by Associated Press in Charleston, West Virginia on (#6E5N1)
Judge says near-total abortion ban signed by governor in September 2022 takes precedence over FDA approvalsWest Virginia can restrict the sale of the abortion pill despite federal regulators' approval of it as a safe and effective medication, a federal judge has ruled.The US district court judge, Robert C Chambers, determined on Thursday that the near-total abortion ban signed by the Republican governor, Jim Justice, in September 2022 takes precedence over approvals from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Continue reading...
For Trump and his minions, the coming election is more than a rematch. It is about revengeOn Wednesday night, Donald Trump won the Republican debate without showing up. One night later, he surrendered to law enforcement at the Fulton county, Georgia, jail. In the span of 24 hours, cameras captured the essence of the current presidential contest, namely the legal status of the prior occupant of the Oval Office. Whether Trump is a free man or a convict on election day 2024 will weigh heavily upon voters and the republic.At the debate, six of the eight contenders raised their hands when asked if they would back Trump if he were convicted. With the predictable exceptions of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the rest of the pack fell into line.Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 Continue reading...
GOP-led House committee convenes on Guam as officials say Beijing working to fill perceived voids in America's assistance'Countering China and bolstering national security dominated the conversation in a Hilton hotel on Guam, 15 hours before and oceans away from the Milwaukee arena hosting the first Republican primary debate.Nine members of the GOP-led House committee on natural resources convened in the US-governed Pacific island territory for a rare field hearing - during the summer recess - on countering China's influence in the region. Continue reading...
The Digital Services Act is finally bringing social media giants to heel after 20 years of laissez-faire. Yet Westminster still dithersYou might not immediately notice it, but the world changes today. You could be forgiven for missing it: the developments are buried deep in the decision trees of your social media app menus, tucked several clicks and taps away from easy access in a thicket of terms and conditions text.The Digital Services Act (DSA), Europe's sweeping attempt to regulate big tech that was passed in October 2022, comes into force for more than a dozen of the biggest tech companies today. The new laws set clear rules on content moderation, user privacy and transparency that online platforms must now follow.Chris Stokel-Walker is a UK journalist based in Newcastle. He is the author of TikTok Boom: China's Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media Continue reading...
Erik Duran suspended over death of Eric Duprey, who was driving motorcycle on Bronx sidewalk towards group including DuranA man fleeing New York City police officers on a motorcycle died after a sergeant hurled a plastic picnic cooler at his head from close range, causing a violent crash, authorities said.The sergeant, Erik Duran, was suspended without pay just hours after the death of Eric Duprey, 30, in the University Heights section of the Bronx, police said. Continue reading...
Former vice-presidential nominee condemns prosecutors over travesty' and says we're not going to keep putting up with this'A second US civil war is going to happen" if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin said.Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you do want us to be in civil war? Because that's what's going to happen," Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington and Dominic on (#6E5CW)
Manhattan Institute one of eight conservative advocacy groups that filed amicus briefs urging the court to hear Moore v USAn influential thinktank closely linked to two billionaires who provided lavish travel gifts to conservative supreme court justices is behind a successful lobbying campaign to get the US high court to take on a case that could protect them and other billionaires from a possible future wealth tax.The Manhattan Institute was one of eight conservative advocacy groups that filed amicus briefs urging the supreme court to take on Moore v US, a $15,000 tax case that Democrats have warned could permanently lock in" the right of billionaires to opt out of paying fair taxes. Continue reading...
Joe Delfausse, 82, drew a crowd in the middle of a Brooklyn street by sharing his telescopeJoe Delfausse didn't intend to stop traffic on a recent Tuesday night in Brooklyn, but Saturn had other plans.The amateur astronomer, who has been a fixture in his Park Slope neighborhood for more than 20 years, regularly lugs out a telescope on clear nights and encourages passersby to take a look at the cosmos. Continue reading...
Republican candidate brands himself as an outsider' but has close links to prominent figures Leonard Leo and Peter ThielVivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an outsider", accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being bought and paid for" by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle. Continue reading...
Prosecution is fourth criminal case against Trump since March, and his booking included a mugshot. Plus, the story behind a fake football schoolGood morning.Donald Trump surrendered at the Fulton county jail yesterday evening on racketeering and conspiracy charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, where he was processed as any criminal defendant and had his mugshot taken.When will the trial begin? In a clear sign of the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis's belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, she asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October after one of the co-defendants, Trump's former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.Will the trial harm Trump politically? It would be a mistake to assume that the mugshot and the spectacle of Trump's surrender at jail will harm Trump politically, writes Sam Levine. It is likely to entrench support more deeply from those who back Trump and believe he is being persecuted. As both a candidate and president, Trump has made the politics of grievance, the feeling of being persecuted and wronged, central to his political identity. Trump is already using his indictments to rally his supporters.What caused the plane to crash? An explosion onboard probably brought down the plane presumed to be carrying the Wagner leader, a preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded. US and western officials said it determined Prigozhin was very likely" to have been targeted and that the explosion was in line with Putin's long history of trying to silence his critics".What else is happening? Volodymyr Zelenskiy said early this morning he spoke with Joe Biden. Ukraine's president said he thanked Biden for his Ukraine Independence Day greetings and support in the conflict with Russia. Together, we prove that freedom and independence are worth fighting for," he said in a statement. The US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced. Continue reading...
A 1980s essay by Czech writer Milan Kundera on the peoples trapped between east and west is enjoying a new lease of lifeAre you a dissident?", a journalist asked Milan Kundera, when he had became exiled in France from his native Czechoslovakia in the mid-1970s. No, I am a writer," replied the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Not that he was indifferent to the plight of those who were opposing the Czech regime from inside, but he was wary of a political label being attached to a novel, and more generally to literature with a message, to art in the service of a political idea.Yet Kundera, who died last month, was a man of ideas, which he explored particularly in his essays, the most influential being A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe, published in Paris in 1983 and republished in English earlier this year. Central Europe, Kundera argued, belonged culturally to the West, politically to the East and geographically in the centre". The predicament of the small nations between Russia and Germany was that their existence was not self-evident" but remained closely tied to the vitality of their culture, and historically intertwined with that of the west from which they had been kidnapped" in 1945. Continue reading...
Ex-president and co-defendants didn't see the facility's dark side, where violence is prevalent and a man died covered in insectsMillions of people around the world watched on Thursday as former president Donald Trump surrendered to the Fulton County jail, and then promptly left the building on $200,000 bond. Local activists and attorneys say it's a starkly different experience from what the more than 1,500 inmates who are booked into the facility each month typically face in the overcrowded jail, which has been the subject of ongoing reports of horrific conditions and has seen a spate of recent deaths.Along with 18 co-defendants, Trump was indicted last week on racketeering charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the Georgia presidential election results in 2020. Continue reading...
Donald Trump claimed his arrest amounted to 'election interference' and argued he had 'every right' to contest Joe Biden's victory after reporting to the Fulton county jail in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was formally arrested after his indictment on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in the state. The former US president, photographed for a police mugshot, had reached an agreement to post a bond guaranteeing his release as his case moves through the court system
The lawsuit claims the electric utility failed to shut off power during high winds, resulting in downed lines that ignited blazesMaui county sued the Hawaiian Electric company on Thursday over the fires that devastated Lahaina, saying the utility negligently failed to shut off power despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions.Witness accounts and video indicated that sparks from power lines ignited fires as utility poles snapped in the winds, which were driven by a passing hurricane. The 8 August fire killed at least 115 people and left an unknown number of others missing. Continue reading...
The Republican debate became the entrepreneur's coming-out party, with the news media boosting him along his wayHe thinks the climate crisis is a hoax, supports Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine and would gladly pardon Donald Trump on day 1 of his would-be presidency. A wealthy biotech entrepreneur, the 38-year-old has never before run for public office.Despite all of this (or maybe because of it), this week's Republican debate became a national coming-out party for Vivek Ramaswamy.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...
A caravan carrying former US President Donald Trump was seen making its way through the New Jersey hamlet of Bedminster on Thursday.Trump was making his way to be transported to Georgia where he was set to make history as the first former US president to provide a mugshot when he appeared at an Atlanta jail to face criminal charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia
Gunman, who was shot by police, was reportedly targeting his estranged wife, a regular at Cook's Corner barGunfire at a popular southern California biker bar killed three people and wounded five others, and the gunman - believed to be a retired law enforcement officer - was fatally shot by deputies, authorities said.On Wednesday evening, just after seven o'clock, 911 calls began pouring in about someone shooting at Cook's Corner in rural Trabuco Canyon, a beloved longtime watering hole for motorcycle riders and enthusiasts gathering for live music, open-mic nights or just a cold beer after a long ride. Continue reading...
The Pentagon has no indication that the plane carrying Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was brought down by a surface-to-air missile, a representative has said.'We assess that information to be inaccurate,' Patrick S Ryder said of press reports that the Embraer plane was hit by surface-to-air missiles.He also said the Pentagon thought it was likely that Prigozhin was dead but did not confirm this
The Russian president was never going to forgive or forget his mutiny - and the Wagner group may have served its purposeDespite the viscerally shocking nature of images of a tumbling aircraft, and of the conflagration that followed, Yevgeny Prigozhin's reported death in a plane crash on Wednesday was one of the least surprising developments of the last 18 months. Russian aviation officials listed the Wagner group chief and senior commander, Dmitry Utkin, among the 10 onboard the jet, all of whom died.Ever since he led the mutiny by his Wagner group of mercenaries two months ago, Prigozhin's death was assumed by many to be imminent. Though he denounced military leaders rather than his patron, the challenge to Vladimir Putin was unprecedented, and the Russian president called him a traitor. That the mutiny was not decisively suppressed but ended with a deal looked more humiliating. William Burns, the CIA chief, suggested last month that for Russians used to seeing their president in control, the question was Does the emperor have no clothes?' or at least Why is it taking him so long for him to get dressed?'". Continue reading...
Even though he decided not to attend, the former president cast a long shadow over this week's debate between his rivalsDonald Trump stayed away from Wednesday's Republican candidates' debate in Milwaukee. Yet he remained the evening's dominant presence. The former president's poll lead among Republican supporters for the 2024 US presidential contest is so strong that he could afford to do this. His absence deliberately belittled both the televised event, as he simultaneously gave an imperiously misleading social media interview to Tucker Carlson, and his eight challengers, who were left vying to impress in a fantasy What if?" contest over the choice for a party not in fact dominated by Mr Trump.Absence also allowed Mr Trump, on the eve of his latest court appearance in Atlanta and now facing 91 felony counts in four separate criminal cases, to avoid offering himself as a target to his eight rivals. Not that he need have worried about that. Most of them went out of their way all evening to pay him repeated homage. No one did this more shamelessly than the Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who told the audience both that Mr Trump was the best Republican president of the 21st century and that, if elected, Mr Ramaswamy would instantly pardon him for whatever he may have been convicted of in the meantime. Continue reading...
The debate was the party in miniature: vexed, divided, driven by their base to unpopular extremes, glorying in fantasies of revenge and social purificationBarring some dramatic reversal, none of the people on the Republican primary debate stage on Wednesday night are going to be president in 2025. The eight candidates who made their confused cases to the Republican primary electorate are all flailing in the race, trailing the absent frontrunner, Donald Trump, and infighting among themselves for who gets to lose to him. When Bret Baier, one of the two moderators, told the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, that Trump is beating you by 30, 40 points" in recent polls, the live studio audience behind him erupted into cheers. Onstage, DeSantis kept a rigid smile.Trump skipped the debate, declining to subject himself to an exercise that would suggest he was not already the party's anointed leader. He is scheduled to surrender to authorities in Fulton county, Georgia, on Thursday, an event that will generate a mugshot: almost certainly, that image will proliferate across Fox News broadcasts and Facebook newsfeeds as soon as it is released, eclipsing the debate in the minds of Republican voters.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Suspect arrested after undercover detective waited in woods to see whether rock-leaver would emerge on rural roadFor months, danger lurked on a dark road in the quiet coastal town of Kingston, Massachusetts. Rocks, some as heavy as 50lbs, started appearing in the middle of a rural road flanked by thick woods.These rocks would be placed sporadically, mostly during darkness", each discovery appearing to involve one wayward rock. Sometimes, motorists would simply drive over the rocks without incident while at many other times, vehicles' undercarriages were being ripped out, causing fluid spills, disabling vehicles and even causing airbag deployments". Continue reading...
Trump wanted to distract from the Republican debate. But the slobbering snoozefest interview was low-energy'Scientists recently revealed that they revived a worm that was frozen in the Siberian permafrost 46,000 years ago. This was obviously a totally unnecessary and reckless exercise.Because barely a month later Tucker Carlson would revive the semi-frozen carcass of an ex-president from the Twitter permafrost that is now weirdly known as X. Anyone who has watched a Jeff Goldblum movie knows how badly these experiments can turn out.Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
World No 6 arrives at the US Open on the back of his first Masters 1000 title and buoyed by how he matches up with Carlos AlcarazFrom the very beginning of the French Open this year, an opportunity was reserved for whoever had the courage to take it. While the tournament's perennial conqueror, Rafael Nadal, was absent, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz had been drawn into the top half. The bottom half, meanwhile, was wide open. Among the many contenders, Jannik Sinner, a youngster from South Tyrol in northern Italy, had a chance of producing the best fortnight of his careerBut expectations can be crippling. Faced with increased pressure, Sinner crumbled. He went out in the second round, falling in five sets to Daniel Altmaier, who was the world No 79 at the time. Continue reading...
Abortion has been a losing issue for GOP since end of federal right but Pence, Scott and Hutchinson urged tightening restrictionsEight Republican presidential hopefuls clashed over the future of abortion access on Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 election cycle.Without the specter of Roe v Wade looming overhead, the candidates faced a new litmus test on abortion: whether or not they support a nationwide ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Continue reading...
Criminal defense lawyer Steve Sadow is reportedly going to replace Trump's existing lawyer, Drew FindlingWhile former president Donald Trump was preparing to surrender at an Atlanta jail on Thursday, he was apparently also reconsidering his legal defense team.Just hours before Trump is supposed to turn himself in, reports broke that he had shaken up his team. Criminal defense lawyer Steve Sadow is reportedly going to replace Trump's existing lawyer, Drew Findling, according to the New York Times. Continue reading...
San Francisco gave up a bundle of draft picks to acquire a promising but largely untested quarterback. They may have outthought themselvesThe Trey Lance experiment ended first with a whimper, and then on Wednesday, a thud. The San Francisco 49ers announced that Lance, the former No 3 overall pick, will be the team's third-string quarterback to start the season, behind Brock Purdy and Sam Darnold.Lance was allowed to leave the team's facility and miss practice after receiving the news. 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said that he really hopes" the team keeps Lance, but the quarterback moving on is now inevitable - whether the team can figure out a trade remains to be seen. Continue reading...
The companies paid their employees a median wage of $31,672 in 2022, while their CEOs took home an average $15.3mThe CEOs of the top 100 companies paying the lowest wages made an average of $601 for every $1 earned by the average worker last year as executive compensation continued to climb to record highs.A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies singles out which 100 companies in the S&P 500 pay their workers the least, companies the report dubs the low-wage 100". These companies paid their employees - including workers outside the US and part-time workers - a median wage of $31,672 in 2022, while their CEOs took home an average $15.3m. Continue reading...
Opponents of law passed in Republican-run state argue it is violation of religious freedom guaranteed in US constitutionA new law in Texas that allows chaplains to work as counselors in the Republican-run state's public schools is unconstitutional, rights groups have claimed.Opponents argue it is a violation of religious freedom and the separation of church and state guaranteed by the US constitution. Lawmakers against the bill called it a Trojan horse" to evangelize children. Continue reading...
by Osita Nwanevu, Jill Filipovic, Ben Davis and Lloyd on (#6E4CB)
Donald Trump may not have been on the stage, but he was the winner of the debateIt's been ages since the Republican party has had a national debate this bland. But as easily forgotten as this debate will be in a matter of weeks, if not days, it's notable as perhaps the first glimpse we've had in years of what Republican politics might have looked like in an alternate reality where Trump never happened. Much of the top half of the debate seemed to proceed uninterrupted from the policy discourse of 2012, with most of the candidates trading lines about the profligate spending of the Democratic administration. Inflation was part of the complaint, but there's evidently a real itch, beyond that, to return to the rhetoric of plain old fiscal unsustainability and generational debt.Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnistJill Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of HappinessBen Davis works in political data in Washington, DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaignLloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 Continue reading...
While most candidates didn't flat out deny the climate emergency - save Vivek Ramaswamy - they showed no urgency to address itUnlike in recent election cycles, most Republican presidential hopefuls this time around didn't flat out deny that the climate crisis is real. But on the Fox News debate stage, they made clear that they're not interested in dwelling on the issues - or doing much about it.On Tuesday night, the eight candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in the reality of human-caused global heating. They all punted. Continue reading...
Eight candidates, who gathered in Milwaukee in hope of catching up to former president in polls, also argued about abortion and the climate. Plus, 130 million people under heat alerts in 22 states
Kristopher Coody quit his job and pleaded guilty this week to groping Glenda Hatchett at a sheriffs convention in January 2022A television judge whose breast was groped by the sheriff of a community in the US state of Georgia said justice has been served after her assailant pleaded guilty this week and quit his job. But Glenda Hatchett joined others who argued that Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, should have taken matters into his own hands and forced out the Bleckley county sheriff, Kristopher Coody, sooner.I'm going to go there," the Atlanta-based Hatchett said, according to the Georgia television news station WMAZ. Alluding to calls for Kemp to implement administrative measures which could have at least gotten Coody temporarily sidelined ahead of his resignation, Hatchett added: The governor, after men and women ... demanded the governor take action, he never suspended him." Continue reading...
by David Smith in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on (#6E4A0)
Joe Biden and his predecessor were the big winners as GOP nominees on Fox News simply squabbled amongst themselvesThe winners of the first Republican presidential primary debate are ... Joe Biden and Donald Trump.Eight candidates who took the stage in Milwaukee tore pieces out of each other while failing to distinguish themselves. They revealed a party of chaos and discord that has veered right of the mainstream on issues such as abortion, education, immigration and the climate crisis. It was a two-hour campaign ad for the Democrats broadcast by Fox News. Continue reading...
The Republican Nikki Haley criticises fellow presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy during the GOP debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, saying that Ramaswamy has 'no foreign policy experience, and it shows' after he suggested the US reduce funding for Ukraine in its war against Russia. 'You would make America less safe,' Haley says during the heated exchange
In an age when so much of sports documentary has become stylized PR, the story of an online school that turned out to be fake is a high mark for the genreIn August 2021, two high school football teams met in the Pro Football Hall of Fame stadium in Canton, Ohio, for a much-hyped matchup shown live on ESPN. When it quickly became a 58-0 blowout, suspicion descended most heavily on the losing side - an outfit called Bishop Sycamore purporting to be a faith-based school that actually turned out to be fake. The scandal rocked the sports world, lit up social media and had Hollywood producers rushing to unpick the sordid affair. Travon Free, the veteran comedian and TV writer, was already workshopping titles. So the Bishop Sycamore movie is definitely gonna be called BS' right?," he tweeted.That film, BS High, premieres Thursday on HBO and has Free co-directing with Martin Desmond Roe. BS High marks their first collaboration since their Academy Award-winning short Two Distant Strangers. But where that film was a fiction, this 97-minute doc is stranger than. It features extensive interviews with many of the people at the center of the scandal - not least the players, whose experiences had mostly been captured in dribs and drabs on social media and in the press. The biggest get by far is Bishop Sycamore coach Roy Johnson - the sine qua non of what you needed to tell this story properly," Roe says. Johnson's fan fealty to Michael Strahan, the NFL great turned BS High executive producer, was what ultimately motivated him to talk. Much of what he says is shocking. Continue reading...
People were overwhelmingly in favour of stopping oil drilling in Yasuni national park. Can this success be replicated elsewhere in the world?Joy and hope are all too rarely associated with the environmental movement, but both have been in abundant supply since Ecuador's people voted on Sunday to keep the country's oil in the subsoil of the Yasuni national park. The question now is whether this is a one-off triumph, or something that can be replicated in other countries.The referendum result obliges the state oil company to dismantle operations - 12 drilling platforms and 225 wells that produce up to 57,000 barrels a day - in block 43 of the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) project, an area of the Amazon rainforest famed for its ecological diversity, and which is home to two tribes that live in voluntary isolation. With more than 5.4 million votes in favour of halting production and 3.7 million against, this is the most decisive democratic victory against the fossil fuel industry in Latin America and, arguably, the world.Jonathan Watts is the Guardian's global environment editor Continue reading...
by Claire de Lune, Beau Dure, Bryan Armen Graham and on (#6E486)
Basketball's World Cup tips off on Friday in the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan. Who will stand out? Who will surprise? And can anyone stop Team USA? Our writers weigh inThe inevitable rise of Anthony Edwards. All signs point to this World Cup run being a star-solidifying turn for the 2020 No 1 overall pick as he makes his international debut for Team USA. The 22-year-old NBA All-Star has shown flashes of utter brilliance with the Minnesota Timberwolves but has yet to climb to the level of global superstar. Claire de Lune Continue reading...
Eight candidates gather in Milwaukee in hopes of catching up to former president in pollsRepublican presidential candidates clashed over Donald Trump's legal woes during the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign season, underscoring the former president's absence from the event and casting a spotlight on his potential vulnerabilities in a general election rematch against Joe Biden.Nearly an hour into the debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier asked the eight candidates on the stage whether they would still support Trump as the Republican presidential nominee if he were convicted of the charges he faces. Six candidates - North Carolina's Governor Doug Burgum, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis, the former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina's Senator Tim Scott - indicated they would still support Trump. Only two candidates - the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson - said they would not. Continue reading...
Former president and frontrunner was absent, but cast a long shadow over the eight presidential hopefulsEight Republicans vying for the party nomination took the debate stage on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, throwing punches over Ukraine, a federal abortion ban and more, hoping to increase their chances at defeating the no-show frontrunner.Absent was Donald Trump, whose pre-taped interview with the rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson simultaneously published on Twitter, now known as X, and sought to siphon away screen time from the debate housed on Fox News, which famously ousted Carlson earlier this year. Continue reading...
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