there’s no way you can compete with on paper a government mandate with coverage,” he continued. “What we are trying to achieve here is bringing down the cost of care, bringing down the cost of insurance not through government mandates and monopolies but by having more choice and competition.”

Still, Ryan promised there would be a “smooth transition” between the current system and the new system so people don’t feel like they’re having “the rug pulled out from under them.”

As for concern that health care premiums will rise higher under the new plan than they would have under Obamacare, Ryan said that may be true in the short term -- but that there’s a “transition” period that will be necessary before the new system works the way it’s designed to.

“There’s a transition. It takes a little while to get the states back in the game to regulate health insurance,” he said. “It takes a little while for risk pools to be set up in the states to cover people with preexisting conditions. It takes a little while for tax credits to be deployed so the guy waiting tables and getting $12 an hour can get health insurance. It takes some time to do that.”

Asked about the “awful” reaction to the bill’s rollout -- and the groups ranging from the AARP to the American Medical Association who oppose it -- Ryan said people are comparing the bill to Obamacare, which isn’t a fair comparison.

“I think the reaction is everybody wants to compare this to Obamacare, as if they can keep these guarantees going, as if we’re going to have Obamacare plans and we’re just going to finance it a different way,” he said. “This is repealing and replacing Obamacare. So this first part is very, very important. It repeals entire fiscal pieces of the law and replaces it with a patient-centered system.”

He added that there’s no way there will be a unanimous consensus among his “wide, big tent party” on how to structure an Obamacare replacement -- but that the party has an “obligation” to do something to fix the current health care system.

“Everybody doesn’t get what they want. But we’re getting much better policy here. Let me put it this way: Obamacare is collapsing,” he said. “If we just did nothing, washed our hands of the situation, we would see a further collapse of the health insurance markets. So we feel an obligation to step in front of that collapse and replace this law with one that works, that has more freedom. Some people would like it to be done a little bit differently.”

Ryan said President Donald Trump has been “tremendously helpful” in the process of rolling out and pitching the legislation, and that he’s “fully engaged and fully committed” to the issue.

“He’s been extremely engaged with various members of Congress. I talk to him constantly on this,” he said, calling it a “very good collaboration.”

Ryan did have one warning for his fellow Republicans: Asked whether he agrees with Mr. Trump that the 2018 midterms will be a “bloodbath” for Republicans if they don’t pass health care reform, Ryan said the president is correct.

“I do believe that if we don’t keep our word to the people who sent us here, yeah,” he said. “Look. The most important thing for a person like myself who runs for office and tells the people we’re asking to hire us, ‘This is what I’ll do if I get elected.’ And then if you don’t do that, you’re breaking your word.”



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/on-the-horizon-scorpion-venom-as-cancer-treatment-tumor-paint/
CBS NEWS March 12, 2017, 9:22 AM
On The Horizon: Scorpion venom as cancer treatment

Watch Video of scorpions fighting

A multitude of potential advances are ON THE HORIZON in the field of cancer research, as reported by Susan Spencer:

Behold, if you dare, the Israeli Deathstalker Scorpion. Its sting is excruciating, its venom can kill.

Photograph -- deathstalker-scorpion-getty-promo.jpg, An Israeli deathstalker scorpion. Tumor paint, derived from synthetically-reproduced scorpion venom, may revolutionize how surgeons operate on cancer cells. GETTY IMAGES

Sounds terrifying! But Dr. Jim Olson says, “It’s actually beautiful.”

Beautiful, because the Deathstalker’s venom may revolutionize how cancer surgery is done.

Dr. Olson is a brain cancer physician and researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington.

“We were inspired by a 16-year-old girl who had a brain tumor,” he said. “After 12 hours of surgery, the surgeons left behind a big piece. And we decided that day to find a way to make the cancer light up so that surgeons could see it while they’re operating.”

The key is the scorpion venom, synthetically reproduced, minus the poison. When injected into a patient’s bloodstream, it sticks to cancer cells but NOT to normal cells. Combine that sticky molecule with florescent dye and you’ve got what Olson calls “tumor paint.”

So what problem does tumor paint solve? “Sometimes, it’s really hard for a surgeon to tell what is cancer and what is normal,” Dr. Olson said. “And in the brain, you can’t take out a big chunk of normal just to make sure you got the cancer. And tumor paint distinguishes clearly the difference between brain cancer and normal brain in all of our experiments that we’ve done so far.”

Check out this image of a cancerous tumor … inject tumor paint, and there’s no mistaking it. The tumor lights up.

Images – with paint and without tumor-paint-on-screen-620.jpg, CBS NEWS

“So this is definitive? I can see why you’re excited about this,” said Spencer.

“I am thrilled about this.”

“You’re sort of turning nature upside down, right?”

“That’s exactly what we’re doing!” he laughed.

Sounds a lot like science fiction, but Dr. Olson says it could be an FDA-approved reality as soon as 2019.

“I think this will potentially be the biggest improvement in cancer surgery, maybe, in 50 years,” he said.

“God bless the Israeli Deathstalker scorpion!”

“Exactly, exactly. Well, and God bless our patients. Because, you know, they’re the ones that motivate us to do this.”


FUN AND COMMENTARY ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/snl-sets-phasers-blast-sketch-showing-trump-facing-aliens-n732411
NEWS MAR 12 2017, 12:41 PM ET
‘SNL’ Sets Phasers to Blast With Sketch Showing Trump Facing Off With Aliens
by PHIL MCCAUSLAND

"Saturday Night Live" set phasers to blast, as the cast and host Scarlett Johansson took aim at the Trump administration in a number of sketches on the late night program.

Alec Baldwin once again appeared as President Donald Trump in the cold open, but this time he addressed a satirical future crisis in 2018.

Aliens have invaded Earth in 2018 — and "they did not come in peace." While Baldwin's Trump is in a position to give an inspiring speech (à la "Independence Day") to a group of American soldiers battling the extraterrestrials, he stumbles from the start.

"What a beautiful day," Baldwin's Trump exclaims, dressed in a green bomber jacket. "Who here loves Trump?"

"I know this guy over here — he loves Trump," he says pointing at a charred and smoldering corpse.

A general, played by longtime "SNL" cast member Keenan Thompson, asks Trump what they should do.

"Here's what we're going to do," Baldwin declares, "we're going to bring coal back. We're going to have so much coal that you're going to say, 'Where did all this coal come from? I never knew there could be this much coal.'"

Image: Alec Baldwin dressed as President Donald Trump, alongside Kenan Thompson in sketch for Saturday Night Live, March 11, 2017. Will Heath / NBC

What about the aliens vaporizing the state of California? Thompson asks.

"So then I won the popular vote?" Baldwin's Trump quickly responds.

The president then questions whether the alien home world was really so bad, blasts NBC — though he liked the show "This is Us" — laments the loss of Trump Hotel in New York, celebrates conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his radio show InfoWars as a "very reputable source" and then bumbles his way through the Pledge of Allegiance.

When Bobby Moynihan shows up in the guise of an alien, he demands to be taken to the leader.

Though Baldwin-as-Trump tries to pass the buck to his general, the alien is pleasantly surprised to learn who is actually the president.

"Really?" he said, looking at Trump. "This is going to be so easy."

"SNL" then directed its attention to another Trump family member with a filmed segment featuring Johansson as Ivanka Trump. Pseudo-Ivanka stars in in a perfume commercial parody titled "Complicit."

"She's Ivanka. And a woman like her deserves a fragrance all her own," the whispered voiceover says. "A scent made just for her. Because she's beautiful, she's powerful — she's complicit."

Image: Kate McKinnon as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, alongside Alex Moffat as Senator Al Franken (D-MN), Colin Jost and Michael Che for Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, March 11, 2017. Will Heath / NBC

The show then continued on the Trump administration train, taking aim at Jeff Sessions and the recent discovery that he had met with the Russian ambassador. Kate McKinnon reprised her role as the attorney general on "Weekend Update" alongside Democratic Sen. Al Franken as played by Alex Moffat.

The two are "actually great friends," McKinnon, as Sessions, declares. While the attorney general took Franken white-water rafting, the senator shared "Jew stuff" like matzo ball soup and the word "schmear."

Moffat took on the ho-hum style of Franken. "We had lunch at a deli," he deadpans.

McKinnon and Moffat then engage in a back-and-forth in which the senator attempts to get the attorney general to "correct the record."

Antics ensue, including a fake hand placed on the Bible, the different Southern pronunciations of "lawyer" and "liar," and an exploration of the different types of "maybes."


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The show also provided a sympathetic view of Trump supporters — albeit from a dog's perspective.

Johansson, acting as a scientist, gives her dog Max the ability to speak with the invention of a dog translator. In front of a few supervisors, Max provides his coherent support for Trump, which is met poorly by those in the room.

"I like Trump — he's my man," the dog, voiced by Beck Bennett, says.


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"Trump has issues, but one big change is [it's] better than business as usual," Max adds, pointing to the rise in the stock market, taxes and healthcare as reasons to support the new president.

"Trump is bad," Johansson exclaims. "Trump is a racist."

The others in the sketch were quick to agree with the criticism, one even brandishing a gun and threatening to put the dog down.

"You just assume because I'm a Trump supporter that I'm a xenophobic racist," Max responds.

Luckily, the dog — played by a pug — is cute, Johansson says. The entire exchange then leads to an important moment of reflection.

"It's okay, Max," the actress says. "I love you no matter what. We just have to learn to respect each other's point of view, I guess."