High Tech Heels that will Give Your Feet Support and Fashion – FOX 31 Denver

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In 1999 Taryn launched TARYN ROSE FOOTWEAR and provided women with comfortable yet fashionable footwear.

In 2008 she sold the company to take time off, spend time with family and travel the world. But now, Taryn is returning to disrupt the footwear industry again with a new shoe technology she co-founded with architect/engineer (and her former shoe sketcher) Enrico Cuini. Together, they have launched ENRICO CUINI FOOTWEAR (www.EnricoCuini.com), a collection of luxury heels made in Italy that will change women's feet (and lives) forever.

ENRICO CUINI FOOTWEAR uses a patented groundbreaking shoe technology that features a "winged" design that gives support to all three arches of the foot. This results in decreased foot pressure on the forefoot as well as increased stability for the entire foot and ankle. This technology is made of carbon fiber, titanium andnanotechnology resins so that it can respond to every step and keep the foot aligned and weight evenly distributed.Imagine, your feet NOT hurting from wearing heels.

Bio-mechanic testing revealed that ENRICO CUINI heels have the equivalent pressure surface area as a sneaker. Yes, they are THAT comfortable. In fact, to prove it, Taryn hiked up a hill in Italy and have pictures to prove it (see attached). These shoes are the first of its kind and already some celebs like Angela Basset, Tori Spelling and others have been quite impressed.

Taryn and Enrico are hosting a pop up at the Ritz Carlton on Monday, January 19th from 11am -7pm and it's free to the public.

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High Tech Heels that will Give Your Feet Support and Fashion - FOX 31 Denver

Psychedelic Events Are Going Mainstream, Where The Much-Maligned Mushroom Industry Focuses On Mental Health – Forbes

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Psychedelics have been a mainstay for a millennia and appreciated in the counter-culture for decades. In 2020, whether consuming, investing, or both, mushrooms are having a moment.

PsychedeliTech, a ground-breaking new conference, incubator and discovery platform for psychedelic medicine will host Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Founder and Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) as the keynote speaker at the first-ever PsyTech Summit, a forum for psychedelic science, innovation and investment conference, in Israel.

The inaugural PsyTech conference will take place March 29-30, 2020 at the Hilton Hotel, on the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv.

PsyTech is a division of iCAN: Israel-Cannabis, which together with CannaTech, its medical cannabis events platform, has been a global participant in education and innovation for cannabis therapeutics and products with conferences in London, Sydney, Hong Kong, Panama and Cape Town, to date.

Saul Kaye, iCAN founder and CEO, said, Rick Doblin is an early pioneer and extremely effective advocate for the potential of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health disease and symptoms, including depression, anxiety disorders, and PTSD. We are thrilled he will join us at our first PsyTech Summit in Tel Aviv to share his enlightened vision and vast knowledge of the fast-developing therapeutic ecosystem that is about to explode as a wave of new information, research and consumer interest about psychedelics floods the market.

For the first 30 years of MAPS dedicated research, there were virtually no for-profit psychedelic business opportunities, apart from a few ibogaine and ayahuasca clinics and mushroom sales in countries where the substances are legal.

Psychedelics have the potential to impact and improve mental health.

For-profit entities emerging in the field of psychedelics, such as Cybin with microdosed psilocybin products and Mind Med with synthetic ibogaine, are directly due to the success of non-profit psychedelic therapy research, including the lifelong work of MAPS and other advocates.

"The new psychedelic industry will need to focus on public benefit as well as profit in order to avoid a cultural backlash against these historically misunderstood substances," cautions Doblin."I am looking forward to discussing these important issues at PsyTech, Israels first summit focusing on psychedelic innovation," he continued.

The global market for mental health medications was worth $88.3 billion in 2015, according to BCC Research.

Similar to the cannabis industry, psychedelics and medicinal mushrooms will require an ecosystem to effectively drive education, regulation, safety, investment, research and development.

These key issues, as well as personal stories of treatment, will be explored at PsyTech.

The topic of psychedelics is sparking worldwide mainstream interest. People who want to learn more about the companies developing the science of mushrooms can attend a conference in New York, prior to the upcoming one in Tel Aviv.

"This is an exciting new industry and it's just starting to grow, which is whyGMRis hosting a mini-conference on Psychedelics in New York," says Debra Borchardt, Editor-In-Chief of Green Market Report.

TheEconomics of Psychedelic Investing takes place onJanuary 24, 2020 in NYC.

For those who merely want to experience the effects of psychedelic mushrooms in a safe and welcoming environment, Irie Selkirk offers her guests a transformative psilocybin experience complete with farm-to-table meals and a psychotherapist on staff, at her immersion retreat in Jamaica.

With conferences, nascent investment opportunities and infused staycations available, magic mushrooms are going mainstream.

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Psychedelic Events Are Going Mainstream, Where The Much-Maligned Mushroom Industry Focuses On Mental Health - Forbes

Can you have a bad trip from taking acid in the woods? – WHYY

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The Pine Barrens of New Jersey is home to just about as many myths as it is trees. From ghost towns to interdimensional portals, if its a thing that scares people on the internet, chances are that thing is rumored to be lurking somewhere among the conifers.

Thats why when a couple of my friends asked me if I wanted to take LSD with them during our annual camping trip a few summers ago, I declined. We were deep inside Jersey Devil country, and although my sober brain didnt much believe in that kind of stuff, who knows what might emerge from my subconscious while on acid in the woods. And I didnt want to find out.

Id heard that psychedelics could change a persons outlook on life forever; that conditions had to be just right for a good trip, and something about the possibility of a hircine winged demon eyeing me through the brush didnt seem like a promising vibe.

My friend, lets call him Kevin, wasnt as worried. Kevin didnt want to use his real name for this story because, well, its about LSD.

I did it on a previous camping trip with a different group of people and had a really good time, he said.

Up to that point, Kevin had had nothing but positive experiences with psychedelics.

I would sit down, listen to [a] song just deep in my head with my eyes closed, and it just all kind of made a lot more sense to me, he said.

But this time, Kevin and another friend upped their dose.

Were sitting there by the fire for a little bit, and then it finally starts kicking in. Im kind of looking around the leaves are kind of starting to blur around a little bit and the colors are starting to pop, said Kevin. Then all of a sudden, were really not feeling the rest of the group vibe, so we decided were just going to go this way.

Before the rest of us knew it, the two were gone out wandering around the Pinelands alone and tripping, with neither direction nor drinking water.

If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, its because it could have been.

What were seeing is that so much of what is traditionally considered a bad trip is so often around set and setting, said Ryan Beauregard.

Beauregard has a degree in psychology and now manages the Zendo Project, a group of professionals and volunteers that set up facilities at concerts and festivals to help those having bad experiences on psychedelics.

Though in the past bad trips were frequently attributed to bad acid, Beauregard said, his team finds that nascent, low-level anxiety and trauma are typically to blame for the negative experiences with psychedelics that the Zendo Project helps manage.

Have you cleaned your room and have you done your homework before you go down the rabbit hole? Because these are some big and powerful substances that are going to bring up a lot, Beauregard said. If you havent taken the time to just simply declutter your space, it can take up a lot of headspace in these psychedelic realms.

How cluttered were my two friends psychedelic realms out there alone? Had they done their homework? Would that be enough keep the devils inside their heads at bay?

Just as all of us back at the campsite were going to go look for them to find out, they returned.

At the edge of our seats we inquired: How was it? What did you guys do out there?

Kevin told us about their journey.

We both just sat underneath a tree just kind of looking up, kind of moving around the tree side, kind of making this kaleidoscope thing happen. And that was cool. So we called that Kaleidoscope tree. he said.

And then there were a couple of smaller trees also on that same path that were dead on the grounds. We called them our fallen brothers.

Then finally, the big one.

We get to the end of the path and we see, boom, out in the middle of the woods up on the right, just this one very tall tree a good 20 feet away from all the other trees. We just look at it for a couple of minutes and then we finally look at each other. And were like, this is the God Tree.

They showed us how they transferred energy from the God Tree to a smaller one named Baby Energy Tree. They made us kneel before it and pray. We didnt know exactly what we were praying to or for, but whatever it was, it was good.

From an outsiders perspective, this spiritual transcendence looked remarkably like it was made of the type of stuff that could change someone forever: a one-way ticket to Zen, courtesy of two tabs of LSD and a forest filled with otherworldly projections.

But for Kevin, that sort of lasting impact wouldnt come until he dropped acid again a few months later, on a different camping trip with another group of friends.

I wanted to listen to music. So I go into my car, I grabbed my headphones, then I just laid back down on the grass. And then the next three hours were just crazy visual, he said. Some of them were pretty terrifying.

Every time the bass dropped, Kevin felt the earth violently rotate 90 degrees.

I was just kind of getting lost. And then all of a sudden they hear an airplane or helicopter or something kind of go overhead. And then for whatever reason, I just envisioned, like the military coming. I just imagined missiles striking down on this one point in the ground, he said.

Then Kevin said he saw one of his friends set a section of grass on fire.

I could just feel the heat. I just felt like everyone was burning. I would just see plastic cups kind of just melting and then like people on fire, he said, and then I thought, Oh no, what have we gotten ourselves into?

Kevin had gotten himself into a bad trip. It took him hours to return to a normal state, but once he did, he was different in a good way.

I just feel like it kind of put the world in a different perspective, he said.

Beauregard, from the Zendo Project, said that while complex reactions to psychedelics and bad trips like Kevins arent uncommon, theyre not for everyone and not always without consequence.

In 2008, Beauregard traveled to Peru to take part in a psychedelic ritual. There, he suffered what he described as a psychotic break that lasted for three weeks.

I had, you know, created an internal reality, that at some point, it was like I dove through a wormhole. Man, it just felt really scary, Beauregard said. I think theres so much about this idea that psychedelics are the magic pill, but the reality is, I think they make more work for us. Like once youve pulled those veils away, you cant unsee those things.

Kevin is still doing that work.

I feel like I learned to appreciate life and just not really worried about things. I did kind of burn alive for a couple of minutes, so I feel like Ive already experienced some bad things, so nothing probably would come close to that, he said.

He even returned to the God Tree.

Ive gone back there a couple other times, Ive also done other acid or other things and then just kind of went on the same path. But it really wasnt the same thing. he said.

And thats OK with him. That dead tree may live in our imaginations forever, alongside the other legends out there in the Pinelands, but at the very least Kevin avoided becoming one himself that day.

As for what this all means for the next camping trip, I dont know.

If one of my friends decides to explore their inner wilderness God Trees, Devils and all in the actual wilderness, thats their choice.

All I can do is make sure they dont stray too far from camp.

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Can you have a bad trip from taking acid in the woods? - WHYY

How researchers and advocates of color are forging their own paths in psychedelic-assisted therapy – WHYY

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Were seeing an explosion of medical research into psychedelics. Psilocybin, or shrooms, to treat major depressive disorder. Ayahuasca, a psychotropic plant medicine from the Amazon, and ibogaine, a potent hallucinogen from Africa, to treat addiction. LSD for anxiety.

MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, is currently in Phase III clinical trials the last phase before Food and Drug Administration approval. If results hold up, it could be used in therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder by early 2022.

But some researchers are pushing for MDMA and other psychedelics research to be more inclusive. A study from 2018 found that 82% of participants in psychedelic studies were white.

That means theres a greater likelihood these treatments will be developed in ways that dont work for people of color.

Furthermore, practitioners may be overlooking a huge opportunity with psychedelic-assisted therapy using it to treat racial and intergenerational trauma within communities of color.

When Ifetayo Harvey was 4 years old, her dad was sentenced to 15 years in prison. She says an undercover cop had propositioned him to sell cocaine, and as a new immigrant, working to support his family, he accepted. He served eight years, before being deported back to Jamaica.

This shaped my childhood experience in a way thats hard to explain, Harvey said. Because things like this arent supposed to happen, right?

Through her childhood, Harvey often felt sad or angry toward herself. She had trouble trusting people.

I was really confused about what happened with my dad, and who he was as a person, Harvey said. As a kid, I dealt with depression and anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

In college, Harvey learned about psychedelics as a therapeutic substance. She was a senior, feeling depressed and struggling to graduate.

She decided to give it a try. She took some shrooms, then went on a walk with a friend through the woods of western Massachusetts. It was fall in New England, the woods wearing their most stunning colors. At first, she says, the sensations were overwhelming.

But once that passed, she felt an authentic sense of happiness, for the first time in a year.

I felt like I was alive again, Harvey said. Before, I just felt really dull and lifeless and numb, and not really motivated to live.

During her walk, she saw life all around her.

I saw plants breathing, I saw things move and sparkle in ways that I hadnt seen before. I also felt just spiritually connected to the earth in a way that I havent had, she said. I got a reset, and I needed that to be able to graduate.

Shrooms have helped Harvey heal and process a lot of the trauma she and her family went through.

Ive been able to look at myself with more compassion, look at my family with more compassion, she said. When youre in a sober state of mind, its harder to process heavy things sometimes because we want to run away from it or we want to bury our feelings. And with mushrooms, you cant really do that. Mushrooms kind of makes you face whatever youre running away from.

That year, Harvey started learning more about psychedelics and psychedelic research. After she graduated in 2014, she was excited to get a job with one of the biggest psychedelic research organizations around the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS.

When she got there, she was the only Black employee, and she felt like she didnt belong. Her feelings came to a head during a classic psychedelic experience, in Chicago.

My first time taking LSD was at a Grateful Dead show with MAPS, Harvey said. Im there, I know one Grateful Dead song, but I was offered LSD by one of my colleagues and I partook in it. And I was having a great time.

When she and her colleagues walked out of the concert, they saw Deadheads everywhere, she says, being wild up and down Michigan Avenue. As they approached Grant Park, they noticed police putting a Black man in handcuffs.

Mind you, theres all these white folks running around probably on drugs, selling drugs, have drugs on them, doing God knows what, Harvey said. The one Black guy you see at the concert is, of course, getting arrested.

She recalled that someone asked, Should we stop and watch to make sure they dont mistreat him? To which her other coworkers responded, He probably did something or you dont know what he did, lets just keep it moving.

That, to me, was kinda just representative of how Black folks are seen, Harvey said.

This was one of many times Harvey felt alienated by her white coworkers. Though they knew about her familys history with drugs and incarceration, people didnt check if she felt safe when everyone used substances. They didnt seem aware that her risk, and connection to drugs, was different from theirs.

It actually kind of, it feels like youre in a twilight zone, she said. Its very frustrating because I believe that psychedelics can be powerful and can be healing and can do amazing things for our world. But I think that we have to be very intentional and thoughtful about how we do that.

Eventually, Harvey got a new job with a nonprofit called the Drug Policy Alliance. And she also co-founded a group called the People of Color Psychedelic Collective.

I really wanted to create a space that is truly open and also safe for folks of color, she said.

Right now, psychedelics are gaining traction in mainstream medicine. But the big names behind psychedelics, the leaders of research organizations, and the therapists doing psychedelic-assisted therapy are all mostly white.

There are reasons why the mainstream psychedelic movement is not very diverse. Elijah Watson is a journalist whos written about what he calls the whitewashing of psychedelics.

Psychedelics originated in communities of color, he said. Indigenous groups have used them as medicine and sacrament for thousands of years. In some cases, those traditions are alive. In other cases, they were banned or destroyed through colonization.

Then in the 1950s, a white bank executive from the United States went to Mexico and participated in a Mazatec mushroom ritual.

His name was Robert Gordon Wasson, Watson said. He went to Mexico, and he found a medicine woman named Mara Sabina. And he took the mushrooms himself.

Sabina let Wasson take her picture on the condition that he keep it private. But when he got back to the U.S., he published the picture, and the name of her community, in a Life magazine article called Seeking the Magic Mushroom.

That article is credited with sparking an interest in psychedelics that caught fire across the U.S., especially within the hippie movement. Countercultural figures like author Ken Kesey and Harvard professor Timothy Leary took on the mantle of psychedelics.

And you have it emerging within countercultural music during the 60s, where youre having sub-genres like psychedelic rock, Watson said.

After the article came out, Sabinas community was bombarded by hippies who wanted to hallucinate on shrooms. Local police blamed her, and people ended up ostracizing her and burning her house down.

During this time, researchers and psychiatrists were also digging into the use of psychedelics.

Not all of this research was aboveboard or, for that matter, ethical. MK-Ultra, Project BLUEBIRD and Project ARTICHOKE are the names of top-secret CIA programs, in which the government used LSD, mescaline and other psychedelics to manipulate peoples mental states.

The CIA also backed open research, such as the work of Harris Isbell in Lexington, Kentucky, in the 1950s and 60s. Isbell did experiments on incarcerated Black men, often with a history of drug addiction. He wanted to test how much LSD someone would tolerate, and for how long. Hed give people LSD doses for 77 days in a row.

Though it was coercive and abusive, the work was published in respectable journals. Isbell had people sign simple consent forms and paid them off with drugs. Experiments like this led to public distrust in psychedelic research, especially in Black communities.

By the 1970s, the antiwar and Black Power movements were gaining strength. Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Research into psychedelics shuttered, practically overnight. And drugs became a reason to search peoples homes and cars, and put them in prison.

Black and Brown people are more disproportionately being arrested and targeted during this still very ongoing war, Watson said.

While white people have continued to use psychedelics, he added, Black people have many reasons to stay away from them.

My livelihood is already in jeopardy even by just smoking some weed, Watson said. We also see how police officers tend to treat people of color with mental illness. Its, Were going to shoot first and ask questions later. If Im going to partake [in] this substance that may make someone think I have this mental illness, and I see how cops already treat them, whats to say that theyre gonna treat me any differently?

Because theres so much mistrust, MAPS, the organization that studies psychedelics, has had trouble convincing people of color to join their clinical trials.

Once the Phase II [MDMA] trials were completed, we saw that we didnt have the diversity that ideally we would have wanted, said Brad Burge, the director of communications for MAPS.

If you look at the history of the stigma and prohibition of these substances, it seems like a miracle that we were able to get the approval that we needed, he said. And so we were just hoping that we could enroll enough people in those Phase II trials and get approval.

With Phase III, which will have 200 to 300 participants, MAPS wants to include more people of color. So a few years ago, the organization reached out to a psychologist named Monnica Williams.

Williams is a Black woman herself, and shes spent her career addressing mental health disparities. Shes worked with many people who are traumatized from experiences of racism, stigma and discrimination.

We know that people in communities of color may have a lot of additional trauma beyond the usual suspects, Williams said. So beyond assault and combat, things like cultural traumas due to genocide, slavery, immigration trauma and refugee trauma.

When someone has experienced trauma, it shatters their trust in the world and their feelings of safety. It causes them to be perpetually on the lookout for danger.

If you look at experiences of racism and discrimination, you really see the same thing happening, because people are continually assaulted, Williams said. Could be large things, major discriminatory experiences, or it could be a lot of small things, but theyre coming unpredictably. And eventually you start to fear for your own safety. And then when you try to talk about it, oftentimes its dismissed. So youre still just holding onto it and carrying it around.

People of color also often hold intergenerational trauma. Black folks whove been in the U.S. for generations have a whole family legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws and hate, Williams said. Researchers have found that trauma can get passed down biologically, she said, through changes in how genes are expressed.

There is a lack of therapists of color, or even white therapists who are trained to think about these things, Williams said.

Often, its just not on clinicians radar, she said. Theyre not thinking about the fact that maybe being strip-searched by a law enforcement person felt like a sexual assault. Being threatened at work, maybe that landed on someone like a death threat.

Williams has trained in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy with MAPS, and she believes it has a lot of potential to treat PTSD.

The treatments we have now for PTSD are not that great, she said. The medications are ineffective. They just sort of numb peoples emotions. And the therapies can be effective, but theyre very difficult. Often, patients just dont feel able to deep dive into their past traumas.

Right now, the therapies that are most effective, like prolonged exposure, require people to recount their traumas in harrowing detail. With MDMA and other psychedelics, Monnica sees something completely different.

People are able to move through their traumas with a lot less pain and fear, she said. People are making new connections in their brains, and changing how theyre thinking about their trauma. I dont know, I think its a beautiful process really. In a way that I wouldnt say is necessarily true of traditional therapy.

Scientists dont fully understand how MDMA works in the brain. They know it reduces activity in brain regions that process fear, and stimulates the release of feel-good neurotransmitters, like oxytocin, which enhances feelings of trust and bonding.

But then theres also things that we dont necessarily understand, Williams said. A lot of people have very spiritual experiences. Sometimes, people may feel like theyre talking to deities, they may see ancestors, they may feel like theyre getting wisdom from spiritual guides.

Its also common for people to feel a sort of ego-death, which puts things in perspective. Or to find compassion.

Theyre able to forgive themselves a lot of times. What keeps people stuck in PTSD is they blame themselves for the traumas that have happened to them, Williams said. So you do see big shifts in the way people think. And a lot of it does seem to be, you know, connected to love. And that just sort of helps to melt away the trauma.

Williams said she has to practice therapy a bit differently when shes treating patients with psychedelics. With prolonged exposure therapy, shes always directing people to the hardest parts of their story.

I dont do that with MDMA therapy, she said. People in a lot of ways are healing themselves. Its a nondirective type of therapy. For example, if they say, I see a door, we might encourage them to go through it. Its mostly what we call inner-directed. Theyre sort of listening to their hearts and going in that direction.

For all its potential, there are still concerns that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy will be hard to get once its approved. Its a 12-week course, and requires two therapists for ethical reasons, so it will be expensive. And there still arent enough therapists of color.

MAPS said it is working on convincing insurance companies that this approach is cheaper than traditional PTSD therapies, which can take a longer amount of time to work. And in August, Monnica helped MAPS put on a Cultural Trauma & Psychedelic Medicine workshopspecifically for therapists who work with communities of color.

Aisha Mohammed, a Philadelphia-based therapist who attended that training, has spent much of her career working with sex workers, drug users, and people who dont have housing.

Its been difficult for some of the clients I see to make regular appointments, or to even come into sessions. And the trauma has been so disruptive to their lives that conventional therapy isnt a good fit for them, Mohammed said. So this idea that you could address longstanding, deep traumas in a three- to five-month window is really life-changing and transformative.

Mohammed is part of a team thats opening an MDMA-assisted psychotherapy clinic in Philadelphia, called the SoundMind Center. The nonprofit clinic will offer sliding-scale treatment, and will have a community organizer on staff whose job is to raise awareness and build trust with communities that have been affected by the war on drugs.

She hopes to also see Philadelphias community health agencies, which offer free or low-cost therapy to people with Medicaid, hire practitioners trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Mellody Hayes is another practitioner of color who attended the MAPS training in Kentucky. Shes a San Francisco-based anesthesiologist who focuses on palliative care, and plans to open an inclusive psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy center called Ceremony Health.

Psychedelics are the first medicine we have that is a way to experience liberation, Hayes said. The medicine is in how we live in community and connection with one another.

With psychedelics, you can experience more peace, she said. And what are you going to build with that peace? They say that we create from what we know if what you know is pain and trauma, you will pass forward pain and trauma. And if what you know is peace and joy, you will create peace and joy.

For Elijah Watson, the journalist whos covered the history of psychedelics, whats important about this moment is that people of color are speaking up and people are listening.

If you dont have somebody who does look like you advocating for the thing that could possibly help you, yeah, youre probably not going to do it, Watson said.

The erasure of history has led Black and Brown people to think psychedelic healing was never a part of us, he said. But it always has been, and we deserve access to it, just like anybody else. The main goal of therapy is to get better. And thats something we should all be able to strive for.

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How researchers and advocates of color are forging their own paths in psychedelic-assisted therapy - WHYY

NYC To Host Economics Of Psychedelics Investing Summit – Benzinga

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The Green Market Summit, an event series by the cannabis financial news publication Green Market Report, is hosting a half-day event on the emerging trend of psychedelics, focusing on current and future investment opportunities: The Economics of Psychedelics Investing.

The event will offer a program on the opportunities in alternative plant investments, the quickly emerging industry of psychedelic medicines, and the companies looking to capitalize on it.

Research has shown psilocybin can help relieve symptoms of people who experience cluster headaches, treat addiction, and could even be an alternative to typical depression treatments.

This event will educate curious investors as to the opportunities in this industry in its earliest stages. It will take place Jan. 24 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., at 54 West 40th St., New York, NY.

Check out Benzinga Cannabis Psychedelics portal.

This emergence of new companies focusing on the promise of mushrooms to treat certain mental health issues is really exciting. Not only from a patient perspective, but also from an investor perspective. It feels similar to the early days of the cannabis industry and I believe that is why we are seeing a lot of parallels between the two, said Debra Borchardt, co-founder and CEO of Green Market Media. Green Market Report has always had its strength in spotting trends which is why we recognized the importance of this new industry.

Attendees will hear from companies like Atai Life Sciences, MindMed, Field Trip Ventures and KCSA Strategic Communications. Topics will cover the parallels between the cannabis industry and psychedelics, micro-dosing and building a strategy around this promising new science.

After the event, attendees and key industry leaders will be welcomed to enjoy a Cocktail hour sponsored by Mattio Communications.

See Also:

Bruce Linton Talks Psychedelics Investments, Microdosing And LSD: 'The Therapeutic Potential Of Psychedelics Is Greater Than Cannabinoids'

The Keys To Understanding Psilocybin's Medical Value, Market Potential

2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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NYC To Host Economics Of Psychedelics Investing Summit - Benzinga

Hide the Pain Harold is the meme of the decade (according to Imgur) – The Next Web

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Distracted boyfriend, American Chopper yelling scene, Pepe the Frog, woman yelling at a cat all memorable memes. But which one of those is the meme of the decade? Its a hotly contested topic, thats for sure. But according to image sharing platform Imgur, the most impactful meme of the decade is none of those.

We asked Imgurians to decide, once and for all, which meme was their favorite meme from the 2010s, the company wrote in a blog post. From 2,000 nominations, the top 10 were selected to battle it out in the final round. A total of 54,768 votes were cast in 72 hours by Imgurians. It was a close race, but were proud to announce Imgurs Meme of the Decade is Hide the Pain Harold.

Hide the Pain Harold represents a deep-seated emotion, a quiet dread, or existential anguish that resides in all of us, Imgur writes.

To clinch this prestigious title, Harold edged out the badly photoshopped Michael Cera and the this is fine dog memes.

Grumpy Cat, Nodding Gandalf, and Obama-Biden Bromance were also among the top contestants.

You cant argue with the numbers.

The man behind the meme isAndrs Arat, a retired engineer from Hungary whose rise to fame began with a random shoot for a stock photo website.

Nine years ago, I did a reverse image search on a photograph of me and was shocked to discover it had become a meme.Arat wrote in a piece for The Guardian. People online thought my smile, combined with the look in my eyes, seemed terribly sad. They were calling me Hide the Pain Harold.'

The photo came from a shoot Id done a year earlier, when I was still working as an electrical engineer, he added. A professional photographer had got in touch after seeing my holiday photographs on Facebook. He said he was seeking someone like me to be in some stock images.

Once the memes were out in the world, journalists began to contact me, and wanted to come to my home to interview me. My wife hated it: she thought it interfered in our private life and didnt like the way I was portrayed, he said. I was given a role in a television commercial for a Hungarian car dealer. []The fee for that commercial changed my wifes mind about the meme.

Congrats on the meme of the decade award, Harold. Youre an absolute fucking legend.

Read next: Facebook now sends you a notification when you log in to third-party sites

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Hide the Pain Harold is the meme of the decade (according to Imgur) - The Next Web

Edward Snowden – Wikipedia

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American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American whistleblower who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.

In 2013, Snowden was hired by an NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, after previous employment with Dell and the CIA.[1] Snowden says he gradually became disillusioned with the programs with which he was involved and that he tried to raise his ethical concerns through internal channels but was ignored. On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, and in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill. Snowden came to international attention after stories based on the material appeared in The Guardian and The Washington Post. Further disclosures were made by other publications including Der Spiegel and The New York Times.

On Snowden's 30th birthday, June 21, 2013, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property,[2] following which the Department of State revoked his passport.[3] Two days later, he flew into Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, where Russian authorities noted that his U.S. passport had been cancelled, and he was restricted to the airport terminal for over one month. Russia later granted Snowden the right of asylum with an initial visa for residence for one year, and repeated extensions have permitted him to stay at least until 2020. In early 2016, he became the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization that states its purpose is to protect journalists from hacking and government surveillance.[4] As of 2017 he is married and living in Moscow.[5][6]

On September 17, 2019, his memoir Permanent Record was published.[7] On the first day of publication, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against Snowden over publication of his memoir, alleging he had breached nondisclosure agreements signed with the U.S. federal government.[8] Former The Guardian national security reporter Ewen MacAskill called the civil lawsuit a "huge mistake", noting that the "UK ban of Spycatcher 30 years ago created huge demand".[9][10] The memoir was listed as no. 1 on Amazon's bestseller list that same day.[11] In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! on September 26, 2019, Snowden clarified he considers himself a "whistleblower" as opposed to a "leaker" as he considers "a leaker only distributes information for personal gain".[12]

Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21, 1983,[13] in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.[14] His maternal grandfather, Edward J. Barrett,[15][16] a rear admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard, became a senior official with the FBI and was at the Pentagon in 2001 during the September 11 attacks.[17] Snowden's father, Lonnie, was also an officer in the Coast Guard,[18] and his mother, Elizabeth, is a clerk at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.[19][20][21][22][23] His older sister, Jessica, was a lawyer at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. Edward Snowden said that he had expected to work for the federal government, as had the rest of his family.[24] His parents divorced in 2001,[25] and his father remarried.[26] Snowden scored above 145 on two separate IQ tests.[24]

In the early 1990s, while still in grade school, Snowden moved with his family to the area of Fort Meade, Maryland.[27] Mononucleosis caused him to miss high school for almost nine months.[24] Rather than returning to school, he passed the GED test[28] and took classes at Anne Arundel Community College.[21] Although Snowden had no undergraduate college degree,[29] he worked online toward a master's degree at the University of Liverpool, England, in 2011.[30] He was interested in Japanese popular culture, had studied the Japanese language,[31] and worked for an anime company that had a resident office in the U.S.[32][33] He also said he had a basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese and was deeply interested in martial arts. At age 20, he listed Buddhism as his religion on a military recruitment form, noting that the choice of agnostic was "strangely absent."[34] In September 2019, as part of interviews relating to the release of his memoir Permanent Record, Snowden revealed to The Guardian that he married Lindsay Mills in a courthouse in Moscow.[7]

Snowden has said that, in the 2008 presidential election, he voted for a third-party candidate, though he "believed in Obama's promises." Following the election, he believed President Barack Obama was continuing policies espoused by George W. Bush.[35]

In accounts published in June 2013, interviewers noted that Snowden's laptop displayed stickers supporting Internet freedom organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project.[28] A week after publication of his leaks began, Ars Technica confirmed that Snowden had been an active participant at the site's online forum from 2001 through May 2012, discussing a variety of topics under the pseudonym "TheTrueHOOHA."[36] In a January 2009 entry, TheTrueHOOHA exhibited strong support for the U.S. security state apparatus and said leakers of classified information "should be shot in the balls."[37] However, Snowden disliked Obama's CIA director appointment of Leon Panetta, saying "Obama just named a fucking politician to run the CIA."[38] Snowden was also offended by a possible ban on assault weapons, writing "Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished."[38] Snowden disliked Obama's economic policies, was against Social Security, and favored Ron Paul's call for a return to the gold standard.[38] In 2014, Snowden supported a basic income.[39]

Feeling a duty to fight in the Iraq War to help free oppressed people,[28] Snowden enlisted in the United States Army Reserve on May 7, 2004, and became a Special Forces candidate through its 18X enlistment option.[40] He did not complete the training[13] because he broke both legs in a training accident,[41] and was discharged on September 28, 2004.[42]

Snowden was then employed for less than a year in 2005 as a security guard at the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language, a research center sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA).[43] According to the University, this is not a classified facility,[44] though it is heavily guarded.[45] In June 2014, Snowden told Wired that his job as a security guard required a high-level security clearance, for which he passed a polygraph exam and underwent a stringent background check.[24]

After attending a 2006 job-fair focused on intelligence agencies, Snowden accepted an offer for a position at the CIA.[24][46] The Agency assigned him to the global communications division at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.[24]

In May 2006, Snowden wrote in Ars Technica that he had no trouble getting work because he was a "computer wizard".[34] After distinguishing himself as a junior employee on the top computer team, Snowden was sent to the CIA's secret school for technology specialists, where he lived in a hotel for six months while studying and training full-time.[24]

In March 2007, the CIA stationed Snowden with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was responsible for maintaining computer-network security.[24][47] Assigned to the U.S. Permanent Mission to the United Nations, a diplomatic mission representing U.S. interests before the UN and other international organizations, Snowden received a diplomatic passport and a four-bedroom apartment near Lake Geneva.[24] According to Greenwald, while there Snowden was "considered the top technical and cybersecurity expert" in that country and "was hand-picked by the CIA to support the president at the 2008 NATO summit in Romania".[48] Snowden described his CIA experience in Geneva as formative, stating that the CIA deliberately got a Swiss banker drunk and encouraged him to drive home. Snowden said that when the latter was arrested, a CIA operative offered to help in exchange for the banker becoming an informant.[49] Ueli Maurer, President of the Swiss Confederation for the year 2013, in June of that year publicly disputed Snowden's claims. "This would mean that the CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I just can't imagine it," said Maurer.[50] In February 2009, Snowden resigned from the CIA.[51]

In 2009, Snowden began work as a contractee for Dell,[52] which manages computer systems for multiple government agencies. Assigned to an NSA facility at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, Snowden instructed top officials and military officers on how to defend their networks from Chinese hackers.[24] Snowden looked into Mass surveillance in China prompted him to investigate and then expose Washington's mass surveillance programme after he was asked in 2009 to brief a conference in Tokyo.[53] During his four years with Dell, he rose from supervising NSA computer system upgrades to working as what his rsum termed a "cyberstrategist" and an "expert in cyber counterintelligence" at several U.S. locations.[54] In 2011, he returned to Maryland, where he spent a year as lead technologist on Dell's CIA account. In that capacity, he was consulted by the chiefs of the CIA's technical branches, including the agency's chief information officer and its chief technology officer.[24] U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the investigation said Snowden began downloading documents describing the government's electronic spying programs while working for Dell in April 2012.[52] Investigators estimated that of the 50,000 to 200,000 documents Snowden gave to Greenwald and Poitras, most were copied by Snowden while working at Dell.[1]

In March 2012, Dell reassigned Snowden to Hawaii as lead technologist for the NSA's information-sharing office.[24] At the time of his departure from the U.S. in May 2013, he had been employed for 15 months inside the NSA's Hawaii regional operations center, which focuses on the electronic monitoring of China and North Korea,[1] the last three of which were with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.[55] While intelligence officials have described his position there as a system administrator, Snowden has said he was an infrastructure analyst, which meant that his job was to look for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world.[56] On March 15, 2013 three days after what he later called his "breaking point" of "seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress"[57] Snowden quit his job at Dell.[58] Although he has said his career high annual salary was $200,000,[59] Snowden said he took a pay cut to work at Booz Allen,[59] where he sought employment in order to gather data and then release details of the NSA's worldwide surveillance activity.[60] An anonymous source told Reuters that, while in Hawaii, Snowden may have persuaded 2025 co-workers to give him their login credentials by telling them he needed them to do his job.[61] The NSA sent a memo to Congress saying that Snowden had tricked a fellow employee into sharing his personal public key infrastructure certificate to gain greater access to the NSA's computer system.[62][63] Snowden disputed the memo,[64] saying in January 2014, "I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers."[65][66] Booz Allen terminated Snowden's employment on June 10, 2013, one month after he had left the country.[67]

A former NSA co-worker said that although the NSA was full of smart people, Snowden was a "genius among geniuses" who created a widely implemented backup system for the NSA and often pointed out security flaws to the agency. The former colleague said Snowden was given full administrator privileges with virtually unlimited access to NSA data. Snowden was offered a position on the NSA's elite team of hackers, Tailored Access Operations, but turned it down to join Booz Allen.[64] An anonymous source later said that Booz Allen's hiring screeners found possible discrepancies in Snowden's resume but still decided to hire him.[29] Snowden's rsum stated that he attended computer-related classes at Johns Hopkins University. A spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins said that the university did not find records to show that Snowden attended the university, and suggested that he may instead have attended Advanced Career Technologies, a private for-profit organization that operated as the Computer Career Institute at Johns Hopkins University.[29] The University of Maryland University College acknowledged that Snowden had attended a summer session at a UM campus in Asia. Snowden's rsum stated that he estimated that he would receive a University of Liverpool computer security master's degree in 2013. The university said that Snowden registered for an online master's degree program in computer security in 2011 but was inactive as a student and had not completed the program.[29]

Snowden has said that he had told multiple employees and two supervisors about his concerns, but the NSA disputes his claim.[68] Snowden elaborated in January 2014, saying "[I] made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the proper clearance who would listen. The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom to go through what [Thomas Andrews] Drake did."[66][69] In March 2014, during testimony to the European Parliament, Snowden wrote that before revealing classified information he had reported "clearly problematic programs" to ten officials, who he said did nothing in response.[70] In a May 2014 interview, Snowden told NBC News that after bringing his concerns about the legality of the NSA spying programs to officials, he was told to stay silent on the matter. He asserted that the NSA had copies of emails he sent to their Office of General Counsel, oversight and compliance personnel broaching "concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office."[17]

In May 2014, U.S. officials released a single email that Snowden had written in April 2013 inquiring about legal authorities but said that they had found no other evidence that Snowden had expressed his concerns to someone in an oversight position.[71] In June 2014, the NSA said it had not been able to find any records of Snowden raising internal complaints about the agency's operations.[72] That same month, Snowden explained that he himself has not produced the communiqus in question because of the ongoing nature of the dispute, disclosing for the first time that "I am working with the NSA in regard to these records and we're going back and forth, so I don't want to reveal everything that will come out."[73]

In his May 2014 interview with NBC News, Snowden accused the U.S. government of trying to use one position here or there in his career to distract from the totality of his experience, downplaying him as a "low level analyst." In his words, he was "trained as a spy in the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseaspretending to work in a job that I'm notand even being assigned a name that was not mine." He said he'd worked for the NSA undercover overseas, and for the DIA had developed sources and methods to keep information and people secure "in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world. So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading."[17] In a June interview with Globo TV, Snowden reiterated that he "was actually functioning at a very senior level."[74] In a July interview with The Guardian, Snowden explained that, during his NSA career, "I began to move from merely overseeing these systems to actively directing their use. Many people dont understand that I was actually an analyst and I designated individuals and groups for targeting."[75] Snowden subsequently told Wired that while at Dell in 2011, "I would sit down with the CIO of the CIA, the CTO of the CIA, the chiefs of all the technical branches. They would tell me their hardest technology problems, and it was my job to come up with a way to fix them."[24]

Of his time as an NSA analyst, directing the work of others, Snowden recalled a moment when he and his colleagues began to have severe ethical doubts. Snowden said 18 to 22-year-old analysts were suddenly

"thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility, where they now have access to all your private records. In the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated in any sort of necessary sensefor example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation. But they're extremely attractive. So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker ... and sooner or later this person's whole life has been seen by all of these other people."

As Snowden observed it, this behavior happened routinely every two months but was never reported, being considered one of the "fringe benefits" of the work.[76]

The exact size of Snowden's disclosure is unknown,[77] but Australian officials have estimated 15,000 or more Australian intelligence files[78] and British officials estimate at least 58,000 British intelligence files.[79] NSA Director Keith Alexander initially estimated that Snowden had copied anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 NSA documents.[80] Later estimates provided by U.S. officials were on the order of 1.7 million,[81] a number that originally came from Department of Defense talking points.[82] In July 2014, The Washington Post reported on a cache previously provided by Snowden from domestic NSA operations consisting of "roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts."[83] A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report declassified in June 2015 said that Snowden took 900,000 Department of Defense files, more than he downloaded from the NSA.[82]

In March 2014, Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee, "The vast majority of the documents that Snowden ... exfiltrated from our highest levels of security ... had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities. The vast majority of those were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures."[84] When asked in a May 2014 interview to quantify the number of documents Snowden stole, retired NSA director Keith Alexander said there was no accurate way of counting what he took, but Snowden may have downloaded more than a million documents.[85]

According to Snowden, he did not indiscriminately turn over documents to journalists, stating that "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over"[28] and that "I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists ... If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country."[60] Despite these measures, the improper redaction of a document by the New York Times resulted in the exposure of intelligence activity against al-Qaeda.[86]

In June 2014, the NSA's recently installed director, U.S. Navy Admiral Michael S. Rogers, said that while some terrorist groups had altered their communications to avoid surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden, the damage done was not significant enough to conclude that "the sky is falling."[87] Nevertheless, in February 2015, Rogers said that Snowden's disclosures had a material impact on the NSA's detection and evaluation of terrorist activities worldwide.[88]

On June 14, 2015, UK's Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies. The Sunday Times said it was not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden's data or whether Snowden voluntarily handed it over to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow.[89][90] In April 2015 the Henry Jackson Society, a British neoconservative think tank, published a report claiming that Snowden's intelligence leaks negatively impacted Britain's ability to fight terrorism and organized crime.[91] Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, criticized the report for, in his opinion, presuming that the public became concerned about privacy only after Snowden's disclosures.[92]

Snowden's decision to leak NSA documents developed gradually following his March 2007 posting as a technician to the Geneva CIA station.[93] Snowden first made contact with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working at The Guardian, on December 1, 2012.[94][95] He contacted Greenwald anonymously as "Cincinnatus"[96] and said he had sensitive documents that he would like to share.[97] Greenwald found the measures that the source asked him to take to secure their communications, such as encrypting email, too annoying to employ. Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013.[98] According to Poitras, Snowden chose to contact her after seeing her New York Times article about NSA whistleblower William Binney.[99] What originally attracted Snowden to both Greenwald and Poitras was a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras's controversial films had made her a target of the government.[97]

Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February[100] or April 2013, after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City, at which point Snowden began providing documents to them.[94] Barton Gellman, writing for The Washington Post, says his first direct contact was on May 16, 2013.[101] According to Gellman, Snowden approached Greenwald after the Post declined to guarantee publication within 72 hours of all 41 PowerPoint slides that Snowden had leaked exposing the PRISM electronic data mining program, and to publish online an encrypted code allowing Snowden to later prove that he was the source.[101]

Snowden communicated using encrypted email,[98] and going by the codename "Verax". He asked not to be quoted at length for fear of identification by stylometry.[101]

According to Gellman, prior to their first meeting in person, Snowden wrote, "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end."[101] Snowden also told Gellman that until the articles were published, the journalists working with him would also be at mortal risk from the United States Intelligence Community "if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information."[101]

In May 2013, Snowden was permitted temporary leave from his position at the NSA in Hawaii, on the pretext of receiving treatment for his epilepsy.[28] In mid-May, Snowden gave an electronic interview to Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum which was published weeks later by Der Spiegel.[102]

After disclosing the copied documents, Snowden promised that nothing would stop subsequent disclosures. In June 2013, he said, "All I can say right now is the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."[103]

On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong,[104] where he was staying when the initial articles based on the leaked documents were published,[105] beginning with The Guardian on June 5.[106] Greenwald later said Snowden disclosed 9,000 to 10,000 documents.[107]

Within months, documents had been obtained and published by media outlets worldwide, most notably The Guardian (Britain), Der Spiegel (Germany), The Washington Post and The New York Times (U.S.), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), and similar outlets in Sweden, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Australia.[108] In 2014, NBC broke its first story based on the leaked documents.[109] In February 2014, for reporting based on Snowden's leaks, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and The Guardians Ewen MacAskill were honored as co-recipients of the 2013 George Polk Award, which they dedicated to Snowden.[110] The NSA reporting by these journalists also earned The Guardian and The Washington Post the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service[111] for exposing the "widespread surveillance" and for helping to spark a "huge public debate about the extent of the government's spying". The Guardian's chief editor, Alan Rusbridger, credited Snowden for having performed a public service.[112]

The ongoing publication of leaked documents has revealed previously unknown details of a global surveillance apparatus run by the United States' NSA[115] in close cooperation with three of its four Five Eyes partners: Australia's ASD,[116] the UK's GCHQ,[117] and Canada's CSEC.[118]

On June 5, 2013, media reports documenting the existence and functions of classified surveillance programs and their scope began and continued throughout the entire year. The first program to be revealed was PRISM, which allows for court-approved direct access to Americans' Google and Yahoo accounts, reported from both The Washington Post and The Guardian published one hour apart.[113][119][120] Barton Gellman of The Washington Post was the first journalist to report on Snowden's documents. He said the U.S. government urged him not to specify by name which companies were involved, but Gellman decided that to name them "would make it real to Americans."[121] Reports also revealed details of Tempora, a British black-ops surveillance program run by the NSA's British partner, GCHQ.[119][122] The initial reports included details about NSA call database, Boundless Informant, and of a secret court order requiring Verizon to hand the NSA millions of Americans' phone records daily,[123] the surveillance of French citizens' phone and Internet records, and those of "high-profile individuals from the world of business or politics."[124][125][126] XKeyscore, an analytical tool that allows for collection of "almost anything done on the internet," was described by The Guardian as a program that shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements: "I, sitting at my desk [could] wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email."[127]

The NSA's top-secret black budget, obtained from Snowden by The Washington Post, exposed the successes and failures of the 16 spy agencies comprising the U.S. intelligence community,[128] and revealed that the NSA was paying U.S. private tech companies for clandestine access to their communications networks.[129] The agencies were allotted $52 billion for the 2013 fiscal year.[130]

It was revealed that the NSA was harvesting millions of email and instant messaging contact lists,[131] searching email content,[132] tracking and mapping the location of cell phones,[133] undermining attempts at encryption via Bullrun[134][135] and that the agency was using cookies to piggyback on the same tools used by Internet advertisers "to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance."[136] The NSA was shown to be secretly accessing Yahoo and Google data centers to collect information from hundreds of millions of account holders worldwide by tapping undersea cables using the MUSCULAR surveillance program.[113][114]

The NSA, the CIA and GCHQ spied on users of Second Life, Xbox Live and World of Warcraft, and attempted to recruit would-be informants from the sites, according to documents revealed in December 2013.[137][138] Leaked documents showed NSA agents also spied on their own "love interests," a practice NSA employees termed LOVEINT.[139][140] The NSA was shown to be tracking the online sexual activity of people they termed "radicalizers" in order to discredit them.[141] Following the revelation of Black Pearl, a program targeting private networks, the NSA was accused of extending beyond its primary mission of national security. The agency's intelligence-gathering operations had targeted, among others, oil giant Petrobras, Brazil's largest company.[142] The NSA and the GCHQ were also shown to be surveilling charities including UNICEF and Mdecins du Monde, as well as allies such as European Commissioner Joaqun Almunia and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[143]

In October 2013, Glenn Greenwald said "the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish."[144] In November, The Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger said that only one percent of the documents had been published.[145] In December, Australia's Minister for Defence David Johnston said his government assumed the worst was yet to come.[146]

By October 2013, Snowden's disclosures had created tensions[147][148] between the U.S. and some of its close allies after they revealed that the U.S. had spied on Brazil, France, Mexico,[149] Britain,[150] China,[151] Germany,[152] and Spain,[153] as well as 35 world leaders,[154] most notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said "spying among friends" was unacceptable[155][156] and compared the NSA with the Stasi.[157] Leaked documents published by Der Spiegel in 2014 appeared to show that the NSA had targeted 122 high-ranking leaders.[158]

An NSA mission statement titled "SIGINT Strategy 2012-2016" affirmed that the NSA had plans for continued expansion of surveillance activities. Their stated goal was to "dramatically increase mastery of the global network" and to acquire adversaries' data from "anyone, anytime, anywhere."[159] Leaked slides revealed in Greenwald's book No Place to Hide, released in May 2014, showed that the NSA's stated objective was to "Collect it All," "Process it All," "Exploit it All," "Partner it All," "Sniff it All" and "Know it All."[160]

Snowden said in a January 2014 interview with German television that the NSA does not limit its data collection to national security issues, accusing the agency of conducting industrial espionage. Using the example of German company Siemens, he said, "If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to US national interestseven if it doesn't have anything to do with national securitythen they'll take that information nevertheless."[161] In the wake of Snowden's revelations and in response to an inquiry from the Left Party, Germany's domestic security agency Bundesamt fr Verfassungsschutz (BfV) investigated and found no concrete evidence that the U.S. conducted economic or industrial espionage in Germany.[162]

In February 2014, during testimony to the European Union, Snowden said of the remaining undisclosed programs, "I will leave the public interest determinations as to which of these may be safely disclosed to responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders."[163]

In March 2014, documents disclosed by Glenn Greenwald writing for The Intercept showed the NSA, in cooperation with the GCHQ, has plans to infect millions of computers with malware using a program called TURBINE.[164] Revelations included information about QUANTUMHAND, a program through which the NSA set up a fake Facebook server to intercept connections.[164]

According to a report in The Washington Post in July 2014, relying on information furnished by Snowden, 90% of those placed under surveillance in the U.S. are ordinary Americans, and are not the intended targets. The newspaper said it had examined documents including emails, message texts, and online accounts, that support the claim.[165]

In an August 2014 interview, Snowden for the first time disclosed a cyberwarfare program in the works, codenamed MonsterMind, that would automate detection of a foreign cyberattack as it began and automatically fire back. "These attacks can be spoofed," said Snowden. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?"[24]

Snowden first contemplated leaking confidential documents around 2008 but held back, partly because he believed the newly elected Barack Obama might introduce reforms.[1] After the disclosures, his identity was made public by The Guardian at his request on June 9, 2013.[100] "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded," he said. "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."[104]

Snowden said he wanted to "embolden others to step forward" by demonstrating that "they can win."[101] He also said that the system for reporting problems did not work. "You have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it." He cited a lack of whistleblower protection for government contractors, the use of the Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute leakers, and his belief that had he used internal mechanisms to "sound the alarm," his revelations "would have been buried forever."[93][166]

In December 2013, upon learning that a U.S. federal judge had ruled the collection of U.S. phone metadata conducted by the NSA as likely unconstitutional, Snowden said, "I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts ... today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights."[167]

In January 2014, Snowden said his "breaking point" was "seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress."[57] This referred to testimony on March 12, 2013three months after Snowden first sought to share thousands of NSA documents with Greenwald,[94] and nine months after the NSA says Snowden made his first illegal downloads during the summer of 2012[1]in which Clapper denied to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA wittingly collects data on millions of Americans.[168] Snowden said, "There's no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions. Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back. Beyond that, it was the creeping realization that no one else was going to do this. The public had a right to know about these programs."[169] In March 2014, Snowden said he had reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than ten officials, but as a contractor had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing.[70]

In May 2013, Snowden took a leave of absence, telling his supervisors he was returning to the mainland for epilepsy treatment, but instead left Hawaii for Hong Kong[170] where he arrived on May 20. Snowden told Guardian reporters in June that he had been in his room at the Mira Hotel since his arrival in the city, rarely going out. On June 10, correspondent Ewen MacAskill said Snowden had left his hotel only briefly three times since May 20.[171]

Snowden vowed to challenge any extradition attempt by the U.S. government, and engaged a Hong Kong-based Canadian human rights lawyer Robert Tibbo as a legal adviser.[1][172][173] Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he planned to remain in Hong Kong for as long as its government would permit.[174][175] Snowden also told the Post that "the United States government has committed a tremendous number of crimes against Hong Kong [and] the PRC as well,"[176] going on to identify Chinese Internet Protocol addresses that the NSA monitored and stating that the NSA collected text-message data for Hong Kong residents. Glenn Greenwald said Snowden was motivated by a need to "ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China."[177]

After leaving the Mira Hotel, Snowden was housed for two weeks in a number of apartments by other refugees seeking asylum in Hong Kong, an arrangement set up by Tibbo to hide from the US authorities.[178][179]The Russian newspaper Kommersant nevertheless reported that Snowden was living at the Russian consulate shortly before his departure from Hong Kong to Moscow.[180] Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and legal adviser to Snowden, said in January 2014, "Every news organization in the world has been trying to confirm that story. They haven't been able to, because it's false."[181] Likewise rejecting the Kommersant story was Anatoly Kucherena, who became Snowden's lawyer in July 2013 when Snowden asked him for help in seeking temporary asylum in Russia.[182] Kucherena said Snowden did not communicate with Russian diplomats while he was in Hong Kong.[183][184] In early September 2013, however, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that, a few days before boarding a plane to Moscow, Snowden met in Hong Kong with Russian diplomatic representatives.[185]

On June 22, 18 days after publication of Snowden's NSA documents began, officials revoked his U.S. passport.[186] On June 23, Snowden boarded the commercial Aeroflot flight SU213 to Moscow, accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks.[187][188] Hong Kong authorities said that Snowden had not been detained for the U.S. because the request had not fully complied with Hong Kong law,[189][190] and there was no legal basis to prevent Snowden from leaving.[191][192][Notes 1] On June 24, a U.S. State Department spokesman rejected the explanation of technical noncompliance, accusing the Hong Kong government of deliberately releasing a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant and after having sufficient time to prohibit his travel.[195] That same day, Julian Assange said that WikiLeaks had paid for Snowden's lodging in Hong Kong and his flight out.[196]

In October 2013, Snowden said that before flying to Moscow, he gave all the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, and kept no copies for himself.[93] In January 2014, he told a German TV interviewer that he gave all of his information to American journalists reporting on American issues.[57] During his first American TV interview, in May 2014, Snowden said he had protected himself from Russian leverage by destroying the material he had been holding before landing in Moscow.[17]

In January 2019, Vanessa Rodel, one of the refugees who had housed Snowden in Hong Kong, and her 7-year-old daughter were granted asylum by Canada. Five other people who helped Snowden still remain in Hong Kong awaiting a response to their asylum request.[197]

On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.[198] WikiLeaks said he was on a circuitous but safe route to asylum in Ecuador.[199] Snowden had a seat reserved to continue to Cuba[200] but did not board that onward flight, saying in a January 2014 interview that he intended to transit through Russia but was stopped en route. He asserted "a planeload of reporters documented the seat I was supposed to be in" when he was ticketed for Havana, but the U.S. cancelled his passport.[181] He said the U.S. wanted him to stay in Moscow so "they could say, 'He's a Russian spy.'"[74] Greenwald's account differed on the point of Snowden being already ticketed. According to Greenwald, Snowden's passport was valid when he departed Hong Kong but was revoked during the hours he was in transit to Moscow, preventing him from obtaining a ticket to leave Russia. Greenwald said Snowden was thus forced to stay in Moscow and seek asylum.[201]

According to one Russian report, Snowden planned to fly from Moscow through Havana to Latin America; however, Cuba told Moscow it would not allow the Aeroflot plane carrying Snowden to land.[183] Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Cuba had a change of heart after receiving pressure from U.S. officials,[202] leaving him stuck in the transit zone because at the last minute Havana told officials in Moscow not to allow him on the flight.[203] The Washington Post contrasted this version with what it called "widespread speculation" that Russia never intended to let Snowden proceed.[204] Fidel Castro called claims that Cuba would have blocked Snowden's entry a "lie" and a "libel."[200] Describing Snowden's arrival in Moscow as a surprise and likening it to "an unwanted Christmas gift,"[205] Russian president Putin said that Snowden remained in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport, had committed no crime in Russia, was free to leave and should do so.[206] Putin denied that Russia's intelligence agencies had worked or were working with Snowden.[205]

Following Snowden's arrival in Moscow, the White House expressed disappointment in Hong Kong's decision to allow him to leave.[207][208][195] An anonymous U.S. official not authorized to discuss the matter told AP Snowden's passport had been revoked before he left Hong Kong, but that a senior official in a country or airline could order subordinates to overlook the withdrawn passport.[209] U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Snowden's passport was cancelled "within two hours" of the charges against Snowden being made public[3] which was Friday, June 21.[2] In a July 1 statement, Snowden said, "Although I am convicted of nothing, [the U.S. government] has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum."[210]

Four countries offered Snowden permanent asylum: Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela.[211] No direct flights between Moscow and Venezuela, Bolivia or Nicaragua existed, however, and the U.S. pressured countries along his route to hand him over. Snowden said in July 2013 that he decided to bid for asylum in Russia because he felt there was no safe way to reach Latin America.[212] Snowden said he remained in Russia because "when we were talking about possibilities for asylum in Latin America, the United States forced down the Bolivian President's plane", citing the Morales plane incident. On the issue, he said "some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights."[213] He said that he would travel from Russia if there was no interference from the U.S. government.[181]

Four months after Snowden received asylum in Russia, Julian Assange commented, "While Venezuela and Ecuador could protect him in the short term, over the long term there could be a change in government. In Russia, he's safe, he's well-regarded, and that is not likely to change. That was my advice to Snowden, that he would be physically safest in Russia."[170] According to Snowden, "the CIA has a very powerful presence [in Latin America] and the governments and the security services there are relatively much less capable than, say, Russia.... they could have basically snatched me...."[214]

In an October 2014 interview with The Nation magazine, Snowden reiterated that he had originally intended to travel to Latin America: "A lot of people are still unaware that I never intended to end up in Russia." According to Snowden, the U.S. government "waited until I departed Hong Kong to cancel my passport in order to trap me in Russia." Snowden added, "If they really wanted to capture me, they would've allowed me to travel to Latin America, because the CIA can operate with impunity down there. They did not want that; they chose to keep me in Russia."[215]

On July 1, 2013, president Evo Morales of Bolivia, who had been attending a conference in Russia, suggested during an interview with Russia Today that he would consider a request by Snowden for asylum.[216] The following day, Morales's plane, en route to Bolivia, was rerouted to Austria and landed there, after France, Spain, and Italy denied access to their airspace. While the plane was parked in Vienna, the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived with two embassy personnel and asked to search the plane but they were denied permission by Morales himself.[217] U.S. officials had raised suspicions that Snowden may have been on board.[218] Morales blamed the U.S. for putting pressure on European countries, and said that the grounding of his plane was a violation of international law.[219]

In April 2015, Bolivia's ambassador to Russia, Mara Luisa Ramos Urzagaste, accused Julian Assange of inadvertently putting Morales's life at risk by intentionally providing to the U.S. false rumors that Snowden was on Morales's plane. Assange responded that "we weren't expecting this outcome. The result was caused by the United States' intervention. We can only regret what happened."[220][221]

Snowden applied for political asylum to 21 countries.[222][223] A statement attributed to him contended that the U.S. administration, and specifically Vice President Joe Biden, had pressured the governments to refuse his asylum petitions. Biden had telephoned President Rafael Correa days prior to Snowden's remarks, asking the Ecuadorian leader not to grant Snowden asylum.[224] Ecuador had initially offered Snowden a temporary travel document but later withdrew it,[225] and Correa later called the offer a mistake.[226]

In a July 1 statement published by WikiLeaks, Snowden accused the U.S. government of "using citizenship as a weapon" and using what he described as "old, bad tools of political aggression." Citing Obama's promise to not allow "wheeling and dealing" over the case, Snowden commented, "This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile."[227] Several days later, WikiLeaks announced that Snowden had applied for asylum in six additional countries, but declined to name them, alleging attempted U.S. interference.[228]

After evaluating the law and Snowden's situation, the French interior ministry rejected his request for asylum.[229] Poland refused to process his application because it did not conform to legal procedure.[230] Brazil's Foreign Ministry said the government planned no response to Snowden's asylum request. Germany and India rejected Snowden's application outright, while Austria, Ecuador, Finland, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain said he must be on their territory to apply.[231][232][233] In November 2014, Germany announced that Snowden had not renewed his previously denied request and was not being considered for asylum.[234] Glenn Greenwald later reported that Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor of Germany, told him the U.S. government had threatened to stop sharing intelligence if Germany offered Snowden asylum or arranged for his travel there.[235]

Putin said on July 1, 2013, that if Snowden wanted to be granted asylum in Russia, he would be required to "stop his work aimed at harming our American partners."[236] A spokesman for Putin subsequently said that Snowden had withdrawn his asylum application upon learning of the conditions.[237]

In a July 12 meeting at Sheremetyevo Airport with representatives of human rights organizations and lawyers, organized in part by the Russian government,[238] Snowden said he was accepting all offers of asylum that he had already received or would receive. He added that Venezuela's grant of asylum formalized his asylee status, removing any basis for state interference with his right to asylum.[239] He also said he would request asylum in Russia until he resolved his travel problems.[240]Russian Federal Migration Service officials confirmed on July 16 that Snowden had submitted an application for temporary asylum.[241] On July 24, Kucherena said his client wanted to find work in Russia, travel and create a life for himself, and had already begun learning Russian.[242]

Amid media reports in early July 2013 attributed to U.S. administration sources that Obama's one-on-one meeting with Putin, ahead of a G20 meeting in St Petersburg scheduled for September, was in doubt due to Snowden's protracted sojourn in Russia,[243] top U.S. officials repeatedly made it clear to Moscow that Snowden should immediately be returned to the United States to face charges for the unauthorized leaking of classified information.[244][245][246] His Russian lawyer said Snowden needed asylum because he faced persecution by the U.S. government and feared "that he could be subjected to torture and capital punishment."[247]

In a letter to Russian Minister of Justice Aleksandr Konovalov dated July 23, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder repudiated Snowden's claim to refugee status, and offered a limited validity passport good for direct return to the U.S.[248] He further asserted that Snowden would not be subject to torture or the death penalty, and would receive trial in a civilian court with proper legal counsel.[249] The same day, the Russian president's spokesman reiterated that his government would not hand over Snowden, noting that Putin was not personally involved in the matter and that it was being handled through talks between the FBI and Russia's FSB.[250]

On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property and two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 through unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.[2][248] Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. The charge was initially secret and was unsealed a week later.

Snowden was asked in a January 2014 interview about returning to the U.S. to face the charges in court, as Obama had suggested a few days prior. Snowden explained why he rejected the request:

What he doesn't say are that the crimes that he's charged me with are crimes that don't allow me to make my case. They don't allow me to defend myself in an open court to the public and convince a jury that what I did was to their benefit. ... So it's, I would say, illustrative that the President would choose to say someone should face the music when he knows the music is a show trial.[57][251]

Snowden's legal representative, Jesselyn Radack, wrote that "the Espionage Act effectively hinders a person from defending himself before a jury in an open court." She said that the "arcane World War I law" was never meant to prosecute whistleblowers, but rather spies who betrayed their trust by selling secrets to enemies for profit. Non-profit betrayals were not considered.[252]

On September 17, 2019, the United States filed a lawsuit against Snowden for alleged violations of non-disclosure agreements with the CIA and NSA.[253] The complaint alleges that Snowden violated prepublication obligations related to the publication of his memoir Permanent Record. The complaint lists the publishers Macmillan and Holtzbrink as relief-defendants.[254]

On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport aboard a commercial Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong.[255][187][256] On August 1, after 39 days in the transit section, he left the airport and was granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year.[257] A year later, his temporary asylum having expired, Snowden received a three-year residency permit allowing him to travel freely within Russia and to go abroad for up to three months. He was not granted permanent political asylum.[258] In January 2017, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry wrote on Facebook that Snowden's asylum, which was due to expire in 2017, was extended by "a couple more years".[259][260] Snowden's lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said the extension was valid until 2020.[261]

As of October 2019, Snowden had been granted permanent residency in Russia, which is renewed every three years. He secretly married Lindsay Mills in 2017. By 2019 he no longer felt the need to be disguised in public and lived what was described as a "more or less normal life", able to travel around Russia and make a living from speaking arrangements (locally and over the internet). His memoir Permanent Record was released internationally, and while U.S. royalties were expected to be seized, he was able to receive the advance.[6] According to Snowden, "One of the things that is lost in all the problematic politics of the Russian government is the fact this is one of the most beautiful countries in the world" with "friendly" and "warm" people.[6] In another interview, Snowden went on to say: "There's a way to criticize the Russian government's policies without criticizing the Russian people who are ordinary people, who just want to have a happy life; they just want to do better. They want the same things that you do."[262]

A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously called a hero,[263][264][265] a whistleblower,[266][267][268][269] a dissident,[270] a patriot,[271][272][273] and a traitor.[274][275][276][277] Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg called Snowden's release of NSA material the most significant leak in U.S. history.[278][279]

Numerous high-ranking current or former U.S. government officials reacted publicly to Snowden's disclosures.

In the U.S., Snowden's actions precipitated an intense debate on privacy and warrantless domestic surveillance.[294][295] President Obama was initially dismissive of Snowden, saying "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."[296][297][298] In August 2013, Obama rejected the suggestion that Snowden was a patriot,[299] and in November said that "the benefit of the debate he generated was not worth the damage done, because there was another way of doing it."[300]

In June 2013, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont shared a "must read" news story on his blog by Ron Fournier, stating "Love him or hate him, we all owe Snowden our thanks for forcing upon the nation an important debate. But the debate shouldn't be about him. It should be about the gnawing questions his actions raised from the shadows."[301] In 2015, Sanders stated that "Snowden played a very important role in educating the American public" and that although Snowden should not go unpunished for breaking the law, "that education should be taken into consideration before the sentencing."[302]

Snowden said in December 2013 that he was "inspired by the global debate" ignited by the leaks and that NSA's "culture of indiscriminate global espionage ... is collapsing."[303]

At the end of 2013, however, The Washington Post noted that the public debate and its offshoots had produced no meaningful change in policy, with the status quo continuing.[139]

In 2016, on The Axe Files podcast, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that Snowden "performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made." Holder nevertheless said that Snowden's actions were inappropriate and illegal.[304]

In September 2016, the bipartisan U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence completed a review of the Snowden disclosures and said that the federal government would have to spend millions of dollars responding to the fallout from Snowden's disclosures.[305] The report also said that "the public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions."[306] The report was denounced by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, who called it "aggressively dishonest" and "contemptuous of fact."[307]

In August 2013, President Obama said that he had called for a review of U.S. surveillance activities before Snowden had begun revealing details of the NSA's operations,[299] and announced that he was directing DNI James Clapper "to establish a review group on intelligence and communications technologies."[308][309] In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the NSA to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using backdoors in hardware or software.[310] Panel member Geoffrey R. Stone said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.[311]

On June 6, 2013, in the wake of Snowden's leaks, conservative public interest lawyer and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government had unlawfully collected metadata for his telephone calls and was harassing him. In Klayman v. Obama, Judge Richard J. Leon referred to the NSA's "almost-Orwellian technology" and ruled the bulk telephone metadata program to be probably unconstitutional.[312] Snowden later described Judge Leon's decision as vindication.[313]

On June 11, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, alleging that the NSA's phone records program was unconstitutional. In December 2013, ten days after Judge Leon's ruling, Judge William H. Pauley III came to the opposite conclusion. In ACLU v. Clapper, although acknowledging that privacy concerns are not trivial, Pauley found that the potential benefits of surveillance outweigh these considerations and ruled that the NSA's collection of phone data is legal.[314]

Gary Schmitt, former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote that "The two decisions have generated public confusion over the constitutionality of the NSA's data collection programa kind of judicial 'he-said, she-said' standoff."[315]

On May 7, 2015, in the case of ACLU v. Clapper, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that Section 215 of the Patriot Act did not authorize the NSA to collect Americans' calling records in bulk, as exposed by Snowden in 2013. The decision voided U.S. District Judge William Pauley's December 2013 finding that the NSA program was lawful, and remanded the case to him for further review. The appeals court did not rule on the constitutionality of the bulk surveillance, and declined to enjoin the program, noting the pending expiration of relevant parts of the Patriot Act. Circuit Judge Gerard E. Lynch wrote that, given the national security interests at stake, it was prudent to give Congress an opportunity to debate and decide the matter.[316]

On June 2, 2015, the U.S. Senate passed, and President Obama signed, the USA Freedom Act which restored in modified form several provisions of the Patriot Act that had expired the day before, while for the first time imposing some limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication data on U.S. citizens by American intelligence agencies. The new restrictions were widely seen as stemming from Snowden's revelations.[317][318]

Hans-Georg Maaen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic security agency, speculated that Snowden could have been working for the Russian government.[319][320] Snowden rejected this insinuation,[321] speculating on Twitter in German that "it cannot be proven if Maaen is an agent of the SVR or FSB."[322]

Crediting the Snowden leaks, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution 68/167 in December 2013. The non-binding resolution denounced unwarranted digital surveillance and included a symbolic declaration of the right of all individuals to online privacy.[323][324][325]

Support for Snowden came from Latin American leaders including the Argentinian President Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.[326][327]

In an official report published in October 2015, the United Nations special rapporteur for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of speech, Professor David Kaye, criticized the U.S. government's harsh treatment of, and bringing criminal charges against, whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden. The report found that Snowden's revelations were important for people everywhere and made "a deep and lasting impact on law, policy and politics."[328][329] The European Parliament invited Snowden to make a pre-recorded video appearance to aid their NSA investigation.[330][331] Snowden gave written testimony in which he said that he was seeking asylum in the EU, but that he was told by European Parliamentarians that the U.S. would not allow EU partners to make such an offer.[332] He told the Parliament that the NSA was working with the security agencies of EU states to "get access to as much data of EU citizens as possible."[333] The NSA's Foreign Affairs Division, he claimed, lobbies the EU and other countries to change their laws, allowing for "everyone in the country" to be spied on legally.[334]

In July 2014, Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news conference in Geneva that the U.S. should abandon its efforts to prosecute Snowden, since his leaks were in the public interest.[335]

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Staten Island’s Best Dressed: Ladies and gents in festive attire and more – SILive.com

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Staten Island Advance/Dr. Gracelyn Santos

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- As the holiday party scene dwindles down, memories remain of festive gatherings to celebrate 2020. For this week's Best Dressed, readers submitted their fun photos from family parties at home and local venues like the Hilton Garden Inn, Bloomfield.

Also included in the slideshow below are ladies and gents from the First Central Baptist Church, Tompkinsville.

Submit your "Best Dressed" photos to gsantos@siadvance.com and make sure to identify everyone in the photos.

Courtesy Chris Cicero

Matt Breslauer looking sharp in his red bow tie at the Bay Street Landing's Roarin '20s New Year's Eve Party.

Staten Island Advance/Dr. Gracelyn Santos

Linda Griggslooking sharp after Sunday Service at First Central Baptist Church.

Courtesy Jennifer Gordon

Shirley Gordon and Thomas Nugent at a New Year's Eve Party at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Staten Island Advance/Dr. Gracelyn Santos

Cherish Tafe and Joan Godette looking sharp after Sunday Service at First Central Baptist Church.

Courtesy Jennifer Gordon

Jennifer Gordon and Steven Caban at a New Year's Eve Party at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Courtesy Catherine Cumming

Mia Rose Cumming is ringing in the New Year in style.

Courtesy Kerry Falcone

Members of the Dicks, Falcone, and Welborn families take a New Year's selfie.

Staten Island Advance/Dr. Gracelyn Santos

Josenia Ruiz and her fiance, Rev. Dr. Demetrius Carolina, Pastor of First Central Baptist Church.

Courtesy Renee Sarno

David Budash Rene Sarno at Medieval Times.

Courtesy Angelica Cimmino

Angelica and Joseph Cimmino pose for a photo at a Roaring '20s-themed holiday party.

Courtesy Sophia Caputo

Lenny, Sophia, Stephanie and Gianna Caputo.

Staten Island Advance/Dr. Gracelyn Santos

Nylah and her dad, Lawrence de Silva, ooking sharp after Sunday Service at First Central Baptist Church.

Courtesy Vincent Innocente

Vincent Innocente gets a hand from Robert Farrell as he scales the Grand Canyon earlier this month.

Courtesy Doreen Quirk

Quirk Family members pose for a New Year's Eve photo: Dennis Quirk; William, Eden and Sean Quirk; Keri, Emma, and Lindsay Fortel; Doreen, Allie and Bri Quirk; Mike Postiglione; Susan, Steve, AnnaDoreen and Antonia; and Joseph Quirk and Nicole DAngelo.

Courtesy Jackie Rinaldo

James Rinaldo at a family New Year's Eve party.

Courtesy Theresa Montuori

Theresa Montuori, foreground in grey, submitted this photo of girlfriends ringing in the New Year together.

Staten Island Advance/Dr. Gracelyn Santos

Travis Sims Alycia Byrd- Richardson after Sunday Service at First Central Baptist Church.

Guests of Peggy Maida, West Brighton, pose for a group photo at a New Years Eve party at her home.

Courtesy Holly Bonner

Holly Bonner and her daughters, Nuala and Aiofe.

Courtesy Sophia Caputo

Caputo Family: Lenny, Sophia, Stephanie and Gianna.

Courtesy Peggy Maida

Cousins take a photo with their dads on New Year's Eve: Peggy Maida, at left, Judy Daley, Richard Christie and Jimmy Christie.

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Former WingHouse on 4th Will be a Rumba Island Bar and Grill – St. Pete Rising

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Rumba Island Bar and Grill is a member of the Bay Star Restaurant Group, which is led by Frank Chivas. Chivas has been operating restaurants in Pinellas County for over 20 years, including long-time institutions like Salt Rock Grill and Island Way Grill. With the addition of the Rumba on 4th Street, Bay Star will be just shy of a dozen establishments.

In 2015, Chivas was named Mr. Clearwater by the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce. Chivas grew up in foster care and as a result has dedicated himself to helping children in need. He actively supports a variety of local nonprofits including the Boys & Girls Club, Clearwater 4 Youth, and the Chi Chi Rodriguez Academy.

There is no expected opening date for Rumba Island Bar and Grill on 4th Street, but if its anything like its sister restaurants in Clearwater and Oldsmar, itll be worth the wait. Be sure to follow Rumba Island Bar and Grill on Facebook and Instagram to stay up-to-date on construction progress and a grand opening.

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Former WingHouse on 4th Will be a Rumba Island Bar and Grill - St. Pete Rising

Whats the average credit score on Staten Island? – SILive.com

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- While the cost of living in New York City is among the highest in the world, a report from Experian has found that credit scores among New York residents range from significantly below average to some of the highest in the country.

Experian ranked each New York City borough by credit score, as part of its ongoing look at the scores in the United States. It analyzed consumer credit data from the second quarter of 2019 to break down New York City neighborhoods by zip code and see which ones had the best credit.

Experian examined credit scores using the scoring model FICO Score 8, which examines factors like credit card usage, balances, credit history, credit mix and new credit. Credit scores range from 300 to 850, and a credit score of 700 or above is generally considered good, according to Experian.

New York City overall averaged a 701 FICO credit score for the second quarter of 2019, which Experian said is just under the national average of 703.

The average credit score on Staten Island is 709 -- lower than Manhattan (714) and Queens (710), but higher than Brooklyn (700) and the Bronx (665), the report found.

Experian ranked the credit scores by neighborhood. The South Shore had the highest average credit score on Staten Island, with an average score of 728.

The lowest average score on Staten Island was in Port Richmond at 681. Mid-Island consumers had an average score of 725, and residents who live in Stapleton-St. George had an average score of 703.

Experians 2019 State of Credit report released last June found that the average American has three regular credit cards with balances totaling about $6,500, and 2.6 store cards with total balances of around $1,900.

The average credit score nationwide was 680, and the average mortgage debt was $208,180, according to the report.

In New York State, the average credit score was 692, Experian reported. New Yorkers carried an average of 3.3 regular credit cards with balances totaling $6,850. The average resident also had 2.8 store credit cards with balances totaling $1,888.

The mortgage debt for a New York resident averaged $251,323, according to the Experian report.

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Staten Island Tech ranks 2nd in list of top 2020 NYC high schools – SILive.com

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A Staten Island public high school is the second best public high school in New York City and New York State, according to a new ranking.

Niche -- a website dedicated to ranking and reviewing schools across the country -- has released its list of the best public high schools in New York City for 2020. Staten Island Technical High School ranked second as the best public high school in both the city and state.

The ranking is based on an analysis of academic and student life data from the U.S. Department of Education. The ranking is determined by a number of factors, including test scores, college data, graduation rates, SAT/ACT scores, teacher quality and high school ratings.

Staten Islands school district, District 31, ranked 141st in the ranking of best school districts in New York State.

Here are Niches top 25 best public high schools in New York City, along with their ranking among public high schools in New York State.

25. Midwood High School at Brooklyn College

Location: Brooklyn

Number of students: 4,011

State rank: 105

24. Maspeth High School

Location: Queens

Number of students: 1,048

State rank: 102

23. Manhattan Center for Science & Mathematics

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 1,596

State rank: 97

22. Scholars Academy

Location: Queens

Number of students: 1,351

State rank: 93

21. Millennium High School

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 660

State rank: 91

20. Manhattan Hunter Science High School

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 448

State rank: 75

19. NYC Lab High School for Collaborative Studies

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 531

State rank: 70

18. Columbia Secondary School

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 687

State rank: 69

17. Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences

Location: Brooklyn

Number of students: 1,025

State rank: 59

16. Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 2,701

State rank: 55

15. The Brooklyn Latin School

Location: Brooklyn

Number of students: 725

State rank: 47

14. The Beacon School

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 1,291

State rank: 45

13. Queens High School for the Sciences at York College

Location: Queens

Number of students: 464

State rank: 38

12. New Explorations into Science, Technology & Math School

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 1,743

State rank: 32

11. Bard High School Early College

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 549

State rank: 27

10. Eleanor Roosevelt High School

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 544

State rank: 23

9. Brooklyn Technical High School

Location: Brooklyn

Number of students: 5,664

State rank: 18

8. Bard High School Early College Queens

Location: Queens

Number of students: 598

State rank: 16

7. High School of American Studies at Lehman College

Location: Bronx

Number of students: 377

State rank: 15

6. Baccalaureate School for Global Education

Location: Queens

Number of students: 515

State rank: 12

5. High School Math Science & Engineering at The City College of New York (CCNY)

Location: Manhattan

Number of students: 464

State rank: 7

4. Bronx High School of Science

Location: Bronx

Number of students: 2,977

State rank: 4

3. Townsend Harris High School

Location: Queens

Number of students: 1,109

State rank: 3

2. Staten Island Technical High School

Location: New Dorp

Number of students: 1,313

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Staten Island Tech ranks 2nd in list of top 2020 NYC high schools - SILive.com

The Conventional Wisdom on China’s Island Bases Is Dangerously Wrong – War on the Rocks

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Last month, during a conference on Chinas maritime ambitions, I was asked a question I often get about Beijings artificial island bases in the South China Sea. That question goes something like this: Couldnt the United States easily neutralize these remote outposts in a conflict, negating their value? The assumption is understandable given how seemingly remote the facilities are and how accustomed Americans have become to uncontested dominance over the sea and air. But it is flawed. In fact, China, not the United States, would control the sea and airspace of the South China Sea at the outbreak of hostilities thanks to its artificial island bases. And given current American force posture in the region, it would be prohibitively costly for the United States to neutralize those outposts during the early stages of a conflict. That would make the South China Sea a no-mans land for most U.S. forces (submarines excepted) during the critical early stages of any conflict giving the islands considerable military value for Beijing.

This answer provoked enough of a stir among conference attendees that I took to Twitter to see what fellow South China Sea watchers and security experts thought. Their responses were overwhelmingly consistent with my argument and added several concerns for the United States that I had overlooked. This confirmed a worrying disconnect. Most of those who follow the South China Sea most closely see Chinas artificial island bases as major gamechangers in any future SinoU.S. conflict. Yet the conventional wisdom throughout Washington still seems to be that they can be safely dismissed as lacking strategic value. Thats wrong.

The main purpose of Chinas artificial islands is not to help fight a war against the United States. Beijings primary strategy in the South China Sea is to use civilian and paramilitary pressure to coerce its Southeast Asian neighbors into abandoning their rights. Thanks to the facilities on its island bases, hundreds of militia vessels and a large number of coast guard ships are based hundreds of miles from the Chinese coast for months at a time. They engage in frequent harassment of civilian and law enforcement activities by neighboring states, making it prohibitively risky for Southeast Asian players to operate in the South China Sea. The threat of Chinese naval and airpower, meanwhile, dissuades neighboring states from using more forceful military responses against these illegal actions. Left unchallenged, this primarily nonmilitary strategy will secure Chinese control over the waters and airspace of the South China Sea in peacetime and undermine Americas role as a regional security provider. It will make clear to Southeast Asian partners that a security relationship with the United States cannot safeguard their interests in the face of a rising China and will thereby undercut the rationale for governments like the Philippines and Singapore to support the U.S. military presence in the region.

But China also recognizes that its strategy might fail. It could miscalculate, provoking a violent conflict with the United States. Or a fight could start in Northeast Asia and spread south. The Peoples Liberation Army has therefore invested in facilities and deployments in the Spratly Islands that not only support its current peacetime coercion but also favorably shift the balance of power in any future conflict. As a result, the islands not only guarantee China air and surface dominance in the South China Sea in the opening stages of a conflict, but they are also far more difficult to neutralize than conventional wisdom suggests. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS has exhaustively documented the growth of these capabilities using commercial satellite imagery and other remote sensing tools.

China has constructed 72 fighter jet hangars at its three airbases in the Spratlys Fiery Cross, Mischief, and Subi Reefs along with another 16 on Woody Island in the Paracels. It has so far held off on deploying combat aircraft to the Spratlys but rotates J-11 fighters frequently through Woody. Assuming it was the first mover in a conflict, it would be able to deploy combat aircraft rapidly to the airfields in the Spratlys, instantly establishing air dominance in the theater. Unless the Chinese happened to pick a fight when U.S. forces were engaged in a major exercise like Balikatan in the Philippines, the closest U.S. ground-based combat aircraft would be in Okinawa and Guam, approximately 1,300 and 1,500 nautical miles away, respectively. The only U.S. military planes in the region would be patrol aircraft in the Philippines and potentially Malaysia.

China has, meanwhile, deployed YJ-12B and YJ-62 anti-ship cruise missiles to its outposts in the Spratlys and Paracels, backed by longer-range missile capabilities from the mainland. And it has invested heavily in radar and signals intelligence capabilities on all the islands, making it a safe bet that it sees just about anything moving on or above the South China Sea. A U.S. Navy vessel sailing in those waters would be well within the range of Chinese fire when hostilities broke out. Lacking supporting ground-based fire or air cover, the only rational option would be to pull back to the Sulu and Celebes Seas, and probably beyond, as quickly as possible. This would be especially true of any U.S. aircraft carrier that happened to be in the theater, since it would be far too valuable to leave in such an indefensible position.

In the face of these Chinese advantages, could the United States still neutralize the island bases early in a fight? Probably, but not at an acceptable cost. Doing so would require expending a lot of ordnance likely desperately needed in Northeast Asia, diverting important air and naval platforms and placing them at risk out of proportion to the potential battlefield gains.

The island facilities are considerably larger than many observers seem to realize. As Thomas Shugart, then a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security, once pointed out, most of the District of Columbia inside the I-495 beltway could fit inside the lagoon at Mischief Reef. Pearl Harbor Naval Base could fit inside Subi Reef. The critical infrastructure that would need to be hit to seriously degrade Chinese capabilities is spread out across a considerable area. That amounts to a lot of ordnance to drop, even if the goal were just to hit critical nodes like sensors, hangars, ammunition depots, and command and control facilities.

Disabling the airstrips themselves would be an even taller order. The United States fired 59 Tomahawks at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria in 2017, all but one of which hit, yet the runway was back in operation just a few hours later. Considering that China has deployed HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles and constructed point defenses at all these bases, some percentage of missiles fired would never reach their target. And much of the infrastructure has been hardened, including Chinas missile shelters, larger hangars, and buried ammunition depots. The most effective means of cratering the runways themselves would be to drop heavier ordnance from the air, but that would put high-value U.S. bombers at unacceptable risk in a secondary theater (more on that below). So a safer bet would be to just focus on hitting key information nodes with longer-range munitions. A hundred cruise missiles per outpost would not be an unreasonable estimate to effectively disable the bases. That amounts to 300 missiles just for the major bases in the Spratlys, another 100 for Woody Island, and dozens more if the United States wanted to disable smaller facilities (for instance, the heliport on Duncan Island that would likely be used for anti-submarine warfare operations).

What platforms would launch these hundreds of cruise missiles? The only thing safely operating in the theater after hostilities started would be U.S. submarines. They would find it a lot harder to remain undetected in the face of active Chinese anti-submarine operations once they started shooting. Every launch would put them at some risk. And in that environment, U.S. subs would likely be busy attacking Chinese surface ships and other high-value platforms, not trying to blanket thousands of acres of infrastructure at Mischief or Subi Reefs with valuable ordnance with no guarantee of success. Anything else sent into the theater long-range bombers from Guam, surface ships, etc. would be operating at high risk given Chinese dominance of the sea and air space.

No matter how the ordnance was delivered, the math would be the same. Effectively neutralizing Chinas bases would require hundreds of missiles, emptying the magazines of valuable U.S. platforms that dont have ordnance to spare. And it would do so in what is sure to be a secondary theater. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which the United States would be seriously considering kinetic strikes on Chinese bases in the South China Sea that would not also involve fighting in Northeast Asia. That would mean that anything the United States launched against the Spratlys would be something it could not use for operations in defense of U.S. and Japanese forces or for the relief of Taipei.

This punishing math could be changed, especially by the full implementation of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement to allow rotational deployments of key U.S. capabilities in the Philippines. These should include combat aircraft at Basa Air Base on Luzon and Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa to contest Chinese air dominance over the South China Sea. And it should include preparations to rapidly stand up U.S. fire bases at these and other facilities in case of hostilities to hold Chinese outposts and ships in the South China Sea at risk.

Barring an unexpected change of heart, these plans are unlikely while Rodrigo Duterte remains president of the Philippines through 2022. In the meantime, the United States can lay the groundwork for full implementation of the defense cooperation agreement by undertaking more ambitious infrastructure projects at agreed-upon sites and pushing the Armed Forces of the Philippines to support those upgrades. It should also push for more opportunities to deploy combat aircraft to defense cooperation sites as part of bilateral exercises, as American F-16s were for the first time at Basa last year. This would help acclimate both sides to U.S. fighters operating from these bases and, if frequent enough, could strengthen deterrence by giving the United States some rapid-response capability in the South China Sea. But these steps will not fundamentally alter the math.

Without the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or some undiscovered (and unlikely) stand-in, U.S. forces would have little choice but to concede the waters and airspace of the South China Sea to China in the opening stages of a conflict. The logistics and maintenance hurdles China would face during wartime would likely prevent its island bases from effectively operating over the long-term. But for several weeks at least time that would be critical in a Taiwan contingency, for instance they would pay huge dividends for Beijing. So long as the United States lacks ground-based combat aircraft and fire bases along the South China Sea, American planning needs to acknowledge that reality.

Gregory B. Poling is director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and a fellow with the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Image: Wiki Commons

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The Conventional Wisdom on China's Island Bases Is Dangerously Wrong - War on the Rocks

Meet Love Island Winter 2020 contestant Finley Tapp the bombshell footballer who fancies three Islanders – RadioTimes

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It looks set to be one of the most explosive series of Love Island yet.

Already weve seen bombshells Jess and Eve ruffle a few feathers in the villa and the shock departure of Ollie and that was all in the first few days.

Now, things are set to be even steamier with two new boys heading into the villa looking to crack on in the sun.

Heres everything you need to know about Finley Tapp, the football player hoping to impress three of our Islanders

Age: 20

Job:Recruitment consultant and footballer plays for Oxford City

In three words:Loud, outgoing and good looking

Instagram:@finn_tapp

Coupled up with:Single

Finley, who rates himself a 9/10, says its not all about looks when hes looking for a partner.

I want a girl who is fun and outgoing and someone who can make me laugh, he said. I dont have a type looks-wise but obviously you want that initial attraction.

He adds his celebrity crush is Maya Jama.

Siannise, Paige and Sophie are in Finleys firing line, with Finley adding hes not afraid to ruffle a few feathers to get what he wants.

Itll be great if I come out of the villa with mates but if I need to step on toes to get the girl I like, Ill do it, he said.

If you feel like youve got loyalties with the boys and theyve shown you loyalty before then thats where the respect lies.

According to Finley, yes.

Ive always been loyal. Whenever I start getting the wandering eye, its time to break up. Who knows what could happen in the villa!

Having started out at the MK Dons Academy aged just eight, he played for the team professionally in 2018. After being loaned to seventh-tier team Staines Town until January 2019, Finley then chose to sign with Oxford City as a defender.

Finley suffered a head injury in January last year after he was knocked unconscious on the pitch during a match against Dartford.

LoveIsland continues weeknights and Sundays at 9pm on ITV2

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Meet Love Island Winter 2020 contestant Finley Tapp the bombshell footballer who fancies three Islanders - RadioTimes

the first building of zaha hadid’s ‘unicorn island’ nears completion in china – Designboom

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zaha hadid architects has revealed a glimpse of an almost complete exhibition and conference center in chengdu, marking the first building of the studios unicorn island masterplan for the city. the video, which pans around the curved forms of the construction, shows just one part of the much larger scheme. once realized, the 67-hectare site will provide a huge mixed-use program to accommodate both work and leisure functions in chinas growing metropolis.

render by MIR

the name of the project comes from the term unicorn companies, which refers to start-ups valued at over a billion US dollars. with china now boasting a third of these companies, chengdu has become a hub for the latest technology and innovations. consequently, in the south of the city, the tianfu new area is being developed as an ecologically sustainable civic, business and residential center for chinas technology and research sectors.

render by MIR

designed by zaha hadid architects, unicorn island will become a part of the tianfu new area and provide space for chinas digital economy to continue to grow. with its massive scope, the multi-purpose masterplan is planned to accommodate 70,000 researchers, office staff, residents and visitors alike. in addition to creating new living and working environments for chinese and international companies, the project is also developed to enhance the wellbeing of its community by integrating generous amounts of green areas and wetlands.

render by MIR

the design makes reference to the regions historical natural engineering projects. constructed 2,300 years ago to the northwest of chengdu, the nearby dujiangyan irrigation system on the min river was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2000. this ancient water management system deployed the rivers natural forces to irrigate the chengdu plain, creating some of the most productive agricultural land in china and protecting the area from flooding.

render by MIR

unicorn islands parkland design is driven by the environmental principles of dujiangyans historic irrigation system and tianfu new areas ongoing ecological work to re-establish its natural wetlands. with this in mind, the masterplan intertwines an abundance of green civic spaces, water conservation and principles of connectivity, in order to establish healthier living and working environments and improved wellbeing of residents and workers.

render by MIR

the masterplan is arranged in a radial array, with a plaza and metro station at the center, allowing the entire island to be easily reached on bike or foot. the buildings will be constructed in clusters and respond to a diversity of functions. the architecture also intends to foster a strong sense of community by building to a human scale. this notion of community will also be harnessed thanks to innovations in urban farming technologies, which will provide residents, workers and visitors with fresh, locally-grown produce.

render by ZHA & negativ.com

project info:

project name: unicorn island

location: chengdu, china

project team:

architect: zaha hadid architects (ZHA)

design: patrik schumacher

ZHA project directors: satoshi ohashi, michele pasca di magliano

ZHA project associates: andres arias madrid, stefano paiocchi, jingwen yang

ZHA project architect: maria tsironi

ZHA project team: di ding, chengzhen jia, johannes elias, konstantina tsagkaratou, martin gsandtner, millie anderson, nicolas tornero, shahd abdelmoneim, sven torres, thomas bagnoli, valentina cerrone, yihui wu, yuan zhai, martina rosati, arian hakimi nejad, kate revyakina, vincent konate, neil rigden, juan montiel, christos koukis, jihan shraibati, patricia de osma arena, shi qi tu, irfan bhakrani, qiuru pu

ZHA competition project directors: satoshi ohashi, michele pasca di magliano

ZHA competition project designer: maria tsironi

ZHA competition project associate: jingwen yang

ZHA competition team: chafik zerrouki, di ding, konstantina tsagkaratou, lida zhang, lorena espaillat bencosme, millie anderson, nailu chen, nicolas tornero, philipp siedler, sven torres, xinqi zhuang, yihui wu, yuan feng

competition engineering (transport, smart and civil): ramboll

landscape design: ramboll dreisetl

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the first building of zaha hadid's 'unicorn island' nears completion in china - Designboom

Hawaii island takes brunt of storm – Honolulu Star-Advertiser

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Hawaii News

Hawaii island got the brunt of the precipitation Sunday in the form of heavy rainfall and, on its summits, snowfall, while rain fell incessantly over the other islands, further saturating the ground. Read more

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Hawaii island got the brunt of the precipitation Sunday in the form of heavy rainfall and, on its summits, snowfall, while rain fell incessantly over the other islands, further saturating the ground.

The National Weather Service extended a flood watch until Monday afternoon for all the Hawaiian Islands, while the Big Islands flood warning was expected to be lifted for all parts of that island by Sunday night.

A flood watch means conditions are favorable for life-threatening flash flooding. The Weather Service said the atmosphere is unstable and wet, and the ground, especially in windward and upslope areas, is soaked from all the recent rainfall.

A 72-year-old driver was trapped inside a bus that stalled early Sunday morning along Highway 11 in Kau while attempting to drive through floodwaters.

The water was 5 to 6 feet high, a Hawaii County fire official estimated. The area was prone to flooding due to prior heavy rain, which covered the roadway.

Firefighters rescued her and she was uninjured.

Some Hawaii island rain gauges (48-hour precipitation totals ending at 1 p.m. Sunday) measured in the 20-plus-inch range, with the Saddle Quarry gauge falling just shy of 30 inches with 29.12 inches. Hakalau hit 26.39 inches. Mauna Keas summit reached 24.59 inches, and Pahala got up to 20.3 inches.

For comparison, the 24-hour record rainfall in the U.S. was on Kauai at Waipa Garden on April 14 to 15, 2018, when 49.69 inches fell.

The Weather Service says showers are expected to gradually diminish today into Wednesday, but tradewinds are expected to remain locally strong and gusty. However unsettled weather with more rain could return Thursday and Friday, but with lighter winds.

Police closed Highway 11 at 7:29 a.m. Sunday near Kawa Flats in Kau. It remained closed between mile markers 57 and 61 as of 4:25 p.m. Sunday.

The Weather Service said Kawa Flats, Naalehu and Pahala were in the flood warning zone.

Hawaii County police closed Highway 19 in both directions in the Laupahoehoe Gulch area due to a landslide late Saturday night, leaving drivers with no alternate route until it reopened three hours later.

Police also closed, at 6:23 a.m. Sunday, both lanes on Highway 19 near mile marker 47, north of Honokaa, due to a large fallen tree, until 10:12 a.m. Sunday.

The Department of Public Safety canceled visits to the Kulani Correctional Facility due to fallen trees and hazardous conditions along Stainback Highway, which leads to the prison.

Meanwhile on Oahu, two mudslides on Pali Highway forced the closing of one Kailua-bound lane for several hours. Upper Nuuanu got 14.8 inches of rainfall in 48 hours as of 1 p.m. Sunday.

First responders on Oahu were kept busy with calls for fallen trees and branches, which got dangerously close to power lines.

The Weather Service warns, Rainfall and runoff will cause hazardous driving conditions due to ponding, reduced visibility and poor braking action.

It recommends avoiding streams, drainage ditches and low-lying areas prone to flooding.

The flood advisory for windward portions of Hawaii island was in effect until 8 p.m. Sunday due to the significant ponding in communities from windward Kohala to Hilo.

Water levels in streams and rivers were still very high, the Weather Service said.

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Hawaii island takes brunt of storm - Honolulu Star-Advertiser

White Island Tours restarts visits to Moutohor Island – RNZ

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White Island Tours has started taking people to Moutohor/Whale Island for the first time since the Whakaari/White Island eruption five weeks ago.

White Island Tours, which had been running boatloads of people to both islands, suspended operations after the eruption on Whakaari on 9 December which is believed to have killed 20 people including tourists and some of the company's tour guides.

Moutohor or Whale Island was never off limits after the eruption, but tours were halted out of respect for the victims, staff and affected families.

Moutohor is about 10km off the coast of Whakatne, while Whakaari/White Island is another 40km further.

White Island Tours said it was restarting tours to Moutohor, which it said was a sombre occasion but a positive step forward for providing employment for its staff.

The island has some volcanic activity including hot springs, and is a pest-free, wildlife management reserve for endangered birds and plants.

There has been no decision on whether tours to Whakaari will resume.

Meanwhile, camera feeds showing volcanic conditions on Whakaari was today made available to the public again for the first time since a major eruption in early December.

Gas and steam continues to emit from the volcano but it has not erupted since 9 December, although GNS Science has warned the risk of eruption remained.

GNS volcanologist Brad Scott said the eruption did not affect the equipment.

"It was all working the whole time but due to sensitivities some of the information wasn't being pushed through to the public but we're now putting everything back through to the public.

"It was just in respect for the families, particularly the web camera images - we took those down from the public webpage but we've now reinstated those."

Scott said another eruption was possible, but unlikely within the next four weeks.

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White Island Tours restarts visits to Moutohor Island - RNZ

Royal Caribbean currently offering cruises from Galveston to its magical private island, CocoCay – Chron

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The island's Coco Beach Clubs offer floating cabanas and infinity edge pools.

The island's Coco Beach Clubs offer floating cabanas and infinity edge pools.

Photo: Courtesy Galveston Island

The island's Coco Beach Clubs offer floating cabanas and infinity edge pools.

The island's Coco Beach Clubs offer floating cabanas and infinity edge pools.

Royal Caribbean currently offering cruises from Galveston to its magical private island, CocoCay

Beginning this summer, cruise-goers will have the chance to sail straight from Galveston to a hidden paradise island with its own record-breaking waterpark and private beach clubs.

Perfect Day at CocoCay is a private destination island owned by Royal Caribbean. The cruise line is currently offering summer 2020 seven-day cruises to the island from Galveston with fares starting as low as $564. The cruises will depart from Galveston and make stops in Key West, Florida, Nassau and of course, CocoCay, Bahamas.

This private island offers the ultimate getaway vacation perfect for adults and children of all ages. Some of the island features include Thrill Waterpark, home to Daredevil's Peak, the tallest waterslide in North America, according to the cruise line. Located in the heart of the island, the waterpark also boasts the biggest wave pool in the Caribbean; a "family tower" section consisting of six rides; and an adventure pool featuring various obstacle courses, from floating lily pads to rock climbing walls.

RELATED: Royal Caribbean announces 2020-2021 schedule, new perks on ships leaving Galveston

Adults can retreat to the island's Coco Beach Clubs, where floating cabanas and infinity edge pools dot the ocean landscape. The island's Oasis Lagoon, which boasts the largest freshwater pool in the Caribbean, per the cruise line, features several swim-up islands, a swim-up bar and private cabanas with attendant service.

For a more action-packed time, CocoCay's South Beach offers a variety of adventurous activities, from volleyball, beachside basketball and paddleboarding to glass-bottom kayaking. For the real thrill-seekers, guests can soar over the island on 1,600 feet of zipline or take a helium balloon ride to see the highest vantage point in all of the Bahamas.

Ready for your next beach vacation? Get a glimpse at the paradise that awaits you at CocoCay in the photos above, now sailing from Galveston this summer...

For more information on the cruises being offered, click here.

Port, Royal Caribbean make deal for third Galveston cruise terminal

Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com

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Royal Caribbean currently offering cruises from Galveston to its magical private island, CocoCay - Chron

Are Americans drinking less wine? Staten Island business owners weigh in. – SILive.com

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The U.S. wine industry is currently faced with declining consumer demand and, as a result, excess supply, according to a report. And this shift can be on Staten Island, as business owners have said they are seeing lower sales of vino.

The reality is that we have never seen these market conditions. Weve never experienced excess inventory because of declining consumer demand. Prior periods of excess have always been due to over-planting, noted the State of the U.S. Wine Industry 2020, an annual report published by renowned wine analyst Rob McMillan.

And according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, changing demographics have slowed wine sales. Americans drank less wine last year, the first such drop in a quarter of a century, as millennials opt for alternatives like hard seltzers, cocktails and nonalcoholic beer," the report stated.

From Arrochar to Annadale, that assessment can be seen in consumer trends locally.

Joe Labriola, the chef and co-owner of Marina Cafe in Great Kills, said his drink sales are strong from the bar to table-side orders. But he credited a new generation of cocktail-loving patrons to such a shift in consumption. He said younger patrons are drinking vodka-based drinks instead of wine to be more health conscious" as wine is perceived as more fattening than vodka. .

Edward Gomez, of DaNoi restaurants in Fort Wadsworth and Travis plus Cargo Cafe in St. George, said the decrease in wine consumption started a long time ago.

At least I noticed it in all my restaurants. I attributed it to stricter driving laws and the wine gets you tired theory, he said. He also surmised that its pure economics at work: As his older patrons move away and the restaurants see a younger generation dining out theyre not so much into spending.

That observation locally has been a growing pattern for the past few years, a fact reflected in a report by IWSR, a source for beverage industry research.

Adam Rogers, IWSRs research director for North America, wrote for the organization: "Coupled with a preference for less but better, consumers are more discerning about how they spend their disposable income, increasingly preferring premium spirits and cocktails over red or white wine.

Franco Ortega, chef and owner of Italianissimo in South Beach, said he sees a decrease in the number of bottles hes selling. But he added that patrons still enjoy ordering wines by the glass.

You cant have a meal without a glass of wine in fine dining, said the proprietor.

Wine racks at Taverna on the Bay, Stapleton(Staten Island Advance/Pamela Si

The folks at Flagship Brewing Co. said the wine is a necessary component to its taproom, and expanded its menu with the product. Recently, the Tompkinsville brewery added New York State wines to the inventory. Co-owner Jay Sykes called the addition a great experience" with a broader picture.

Our commitment to New York State Agriculture has given us the ability to offer our customers great, locally made wine that is directly correlated to an industry that is creating jobs and sustaining small business," said Sykes. While the wine product is a handy menu addition for non-beer drinkers, the facilitys craft styles represents the lions share of its sales.

As a wine rep for major New York distributor Southern Wines and as a winemaker for his Vino Divino Wines, Charleston, Rob Rispoli said he sees both the spirit store owners and producers perspectives. He said retailers are experiencing lower wine sales, but his barrel production is up. He said he believes that consumers are more price-conscious than ever.

I think people are more educated wine drinkers, buying better wine for the house. I think theyre tired of paying too much in the restaurants, said Rispoli, adding that, in his realm, the dining-out crowd has a drink at home beforehand to save money.

According to a wine industry reports wine sales are down in the United States. Local proprietors and business owners say that consumers have switched over to cocktails and spiked seltzers.

Willowbrook Beverage owner Steve Magnavita said he thinks the slump in wines just means a shift over to other beverages. He said he has observed this trend with spiked seltzers vs. beer.

Even though it has been more of a summer drink, said Magnavita, White Claw is still holding its own. Competition for the line will be a new product, Budweisers Bud Lite Seltzer. This is a fresh product in what Magnavita described as a stagnant suds field at the moment.

And its is a sentiment expressed by other beer-centric markets in the borough.

I think the beer business is a little stale. I couldnt tell you if thats trending into liquor sales," said Magnavita. Consumers switch back and forth sometimes, he explained.

So, will that mean consumers will gravitate into the vino-centric beverages in the store?

Over the years, Ive always noticed its like a pendulum, said Magnavita, adding, For instance as Im speaking to you, someone is just buying a case of White Claw.

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Are Americans drinking less wine? Staten Island business owners weigh in. - SILive.com

Heres how you can live on a remote Irish island for free this year – IrishCentral

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The Great Blasket Island off the coast of Co Kerry is in need of two people to mind the area's accommodation and coffee shop.Ireland's Content Pool

The Great Blasket Island off the coast of Co Kerry is looking for two people to live and work there full time this year

Looking for a new job in Ireland? The Great Blasket Island off the coast of Co Kerry is in need of two people to manage the Island's accommodation and coffee shop from April through October 2020.

** Job Vacancy ** Its that time of year again! A unique position required - looking for long term management of...

Read More: On This Day: The Blasket Islands evacuation of 1953

The Great Blasket Islands, off the beautiful coast of Co Kerry, were abandoned back in 1954 after a decline in population, along with concerns about the difficulty of reaching the island in the event of an emergency. The island, which remains largely uninhabited, does not have electricity or hot running water but is still attracts tourists in the warmer months.

On January 10, the official Twitter page for the Great Blasket Island shared a glimpse of what your new office could look like:

The office #GreatBlasketIsland pic.twitter.com/vTvvLzr6GV

Read More: Will the Blasket Islands ever be a state park? Government efforts ended on this day in 1999

In 2019, the enviable position was filled by Irish couple Lesley Kehoe and Gordon Bond who traded their Dublin city jobs for a simpler life on the Great Blasket Islands.

Kehoe kept followers up to date on her new way of life over on Twitter @island_lesley. On January 8, she revealed that she would not be returning to the position in the new year:

We made the tough decision not to work on the island for the 2020 season The Great Blasket Island Experience are looking for two fit, enthusiastic people to manage the accommodation and cafe from April-October. Email Alice on info@greatblasketisland.net for more info! pic.twitter.com/KTBP96O9BK

Read More: From the Great Blasket to America - a memoir of the longest surviving islander

If you're interested in learning more or visiting The Great Blasket Island, check out their website.

Think youre up for the job? You can email Alice at info@greatblasketisland.net for more information!

Would you consider living full-time on The Great Blasket Island? Let us know in the comments!

The Great Blasket Island off the coast of Co Kerry is in need of two people to mind the area's accommodation and coffee shop.Ireland's Content Pool

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Heres how you can live on a remote Irish island for free this year - IrishCentral

Matchbox Twenty, Wallflowers announced for Treasure Island concert series – Bring Me The News

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Treasure Island Resort and Casino

Treasure Island has announced Matchbox Twenty and The Wallflowers as the latest additions to its 2020 summer concert series.

Matchbox Twenty, led by frontman Rob Thomas, will headline the show at the Treasure Island Amphitheater on Sept. 4.

The four-piece had its heyday in the late '90s, thanks to hits including "Real World," "Push," "If You're Gone" and "Bent."

They hit the big-time with their album, Yourself or Someone Like You,which was diamond-certified after its release in 1996.

They'll be joined by another '90s band, The Wallflowers. Led by Jakob Dylan, the son of Minnesota's own Bob Dylan, the group had their breakthrough in 1992 with their self-titled album.

They hit the big time in 1996 with the release of Bringing Down The Horse, which spawned hits including "One Headlight," "6th Avenue Heartache," and "The Difference."

Tickets go on sale this Friday, Jan. 17, at 10 a.m. and will range in cost from $26.50 to $105.

You can get tickets either fromTIcasino.com or at the Treasure Island Box Office.

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Matchbox Twenty, Wallflowers announced for Treasure Island concert series - Bring Me The News