Despite racing out to an early lead, the Florence Freedom, presented by Titan Mechanical Solutions, dropped the finale and the series to the River City Rascals with an 11-5 loss on Thursday at UC Health Stadium.

Back-to-back singles by Collins Cuthrell and Jordan Brower started the second inning for the Freedom (55-33), asOzzy Braff bunted both runners into scoring position before Austin Wobrock plated the games first run with a run-scoring grounder to short. Garrett Vail followed with a base hit to left center that allowed Brower to cross as Florence jumped in front, 2-0.

River City (47-41) cut the deficit in half in the third, however, as a hit-by-pitch of Brandon Thomas set up a stolen base and an errant throw from Vail, allowing Thomas to reach third. Johnny Morales came through with an RBI-groundout next, pulling the Rascals to within one run. A four-run top of the fourth however, gave River City a lead they would not relinquish. The rally started when Josh Silver was hit by a pitch, and Paul Kronenfeld and Braxton Martinez followed with singles, the latter of which tied the score at 2-2 and chased starter Jordan Kraus (9-5) from the game. Enrique Zamora entered in relief and surrendered a first-pitch, go-ahead three-run homer to Clint Freeman.

Two more Rascals insurance runs would score in the top of the fifth. Mike Jurgella singled to start the frame and Jason Merjano reached on an error by Daniel Fraga. Cuthrell fielded the ball in right field and came up firing to third, but his throw bounced into the stands, allowing Jurgella to score and Merjano to reach third. Kronenfeld then took advantage of the errors, lacing an RBI-single to right to extend the Rascals lead to 7-2.

After four consecutive scoreless innings on offense, Florence would scratch a run across in the seventh. After Braff flew out to left to start the inning, Wobrock singled and Vail laced a double to the left-center gap, scoring Wobrock from first on Vails second hit and second RBI of the game.

Dan Ludwig (6-3) went seven-plus innings as River Citys starter, striking out five and allowing five runs, the final two of which came against reliever Nick Kennedy, who had inherited the runners when entering the game in the eighth.

The Rascals pushed three more runs across in the top of the eighth, and in the bottom half, Florence responded with two. Andrew Godbold led off with a single before Andre Mercurio lined a double down the right field line. Kronenfeld could not field the ball cleanly in the corner, allowing Godbold to score and Mercurio to dive in safely at third. Cuthrell then cut the deficit in half by plating Mercurio with a groundout to second.

A Freeman RBI-single off Pete Perez in the ninth inning gave River City its final run and Freemans fourth RBI of the game, and the Freedom failed to score in the bottom half, dropping the series finale to hand the Rascals the series win.

The Freedoms magic number to clinch a postseason berth still stands at one, with the magic number to clinch the West Division at two, with Thursdays Evansville loss to Normal.

The Freedom next host the Gateway Grizzlies for a three-game weekend series, with first pitch of Fridays series opener scheduled for 7:05 p.m. at UC Health Stadium. Gateway will send Dalton Shalberg (0-1) to the mound opposite Steve Hagen (3-1) on Fireworks Friday in Florence.

The Florence Freedom are members of the independent Frontier League and play all home games at UC Health Stadium located at 7950 Freedom Way in Florence, KY.The Freedom can be found online at FlorenceFreedom.com, or by phone at 859-594-4487.

Originally posted here:

Freedom drop finale to Rascals, return home for weekend series that could be division clincher - User-generated content (press release) (registration)

To close out every Books and Breakfast class, students, parents and volunteers hold hands and recite Assata Shakurs chant for her people:

"It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

It is our duty to win.

We must love each other and support each other.

We have nothing to lose but our chains."

Shakurs words illustrate the purpose of Books and Breakfast: To teach students early on about the work of those who advocate for oppressed communities and how, despite their age, they can contribute, too.

Freedom Inc., a local social justice nonprofit, started Books and Breakfast earlier this summer. The free program meets on Saturday mornings and is designed for black and southeast Asian children ages 4 to 13.

Bianca Gomez, Freedom Inc.s gender justice coordinator and a Books and Breakfast organizer, said one of the goals of the program is to give young students a platform for activism later in life.

Learning about these issues at a really young age is how you create freedom fighters, Gomez said.

Whatever career they get into, whatever choice they make for college, how they decide to raise their families, we hope that (Books and Breakfast) sets the foundation for creating change agents. In building a movement, we cannot leave out our young people.

Each three-hour session begins with a family-style meal around a large table. The intergenerational conversation brings together children, teen volunteers, Freedom Inc. adult staff and parents.

On a recent Saturday, after breakfast, students gathered on the carpet in the center of the room while Gomez led them in a reading of the weeks book: "Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement."

I didnt learn about Fannie Lou Hamer until I was in college, so you all are ahead of the game, Gomez told students before reading a few selections from the text.

Books and Breakfast strives to expose students to narratives and themes they dont typically learn about in school. In addition to reading, staff also discuss topics like standing up for your rights, self care and having power over your body.

You learn more about freedom for black people, said Jemyigha, 10, a Books and Breakfast student. You can learn a lot from Books and Breakfast about Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement.

Gomez said it is important to talk about heavy themes with children so they can advocate for themselves.

We talk to them about their bodies and keeping themselves safe, Gomez said. We feel like schools dont talk about these themes in a culturally specific way. Schools are not going to have a conversation about police. Our kids are telling us they are not having those conversations. That is the training that we give to our adults, so why wouldnt we ingrain that in our children?

Freedom Inc. was inspired by the work of Hands Up United, a Missouri-based organization that has run its Books and Breakfast program for over two years. There are other Books and Breakfast sites in 30 cities across the country.

After learning a bit about Hamer and her work, students made a collage about their communities with sun rays representing their dreams for their people, raindrops to showcase the barriers in front of those dreams, and flowers for the power that they have to overcome barriers.

Students dreams included the need for more love, less pollution, an end to homelessness and more spaces to play. They identified jail, poverty and lack of food as barriers that stood in their way.

As the students pondered the power they had to challenge those barriers, they were excited to raise their voices in protest and stand up for the rights of their communities, just like Fannie Lou Hamer did 50 years before.

People like Fannie Lou Hamer protested so we can have rights, Jemyigha said.

Black people have the right to live, said Alonzo, 7.

Freedom Inc. leverages their youth staff to lead the younger students through class. The teens said they enjoy working with their young peers because they want to teach them about concepts they didnt learn until they were older.

When I was their age, nobody really taught me this stuff. Its a huge privilege to run this kind of thing, said Cynthia, 15, a rising sophomore at West High School. As a teen now, I look at them as my old self. I want them to learn the things that Im learning now and give them the opportunity to learn the things I did not learn at their age.

Given the success of the program, Freedom Inc. hopes to garner support to expand classes into the school year. For more information about Books and Breakfast, contact Bianca Gomez at bgomez@freedom-inc.org.

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Freedom Inc.'s 'Books and Breakfast' centers on youth organizing - Madison.com

"I have lots of family in Haiti and wanted to bring them to the United States, but I don't have residency," Frederic says. "I thought about them every day, my wife and kids."

At a dead end called Roxham Road, Frederic is crossing a narrow ditch that separates the United States and Canada.

Canadian police wait patiently on the other side. They warn anyone who approaches that what they're about to do is illegal, that they'll be arrested.

But that's the first step. Once arrested, Frederic, and the thousands of others who have made this journey across to Quebec in the past few weeks, can apply for asylum in Canada. He hopes that would mean a chance at uniting with his family that remains in Haiti after 17 years apart. Then, he hopes, his family could apply to for asylum to become Canadian residents too.

In the past month, Greyhound and other bus lines have been packed with immigrants -- primarily Haitians -- making this exact trip from the United States into Canada. They have taken trains, buses, often multiple, to get to Plattsburgh, New York.

From there, they hail a taxi to the border. On this day, Frederic is one of a stream of almost 300 crossing, dragging whatever belongings they can with them. Haitians flooded to the United States after a cholera outbreak in 2010, as well as after the devastating earthquake the same year.

Frederic, like 59,000 other Haitians in the United States, has "temporary protected status," known as TPS, given to Haitians after the earthquake.

Frederic is fearful that means he would be kicked out of the US.

"I'm scared because every day I hear different news," Frederic says. "That's why I'm leaving the United States for Canada."

"We've never seen those numbers," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) spokesman Claude Castonguay. "Even though our officers are patrolling 24 hours a day all year long, we've never seen such numbers coming in."

RCMP intercepted almost 7,000 asylum seekers in the last six weeks in Quebec. 3,000 of those were in July, RCMP says, and almost 4,000 in just the first half of August.

Broadly, asylum seekers point to their growing unease about the Trump administration's attitudes toward immigrants. They also point to the racism they say was unleashed after President Trump's election as motivation for driving them to pick up and head to Canada.

Mimose Joseph and her 13-year-old daughter, Melissa Paul, are trying to find their taxi for the ride from Plattsburgh to the border.

They had taken a series of trains and buses from their home in Belle Glade, Florida, a state Joseph has called home since 2002.

Joseph does not speak any English, but her daughter Melissa was born in Florida and is a US citizen. The 13-year-old explains the pair made this trip to Canada, uprooting her adolescence, because of the growing pressure on her,

"She's been through a lot and has stayed here for almost 15 years, and she doesn't want any stress anymore," Paul says.

They, too, hope Canada will take them in permanently and allow brothers and sisters to join her. But for Melissa, it means leaving the only country she has ever known.

"It's kind of shocking and a little bit sad," she says.

Hundreds have been crossing the border each day in the last two months, according to PRAIDA, a provincial government agency that works under Quebec's Immigration Ministry and focuses on helping new arrivals resettle. Immigration officials say 250 people are coming across the border illegally each day.

"Definitely, there is a movement. People are talking to one another and they are suggesting that it is very easy to cross the border and they think that they will automatically become Canadian," PRAIDA Associate CEO Francine Dupuis says.

Canada has already done away with its version of TPS for Haitians, making it more difficult to claim asylum, Dupuis says.

Just because some asylum seekers are poor, or come from poverty-stricken countries, she says, that does not automatically make them refugees nor guarantee asylum.

"It's not going to be an open door," Dupuis says. "That's definitely not (the case) and it's sad because we do think that many of them believe that they are here to stay, which is not necessarily true."

So many asylum seekers now see Canada as a more welcoming country to find refuge and rebuild their lives that traditional sheltering options used during slower times are overflowing. 3,200 are in temporary housing in Montreal, Dupuis says.

The numbers have grown so much that Montreal's Olympic Stadium, which was home to the 1976 games, is now housing about 700 newcomers, Dupuis says.

The idea, Dupuis says, is to get them comfortable temporary housing but move them through the system as quickly as possible into more permanent lodging.

The vast majority of asylum seekers these days are Haitian, officials say. There are others from Syria and Yemen, fleeing the wars in their countries.

"What they want is a normal life, they want to study, they want to work, they want to have their families with a perspective of stability and this isn't something they seem to be getting now in the (United) States, unfortunately," Dupuis says. "They don't know what is going to happen and that creates anxiety, a lot of anxiety."

The YMCA on Montreal's Tupper Street has long served as the first stop for asylum seekers coming from the United States, but these days it is bursting. Its 600 beds are all full.

Nidal al-Yamani, 26, is standing outside. The Yemeni was living in Alabama on a student visa before he crossed into Canada on July 4. Yemen is one of the six Muslim-majority countries on the Trump administration's travel ban.

"After the ban, everybody knows Yemen. Only the bad things about Yemen," al-Yamani says.

He says he no longer felt comfortable in America and experienced several racist incidents.

"The mood changed and the new administration, they give the green light to the people who were racist (who weren't previously) showing it," al-Yamani says.

Al-Yamani has since moved out of the YMCA into more permanent lodgings as his case is processed. He has a higher chance of succeeding than the Haitians, coming from a country wracked by war, immigration officials say. Already, he says, he feels more at home and accepted in Canada.

"I still love USA. As a people, as a community, as everything. It's just the administration, and maybe the system, that affected me," he says. "Even if I try to go back to the United States I don't think I'm welcome anymore."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government are bracing for more people like Al-Yamani to make their way into Canada. On Wednesday he met with a task force of federal and provincial officials charged with managing the influx of asylum seekers.

Those from nine other countries besides Haiti may begin to make their way north too, as their TPS is currently set to expire in the next year. Among them, Honduras and Syria and Al-Yamani's home country of Yemen. It is unclear if the US will extend the TPS for the other countries.

Trudeau said immigrants were a positive for Canada: "Being welcoming and opening is a source of strength," he told reporters.

But he stressed no one was getting a free pass by entering Canada, especially at unauthorized crossing points.

"There are no advantages in terms of the immigration system to arrive irregularly versus arriving regularly," he says. "The same systems will be followed whether it's the very strong and rigorous immediate security checks or whether it's the careful evaluation of their file."

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His greatest hope at freedom is escaping the US and being arrested - CNN

From left, Mark Crane, Jennifer Kraska and the Rev. Joseph Toledo spoke at the Religious Freedom Forum on Wednesday. (Special to the Reporter-Herald)

Area churches hold forum on religious freedom

On Wednesday, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Parish of Fort Collins, and the Loveland, Fort Collins, Windsor, and Greeley Stakes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints jointly hosted a Religious Freedom Forum.

Nearly 750 community members from many faiths attended the event to hear speakers discuss the importance of religious freedom and how people can help preserve it locally and nationally, according to a press release.

Jennifer Kraska, executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, the state level public policy agency of the Church jointly operated by the three Catholic dioceses in Colorado, was the keynote speaker.

President Mark Crane, Loveland Stake President, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Rev. Joseph Toledo of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Parish also spoke, and the Colorado Mormon Chorale performed.

"Religious freedom is our first and most fundamental freedom," Kraska said. "The First Amendment recognizes and protects religious freedom, but this cherished freedom is granted to us by God and inscribed on the heart of every person. Today, there are many voices in society that try to stifle religious freedom, so an event such as the one we are having is so important in order to show unity on this important topic and learn more about what we can do to protect and preserve religious freedom in America."

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Area churches hold forum on religious freedom - Loveland Reporter-Herald

Freedom of association is a fundamental principle of American liberty. The right to start, to join, or to leave a group is simple enough, but what voluntary associations have accomplished because of it is staggering. Associations have worked to end slavery, to defeat polio, and to extend voting rights to women.

Americans support associations to fight heart disease and cancer, to feed and clothe the poor, and to support veterans. Americans will come together in voluntary associations to combat racism, inequality, and the ugly bigotry and violence we witnessed in Charlottesville.

This week a coalition of non-profit organizations throughout the country, including free market think tanks, non-union professional associations, education and labor reform advocates, celebrate National Employee Freedom Week. Spearheaded by the Nevada Policy Research Institute and the Association of American Educators, this effort seeks to educate Americas workforce about their rights regarding union membership, including the right to leave the union and to join a non-union alternative. For too long Americas workersteachers especiallyhave been forced into joining or funding labor unions because they do not know they have the right to opt out. This coerced membership and forced dues run contrary to freedom of association all Americans should enjoy.

For five years now National Employee Freedom Week has worked to ensure that every employee in America knows exactly what options he or she has and how to exercise thema positive and professional message encouraging employees everywhere to choose an association that best suits his or her budget, principles and career aspirations.

Since 1947 the closed shopin which union membership was a precondition for employmenthas been outlawed. In the 28 right-to-work states this means all employees have the right to opt-out of or never join a union, if they so choose. In the rest of the country where employees lack right-to-work protection, workers are likely to be required to pay a significant agency fee share of dues if they opt out of full membership, impelling many to remain union members. Workers can also become religious objectors, directing 100 percent of their union dues to a charity agreed upon with the union.

In a recent survey conducted by National Employee Freedom Week, nearly three in ten union members reported they would leave the union if they could do so without losing their job or any other penalty--and nearly 80 percent of Americans agree they should have that right.

Even for employees who know they have a right to quit their union, the process can be burdensome and confusing. For example, teachers in Clark County, Nev., Americas fifth-largest school district, are only afforded two weeks in July each year when they can leave their unioncell phone contracts are more reasonable. Union bosses hid the exit door in the middle of the summer when a teacher is rightly enjoying a much-deserved break. Many other states have an opt-out deadline in August. Summer comes to an end in September with a cruel and expensive surprise to any teacher trying to exercise the right to leave: You are too late, pay up. Next month many unions will celebrate Labor Day by sending out collection notices for unpaid and mandatory dues to members who wanted out.

National Employee Freedom Week shines a spotlight on these unfair practices, restoring the freedom of association in the workplace that all employees have technically, but not widely, enjoyed since the Taft-Hartley Act was passed 70 years ago. Coalition members in each of the participating states are running information campaigns designed to put control back in the hands of each employee. Only when employees are making informed choices can we have true freedom of association for all of Americas labor force.

Colin Sharkey is the Executive Vice President of the Association of American Educators, the largest national non-union teacher association, and the National Director of National Employee Freedom Week.

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Freedom of association doesn't end in the workplace - The Hill (blog)

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Beijing's Threat to Academic Freedom Wall Street Journal (subscription) As Western universities become dependent on China-related funding and the Xi Jinping regime tightens control over speech, the temptation to sacrifice core values will grow unless schools stand up for academic freedom. Last week news broke that CUP ...

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Beijing's Threat to Academic Freedom - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's northeastern region of Catalonia, hit last week by two Islamist militant attacks which killed 15 people, is to deploy more police, install bollards in Barcelona and step up security around stations and tourist landmarks.

The aim is to strike a balance between security and not overloading residents with restrictions.

"We're looking at introducing (street) obstacles that could be mobile," Joaquin Forn, who is in charge of home affairs in Catalonia, told a news conference on Wednesday.

A van plowed into crowds of holidaymakers and local residents on Barcelona's crowded Las Ramblas boulevard last Thursday, killing 13 people. Two others were killed during the driver's getaway and in a separate attack in Cambrils.

The Barcelona rampage reignited a row over how cities can better prevent such attacks. Militants have used trucks and cars as weapons to kill nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Spain over the past 13 months.

Catalan authorities may also erect some permanent barriers and turn some streets into pedestrian-only thoroughfares, Forn said.

The regional capital, which receives around 30 million visitors a year, is home to several landmarks designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, including the towering Sagrada Familia. Forn added that some 10 percent more police would be deployed.

Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks in Catalonia, issued a video via one of its official channels on Wednesday showing two of its fighters making threats in Spanish against Spain, interspersed with images of the aftermath of the Barcelona attack.

One fighter pledged to avenge Muslim blood spilled by the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478, and what he said was the killing Spain was currently engaged in against Islamic State.

This was an apparent reference to Iraq, where Spain has several hundred soldiers training local forces in the fight against Islamic State.

Investigators are still looking into whether the suspects behind last week's attacks had links to France or Belgium and are examining their movements over recent weeks as they look for connections to possible cells elsewhere in Europe.

The car used in the attack in Cambrils, south of Barcelona, was caught on camera speeding in the Paris region days earlier.

"We are still trying to establish why they were in the Paris area," French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters at a joint news conference in Paris with his Spanish counterpart on Wednesday.

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said France and Spain would continue to reinforce border checks and step up information exchanges, including of passenger information in real time.

One of the suspects has said the leader of the militant group was an imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, who died a day before the Barcelona attack when a house the group was using to build bombs blew up.

Court officials in Spain's Valencia region said on Wednesday that Spain had issued an expulsion order against Es Satty after he served a four-year jail term for drug-trafficking but that this was annulled by a court in 2015 after Es Satty appealed.

The judge at the time overturned the expulsion order partly because Es Satty had employment roots in Spain which he said "shows his efforts to integrate in Spanish society."

A dozen Islamist militants suspected of involvement in the plot were either killed or arrested. A judge on Tuesday ordered two suspects jailed, one remained in police custody pending further investigation and a fourth was freed with conditions.

Reporting by Inmaculada Sanz, Emma Pinedo, Tomas Cobos, Jesus Aguado and Adrian Croft, Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris, Writing by Sarah White; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt

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Barcelona balances security and freedom after deadly attacks - Reuters

The Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and their rivals, the de-facto Hamas administration in Gaza, have both tightened the noose on freedom of expression in recent months,launching a repressive clampdown on dissentthat has seen journalists from opposition media outlets interrogated and detained in a bid to exert pressure on their political opponents, said Amnesty International.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian authorities have arrested six journalists in August so far, shut down 29 websites and introduced a controversial Electronic Crimes Law imposing tight controls on media freedom and banning online expression and dissent. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas security forces have arrested at least two journalists since June and hampered others from freely carrying out their work. At least 12 Palestinians, including activists, were also detained by Hamas for critical comments posted on Facebook.

The last few months have seen a sharp escalation in attacks by the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, on journalists and the media in a bid to silence dissent. This is a chilling setback for freedom of expression in Palestine, said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.

By rounding up journalists and shutting down opposition websites the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip appear to be using police state tactics to silence critical media and arbitrarily block peoples access to information.

The Electronic Crimes Law, adopted by President Mahmoud Abbas in July, violates citizens rights to privacy and freedom of expression and blatantly flouts the State of Palestines obligations under international law.

The law imposes heavy fines and permits the arbitrary detention of anyone critical of the Palestinian authorities online, including journalists and whistleblowers. It could also be used to target anyone for simply sharing or retweeting such news. Anyone who is deemed to have disturbed public order, national unity or social peace could be sentenced to imprisonment and up to 15 years hard labour.

Instead of presiding over a chilling campaign designed to silence dissent, intimidate journalists and breach the privacy of individuals, the Palestinian authorities must stop arbitrarily detaining journalists and drop charges against anyone prosecuted for freely expressing themselves. They must also urgently repeal the Electronic Crimes Law, said Magdalena Mughrabi.

In June, several weeks before the Electronic Crimes Law came into force, Palestinian authorities arbitrarily ordered internet service providers in the West Bank to block access to 29 websites, according to the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA). They include websites belonging to political parties, opposition and independent media outlets and the al Quds network, a volunteer-run community online news outlet.

At least six people in the West Bank have been detained and charged with defamation or spreading information that threatens the state since the Electronic Crimes Law came into force in July. They are currently awaiting trial. At least 10 journalists were summoned for interrogation by Palestinian security forces in June and July.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas security forces arrested two journalists in June, blocked journalists from reporting in some areas, and restricted the work of a foreign journalist. At least 12 activists and journalists were detained and questioned over comments and caricatures posted on social media deemed critical of Hamas authorities. Amnesty International also gathered evidence suggesting at least one of the activists was tortured and otherwise ill-treated in custody including by being beaten, blindfolded, and forced into stress positions for prolonged periods.

Hamas must immediately release anyone held solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and urgently investigate allegations of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees by security forces, said Magdalena Mughrabi.

According to MADA, the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank are responsible for 81 attacks on media freedom since the start of the year. Hamas authorities in Gaza have been responsible for 20 such attacks.

See the original post here:

State of Palestine: Alarming attack on freedom of expression - Reliefweb

Uber is adding more features to its app that are designed to benefit its drivers. Now drivers will be able to set their arrival times and trip preferences, get notifications if a trip is going to take 45 minutes or longer, and set more preferred destinations.

Prior to this update, drivers could set two destinations a day, allowing them to make a trip only in a preferred area, which is supposed to make commuting to and from home more convenient. Uber has now increased the limit to six destinations.

Setting trip preferences means that Uber drivers can switch to making deliveries for UberEats, the companys food delivery service, when car riding requests are slow. By getting a notification if a trip is going to take 45 minutes or longer, drivers will be better informed to decide whether they want to turn down the trip request. And most notably, Uber has made declining a trip less impactful to a drivers account standing.

Its part of the companys PR effort to court drivers after a disastrous couple of scandal-ridden months, which resulted in the companys CEO Travis Kalanick and other top-ranking executives stepping down. The effort, called 180 Days of Change, was announced back in June. As part of the initiative, Uber added tipping for drivers as an option back for Seattle, Minneapolis, and Houston in June. Every month, Uber plans to announce more changes as part of the effort.

Setting an arrival time.

Long trip notification warns driver if a trip will take 45 minutes or more.

Uber increased the driver destination limit from two trips to six.

Drivers can now become UberEats deliverers during slow hours.

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Uber's new app features give its drivers more freedom to decline ... - The Verge

Achieving financial freedom doesn't necessarily mean becoming filthy rich -- not that that hurts.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Brian Tracy explains the seven steps you need to take to achieve financial freedom. Now, financial freedom doesn't mean becoming filthy rich -- lottery winners go bankrupt all the time. Instead, financial freedom is about becoming disciplined and using your money in a way that ensures you can live the sort of life you want both now and in the future.

That's why the first step isn't about getting a lot of money. Instead, it's about teaching yourself to think positivelyaboutmoney. That way, you'll be in the right mindset to move forward.

Click play to learn more.

Related:Brian Tracy's Best Advice for Young People: It's Never Too Early to Find Your Purpose

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EN is partnered with hundreds of topYouTube channelsin the business vertical. Watch video from our network partners ondemand onAmazon Fire,Roku,Apple TVand the Entrepreneur App available oniOSandAndroiddevices.

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7 Steps to Achieve Financial Freedom - Entrepreneur

August 22, 2017 12:52 PM By Christin Ayers

ALLENSWORTH, Tulare County (KPIX 5) California was once the promise land for a former slave who settled a town where his dreams of freedom would become a reality.

That place still exists. Its called Allensworth and if you didnt know it was here, you might never find it.

This blink-and-youll-miss-it former agricultural town, smack in the middle of California, four hours from San Francisco, three hours from Los Angeles, suspended in time looks just the way it did 100 years ago.

Today Allensworth has been preserved as a California state historic park.

But its not just any park.

This is the only California park that deals with black history, said park ranger Steven Ptomey. Its very unique in that.

In its heyday, Allensworth was not just any town.

This was the only endeavor, especially in California that was fully financed, governed, built and designed by African Americans solely, said Ptomey. There was no one else involved in that outside the black community.

Steven Ptomey knows Allensworth better than most anyone. Hes the resident park interpreter, an archaeologist by trade. He has spent years studying Allensworth and the man it is named for, Colonel Allen Allensworth.

He was born in 1842, born a slave, got his freedom during the civil war, served in the U.S. Navy, was a restaurateur, then got the call to go into the ministry, became an ordained Baptist minister, got his doctorate in theology from the same seminary as Booker T. Washington and then got an appointment as the Chaplin of the 24th Infantry Regiment one of four all-black regiments in 1884 where he served until 1906, said Ptomey. And upon his retirement he was the highest ranking African American officer in the U.S. Army. He was also only the second man in history at the time to receive the rank of Lt. Colonel as a Chaplin.

But Colonel Allensworth wasnt finished making history. In the early 20th centuy he decided his next venture would be wildly ambitious.

He had a vision for California.

Even though they were 50 years out of slavery, they were physically free but they were not economically free so his idea was to found a community where they could live apart and prove that they were worthy of everything that America had to offer by being businessmen and entrepreneurs and gentleman farmers if you would, said Ptomey.

It was a time in history when racism dictated where African Americans could live and where they could not. There were Jim Crow laws in the South and aggressive redlining throughout the country, including California.

They had doctrines and covenants on pieces of property where they would agree not to sell to a person of color, added Ptomey.

Allensworth was supposed to solve those problems as a utopian black community.

(Wikimapia)

Looking out from the library you could see the First Baptist Church. A brown building was the home of the Philips family. Off to the left is the Colonels home. There was a school house a hotel, a general store, and fertile land as far as the eye could see.

So what would a typical day in Allentown be like?

Overall this was a small town and this was a quiet, country life, said Ptomey. They never had any serious crime in Allensworth during the historic period. They had a town constable. He only investigated one robbery and the guy who got caught gave everything back.

At its peak, it was a town of some 250 people, families such as Alice and James Hackett. They took a chance and moved to Allensworth from Alameda. Their home looks like a page from history a piano, chandeliers, lace doilies filled with turn-of-the-century antiques.

There were some conveniences in Allensworth. The Santa Fe Pacific Railroad line cut right through town.

Col. Allensworth hoped residents could live off the land, growing crops thanks to the Tulare Lake bed. But that was a crucial miscalculation. About a decade after the town was established, the water would dry up.

The drought that happens in 1913-1914 The railheads moved from Allensworth to Alpaw, and right around that same time, the Colonel was killed in 1914. He was hit by a motorcyclist, said Ptomey.

His death ended one of the Colonels greatest dreams for Allentown.

They lost their bid to build a black college here, said Ptomey. They were going to build the Tuskegee of the West, a black polytechnical college. That was killed in the California legislature after the death of the Colonel because he was the guy with the political connections.

Ptomey believes had they built that college here, Allensworth probably would have survived into the 20th century as a more thriving community.

Nonetheless, Colonel Allensworths dream lasted several years. In 1915, the town was still thriving.

But as the 1920s approached, Allensworth declined. World War II dealt a final crushing blow to the town. After the war, its educated young people migrated to places like Richmond, California, abandoning farm work for factory jobs.

It wasnt until the 1970s, some 50 years after the demise of Allensworth, that it was named a state park. The town was restored back to its original glory and is now in the National Registry of Historic Places.

Tourists travel from far and wide to see Allensworth, like Don Billberry and Betty Lee from Stockton.

It was very interesting, said Billberry after touring with Ptomey. I learned a lot. I never heard of this place really.

Lee believes Allensworth holds an important place in history.

You cant know where youre going until you know where youve been, she said. History is really important for us, and especially black history.

The town is a testament to true grit. They had to be really strong people to be out here in the middle of nowhere not really knowing what your future held, and to keep going anyway, said Lee. Its a whole lot of drive, determination and just the will to say we can make a difference in this world.

Its still standing after 100 years. Can you imagine? Its still standing, says Lee.

As short-lived as its life span was, Allentown made its mark and left a legacy for generations to come.

The Colonel Allensworth State Historic Parks Visitor Center and campgrounds are open daily. There are Juneteenth celebrations and other events all year round.For more information, directions and events, go to the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park web page.

Christin Ayers is a general assignment reporter for KPIX 5 News.Ayers is excited to return to Northern California, where she was born and raised. Ayers grew up in Sacramento and trained to be a journalist in the Bay Area.She received her bachelors...

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Former Slave's Dream Of Freedom Lives On In Central California Town - CBS San Francisco Bay Area

Updated: Aug 21, 2017 1:13 AM ET

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) U.S. and South Korean troops kicked off their annual drills Monday that come after President Donald Trump and North Korea exchanged warlike rhetoric in the wake of the North's two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills are largely computer-simulated war games held every summer and have drawn furious responses from North Korea, which views them as an invasion rehearsal. Pyongyang's state media on Sunday called this year's drills a "reckless" move that could trigger the "uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war."

Despite the threat, U.S. and South Korean militaries launched this year's 11-day training on Monday morning as scheduled. The exercise involves 17,500 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers, according to the U.S. military command in South Korea and Seoul's Defense Ministry.

No field training like live-fire exercises or tank maneuvering is involved in the Ulchi drills, in which alliance officers sit at computers to practice how they engage in battles and hone their decision-making capabilities. The allies have said the drills are defensive in nature.

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in said Monday that North Korea must not use the drills as a pretext to launch fresh provocation, saying the training is held regularly because of repeated provocations by North Korea.

North Korea typically responds to South Korea-U.S. military exercises with weapons tests and a string of belligerent rhetoric. During last year's Ulchi drills, North Korea test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile that flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in the longest flight by that type of weapon. Days after the drills, the North carried out its fifth and biggest nuclear test to date.

Last month North Korea test-launched two ICBMs at highly lofted angles, and outside experts say those missiles can reach some U.S. parts like Alaska, Los Angeles or Chicago if fired at normal, flattened trajectories. Analysts say it would be only a matter of time for the North to achieve its long-stated goal of acquiring a nuclear missile that can strike anywhere in the United States.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump pledged to answer North Korean aggression with "fire and fury." North Korea, for its part, threatened to launch missiles toward the American territory of Guam before its leader Kim Jong Un backed off saying he would first watch how Washington acts before going ahead with the missile launch plans.Hyung-

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US and South Korean Troops Have Started Annual Joint Military Drills Amid a Tense North Korea Standoff - TIME

Freedom is the song of the human heart. Our forefathers crossed the sea to find freedom on these shores. They forged the U.S. Constitution to protect this freedom from governmental tyranny. And they shed their blood on every continent to defend human freedom from the armed assaults of evil governments.

From Francis Scott Keys, the land of the free, to Sammy Davis Jr.s Ive Got to Be Me, to Lady Gagas Born This Way, freedoms song still rings out in every generation. Thats the good news.

We still have common ground. We all yearn to be free. We all have the same indomitable desire to be the person that we are, to be true to ourselves. This desire for liberty strikes such a deep chord in us that it is unarguable. It is common ground. It binds us together as human beings.

So why is it that this solid common ground does not seem to be holding us together anymore, but tearing us apart? In times past, Freedom! was a rallying cry that united us in a common struggle against every oppressor. Today, Freedom! is more often a cry that divides us into a million individuals competing against one another for power to make others bend to my will.

In times past, fighting for freedom meant fighting both Nazis and Communists, totalitarians of all sorts who would undermine or destroy the constitution of the United States. Today so-called freedom-fighters may openly oppose the constitution and believe that it is a hindrance to their true freedom.

What happened? The answer is fairly straightforward. While the definition of freedom has remained the same, the definition of who we are, has been turned on its head. Freedom remains the ability to be who I am; to think, speak and act according to my true humanity. All of us still agree on this. But we have become divided on the more foundational question: What IS my true humanity?

Who ARE you? Who AM I? Are we the same, or are we utterly different? And if we are the same, how are we the same and what unites us?

This is the root problem in public discourse today. Everybody is yelling out freedom. Everyone wants to be free to be who you are. But there are two wildly different accountings of who we are.

One accounting says that we are creatures, first and foremost. The Declaration of Independence says, all men are created equal. Our equality is firmly grounded in a common Creator: They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Human rights are not given by governments but by our Creator.

Because there is a common Creator above us all, our individual human rights cannot be in conflict, but must be in perfect harmony with everyone elses rights. And governments, because they neither created us nor gave us our rights, are duty-bound to recognize and protect the God-given rights of every individual.

This accounting of human nature was the bedrock of our US constitution. It is also found embedded within the constitution of every state. All 50 states in our union have reference to God or the divine in their constitution.

The other accounting of human nature denies a common Creator. This denial comes in so many shapes and sizes that it is impossible to enumerate them all here. For the moment, it is enough to say that a common Creator is denied either explicitly or implicitly.

But without a common creator, it is practically impossible to account for human rights. If there is no common Creator above us, are there multiple creators so that we are divided one from another and fundamentally different? Or is there no creator at all, so that each person is his or her own creator?

Either way, rights come into conflict. Interests cannot be harmonized. People are pitted against each other. We are tribalized, or atomized into a million competing individuals with no real hope of harmony. This world-view raises some serious questions both about human rights and about the nature of government.

If I am not endowed with full human rights by virtue of my conception as a human, just exactly how and when do humans get any rights at all? We see these confusions at work in everything from embryonic ethics to assisted suicide debates. For these unfortunate people, right to life and liberty is not absolute, but depends entirely upon what other people think about them.

If there is not a God who transcends every human being and every human institution, just exactly who are we responsible to? What principle limits government?

America was not born in a vacuum. The founding fathers did not simply assume a Creator because they didnt have the imagination to think any other way. At the writing of the Declaration of Independence, there were already philosophers and ways of thinking that discounted God, and posited that human beings alone were the source and measure of all things.

Those philosophies led France to a completely different kind of revolution than America experienced. The history of the French Revolution is bloody and hellish. Those who seized power from the crown were not humble and restrained like the authors of the U.S. Constitution.

Heads rolled. A lot of them. The guillotine first killed the royalty. Then, it turned on the people. Without accountability to a Creator, the revolutionary government became a god unto itself.

We saw the same thing happen in Hitlers Germany with its extermination of 10 million, and in Stalins Russia which liquidated 50 million of its own citizens, and in Maos China, which is still killing and imprisoning its own people and the list goes on and on.

Each of these places tried to replace the common Creator with a different basis for unity. Each made the sovereign individual the basis of freedom, and wound up denying rights to millions of those same individuals.

So back to the question at hand. What is true freedom? I am thankful that we have such a solid common ground. That we all want to be free to live true to ourselves provides us with a huge potential for unity around this idea.

But whether or not we achieve that unity, depends entirely upon how we answer the prior question: Who are we?

Are we fundamentally creatures, accountable to a Creator? If so, the path to true freedom lies in knowing who I am through His eyes, through His revelation. And seeing myself through Gods eyes, I can have every confidence that my freedom serves my neighbor and does not impinge on the freedoms of those created by the same God.

But if we are fundamentally independent and sovereign beings, with no Creator, we have a challenge before us that no country has ever yet figured out how to live with. If my true freedom depends only on actualizing self-will, how can I ever be confident that my freedom serves my neighbor and is not in direct competition with everyone around me?

Each person must wrestle with these questions for himself or herself. My only purpose here is to point out the necessity of thinking this through. I know where I stand. I hope you will stand with me. But either way, the more thought we give to these questions, the better chance we have to understand ourselves and one another.

Jonathan Lange has a heart for our state and community. Locally, he has raised his family and served as pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Evanston and St. Pauls in Kemmerer for two decades. Statewide, he leads the Wyoming Pastors Network in advocating for the traditional church in the public square.

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What is true freedom? - Uinta County Herald

If confirmed by the Senate to serve as the next U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback will face a daunting trifecta of challenges: Recent data from Pew Research Center reveals that religious persecution is on the rise, Americas image is in decline, and global majorities view President Donald Trump as arrogant, dangerous, and intolerant.

When it comes to religious tolerance, a skeptical world doesnt believe America practices what it preaches.

Unsurprisingly, at the release of the State Departments annual report on religion freedom last week, journalists peppered a senior State Department official with questions about how high-minded rhetoric on the importance of religious freedom abroad squares with Trumps promise to prioritize Christian refugees, his efforts to enact a so-called Muslim ban, silence in response to increased attacks against American Muslims, conflicting views on Russia, and enhanced security cooperation with religiously repressive Saudi Arabia.

And yet, despite the presidents many blunders on religion-related issues, there are signs of a more conventional and constructive focus on religious freedom at the State Department. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared at the religious freedom report rollout and gave solid remarks, offering solidarity with a wide range of persecuted groups notably including Turkish Alevis, Chinese Uighurs, Pakistani Ahmadiyya, Saudi Shia, and other minority Muslim communities. The administration has retained Knox Thames, the special advisor for religious minorities in the Middle East and South/Central Asia. And most significantly, the administration has nominated a highly qualified, highly respected religious freedom ambassador.

During his many years in Congress, in the House and then Senate, Brownback was a well-known champion of religious freedom and myriad humanitarian causes. His nomination has been praised by a wide spectrum of religious leaders and religious freedom advocates including some who have been intensely critical of Trump.

The Trump administration is also to be commended for the relative speed of the Brownback nomination. Whereas President George W. Bush took eight months to nominate his religious freedom envoy and Barack Obama took 17, Trumps selection took just six months.

But many things Trump has said and done in the early months of his young presidency will complicate Brownbacks already difficult job. If the religious freedom report press conference was any indication, he is likely to be dogged by questions about the administrations credibility on religious freedom issues.

Here, I put forward five concrete recommendations for addressing specific challenges Brownback will face as Trumps religious freedom ambassador.

1. Emphasize early and often that religious freedom is a universal principle, not identity politics. Everyone from atheists to Zoroastrians is entitled to the same protection to peacefully practice and promote their beliefs.

Thankfully, Brownback has a strong track record of upholding the universality of religious liberty, as does the State Department office he will lead. Brownback should forcefully resist any pressure to prioritize Christians or to give short shrift to other groups.

2. Especially reassure and defend vulnerable Muslims. Muslims are the primary victims of terrorism, they suffer severe repression in places like China and Myanmar, and they face far greater social hostility than socially conservative Christians in Europe and North America.

From candidate Trumps call for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States to his insistence on using the unhelpful phrase radical Islamic terrorism to his refusal to host the traditional White House iftar, this administration has severely strained Americas relationship with the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims.

Brownback can help to repair some of the damage by meeting regularly with Muslim groups, speaking at their conferences, visiting their holy sites, calling out governments that mistreat their Muslim populations, condemning acts of terror targeting Muslims, and being forthright about Americas own struggle with Islamophobia.

3. Communicate the value of religious liberty in language that appeals across the ideological and theological spectrum. At home and abroad, the very term religious freedom is increasingly viewed as a partisan, sectarian rallying cry as a front for a Christian nationalist agenda.

Brownback need not drop the phrase religious freedom entirely it will be in his official title after all but he can help to broaden the lingo of the movement he will serve. In Europe and in multilateral settings, the standard phrase is freedom of religion or belief, which more explicitly expands the concept and the cause to include people with nonreligious beliefs. Other terms like belief rights, soul liberty, and freedom of conscience get at more or less the same thing in less politicized ways.

Framing the issue around social inclusion, minority rights, and protection of sacred sites can also help to open productive conversations on the importance of respecting religious pluralism.

4. Champion democracy and the full range of human rights. Rarely does a government make isolated progress on one discreet human right, such as religious freedom. All rights are interconnected, mutually reinforcing elements of good governance. The rising tide of liberal democracy lifts the boats of all human rights.

Thus, the apparent lack of emphasis on democracy and human rights in America First foreign policy is worrisome for U.S. religious freedom diplomacy. Brownback will be more effective in advancing religious freedom if he is surrounded by a strong and collegial team of senior and mid-level officials advocating human rights and democracy. He can use his position to press the administration to fill and empower other vital human rights positions, most critically the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, and the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.

5. Defend and collaborate with the State Departments Office of Religion and Global Affairs. Just as religious freedom is only one of many human rights, its also just one of many issues at the intersection of faith and foreign affairs. Thats why in 2013, after several years of internal and external lobbying, the State Department created an office devoted to it.

Now, under the Trump administration, there are concerns that the office could be bureaucratically sidelined. If it is, the State Department would lose an important mechanism for analyzing and advising on global religiopolitical dynamics and for equipping the U.S. diplomatic corps to more effectively engage faith-based communities on a broad range of shared goals, from promoting peace to combating corruption.

Religious freedom is just one small part of American foreign policy, but given Brownbacks political prominence and religious freedoms significance to Trumps constituency, Brownback will likely become a major force in Trumps diplomacy. His task will be to make American religious freedom advocacy credible again.

Photo credit: ALEX WONG/Getty Images

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Can Trump's Religious Freedom Ambassador Actually Succeed? - Foreign Policy (blog)

The art work of Freedoms professional and amateur artists, as well as that of local children that was put into a coloring book by the Freedom Village Store, is almost sold out. There are 23 left. The store will not be doing another production run so if you have not gotten your copy, you better do it soon, before they are all sold out!

South Eaton Meetinghouse will be hosting a special program featuring Maestro George Wiese and friends Tuesday, Aug. 22, at 6 p.m. This skilled graduate of the Juilliard School of Music will entertain and delight you with the history and nuances of the beautiful rebuilt Woods & Co. reed organ at the meetinghouse, and will play a wide array if music created and adapted for reed organ. There is suggested donation of $10. The South Eaton Meeting House is located on the corner of Towle Hill and Burnham Roads. For more information, go to southeatonmeetinghouse.com or email semh1844@outlook.com.

Camp Huckins Family Weekend is being held on Sept. 8-10. This is a getaway weekend at Camp Huckins with a special rate for Freedom families. Call now to reserve your space as there are only a few cabins left. Families stay together in one cabin and participate in camp activities. Meals included two cookouts and other meals will be served at the Camp Huckins Dining Hall. One family member must be a resident of Freedom to receive special sliding fee scale (family of four) additional family members $10. Tier one is $50, tier 2 is $75 and tier 3 is $125. Choose the tier that best suits your family. To register, call the Camp Huckins office at (603) 539-4710.

Ernie has started raising turkeys for Thanksgiving. If you are interested in getting one, you should contact Ernie now at ernieday@roadrunner.com or call him at (603) 539 3604. He has a very limited supply.

Your local Kennett High football player has Gold Cards for sale. The cost is $20 and the cards give discounts at Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, McDonalds, Elvio's, Subway, Beef and Ski, Wicked Fresh, Jalisco's, D'Angelo's, Shalimar, Friendly's, Flatbread, Black Cap, Applebee's, Ben and Jerry's, Almost There Tavern, Horsefeathers, Starbucks, the Met, Seadogs, McGrath's, Twombly's Market, Dairy Queen and Margarita Grill. The cards can be used over and over and over again and last for one year. Don't forget to pick up one, or several. They are only available for a short time.

Lisa Wheeler can be contacted at wheelersinfreedom@roadrunner.com.

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Freedom Town Column: Coloring book featuring local artist nearly sold out - Conway Daily Sun

On TuesdaySecretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a speech to mark the release of the State Departments annual International Religious Freedom Report. Human Rights Firsts Rob Berschinski spoke to NPRs All Things Considered about Tillersons remarks.

The report, which documents developments in religious freedom in every nation around the world, is an important human rights monitoring tool, and is used throughout the U.S. government to inform policy, conduct diplomacy, and allocate aid. Secretary Tillersons remarks affirmed its value as both a resource for decision makers and as a platform to all those worldwide seeking to live their lives peacefully in accordance with their conscience.

That Tillerson took time to make remarks on the report is a good step after his conspicuous absence at the release of the State Departments annual report on human rights conditions around the world. He noted that U.S support for religious freedom is both a moral imperative and part of a strategy to make the world more stable, economically vibrant, and peaceful.

Unfortunately, Tillerson did not highlight several areas covered in the report: growing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and extremism in Europe. With the release of the report in the immediate aftermath of this weeks white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Jews were targeted by neo-Nazis and the KKK, the omission of antisemitism was all the more striking.

Also missing from his remarks was any mention of refugee protectiona lifeline for persecuted religious minorities. While the Secretary rightly assailed ISIS for its multiple crimes against minority religious communitiesincluding genocide of Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslimsand criticized Bahrain, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia for violating the rights of religious minorities these statements lack credibility in light of the Trump administrations policies regarding U.S. resettlement of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.

Where religious freedom is not protected, Tillerson said, we know that instability, human rights abuses, and violent extremism have a greater opportunity to take root. Those fine words should be coupled with a commitment to help those fleeing religious persecution. As the report points out, the United States has historically been a leader on refugee resettlement. Today, a strong effort to help refugees would not only relieve suffering; it would serve U.S. foreign policy interests by securing the stability of frontline states hosting the overwhelming majority of the worlds 22.5 million refugees.

Six-months after President Trumps January 27 travel ban executive order, U.S. refugee resettlement has declined by over 50 percent, with the resettlement of Syrian refugees declining by 80 percent and Muslim refugees by 76 percent. To proclaim the importance of protecting religious minorities while denying them the ability to seek asylum is a glaring contradiction and a failure of American leadership.

Human Rights First recommends the following steps to align American foreign policy with the responsibility to protect religious freedom and to prioritize areas of urgent concern:

Originally posted here:

Aligning American Foreign Policy to Protect Religious Freedom - Human Rights First (blog)

ROBERT PATTINSON cut his teeth, as it were, on the "Twilight" series of vampire films. These days he's deep into a very different sort of role, and trading questions-and-answers with Michelle Miller:

If you had to fall in love with a vampire, you could do worse than the one played by Robert Pattinson, as Edward Cullen in the mega-hit "Twilight" series.

Pattinson fought, kissed, and glowered his way to superstardom. And like so many teen idols before him, he's been trying to shake that image ever since.

"It's not like, 'Oh, I'll come down from an ivory tower to be ' I mean, these movies are hard for me to get. Literally, I'm just as much trying to convince people, like, every single time. And it's not like I'm, like, Leo [diCaprio] or something!"

"So it's tough for you?" Miller asked.

"The only thing that being famous really helps in is getting financing if your movies make a lot of money," he said. "And, like, the movies I do are weird, and they don't make a lot of money a lot of the time!"

Perhaps that's why on a Thursday afternoon in August, Miller met up with the now-31-year-actor at, of all places, a jail in Queens, New York, where he went to do research for his new film, "Good Time." "I tried to get permission to stay overnight for a few days. But yeah, the prison's commissioner was saying it's too dangerous, even if you're in protective custody." he said.

Robert Pattinson with correspondent Michelle Miller.

CBS News

If he's all but unrecognizable in the role, that's by design.

"I think so much of life people are trying to put you in a box and define you all the time," he told Miller. "And it's just exciting to have a job where you're allowed to consistently break the walls of the box around you."

Robert Pattinson in the Safdie Brothers' "Good Time."

A24

That desire to break free is one reason he reached out to brothers Josh and Benny Safdie (directors of "Heaven Knows What"), hoping to work with them. "My initial thought was, 'He's not right for this other project we're trying to do," Josh told Miller.

Despite their initial misgivings, they discovered -- as millions of fans have there's just something about Pattinson. So they put their other projects on hold, and wrote this film especially for him.

"I was very aware of what Rob was doing with his career choices," said Josh Safdie. "I thought that his conviction, as an actor's purpose, wasn't a commercial one, in a weird way."

Benny Safdie said Pattinson was searching for something: "He was after a greater purpose."

When Miller sat down with Pattinson on the set of the film, he admitted he's still a little ambivalent about his success as an actor: "My main thing, which is what I've always had the fear of since I started acting, is that everyone's just going to see through it and just see, 'You're just some kid from London!'" he laughed. "So you always think, people are just going to see though whatever character you make."

Left: Robert Pattinson with Guy Pearce in "The Rover." Center: "The Childhood of a Leader." Right: "The Lost City of Z."

A24/IFC Films/Bleecker Street

Born in London, Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson is the youngest of three children. His father, Richard, imported vintage cars. His mother, Clare, worked for a modeling agency.

He started acting by accident: "One of the plays one year, all the tall people left [the company], and I was the only one tall enough to, like, play this role! And then [I] ended up getting an agent from that. And it kind of spiraled."

"You were lucky," said Miller.

"Very, very, very lucky! And then you have to kind spend the rest of the your life sort of trying to come to terms with why you were lucky! But I still haven't really figured that out yet!"

"But you know what luck is -- when preparation meets opportunity."

"Yeah. I feel like I had it the other way 'round though! I had the opportunity and then kind of built up to, you know, just sort of worked for itafterthe opportunity."

Case in point: After his breakthrough role as the handsome yet doomed Cedric Diggory in 2005's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Pattinson says he struggled to find work.

"I'd been living off Harry Potter money for ages," he said. "I'd blown all of that! And then I didn't realize you had to pay taxes at the time. So I was completely broke and then got a big tax bill. I loved my agent in America, and so I came over and tried to get a job."

The job he got in the "Twilight" series was the role of a lifetime. The result: fame, fortune, and the neverending glare of the spotlight.

His on-screen chemistry turned into an off-screen romance, and subsequent breakup, with co-star Kristen Stewart in 2013 -- every twist and turn played out in the tabloids. (Even the future president weighed in with, what else, a tweet.)

And that media attention hasn't let up on his latest relationship, with British pop star FKA Twigs (a.k.a. Tahliah Debrett Barnett) -- despite efforts to keep his personal life off-limits.

"I'm quite an open person," he said. "I don't want to be one of those people who's just like, 'Oh, no comment,' 'cause I just think you just look like an idiot if you're in it. But then the annoying thing happens as well, then you answer in these kind of vague ways which kind of create these weird conspiracy theorists."

"You think people put that much thought into it?" Miller asked.

"The average person would never be aware of it," Pattinson said. "But it's, like, literally, if you come into contact with me, you will touch this demon. I don't know how to deal with it. And so I thought in a way to kind of stop feeding it, you just try and say 'I don't wanna talk about it.' And also, it kind of makes you feel like that's the only way you can get some kind of strength."

It doesn't hurt that he took roles in a string of smaller independent films that offered a break from the blockbuster limelight. These days, Pattinson says he gets a kick out of just walking down the street without being mobbed by fans. "You realize what makes you comfortable or uncomfortable, and you just kind of stay out of the places that make you uncomfortable."

By all measures, Robert Pattinson -- a little older, a litter wiser -- is exactly where he wants to be:

"And if someone says, like, 'I like you 'cause you did this thing,' well, then it's like, 'Well, I wanna do the opposite thing.' I want to be able to have the freedom to do something else, mainly 'cause I feel like I don't fully know myself yet.

"And I so I don't want someone to say, 'Well, this is who you are. Well, if you don't know yourself, we'll tell you who you are.' Like, I want to kind of remain in that chaos a little bit."

To watch a trailer for "Good Time" click on the video player below.

For more info:

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Robert Pattinson: Revelling in the freedom of chaos - CBS News

The furore that followed CUPs compliance with an instruction from a Chinese import agency made one thing very clear. Academic freedom remains the absolute core concern. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer

The international furore that followed Cambridge University Presss compliance with an instruction from a Chinese import agency to block individual articles from China Quarterly made one thing very clear. Academic freedom remains the absolute core concern of scholars all over the world.

This morning I met CUP officials and conveyed the message in forthright terms: the 315 articles that the academic publisher had removed from its internet portals in China should be re-posted as soon as possible and made available free of charge. At no point did China Quarterly, which I edit, consent to removal of the articles and we are delighted at CUPs reversal of thedecision.

The ideological constraints on academic freedom under Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang appear to be policy-driven

As a researcher of labour relations in China for 20 years, I have grown accustomed to the shifting boundaries of what is and is not possible. The first decade of Chinas going out this century was marked by an increase in public engagement and an expansion of research. Partnerships between Chinese and international universities were forged. The opportunities for creating new knowledge, a lofty-sounding but nevertheless key goal of academic research, blossomed.

For sure, Chinese partners still faced constraints. And non-Chinese academics researching sensitive areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet, human rights, or the tragic end to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 had visas denied and fieldwork hampered or blocked.

But these were nevertheless exciting times to be an academic working on China. They were accompanied by an equally important expansion in environmental movements, labour campaigns and gender equality, and the appearance of a courageous cohort of lawyers prepared to work on human rights cases.

An important outcome of the increased opportunities for academic exchanges was access to information. The numbers of non-Chinese able to access and read Chinese-language materials increased. The numbers of Chinese able to access non-Chinese materials inevitably, and unfortunately, it is mainly in English has exploded. This has had a positive impact on Chinese scholarship published in both languages.

China Quarterly has been run from Soas, University of London, for more than 50 years, and I have been fortunate to come into contact with some of the worlds leading academics working on China. In the first years of the new millennium the internet emerged as a powerful research tool, and authoritarian government in China was reconfiguring itself as pragmatic, innovative and open to non-Communist party voices. But this scholarship is now under threat.

The previous era of relative openness was qualified by targeted repression of those who crossed party-defined boundaries, such as Liu Xiaobo, who died in prison earlier this year. He was sentenced for his part in the pro-democracy manifesto Charter 08.

The now re-posted articles had gone through a rigorous double-blind peer-review process and represent some of the best contributions to new knowledge on China. Some of the authors are globally renowned scholars, others are early-career academics. Access to such research has hugely enriched Chinese scholarship, just as scholarship outside China has been hugely enriched by the response of Chinas academic community to this work.

This attempt to deny access might just might be the result of over-reach by Chinese censorship bodies such as the recently created General Administration of Press and Publication. But I fear it is the outcome of a much stronger shade of authoritarian government that excludes voices from outside the party-led system. The evidence of new regulatory, and apparently ideological, constraints on academic freedom and public engagement in China that have emerged since 2012 under the leadership of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang suggest that the parlous state of affairs with regard to academic freedom is policy-driven. What is unprecedented is that itsreach has now stretched to international institutions such as Cambridge University Press.

The key criteria for publication in our journal will not change academic rigour and contribution to new knowledge. The topics we publish will not take into account the political sensitivities of any government. And as editor, I will work harder than ever to disseminate our articles as widely as possible.

Tim Pringle is a senior lecturer in development studies at Soas, University of London, and editor of China Quarterly

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China's bid to block my journal's articles is a new attack on academic freedom - The Guardian

Scene from BBC 4s 2007 adaptation of Fanny Hill, a text allegedly dropped from Royal Holloways course. Photograph: BBC/Sally Head Productions

On Monday, Vogues website, unusually straying into academia, reported: Eyebrows were raised when the first erotic novel in the English language, Fanny Hill, was dropped from an 18th-century literature course for fear of offending students. This followed a headline in the Mail on Sunday: Erotic novel first banned 270 years ago for describing a young girls sexual exploits is censored AGAIN in case it upsets students. Both assertions were incorrect, neatly illustrating how freedom of speech so easily slides into the murky realms of Trumpian post-truth.

John Clelands Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, popularly known as Fanny Hill (a play on mons veneris the mount of Venus) was published in 1748. He began it as a young man working in the East India Company in Bombay in response to a challenge to write what became the first English pornographic novel without using coarse language. He completed it in his 30s, in debtors prison, writing to pay for his freedom. He returned to jail soon after, convicted on obscenity charges.

Fanny Hill became an underground hit for more than 200 years. Unlike previous continental pornography written in Latin or Greek, accessible only to the educated, the book was written in English at its most flowery and, frequently, comical best. Or, according to the moralists and critics, at its worst. They were not amused, for instance, by Fannys enthusiasm when confronted by a maypole and an engine of love assaults, or her evident enjoyment of both: What floods of bliss! What melting transports!

The alleged dropping of Fanny Hill from a university course, taught at Royal Holloway, University of London, appeared to hint at yet another example of the snowflake generation of students in action. They shy away from what displeases them; dictate content of courses; no-platform speakers (Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell on grounds of transphobia) and establish safe spaces on campus so that unsettling debates that might trigger concern can be avoided. It results in what Judith Shapiro, the former president of New York Citys Barnard College, calls self-infantilism, ill-equipping students to see the world as others see it.

So has Fanny Hill been snowflaked? Professor Judith Hawley teaches the course but, as she explained in a Guardian article, Fanny Hill hadnt been dropped because it had never been included. What she had said as a participant in a fascinating Radio 4 investigation into the history of freedom of speech, broadcast during the previous week, had been misrepresented.

What she said is this: In the 1980s I protested against the opening of a sex shop in Cambridge and taught Fanny Hill. Nowadays, I am afraid of causing offence to my students, in that I can understand why a senior academic imposing a pornographic text on students would come across as objectionable but also that the students would slap me with a trigger warning, in a way that I now self-censor

Trigger warnings flag up references that might disturb. In the 1980s the issues raised by Fanny Hill, including desire, pornography and power, were important to discuss. Now, she explained, the student body is larger, more diverse, less privileged and more uncertain about the future, and the ubiquity of pornography has changed the terms of the debate.

Her words reveal the tricky area we have rightly entered, in which the long-held power of establishments which are affluent, academic, political, white and male are under challenge. The market too has played a role. Students are now not only learners but customers, paying up to 9,000 a year and, therefore, expecting to define what value for money means to them, the consumer. The ability to identify triggers, signalling material that might damage, may be a customer perk but it infects education with caution and self-censorship that undermines its very purpose. Students, ironically, as a result, are being short-changed.

In the 1980s, when Hawley was campaigning to stop the opening of a sex shop, sexism was rife, reflected in language that today is policed by a consensus on what is acceptable, backed by legislation. Political correctness helped to put the foot on the brakes but how far down should the foot go? In a poll by the National Union of Students last year, over 60% were in favour of no-platforming. But silencing voices has a price. How does society decide when the cost becomes unacceptable?

In the US, the right to freedom of speech is enshrined in the first amendment. As long ago as the 1990s, the law professor and anti-pornography campaigner Catharine MacKinnon warned, in Only Words, The law of equality and the law of freedom of speech are on a collision course ... Or, as she put it more succinctly, some people get a lot more speech than others.

In the 80s I protested against a sex shop in Cambridge and taught Fanny Hill. Now, Im afraid of offending my students.

How to decide who gets to talk about what and where and why is part of any dynamic democracy. But a guiding instinct should surely be that we learn from open and unafraid debate? A couple of years ago, students at New Yorks Columbia University supplied a flyer against homophobia for student rooms . It read: I want this space to be a safer space. One student. Adam Shapiro, objected. He told the New York Times If the point of a safe space is therapy for people who feel victimised by traumatisation, that sounds like a great mission. But he explained that both professors and students are increasingly loath to say anything that might hurt feelings: I dont see how you can have a therapeutic space thats also an intellectual space. The question is one of balance. So, back to Fanny Hill and Hawleys implied argument that, 30 years on, to teach it need no longer be a requirement. Fanny is a woman who admires other women. She has a sexual appetite that includes lesbianism (but, of course, as the book is a fantasy written by a man, the encounter is nothing in comparison to a store bag of natures pure sweets). At the end of the book, Fanny is neither fallen and destroyed, nor an outcast, but is married to the man who deflowered her, whom she loves and who is very rich. Fanny has it all.

She is thus, in some ways, a female pioneer. Arguably, far from being an oppressive text which might make students feel coerced, as Hawley asserts, it is surprisingly subversive of patriarchal politics. Smutty books have often become milestones in society. In 1960, for instance, the Obscene Publications Act saw Penguin Books in the dock. Mervyn Griffiths QC famously asked the jury about Lady Chatterleys Lover, Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read? The answer was yes, and two million copies were sold in a year. They were bought, like Fanny Hill, by hoi polloi. The acquittal marked an important step for freedom of the written word and the end of what George Orwell called the striped-trousered ones who rule.

Other notable books Radclyffe Halls The Well of Loneliness, Erica Jongs Fear of Flying, Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer, Nabokovs Lolita might also run the risk of censorship by one group or another in todays delicate academic ecosystem. Whats unclear is who gets to have the louder voice and why. Out of university, in the real world, triggers arent available, nor is it possible to duck issues that hurt.

In the 60s, 70s and 80s, students were taught too often from curriculums that covered only half the story, omitting women, ethnic minorities and the working class. The clamour for change grew. But Orwells intellectual cowardice is an ongoing issueas we struggle to forge a different, more just balance of power and a new model of freedom of expression. Of course it isnt easy, but its worth the doing.

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Row over teaching Fanny Hill highlights threat to freedom of expression - The Guardian

Produced by Gail Abbott Zimmerman and Doug Longhini

[This story first aired on May 30, 2015. It was updated on Aug. 19, 2017]

For more than 18 years, "48 Hours" has investigated what many say is a case of injustice. That case began in the early morning hours of April 4, 1989, when a young woman called 911 saying she thought her boyfriend had been shot. The problem was she was three miles away from the crime scene and she had trouble telling police how to get there.

"Something was not right," said Mark Rixey, who at the time was a road patrol deputy for the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. "Why would somebody say there's something happening here and nothing's there?"

"All we had was that he had been shot and that he was in the orange groves. I sent a deputy to pick her up because we absolutely, would never have found her ... we'd have been there all night looking," Diane Clarke, who was a patrol sergeant in Brevard County, told "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty.

"She remained in the vehicle out here and refused to walk down there," said Rixey.

"'You don't wanna see him? You don't wanna know his condition?' ...there was something wrong with this," said Clarke.

The victim was 22-year-old Chip Flynn.

"It was a young white male ... laying on his side with his hands bound behind his back," said Rixey.

"He had a bullet wound, there was blood on the right side of his chest," Clarke explained. "We have a gun on the ground that we don't know who it belongs to."

Flynn was conscious when the deputies arrived. "Speaking very clearly ... he just said, "Get me outta here,'" said Rixey.

"'Who shot you?'" Clarke said of asking Flynn. "'Just take me home, God, get me out of here.'"

"'Could you at least tell us which way he went,'" Rixey asked Flynn.

"'Who did this to you?' He wouldn't tell us," Clarke continued.

"This is so not typical. It defies explanation," said Rixey.

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Mark Rixey, who was a deputy sheriff with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, recalls the crime scene at a remote grove where shooting victim C...

Flynn died before the ambulance arrived.

The woman who called 911 was Flynn's former girlfriend, Kim Hallock. She said she and Flynn had been in his truck when a black man with a gun hijacked and drove them to that remote grove. She alone managed to get back into the truck and escape -- driving those three miles to Chip's friend's home.

"They needed someone to put that murder on and Crosley Green fit the bill," said private investigator Joe Moura.

"It's an example of race being a substitute for evidence," said attorney Keith Harrison.

"I didn't kill that young man," Crosley Green told Moriarty.

Today, 26 years after Green was sentenced to death for the murder of Flynn, there is new compelling evidence that the wrong person may have been sent to prison and the killer is still free.

"The first rule of homicide investigation is ... everybody who was at that scene is treated as a suspect until they're eliminated," said Rixey. "That's not the way this happened."

Washington D.C. attorneys Keith Harrison, Bob Rhoad and Jeane Thomas typically counsel an elite corporate clientele. But they are working for no pay at all to win freedom for 59-year old Crosley Green, incarcerated in Florida for almost 28 years.

"Crosley's case is special. Because it cries out for justice," Harrison told Erin Moriarty.

"You can't stop thinking about what happened to this individual, the injustice that occurred," said Rhoad.

"For me, I was offended. I was angry," said Thomas.

"The main focus of the case was that there was a black guy who had done something, the old, 'the black guy did it,'" said Harrison.

They accuse prosecutors of a rush to judgment in the murder of the young white man, Chip Flynn, found shot and dying in a remote Florida citrus grove in 1989. At the time, Chip had been living with his parents. They spoke with "48 Hours" in 1999.

"Rarely did you see him without a smile on his face, just rarely," his mother, Peggy Flynn" told "48 Hours."

The Flynns, now both deceased, told us they were shocked to learn that Chip had been with Kim Hallock that night. Kim was an ex-girlfriend and Chip was happily seeing someone else.

"That was all he talked about. He didn't mention Kim anymore or anything," Charles Flynn said of his son.

And Hallock's story -- that a man had robbed and hijacked them -- seemed strange. Police recorded her statement just hours after the shooting:

Detective: When was the first time you saw Chip yesterday?

Kim Hallock: About 10 at night. He came to my house.

Hallock said it began in the local baseball field, Holder Park. They were sitting in his truck when she first saw someone walk by.

"I told Chip there was a black guy on your side and he rolled up the window real quick," she told investigators in her statement.

Twenty minutes later, she says, Chip stepped out and she heard him say "hold on man."

"Chip had a gun in his glove box. I took the gun out of the glove box and stuck it under some jeans that were next to me," Hallock continued.

And then, she says she saw the man again:

Detective: Did you see that the black male was armed at that time?

Kim Hallock: Yes, I did.

She says the man tied Chip's hands with a shoelace. Then, he ordered her to hand over money from Chip's wallet. And then, with everyone in the truck, he drove them away -- steering, shifting gears and somehow holding a gun on them all at the same time.

Kim Hallock told police that when they got to the grove, the man yanked her out of the truck and then Chip--his hands still tied--somehow managed to get a hold of his gun hidden on the truck seat.

"Chip, his hands were behind his back, he leaned out of the truck and somehow shot at the guy and the guy stepped back. Chip jumped out of the truck, I jumped in the truck ... and I heard about five or six gunshots," she told investigators.

Play Video

The Brevard County Sheriff's Office interviewed Kim Hallock hours after she says she and ex-boyfriend Charles "Chip" Flynn were abducted from a l...

She said she then drove those three miles to Chip's friend's home to call for help.

"Wouldn't you stop at the first telephone that you came to, the first home that you came to, to call 911?" Rhoad asked.

Washington D.C. attorneys Bob Rhoad, Keith Harrison and Jeane Thomas are working to win freedom for Crosley Green.

"48 Hours"

Crosley Green's current attorneys say a lot of Kim Hallock's story simply doesn't make sense.

"It's bizarre -- to be charitable," said Thomas.

"Chip ... with the gun in his hands tied behind his back ... opens the door of the truck and propels himself out of the truck, shooting at the black guy," Harrison said of Hallock's story.

Still, police seemed to take Hallock at her word, even though parts of her story changed. And she couldn't describe the assailant very well.

"I really didn't get a real good look at him. I was really scared," she told detectives.

The details she did give didn't really match the man detectives had in mind: Crosley Green, a small-time drug dealer recently released from jail. But later that night, they showed Kim a photo lineup with six photos. Hallock chose photo No. 2 - Crosley Green.

"That's a target with a bull's-eye for Crosley Green. ...His picture is smaller and darker than the other pictures," Harrison said of the photo lineup. "Anybody involved in police investigation and prosecution knows this. ...the position that your eyes are normally drawn to are right in the middle."

"It's a black spot," Green said of the photo. "That's what you focus on, that black spot."

Crosley Green, better known as Papa, became the father figure for his large family after his parents died. He admits he was no angel, but he says he has never done anything violent. At the time Chip Flynn was killed, he says he was with friends around two miles away.

"I kidnapped no one. I killed no one. I did none a those things," Green told Moriarty.

"The task at hand was finding a black guy to pin this on. And unfortunately for Crosley ... that's where their attention focused," said Rhoad.

"So when a young white woman says, 'A black man did it,' nobody questioned it?" Moriarty asked Tim Curtis, a local body shop owner and friend of Chip's.

"I don't think nobody questioned that," he replied.

Curtis also knew the Green family and helped spread the word: Crosley Green did it.

"...there was a lot of racial words bein' used. 'We're gonna get him, we're gonna get him. We're gonna get him. We're gonna get him.' You know?" said Curtis.

Crosley Green was arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbery and murder. At trial, prosecutors pointed to what they said were the killer's shoeprints found in Holder Park.

Footprints found at the crimescene

Assistant State's Attorney Christopher White--now retired-- told jurors that a police dog got the scent of those prints and tracked that scent to the vicinity of a house where Crosley Green sometimes stayed.

"You've seen those shoe impressions. It wasn't just her and Chip out there," White told Moriarty. "The shoe impressions were followed ... from the site where the truck was parked ... supporting what Kim said about there being a third person there, a black male, who abducted them and did these things."

But White was never able to match those shoeprints to Crosley Green or anyone else. What's more, not a single fingerprint of Green's was found anywhere on the truck. And despite Kim Hallock's claim that Chip had fired his gun trying to save her, no gunshot residue was found on Chip's hands.

"She's saying he fired the gun, and there be no gunshot residue left on his fingers? Is that possible?" Moriarty asked Harrison.

"It's highly improbable," he replied.

Still, prosecutors found three witnesses with criminal pasts who claimed Crosley had actually confessed to them -- most damning, his own sister Sheila. Before the case went to the jury, Crosley Green was offered a deal: admit guilt and get no more than 22 years.

"So why didn't you take it?" Moriarty asked Green in 1999.

"I didn't kill that young man. I keep telling you I didn't kill this young man, so why should I take that plea bargain?" he replied.

It took the all-white jury just three hours to convict Crosley Green; the judge sentenced him death.

"What's it like being here on death row?" Moriarty asked Green.

"It's hell," he replied. "It's hell to me because I'm here for a crime I didn't commit."

"Don't kill this guy. He didn't do it. He's innocent," said Joe Moura, who was a"48 Hours" consultant.

Back in 1999, Crosley Green spoke about the obvious inconsistencies in the case against him.

Crosley Green during a 1999 interview with "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty.

"48 Hours"

Kim Hallock had told police her assailant had long hair that covered his ears.

"Was any of your hair over your ears?" Moriarty asked Green, whose hair was cut short and above his ears.

"They way I look now is the way I looked then," he replied.

When "48 Hours" first reported on the case, a team of private detectives from around the country who believed in Crosley Green's innocence were working pro bono to prove it.

"It's not every day do you see this kind of injustice," said Moura.

Moura found it difficult to believe that Crosley had confessed to three people.

"So Crosley ends up shooting somebody. And he decides he's gonna tell everybody in town, 'Guess what, it was me.' Not credible. It's not credible at all," he said.

So Moura tracked down those witnesses. Sheila Green told Moura that she had lied at trial. Even though she knew she could be dooming her brother, she said she had no choice.

Sheila Green talks with Erin Moriarty in 1999.

"Basically, they told me that this was my last chance to help myself, 'cause I was already convicted," she told Moriarty in 1999.

At the time she testified, Sheila was facing sentencing on drug charges herself.

"What did they say would happen if you didn't testify against your brother?" Moriarty asked Sheila.

"I would never see my kids again," she replied.

And when Moura found the other two witnesses, they told him similar stories.

"Every witness recanted their story," Moura explained. "And every one of them had reason to be afraid of the police. ...They were squeezed. ...And they were squeezed hard."

With Crosley Green's sister and his two friends recanting, the private detectives focused on crime scene evidence: notably, those shoeprints in Holder Park that prosecutors said corroborated Kim's story.

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Crosley Green's last chance for freedom - CBS News