NANO

Tracking and surveillance are no longer the stuff of old espionage movies—the little black box covertly hidden underneath a car, a bug placed in a room, or an agent spying from the rooftop across the street. The most targeted surveillance subjects in the United States now voluntarily provide volumes of information that would amaze the clandestine agents of yesteryear. I am referring to that ever-present device that you rarely leave home without—your cell phone—an electronic gadget that constantly yields digital location data about your daily movements and travels. Three years ago, I asked the question, “Is Your Internet Device Spying on You?”1 Now, instead of asking a question, I am telling you, “Your cell phone is a spy!” It is a tracking device that logs information about your locations and movements throughout the day and reports that information to third parties. Many of us are aware of this spotlight on our daily travels, but we have traded this loss of privacy for the convenience of our ever-increasing reliance on mobile devices. What are the implications? The answers may amaze you. An investigation of cell site location data that resulted in a series of New York Times articles, including “How to Track President Trump,” has placed some of these implications into stark relief. The article reports how the Times obtained a random sample dataset consisting of over 50 billion location pings occurring in 2016 and 2017 from over 12 million people in Washington, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other major cities in the United States.2 Pings, Cell Site Data, and Location Data Companies As discussed in this column, I am using the term “ping” to include any of several ways that a cell phone provides electronic clues or descriptions of its location. This location information is often known as cell site location information or global positioning system (GPS) data. When a phone is in standby mode ready to make or receive a call, it initiates several searches a minute seeking the strongest network signal from nearby cell towers, which is often the closest tower. In this situation, the phone identifies its approximate location by connecting with a particular cell tower. Additionally, the GPS feature of a cell phone allows tracking within several feet of its precise location. Lastly, as typically referred to in the telecommunications industry, a network may “ping” a cell phone to reveal its location as part of standard network protocol. One or more entities, including the cell carrier, the phone itself, or a location data company, maintain a time-stamped log for each of these contacts. Depending on the number of apps installed, a cell phone may send data regarding its location thousands of times per day. Indeed, some phone apps will share as many as 200 individually time-stamped location data points within a 12-hour interval.3 These data are sent in real time to multiple companies, each of which can track the phone in real time or retrace the phone’s path by analyzing the logged historical data. According to the Times, every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies . . . largely unregulated, little scrutinized . . . are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in massive data files. Location data are collected by companies along with millions of other data points, commonly packaged and sold as marketing analysis to advertisers, financial institutions, real estate investors, and other third parties. Location data are particularly lucrative to advertisers, who use it to determine the places people frequent and the times they go to these locations. Although companies routinely package location data and commercially sell those data to other companies, additional dissemination may occur through unauthorized leaks, such as the dataset received by the Times, or hacking efforts by malevolent actors to steal the historical information from location data companies and cell phone carriers. The data provided to the Times did not come from a “telecom or giant tech company” or “governmental surveillance operation.” The data came from a location data company that collects digital information from mobile phone apps.4 Analysis of the Dataset Received by the Times The data provided to the Times included location, date, and unique identifier information for the device, but no information identifying any individual’s association with a device. This is often described as anonymized data. However, deanonymizing the anonymized data was a straightforward task for the researchers. The location pings associated with each device revealed work and life patterns. This enabled the researchers to determine the location of a user’s site of employment, the user’s home, and other places the user frequents. Once the address of a home was located, public records for the home were accessed to provide the name of the person and often the name of his or her spouse or other persons occupying the property.5 It did not take long for researchers to deanonymize the data. They were able to track federal employees in almost every major government building in Washington, D.C. This included congressional advisors, department of defense officials, and Supreme Court judicial staff. The observations also included thousands of pings inside the Pentagon, on military bases, in F.B.I. headquarters, and in Secret Service facilities across the country. The researchers were even able to track a secret service agent assigned to President Trump. By proxy, the researchers were able to track the location of the president himself, capturing movements to within a few feet of accuracy on a day when the president traveled between Mar-a-Lago and nearby golf clubs, which also included a golf outing with the prime minister of Japan. Phone Tracking in Government Facilities Addressing the risks associated with location tracking has proven difficult for government institutions. Policies limiting employee use of location-sharing apps are difficult to enforce, particularly as they relate to personal devices. Further, compliance with such rules is complicated by the fact that users often cannot detect which apps are actually tracking them. With cell phones being so ubiquitous and increasingly necessary, government employers find that, to an extent, they must acquiesce to their employees’ use of those devices. Even when cell phone use is prohibited within government buildings, risks still exist. The Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies prohibit most personal phones within their facilities. These agencies also advise employees to turn off their personal devices before they arrive at their work location. However, researchers still located thousands of location pings in parking lots outside these buildings, with additional pings creating trails leading back to the homes of these employees and visitors. Risks Posed to Courts, Judges, and Attorneys Many of the risks present at government facilities pose similar threats to the courts. Every place judges visit could be tracked. Sensitive location information released publicly for the purpose of embarrassing or impugning the impartiality of a judge or court official could serve to undermine public confidence in the judiciary. Additionally, concerns regarding the security of the courts and the personal safety of judges are implicated. The researchers were able to track dozens of phones within multiple Washington, D.C., courthouses. One person whose movements researchers traced had a role in the technology division, which controls servers containing data for the Supreme Court.6 Similar tactics could be used to undermine and embarrass prosecutor and public defender offices, prominent law firms, government officials, and officers at major corporations. Cell Phones in the Courthouse The courts across the United States have adopted a variety of policies regarding cell phones, with many permitting them within courthouses. While phone use is generally prohibited within courtrooms, courthouse hallways are commonly filled with litigants on their devices. Some courts have banned the general public from bringing phones into the courthouse. However, these prohibitions have been increasingly met with pushback from the public and legal community who assert that such bans are overly burdensome for litigants, particularly pro se litigants who may rely on connectivity to aid in their cases,7 and jurors who want to conduct personal business while they are not in jury selection, trial, or deliberations. Moreover, courts that prohibit the public and visitors from bringing phones into the courthouse often make exceptions for staff. Hence, even these courts are not signal-free. A Few Specific Observations After Reviewing the Location Data In one case, researchers noticed the recorded movements of a Microsoft engineer when he visited the campus of a Microsoft competitor, Amazon. Further information obtained the following month from employment announcements within the tech industry revealed the engineer started a new job at Amazon as a manager for an Amazon drone delivery service.8 Another set of pings noticed by the researchers was someone who spent weekdays at the Pentagon and visited a mental health and substance abuse facility multiple times.9 Researchers also found cell phones traveling to a Church of Scientology storefront and a late-night stop at a massage parlor. This travel and location information is recorded in a database and often tied directly to a home address, viewable by anyone with access to the data.10 Protecting Your Phone from Being Tracked Is Not Easy The primary vulnerability allowing our phones to be turned into tracking devices is found within the phone’s apps. Many of the apps we use collect and share our data with advertisers or other third parties. This includes not only those apps that require our location information for functionality, such as mapping apps, but may include apps that we would not expect to utilize location data, such as a coupon saving app. The one-time permission requests and privacy disclosures we see when we download apps commonly go unread or are not fully understood before we accept them. When installing a new app, we almost always click “Accept” or “Agree” in response to the End User License Agreement (EULA) (our contract with the software provider) because we know from experience the app will not install on our device if we decline. Even reading the fine print might not guarantee that your cell phone app will not transmit more information than you agreed to share. Security researchers have discovered many apps that share data beyond what users have consented to under the permission requests and privacy policies. For example, researchers found over 1,000 apps that shared data even after permission had been revoked or denied by the user. In one case, the po[CENSORED]r weather app AccuWeather was sending location data even after users had turned location sharing off.11 Privacy advocates have expressed concerns that more apps in the future will contain tracking technology in order to improve business data collection methods, the result of which the advocates believe will increase the threats posed. Beneficial Uses of Phone Tracking Can Cause Concern Researchers can use cell phone location data to provide insights for transportation studies and government planners. The City Council of Portland, Oregon, approved a traffic and transit study to monitor millions of cell phones. Unicef announced a plan to use similar data to study epidemics, natural disasters, and demographics.12 The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has placed some of these benefits in the public eye. Private technology companies have used cell phone location data to create heat maps demonstrating the potential impact that disregard for social distancing and travel guidelines could have on the spread of COVID-19. One of these maps showed cell phones active on a Florida beach during spring break, as well as their subsequent movements throughout the country as the owners of these devices returned to school or home. Notwithstanding the insight this use of location data can provide, critics have pointed out that this technology poses the same risks associated with other forms of location tracking. Although user data are anonymized, users’ identities can nonetheless be determined by following their movements back to their homes and other places.13 Apple and Google are jointly developing technology utilizing cell phone data in response to the pandemic for contact tracing. The planned software is not strictly location tracking, as it does not collect individual location pings or follow a phone’s movements. Instead, whenever cell phone users with the enabled technology come into close proximity with one other, their phones collect a randomized identifier number associated with the other person. These identifier numbers change approximately every 15 minutes. Information from these person-to-person contacts are collected and stored on individual phones instead of a centralized database. In the event someone is diagnosed with COVID-19, that person or his or her doctor can upload the identifier information to a central system set up by a health authority, whereby anyone documented to have been in contact with the infected person will be notified. Although contact tracing appears to be more protective of users’ information than forms of location tracking, critics have noted privacy concerns, including hacking. On the other side of the debate, some have argued that Apple and Google’s concessions to privacy concerns will make the technology less effective than more rigid versions proposed or already deployed in other countries. For example, the ability to opt out of contact tracing will result in lower utilization.14 And finally, many readers know about the use of location pings in aid of law enforcement and witness investigations and to help parents keep track of their children’s whereabouts. However, with each of these uses, debates continue concerning the benefits and conveniences offered versus the resulting loss of privacy. Final Thoughts In Carpenter v. United States,15 the Supreme Court invalidated the warrantless acquisition of stored cell site location data, a result that should have been a clarion call to the public. The cell phone has now achieved the protected status of a private residence or body appendage because it stores so much information about the owner as to deserve constitutional protection requiring the government to obtain your consent or a search warrant based on probable cause. As the Times stated, the private sector does not need a search warrant to request your data, and nothing prevents companies from tracking the precise movements of hundreds of millions of Americans and selling copies of that dataset to anyone who can pay the price.16 Remember, if your cell phone is turned on, someone, somewhere is collecting information about you. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/judicial/publications/judges_journal/2020/summer/your-cell-phone-a-spy/

The discoverer of the Americas had a strong sense of divine intervention in his life. In his thirties, when his ship was wrecked and he managed to grab a wooden oar and reach the shore in Portugal, Cristoforo Colombo believed that he had been personally saved by God, and there would be other occasions later when he saw the hand of God in his affairs. By the time he had completed his four great transatlantic voyages, between 1492 and 1504, he had identified himself with his namesake, St Christopher, who carried the Christ-child across a swollen stream, despite the child’s massive weight. Columbus felt that he, too, had struggled across the water under the heavy burden of Christ and by 1501 he was signing himself Christo Ferens (‘Christ Bearer’). He had also long dedicated himself to the recapture of Jerusalem and believed that Jerusalem and Mount Sion would be rebuilt by a Christian from Spain, which he hoped would be him. When he returned to Spain in 1504 after his last voyage, Columbus was fifty-three and in poor health. Inflammation of the eyes sometimes made it impossible for him to read and he suffered agonies from what was once diagnosed as gout or arthritis, but is now suspected to have been something called Reiter’s syndrome. He went to Seville and waited in vain for a summons to court. His patrons King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had doubts about his mental condition and had no intention of giving him any official position, and Isabella was in any case only three weeks away from her death. Columbus lived most of his last eighteen months unhappily in Valladolid, comfortably off and cared for by his family, but in an increasingly disturbed state of mind and ceaselessly agitating for the official recognition, money and prerogatives that had been promised him. He managed a brief word with the king at Segovia in 1505, struggling there on mule-back, but Ferdinand was noncommittal and Columbus was mainly represented at court by his elder son Diego, a member of the royal guard. On 20 May Columbus took a sudden turn for the worse. His sons Diego and Ferdinand, his brother Diego and a few old shipmates were at the bedside when a priest said Mass and the great explorer was heard to say that into God's hands he commended his spirit. After the funeral at Valladolid, Columbus was buried in the Carthusian monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas in Seville. The body was exhumed in 1542 and taken to Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, where it remained until the island was ceded to the French in the 1790s, when it was moved again, to Havana. After the Spanish-American war of 1898 and Spain’s loss of Cuba, Columbus’s remains were at last returned to Spain and buried in Seville Cathedral. Columbus himself never knew that he had discovered the New World, nor did anyone else the time. All he thought he had found was outlying bits of Asia. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/death-christopher-columbus

Senior American and Chinese officials had “candid” and “productive” discussions on Monday in China, according to read-outs from both Washington and Beijing, as the two countries grapple with how to maintain communication amid intense friction. Top US State Department and National Security Council officials met with Chinese officials in Beijing on Monday “as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and build on recent high-level diplomacy between the two countries,” according to a readout from the US State Department. The trip by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink and NSC Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs Sarah Beran to the Chinese capital comes as the Biden administration works to navigate its complicated relationship with Beijing. There have been a number of exchanges as the United States works to rectify normal channels of communications amid ongoing tensions between the two nations, including two military-related incidents in the past week. According to the readout from the State Department, Kritenbrink and Beran, accompanied by US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Director General of the North American and Oceanian Affairs Department Yang Tao. They also “met with members of the U.S. Embassy community.” “The two sides exchanged views on the bilateral relationship, cross-Strait issues, channels of communication, and other matters. U.S. officials made clear that the United States would compete vigorously and stand up for U.S. interests and values,” the readout said. China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the two sides had “candid, constructive, and productive communication on improving China-US relations” and “properly managing differences” in line with the consensus reached by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, who met on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November. China also clarified its “solemn position” on Taiwan and other major issues of principle, according to its readout, which added that the two sides agreed to continue communication. The self-governing democracy of Taiwan has become a key source of tension between the two countries. China’s ruling Communist Party claims the island as its own, despite never having controlled it and has not ruled out using force to take it. On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be “devastating” and affect the global economy “in ways we cannot imagine,” while underlining US support for the island democracy and the importance of deterrence. State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Monday that other bilateral issues discussed in Monday’s meeting included climate change, precursor chemicals from China that are used in fentanyl production, human rights, and wrongfully detained American citizens. There are three Americans publicly known to be wrongfully detained in China: Mark Swidan, Kai Li and David Lin. Patel did not say if the meeting in Beijing yielded progress on rescheduling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s own visit to the Chinese capital, which was postponed after the spy balloon incident earlier this year. Instead, Patel reiterated that the department hoped to schedule the trip “when conditions allow.” US officials have emphasized their desire to maintain open channels of communication with China as a means to prevent the “competitive” relationship from veering into conflict. China rebuffed a formal meeting of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu while they were both in Singapore, though the two ministers shook hands and “spoke briefly,” the Pentagon said. “The most dangerous thing is not to communicate and as a result, to have a misunderstanding, a miscommunication,” Blinken said at a press availability in Sweden last week after the US asserted that a Chinese fighter jet conducted an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a US spy plane in international airspace. On Sunday, the US accused a Chinese warship of cutting in front of an American vessel that was taking part in a joint exercise with the Canadian navy in the Taiwan Strait, forcing the American vessel to slow down to avoid a collision. The Chinese defense minister accused the US of “provocation.” John Kirby of the US National Security Council on Monday attributed the incidents to an “increasing level of aggressiveness” by China’s military. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/05/politics/kritenbrink-china-meeting/index.html

Punjab Caretaker Local Government Minister Ibrahim Murad has directed that comprehensive security and cleaning arrangements should be made at the sale points of sacrificial animals. He said that no expenditure will be incurred from the public exchequer for establishing sale points of the sacrificial animals in the province this year. Chairing a meeting to review issues pertaining to sale of animals for Eid-ul-Azha, the minister told that all the local bodies in Punjab have been directed for selecting suitable locations for setting up sale point of sacrificial animals away from the urban po[CENSORED]tion. He underlined the need for devising an effective monitoring mechanism for smooth functioning of these sale points. The minister directed for establishing these sale points at least 15 days before Eid-ul-Azha and widely publicizing the locations of these points for the public convenience. Arrangements for clean drinking water, lights, generators and parking should be ensured at these places. Road cutting, ramps, sewerage and water tanks should also be provided at these points, he added. Ibrahim Murad said that drains should be de-silted within five kilometers radius of animal sale points to avoid public nuisance and pre-monsoon arrangements should be finalised at the earliest. He said that in view of Congo virus and lumpy skin diseases, only healthy sacrificial animals should be allowed to be sold at these sale points. The entry points of cities should be sprayed to prevent Congo virus, he emphasised. https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1077550-minister-orders-strict-security-of-sale-points-of-sacrificial-animals

Ferrari is returning to compete for outright victory at the famed Le Mans 24 Hour race this weekend. As motorsport moments go, it doesn't get much bigger than this; it's been 50 years since a factory-backed Ferrari lined up at the pointy end of the grid at La Sarthe. "We feel the weight of history," acknowledges Ferrari chairman John Elkann, whose grandfather, Gianni Agnelli, was instrumental in Fiat's acquisition of 90 percent of Ferrari after founder Enzo's death in 1988. Comebacks are always risky, but the signs are good for Ferrari. Team driver Antonio Giovinazzi set the quickest time of last weekend's six-hour test session at Le Mans in the new Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercar. This follows the 499P capturing pole in qualifying for the 1000 Miles of Sebring in March and finishing second outright in the 6 Hours of Portomão in Portugal in April. Watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2023 exclusively on MotorTrend+ and MotorTrend TV. The Ferrari 499P As its name suggests, the Ferrari 499P has been designed and engineered to meet the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) sports racing prototype regulations for this year's FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). LMH cars share the WEC's top billing with the Le Mans Daytona Hybrid (LMDh) racers. In addition to Ferrari, the combined category has this year attracted LHM entries from Peugeot and Toyota, and LMDh-specification cars from Cadillac and Porsche, as well as cars from America's Glickenhaus Racing and Britain's Floyd Vanwall Racing Team. In simple terms the key difference between the two categories is the LMH cars are completely bespoke machines while LMDh cars have a specified hybrid powertrain configuration and are built on chassis from one of four specified suppliers with a common rear axle and hybrid transmission system. The FIA uses a balance of performance formula ensure both the LMH and LMDh cars are capable of similar lap times. Crucially, the LHM regulations allow all-wheel drive hybrid powertrains. (The Glickenhaus and Vanwall LMH cars are non-hybrids, and so rear-drive only.) Total system output is limited to 671 horsepower, but the e-motors in the hybrid powertrain can put up to 268 hp through the front wheels, the balance between the outputs of the ICE and the e-motors controlled by complex algorithms that ensure no more than the allowed 671 hp gets to the track surface at any time. As the actuation of the e-motors is not allowed at low speeds to prevent the all-wheel drive cars having a traction advantage out of tight corners, the main advantage of the hybrid system is that the energy recouped during braking and stored in the battery can be used to by the e-motors to reduce the power demand on the ICE, improving fuel consumption. The hybrid cars are can this be lighter in race trim than the pure ICE cars, says Mauro Barbieri, performance, simulation, and regulation manager of Ferrari's endurance race cars operation. The 499P revives an old Ferrari tradition of using the displacement of an engine's single cylinder to create a model name. The ICE that anchors the 499P's powertrain is based on the 120-degree, 2.9-liter V-6 that powers the plug-in hybrid 296GTB and 296GTS, though the block has been strengthened to account for the fact that the engine is a stressed member of the car's structure. The engine drives the rear wheels through a seven-speed sequential-shift transmission. The hybrid system's electrical architecture is 900V and has been designed using learnings from Ferrari's Formula 1 cars. The last factory Ferrari sports prototype to race at Le Mans was the open-top, V-12-powered 312PB, one of which finished second outright in 1973. Since then, Ferrari's front-line motorsport activity has been entirely focused on Formula 1. So why return now to top-level sports car racing? Why Now? "The two factors which gave us the courage were the regulatory framework and the certainty of rules in the years to come," says John Elkann, referring to the fact the LMH rules fix the basic specification of the category's cars for five years. "The regulations have been thought through." What's more, Elkann says, Ferrari believes the LMH category offers the opportunity for genuine technology transfer to the company's production cars beyond what is already happening from the Formula 1 program. "We've been very deliberate about the technology transfer that we have from our motor racing activity," Elkann says. "We view the 499P as a way for us to innovate and as a way for our innovations to be part of our sports cars on the road." The fact the Le Mans 24 Hour this year celebrates its centenary also played a part in Ferrari's return to La Sarthe, Elkann says. "We felt that had made the preparation to be able to come in, and the context was there." But he's keenly aware of the potential downsides of Ferrari officially participating in what is arguably the world's toughest and most demanding race. "To go into a new adventure 50 years after we've left definitely needs courage," Elkann says. Elkann says motorsport is core to the Ferrari brand. "Ferrari started in racing and has evolved from racing," he says. "Racing really is very much linked to what we do, very much linked to how we function. And the nice thing about motor racing is that there are always new adventures, new categories coming up, and new evolutions." Ferrari In Formula E All of which begs an obvious question: With Ferrari about to launch its first ever all-electric car in 2025, would the company consider entering a team in Formula E? "Electrification is an incredible opportunity to be able to experiment at the boundaries of what is possible and being able to think about sports cars that are completely electrified has been incredibly energizing," says Elkann, who notes Ferrari's experience with electrification extends back more than a decade because of the complex high-performance hybrid powertrains of its Formula 1 cars. "In Formula E it seems that battery management is really the key to success, and I don't know if that's a skill we feel would be a differentiator." That said, Elkann is careful not to categorically rule out Ferrari's participation in Formula E in the future. "Formula E is an evolving category and I feel that one needs to understand more clearly how it is evolving." Though Ferrari last year celebrated its 75th anniversary, it is still a young company in an old business, says Elkann. "Ferrari has remained very agile in terms of how the primary focus goes to building the best sports cars possible, and it remains free in being able to do that in an unconstrained way. We were born in racing, we evolved in sports cars, and coming back to Le Mans with the 499P is very exciting." https://www.motortrend.com/features/le-mans-24-hours-2023-ferrari-john-elkann/

Moeen Ali will decide over the next 48 hours whether he is ready to end his retirement from Test cricket and answer England’s spin-bowling distress flare in the Ashes. Moeen, 35, called time on his 64-cap Test career in September 2021 and has enjoyed his time as a freewheeling white-ball specialist since, securing two Indian Premier League titles with Chennai Super Kings and helping England seal T20 World Cup glory in Australia last winter. But now Ben Stokes, the England captain, and Brendon McCullum, the head coach, are understood to have contacted him regarding one last dance in Test cricket, having seen Jack Leach – a success story as their frontline spinner over the past 12 months – ruled out of the five-Test series against Australia with a lower-back stress fracture. Despite there being just over a week to go before the first Test gets under way at Edgbaston on 16 June, England are said to have given Moeen some time to decide, with Liam Dawson, Rehan Ahmed and Will Jacks viewed as alternative candidates. Following the largely one-sided 10-wicket victory against Ireland, the team are due to hold a bonding camp in Scotland this weekend, before training resumes in Birmingham next Tuesday. Moeen’s record against Australia has been disappointing since contributing 12 wickets and two half-centuries to a 3-1 victory in 2015, with a struggle in the 2017-18 away series followed by just one Test in 2019 that led to him being dropped for two years. But, perhaps crucially, he is yet to play under Stokes and McCullum, a leadership pairing that has proved transformative for a good number of England players in the past year. Speaking to Sky about the prospect of Moeen returning, the England seamer Stuart Broad said: “We know Mo is a phenomenal cricketer and someone who would fit into Stokes and Baz’s philosophy beautifully. I don’t know if he’s being considered by the selectors or if he would consider red-ball cricket again. But he’s a mighty fine cricketer.” Moeen turned down a personal approach from McCullum to feature in the Test series in Pakistan last December, mindful of a packed winter white-ball schedule that included the T20 World Cup. But during that summer he did express an interest in playing under the captaincy of Stokes, having been impressed from the outside. Along with England’s fresh approach, another temptation is a personal milestone: he is 86 runs and five wickets away from becoming the 15th Test cricketer to an all-rounder’s double of 3,000 runs and 200 wickets. There may be concerns about an 18-month absence from red-ball cricket, with the fourth Test against India at the Oval in 2021 his last match. Upon retiring later that month, Moeen noted the physical and mental demands of Test cricket – albeit having signed off during the hugely draining pandemic period. Having only just returned from two-months at the IPL and immediately resumed his career at Warwickshire following 16 years at Worcestershire, another consideration for Moeen will be yet more time away from his young family over the next two months. The quickfire nature of Blast and Hundred matches will allow him to be at home for much of the English summer before a seven-week 50-over men’s World Cup takes place in India in October and November. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/05/england-wait-as-moeen-ali-ponders-chance-to-make-test-return-for-ashes

For the last 17 years, an Iranian man, reportedly, has been surviving on just cold drinks, according to The Mirror, which quoted local Iranian media. Gholamreza Ardeshiri has claimed that he does not feel hungry, but when he gets tired, the only thing that gives him any energy is carbonated drinks. The middle-aged man told Iranian media that he stopped eating food in June 2006, without a reason. “There was no accident that caused the effects and I was not shocked. I still haven’t found the reason,” he was quoted as saying. On how it started, the man said, “I had a strange feeling. I felt like a hair-like object was inside my mouth, and the end was inside my stomach. No matter what I did, it was not possible to remove this hair. It was like the hair was tugging in my throat and I felt like I was suffocating, it was so tight that I didn’t know what to do. I can’t really describe it, but it felt crazy.” “To get rid of this feeling, I went to every doctor you can think of until a kidney and hematologist said it’s better to go to a psychiatrist and they introduced me to one,” he added, further mentioning that despite the help of the psychiatrist, he has still not been able to get a diagnosis. He added that owing to this feeling, his family also doesn’t eat in front of him, as the sight of them eating food makes him nauseous. He also reportedly sleeps little, about four hours a night, and has three liters of fizzy drinks a day. To understand if it is a real condition, we reached out to experts. Know what they had to say. Terming it a unique case if true, Dr Adrita Banerjee, consultant physician, Godrej Memorial Hospital said that considering only carbonated drinks as a source of energy or nutrition is a façade. “Carbonated drinks have high content of phosphorus, which can interfere with loss of calcium from kidneys, causing osteoporosis and low bone mineral density. It also has a high carbon dioxide content which increases the risk of tooth decay. Further, high sugar content can cause irritable bowel syndrome. Carbonated drinks also increase the production of ghrelin a hormone that leads to increased hunger and ultimately weight gain and obesity — which can have a significant effect on heart health and increases the risk of cardiac diseases,” said Dr Banerjee. High sodium content in the drinks can further increase blood pressure and have long-term effects on the heart, Dr Banerjee told indianexpress.com, adding that carbonated drinks also increase risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. “They have high caffeine content which can cause disturbed sleep, diuresis, and dehydration. Its high fructose content can cause non-alcoholic fatty liver disease along with premature ageing,” said Dr Banerjee. Dr Santosh Pandey, naturopath and acupuncturist, Rejua Energy Centre, Mumbai concurred and said that carbonated soft drinks mostly contain caffeine and are sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. “So, these beverages may cause side effects, especially if you consume them on a regular basis. Drinking high-sugar soft drinks is most commonly associated with type 2 diabetes and weight gain. It can potentially lead to cavities and even tooth decay. Also, carbonated beverages contain dissolved carbon dioxide, which becomes a gas when it warms to body temperature in your stomach. Consuming carbonated soft drinks may cause repeated belching and few other digestive disorders,” he said. Experts suggest that in preventive healthcare, lifestyle modification and diet play an essential role in maintaining good health. “Balanced diet is essential to keep healthy,” said Dr Banerjee. https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/health/iranian-man-claims-cold-drinks-17-years-does-not-eat-food-experts-8645983/

Apple has unveiled a much-anticipated augmented reality headset, Apple Vision Pro, in its first major hardware launch for almost a decade. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the new headset "seamlessly blends the real world and the virtual world". The tech firm also announced its latest iPhone operating system, as well as updates to MacBook Air. The headset has a two-hour battery life, costs $3,499 (£2,849) and will be released early next year in the US. The cost is considerably more than virtual reality headsets currently on the market. Last week Meta announced its Quest - which costs $449. Apple said little about generative artificial intelligence - the buzzy technology that is the talk of Silicon Valley. The company's share price fell slightly during the announcement, made at a developer's conference at Apple Park, the company's headquarters, in Cupertino, California. The BBC is among the media outlets at the event, but has yet to try out the new device. 'Ski goggles' Apple Vision Pro looks different to similar headsets on the market - and is more reminiscent of a pair of ski goggles than a virtual reality headset. Apple used the phrase "augmented reality" to describe what the new device does. Augmented reality, also known as mixed reality, superimposes virtual objects in the world around us - enabling us to mix reality with virtual reality by looking through a screen. Users can access apps, watch movies, and write documents in a virtual world. But so far, there is little evidence of a big market for this kind of wearable tech. Hartley Charlton, senior editor of MacRumors, was unsure how much the headset would appeal to the general public. "It won't appeal to mainstream consumers at first on account of its extremely high price point and immediate shortcomings as a first-generation device," he said, "such as its separate wired battery pack." But he said Apple has a track record of "overcoming scepticism" about new devices, and has historically encouraged people to "part with their cash to add a new gadget to their repertoire". In his sales pitch, Mr Cook said the headset allows users to "see, hear and interact with digital content just like it's in your physical space". It is controlled by using a combination of your hands, eyes and voice - such as tapping your fingers together to select, and flicking them to scroll. The announcement comes a week after Meta and Lenovo announced new iterations of their pre-existing virtual-reality headsets, that do not superimpose objects onto a view of the real world. Meta has also invested heavily in mixed reality - but right now the sector is struggling. The headset market saw a 54% drop in global sales last year, according to the International Data Corporation. Apple's last major hardware release was for the Apple Watch device in 2015. Thomas Husson, of Forrester Research, told BBC News it may take time for Apple's new headset to take off. "The overall AR/VR space has been a bit overhyped over the past few years with the metaverse and that kind of experience," he said. "That's the reason why I think it will take a bit more time. "Having said that, if I told you 10-15 years ago that people would be ready to pay almost $2,000 for a mobile phone, I don't think many people would have said they would be willing to pay that." iOS 17 Aside from the Vision Pro announcement, Apple also unveiled iOS17, the latest version of its iPhone operating system. Updates include "contact posters" - a picture or image of yourself that will appear on a person's phone when you call them - and "live voicemail" - which provides a real-time transcription of an answerphone message being left to you. This transcription will also apply to audio messages left using Apple Messages. And Apple has introduced a system called Check-In - which will automatically tell a friend or family member when you've arrived home. If your journey is substantially delayed, it has the power to tell others that you have not made it home safely yet. The new operating system will be available in Autumn 2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65809408

Job creation in the US remained robust last month, despite rising prices and a sharp spike in borrowing costs weighing on the economy. Employers added 339,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, from April's unusually low 3.4%. The gains were far greater than expected, continuing a streak of hiring that has surprised economists. Analysts have expected hiring to slow as the US central bank raises interest rates to try to rein in rising prices. But payrolls have remained resilient, raising hopes the economy will avoid a painful recession, while also stirring debate about whether the Federal Reserve will have to take more aggressive action to bring inflation under control. Inflation, the rate at which prices rise, was 4.9% in the US in April. While that was the lowest in roughly two years, it remained more than double the 2% rate that the bank considers healthy. Expectations of what Friday's report might mean for interest rates in the months ahead were divided. "This is the strangest employment report for some time," said Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics, pointing to the disconnect between the job gains and the rise in unemployment reported by the Labor Department. Some analysts said the widespread job gains in May, as hospitals, restaurants, bars and construction firms added workers, were a sign that the Fed will have to raise interest rates more. The Labor Department also said employers added more jobs in April had been greater than previously estimated. Others said the report included signs that should convince the bank to hold off, pointing to moderating wage gains. At 3.7%, the unemployment rate was also the highest in seven months. US President Joe Biden, who has been dogged by public pessimism over the economy, celebrated the figures, saying it was a "good day for the American economy and American workers". But others said the gains may not be sustainable. Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said the "blow out" job figures in May indicated that the "Fed's job is not yet done". "The key question now is: can they wait until July or does this monster payrolls number trigger another burst of urgency?" she said. "Perhaps the report details, with the unemployment rate rising and average hourly earnings growth slowing, tilts the decision to July. But overall, this is not a labour market that is slowing - and if it's not slowing, then inflation isn't coming down to 2%." If the US central bank continues to raise interest rates, that would lead to higher borrowing costs for households and businesses seeking mortgages or other loans. The expectation is that the economy will cool, easing pressures pushing up prices, as higher borrowing costs lead people to cut back on spending and businesses to delay expansions and other activities. "By year-end, as the impact of Fed tightening feeds into the economy and corporates retrench, we expect a material weakening in job market conditions and an early-90s type economic recession," said Hussain Mehdi, macro and investment strategist at HSBC Asset Management. He added: "A delay to this process implies the risk of higher-for-longer rates, and a deeper downturn." For now, many on Wall Street appear to be betting on a pause at the Fed's June meeting. Stock indexes in the US, which were also cheering passage of a deal to avert US default, gained. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.1%, the S&P 500 was up 1.45% and the Nasdaq ended 1% higher. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65790164

With parts of China experiencing record high temperatures and heavy rains, reports of farm animals and crops suffering from extreme weather patterns are dominating headlines in the country, raising concerns about food security in the world’s second largest economy. China experienced its worst heat wave and drought in decades during the summer of 2022, which caused widespread power shortages and disrupted food and industrial supply chains. This year, extreme heat has ravaged many parts of the country even earlier than last year. Pigs, rabbits and fish have been dying from the searing temperatures, and wheat fields in central China have been flooded by the heaviest rainfall in a decade. Meanwhile, officials are worried that drought could hit the Yangtze River basin, China’s main rice-growing region, in the coming months. Since March, temperatures in dozens of Chinese cities have hit record seasonal highs. The heat wave has escalated in recent days, with a number of cities in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces suffering record-breaking temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. By Wednesday, 578 national weather stations located in different cities across the country recorded their highest ever temperatures for this time of year, according to the China Meteorological Administration. “Extreme weather such as drought and floods may disrupt the food production order and bring more uncertainties to the supply of food and oil,” Sheng Xia, chief agricultural analyst for Citic Securities, wrote in a research report on Wednesday. He warned of increasing threats to food security this year because of the looming El Niño, a natural phenomenon in the tropical Pacific Ocean that brings warmer-than-average temperatures. El Niño could, for the first time, push the world past 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above the pre-industrial levels of the mid-to-late 1800s. “For China, the El Niño event will easily lead to increased climate uncertainty in the Yangtze River Basin, causing flooding in the south and drought in the north, and cold summer in the northeast,” said Sheng. Last month, the World Meteorological Organization said the likelihood of El Niño developing later this year was increasing. Following last year’s severe heat wave and drought, Beijing strengthened its focus on food security. In March, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said agriculture was the foundation of national security. “Once something’s wrong with agriculture, our bowls will be held in someone else’s hands and we’ll have to depend on others for food. How can we achieve modernization in that case?” he said in an article published in March by Qiushi, the Communist Party’s main theoretical journal. Animals killed In recent days, reports of farm animals killed by extreme heat have dominated the news. At a farm in eastern Jiangsu province, hundreds of pigs died this week after a sudden power outage caused fans to stop working at night, according to several state media reports. The pigs suffocated to death amid extreme heat and poor air circulation, Jimu News, a government-owned news website, cited an unnamed employee at the farm as saying. The heat wave was blamed for killing large numbers of farmed carp living in rice fields in the southwestern region of Guangxi. Villagers told the South of China Today newspaper on Wednesday that their fish were “burned to death” as water temperatures soared due to hot weather. The prices of rabbit heads, a signature dish in Sichuan, have surged in recent days as high temperatures caused rabbit deaths on farms, resulting in tighter supply. Spicy rabbit heads are a po[CENSORED]r street food in the southwestern province, where residents consume more than 200 million of the heads a year, according to industry association figures. Crops damaged Extreme weather conditions have also affected the country’s largest wheat-growing region. Heavy rainfall flooded the wheat fields of Henan, a central province which accounts for a quarter of China’s production, in the last week of May, just days before harvest time. The rains caused some grain crops to sprout or go moldy. The ruined crop accounted for 20% of some farmers’ yields for the whole year, according to the state-run China Media Group. It was said to be the worst rainfall taking place near harvest season in more than a decade. And more extreme weather events are likely to come. From May to September, “drought and flooding might occur simultaneously,” with more extreme climate events such as heavy rainfall and heat waves hitting the country, according to a recent estimate by the national climate center. Sheng noted that the heat wave and lack of rainfall in the far western region of Xinjiang had already affected some corn and wheat production. In the next few months, precipitation in the middle reaches of the mighty Yangtze River, which bisects the country, may be significantly reduced, according to an official estimate. That could lead to a drought and affect the region’s rice crops, he said. The Yangtze River basin provides more than two thirds of China’s rice, a major food staple at home and abroad. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/02/business-food/china-animals-crops-extreme-weather-intl-hnk/index.html

Car names such as the Porsche 911, VW Beetle or Toyota Corolla have stood the test of time, but will the same be said for the Toyota bZ4X, Honda e:Ny1 and the ID3? The chance to name a new car is precious, a billion-dollar branding exercise with decades of potential staying power. Many vehicles have names that have been around for 20-plus years -- even when the underlying car has changed. The Porsche 911 was introduced in 1965, one year after Toyota unveiled its first Corolla. Making its debut in 1934, the Chevrolet Suburban is the oldest badge in U.S. Over the past few years, this rite has kicked into overdrive. Automakers are racing to electrify their product lines and launching new vehicles at a pace not seen in decades. Battery-powered driving offers a cleaner, quieter and eventually cheaper way to travel -- an aspirational viewpoint that branding executives must distill into a slew of catchy new car names. It’s not going great. Take Toyota. The company has been perfecting battery-assisted vehicles since the late 1990s finally unveiled its first mass-market full-electric car in 2022. Its title? The bZ4X. The “bZ” stands for “beyond zero” emissions; the 4 refers to its four-wheel drive and X denotes a crossover shape -- all of which is probably lost on the Corolla crowd. Not to be outdone, Honda announced that its second EV will be known as the e:Ny1, a gamble on the appeal of a colon. Over at Jaguar, a driver could be forgiven for assuming the brand’s electric option is the E-Pace, but that model has a gasoline engine. The battery-powered Jaguar is the I-Pace. And no one could fault a VW fan for confusing the core brand’s ID4, an SUV-shaped EV, with the ID Buzz, a recast of the company’s famous van. “Honestly, a lot of these names are just trying too hard,” says David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, which helped name Lucid, the Subaru Outback and the Honda Ridgeline. “Everyone is kind of scrambling.” Placek says a great product name needs to check three boxes: It has to be memorable, noteworthy and distinctive within its category. It also helps if the moniker is “what we call ‘processing fluent,’ ” Placek says. “When the mind looks at it and says ‘OK, I can get that.’” Many new EV names fall short. They either hew too closely to tradition to feel noteworthy or stretch so far for distinction that they are not memorable. No one’s saying naming a car is easy, or that doing it poorly is unique to EVs (see: the Daihatsu Naked, Ford Probe and Studebaker Dictator). A car’s name may also matter less to consumers than its price tag, range, features and aesthetic. But as an exercise in marketing, the raft of clunky EV names represents a missed opportunity. Just look at Tesla: The company may have failed to spell out “SEXY” with its four models as planned -- “Model E” was trademarked by Ford six years before Elon Musk launched his sedan -- but the attempt was as memorable, noteworthy and distinct as it was juvenile. In some cases, today’s EV names also highlight a disconnect between R&D and product planning. Nearly every automaker has set an ambitious timeline to completely switch to EVs, but that memo may have been lost on the people naming the Kia EV6, for example, or the GMC Hummer EV. Those labels will not age well. “They are just dating themselves,” Placek says. “Within five years almost everyone driving a new car will be in an EV or a hybrid.” There are also the names that metastasize, tacking on letters or becoming less clear as the variants proliferate. Audi launched its seminal electric vehicle as the “E-tron” -- sensible enough -- but now it has a slew of E-trons, including the original and a (very different) E-tron GT. Mercedes made a similar hash of it. The company’s EV models include the EQS, EQA, EQB and EQE, as well as the EQS SUV, EQB SUV and EQE SUV. At the very top end, Mercedes also throws an AMG into the mix. No one wants to drive an alphabet salad. Volvo spinoff Polestar, meanwhile, took the iPhone approach: Its first car (no longer in production) was the 1. Now there is the 2, and 3 is coming soon. The Polestar 12 is going to be bananas. The best EV names arguably are not acronyms or jumbles of letters; they are fresh and nouny and fun to say. General Motors took this route with its Chevrolet Bolt and Cadillac Lyric. Hyundai’s Ioniq clicks nicely. Lucid has its Air, Fisker its Ocean, and Subaru its Solterra. Then there is Nissan’s Ariya, allegedly a tarting up of the Sanskrit word for noble or admirable. Porsche’s Taycan is a unique choice, but also conjures to mind an elusive jungle beast. There will be more opportunities to improve upon the current crop of EV names in the years to come. Until then, appreciate the Toyota team that pitched “Prius,” which still has a nice ring to it 25 years later. Too bad that team wasn't around to save us from the bZ4X. https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/why-are-electric-car-names-so-bad

England have named an unchanged squad for the first two tests of the five-match Ashes series against Australia, with seamer Josh Tongue retaining his place after an impressive debut against Ireland this week. Tongue was initially drafted into the squad after injury concerns over James Anderson and Ollie Robinson, who were rested for the Ireland test but are expected to be fit to face Australia when the first test begins at Edgbaston on June 16. Worcestershire seamer Tongue took three wickets on day two as England closed on a comprehensive victory over Ireland at Lord’s in their only warm-up test before the Ashes. England do have concerns about the fitness of their captain Ben Stokes who has a longstanding knee problem and was in obvious pain after taking a catch to dismiss Ireland’s Curtis Campher on Saturday. England squad: Ben Stokes (captain), James Anderson, Jonny Bairstow, Stuart Broad, Harry Brook, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Ollie Robinson, Joe Root, Josh Tongue, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood. https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/england-name-unchanged-squad-for-first-two-ashes-tests-8644106/

Sonnalli Seygall is known to be a fitness freak. From diets, and exercises to acro yoga, the actor has done it all. But when it comes to looking fashionable at the gym, she does not fail us. In many of her posts on Instagram, the Pyaar Ka Punchnama actor would give not just fitness goals but also some amazing fashion inspo. She curated some comfortable yet classy gym wear one can wear while working out in one of her posts. “Keeping it classy, one gym OOTD at a time,” she captioned her post. In the first picture, she wore a white black lined sports bra and paired it with a deep blue crop jacket. Black cycling shorts and for her hair, she tied them neatly in a tight braid – perfect for a gymming session. This outfit can be super comfortable and chic for all the fitness junkies out there. With a black sports bra along with a black and white striped long jacket, the combination appeals to the eyes. The actor paired it with simple green shorts and white shoes. It is said when in confusion go for black and Sonnalli cannot agree more. The actor went for an all-black outfit in the following picture. She chose a simple black inner and paired it with black cycling shorts. What caught our eyes was a net crop top and a short skirt that the actor wore over it. The outfit looked super casual and classy. If patterns are something you fall for, then this gym wear would be a perfect match for you. The actor chose an off-white leopard print backless crop top and leggings. With grey shoes and a tight braid, the actor, as well as the outfit, could not look chicer. https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/fashion/sonnalli-seygall-shares-gym-ootds-8012205/

The train collision in India's eastern Odisha state on Friday evening - the country's worst this century - involved two passenger trains and a freight train. At least 288 people were killed and 1,000 injured. The BBC spoke to villagers who witnessed the crash, and an injured passenger. Suryaveer My mother and my grandmother were on the train. They were going to the city to buy medicines. I found my granny a few hours after the accident. She was alive. But my mother was missing. We looked for her everywhere but couldn't find her. I didn't know what to do, so I forwarded a photo of my mother to all my friends and acquaintances. I shared her number as well and described the colour of the dress she was wearing when I last saw her. This morning I heard from one of my friends. They sent me a picture of a body - it was my mother. She was wearing the same dress. All I want now is to be able to take her body back home safely so that we can put her to rest. But there is so much chaos here - there are no trains and the roads are all jammed. Girija Shankar Rath There was chaos. There was a loud sound and there was smoke all around. People were running in all directions. I was close to the tracks and decided to run to the spot. We started pulling out some of the trapped passengers. We managed to get some of the survivors out - and some bodies, too. There were so many injured, we did not know how to get them out. It became a bit easier after the rescue workers arrived. This work went on almost throughout the night. I am still in a daze. Tutu Biswas We heard a loud sound. When we came out of the house, we saw that this accident had happened outside. I saw the goods train had climbed over on another train. When I reached the spot, I saw that many people were injured, many people had died. A small child was crying whose parents had probably died. That child also died after a while. Many people were asking for water here. I gave water to people as much as possible. People from our village came here and helped people as much as they could. It was horrific. Mukesh Pandit I was in the train when we felt a slight jolt and the train derailed. There was a thunderous sound and the train overturned. I was trapped and was rescued after half an hour by local people. All our belongings were scattered outside. I couldn't find any of it. I came out and sat on the ground. Four passengers who were travelling from my village have survived, but a lot of people are injured or still missing. A lot of people died in the coach I was travelling in. Those who were seriously injured were brought to the hospital. Ritik Kumar My brother was sitting on his berth and I was standing next to the door of the coach. When the train overturned, I managed to escape. I thought my brother would've escaped too, but that did not happen. He got stuck under his seat. I ran back to the wreckage and pulled him out - I pulled out a young girl who was stuck with him as well. I called the police and the ambulance services but they took half-an-hour to get there. Photos by Hemant Behara and additional reporting by Reuters news agency India's deadly train crashes June 1981: Nearly 800 people died when seven of the nine coaches of an overcrowded train fell into a river during a cyclone August 1995: At least 350 people are killed when two trains collide 200km (125 miles) from Delhi August 1999: Two trains collide near Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) killing at least 285 people October 2005: 77 people are killed when a train derails in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh November 2016: Nearly 150 people are killed and an equal number are injured when 14 carriages of the Indore-Patna Express train derail near the city of Kanpur https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65795959

Efforts to catalogue and understand the human microbiome are opening up a whole new research frontier. But the earlier Human Genome Project should provide a cautionary lesson about overselling. “Who am I?” is a question that is often asked and seldom answered. But as several articles in this issue suggest, the question itself may need to be reframed: biologists are discovering that it is frequently more informative to ask, “Who are we?” Don't oversell the human microbiome until its medical promise has been established. The 'we' refers to the wild profusion of bacteria, fungi and viruses that colonize the human body. These unseen passengers number in the trillions. According to one common estimate, the human gut contains at least a kilogram of bacteria alone. They contribute so much to human biology that it is difficult to say where the body ends and the microbes begin — which is why several massive projects have now started up to characterize the human microbiota in its entirety (see page 578). Microbiologists are understandably excited by this opportunity. So, too, are the food and pharmaceutical industries. When it comes to profitable applications to human health, the microbiome could well offer distinct advantages over the more famous genome. Human genes are notoriously difficult and risky to tamper with. But, in theory at least, the microbiome should be relatively easy to change by the selective addition or removal of bacterial species, or by altering their genetic components. This idea has some basis. Antibiotics and 'probiotic' foods have already been shown to calm inflammatory bowel diseases in some instances. In this issue, for example, researchers show how intestinal inflammation can be reduced by a single molecule produced by a gut bacterium (see pages 602 and 620). And there is increasing acceptance that certain foods, or the bacteria contained in them, can alter gut microbiota in ways that are beneficial to health in general. The new appreciation of the microbiome comes just as some observers have started to question whether the human genome can deliver on its once-hyped promises to tackle disease. To take just one example, anyone so inclined can now pay genetic-testing companies for a preliminary rundown of the genetic variations associated with his or her risk of developing cancer, obesity and other conditions. But the risks identified are often so low or unclear that people are questioning whether the information will actually prompt the changes in health behaviour, such as losing weight, that could make them valuable (see page 570). For all the excitement, however, researchers involved in the human microbiome efforts can learn a valuable lesson from the genome experience. Simply put: be circumspect. Don't oversell the human microbiome until its medical promise has been established. Remember that the understanding of these microbial communities is still fragmentary, at best — and that it is far from established that the microbiota can be radically altered without upsetting the balance and causing harm, or that any alterations will last more than a few months. Indeed, attempts to understand the dynamics of gut colonization are still in their infancy (see page 581). In the meantime, microbiologists should celebrate their quest to map, catalogue and understand the human microbiome for the inspiring saga it is. Certainly there is food for thought in the fact that everyone has inside them exotic environments that support communities as diverse as any rainforest. There is a unique ecological perspective on food itself, and the effects that different foodstuffs, such as processed versus unprocessed ones, have on these environments. There is a compelling new take on humankind's place in the world — a realization that “Who am I?” cannot be fully answered until it is fully understood who 'we' are. “That’s not who we are.” So said President Obama, again and again throughout his administration, in speeches urging Americans to side with him against the various outrages perpetrated by Republicans. And now so say countless liberals, urging their fellow Americans to reject the exclusionary policies and America-first posturing of President Donald Trump. The problem with this rhetorical line is that it implicitly undercuts itself. If close to half of America voted for Republicans in the Obama years and support Trump today, then clearly something besides the pieties of cosmopolitan liberalism is very much a part of who we are. This self-undermining flaw makes the trope a useful way to grasp the dilemmas facing Trump’s opponents. In seeking to reject Trump’s chauvinist vision, they end up excluding too much of what a unifying counternarrative would require. The exclusion happens by omission, in the course of telling a story about America that’s powerful but incomplete. In this narrative, which has surged to the fore in response to Trump’s refugee and visa policies, we are a propositional nation bound together by ideas rather than any specific cultural traditions — a nation of immigrants drawn to Ellis Island, a nation of minorities claiming rights too long denied, a universal nation destined to welcome foreigners and defend liberty abroad. Given this story’s premises, saying that’s not who we are is a way of saying that all more particularist understandings of Americanism, all non-universalist forms of patriotic memory, need to be transcended. Thus our national religion isn’t anything specific, but we know it’s not-Protestant and not-Judeo-Christian. Our national culture is not-Anglo-Saxon, not-European; the prototypical American is not-white, not-male, not-heterosexual. We don’t know what the American future is, but we know it’s not-the-past. But the real American past was particularist as well as universalist. Our founders built a new order atop specifically European intellectual traditions. Our immigrants joined a settler culture, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, that demanded assimilation to its norms. Our crisis of the house divided was a Christian civil war. Our great national drama was a westward expansion that conquered a native po[CENSORED]tion rather than coexisting with it. As late as the 1960s, liberalism as well as conservatism identified with these particularisms, and with a national narrative that honored and included them. The exhortations of civil rights activists assumed a Christian moral consensus. Liberal intellectuals linked the New Deal and the Great Society to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Pop-culture utopians projected “Wagon Train” into the future as “Star Trek.” Then for a variety of reasons — a necessary reckoning with white supremacism, a new and diverse wave of immigration, the pull of a more globalist ethos, the waning of institutional religion — that mid-century story stopped making as much sense. In its place emerged a left-wing narrative that stands in judgment on the racist-misogynist-robber baron past, and a mainstream liberal narrative that has room for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton (as opposed to the slightly more Trumpish genuine article) and Emma Lazarus, but feels unsure about the rest. But meanwhile for a great many Americans the older narrative still feels like the real history. They still see themselves more as settlers than as immigrants, identifying with the Pilgrims and the Founders, with Lewis and Clark and Davy Crockett and Laura Ingalls Wilder. They still embrace the Iliadic mythos that grew up around the Civil War, prefer the melting pot to multiculturalism, assume a Judeo-Christian civil religion rather the “spiritual but not religious” version. Trump’s ascent is, in part, an attempt to restore their story to pre-eminence. It’s a restoration attempt that can’t succeed, because the country has changed too much, and because that national narrative required correction. The myth of the “Lost Cause” had to die, the reality of racial wrongs required more acknowledgment, the Judeo-Christian center had to make room for a larger plurality of faiths. But so far we haven’t found a way to correct the story while honoring its full sweep — including all the white-male-Protestant-European protagonists to whom, for all their sins, we owe so much of our inheritance. Instead liberalism, under pressure from the left, has become steadily more anxious about its political and cultural progenitors, with Woodrow Wilson joining Jackson and Jefferson in the dock. Meanwhile the right’s narrative has become steadily more exclusionary — religious-conservative outreach to Muslims has given way to Islamophobia, racial optimism has been replaced by white resentment. Maybe no unifying story is really possible. Maybe the gap between a heroic founders-and-settlers narrative and the truth about what befell blacks and Indians and others cannot be adequately bridged. But any leader who wants to bury Trumpism (as opposed to just beating Trump) would need to reach for one — for a story about who we are and were, not just what we’re not, that the people who still believe in yesterday’s American story can recognize as their own. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/opinion/who-are-we.html https://www.nature.com/articles/453563a

Death of Caesar Julius Caesar was assassinated by about 40 Roman senators on the "ides of March" (March 15) 44 B.C.E. Caesar's death resulted in a long series of civil wars that ended in the death of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Roman Empire. On March 15, 44 B.C.E., Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in Rome, Italy. Caesar was the dictator of the Roman Republic, and his assassins were Roman senators, fellow politicians who helped shape Roman policy and government. Julius Caesar was immensely po[CENSORED]r with the people of Rome. He was a successful military leader who expanded the republic to include parts of what are now Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium. Caesar was also a po[CENSORED]r author who wrote about his travels, theories, and political views. Many members of the Senate, a group of appointed (not elected) political leaders, resented Caesar’s po[CENSORED]rity and arrogance. After Caesar attained the status of dictator for life in 44 B.C.E., these officials decided to strike the ultimate blow against his power. A group of as many as 60 conspirators decided to assassinate Caesar at the meeting of the Senate on March 15, the ides of March. Collectively, the group stabbed Caesar a reported 23 times, killing the Roman leader. The death of Julius Caesar ultimately had the opposite impact of what his assassins hoped. Much of the Roman public hated the senators for the assassination, and a series of civil wars ensued. In the end, Caesar’s grandnephew and adoptive son Octavian emerged as Rome’s leader. He renamed himself Augustus Caesar. The reign of Augustus marked the end of the Roman Republic and the start of the Roman Empire. ‘Caesar’s is the only death that still reverberates’ Emma Southon, Author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Oneworld, 2021) and A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women (published in September 2023) The Ides of March was a bottleneck in Roman history. Before it was the Republic and after it came the Principate, under the rule of a single emperor. Julius Caesar was neither the first nor the last leader to be assassinated in Roman history, but his is the only death that still reverberates. The Ides of March left an immediate impact on the Roman historical landscape not just because of Caesar’s unique position as Perpetual Dictator, but because it opened the door for his astonishing grand-nephew Octavian (who later renamed himself Augustus) to reshape the entire political world and to look reasonable while doing it. Caesar adopted Octavian as his son in his will, written just six months before he died. No assassin considered the 18-year-old to be a political or military threat, and indeed he was treated as a nuisance and a joke by both Mark Antony and Cicero when he appeared in Rome two months after 15 March 44 BC to take up his place as Caesar’s heir. Over the months that followed, however, Octavian used the manner of Caesar’s death as an unimpeachable foundation on which he could build power, influence and an army. While the adults in the city were attempting to come to a very uneasy truce with Antony as consul and the assassins in safe positions abroad, Octavian refused to play along. He claimed to want vengeance against his ‘father’s’ murderers and he upended every due process to pursue this claim. Octavian’s early career raising private armies, turning Caesar into a divinity and creating his own political career outside of official structures was guided entirely by the manner of Caesar’s death. The Ides of March is still remembered because of Octavian, because the violence allowed him to start two civil wars on the pretext of avenging his father, to ‘restore liberty to the Republic’ through better planned violence. He was able to learn from his father’s mistakes and carve out the Principate over the course of decades instead of years. Without Octavian, Caesar’s death may have been just one in an ongoing series of tyrannicides and wars, a comma in Roman history. Octavian made it a full stop. ‘The assassination was a public act by Roman grandees against one of their own class’ Peter Stothard Author of The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020) and Crassus: The First Tycoon (Yale University Press, 2022) First, there was fear of the new. The assassination was a public act by Roman grandees against one of their own class who had become a populist dictator. Few in Rome knew how many killers there were, or who their next target might be. Maybe the plotters were merely aristocrat reactionaries who wanted back what Caesar had taken away? But lesser reactionaries in recent history had murdered thousands of their enemies. For as long as history might repeat itself, it was safer to take cover. Secondly, there was pretence. In the days after the wielding of the daggers it suited both Caesar’s killers and his loyal lieutenants to pretend that the dictatorship had been a blip, an aberration, and that, with Caesar gone, normal life could resume. The assassins were not revolutionaries. They preferred to take command of the top jobs in the provinces that Caesar had already promised them. The third impact was the realisation of a new reality. Caesar’s teenage adopted son took over where his father had left off. The power of a po[CENSORED]r name to motivate soldiers and the poor left his killers amazed. Their attempt to fight under the banner of ‘Liberty’ and ‘Death to Tyrants’ ended in defeat. Caesar’s people had much less interest in these concepts than the intellectual aristocrats did. The fourth impact combined the first three. There was a terror, but not of the kind feared on the afternoon of the Ides of March. Caesar’s son initiated a revolutionary terror of populists against those alleged to be reactionaries. There was pretence by the newly named Augustus that his rise to be more powerful than any mere dictator was a peaceful continuation of the best old ways – a ploy followed by Party General Secretaries far into the future. Rome’s first emperor, who preferred to style himself Rome’s First Citizen, took all Caesar’s centralised power that the assassins had feared, and more. The man who felt the clearest impact of the assassination did not give up power till AD 14, and then only at his peaceful death and a handover to his own adopted son. The law of unintended consequences would never be better proved. ‘The murder of Caesar marked the beginning of a long and protracted civil war’ Valentina Arena, Professor of Ancient History, University College London Along with 9/11 and 14 July, the Ides of March is arguably one of the most famous dates in history. When the conspirators murdered Julius Caesar under the battle-cry of liberty for the Republic, they did not realise that their action would produce an outcome diametrically opposed to their aim. Far from ending civil unrest and restoring the res publica, the murder of Caesar marked the beginning of a long and protracted civil war and social turmoil, with the formal establishment of the second triumvirate (Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus) by the lex Titia in November 43 BC, which gave legal legitimacy to its members’ powers and inflicted a powerful blow to an already fractured community. When this period came to an end and the self-proclaimed liberators were defeated, the two heirs of Caesar, Octavian and Mark Antony, fought one another, with the ultimate victory of Octavian and the establishment of peace (pax). This concept, very different from the harmony sought after previous internecine conflicts, gained a new saliency. The civil war between Mark Antony and Octavian could no longer be masked as an attempt to remove an hostis (an external enemy of the Roman Republic) from the state and to recompose the state’s harmony. Rather, it created a split in Republican society that, thereafter, could no longer be recomposed: the two sides strove for the annihilation of the other. The resulting peace, born out of victory of one group of citizens over the other, was a state of non-violence, in effect a blank canvas, open to the design of the victor. At the end of all previous internecine conflicts, the Romans seemed to search for the recomposition of the harmony among Roman social groups as well as their institutional representations. Octavian, instead, created peace under a new political order where the old institutions, although formally preserved, were now under the authority of a new role, the princeps (Octavian/Augustus). The assassination of Caesar thus marked the definitive end of the Republican dream and any plan to reform the Republican system was halted: the people no longer had an institutional voice of any kind and the senate’s liberty, for which the killers of Caesar fought, was never restored again. ‘The death of Caesar did not provoke the end of the Republic’ Anthony Smart, Lecturer in Ancient and Medieval History at York St John University When Julius Caesar died it appeared for a brief moment that the old oligarchy had at last triumphed. His death was meant to free the Republic from one-man rule; to unfetter the ancient structures of governance from unnatural and unprecedented control, and return the Republic to what it had once been. But the death of Caesar did not provoke the end of the Republic. Caesar’s power came not only from the legions, but from the urban po[CENSORED]ce of Rome itself. When campaigning in Gaul, he took care to speak to people across the city, to provide his version of events, but also to create in their minds an image of himself that was for the people. His Commentaries were never just dispatches from the front, but a point of political communication with the city and with the people who championed him. When the conspirators headed to the Capitoline Hill to proclaim the death of the dictator the reaction was muted. The city strangely silent. When the voice of the people did at last emerge, it was not what the oligarchic elite had anticipated. The speech against Caesar delivered by one of the conspirators in the Forum resulted in anger and violence. The conspirators were forced to flee for their own safety. This is the crucial moment that tells us about Caesar’s death and its importance. Some believed his body should be cast into the Tiber, the resting place of those criminals and malcontents who had turned against the Republic. Instead, his corpse was abandoned so it could be returned to his home later in the day, to be used by Antony to build his own political support among the Roman people, and then in turn to create the image of Octavian/Augustus. This was no year zero. It did not mark the end of the Republic. Caesar’s death reminds us not just of the danger of narratives, but that the political and social realities of Rome were never going to disappear. It was the Roman people, with their voice and in their silence, who dictated the realities of power. It is the senate and the people who brought about the fall of the Republic, not Caesar. Julius Caesar was one of the most influential and important figures in Roman history. As supreme dictator of Rome, he enforced a series of changes that impacted the lives of many Romans. However, his time as dictator was not without controversy. In 44 BC, a group of angry senators killed Caesar. This article will explain the events leading up to Julius Caesar's assassination and what happened afterwards. The First Triumvirate and Civil War Julius Caesar had come to power through a political alliance with Pompey the Great, and Crassus, which was called the First Triumvirate. This alliance, which was formed in 60 BC, allowed them to effectively control Rome. However, it was not without its problems. Pompey and Crassus were constantly vying for power, which led to tension between the two men. In 53 BC, Crassus was killed in battle and Pompey became the most powerful leader of Rome. Caesar, who was military governor of Gaul at the time, decided to take advantage of the situation and marched on Rome at the start of 49 BC. This led to a civil war between Caesar and Pompey. Even though Pompey was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC and killed in Egypt soon after, his supporters continued to resist Caesar in both north Africa and Spain. The civil war lasted for several more years and eventually ended with Caesar's victory over the last Pompeiian troops at the Battle of Munda in March of 45 BC. With this victory, Julius Caesar was the undisputed ruler of Rome. However, years of civil war had scarred the Roman republic both physically, in the immense loss of life, but also socially, as deep resentments and suspicions ran deep. The problems facing Caesar With the war over, Caesar took stock of the problems facing Rome after years of devastation and war. People's lives had been overturned for five years. Many people had either fought in the armies on either side or had lost family members who had. The economy had also been devastated, as farmers were not able to hire enough men to work their fields, or safely transport their goods for sale. As a result, poverty became a widespread issue, with crowds of war-weary and displaced Romans filling the streets of Rome looking for relief from their situation. The normal political life of the republic had been severely disrupted since Caesar's invasion of 49 BC. Regular elections had been absent, and any positions of power were subordinate to Caesar himself, as he retained most powers due to his role as dictator. Since war was no longer a threat, some Romans considered it inappropriate that Caesar should continue to hold the position. They encouraged him to move quickly to reinstate annual elections. However, Caesar was cautious about returning to full political operations, because it could open up opportunities for his enemies to regain power. Even though he had beaten the Pompeiians on the battlefield, Caesar had offered pardons to many of them in order to achieve peace. If these disaffected enemies should work together, they could once more undermine Caesar's authority. Therefore, Caesar made sure the retained the dictatorship as a way of retaining control over the new elections. Dismissing the soldiers The significant number of soldiers who had participated on both sides of the civil war needed to be dealt with before they could become a political or military problem for Caesar. Many of Caesar’s own men were due to retire and they were promised gifts of farmland for their time in service. Unfortunately, free land was limited in Italy, so Caesar had to build new colonies in the provinces to fulfil his promises to his men. Caesar ordered the rebuilding of the cities of Carthage and Corinth, both of which were destroyed back in 146 BC. Retired soldiers were sent to settle in these colonies, along with some of the poor citizens from Rome. These new settlements not only provided new land, but also reduced the po[CENSORED]tion pressure in the city of Rome. The creation of new cities and farms also allowed the economy to recover from the wartime devastation. These decisions appear to show that Caesar was an able administrator: being capable of finding multiple solutions to ongoing problems. Reforms of the Senate After finding locations for the soldiers, Caesar turned his attention to the Senate. His first course of action was to increase the number of senators from 600 to 900. Those already in the Senate had been placed their by Caesar himself and they were generally supportive of him. However, to fill up the extra number of new senators, Caesar offered positions to people he had forgiven during the wars. In this way, he not only tried to ensure that he had a loyal base of supporters, but also have people who were morally indebted to him. However, the increase in the number of senators would mean that there would be fiercer competition in annual elections. To counter-act this, Caesar also increased the number of political positions available each year. It appears that these changes were generally well received by the political class of Rome. This was because that it meant that more people had the chance of entering a career in republican politics. Debt relief Caesar had to deal with one of the first crises he encountered: widespread debt in Rome, especially after the outbreak of civil war, when creditors called in loans and real estate values dropped. In order to this, he passed a law that allowed people to repay their debts using cheaper, government-issued coins. He also limited the amount of cash an individual could hold. Caesar's innovative response to the problem, while it did not fully remove the debt, helped alleviate the strain in a way that pleased both creditors and debtors. Economic reforms One of the largest monetary pressures on the city or Rome was the free grain dole. This had been an initiative introduced by Gaius Gracchus almost 100 years earlier which sought to guarantee food to the citizens of Rome. Every day, each citizen was given enough grain for bread to support themselves. However, the number of people who had flooded into the city during the turbulent war years, and the decreasing money being made at the same time, meant that a significant amount of money was being spent every day just feeding poor people. This expense was not sustainable. So, Caesar slashed the grain rations in half, by limiting the number of people who were receiving it to 150,000. The relocation of many of the people to overseas colonies contributed to this reduction, as well as better record-keeping to truly identify who the legitimate citizens were. For those who still depended on the grain dole, Caesar tried to improve the importation and distribution of the grain by building a new harbour at Ostia and digging a new canal from Tarracina. New building projects Caesar also oversaw a number of new building projects in Rome. He built a new forum, which was the center of Roman public life. He also built a number of temples and other public buildings. Since the Senate house had been destroyed when it was used as Clodius's funeral pyre in 52 BC, Caesar had a new one erected. The suburbs of Rome had become overcrowded and large areas of the city had fallen into disrepair and even slums. Caesar ordered that entire sections of the city be torn down and rebuilt with new housing. This provided new accommodation for the poor citizens who were living on the streets. Combined with the relocation of many of them to the new colonies overseas, the pressure on Rome was significantly reduced. Also, Caesar rebuilt the streets and roadways in Rome to allow easier access to public places. He invested money on building new meeting places which could provide a space where the people of Rome could meet to trade their goods. The most famous of these was called the Forum Julium, which was named after Caesar himself. The construction of these new public buildings had the additional benefit of requiring a lot of manual labour. As a result, many of the poor Romans were hired as builders, which helped alleviate unemployment There was another purpose for constructing major projects throughout Rome: Caesar wanted to improve the city's appearance after comparing Rome to Alexandria, which he considered the finest city of the Mediterranean. Changes to the calendar In 46 BC, Julius Caesar revamped the calendar system. By the 1st century BC, the traditional Roman calendar had many problems. The main cause of these problems was that it was a lunar calendar, rather than a solar one. This meant that a year was around 360 days long, rather than 365 days. The five-day difference would accumulate over time. This meant that after ten years, the calendar was 50 days out of sync with the seasons. This was almost two-months difference. For the people of Rome, this meant that they were celebrated winter festivals before winter had begun. As time went on, the problem only became great. By the 40s BC, the traditional Roman calendar was about three months, or an entire season, out of sync. To resolve the problem, Caesar created a new calendar, called the Julian calendar, based on ideas supplied by astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria. It was a solar calendar which also required an extra day (a 'leap day') every four years to compensate for the fact that an Earth year is just a little over 365 days long. This new innovation allowed the civil life of the Republic to run in a much more regulated manner than it had done before. In his new calendar, the fifth month of the year, known as Quinctilis, was given a new name: Iulius. In English, we pronounce it as July. Caesar's growing powers Following the departure of the Senate following Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon River in January of 49 BC, Caesar's newly appointed replacement Senate had given him the power of dictator for a brief period in order to oversee the election of the consuls for 47 BC. Caesar had used these powers to elect himself as one of these consuls. Then, after his victory at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, Caesar had been declared dictator by the Senate for a year. In the years 47 and 46 BC, Caesar was elected to his second third consulships while the war raged on. Then, in 46 BC, the Senate made him dictator for a period of ten years: something that was unprecedented in Roman history. Then, finally, in 44 BC, the Senate declared that Caesar was now 'dictator forever' (dictator in perpetuum). In addition to the supreme authority the dictatorship gave Caesar, he was also given additional powers by the Senate. For example, he was declared sacrosanct, just like the Plebeian Tribunes, which made his body a holy object. Also, on special religious occasions, was permitted to wear a band of laurel leaves on his head, which resembled a victory crown. The Senate also announced that they were setting up a temple dedicated to the personification of his mercy (clementia), and recruited priests to staff it, which were called the Julian Luperci. Finally, Caesar was allowed to make his own coins bearing his face. In the Roman mind, having a face on a coin was the equivalent of declaring Caesar to be either a king or a god. By 44 BC, Julius Caesar possessed more power, influence, and honours than any other Roman had held since the time of the nine mythical kings of Rome almost four hundred years before. But since the expulsion of the last king of Rome, the republic had prided itself on never again allowing one person to hold monarchical power. Caesar's unlimited power became a problem to many of his fellow Romans. There really was no clear difference between the absolute and unprecedented powers that Caesar possessed and a king. The only difference remained was that Caesar didn't use the term king (rex). In fact, when someone asked Caesar if he intended to become king, he was meant to have replied with, "I am not king, but Caesar". Claims of kingship The list of honours and powers that Caesar held in the last year of his life were technically offered to him by the Senate. However, it is not clear how many of them were given freely by the Senate or how many were subtly demanded by Caesar himself. If they were given freely, it might have been a way to thank Caesar for his mercy and generosity. However, if Caesar had mani[CENSORED]ted the Senate to give upon request, it may be evidence that he was genuinely seeking the powers and authority of a king. We may never know which of the two options really happened, as the surviving sources offer conflicting information about how the events occurred. Regardless, by 44 BC, many senators were becoming critical of Caesar's extended time as dictator, and they feared that he intended to be made king. This would have put an end to the Roman Republic and made Caesar an autocrat. These worries were realized when Caesar was named 'dictator for life' in February 44 BC. This caused a great uproar among the senators, who felt that their power was being usurped. The plot against Caesar As the year of 44 BC began, many members of the Senate were secretly critical of Caesar actions as dictator. They feared that Caesar was on the way to genuinely becoming a king. They met together and convinced each other that if they allowed this to occur, it would bring an end to the Roman republic. Their concerns seemed to be confirmed when, in early 44 BC, Caesar was named "dictator for life". There appeared to be little difference between this announcement and the title of 'king'. This was followed by Caesar's preparations for his next military campaign: this time to the far east, against the Parthian Empire. The senators saw that if they let Caesar out of their sight, at the head of another army, that he would return from the East one day and officially become king. So, 60 senators decided that it was the time to act and attempt to kill Caesar. Among these men were former Pompeiians who had accepted Caesar’s pardon after the Battle of Pharsalus. The leader of the assassins was Gaius Cassius Longinus, and a young Marcus Junius Brutus. Brutus was the descendent of the ancient Lucius Brutus who had helped expel the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, in 509 BC. Assassination of Julius Caesar The conspirators decided to act at one of the final meetings that Caesar had called before he departed for his Parthian campaign. The meeting, to be held on the Ides of March (15th March) 44 BC, was believed to be their best chance of successfully ambushing him. The meeting was to be held at the theatre of Pompey. When Caesar arrived, the senators approached him, pretending to greet him. However, they revealed hidden daggers and stabbed Caesar over twenty times. Julius Caesar died at age 56, finally collapsing to the floor at the base of a statue of Pompey. The killing of Caesar was a chaotic and messy affair. In the confusion, Gaius Cassius Longinus accidentally stabbed Brutus. Other members of the conspiracy suffered similar wounds from each other. As the killers ran into the streets, they thought they would be greeted with cheers from the citizens of Rome. However, they were met with confusion and concern. Many of the people in the city appeared to have genuinely liked what Caesar had achieved and were nervous about the implications of the killing. Many of the people in the crowded streets rushed to the safety of their homes, afraid of potential reprisal killings. The conspirators themselves seemed to have been at a loss about what they should do now, and also returned to their homes. Aftermath Julius Caesar's time as dictator of Rome was a period of great reform for the city of Rome. Caesar lowered taxes, improved public services, and created jobs for the unemployed. He also oversaw a number of new building projects in Rome, including a new forum and a number of temples and other public buildings. However, his time as dictator was also marked by controversy, as many senators felt that Caesar was becoming too powerful, and they sought to limit his power. This ultimately led to his assassination in 44 BC. After Julius Caesar's death, Rome descended into another civil war. Caesar's legacy in Rome continued even after his death, with the sti[CENSORED]tion in his will that his home, surrounding gardens, and art gallery be opened to the public. He also gave money to Romans, gifting 300,000 sesterces to each and every Roman citizen. The assassination of Julius Caesar had far-reaching consequences for Rome and its empire. It ushered in a period of instability and turmoil that would last for years. It also put an end to the Roman Republic and paved the way for the Roman Empire. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/head-head/what-was-impact-julius-caesars-murder https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/ancient-history/anc-caesar-s-dictatorship-reading/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/julius-caesar-assassinated/

With the threat of an unprecedented US debt crisis receding fast, the global economy looks to have dodged a huge shock. But there are still plenty of storm clouds darkening the outlook. US lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill Wednesday to raise the debt ceiling and allow the government to continue to pay its bills. It still requires the approval of the Senate, but the risk of a catastrophic default that could have sparked a global market meltdown has all but disappeared. While an immediate crisis has likely been avoided, the litany of problems that had been temporarily overshadowed by the specter of a US default — among them, high inflation, rising interest rates and sluggish growth — haven’t gone away. Even with the “worst-case scenario” off the table, “we are still looking into a scenario of a global slowdown,” said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro research at Dutch bank ING. There is already evidence that economic growth is stuttering in the United States and China — the world’s number one and two economies. The US economy grew far below expectations in the first quarter and data Wednesday showed factory activity in China slumped in May to its weakest level since the country ended its zero-Covid policy five months ago. It’s the latest sign that China’s economic recovery is losing steam, hamstrung by feeble domestic demand, rising unemployment, and a deep slump in its property sector. That in turn gives Germany little hope of an easy exit from its own downturn because China is its most important trading partner. Germany slipped into recession in the first quarter as last year’s energy price shock took its toll on consumer spending. A protracted slowdown in Europe’s biggest economy would spell trouble for the rest of the region, which only narrowly avoided a recession at the start of the year. Already, momentum in France, which has enjoyed a strong economic recovery since the pandemic, is slowing. Consumer spending fell for the third consecutive month in April, official data showed Wednesday. “We can now say that the second quarter got off to a poor start,” said Charlotte de Montpellier, a senior economist at ING. “It is clear that the French economy is slowing sharply.” Inflation still too high Against that backdrop, inflation has eased in Europe’s second biggest economy, mimicking falls in Germany, Spain and Italy. Data for May due on Thursday is expected to show consumer prices across the 20 countries that use the euro rose at a slower pace than in April, when inflation ticked up to 7%. Inflation has also moderated in the United Kingdom and the United States — to 8.7% and 4.9% respectively — but it remains uncomfortably high for central banks, which target a rate of 2%. Investors expect policymakers will hike interest rates further in the coming weeks to tame rising prices — both of which act as a drag on the economy. Inflation increases the cost of everyday goods and services, dampening consumption. At the same time, interest rate hikes make loans and mortgages more expensive, which weighs on spending by businesses and households. The effect of higher borrowing costs has yet to be fully realized. In a report Wednesday, Deutsche Bank said a wave of defaults among US and European companies was “imminent” because of the tightest monetary policy in 15 years, combined with high debt levels and lower profitability. Deutsche’s analysts said the wave would not peak until late 2024. Analysis by Capital Economics suggests that less than half the effects of monetary tightening so far in developed markets have been felt in the real economy. “As tighter financial conditions bite, we expect most major advanced economies to slip into recession and wage and price pressures to cool,” group chief economist Neil Shearing wrote in a note on May 15. “The recessions we are forecasting are relatively mild and should probably qualify as soft landings given the extreme run-up in inflation over the past year,” he added. War, extreme weather Any recession, however mild, would be made worse by an unexpected shock. That now seems unlikely to stem from within the US government. But it could still arise from two longstanding threats: the Ukraine war and the climate crisis, both of which pose risks to global supply chains and food prices. Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened retribution for rare drone attacks on Moscow Tuesday, which reportedly left two people injured and damaged several buildings. Ukraine, which is preparing for a long-awaited counteroffensive against invading Russian forces, has denied involvement in the attacks on Moscow. “What is perhaps likely in the short term, is that Russia will use a hybrid strategy to attack Ukraine and make life uncomfortable for the West,” said Michael Bociurkiw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. This could include “the weaponization of food by restricting ships carrying grain and other agricultural products from Ukraine to western markets,” Bociurkiw added. The war helped drive international food prices to an all-time high last year. Although prices have fallen since, they remain elevated in many countries and have driven extreme hunger in poor nations. Food inflation is already hovering around record highs in Europe. Devastating floods in northern Italy last month swamped thousands of farms in an area of the country known as “fruit valley.” The “once in a century” disaster followed years of severe drought in the region, which compacted the soil, reducing its ability to absorb rainfall. Another severe drought in southern Europe could make matters worse. “Spain’s parched soils and intense drought are afflicting a broad range of crops and threatening to drive food prices higher in many EU countries,” Gro Intelligence, a provider of agricultural data, said in a report this month. Spain is the world’s third largest exporter of tomatoes, according to the report. The country also produces wheat, barley, rice and olive oil. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/01/economy/global-economy-outlook-recession/index.html

National parks are often a fun experience where tourists get to see different animals in their habitat, pet and feed them. However getting too close to the animals is like inviting potential danger. A video shared on Instagram features few tourists trying to take selfies with a huge bison at Yellowstone National Park in the US. In the video a woman, in an attempt to pet the wild animal, went a little too close. The bison soon lunged forward towards her. The woman quickly escapes in a panic and even stumbles on her way away. Fellow tourists can be heard frightened and screaming in the background. Fortunately, the woman wasn’t harmed and could escape safely. The video soon went viral on social media platforms with over 5.5 million views. People on the internet expressed their disappointment towards tourists invading the animal’s territory. “She’s lucky that’s all that happened to her. They are not pets”, a user wrote. “The stupidity of people amazes me”, another user added. “People like that should be punished like it’s a felony!”, a user remarked. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/huge-bison-lunges-towards-a-tourist-as-she-tries-to-pet-the-animal/articleshow/100680288.cms?from=mdr

The upgrade of the factory in Rennes, France, includes a battery assembly area to supply packs to the C5 Aircross compact SUV's successor, which will debut in 2025. Stellantis will invest 160 million euros ($176 million) to prepare its factory in Rennes, western France, to build the next Citroen compact SUV, which will be mostly sold as a full-electric vehicle when it is launched in 2025, the automaker said. Stellantis will use the investment to set up a battery assembly workshop as well as one dedicated to plastic injection molding, it said in a statement, adding that the vehicle's launch will happen on the future STLA Medium platform. The molding area will be used for front and rear modules, Stellantis said. The car, code-named CR3, will succeed the current C5 Aircross, which offers gasoline, diesel and plug-in hybrid powertrains. Stellantis in November 2021 announced it would invest 152 million euros in the factory ahead of the new model, as part of a plan to boost EV production in France. Stellantis plans to sell only electric cars in Europe by 2030. Asked whether the new vehicle would be available as anything other than a full-electric model, CEO Carlos Tavares told the press on Thursday: "In principle, no." The STLA Medium platform can accept internal-combustion powertrains. The factory currently builds the Citroen C5 Aircross and the Peugeot 5008 midsize SUV. Both models entered production in 2017; the C5 Aircross is available as a plug-in hybrid, while the 5008 does not have any electrified options. The 5008 is due to be replaced in the next 18 months, along with the smaller 3008 compact. Its successor is expected to be built at Stellantis' factory in Sochaux, eastern France, with the 3008. The Rennes facility dates to 1960, when it was set up by Citroen. Peugeot models were added in the 2000s, including the 407, 508 and the 5008, which entered production in 2017. It has an annual capacity of about 100,000 vehicles, and about 2,300 employees. Last year it produced about 73,000 vehicles. https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/stellantis-invests-173-million-build-citroen-suv-france

Close to 300 youths from 48 nations and regions gathered in Huai'an, Jiangsu in China on 27 May to participate in the 2023 "Belt and Road Initiative" Sports Exchange Week. Among the activities held were 3X3 basketball and foot orienteering activities. The organizer hoped to fully demonstrate the youthful vigor and demeanor of international young friends through this exchange week, and use sports as a medium to allow them to experience the charm of Jiangsu, understand Jiangsu better, and experience the beauty and joy of sports. This is the fourth edition of the "Belt and Road Initiative" Sports Exchange Week since its inception in 2020. The event has become one of the important brand activities of Jiangsu's "Belt and Road Initiative" cultural exchanges. The "Belt and Road Initiative" Youth Sports Exchange Week will continue to build a platform for youth sports exchanges in countries and regions, deepen the friendship between international youths through sports, and promote cultural exchanges, cultural integration and people-to-people bonds in different countries and regions https://www.sportanddev.org/latest/news/belt-and-road-initiative-sports-exchange-week-draws-close-300-youths

Healthy lifestyles are thought to reduce mortality in the general po[CENSORED]tion, but it is not known whether the same is true in osteoarthritis. Fan and colleagues present new data on the topic at the 2023 annual congress of EULAR—the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology. In this work, data from the UK Biobank were used to investigate the association of both individual and combined healthy lifestyle factors with the risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality among 104,142 people with osteoarthritis. The researchers gave each person a score for their lifestyle, based on their body mass index (BMI) and self-reported diet, sleep duration, physical activity, sedentary time, social connection, smoking, and alcohol drinking—all factors thought to be associated with health. Overall, there were 9,915 deaths recorded after the first 2 years' follow-up. Models showed a variety of associations between people's lifestyle and mortality. Sleep duration had a U-shaped relationship, while moderate physical activity was L-shaped, and BMI and vigorous activity were J-shaped—a trend that starts with a sharp drop and is followed by a dramatic rise. For sleep, the ideal seems to be 7 hours a night, while the turning point for moderate physical activity was 550 minutes per week, and 240 minutes per week for vigorous physical activity. The J-shaped turning point for BMI was 28 kg/m2. In multivariable models, each lifestyle factor was significantly associated with all-cause mortality, as well as mortality associated with cancer, cardiovascular, digestive, and respiratory diseases. This study could be important in helping to identify a healthy lifestyle pattern that could significantly reduce the risk of mortality in people with osteoarthritis. Indeed, EULAR has recently published recommendations on lifestyle behaviors and work participation to prevent progression of rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases, including osteoarthritis. The overarching principles define the importance of a healthy lifestyle, how lifestyle modifications should be implemented, and their role in relation to medical treatments.1 It seems now this could possibly benefit mortality as well as disease outcomes. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06-healthy-lifestyle-mortality-osteoarthritis.html

Andrew Tate has denied fuelling a culture of misogyny and defended his reputation in a combative interview with the BBC. When the BBC put a range of allegations to him - including specific accusations of rape, human trafficking and exploiting women, for which he is being investigated by Romanian prosecutors - he dismissed them. When pushed on whether his controversial views on women harmed young people, the influencer claimed he was a "force for good" and that he was "acting under the instruction of God to do good things". This was Mr Tate's first television interview with a major broadcaster since being released into house arrest from police custody in Romania in April. Mr Tate, who has repeatedly expressed his mistrust of traditional media, has a huge following online but his views have until now gone unchallenged in a direct interview like this. He agreed to our interview with no set conditions. He dismissed the testimonies of individual women involved in the current investigation who have accused him of rape and exploitation. And he described another woman, interviewed anonymously by the BBC earlier this year, as "imaginary", saying she had been invented by the BBC. The woman in question, given the pseudonym Sophie to protect her identity, told BBC Radio 4's File on Four that she followed Mr Tate to Romania believing he was in love with her. There, she was pressured into webcam work and into having Mr Tate's name tattooed on her body, she said. When questioned about Sophie's testimony, Mr Tate told the BBC: "I'm doing you the favour as legacy media, giving you relevance, by speaking to you. And I'm telling you now, this Sophie, which the BBC has invented, who has no face. Nobody knows who she is. I know." Sophie is now helping Romanian prosecutors with the investigation. I also put to him the concerns of schoolteachers, senior police figures and rights campaigners about the influence of his views. These concerns include comments by the chief executive of Rape Crisis in England and Wales, who said she was "deeply concerned by the dangerous ideology of misogynistic rape culture that Mr Tate spreads". Sitting across from me in a small armchair, Mr Tate said those accusations were "absolute garbage". Later in the interview, he said it was "completely disingenuous" to "pretend" that he was damaging young people. When asked about organisations that blamed him for increased incidents of girls being attacked, and female teachers being harassed, he said: "I have never, ever encouraged a student to attack a teacher, male or female, ever. "I preach hard work, discipline. I'm an athlete, I preach anti-drugs, I preach religion, I preach no alcohol, I preach no knife crime. Every single problem with modern society I'm against." Mr Tate suggested that some of his comments had been taken out of context or intended as "jokes" - including a video discussion in which he said that a woman's intimate parts belonged to her male partner. "I don't know if you understand what sarcasm is. I don't know if you understand what context is. I don't know if you understand what's satirical content," he told me when challenged over the comment. His description does not match the tone in an online video seen by the BBC. He also denied admitting to emotional mani[CENSORED]tion of women, despite comments made on a previous version of his online coaching course, Hustlers University. An introduction on that site began: "My name is Andrew Tate… and I'm the most competent person on the entire planet to teach you about male-female interactions." It goes on to say that Mr Tate's job was to "meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, get her to fall in love with me to where she'd do anything I say, and then get her on a webcam so we could become rich together". The page has since been taken down. When asked about it in our interview, Mr Tate replied, "I've never said that." I suggested that making controversial statements had brought him a lot of money by attracting followers who then signed up for a paid course on how to become a successful man. Mr Tate replied: "I genuinely am a force for good in the world. You may not understand that yet, but you will eventually. And I genuinely believe I am acting under the instruction of God to do good things, and I want to make the world a better place." During our conversation, which lasted nearly forty minutes, Mr Tate pointed several times to what he called the "little pieces of paper" I had brought with me, telling me I was "saying silly things" and should "do some research". In a sign of his mistrust of traditional media, our visit and interview were filmed by his team for their own use - and after we left he claimed that the BBC had promised only to ask "sanitised questions". While the BBC did provide topics of discussion before the interview as a matter of courtesy, as per our editorial guidelines, we did not agree the questions we would ask in advance and were clear that our interview would be a wide-ranging, dynamic discussion with challenging questions. Before we had even left the building, Mr Tate posted a message on social media promising to publish his own version of the interview, which he did shortly after. The BBC has followed his case closely since the end of last year, when the Tate brothers were taken into custody, and has spoken to witnesses, former employees, neighbours and associates, and those involved in the investigation, to piece together an accurate picture of the Tate brothers' time in Romania. The brothers are now in their sixth - and last - month under judicial control in this investigation, and any indictment is expected within the next few weeks. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65780107

MATRIX: Myths and Reality Through a series of state ""Freedom of Information Act"" requests, the ACLU has begun to learn more about the secretive program known as the Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX). Documents obtained by the ACLU make it clear that there is a great deal of misinformation being spread about the program by the program's law enforcement boosters as well as the private company that runs it. A lot remains unknown about this secretive program - for example, what type of commercial data it contains, how it is being used to monitor Americans, and how much it will cost. But documents from state and federal authorities and the officials that run the program enable us to separate myth from reality. Especially instructive were the minutes of the state and corporate officials overseeing the MATRIX program. Myth: The MATRIX is about fighting terrorism. Reality: The MATRIX has little to do with terrorism. Like so many surveillance programs today, MATRIX is being pitched as a means of stopping terrorists (for example, the Total Information Awareness program suddenly became ""Terrorism Information Awareness"" in the face of growing public and Congressional opposition). But it seems clear that the real aim and utility of the program is in everyday law enforcement. For example, a promotional pamphlet obtained by the ACLU from Florida describes 15 different examples of how the MATRIX can be used, but only one has any relationship to terrorism; the rest are everyday law enforcement activities.[1] A 12-page memorandum governing the sharing of information between MATRIX and the state of Pennsylvania never once mentions terrorism or terrorist activities.[2] Myth: MATRIX does not utilize data mining. Reality: Data mining has always been one of the most important components of the MATRIX program. MATRIX officials have claimed that the program does not include the highly controversial practice of law enforcement ""data mining,"" in which an automated computer program scans through the records of everyone - criminal and innocent alike - in a search for patterns that are thought to suggest wrongdoing. But the documents obtained by the ACLU contain numerous explicit references to data mining, including meeting minutes of the MATRIX board,[3] presentations by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement[4] and in FDLE budget documents.[5] In the application by the Institute for Intergovernmental Research for the original $4 million Department of Justice grant that funded MATRIX, for example, one of the four objectives of the program that were listed was to ""develop and pilot test a model data mining and integration system for terrorist and other intelligence information.""[6] Myth: MATRIX contains information that has always been routinely available to law enforcement. Reality: MATRIX gives law enforcement unprecedented access to enormous stores of commercially available information. MATRIX appears to include a mix of corporate data, court records and other data compiled by private industry, and records provided directly by the states. This information includes property ownership, address history (including all the people an individual has ever lived with), business and corporate information, marine vessels, U.S. directory assistance, public utility services connections, bankruptcies, liens and judgments, UCC filings, FCC pilot information, hunting and fishing licenses, gun licenses, professional licenses, voter registrations, and U.S. domain names. The MATRIX also includes drivers license data from 15 states, criminal offender information from 35 states and court data from parts of 15 states including felony, misdemeanor and traffic violations going back decades.[7] Those records are apparently only the tip of the iceberg. MATRIX records obtained from Connecticut, Florida and Michigan, claim the ability to access billions of records. This is in addition to all the other government data available from other states such as drivers' license information and criminal offender records.[8] The federal government has paid more than $9 million to a private company,[9] Seisint, Inc., the sole business of which is to sell and mani[CENSORED]te commercial data. It is impossible to know how much data it has received on private citizens for its money. Myth: MATRIX is run by states. Reality: MATRIX is almost completely funded by the federal government. Documents make clear the substantial role of the federal government in this program, which raises the question of whether the MATRIX is at least in part an attempt by federal authorities to cultivate a data mining system that will not attract the attention or oversight of a program like Total Information Awareness, the Pentagon program shut down by Congress. According to documents obtained from Connecticut, MATRIX has received $12 million in federal funding - $4 million from the Department of Justice and $8 million from the Department of Homeland Security.[10] The DHS intelligence analysis center has access to its records.[11] And documents obtained by the ACLU reveal that not only were federal officials present at organizational meetings[12], but that a ""data mining application, called FCIC Plus"" was developed ""with the help of the FBI, INS, DEA, and the U.S. Secret Service.""[13] The only contributions by the states so far have been the unknown costs of compiling their own data. However, MATRIX will eventually cost states large sums to maintain their presence in the system. When Texas withdrew from the system they estimated the cost as more than $1.7 million annually.[14] Myth: The accuracy of data in MATRIX is checked before law enforcement takes action. Reality: There is no guarantee that the accuracy of the data will be checked and every reason to believe that it won't be. Time after time, both government and private databases have been revealed to be riddled with errors, and MATRIX will be no different. In fact, the contract between MATRIX and Seisint (the private company supplying MATRIX with data) states that it cannot guarantee the ""correctness or completeness"" of data in the system.[15] States that utilize the system are responsible for ""assuring that any information relied upon is accurate, current, valid, and complete.""[16] However, MATRIX ""Success Stories"" consistently describes law enforcement taking action based solely upon the information contained in MATRIX.[17] Myth: MATRIX has adequate security measures in place. Reality: State agencies have raised serious concerns about the safety of data in MATRIX. When a system like MATRIX brings various sources of information together to create detailed dossiers on individuals, security must be a top concern. But apparently issues remain; the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicle Safety raised a number of concerns regarding the security of the MATRIX system.[18] As of the fall of 2003, Seisint seems to have no procedure to change passwords for access to the MATRIX system.[19] , In addition, because the MATRIX database has to be refreshed with a complete copy of state records, a full copy of a state's drivers' license data or other confidential data must be sent to MATRIX every month, leaving it very vulnerable to theft.[20] Myth: Information in MATRIX is only available to employees of law enforcement organizations. Reality: A number of private individuals have access to the MATRIX. At least 15 Seisint employees have access to the MATRIX database.[21] Hank Asher, Seisint's founder, had access to this system before court records revealed that he was an unindicted co-conspirator in a group responsible for bringing more than $150-million worth of cocaine into Florida in a single year.[22] Further, it was Asher's former company that administered the contract that stripped thousands of African Americans from the Florida voter rolls before the 2000 election, erroneously contending that they were felons.[23] It was a full year after the program began before Seisint Inc. performed background checks on employees involved with MATRIX.[24] Myth: MATRIX is controlled by the state of Florida. Reality: A private company, Seisint, Inc., has complete control over the MATRIX system. Hank Asher, Seisint's founder, first conceived the MATRIX system,[25] and all the information in the MATRIX is housed in the company's computers.[26] MATRIX utilizes the company's private commercial databases[27] and Seisint's employees provide all technical support for the system.[28] For all practical purposes Seisint controls everything in the MATRIX and every application it performs. Myth: MATRIX is different from the Total Information Awareness system (TIA). Reality: MATRIX shares almost every characteristic of the federal effort to monitor private citizens. Like John Poindexter's infamous Total Information Awareness system that was shut down by Congress, MATRIX brings together information on individuals from diverse sources - various government records as well as more than 20 billion commercial records[29] - and uses a computer data mining tool to scan those records in a search for signs of wrongdoing.[30] It is paid for almost completely by the federal government.[31] Most importantly, it wipes out privacy by making the ever-increasing list of individuals' activities that are recorded by private or public entities subject ever after to scrutiny by the authorities.[32] What the government couldn't sell through a Pentagon program, it is now trying to accomplish at arm's length through the states. https://www.aclu.org/other/matrix-myths-and-reality

“Mobile is no longer about what you can do on your cell phone. Mobile is all about doing more, all of the time”. — Mitch Joel Mobile Phones have now become a ‘part and parcel’ of our life. We can’t even think about our life without the presence of mobile phones. It’s been seen so far that the concept of ‘mobile’ has evolved with the passing time, especially in the last 10 years, and from simple hand-held mobile phones it has now become a multi-featured gadget, a necessity for all. How/when Mobile was invented: On April 3, 1973, Martin cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from hand-held subscriber equipment. Motorola was the first company to produce hand held mobile phones. Initially, those phones were referred to as OG mobile phones (Zero Generation Mobile Phones) which now-a-days has turned into 3G or 4G mobiles with lots of new, unique features making it an invisible part of human lives. In this Article we are going to discuss how mobile has affected our lifestyle both in positive and negative ways. Mobile phones have now become an important tool of our lives and its functioning goes way beyond the capacity of making or receiving calls. 6-Positive Influences of Mobile Phones on our lives: Stay connected: The main purpose of mobile phones is to keep us connected with our loved ones regardless of the distance. It helps us to stay connected with our family, friends, loved ones and society as well in variety of ways including: Calling, Text/Messages, E-mail, Video calling, Public or Social media. Therefore, Mobile phones play a key role to get in touch with each affecting the health of the aged people in a positive way. As per Doctors, adults who stay in touch with others, whether in person over the phone, via email. Or just through text messaging are happier and healthier. Storehouse of knowledge: A mobile phone can be considered as an important learning tool. With the help of the internet, we can find a suitable solution to each problem, satisfactory answers to each question and clarification of every doubt immediately. Mobile phones with several learning apps prove beneficial for the students also to carry on their learning in an effective and interesting way to sharpen their skill and to upgrade their knowledge as well. Mobile phone, in a way is a gift for all offering access to ‘World’s biggest Library whenever required as said by Ray Kurzweil – “Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.” Multiple utility devices: One factor which makes mobiles so important in our daily lives is its multi utility functionary. Besides calling or staying in touch with others, one can easily use mobile for making calculations, setting reminders for some occasion, birthday, meetings or activities. It can be easily used as a torch whenever required. The latest featured phones are designed to work in more than one GSM network. With the help of ‘WhatsApp’, ‘Emails’, ‘Bluetooth’ files and documents can be transferred from one device to another (For long and short distances respectively). Sense of Security: Mobile phones are important tools for emergency services also. It’s a safety gadget which helps us to track exact locations through GPRS (General Packet Radio Services, a continuous connection to the internet for mobile phone and computer users). In emergency situations like accidents, car breakdown, physical illness or medical emergencies, you can always call for rescue or help. As per record, 40% of cell owners said that they found themselves in an emergency situation in which having their phone with them helped. Entertainment: Mobile phones, now-a-days, has become a source of entertainment for all its users by providing — Videos for meditation/ different exercises — Access to internet — Apps for listening music — Thousands of online and offline games application — Apps for watching movies or videos — Opportunity for children to watch videos and cartoon on mobile devices Even daily soaps are telecasted with the help of some special apps on mobile. As per records, 42% of cell owners used their phone for entertainment when they were bored. Memorable clicks: Through the help of high definition cameras, mobile helps us to capture our memorable moments throughout our life. This picture can be clicked any time, anywhere to be remembered forever. “A moment captured is worth so much more than a moment forgotten”. Mobiles, therefore, help to develop all the areas of human well-being; bringing the entire world at our fingertips within a single second of the day. “In their phones were antennas and these antennas sniffed out an invisible world, as if by magic, a world that was all around them, and also nowhere, transporting them to places distant and near; and to places that had never been and would never be” — Mohsin Hamid. 6 Negative Influences of Mobile Phones on our lives: In spite of the usefulness and necessity of mobile phones in our day to day life, there are many downsides of using mobile phones on a regular basis. “Mobile phones are ubiquitous and indispensable, yet they have also given rise to a curious bundle of safety, security and privacy fears.” Unsocial: One of the major drawbacks of using mobile phones is its ability to weaken social emotions; making people more socially disruptive, rational & introverted; engaged in their own world filled up with self-centered, phrases, like ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘myself’. People now have less conversation with people, face to face. They do prefer to stare at their mobile screen than to talk to each other while in a group meet. “What is the truth behind Mobile Technology? Faraway people get connected as nearby people! Nearby people get disconnected as faraway people!” No time for family: “WE have all become addicted to mobile phones. They have become our family, our friend, our confidant and to even some they have become our lovers.” ― Anthony T. Hincks Mobiles in a way isolating people from their friends, family and loved ones. It’s an irony how mobiles can connect us with others, but so often make us aloof from the family persons and alienate from the real world as Gayendra Abeywardane said – “An entire planet pretending to be uncomfortable with the humanitarian crisis while engrossed in distractions on their mobile screens. Humanity ignoring their inevitable existential crisis.” Health problems: There is a lot of speculation that mobile phones are injurious for health. Its radiation is harmful causing life threatening diseases like Cancer, Nervous breakdown/ nerve disease, affecting eyesight, hinders brain development, short temperedness, Insomnia, headaches and many more. Accidents: People get engrossed by their mobile phone while walking on the road. Many times, they don’t even feel the need to look around and carry on listening to music on headphones or talking over the phone while walking around. As a result of which many severe accidents occur and thousands of people lose their lives in a year. Using mobile while driving is also a major reason for car accidents and consecutive deaths. The National Safety Council reports that- “Cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. Nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving”. Effect on child development: Now-a-days, mobiles have become an addiction for children. They are glued to mobile phones to watch cartoons, videos or play games on it. But excessive use of mobile phones could be vulnerable for children affecting their brain development, nervous system, eyesight, psychology, hearing capacity, reaction times, sleep patterns and many more. Doctor. Nora Volkow, the lead author of the JAMA Study said, modelling studies have shown that “Child’s brain would absorb more radiation than those of Adults”. Nomophobia: Excessive use of cell phones results in an emergency condition ‘Nomophobia’ — a fear of being without a mobile device; or beyond mobile phone contact. Worldwide many rehabilitation centres appear to deal with this mental, social and physical condition coming as a result of ‘mobile addiction’. A recent study sponsored by SecurEnvoy has found that since 2008, the amount of people who fear being without a mobile phone has grown from 53 percent to 66 percent. In spite of the downsides, it’s hard to repudiate the advantages of mobile phones and its imperative assistance in our day to day life. Mobile phones are an outstanding accessory and a need for all. But like everything, “Mobiles” too have their benefits and drawbacks & it’s up to us to decide what impact technology will have in our life. https://medium.com/swlh/12-ways-how-mobile-has-changed-our-life-61d4cf03efe0#:~:text=The main purpose of mobile,calling%2C Public or Social media.

On August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812 between the United States and England, British troops enter Washington, D.C. and burn the White House in retaliation for the American attack on the city of York in Ontario, Canada, in June 1813. When the British arrived at the White House, they found that President James Madison and his first lady Dolley had already fled to safety in Maryland. Soldiers reportedly sat down to eat a meal made of leftover food from the White House scullery using White House dishes and silver before ransacking the presidential mansion and setting it ablaze. According to the White House Historical Society and Dolley’s personal letters, President James Madison had left the White House on August 22 to meet with his generals on the battlefield, just as British troops threatened to enter the capitol. Before leaving, he asked his wife Dolley if she had the “courage or firmness” to wait for his intended return the next day. He asked her to gather important state papers and be prepared to abandon the White House at any moment. The next day, Dolley and a few servants scanned the horizon with spyglasses waiting for either Madison or the British army to show up. As British troops gathered in the distance, Dolley decided to abandon the couple’s personal belongings and instead saved a full-length portrait of former president George Washington from desecration. Dolley wrote to her sister on the night of August 23 of the difficulty involved in saving the painting. Since the portrait was screwed to the wall, she ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas pulled out and rolled up. Two unidentified “gentlemen from New York” hustled it away for safe-keeping. (Unbeknownst to Dolley the portrait was actually a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s original). The task complete, Dolley wrote “and now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it by filling up the road I am directed to take.” Dolley left the White House and found her husband at their predetermined meeting place in the middle of a thunderstorm. Although President Madison and his wife were able to return to Washington only three days later when British troops had moved on, they never again lived in the White House. Madison served the rest of his term residing at the city’s Octagon House. It was not until 1817 that newly elected president James Monroe moved back into the reconstructed building. S hortly before Mordechai Booth fled the capital on Wednesday, August 24, 1814, he rode over to the President’s House to see whether anyone was still inside. Near the entrance he saw an American colonel who dismounted, walked to the front door, pulled hard on the bell rope, banged on the door, and shouted for the steward, Jean Sioussat, known as French John. But, Booth recorded, “all was as silent as a church.” Only then did this senior clerk at the Navy Yard grasp the awful reality “that the metropolis of our country was abandoned to its horrid fate.” Within hours the President’s House and the few other public buildings had been set on fire by British occupation troops. The inferno was so great that the glow in the night sky was seen from fifty miles away by British crewmen aboard warships in the Patuxent River by anxious Americans in Baltimore and in Leesburg, Virginia. In the five years it took to research and write a book on the burning of Washington, nothing struck me as more poignant than Booth’s wrenching despair at that moment. It seemed to express the howl of a nation. Yet this was only a passing incident in a roller coaster of dramatic events. Within three weeks the British would try to bludgeon their way into Baltimore by bombarding Fort McHenry from warships, only to be turned away by a stoic defense that inspired an eyewitness, Francis Scott Key, to compose the words of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Days later the drama returned to Washington as Congress narrowly defeated a proposal to move the capital to another city to save the cost of rebuilding. Perhaps they had been influenced by the foreboding of one southern congressman who warned, “If the seat of government is once set on wheels, there is no saying where it will stop.” But this drama was itself overshadowed on Christmas Eve, when U.S. and British peace commissioners signed the Treaty of Peace and Amity in Ghent, Belgium, bringing to an end a costly war that had exhausted both nations. News of the signing took more than a month to cross the Atlantic, arriving too late for men who would die in vain as Andrew Jackson’s makeshift army of ruffians, hillbillies, pirates, and militiamen squared off in a flat field of sugarcane stubble against seasoned British regulars of multiple European campaigns. In the finale to this extraordinary leapfrogging of epic events, Jackson’s men recorded one of the most lopsided victories in military history—even though it was a needless slaughter of foes who did not know they were already at peace. The burning of Washington, which completely gutted the President’s House, would not have taken place but for the ongoing war between Britain and France, who tried to weaken each other by targeting trade with neutral American ships. The French felt free to seize British cargo aboard American ships and bar U.S. vessels from European ports if they had first docked in British harbors. The British blocked American vessels from entering French-controlled ports unless they first anchored in British harbors. The British also boarded hundreds of American ships on the high seas, hauling off droves of their own sailors who had deserted to the growing American merchant fleet, which offered better pay and conditions. The swaggering imperial power used the blunt instrument of its fearsome navy, refusing to recognize the rights of its sailors to renounce citizenship and become naturalized Americans. During a six-year period through 1810 the British snatched almost 5,000 sailors off American vessels, including 1,361 native-born Americans, who were later freed with few apologies. Goaded to mounting fury, Americans needed little coaxing to bring them to war. A British diplomat in Washington clearly saw the possibility of a clash when writing home to his mother: “While we are aiming blows at the French marine we want elbow room, and these good neutrals won’t give it to us, and therefore they get a few side pushes which make them grumble. However, I hope that they will see their interests better than to seriously quarrel with us.” These repeated affronts to the dignity of a free and sovereign people were insufferable for proud young Americans like Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, both of whom were born after the Declaration of Independence. The elections of 1810 sent this formidable duo and other young “war hawks” to Congress, and it quickly became evident that what was tolerable for older Americans had become untenable for the new generation. They preferred “war with all its accompanying evils to abject submission.” The wound to national pride had festered for so long that appeals to transatlantic ties made no impression. The leader of those opposed to war, Representative John Randolph of Roanoke, argued in vain against a fratricidal war against those who shared the same blood, religion, language, legal system, representative government, and even the works of Shakespeare and Newton. The war hawks carried the day in June 1812, and with his signature to the congressional approved declaration of war, President James Madison locked the snippety transatlantic upstart into battle against the mightiest power on earth. But why would the British target Washington as the war entered its third year, after rumbles and clashes confined to the distant Canadian border? The American capital was nothing more than a gawky village, a mere embryo of the city it aspired to be. Only fourteen years had passed since the capital had moved from Philadelphia, and the po[CENSORED]tion had grown to little more than 8,000, of whom one-sixth were slaves. The clammy expanses of its Potomac site were still almost barren and certainly bleak. Attorney General Richard Rush described Washington as “a meager village with a few bad houses and extensive swamps.” Augustus John Foster, who would be promoted from junior diplomat to the last British minister to the United States before the two countries went to war, lamented his posting to “an absolute sepulcher, this hole.” It was no coarse, woebegone, and lacking in refinement that in another letter home Foster wailed, “luckily for me I have been in Turkey, and quite at home in this primeval simplicity of manners.” Even though Washington had no strategic significance for the British military, the commander and chief of the North American station, Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, had it in mind to give the American “a complete drubbing.” It would avenge the excesses of American who had plundered and burned public and private buildings the year before in York (modern Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada. Above all, seizing the capital would humiliate and demoralize American and, as a bonus, might even lead to the disintegration of the United States. Early warning signs that Washington would be targeted went unheeded, even though the British press had openly speculated on the fate of the American capital. Little action was taken, even after U.S. emissaries in Europe warned that the fall of Napoleon in mid-1814 would free up thousands of British troops for the war against America. Secretary of War John Armstrong refused to take these signals seriously, even as the British fleet sailed into the Patuxent River, fifty miles east of Washington, in August 1814. “By God,” he fumed at Major General John Van Ness, the uneasy chief of militia in the District of Columbia, “they would not come with such a fleet without meaning to strike somewhere. But they certainly will not come here! What the devil will they do here? No! No! Baltimore is the place, Sir. That is of so much more consequence.” If the secretary of war, a former major general with access to every morsel of intelligence, refused to take the British seriously, small wonder that the general po[CENSORED]tion was caught off guard. As word of the British advance on land filtered through to Washingtonians, the uneasy calm turned into a full-fledged flight, driven by fear, then stark terror in the widening pandemonium. It was the hottest summer in memory and no rain had fallen for three weeks. The dusty roads were clogged with desperate refugees, their meager possessions spilling over in the stampede to escape. Others fled to the wooded surroundings, preferring the security of the wild to the insecurity of their homes. By the time the British set food on Capitol Hill after sunset on Wednesday, August 24, about 90 percent of Washington’s residents had bolted. Among those who escaped was Georgetown librarian and bookshop owner Joseph Milligan, who fled far across Virginia, arriving so incoherent and irrational at the home of an acquaintance that he told his host he thought he was being pursued by the British. Saner counsels prevailed in the government agencies, where many of the offices remained staffed because most of the clerks were over the age of forty-five and therefore exempt from call-up into the militia. But in the basement of the House of Representatives most of the offices were empty because nearly all of the employees were young men. Only J.T. Frost, a newcomer over forty-five, remained at this desk. In this moment of acute crisis a man of scant experience and even less authority was burdened with the responsibility for making snap decisions of crucial importance. He was sorely in need of the guiding hand of the clerk of the House of Representatives, Patrick Magruder, a former member of Congress and custodian of the Library of Congress. But here, as in so many instances throughout this catastrophe, the human factor was paramount. Events turned on the nature and whereabouts of individuals. Magruder had been ill for months and had finally taken the advice of his doctor to leave the city to try to restore his health at mineral spas. Frost’s colleague, Samuel Burch, had tried hard to persuade his superiors to let him remain at his desk in the hope of saving the House papers. But he, too, had been marched out of the city to meet the enemy. He was finally stood down at night on Sunday, August 21, three days before the British seized the capital. But when he went looking for transport the following day, it was already too late. Most of the carts and wagons had been grabbed by the military, and the remainder were piled high with the goods of civilians in flight. In desperation, Burch ordered three messengers to scour the countryside for transport. They came back with only one cart and four oxen, procured from a man who lived six miles out in the countryside. Into this single cart they loaded the most important documents of the House of Representatives, then turned the oxen around and drove nine miles into the countryside, where they unloaded the documents in a place of safety. They returned to Washington, but on Wednesday, August 24, just hours before the British hoisted the Union Jack on Capitol Hill, they all joined in the general exodus of refugees. Burch and Frost were frustrated beyond measure. Both men knew they could have saved all the papers of the House, and even the vast contents of the Library of Congress, if only they had been able to seize more transport. The archival material of the Senate was in equal jeopardy because no one of administrative seniority was on hand to take charge. Samuel Otis, the secretary of the Senate since 1789, had died in April 1814, and no one had appointed his successor in the intervening four months. The principal clerk was away from the city, leaving only two younger clerks, John McDonald and Lewis Machen, to decide whether to take matters into their own hands. Machen, twenty-four, should have been called up into the D.C. militia, where he commanded a company with the rank of captain, but seven weeks earlier he had bought a farm in Maryland, which disqualified him from holding a commission in the District. He had not yet been called up into the Maryland militia, so he decided to make himself available for civilian tasks at the U.S. Capitol. Machen waited in vain for an executive order or instructions from higher up, but neither was forthcoming. By noon on Sunday the 21st, just three days before the British marched into Washington, he could wait no longer. All around him he saw signs of “doubt, confusions and dismay.” He gave McDonald an ultimatum: help remove the Senate documents from the Capitol or he would act alone. McDonald readily agreed, but now they were faced with finding suitable transport, a commodity that had become more precious than jewelry. Machen obtained a single wagon by telling the driver he would impound it if the driver did not hand it over voluntarily. However, when they arrived back at the Capitol, they discovered McDonald had gone, apparently to make arrangements for the safety of his family. Machen, the driver, and a messenger then loaded the most valuable documents, including what he later said was the only copy of the Senate’s quarter-century of executive history, and another that listed the names and positions of all American military forces. They set off at sunset for Machen’s farm in Prince George’s County, Maryland, but were still within the borders of the District of Columbia when the wagon lost a wheel. Fortunately, they were near a blacksmith’s shop and were able to steal a replacement. But later that night, when they were still two miles away from Machen’s farm, the wagon overturned, and repair and reloading took several hours. The following morning, when McDonald arrived, he took the loaded wagon to the Quaker village of Brookeville, in neighboring Montgomery County, out of the path of the advancing British. The Senate documents remained there until the following month, when they were returned to Washington. Secretary of State James Monroe, out spying on horseback as the British advanced east of Washington, sent a scribbled note to the State Department telling his staff to secure as best they could the precious national documents and departmental records. One of the clerks, Stephen Pleasonton, hurried out to buy coarse, durable linen and ordered it cut and made up into book bags. Together with other clerks, he stuffed the bags with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, international treaties, and the correspondence of George Washington, including the historic letter resigning his commission. As they worked in a passageway of the War Department, located a short distance from the west flank of the President’s House, Secretary of War Armstrong passed by and rebuked Pleasonton for being an alarmist in believing the British would march on Washington. Pleasonton replied without hesitation that he had a difference belief and thought it prudent to try to safeguard the papers of the Revolutionary government. Pleasonton loaded the bags into carts and crossed the Potomac River, driving two miles upstream above Georgetown, where he deposited them in an abandoned mill. But then he had second thoughts, for the mill was opposite Foxall’s Foundry in Georgetown, the largest manufacturer of munitions in the country, and certain to be targeted by the British. A spy or turncoat could easily lead the enemy to his nearby hiding place. So he reloaded the carts with his precious cargo and drove thirty-five miles inland to Leesburg, Virginia, where he placed the documents in an empty house, locked the door, and gave the key to the local sheriff. Then he checked into a hotel, too tired to join the townspeople who flocked into the streets that night to watch the glow in the sky over the burning city of Washington. When the advance party of British commanders rode onto Capitol Hill at sunset, they were met by a volley of sniper fire from a house at the junction of Maryland Avenue, Constitution Avenue, and Second Street, N.E. These were the only shots aimed at the invaders in the capital now quiet and almost abandoned. The shots felled the horse ridden by the top British commanded, Major General Robert Ross, and killed at least one enemy soldier and wounded another. In keeping with their policy of destroying buildings used for hostile purposes, the invaded retaliated by quickly torching the house, even though the anonymous snipers had run off. Before darkness set in, one Washingtonian looked out of her window in horror to see the Union Jack flying atop Capitol Hill as enemy troops moved about brandishing Congreve rockets. Some of the invaders now closed in on the 67-foot-high twin buildings of the Capitol—the Senate on the north and the newer House on the south. The central part of the Capitol was not built; the two wings were linked by a covered 100-foot-long wooden walkway. Other invading troops marched south to burn more of the Navy Yard, already roaring with flames set pre-emptively by Americans hoping to deny the British supplies and naval vessels. When the British entered the halls of the House and Senate, they passed through monumental interiors of stone adorned with fluted columns and arched entrances below domed vestibules. They raced up grand staircases into ornate rooms with vaulted ceilings. One young officer, expecting to find “republican simplicity,” was astonished by evidence all around him of “monarchical splendor.” The foreigners were so awed by the grandeur of the buildings that a number of junior officers were dismayed by the order to set it all on fire. The architect in charge for the past decade, English-born Benjamin Henry Latrobe, had supervised with a perfectionist’s rigor as he created a national capitol that, in its formidable beauty, could compare with many of its counterparts across the sea. There were no sculptors of note in the young republic, so Latrobe had looked to the land Michelangelo and Donatello, of Leonardo and Cellini, and after he found two worthy Tuscans he hired them. Giovanni Andrei had worked too slowly for the impatient Latrobe, but when he finished the fist of his columns the architect had rejoiced at this “artist of first rate excellence.” Latrobe had commissioned from the other Tuscan, Giuseppe Franzoni, a grand American eagle, with a wingspan of more than twelve feet. When it was complete, Latrobe declared it the finest eagle in the entire history of sculpture. It hung high above the Speaker’s chair, facing the British invaders when they entered the chamber of the House of Representatives. The colossal eagle suffered the same fate as the Capitol’s other glorious works of art when the vandals lit bonfires made from piles of furniture spread with the combustible content of the Congreve rockets. The heat was so fierce that glass oil-burning lamps and one hundred panes of English plate glass skylights melted into the sizzling debris. Sheets of flame created such heat that the outer stone of the columns expanded and fell off, leaving the deformed shafts wobbly and grotesque. The heavily timbered Library of Congress, stacked with about three thousand volumes of rare books, burned to oblivion. The 86-foot-long room had a 36-foot-high flat ceiling, which, if vaulted, might have served as a firebreak. There was something incongruous about the devastation and havoc behind them and the quiet ahead, as one hundred British troops advanced silently in two orderly columns down Pennsylvania Avenue, between double rows of stately Lombardy poplar trees. Slaves raced ahead warning residents to escape while they could as the invaders were on their way to burn the President’s House and flanking government offices. Along the route, just over a mile long, the British commanders stopped several times to assure anxious residents that they lives and private property would safe so long as they did no take up arms against the occupying forces. These were no glib promises made on the spur of the moment. General Ross even detailed a Scottish officer, Major Norman Pringle, to command a company specifically to protect private property along Pennsylvania Avenue. They would perform so honorably that Americans would remember them respectfully for years afterward. As they approached the southeast junction of Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, the British ringed the low brick boardinghouse run for the past two months by the widow Barbara Suter. General Ross teased the frightened woman, telling her he had “come, madam, to sup with you.” She tried to divert him to the Washington Hotel across the road, but Ross would have none of it, telling her she had a superior location because of its better view of the public buildings. In their brief encounter she was horrified to learn from Ross that one of his spies had duped her a few days earlier when she had taken him for a British deserter and fed him against the advice of one of her permanent residents, the postmaster general. As he left, General Ross told her to prepare a meal for later that night when he would return with a number of officers. Now within a few hundred yards of the President’s House, the occupation forces were approaching the from the opposite direction to that taken by a procession of dignitaries, led by Freemasons in hierarchical order, who had taken part in the ceremony in which the cornerstone had been laid twenty-two years earlier. At least one American accompanied the British soldiers and sailors into the President’s House. Roger Chew Weightman, a young bookseller, recently married, was made to accompany the invaders into the mansion where Admiral George Cockburn teased him with mischievous relish. When Cockburn told him to select a memento of the visit, Weightman chose an item of value, only to be told by the admiral that everything of value would be destroyed and the he must instead select a worthless souvenir. The vandals were tired, thirsty, and famished. It was almost midnight and the end of an exhausting day that had begun with a seven-hour forced march from near Upper Marlboro, through miles of woods, thickets, and brush until they reached Bladensburg, where they had fought a running battle with Americans in heat so fierce that eighteen invaders dropped dead from exhaustion. And then they had marched another six miles to Washington. Now that they were inside the President’s House they feasted inelegantly on food and wine, prepared for a table of forty military and cabinet officers expected for dinner by Dolley Madison. One of the Britons toasted the health of their Prince Regent. Another raised his glass to the success of His Majesty’s land and naval forces. Then they drank “to peace with America and down with Madison.” Someone found one of James Madison’s tricornered hats and, raising it by the tip of his bayonet, declared that if they could not capture “the little president” they would parade his hat in England. Sailors hurried up the stairs and into the more numerous rooms above, where they snatched souvenirs and clothing. But already there were signs of looting by local thieves who had broken in earlier. Drawers were opened and their contents strewn around haphazardly. Whatever was not carried off by the British would perish in the fire. Only two objects of art that were in the President’s House before the conflagration of August 1814 remain in the White House today. One is Gilbert Stuart’s full-length portrait of George Washington, which now hangs in the East Room. The other is a small wooden medicine chest in the downstairs Map Room. Both were taken out of the mansion in dramatic circumstances before the British burned the building. Dolley Madison, one of the most beloved women ever to occupy the White House, had displayed a courage rare among Washington’s residents. She stayed on in the President’s house even after her guard of one hundred military men had fled. The president’s wife refused to be rushed even after a horseman galloped down Pennsylvania Avenue warning all to flee because the British army had routed American forces at Bladensburg, about six miles northeast of Washington. She insisted on staying to save the portrait of the first president, which then hung on the west wall of the large dining room. It had been acquired by the federal government as a state portrait for the President’s House in 1800 at a cost of $800. At this calamitous moment two New Yorkers entered the room and asked if there was anything they could do to help. One of the men, a ship owner named Jacob Barker, was a close friend of the Madisons, and, like Dolley, a Quaker. His companion was Robert DePeyster. “Save that picture if possible!” cried Dolley Madison. “Under no circumstances allow it to fall into the hands of the British!” When she saw that her slave, Paul Jennings, and another servant were taking too long to unscrew the giant frame from the wall, she told them to break the wood and take out the linen canvas. At that moment French John entered the room, and seeing the potential for irreparable damage to the painting, ordered Jennings to stop. According to traditional accounts, with Dolley’s approval he took out a penknife and cut the heavyweight English twill fabric from its frame. French John gave the canvas to Barker, who started to roll it up until stopped by the Frenchman for fear the paint would crack. Barker and DePeyster then escorted the portrait in a wagon through Georgetown into the countryside, where they left it with a farmer they lodged with overnight. A few weeks later Barker retrieved it and gave it back to Dolley Madison. The medicine chest, small enough to be carried off in one hand, was returned to the White House 125 years later, in 1939, by Archibald Kains, a Canadian, who wrote a cover letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that it was “looted or pillaged from the White House by my grandfather, who was paymaster of the Devastation, one of the boats that sailed up the Patuscent (sic) at that time. …I hope you will find an appropriate resting place for this little relic and should be very pleased if you gave it shelter in your own home.” The most conspicuous case of the British enforcement of the rule against wanton looting involved a soldier armed with a musket who robbed residents close to the charred skeleton of the President’s House. The first victim was John Macleod, proprietor of the Washington Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. After threatening to set fire to the building, the robber moved to the home of a second victim as a neighbor sped to British headquarters on Capitol Hill to sound the alarm. Two British officers galloped down Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the home of a third victim as he was being robbed. What happened next was witnessed by a Washingtonian. One of the young officers shouted, “You villain! You have turned thief and are disgracing your country!” The thief denied doing anything wrong, but he was contradicted by Macleod the hotelier. Infuriated, the officer clenched his fist and punched the soldier so hard that he staggered and his hat fell off. It was found to contain silk shawls and other valuables. When he saw this the officer whacked the thief with the butt of his pistol and threatened to shoot him on the spot unless he set off immediately for British headquarters. He was put on his stolen horse and escorted up to Capitol Hill. On the way he tried to escape but his luck had run out. He was paraded at headquarters and then shot dead. Two other British thieves caught by their own men were each given one hundred lashes. The worst looting by Washingtonians took place while the British were still in the nation’s capital. The morning after they burned the President’s House and the Capitol the British returned to the Navy Yard to burn what had not been destroyed the night before. They came and went within fifteen minutes. Local residents then went gleefully wild in an orgy of theft at the unprotected Navy Yard. They swarmed into houses and scurried from cellars to attics snatching anything that could carried away, even ripping fixtures off the walls and tearing locks out of doors. The following morning, after the British had left, Washingtonians returned to the ruins of the Capitol and the President’s House to pick and pluck like vultures. After a night and a day of torching nearly all of the public buildings, and even a few private businesses, including ropewalks, which sent billowing clouds of choking black smoke over the capital, the British withdrew to their ships, afraid that their path of retreat might by blocked by American troops. The occupation of Washington by British troops lasted about twenty-six hours, but evidence of their vandalism survives to this day. Some of the blocks of Virginia sandstone that make up the original walls of the White House are clearly defaced with black scorch marks. They are the indelible strains from the fires of 1814. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-troops-set-fire-to-the-white-house