As France mourns the victims of its worst terrorist atrocity since the mid-nineties’ attacks carried out by the Armed Islamic Group, attention has begun to turn to the significance of the Syrian civil war.

A former UK counter-terrorism detective has told Newsweek that the authorities in Britain and France “face awkward questions” about letting young jihadists travel to join the Syrian rebels, especially in the early days of the civil war when the Islamic State had yet to emerge as the predominant fighting group.

And a French security source says European intelligence services underestimated the danger of Syria-linked jihadist groups.

Connections between the Syrian conflict and the attacks in Paris are beginning to emerge, with a video circulating apparently showing supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly pledging his allegiance to ISIS, and suggestions in the US media that the Kouachi brothers may have returned from Syria relatively recently.

CNN quoted a French source saying that Cherif Kouachi might have travelled to Syria and returned in August last year, whereas USA Today reported both brothers returned last summer.

Charles Shoebridge, a former counter-terrorism detective in the UK, says the strategy of Western governments in relation to the Syrian war will now be scrutinised, and warned that the battlefields “have served as incubators for the kind of jihadist terrorism increasingly seen on Europe's streets.”

Shoebridge told Newsweek: “For the first two of the last three years, countries such as the UK and France did little to stem the flow of their citizens to an already destabilised Syria and Libya, perhaps believing these jihadists would serve Western foreign policy objectives in attacking Gaddafi and Assad for example.”

He continued: “Only when domestic intelligence services began to warn of the dangers of blowback from such people, and when groups such as ISIS began over the last year to turn against the West in Iraq and Syria for example, was any real action taken to stop the flow of UK and French citizens to what, in effect, were largely western policy created terrorist recruiting and training grounds. By then, as Europe seems increasingly likely to experience, it was already too late.”

The security analyst and writer Nafeez Ahmed, who has been critical of the UK’s anti-extremism programme Channel, thinks the approach to extremists with Syrian links was wrong: “What we know is that the police took a pretty lax approach. There were a bunch of court trials in 2008, but there was a whole network who were just sitting there, and who were under surveillance.

“At some point, there was a decision to leave these guys, these Islamists inside Paris, because they were going abroad. I saw quotes from French police and agents who were saying they didn’t think there was a threat for Paris. The question is: to what extend did it allow these people to operate inside France and Britain, and to carry out their recruiting activities?”

A source familiar with the French security services doesn’t believe police and agents ignored terror recruitment, but admits that “we were naive”.

“I think that the confusion in the European position allowed recruiters to say that it was OK to go to Syria. I won’t say they were ‘allowed’ to do this, but clearly, they were not properly prevented. In the two first years, a lot of services didn’t pay the necessary attention to this situation and, actually, for once, it was Belgium who sounded the alarm.”

He continued: “At the very beginning, authorities treated the problem as a humanitarian and  social one, about ‘poor young men going to Syria and being exposed to violence’. At the time very few understood that this was ‘a new Afghanistan’ for jihadists, but at a much larger scale.”

It has emerged that both Kouachi brothers, Coulibaly, and his girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene – who is thought to have escaped France, possibly heading to Syria – were all associated with the same jihadist group in Paris, Buttes-Chaumont. “I think until a year ago, they were considered as a joke,” says the French source.

“Those people were extremists but they were mainly talking in the streets, telling Muslims to cut off from society – it was bizarre, but it was not a priority. Those organisations – like Sharia for Belgium, and the equivalent in London - were seen as crazy people, quite funny people. They were treated as average extremists. Maybe not the security services, but the policy makers were very naive.”

Cancer, we are told, lurks everywhere: popcorn, non-organic fruit, canned tomatoes, processed meats, farm-raised salmon, potato chips, foods (salted, pickled and smoked), GMOs (of course),candy, artificial sweeteners, diet soda, alcohol, red meat; even white flour can kill you.  

Enough already!

In fact, a recent study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine contends that most occurrences of cancers are simply a result of bad luck. To wit, “Plain old bad luck plays a major role in determining who gets cancer and who does not, according to researchers who found that two-thirds of cancer incidence of various types can be blamed on random mutations and not heredity or risky habits like smoking.”

So, why do we obsess about what we eat and drink? Why do we see death lurking in every sip of coffee and every piece of bacon (the latter surely being the best proof yet that God truly loves us)?

Well, maybe it is due to evolution. For most of our existence on this blue dot hurtling through the universe, skepticism was perfectly warranted. Sometimes a delicious-looking berry was just a berry, and sometimes it made your stomach explode. (I exaggerate, but only a little.)

(As a side note, in some places skepticism about food and drink continues to be appropriate. Those who spend sleepless nights worrying about big, faceless corporations infusing us with poison may find it illuminating that in Zimbabwe, it is generally safer to drink a can of Diet Coke than a glass of tap water.)  

Interestingly, obsession about the purity of food and drink seems to be much more prevalent among one sub-group of our species (and, according to MSNBC, the most highly evolved). I am, of course, talking about Homo Progressivensis.

As described by The Guardian, the magnificently evolved Gwyneth Paltrow, to give one example, wrote that she was moved to write a cookbook because

she nearly died after eating too many french fries … and so went to a doctor, submitted herself to more medical tests than a sufferer of Munchausen’s syndrome and came up with the diagnosis that her body was in crisis. A doctor duly decreed that she is allergic to pretty much everything, including peppers, corn and aubergine, and should eat next to nothing. Except quinoa. And maybe some pomegranate on special occasions.

To explain this peculiar behavior of our social betters, we must consult Jonathan Haidt, the NYU professor and former speechwriter for John Kerry. As the good professor writes in his groundbreaking book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, progressives tend to moralize food.

They obsess about food in much the same way that conservatives obsess about sex. Eating, like copulating, is a potential source of impurity. As such, the search for that locally sourced and organically grown tomato serves the same purpose as a pilgrimage to Lourdes or Mecca. It is a quasi-religious form of purification.

The fact is, as we discussed in a recent policy forum, just about everything—including our collective health—is getting better.

So go ahead, start your day with butter-fried bacon and a strong cup of coffee.

Marian L. Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org and a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. This article first appeared on the Cato Institute website.

Melik Demirel has long been interested in creating materials that mimic nature. With his colleagues, he’s fabricated materials based on butterfly wings and gecco footpads. Most recently, the engineering science and mechanics professor and his team at Pennsylvania State University have produced a thermoplastic that replicates squid ring teeth (SRT), a protein complex extracted from the squid tentacles’ suction cups.

They’ve made “an eco-friendly material with remarkable mechanical properties,” Demirel says, one that “provides unique opportunities for a range of applications including drug delivery, materials coatings, tissue engineering, and wet-adhesives.” Their study was published as the cover of the December 17 issue of the Advanced Functional Materials journal.

The problem with previous materials he’s studied in the past, Demirel says, is that they could not be engineered. In other words, they could not be easily reshaped or remolded into different forms, limiting their real-world applications. He turned to squid ring teeth, a structural protein (like hair or nails) similar to silk in its semi-crystalline structure, which could be shaped into any geometry using polymer processes that have been around for a century, as well as newer 3D printing methods.  

The amount of SRT protein that can be extracted from squid is severely limited, “even if you caught all the squid” in the world, says Demirel, with a touch of hyperbole to drive home the point. “The natural abundance will be the limiting factor.” To produce the material in larger quantities, Demirel and his fellow researchers used a common bacteria-based fermentation technique that originated during the 1980s biotech boom.

The researchers took genes from a squid and put it into E. coli bacteria. “You can insert genes into this organism and while it produces its own genes, [it] produces this extra protein,” Demirel explains. He compares the process to making wine or beer, except that instead of the fermentation process producing alcohol, it produces more of the synthesized squid protein.

They began producing the material in a 1-liter tank, but by now have started using a 300-liter tank and can make 30-40 grams a day. In addition, they’ve made several changes to make the production process cheaper, whittling the cost down from $50 per gram to $100 per kilogram. Demirel says they are looking at using algae instead of bacteria to cut down costs further.

The squid-inspired thermoplastic has several advantages over traditional plastics, Demirel says. It’s lighter than carbon-based materials and its versatility allows it to be made into fibers and thin films. Because it’s a protein, it’s also biodegradable and tuneable. In other words, you can modify the properties of the gene at the start of the production process to adapt the material to different needs.

Finally, the production process requires less energy and is more environmentally friendly than that of traditional plastics. Unlike the “high temperature refinery processing of plastics,” which are manufactured from fossil fuel sources like crude oil or from synthetic oils, the creation of the SRT thermoplastics can take place at room temperature

Demirel and his team are not alone in touting the potential of such proteins. In July, the American Chemical Society’s journal ACS Nano published research on a few dozen proteins from a number of species of squid and one cuttlefish.

“We envision SRT-based materials as artificial ligaments, scaffolds to grow bone and as sustainable materials for packaging, substituting for today’s products made with fossil fuels,” Ali Miserez from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore told the ACS. “There is no shortage of ideas, though we are just beginning to work on these proteins.”

Demirel and his team have already started working on a number of applications. They’ve received funding from the army to work on developing new textile materials for soldiers, and they are currently working on making backpacks. They’ve begun collaborating with colleagues in medicine as they think about using colloids—a kind of substance they’ve already succeeded in making from the synthesized SRT protein—for drug delivery that targets certain cells, such as tumor tissue in cancer patients, as well as 3D printing devices like prosthetic arms.

The researchers are also looking toward the adhesive market. Since they’re working with a protein-based material that evolved in a marine environment, it can resist water and stick to other surfaces even when wet, a huge advantage compared to other adhesives, Demirel says.

In the (far) future, Demirel can also see applications in space. He imagines, for example, using the material to produce equipment up on Mars—rather than lugging stuff along on a mission. “One of key advantages,” he says, is that “you can take bacteria and grow it anywhere you like.”

“It’s completely futuristic, Demirel admits, but it seems he can’t help but “start imagining what could be done.”

Anita Ekberg, the acid-tongued Swedish film siren best known for her role in La Dolce Vita, died on Sunday in Rocca di Papa, Italy, at age 83. Her attorney, Patrizia Ubaldi, confirmed the news on Sunday afternoon, saying: “She had hoped to get better, something that didn’t happen.”

Ekberg, who hailed from Malmo, Sweden, had been in an Italian hospital since the holidays as she battled a longtime illness, Ubalzi said. Prior to that she was staying briefly in an Italian care home after her villa was partially destroyed in a fire, BBC reports. The former actress had been in a wheelchair for the past several years since colliding with one of her Great Dane dogs and breaking her hip.

Born Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg on September 29, 1931, she was one of eight children. Ekberg got her big break when she traveled to the U.S. at age 20 to compete in the Miss Universe pageant, after she had been crowned Miss Sweden in 1950. She didn’t win the pageant, but just afterward signed with Universal Pictures.

Her first role was as a resident of the planet Venus in 1953’s Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, and then she went on to act in the John Wayne film Blood Alley. She acted alongside Audrey Hepburn in the 1956 adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in which she played Henry Fonda’s adulterous wife Helene Kuragina. That same year, she appeared in Hollywood or Bust,Back from Eternity, Man in the Vault and Zarak, and was awarded a Golden Globe, along with actresses Victoria Shaw and Dana Wynter, for most promising newcomer.

According to BBC, while filming War and Peace in Rome, she met famed Italian director Federico Fellini, who cast her in his film La Dolce Vita (1960). Her role as Sylvia Rank earned her international acclaim, and the sexually charged scene during which she and co-star Marcello Mastroianni swim in the Trevi Fountain is considered one of the most iconic in film history. The film received the Palme d’Or at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was an instant success.

She and Fellini would work together again in 1962, on the comedy Boccaccio ’70. Her acting career tapered off in the 1970s; her last project was a Fellini exhibition that opened in Amsterdam in 2013.

Ekberg was married twice: first to English actor Anthony Steel, in 1955. The marriage dissolved in 1959, frayed by Steel’s heavy drinking. In 1963 she married Rik Van Nutter, who appeared alongside Sean Connery in the Bond film Thunderball, according to the New York Times.

Officials have said that over three million people, including dozens of world leaders, marched in solidarity following last week’s terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and at a Kosher deli that left 17 dead and a nation wounded.

Wielding “Je Suis Charlie Hebdo” signs, activists and residents marched through the streets of Paris in a unified rally both mourning the victims of terrorist attacks and in defiance of living in fear. Officials have estimated the number of participants to be between 1.3 million and 2 million, reports BBC. In neighboring French cities, similar demonstrations took place and turnout was strong, with up to 1 million people combined, according to AFP.

French president Francois Hollande, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, British prime minister David Cameron and other prominent world leaders marched with the crowds, and gathered for a minute of silence before kicking off the march, which started at the Place de la Republique and snaked through the city, ending at the Place de la Nation.

According to officials, the anti-terrorism rally is the largest demonstration in French history, reports The Guardian. Check out highlights from the rally below. 

A general view shows hundreds of thousands of French citizens taking part in a solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015. Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersA giant figure depicting Marianne, the symbol of France, is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of French citizens taking part in a solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015. Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersFrench columnist for Charlie Hebdo Patrick Pelloux (4thL) and cartoonist Luz (2ndL) take part with family members and relatives of the seventeen victims in a solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015. Yves Herman/ReutersA man holds a giant pencil as he takes part in a Hundreds of thousands of French citizens solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015. Stephane Mahe/ReutersA general view shows hundreds of thousands of French citizens taking part in a solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015. Eric Gaillaird/ReutersCitizens carrying placards reading "Charlie it is us" and "The religions united against the hatred" take part in a Hundreds of thousands of French citizens solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015. Charles PlatiauIsrael's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L), Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (2ndL), French President Francois Hollande (C), Germany's Chancellor Angela Merke (4thL), European Council President Donald Tusk (5thL) and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attend the solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015.Philippe Wojazer/ReutersA woman holds colour pencils during a silent protest and tribute to the victims of the shootings by gunmen at the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.Darrin Zammit/ReutersPeople walk past a grafitti tag reading "I am Charlie" as they take part in a solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015.Eric Gaillard/ReutersA man holds up a giant pencil during a march for the victims of the shootings by gunmen at the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, in Brussels January 11, 2015. Francois Lenoir/Reuters

“Games are nice, but not really life-changing,” says Oded Ben Dov, an Israeli entrepreneur who turned from making mobile phone games to creating a phone for people with spinal cord injuries, ALS, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis and other mobility impairments.

His invention is an Android device activated with the voice command “Open Sesame.” The phone has a front-facing camera that searches for a face in the frame. Once it finds your face, you control a cursor by shifting your head up, down and sideways, your movements tracked by a proprietary algorithm. When you rest in one position for a couple of seconds, a navigation icon pops up and you can choose whether you want to click, swipe, see more options or exit by moving the cursor to hover over one of four circles that appear on the screen like a compass rose.

With the Sesame smartphone, those with mobility impairments can call, text, surf the Web, participate in social media and play games, just like anybody else, without buying any special equipment, says Ben Dov: “Our intention is to help them regain control, regain independence, privacy.”

Ben Dov co-founded Sesame Enable with Giora Livne, who served as a naval commander in the Israeli Defense Forces and then worked as an electrical power engineer in the private sector before an accident left him a quadriplegic nearly a decade ago. Livne called Ben Dov—who specializes in computer vision—after the young coder appeared on television to demonstrate a game operated by gestures.

“I can’t move my hands. I can’t move my legs. Can you make me a phone I could use?” Ben Dov recalls his future partner saying.

Sesame Enable was named a winner of Verizon’s Powerful Answers Award in December as the company was in the midst of an Indiegogo campaign to crowdsource funds for its first shipment of phones, in March, and tablets, due out in June.

The award will cover the development costs. (Verizon will announce at the end of January whether Sesame will receive a $250,000 or $1 million prize.) The company plans to use the nearly $34,000 it has already raised to donate some Sesame phones to those in need. The phones cost $700 to preorder on Indiegogo, and the retail price will run up to $1,000.

For the recipients, the phones can mean much more than a mindless 20 minutes with Angry Birds and Candy Crush. “We started realizing that through giving someone a smartphone, we’re actually opening up so many more options—accessibility to the virtual space but also to physical space,” says Ben Dov. “My partner Giora just ordered a smart home system,” for example. Combined with the Sesame smartphone, it will allow Livne to control his television, thermostat, and lights.

When Livne first started using his touch-free phone, though, it wasn’t being able to check his email or control of the television that he was most excited about. He just wanted to order flowers for his wife, without asking her to dial.

Correction: This article originally misstated the name of Verizon's Powerful Answers Award. 

The first great album of 2015? That’s easy. Panda Bear's Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper is as otherworldly as its title, as colorful as its cover art and as gleefully psychedelic as anything befitting of the Noah Lennox name.

But there is a mournful edge, and beneath the reggae-inspired drum breaks and glimmery, washed out synths lie some of the most conventionally beautiful music the Animal Collective member has ever composed. On “Tropic of Cancer” he sings of his late father’s illness over lush, interlocking harp arpeggios, while on the sing-song-y “Boys Latin” he sounds like he’s testing out nonsense syllables one-by-one, letting the phrases shift back and forth between headphone channels like a ping pong ball. Neither as sample-heavy as 2007’s Person Pitch nor as guitar-driven as 2011’s Tomboy, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper is a dense, bewilderingly brilliant listen.

Lennox, who has been based in Portugal for a decade, traveled to New York recently to talk about his record. He is boyish and thoughtful in person, his speaking voice a relaxed, nasal-y murmur without those layers of tripped out reverb. We met at the Rubber Tracks studio space in Brooklyn just before Thanksgiving and spoke about death, reggae and the long road to Grim Reaper.

Noah Lennox, better known as Panda Bear.Tonje Thilesen/Domino Recording Company

Surprise album releases have become so fashionable recently, but you've done somewhat the opposite. What’s the benefit of the long build-up?

I wonder sometimes if it's smarter just to surprise it like that. Creatively speaking, I kind of wish I could just finish something and share it with people. I'm always impatient to get it out there. I do a lot of daydreaming and planning about stuff…

I should say on the last two albums, I was always releasing singles kind of staggered. As I would make them, I would release them. I think it worked well on the first one and then not so well on the second one. It's so hard to say these days with the way the whole music business is. It seems like it's so in flux.

You’ve had these songs sitting around for a while. You've been touring behind them. Have they been mutating all along?

Yeah, but only kind of slightly. The stuff that I was performing live a year or so ago—they've gotten a little more spaced out, kind of more ethereal once we went into the studio. They got a little more floaty and a little more spacey, literally, in kind of a sci-fi way. The way I made a lot of this is by fooling around with drum breaks and arranging the stuff. I made maybe between 40 and 60 what you might call "beats." And the stuff that I found myself going back to and listening to, the stuff I was most attracted to, I would flesh out a little more and try to write the singing parts and the words.

What can you tell me about the album title?

Initially it was inspired by a bunch of dub and reggae records from Jamaica that would pit one musician or producer meets another musician or producer. It was a way of signaling some sort of collaboration between the two. I thought it was funny, the idea of me working together with the Grim Reaper to make music, kind of like making a band together. I like that it harked back to these Jamaican records. I feel like dub music in general has been the most consistently inspiring music for me, particularly from a production standpoint. I just find that sonic setup to be endlessly satisfying. I like sort of rainy and wet-sounding music, and that sort of fits that bill perfectly for me.

Were there any experiences that drove you to the more morbid side of things?

Difficult to say. I suppose being middle-aged, death becomes more of a tangible thing. There's been an image in my mind over the past couple years. I spent the last 36 years of my life walking up a hill or up a mountain. Having a sense of what was on the other side of the mountain, but not being able to see it. Now I feel like I'm kind of at the top where I can look back down one side, where I've come from, but I can also see down the other side. I suppose that being in this place in my life, I wouldn't say it's morbid. There isn't a sense of mortality in any dark way or difficult way. But it certainly becomes a more tangible thing.

Noah Lennox, better known as Panda Bear.Tonje Thilesen/Domino Recording Company.

It's been more than two years since the last Animal Collective album. How much of that time did you spend working on this record?

When we recording [2012 Animal Collective album] Centipede Hz in El Paso is when I first started making stuff that eventually became these songs. It was a very basic form then. It's been two and a half years slowly chipping away at the stone to make the sculpture.

When does [producer] Sonic Boom come in?

Pretty late. Earlier than Tomboy. I'm not crazy about working with the same people or doing things in exactly the same way. The more the set-up is different, the easier it will be to get results that sound kind of different, or new or fresh. I was a little nervous about doing stuff with him again, but I felt like starting with him earlier, going into the studio, would yield different results.

Any other producers you've been eyeing for potential collaborations?

I'd like to do something with Geoff Barrow from Portishead.

What were you listening to while putting the album together?

I wasn't listening to a whole lot of hip hop or anything like that. Before making the songs I was. Mostly this guy 9th Wonder. He produced a record for Little Brother called The Minstrel Show. I have a version of it that's just the instrumentals, and that was hugely inspirational for this stuff. There's also a Suzanne Vega song, a remix of one of her songs, that I think I heard on the radio, probably around the time when I started making this stuff. The way that song is set up with the vocals and the drum break, I feel like I can connect the dots between these songs and that.

When Tomboy came out, you talked about how you were moving away from samples, towards a more—

I wanted to write songs on the guitar.

Right. Was this reversing course? The new album is really beat-driven.

That was something I was a little nervous about at first. I was making all this stuff on the computer. The possibilities are so open in that set-up. With the Person Pitch stuff and the samples, the boundaries were very clearly defined. There was very little I could do with the sounds and the samples. Making the stuff on the computer, there's a lot more flexibility with how you chop things up and multitracking lots of samples together. And I feel like the characters of the drum breaks and how they dictated what the song felt like.

There are a few tracks that seem like the closest thing you've written to typical ballads. "Tropic of Cancer" is a really beautiful track.

We tried to throw a bunch of stuff at that track, but anything we did trying to add to the song felt like it was diminishing returns. Even the vocal. It's not very exact, it's very imperfect. Redoing that vocal take, it lost some of its power.

The song is about disease. It's a good example of how lyrically, they would start in a very personal place and then you could see me trying to expand my gaze or expand my perspective. It starts out with an anecdote about my father getting sick. He had a tumor. I think I reference a conversation my parents had with me when they first found out about it. They had a weird, casual vibe about it, which I thought was strange. Then, as the song goes on, it sort of becomes about disease in a larger sense and trying to forgive disease as far as seeing it as just any other being in the universe trying to propagate and survive. And trying to emphasize with it in that context.

Can you tell me about the song "Mr. Noah"? I thought that was one of the most striking and overtly psychedelic songs you've ever done.

Oh, sweet. It's kind of like a self-portrait. I was speaking to this holistic healer lady in Portugal and she was telling me that my character was divided up into three sections. She could identify my character in these three animals, one of which was a wolf, one of which was a bear and one of which was an eagle. I thought that was a bit odd. I had to think about if I could characterize things about my personality that fit those animals. [The lyrics] all reference parts of my personality that I'm not super happy about. It's a bit grumpy, the song. It's a light-hearted look at something that's maybe a little darker and difficult to digest.

What was your headspace like when writing the lyrics?

I felt like I'd done a lot of introspective stuff in the past, and started to feel like maybe it was bordering on narcissism, or… I guess I was just weary of that. I feel like past a certain point, introspection just becomes self-centered. I suppose having children and being kind of middle-aged assisted in that impulse a little bit. The themes are very big and broad, though they all started from a very personal space. Often something that happened to me or something that I thought about.

You have two kids now, right?

Yeah. They're nine and four.

Do they listen to your music?

The nine-year-old, I've tried. She doesn't dig it at all. The four-year-old, I still feel like I have a chance. He seems more musically adventurous. She seems to be more stimulated by visual stuff than music. She just doesn't seem that interested.

is it just inherently uncool because it's dad's music?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. In a big way. The studio is in my apartment, and sound travels in really weird ways. Not only in my apartment, but in my neighborhood. When I'm practicing, it's obvious to everybody in the house. She gets pretty bummed about it.

For viewers in the know, the season premiere of MTV’s competition reality show The Challenge last Tuesday was tinged with sadness: Two cast members died after filming, one of cancer and one of causes not made public. It’s not the first time the network has had to deal with losing reality stars that way, but industry experts say it’s unheard of for producers to have to face two deaths before airing a single season of a show.

As the lines between public and private blur on television, producers of “unscripted” programming find themselves increasingly having to work around the off-screen lives of the people on screen. The death of a cast member between a show’s filming and airing is perhaps the biggest obstacle, as it leaves networks struggling with moral and financial decisions. For The Challenge, producers faced twice as many hurdles.

“In the production world, if someone passes before a show is set to air, they will generally pull that show before it airs out of respect for the person and their family,” says Elyse Neiman Seiter, who produced Made, True Life and other MTV programs, “unless the airing is going to inspire viewers.”

“The tragic reality of death is part of the arc of the stories of characters whom viewers have grown to know,” says Mark Andrejevic, author of Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. “The calculation for producers is to navigate the line between what seems appropriate and what might be seen as exploitative.”

Seiter and Andrejevic both point out that MTV pioneered navigating such dilemmas; the third season of The Real World, in 1994, depicted cast member Pedro Zamora’s battle with AIDS. Zamora died five months after filming, and just hours after the season finale. That show’s producer, Jonathan Murray, also produces The Challenge.

The Challenge, which had its premiere in 1998 as Road Rules: All Stars and is now in its 26th season, features cast members, mostly from previous MTV shows, competing for money. This season, called “Battle of the Exes 2,” features 26 competitors. Diem Brown died November 14 at age 34; Ryan Knight, 29, died November 27.

Diem Brown died in November after a long struggle with cancer, as documented on MTV.MTV

Brown and Knight had both previously been on The Challenge. Brown had long faced ovarian cancer, and aspects of that struggle were shown to TV viewers. Knight appeared first on MTV’s The Real World: New Orleans. Us Weekly reported that he had been complaining of stomach pains and that friends found him dead “after a night of partying.”

In recent years, MTV and its associated networks have had to choose between scrapping shows and airing them as tributes. In 2009, MTV delayed airing Gone Too Far after its host, Adam Goldstein, also known as DJ AM, died of an accidental cocaine and prescription drug overdose. The show featured Goldstein, a recovering addict, helping people who were struggling with addiction. MTV decided to air the show a week later than planned, two months after Goldstein’s death. “I believed what happened to DJ AM affirmed the need for the show,” Michael Hirschorn, who helped develop the show, tells Newsweek.

As former executive vice president, original programming and production at VH1, which like MTV is owned by Viacom, Hirschorn oversaw Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, which has had at least five cast members die after their seasons aired. With some of his shows that depict struggle, Hirschorn says production members have checked in on cast members after filming. “The entertainment business in general does not put a premium on ethics and good behavior,” he says, “but I think one of the main jobs we have as producers it to look out for and protect our cast members.”

Also in 2009, VH1 canceled two shows following the suicide of a cast member after his ex-wife’s body was found mutilated. (Police suspected the cast member killed her. After his death, the district attorney’s office said it would close its investigation.) The network scrapped that season for one of those shows, a competition like The Challenge, but later continued the series.

In 2013, MTV promptly canceled Buckwild, then in production on its second season, after one of its stars died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. “How can the show go on with this specter of a tragedy hanging over it?” an MTV executive said at the time. The show’s executive producer reportedly disagreed with the network’s decision and said he would try to continue the series independently. Producers also paid for the star’s funeral.

Ryan Knight (right) was one of two cast members who died before the season premiere of MTV's The Challenge.MTV

MTV released statements following the deaths of Brown and Knight in November, and in December the network announced it would dedicate this season of The Challenge to them. The network also aired a special, “We <3 Diem,” on December 9.

Through an MTV spokesperson, Producer Jonathan Murray declined to comment on the decision to air the season following the deaths, but the spokesperson tells Newsweek, “It’s a tragic loss for us and something that doesn’t come lightly to us, and we want to be respectful.” The spokesperson added that some sort of tribute to Knight will air following an upcoming episode.

When answering questions on Reddit last week, Murray wrote, “We were still editing when they passed away. I know it influenced how we edited the shows.” When asked whether he considered not airing the season, Murray responded: “Never a consideration. All the cast and people who make the series believe that Diem and Knight would have wanted us to air the shows. We worked hard to make sure these final show do them justice.”

Jeff Dawson, a former MTV reality show editor, says editing a cast member out of the narrative is a possibility. “Because the edges can be a little rough, you do have a little more wiggle room or flexibility when it comes to shifting the focus,” he says.

Dawson added that while fictional TV shows and movies also must deal with the deaths of cast members (Philip Seymour Hoffman had several projects in the works when he died last year, for example), scrapping a reality project is more often a possibility because of the lower cost of creating the program.

Elyse Neiman Seiter adds that canceling a show is sometimes an ethical necessity. “For a network to choose to pull a show off the air or to withhold it from airing if it’s already been completely shot, cut, and delivered is absolutely a financial loss,” she says. “But they have to weigh that loss against morals and doing the right thing.”

A 29-year-old man who killed three people and critically wounded another during a shooting spree in the northern Idaho city of Moscow had five weapons in his car, police said on Sunday.

John Lee, 29, was arrested after the Saturday shootings when he crashed his car during a high-speed chase with police. Inside his Honda Fit, authorities later found three handguns, a shotgun and a rifle, saidMoscow Police Chief David Duke.

Lee has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one court of attempted murder, Duke said.

The motive for the shootings was not known, Duke said. He said authorities would likely seek to search alaptop computer that was also removed from Lee's vehicle.

The shootings occurred in rapid succession.

Lee, a resident of the city, is believed to have first killed his mother at her home before driving to an office building and shooting and killing his landlord, and wounding another man who was in the landlord's office, Duke said.

Lee then drove to an Arby's restaurant and asked to see the manager, before shooting and killing the 47-year-old woman, he added.

The suspect fled and was pursued by police shortly after he was spotted just over the state border in Pullman, Washington. The chase ended when Lee crashed on an interstate highway.

Lee was jailed in Washington pending extradition to Idaho after being taken into custody on a felony-level charge of eluding police, Duke said.

"The city and community are grieving at this point, but it’s a strong community," Duke said.

The victims were identified as Lee's mother, Terri Grzebielski, 61, a physician’s assistant, landlord David Trail, 76, and restaurant manager Belinda Niebuhr, all of Moscow. Michael Chin, 39, of Seattle, survived his wounds and was listed in critical condition at a Moscow hospital.

Last week, conservators at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston opened a time capsule sealed by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere back in 1795. The 220-year-old time capsule is the oldest-known in the U.S., according to historians.

The time capsule was initially discovered in December at the Massachusetts State House, where researchers took seven hours to carefully unearth the brass container the size of a cigar box. Removing the screws from the top of the lid took nearly five hours, but it was worth it: Inside lay 23 rare coins, five folded newspapers in “amazingly good condition” and a silver plate commemorating the 20th anniversary of American Independence, in July 1795. The artifacts will eventually return to the State House after being exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts.

This discovery raises the question: What else is out there? The answer is, a lot. It’s unknown how many time capsules are resting in the ground, but whether they’re regional, national or international, time capsules are a part of our culture.

Here’s a roundup of many of the niftiest time capsules that have yet to be unearthed, in order of when they’re scheduled to be opened:

FDR’s Time Capsule 

This time capsule is intriguing in that we have virtually no idea what it contains, save for a speech that former U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote for the capsule's celebration at the University of Pennsylvania. The capsule, buried in the campus quad in 1940, weighs all of 450 pounds -- so what else could be in there? Top-secret military data from World War II? Hundreds of cans of Spam? Until 2040, when it’s supposed to be unveiled, we can only speculate.

The Nickelodeon Time Capsule

Nickelodeon, the cable network for children that brought to our culture such gems as All That and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, buried a time capsule in 1992. It’s filled with goodies that would make any ’90s kid salivate, among them a Nintendo Gameboy, Home Alone on VHS, a box of Twinkies, and a jar of Gak! The network crowdsourced for the time capsule, calling on the “Kids World Council” to decide what should be included in this piece of history. The capsule is buried in front of Nickelodeon Studios at Universal City, California and is due to be opened on April 30, 2042, 50 years after it was laid into the ground.

General Dynamics Time Capsule

In 1963, on the fifth anniversary of the opening of the General Dynamics Astronautics facility in San Diego, researchers created a time capsule intended to be opened 100 years later. The coolest part? A booklet entitled 2063 A.D., in which prominent astronauts, world leaders, researchers, military personnel and others wrote predictions of where space exploration might stand at that point. Were any of them right? Seems like we’ll have to wait and see.

Los Angeles Bicentennial Time Capsule

In 1976, the City of Angels celebrated its bicentennial with a blowout and the burial of a time capsule containing artifacts appropriate to the era: a pet rock, a dress worn by Cher, Los Angeles Lakers veteran Jerry West’s jersey and probably a generous amount of smog. It’s scheduled to be opened on the city’s tricentennial, in 2076.

Martin Luther King Jr. Time Capsule

Underneath the Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. lies a time capsule containing the belongings of the late civil rights pioneer and activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech at the neighboring Willard Hotel. This one will be opened in 2088, a hundred years after it was buried.

National Millennium Time Capsule

What do Ray Charles’s sunglasses, DNA models and a piece of the Berlin Wall have in common? They’ve been deemed by officials as "artifacts, ideas, or accomplishments” that best represent our nation at this point in time, and are thus worthy of being included in the National Millennium Time Capsule. Sealed by the White House in 1999, this one won’t be opened until 2100.

Westinghouse Time Capsules

Two time capsules, one in 1939 and another in 1965, were buried under the site of the New York World’s Fair in Flushing-Meadows Corona Park in New York City’s Queens borough by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. Instructions read that the pair be opened simultaneously in 6939 A.D., exactly 5,000 years after the first one was signed and sealed. The 1939 time capsule contains newsreels, seeds, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a Sears Roebuck catalog and a message from Albert Einstein, among others, while the contents of the 1965 time capsule include an electric toothbrush, freeze-dried food, a Beatles album and birth control pills.

Crypt of Civilization

There may not be an Earth as we know it when this time capsule is supposed to be unearthed: 8113. Buried in 1940 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta by the university’s former president Thornwell Jacobs, it is modeled after a cell that one might find in an Egyptian pyramid. The enormous vault contains items that have been crucial to our civilization thus far: classic works of film and literature, every book of faith, an original script for Gone With the Wind, as well as cultural odds and ends, including a sealed bottle of Budweiser and a typewriter. But what if future civilizations can’t read English? Not to worry: At the front of the crypt lies a “language integrator,” a machine intended to help the aliens who open said crypt with our mother tongue.

George Lucas Time Capsule

The mastermind behind the Star Wars enterprise has buried a time capsule at Skywalker Ranch containing priceless memorabilia and artifacts from the company. But don’t expect to hear about the grand unveiling in your lifetime. Lucas told Wired in an interview that the time capsule will “never” be resurrected because “it's for some archeologist 2,000 years from now to discover. We have an archive….and it is very big. But after a few hundred years it will be gone, so the only thing left is the time capsule.”

Immigration to Europe should be largely halted, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said late on Sunday, demanding a robust EU response to last week's killings in France.

Orban was speaking after attending a mass rally in Paris to pay tribute to 17 people killed in attacks launched by a trio of Islamist extremists, who were born in France to immigrant families.

The deadly attacks look certain to bolster anti-immigration movements around Europe, and Orban, who has called for migration curbs in the past, said it was time for Brussels to get tough.

"We should not look at economic immigration as if it had any use, because it only brings trouble and threats to European people," he told state television. "Therefore, immigration must be stopped. That's the Hungarian stance."

The only exception, he said, should be for people claiming political asylum.

"Hungary will not become a target destination for immigrants," he said. "We will not allow it, at least as long as I am prime minister and as long as this government is in power."

Orban's right-wing government was elected for a second consecutive term last year. The prime minister said minorities living in Hungary, which has a population of some 10 million, posed no particular problem.

"We do not want to see a significant minority among ourselves that has different cultural characteristics and background. We would like to keep Hungary as Hungary," he added.

According to the national statistics office (KSH), some 350,000 Hungarians live and worked abroad, most of them in Germany, Britain and Austria.

The suspected female accomplice of Islamist militants behind the attacks in Paris last week crossed into Syria on Jan. 8 from Turkey, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in comments posted on state-run news agency Anatolian's website on Monday.

The suspect, Hayat Boumeddiene, arrived at an Istanbul airport on Jan. 2 via Madrid and stayed in a hotel, Cavusoglu said in an interview with Anatolian.

Those dates would put her in Turkey before the violence in Paris began, and leaving for Syria while the attackers were still on the loose.

Seventeen people, including journalists and policemen, were killed in three days of violence that began with a shooting attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, Jan. 7, and ended with a hostage-taking at a kosher supermarket on Friday. The three gunmen were also killed.

French police are searching for Boumeddiene, the 26-year-old partner of one of the attackers, describing her as "armed and dangerous".

Cavusoglu said as soon as Turkey identified the whereabouts of Boumeddiene, it passed the information to French authorities.

World leaders including Muslim and Jewish statesmen linked arms on Sunday to lead more than a million French citizens through Paris to pay tribute to victims of the attacks.

Many Russian journalists have become experts in black humor. They have to be if one of their goals is to remain sane. One reporter at a state-owned Russian newspaper joked privately with friends that they would have to scribble the “true story” in milk between the lines of ink, the way underground messages from exiles were conveyed back to Russia in tsarist times by the future father of the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir Lenin.

Press freedom has taken a giant step backward since the heady days after Communism’s collapse, when Russian editors welcomed independent ideas and valued professional reporting. It has become difficult to remain committed to decent journalism without risking your job and your family’s welfare. In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, dissidents invented the word samizdat to describe their clandestine scribblings. Now a new generation of dissidents is starting projects discreetly online, or going abroad to reach Russians from outside the country’s borders.

No wonder. Most journalists in Russia live in fear of the authorities firing an editor or reporter for publishing something disparaging. For Russkaya Planeta, a television company covering regional news, that day came on November 27 when the channel’s main investor fired the editor-in-chief, Pavel Pryanikov, after a report was aired about the abductions of Tatars in Russian-annexed Crimea.

Many journalists have created independent multimedia websites, both in Russia and abroad. Blogs have popped up with anonymous sponsors. “If the Kremlin shuts down five media outlets, 10 will appear online,” says Timur Olevsky, who covers the war in Ukraine for Dozhd TV, an independent channel struggling to survive on viewers’ donations. Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists honored Dozhd’s editor-in-chief, Mikhail Zygar, with the International Press Freedom Award for defiance of imprisonment, repression and censorship.

It cost reporter Oleg Kashin just $40 to launch his Kashinguru media project last spring—the monthly fee for the domain and hosting services required for the website. By October, half a million readers had visited it.

Two members of the band Pussy Riot who were recently released from prison, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, launched the website Media Zona, a play on the Russian slang word for the gulag (the zone). The site covers news from Russian prisons, human rights violations and overtly political court cases.

It can take just hours to create a new outlet on social networks. Yelena Vasilyeva’s Cargo-200 posted voices of army families searching for loved ones who had disappeared or been illegally deployed to fight in Ukraine. The more pressure the Kremlin puts on journalists, the more the solidarity between them grows.

The case of Lenta, an online newspaper, is instructive. Last march, Ivan Kolpakov was one of 78 reporters who quit their jobs at the high-profile site after a phone call from an investor close to the Kremlin prompted the firing of its editor-in-chief, Galina Timchenko. “I simply could not breathe in that stuffy atmosphere,” said Kolpakov at his new office in Riga, Latvia, where he, Timchenko and a couple of dozen other self-exiled Moscow reporters launched their new outlet, Meduza, in October.

During the war in Ukraine, there has been an unprecedented level of state propaganda in the papers and on the airwaves. The war has divided journalists into those who would compromise with the new hard line and those who chose to quit their jobs or protest censorship in other ways. Two state reporters complained that every other article they wrote was put “on hold” or never published.

On December 29, Russian authorities closed down one of the last independent media outlets, Siberian television channel TV-2. In a final video message to viewers, reporters at the station said they had tried to report the truth despite constant pressure to change their editorial policy.

Often, direct intervention by the Kremlin is not needed. Self-censorship is pervasive and corrosive—editors know what must be done when liberal-minded colleagues, like Timchenko, lose their jobs. The Kremlin has made the general line clear: During this information warfare against the West, journalists have a duty to defend Mother Russia. Lenta realized that the conflict with Ukraine was “a minefield,” Timchenko said, but she nevertheless assigned reporter Ilya Azar to report from both sides of the front line.

Last summer, the Russian parliament introduced a law obliging bloggers with over 3,000 readers to register, which allows the government to review the authors’ personal information. That has not been very effective, according to State Duma Deputy Robert Schlegel, who supports policies to restrain anti-Putin media outlets that are “biased” but says there is no point in banning them online. “Medusa only grows new heads,” he says.

Nevertheless, the Kremlin continues to “cleanse the destructive and anti-Russian journalism,” as pro-Kremlin think tank analyst Yuri Krupnov puts it. When thousands of doctors and nurses demonstrated against Putin’s medical reforms (which included cuts to hospital budgets), the only news sources that published details of the action were online.

Russian modern art expert and blogger Murat Gelman decided to leave the country last spring. His Cultural Alliance project, a network that involved artists from Russian cities in 11 regions, was deemed not sufficiently patriotic. He came under pressure to give it up. “I could not stop writing my blog, it is a part of me,” Gelman says. The editor-in-chief of Kommersant, Mikhail Mikhailin, had to resign after the newspaper published an article about one of the most influential figures in Putin’s circle, Igor Sechin. The piece apparently infuriated Sechin, and so the editor had to go.

Losing a job in such a public way can lead to better things. On the night Pryanikov was fired from the Russkaya Planeta television channel, five of his colleagues quit in solidarity. Most of the staff attended a liquid wake for the “death” of news in Russia. Within hours, Open Russia, a news website launched by formerly imprisoned tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has become a persistent irritant to Putin from his base in Switzerland, posted on Twitter: “Guys, send over your CVs.” 

Indonesian navy divers retrieved the black box flight data recorder from the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet on Monday, a major step towards investigators unraveling the cause of the crash that killed all 162 people on board.

Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather on Dec. 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

"At 7:11, we succeeded in lifting the part of the black box known as the flight data recorder," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, the head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters at a news conference.

The second so-called black box, containing the cockpit voice recorder, has been located but not yet retrieved, Madjono Siswosuwarno, the main investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), told Reuters.

The black boxes, found near the wrecked wing of the plane in the northern Java Sea, contain a wealth of data that will be crucial for investigators piecing together the sequence of events that led to the airliner plunging into the sea. The national weather bureau has said seasonal storms were likely a factor in AirAsia's first fatal crash.

The flight data recorder was brought by helicopter to Pangkalan Bun, the southern Borneo town that has been the base for the search effort, and then flown to Jakarta for analysis.

The black box looked to be in good condition, said Tatang Kurniadi, the head of the transport safety committee.

Investigators may need up to a month to get a complete reading of the data.

"The download is easy, probably one day. But the reading is more difficult ... could take two weeks to one month," the NTSC's Siswosuwarno said.

Calmer Waters

Over the weekend, three vessels detected "pings" that were believed to be from the black boxes, but strong winds, powerful currents and high waves hampered search efforts.

Dozens of Indonesian navy divers took advantage of calmer weather on Monday to retrieve the flight recorder and search for the fuselage of the Airbus A320-200.

Forty-eight bodies have been retrieved from the Java Sea and brought to Surabaya for identification. Searchers believe more bodies will be found in the plane's fuselage.

Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority.

"I told our soldiers that the search isn't over yet," Armed Forces Chief Moeldoko told reporters. "I am sure the remaining victims are in the body of the plane. So we need to find those."

Indonesia AirAsia, 49 percent owned by the Malaysia-based AirAsia budget group, has come under pressure from authorities in Jakarta since the crash.

The transport ministry has suspended the carrier's Surabaya-Singapore license for flying on a Sunday, for which it did not have permission. However, the ministry has said this had no bearing on the crash of Flight QZ8501.

President Joko Widodo said the crash exposed widespread problems in the management of air travel in Indonesia.

Coming of age tale "Boyhood" won the coveted Golden Globe for best drama on Sunday, while the quirky period caper "The Grand Budapest Hotel" was the surprise winner for best comedy or musical, in a big upset to awards season front-runner "Birdman."

The first major awards for the Hollywood film industry this year were scattered widely among many films, potentially setting up a complex race towards the industry's top honors, the Oscars, on Feb. 22.

The night took on a more somber tone from the beginning when stars like George Clooney and Helen Mirren showed their support for free expression and the victims of a deadly attack on a satirical French newspaper last week.

The president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which organizes the Globes, brought the room to a standing ovation by saying: "Together we will stand united against anyone who would repress free speech anywhere from North Korea to Paris."

"Boyhood" took three Globes from five nominations, including the night's top drama film honor, a reward for the unprecedented cinematic venture of making a film over 12 years with the same actors. The man behind the low-budget experiment, Richard Linklater, won best director and Patricia Arquette won best supporting actress.

If "Boyhood" goes on to win the Academy Award for best picture, it will constitute an extraordinary run for a film from the small studio IFC Films.

"When he came to us with this project 14 years ago, we said yes, the man has such humanity. He's so humble. He put so much of his own life into this movie,""Boyhood" producer Jonathan Sehring said of Linklater.

"Birdman," a satire of show business that led all nominees with seven nods, picked up best screenplay and best actor in a comedy or musical for Michael Keaton, embodying a comeback in both the film and real life.

But losing best comedy or musical to "The Grand Budapest Hotel" from director Wes Anderson was a big blow to the awards momentum of "Birdman." The colorful tale of a hotel concierge caught up in a murder mystery and art heist won only that award.

Up to 10 films can compete for the Oscar best picture. In the last two years, the winner of best drama at the Globes has gone on to win the Academy Award for best picture.

'Selma,''Imitation Game' Falter

Another top drama contender to suffer disappointment was the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic "Selma," which made history with the first nomination for best director for an African American woman. It won one award: best song for "Glory."

"The Imitation Game," a British biopic about a World War Two codebreaking hero, walked away empty-handed despite the popularity of its star, Benedict Cumberbatch, and the heft of its distributor, the awards-savvy Weinstein Co.

The outcome of the 72nd Globes will not influence the Academy Awards slate, since voting for next week's nominees announcement is closed. But it can give crucial momentum to the Oscar race.

The Globes fortified the frontrunner positions of actors who portrayed extreme illness.

Julianne Moore won best actress in a drama as an early-onset Alzheimer's patient in "Still Alice," while Eddie Redmayne took best actor in a drama for his portrayal of physicist Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything."

Politics played heavily into acceptance speeches, from support for the Hispanic and transgender communities to calls to protect freedom of expression and solidarity after the deadly attack on French newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

George Clooney, receiving a lifetime achievement award and sporting a lapel pin declaring "Je suis Charlie," noted the "extraordinary day" in Paris and around the world as millions of people and world leaders marched to pay tribute to victims of Islamist militant attacks.

"They marched in support of the idea that we will not walk in fear," said Clooney. "Je suis Charlie."

The hacking of Sony Pictures also played out at the Globes, but in a more humorous way.

Third-time hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler opened with a joke about the cyber attack, which the U.S. government has blamed on North Korea. The country, which denies it is behind the hacking, was angered over the studio's comedy "The Interview," which depicts the assassination of leader Kim Jong Un.

"Tonight we are celebrating all TV shows we know and love and all the movies North Korea was OK with," Fey said.

In television awards, the HFPA anointed "Transparent" as best comedy series, the first big award for original programing streamed online from retail giant Amazon Inc.. The show is about a divorced father transitioning to become a woman and how his grown children react.

In the drama category, Showtime's "The Affair" won for its first season, serving an upset to the favorite, the political thriller "House of Cards" from Netflix Inc.

But Kevin Spacey did win best actor in a TV drama series, his first Globe after eight nominations, for his role as the conniving politician Frank Underwood in "House of Cards."

It was a sign of things to come when, standing on the red carpet before the 72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards, the Today Show’s Matt Lauer asked nominee Amy Adams about the rumor she would play Janis Joplin -- and then offered to be an extra in the Woodstock scenes, wearing tie dye and covered in mud. Though I may never be able to expunge that image from my imagination, it proved to be rather fitting as the men played second fiddle, if not roadie, to the women most of the night.

Though returning hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler seemed a tad tamer than in years past, and sadly announced they would not be returning (maybe they’re holding their hosting duties ransom until the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gives them each another statuette?), they set the tone for the evening when Poehler told Frances McDormand, “you are the only person here I would save in a fire,” and then tweaked the ever twee Wes Anderson saying he “arrived on a bicycle made of antique tuba parts.”

Anderson won Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical, for the Grand Budapest Hotel (and gave one of the evening’s funnier acceptance speeches, saying he wasn’t going to thank all the people who made the film while mentioning them by name -- and then going on to thank the Dagmars and Lorenzos, members of the Hollywood foreign press who voted for his film) and McDormand’s depressing HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge was blanked -- but the hosts ‘tude set the tone.

Lily Tomlin, presenting along with erstwhile Nine to Five co-star Jane Fonda the award for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical TV show, said, “Finally we can put away that negative stereotype that men just aren’t funny.” Amy Adams, winning for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical  (while keeping one eye out for Matt Lauer) touted Margaret Keane, who she plays in Big Eyes, as a feminist role model -- before lighting up Twitter with a remark about “Megan, at home nurturing twins in her womb.” Though people were thinking surrogacy, it turns out Megan is her publicist. (Maybe she was the Megan who tweeted, “For the love of God, DIFFUSE THE LIGHT OR POWDER UP THE TALENT.”) Adams was so surprised to get the award, “I didn’t even apply lip gloss.”

It’s like going onstage naked! Not that there was any of that, but Jennifer Lopez challenged the censors with her scene stealing dress, prompting the only old-fashioned sexist line of the night as she presented, for Best Actor in a Mini-Series, with Jeremy Renner. Envelope in hand J Lo asked, “Want me to open it, I’ve got the nails?” Renner: “You’ve got the globes too.”

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal arrives at the Weinstein Netflix after party after the 72nd annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California January 11, 2015.Patrick T. Fallon /Reuters

Bada-bing! And you could all but sense McDormand crossing Renner off her next picture list. But for the most part, the tables were turned, as when Maggie Gyllenhaal, who won for her performance in the Sundance Channel’s The Honourable Woman, talked about “the wealth of roles for actual women in television” (as opposed to fictional characters) or Julianne Moore, winning for her role as a dementia sufferer in Still Alice, recalled when Lisa Genova, the author of the book on which the film was based told her, “no one wanted to see a role about a middle-aged woman.” (Reminiscent of Fey’s earlier joke: “Boyhood proves there are great roles for women over 40 as long as you get hired when you are under 40.”)

Far less classy was Ruth Wilson, who, when accepting for her role as the small town temptress (or not) in Showtime’s The Affair, told co-star Dominic West, “Dom, your ass is something of great beauty, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Or maybe she was just channeling her inner Jeremy Renner.

Gay pride got its due as the UK’sPride (starring the above mentioned West playing against type as a queeny disco dog) was nominated for Best Picture Comedy/Musical, and Matt Bomer, who played an HIV positive newspaperman in HBO’s version of The Normal Heart, thanked his husband “for putting up with me when I was 130 lbs and really grumpy when you ate pizza in front of me.” Amazon’s Transparent won Comedy series, marking the first time Jeff Bezos has been thanked from the Golden Globe stage, and Jeffrey Tambor, who plays the transparent of the title thanked the transgender community and symbolically shared the award with them. But no, you can’t take it home and put it on your mantle.

But despite the it’s-about-time victories of Boyhood director Richard Linklater and Birdman’s Michael Keaton, it felt like the women’s night. Joanne Froggatt, whose character was raped in season four of Downton Abbey, mentioned rape victims who had written her emotional thanks as she accepted her Supporting Actress in a Series award. Patricia Arquette, the single mother of Linklater’s film, mentioned her own mother and her stint as a single parent. And Gina Rodriguez, surprise winner for CW’s comedy hit Jane the Virgin, is just getting started.

As Kevin Spacey, winning his first Golden Globe after eight nominations for Netflix’s House of Cards, said in his Frank Underwood voice, “This is just the beginning of my revenge.”

Visit the Golden Globes’ site for a complete list of winners.

France will deploy 10,000 soldiers on home soil by Tuesday and post almost 5,000 extra police officers to protect Jewish sites after the killing of 17 people by Islamist militants in Paris last week, officials said.

Speaking a day after the biggest French public demonstration ever registered, in honor of the victims, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the country remained at risk of further attacks. Soldiers would guard transport hubs, tourism sites and key buildings and mount general street patrols.

"The threats remain and we have to protect ourselves from them. It is an internal operation that will mobilize almost as many men as we have in our overseas operations," Le Drian told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

The victims, including journalists and police, died in three days of violence that began on Wednesday with a shooting attack on the political weekly Charlie Hebdo, known for its satirical attacks on Islam and other religions. Many at Sunday's march wore badges and carried placards declaring "I Am Charlie".

The Charlie Hebdo attackers, two French-born brothers of Algerian origin, singled out the weekly for its publication of cartoons depicting and ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad.

Charlie Hebdo's remaining members are working on an eight page issue due to come out on Wednesday with a one-million copy print run. Its lawyer, Richard Malka, told France Info radio there would be caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad.

"We will not give in. The spirit of 'I am Charlie' means the right to blaspheme," he said, adding that the front page would be released Monday evening.

The three days of bloodshed ended on Friday with a hostage-taking at a Jewish deli in Paris where four hostages and another gunman were killed. That gunman declared allegiance to Islamic State insurgents and said he was acting in response to French military deployments against militant Islamist groups overseas.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 700 police officers would be placed at all 717 Jewish schools across the country in addition to some 4,100 gendarmes already deployed.

"Synagogues, Jewish schools, but also mosques will be protected because in the past few days there have been a number of attacks against mosques," Prime Minister Manuel Valls told BFM TV.

The first two attackers, who had traveled to Yemen in 2011 for training, were killed on Friday after a siege north of the capital. Police said all three men were part of the same Paris-based militant Islamist cell.

Over 1.2 million people marched in Paris on Sunday and 2.5 million more in the provinces. The Paris march was led by dozens of foreign leaders. Some commentators said the last time crowds of this size were seen in the capital was at the Liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany in 1944.

SEARCH FOR ACCOMPLICES

The co-ordinated assaults amounted to the deadliest attack by militant Islamists on a European city since 57 people were killed in an attack on London's transport system in 2005.

Valls said police were searching for likely accomplices. The Turkish government confirmed that the female companion of the supermarket attacker had entered Syria on Jan. 8 from Turkey, having arrived in Istanbul several days before the killings.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was holding an emergency security meeting of his cabinet on Monday, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were among 44 foreign leaders marching with French President Francois Hollande on Sunday.

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu - who on Sunday encouraged French Jews to emigrate to Israel - and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were also present and walked just a few steps from one another. Netanyahu is due to visit the supermarket on Monday.

With growing calls for a comprehensive investigation into whether there had been security failings given that the three gunmen were known to intelligence services, Valls and main opposition leader Nicolas Sarkozy agreed on a bi-partisan parliamentary commission into the attacks.

Valls also said the government had begun studying ways to strengthen the fight against "homegrown terrorism." France beefed up anti-terrorism legislation last year to prevent its nationals traveling to Syria and Iraq.

The prime minister said one proposal being studied was to isolate radical Islamists from the rest of the prison population as repeated cases showed individuals were susceptible to radicalization in jail.

"There is a lot of work to be done in the prisons. It's a priority," Valls said.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Pakistan on Monday on an unannounced trip to urge the government to do more to crack down on militant groups following last month's massacre of 134 children by Taliban gunmen.

Kerry is due to meet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army Chief Raheel Sharif as he aims both to offer sympathy and to galvanize Pakistan to combat militants who have used its territory to attack neighboring Afghanistan andIndia.

"We’ll be very clear, as we have on previous occasions, that the Pakistani fight against militarism has to root out all militant groups in Pakistan," a senior State Department official told reporters before Kerry left Washington on Friday.

While acknowledging the army's offensive against militants in areas near Afghanistan over the last six months, Kerry plans to call for more action to fight groups that Pakistani officials and generals have viewed as strategic assets in their rivalry with India and as they jockey for influence in Afghanistan.

"Part of the secretary's core message will be to ensure that actions are met with a real and sustained effort to constrain the ability of the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Afghan Taliban, and other militants who pose a threat to regional stability and to direct U.S. interests," said the official.

Lashkar-e-Taiba fights Indian rule in Kashmir and is accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed at least 163 people in India.

As for Haqqanis, the United States accuses Pakistan's intelligence agency of supporting the network and using it as a proxy in Afghanistan to gain leverage against the influence of its arch-rival India in the country. Pakistandenies that.

Pakistan's Taliban, blamed for the Dec. 16 attack on the military-run school in Peshawar, are distinct from the Afghan Taliban but both share the goals of toppling their governments and setting up a strict Islamist state across the region.

In addition to bilateral meetings with the prime minister and army chief of staff, Kerry will co-chair the U.S.-Pakistanstrategic dialogue with Sartaj Aziz, the national security and foreign affairs adviser to Nawaz Sharif.

Kerry will be joined by General Lloyd Austin, who heads the U.S. Central Command which stretches across 18 nations in the Middle East, Central and South Asia from Egypt to Pakistan.

A Pakistani source told Reuters earlier that the Pakistani side would use the talks to ask Kerry to step up technical and training assistance for its program aimed at cracking down on extremism following the Peshawar attack.

“It’s pretty terrifying for all of us who are correspondents, who covered Egypt and who have covered the Middle East, because we look at the Al-Jazeera three and we think that could have been any of us,” Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News’s International Editor, told me at a protest outside the Egyptian Embassy in London on December 29, the coldest day of the year.

She was joined on that bitingly cold day by at least 30 other prominent international journalists and human rights campaigners calling for the release of Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy, and Baher Mohamed, the three Al-Jazeera English journalists who have already spent just over a year in prison in Cairo.

They were charged last year with spreading false news and aiding a terrorist organization, the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group, in a widely criticized trial. They were given between seven- to 10-year prison sentences.

Outside the Egyptian Embassy, the international journalists were also calling for the release of other journalists that are languishing in Egypt’s jails. There are 16 in total, according to the Paris-based monitoring group, Reporters Without Borders, placing Egypt in fourth place for the world’s largest jailer of journalists.

The other jailed journalists in Egypt include Mahmoud Abdel Nabi (Rassd News Network), Mahmoud Abu Zeid (freelance photographer), Samhi Mustafa (Rassd News Network), Ahmed Gamal (Yaqeen News), Ahmed Fouad (Karmoz News), and Abdel Rahman Shaheen (Freedom and Justice News Gate), according to the New York–based Committee to Protect Journalists and London-based Egypt Solidarity Initiative.  

Many of those arrested worked for Islamist-affiliated news networks, such as Rassd and Freedom and Justice News, or were rounded up while covering protests by the Brotherhood.

Since Egypt ousted former president Mohamed Morsi in a popularly-backed military coup on July 3, 2013, the government has launched a broad crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood and its sympathizers in the name of the “war on terror.” That crackdown has also spread to secular political activists, journalists and human rights defenders.

On his 500th day in prison on December 20, without charge or trial, freelance photojournalist Abu Zeid wrote a moving letter from his three-by-four-meter prison cell, asking the world not to forget him.

Entitled “Sunset in the black hole”, he said: “I simply ask that now that you know of me, please do not turn away. I am a photojournalist, not a criminal.”

He was arrested while covering the break-up of the Raba’a demonstration on August 14, 2013, as many of us did, when at least 817 pro-Morsi demonstrators were killed in a single day by Egyptian security forces in what has been described as Egypt’s Tiananmen Square massacre.

And that’s the significance of the Al-Jazeera trial. It sets a precedent for the work of journalists in Egypt, and the world, and sheds a spotlight on those lesser well-known reporters, who don’t have the backing of a powerful media organization putting pressure and calling for their release. It’s about press freedom for international and local journalists, the rule of law and broader political battles.

The Al-Jazeera three have long recognized that. “A retrial is a milestone toward victory in our free press battle! Our spirits are bullet-proof! Back to white garb!” tweeted a defiant Mohamed Fahmy on January 1, the day an Egyptian court ruled in favor of a re-trial for him and his two other colleagues.

Greste wrote a poignant speech in October highlighting the declining state of press freedom all over the world in the last decade, particularly in the context of the global war on terror.

“In all of these battlegrounds, whether hot or cold, journalists are no longer on the front lines. We are the front lines. In this wider conflict, there is no such thing as a neutral, independent reporter. In the view of both sides, if you cross the lines in pursuit of our most fundamental principles of balance, fairness and accuracy, you effectively join the enemy.”

And that applies in Egypt, as much as anywhere. If you’re a reporter covering Muslim Brotherhood protests, you open yourself up to accusations of bias, rather than trying to get a sense of the other view, such is the polarized nature of the environment. And vice versa.

Hilsum said that arresting journalists in this context is counterproductive. “It doesn’t help the fight against terrorism. Actually quite the opposite. Because if you’re wasting the resources of your country on tracking and imprisoning journalists, then you’re distracting yourself with actually trying to deal with the real problem of terrorism.”

In ordering the retrial on January 1, the court appeared to recognize that legal flaws took place in the widely criticized first trial.

Amnesty International criticized last year’s court proceedings, saying that it observed several irregularities.

“In 12 court sessions, the prosecution failed to produce a single shred of solid evidence linking the journalists to an organization involved in terrorism, or prove they had “falsified” news footage,” the London-based human rights organization said.

Among the pieces of evidence presented at the trial were: footage of trotting horses by Sky News Arabia, a BBC documentary about Somalia, a song by the Australian musician Gotye, a program about sheep farming, a Kenyan press conference, and Greste’s family photos.

Many observers have called the Al-Jazeera three “scapegoats” caught up in a cold war between Egypt and Qatar, which owns the Al-Jazeera news network and supported the Brotherhood. Others see them as legitimate targets, who worked for a news channel considered biased towards the now unpopular Islamist group.

Families of the imprisoned journalists have said that hope lies in the recent thawing of relations between Egypt and Qatar, which culminated in the recent closure of Al-Jazeera’s Egyptian channel, Mubasher Misr. This opens the space for public acceptance of their release, if and when it happens, Marwa Omara, Fahmy’s fiancée told me.

There is also hope in a new law that President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi issued in a decree last year, which allowed for the deportation of foreigners who have been convicted of crimes committed on Egyptian soil. The lawyers and families of Greste and Canadian-Egyptian Fahmy have put in requests to the Egyptian government that they be deported.

This, however, would not help Baher Mohamed. He is an Egyptian, whose wife hasn’t even been allowed to attend any of the court proceedings because she is Egyptian, she told me. Only foreigners and their families have been allowed to attend, she said. Hope for them lies in the retrial.

The journalists could also be released on bail during the retrial.

Al-Sisi says he won’t interfere in the work of the judiciary, so a presidential pardon before the legal process is over seems unlikely.

And when the Al-Jazeera three are released, one hopes the world continues to push for the release of the other journalists in jail, among them: Abdel Nabi, Abu Zeid, Mustafa, Gamal, Fouad and Shaheen.

Nadine Marroushihas reported on Egyptian politics since 2011. Follow Nadine Marroushi on Twitter @nadinemarroushi. This article first appeared on the Middle East Eye site.

In 2002, the Powder River Basin (PRB) in Wyoming and Montana surged past the Appalachian coalfields that stretch from Pennsylvania to Tennessee to become the nation’s largest coal-producing region. Today, the PRB occupies a 40 percent share of the U.S. coal market.

Although market forces, mechanization and technological changes help explain some of the coal industry’s decision to shift more production from privately owned lands in the East to federal lands in the American West, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI) coal policies have played an equally important—though largely unnoticed—role in this transition.

Specifically, the DOI’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) use their royalty-collection authority to subsidize coal production on federal lands. Coal companies, in turn, have learned to maximize these subsidies by shielding themselves from royalty payments through increasingly complex financial and legal mechanisms. Reform is urgently needed to cut these subsidies and to close loopholes that disadvantage other coal-producing regions and distort U.S. energy markets.

Subsidizing federal coal through royalty relief

The law governing royalty payments for coal produced on federally owned lands is straightforward. Under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 and its amendments, coal companies are required to pay a royalty of at least 12.5 percent of the value of surface-mined coal and 8 percent for coal from underground mines. The law authorizes the secretary of the interior to set the regulations by which the value of federal coal is determined for calculating a royalty.

In a competitive marketplace, a product’s value on the market is the price that maximizes profit for the seller based on what a buyer is willing to pay. In the case of thermal coal—or coal that is burned to produce electricity—power plants and electric utilities are the buyers in the market. The market value of thermal coal, therefore, is the price that power plants are willing to pay for the product. In theory, royalties should be paid on this market price of coal.

In reality, however, the DOI has built a complex regulatory framework that provides agency officials the power to reduce the effective royalty rate that coal companies pay and thereby subsidizes coal production. The subsidies that DOI officials routinely provide coal companies come in three forms:

1. The assessment of royalties on the so-called “first arm’s-length sale” price of coal instead of the true market value.

Coal companies pay royalties on the price that they receive at the first sale to another entity. This transaction can be to an affiliated or nonaffiliated entity but must be valued as an arm’s-length transaction irrespective of the buyer’s relationship to the coal company. This sale often occurs near the point of production, meaning that taxpayers typically receive royalties on the mine-mouth price of coal instead of the true market price at which the coal is sold to a power plant or other end user, such as a broker who exports the coal. As a result, the federal government assesses royalties too early in the sale process and on prices that are not reflective of the true value of coal, which in turn results in lower royalty returns to taxpayers.

2. Royalty reductions for noneconomically viable coal production or financial hardship.

The BLM provides royalty reductions as low as 2 percent of the sale price if a mine becomes unprofitable due to unfavorable conditions—such as limited access to coal or a decrease in its quality—or if a mining company can show it is facing financial hardship.

3. Subsidies for the costs of washing and transporting coal produced on federal land.

Under the current system, coal lessees can deduct transportation and washing costs, with no cap on deductions, from the total sale price upon which federal coal royalties are due. This translates into an allowance for the full cost of transporting federal coal from the mine mouth to a remote point of sale, or to transport the coal to a distant wash plant. Unlike the case with coal, transportation deductions for oil and gas are capped at 50 percent of the value of the resource.

Captive transactions

The coal industry staunchly defends these subsidies and is lobbying the Obama administration to preserve them. In fact, the National Mining Association told the administration in November 2014 that the royalty-collection system is working and that the coal-valuation regulations that were last updated in 1989 are still relevant and effective.

In its written presentation to the administration, the National Mining Association argued, “Changes to the existing regulations are not justified, as there have been no significant market changes in the last 25 years and markets are even more transparent.”

A review of government data and the records of the largest coal companies operating in the PRB—such as Alpha Natural Resources, Ambre Energy, Arch Coal, Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy—reveals that, notwithstanding industry claims that the markets have remained stagnant, the coal market in the PRB has changed dramatically in the past decade alone. Of perhaps greatest note, the major coal companies operating in the PRB have built an extensive network of subsidiaries and affiliates through which they sell and distribute their coal, which appears to help maximize their subsidies.

A review of corporate documents from five of the biggest coal companies operating in the PRB, listed below, reveals hundreds of affiliates and subsidiaries of parent companies, with names such as Excelven Pty Ltd., licensed in the British Virgin Islands, and Jacobs Ranch Holdings LLC, licensed in Delaware.

• Alpha Natural Resources, operator of the Belle Ayr and Eagle Butte mines in Wyoming, has built a network of 184 domestic and foreign subsidiaries.

• Ambre Energy, which operates the Decker Mine in Montana that has produced more than 300 million tons of coal, has built a network of 26 domestic and foreign subsidiaries.

• Arch Coal—which controls more than 3.3 billion tons of coal reserves in the PRB and operates the Black Thunder Mine, one of the world’s largest coal mines and the first in the world to ship 1 billion tons of coal—has built a network of 83 domestic and foreign subsidiaries.

• Cloud Peak Energy, which operates the Antelope, Spring Creek and Cordero Rojo mines in the PRB that produced more than 86 million tons of coal in 2013 alone, has built a network of at least 31 domestic subsidiaries.

• Peabody Energy—which operates the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming, the largest coal mine in the United States—has built a network of 141 domestic subsidiaries and 101 foreign subsidiaries.

A full list of the affiliates and subsidiaries of these companies is provided in the appendix (see below).

Sales of PRB coal through this network have skyrocketed in the past decade. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 42 percent of all coal produced in Wyoming in 2012 was sold through a “captive transaction”—a sale between an affiliate and parent company—up from just 4 percent in 2004. This upward trend appears to have begun in 2004; captive transactions in Wyoming spiked 105 percent between 2004 and 2005 alone.

Evading royalties

A growing body of evidence suggests that the major coal companies use their elaborate network of subsidiaries and affiliates to maximize the subsidies that can be gained through existing federal royalty regulations. To keep the price of coal artificially low for royalty, tax and other valuation purposes, companies are allegedly cloaking sales to their network of subsidiaries and affiliates as arm’s-length transactions when they are in fact captive, non-arm’s-length transactions.

For example, in Western Minerals v. KCP—which involved a contract dispute filed in the U.S. District Court of Montana in 2012—Western Minerals alleged that Ambre Energy engaged in “self-dealing transactions, by selling to itself coal from the Decker Coal Company through either Ambre Limited directly or an affiliated subsidiary and then reselling such coal at a higher price.”

Similarly, in Cloud Peak Energy v. Montana Department of Revenue—a Montana state court case regarding a tax dispute—the state of Montana alleged that Cloud Peak Energy intentionally undervalued federal coal sold to two affiliates between 2005 and 2007, to pay reduced taxes.

Coal industry records suggest that masking sales to subsidiaries and affiliates as arm’s length to reduce federal royalty payments is a common practice. In a 2013 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, Cloud Peak Energy said that the company’s finances would be adversely affected if there is a change to how the federal government assesses royalty payments on non-arm’s-length sales: “If the federal government were to materially alter the method for valuing royalty payments for our non-arm’s-length sales, our profitability and cash flows could be materially adversely affected.”

The arm’s-length-transaction loophole is particularly lucrative for coal companies that are exporting PRB coal to foreign buyers. For example, a review of Peabody Energy’s 10-K forms shows that the company’s share of revenue from China more than tripled between 2011 and 2013, and its overall revenue rose from approximately $7 billion to $8 billion, yet the company’s royalty payments dropped from $610 million to $546 million. A 2012 Reuters investigation estimated that the loophole allowed companies to pocket at least an additional $40 million on coal exports from Wyoming and Montana alone in 2011.

The state of Wyoming—which, similar to other coal-producing states, receives approximately 50 percent of the royalty revenue from coal production on federal lands within its boundaries—has formally asked the Obama administration to change the current regulations to better prevent coal companies from using their networks of subsidiaries to dodge royalties.

“Non-arm’s-length transactions are highly susceptible to manipulation,” wrote Michael Geesey, director of the Wyoming Department of Audit, to ONRR in 2011. According to Geesey, Wyoming’s chief auditor, ONRR should change current regulations to prevent coal company sales to “affiliates, partners, marketing agents, and trade and export associations” from qualifying as arm’s-length transactions. Republican and Democratic members of Congress and independent reviewers have also called for reforms to close this loophole.

Overdue reforms and recommendations to eliminate subsidies and close loopholes

President Barack Obama’s 2011 commitments under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, or EITI—a global initiative to improve the transparency of natural resource governance, including revenues—highlight why the coal royalty system should be an important next chapter in the administration’s energy reform agenda. The president has stated that the United States joined the EITI to ensure that “industries, governments and civil society all work together for greater transparency so that taxpayers receive every dollar they’re due from the extraction of natural resources.”

Today, however, the DOI’s federal coal program can hardly be held up as a model of American leadership in transparency or efficiency. U.S. taxpayers and the states that share in these royalty collections are receiving far less than the 12.5 percent royalty rate that is required to be collected from surface-mined coal.

Additionally, the United States’ biggest coal competitors in Pacific markets, such as Indonesia and Australia, do not allow many of the subsidies currently in place under the U.S. system. In Indonesia, for example, the royalty rate for exported coal is based on the true market value of the coal received at the export terminal, which is a price determined from the benchmark price or actual sales price, whichever is higher.

Further, Indonesia does not allow transportation costs to be deducted from the price of coal upon which a royalty is levied. Likewise, states in Australia do not allow transportation deductions for domestic shipments of coal.

The DOI has acknowledged some of the deficiencies of the current royalty-collection system, recently issuing a proposed rule to remedy the arm’s-length-transaction loophole. While this proposed rule closes one regulatory gap by eliminating the arm’s-length-transaction loophole, more significant reforms are needed to improve efficiency and transparency in the federal royalty-collection process.

The Obama administration should take a major step toward eliminating the DOI’s subsidies for coal by modernizing existing regulations to apply the federal royalty on the commodity’s true market price—which is at the final point of sale to an end user, such as a utility or power plant, for both domestic and export sales. This straightforward reform would alleviate burdensome royalty assessments for ONRR while also ensuring that taxpayers are receiving a royalty on the true market value of coal.

Currently, the EIA provides publicly available information with the final sales price for federal coal; ONRR auditors could use this information to calculate and verify royalty obligations, eliminating the need for complicated and time-consuming closed-door valuation estimates by federal regulators.

Making such a change would not come without opposition from coal companies, which have built a complex system of corporate entities to game the current system and shortchange taxpayers. Nevertheless, the administration must enact reforms. Each month, U.S. taxpayers and state governments are missing out on tens of millions of dollars in revenue that would accrue if the DOI was enforcing the minimum 12.5 percent royalty rate that is required by statute, rather than effectively lowering rates through subsidies and regulatory loopholes.

Taxpayers are not the only ones hurt by an outdated coal royalty system. Federal subsidies in the PRB unfairly disadvantage coal producers in Appalachia and other regions, contributing to job losses and economic dislocation in Appalachia. More broadly, the DOI’s subsidies for coal distort U.S. energy markets, incentivize U.S. coal exports by subsidizing transportation costs, disadvantage cleaner sources of energy and ultimately undercut the president’s Climate Action Plan.

The DOI should level the playing field between coal operators, and ensure that taxpayers are receiving a fair return on their publicly owned resources, by expanding its proposed rule to apply the federal royalty rate to the true market value of coal at its final point of sale.

Matt Lee-Ashley is director of the Public Lands Project and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Nidhi Thakar is the deputy director of the Public Lands Project at the center. This article first appeared on the Center for American Progress website.

The authors would like to thank Lauren Vicary, Mina Grace, Chester Hawkins, Anne Paisley and Meredith Lukow for their art and editorial assistance on this brief.

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