An Israeli helicopter strike in Syria killed a commander from Lebanon's Hezbollah and the son of the group's late military leader Imad Moughniyah, sources close to Hezbollah said, in a major blow that could lead to reprisal attacks.

The strike hit a convoy carrying Jihad Moughniyah and other Hezbollah members including commander Abu Issa, in the Syrian province of Quneitra, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Lebanese sources said, killing five Hezbollah members in all.

It comes just days after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said frequent Israeli strikes in Syriawere a major aggression, that the group was stronger than before and that Syria and its allies had the right to respond.

Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, has been fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria's four-year war.

Iran's semi-official Tabnak news site said several of its Revolutionary Guards had also been killed in the attack, without giving further details. State-run Iranian television said the identity of the "martyrs" could not be confirmed.

The Hezbollah-run al-Manar news channel said the Israeli attack suggested "the enemy has gone crazy because of Hezbollah's growing capabilities and it could lead to a costly adventure that will put the Middle East at stake".

Israel's military declined to comment, but an Israeli security source confirmed to Reuters that the Israeli military had carried out the attack.

It was not immediately clear what role Jihad Moughniyah, in his 20s, was playing in the fighting in Syria.

Hezbollah accused Israel in 2008 of assassinating his father, Imad Moughniyah, who was implicated in high-profile attacks on Israeli and Western targets and wanted by the United States. Israel denies any involvement in that killing.

Nabil Boumonsef, a columnist at the Lebanon newspaper an-Nahar, said he believed the strike was a direct response to Nasrallah's speech and could lead to a backlash.

"Killing the son of Moughniyah is dangerous. I do not think that the group can be quiet now, now that the father and the son are killed. I expect that it will do something,” he said.

U.N. peacekeepers intensified their patrols on the border between Lebanon and Israel on Sunday night, local sources said.

RETALIATION THREAT

Imad Moughniyah was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.

The United States indicted him for his role in planning and participating in the June 14, 1985, hijacking of a U.S. TWA airliner and the killing of an American passenger.

He was killed in a car bombing in Damascus in 2008.

Jihad Moughniyah appeared in public for the first time a week after his father's death to pledge loyalty to Nasrallah.

"We are with you and we will go wherever you go. We will never leave the battlefield and we will never drop our guns, we answer for you Nasrallah," Jihad, then aged 16, said wearing the group's military uniform in front of thousands of mourners.

Al-Manar television did not mention Moughniyah or the commander but confirmed that a number of fighters were killed when they were checking an area in Quneitra when their convoy came under Israeli missile attack. It said Hezbollah would announce the names of the dead later.

Quneitra has seen heavy fighting between forces loyal to Assad and rebels including fighters linked to al Qaeda. Syrian state television said six people were killed in the attack and a child was wounded, without giving further details.

Israel has struck Syria several times since the start of the war, mostly destroying weaponry such as missiles that Israeli officials said were destined for Hezbollah, Israel's long-time foe in neighbouringLebanon.

Syria said last month that Israeli jets had bombed areas near Damascus international airport and in the town of Dimas, near the border with Lebanon.

Nasrallah said on Thursday "the frequent attacks on different sites in Syria is a major breach. We consider (those) hostilities (to be) against all the resistance axis."

"(Retaliation) is an open issue," he added.

Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and some Palestinian factions consider themselves an "axis of resistance" against Israel.

Quora Questions are part of a partnership between Newsweek and Quora, through which we'll be posting relevant and interesting answers from Quora contributors throughout the week. Read more about the partnership here.

So the GDP of China has grown at breakneck pace in the past 30 years or so. According to the information from media as well as some personal contacts, many of the migrant factory and construction workers work under very tough conditions. Nevertheless, they willingly leave their agriculture jobs in the countryside in order to take these jobs, often leaving their children back home with grandparents and seeing them just once in a year (or less often). So I am assuming that their living conditions would be even worse, if they stayed in the countryside. So besides the fact that they are not starving, as was common till the seventies, what improvement to their life conditions they see, let's say in the last 20 years? Can they buy more for their salaries? Do they feel the government and communist party cares for them?

Answer from Karen Ma, Born in China, raised in Hong Kong and Japan, been in Beijing 6 plus years.

I wonder about that myself. While I can't answer all of the questions you've posted here, I will use my helper, a former farmer, as an example here.

I have a part-time helper who used to be a farmer from Jiangsu.  She and her husband, also from Jiangsu, both work in Beijing as migrant workers--she a domestic worker, and he a construction worker. When I asked her what's the attraction of the big city, she told me working as a farmer is extremely arduous work. Worse, there was never a holiday because you have to work on Saturday and Sunday as well.

My ayi is tickled to find work in the capital city since about ten, twelve years ago. She was especially happy when she found out she would get at least a day off (Chinese families usually give one day off a week, and expats tend to give two days off a week with pay.) So getting time off is an attractive incentive. The pay is also much much better, anywhere from 30 percent increase to double in income. This increase in income of course is the single biggest incentive for most migrant workers because these days, as my ayi says, "without money you can't move an inch in China."

What does she mean by that? Well, anywhere from medical care to education, nothing can be taken for granted here in China. Although in name, there's a welfare system and compulsory educational system in China, they are so patchy here to be effective.  She gave me an example of going to a hospital to take care of her son who broke his leg at one point. Almost everywhere they went, they were told they needed to give the doctors a red envelope (gift money) in order to even secure a hospital bed. (They were told 5,000 RMB was necessary to get a single bed. Now that was the same amount her husband was making in a month at the time. So they weren't able to pay for that.) Then they would have to keep stuffing more red envelopes if they wanted to expedite the care and surgery. They were distraught, but eventually friends came forward to help them through the crisis, and their son had the surgery, after an agonizing wait of two more days.

Education is similarly problematic: they found out "quality education" requires extra money so teachers would teach your kids the real stuff that would matter in the college entry exams in an after school class. A lot of things we take for granted in the West is no guarantee here. Because corruption is rampant, it means the ordinary people have to figure out a way to make more money in order to secure better health care and education for their offsprings, even if it means they have to sacrifice the time they could spend with their kids.

Now don't get me wrong, there's this basic care available in China, but what parents do not want the best for their children? Of course things have improved tremendously from say 20-30 years ago because now people do have a CHOICE to do something about their future and their kids' future, whereas that was simply not an option in the past, and that's saying a lot. (One of the best things that has happened recently is the reform of the hukou system, or family registration system, which took place from about seven, eight years ago. The new system now allows migrant workers to move freely to other parts of the nation. Before that, it was illegal for migrants to move around, and anyone caught with the violation would be sent back right away and with penalties.  Even though migrants in a big city would not be able to get any of the welfares that the city provides, they are entitled to enjoy other benefits, including a higher salary. And that again, is a CHOICE they didn't have, and for that, they are grateful.)

The single proudest thing my ayi feels is that they have produced a son who graduated from university and has a stable job now working as a white collar officer in a middle size town. They have managed to change their lives from that of a farmer's to that of a urban dweller's and knowing their son will never have to toil in the fields for a living. Now that's an accomplishment.

The Middle Kingdom is still far from perfect, but that's to be expected because it has only been about 35 years since the country opened its doors to the rest of the world. And China has the world's largest population. So things do take time. I see/hear imperfection everyday while living here, but I tell myself to be patient. Hopefully things will continue to improve.

What benefits (if any) of the latest economic progress of China do the Chinese blue collar workers and peasants perceive?: originally appeared on Quora: The best answer to any question. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced its approval of a new state-of-the-art weight loss device, the Maestro Rechargeable System. The first such product to get the administration’s OK in eight years, the Maestro is an implantable device that works by electronically suppressing hunger signals that pass between the stomach and the brain.

The product, which has been likened to a pacemaker, is available for people with pre-existing conditions, such as Type 2 Diabetes; those who are morbidly obese; or those who haven’t had success with other supervised weight loss programs in the past five years, reports Science Daily. It’s important to note that while the Maestro was approved, the FDA didn’t also measure other factors that could have contributed to the patients in its study losing weight, such as the kinds of food being ingested or the portions.

While the FDA has approved four weight-loss drugs in the past three years, devices are rarely approved, leaving few options for patients who don’t want to use drugs or undergo surgery. There are only three FDA-approved weight-loss devices now available: the Maestro and two gastric bands, the Realize Gastric Band and the Lap-Band Gastric Banding System.

Many devices that attempt to trick the stomach into feeling full have failed during clinical trials or were unable to show results required for FDA approval. In 2011, a promising product that used a procedure called transoral gastroplasty, which shrunk the stomach without surgery, was shut down by investors after its results were found to be less stellar than expected. Transneuronix’s “stomach pacemaker” didn’t pass its U.S. clinical trial in 2005, and so the Transcend Implantable Gastric Stimulation device is only available in Europe. The FDA did approve a Gastric Electrical Simulator, but it was granted only a “humanitarian device exemption,” meaning it could only benefit less than 4,000 people.  

A New York Times report from 2011 details efforts by entrepreneurs who have been scheming up dozens of ideas for weight loss devices that wouldn’t require surgery, including placing tubes inside the small intestine that would allow food to pass without absorption, and a pacemaker that would administer electric jolts to the inside of the stomach wall. But until they receive FDA approval, they remain blueprints.

While the new Maestro works on changing how hunger signals are triggered, a helpful step in weight loss, experts still stand by lifestyle changes—such as portion control, getting adequate sleep and accounting for stress in addition to monitoring exercise and diet— as the most effective long-term solution for people seeking to lose weight.  

Economists have long argued that increases in worker pay can lead to improvements in productivity—indeed, that it can actually be profitable to pay workers higher wages.

As Alfred Marshall, the father of modern economics, argued almost 125 years ago, “any change in the distribution of wealth which gives more to the wage receivers and less to the capitalists is likely, other things being equal, to hasten the increase of material production.”

Since then, economists have compiled rich data validating Marshall’s hypothesis that paying higher wages generates savings:

Higher wages motivate employees to work harder.

Janet Yellen (1984) suggested that higher wages create the conditions for workers to be more productive, pointing to “reduced shirking by employees due to a higher cost of job loss; lower turnover; an improvement in the average quality of job applicants and improved morale.”

Among the studies documenting this point are David I. Levine (1992), which analyzed a sample of large (mostly Fortune 500) manufacturing companies, and Holzer (1990), which used data from a national sample of firms finding that “high-wage firms can sometimes offset more than half of their higher wage costs through improved productivity and lower hiring and turnover cost.”

Michael Reich et al. (2003) surveyed employers at the San Francisco airport after a broad-based increase in wages and found that the employers of the majority of affected workers reported that their overall performance had improved. Alexandre Mas (2006) analyzed the case of New Jersey police officers who were granted a wage increase of 17 percent, and who were 12 percent more productive in clearing cases than those who were refused the increase.

Higher wages attract more capable and productive workers.

The evidence that higher wages attract more high-quality applicants for new jobs is voluminous. Ernesto Dal Bó et al. (2013) show that offering higher salaries yielded an applicant pool with a higher IQ and with personality scores and motivation that made them a better fit for the advertised jobs. Moreover, the first firm to offer higher wages is more likely to attract and retain more productive workers.

Higher wages lead to lower turnover, reducing the costs of hiring and training new workers.

Reich et al (2003) calculated that typical turnover costs exceed $4,000 for each worker and that an increase in wages at the San Francisco airport led to a decline in turnover of 34 percent, yielding turnover-related savings of $6.6 million per year. Arindrajit Dube et al. (2007) found that when a San Francisco living-wage ordinance raised wages among low-paid workers, those workers were more likely to stay with their employers.

Reich and his co-authors also documented a stunning turnover rate of nearly 95 percent per year among security screeners in mid-2000, which fell to 18.7 percent when pay improved. David Fairris et al. (2005) examined evidence from Los Angeles, finding that when employers were directed to offer higher wages, the decline in worker turnover yielded savings equal to around one-sixth of the cost incurred.

Higher wages enhance quality and customer service.

The Reich et al. (2003) study also found that almost half of employers reported improvements in customer service following a wage rise for low-wage workers, and indeed, higher wages at the San Francisco airport led to shorter airport lines. Douglas M. Cowherd and David I. Levine (1992) found that an increase in the pay of lower-level employees relative to management increased the quality of production.

Using data from more than 500 retail stores, Marshall L. Fisher et al. (2006) found a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and the payroll level of associates and managers in the store. Higher wages were also associated with employers having more knowledge about the inventory.

Higher wages reduce disciplinary problems and absenteeism.

Peter Cappelli and Keith Chauvin (1991) documented that in plants where pay was higher relative to the local labor market, fewer disciplinary actions were required. Likewise, nearly half of those employers surveyed by Reich et al. (2003) reported a decrease in disciplinary issues following a wage rise. Wei Zhang et al. (2013) showed in a survey of Canadian firms that absenteeism was less likely when wages were higher. Christian Pfeifer (2010) found a similar result in a large German survey.

Firms with higher wages need to devote fewer resources to monitoring.

High-paying firms have been found to create a culture of hard work in which employees monitor their co-workers, reducing the need to hire supervisors. James B. Rebitzer (1995) found that low-wage maintenance workers needed more supervision in the petrochemical industry. Erica L. Groshen and Alan B. Krueger (1990) showed that more highly paid nurses were also supervised less. Andreas Georgiadis (2008) found that in residential care homes in the U.K., “higher wage costs were more than offset by lower monitoring costs.”

Workers excessively concerned about income security perform less well at work.

A variety of recent experiments have demonstrated this proposition. Anandi Mani et al. (2013) recruited buyers in a shopping mall and asked them to think about their finances. Researchers observed that the performance of poor subjects on a cognitive test deteriorated if they were asked to imagine a large emergency expenditure (a $1,500 car repair), but no such deterioration was observed for well-off subjects.

Sendhir Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir (2013) assessed a range of related experiments, finding that mental tasks that simulate the constant stress of poverty led people to act in compulsive and improper ways. Indeed, the World Bank Development Report (2015), citing numerous field studies, recognizes that poverty taxes people’s mental capacities and self-control.

Other mechanisms by which higher wages can yield offsetting benefits include:

• Higher wages are associated with better health—less illness and more stamina, which enhance worker productivity.

• Greater job satisfaction can result in less conflict between employers and labor groups.

• Enhanced reputation with consumers (compare the reputations of Costco and Walmart).

All of these positive effects may interact to yield even larger aggregate effects, as the productivity of one worker often raises the productivity of co-workers. Alexandre Mas and Enrico Moretti (2009) offer persuasive data on this point, showing that productive cashiers motivate their co-workers to work faster.

This article first appeared on the Peterson Institute for International Economics website. If this interested you, you may also like to read this, by Tomas Hellebrandt, on the effect of large corporations paying their workers more.

Israelis go to the polls on March 17 to elect the 20th Knesset, Israel's parliament, which will then form a new government to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current one (he hopes to head the next government as well). The Brookings Center for Middle East Policy are following the run-up to the elections in a series of blog posts.

Last week, Israel's Labor Party, the main opposition party to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, held primaries and elected its slate of candidates. That slate, headed by Labor Chairman Isaac Herzog, will be combined with Tzipi Livni's party Hatnua, in an electoral alliance, now officially called "The Zionist Camp."

The Zionist Camp is currently polling just ahead of Netanyahu's Likud as the largest faction in the next Knesset, with a chance to form the next government. However, the alliance still faces a formidable challenge, leaving Netanyahu ahead nonetheless.

Since 1977, the year the right-wing Likud party broke Labor's stronghold on Israeli politics, the Likud—now led by Netanyahu—has dominated Israel's leadership. In the 38 years since, Likud prime ministers have led the country for 27, while Labor prime ministers have held office for only eight years (Ehud Olmert, a former Likudnik who headed the centrist Kadima—primarily an offshoot of the Likud—led the country for three more).

For nearly four decades, then, Israel's leadership has been the right wing's to lose. When Labor did win, its victory included four key elements:

1. The incumbent right wing must be in trouble in its own right.

As I noted here, in democracies incumbents lose more than challengers win.

In 1984, after seven years of Likud governments, the Israeli economy was crippled by annual inflation of nearly 445 percent and the country was mired in a bloody war in Lebanon. The public had naturally soured on the incumbent party, which allowed Shimon Peres and Labor to come to a draw with the Likud and to subsequently share power in a national unity government, which Peres led for the first two years.  

Similarly, in 1992, the Likud appeared to most Israelis as an old, corrupt party that had lost its way, becoming mired in intra-party fights and scandal. This allowed Yitzhak Rabin to capitalize on the Likud's weakness and return to the prime minister's office after a 15-year hiatus (he first served in the post in the 1970s).

In 1999, Ehud Barak's victory owed a lot to widespread disappointment with the young, brash and inexperienced prime minister who preceded him—Netanyahu, in his first term.

Today again, there is Netanyahu fatigue, though his image has improved dramatically from the 1990s. After a combined nine years as prime minister, second only to David Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu is held largely responsible for Israel's mixed fortunes. In a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a full 60 percent of the public disapproved of the way "The Government is handling the country's problems." Even among self-defined right-wing voters, 56 percent disapproved of the government's performance, though this number likely overstates the case somewhat.[2]

Not surprisingly, then, a clear majority (60 percent) of Israelis polled in early December said they preferred that Netanyahu not lead the next government, providing an opening for Herzog, Livni and the Zionist Camp.

2. The left must shift and sharpen the debate to economic issues, where it has an advantage in public opinion.

The instincts of the Israeli public on economic issues, the popular (and at times populist) position leans decidedly to the left. Whereas American voters are often referred to, by default, as taxpayers, and vows to refrain from tax hikes are a staple of contemporary American politics, In Israel, much of the voting public prefers a more robust welfare state and has much higher tolerance for deficits and taxes on the wealthy.

This tendency was most apparent in the dramatic events of the summer of 2011. Then, hundreds of thousands of people—in a country of 8 million—took to the streets in a series of demonstrations over several weeks and in tent encampments, chanting most famously: "The people demand social justice!"

In relative terms, the demonstrations dwarfed similar phenomena in other countries, like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and, moreover, they garnered mainstream support far beyond their numbers; the demonstrations were peaceful and remarkably disciplined even while led by largely unknown and very young leaders. The country, the frightened government and demonstrators themselves were taken utterly by surprise at the wave of protests that swept the country.

Where the demonstrations were weakest was in a clear, unified message, and as will be discussed in a future post, their electoral dividend was dispersed among several parties, most notably the centrist (and upper middle class) Yesh Atid, the party of Yair Lapid, the current finance minister.  

And yet, the most remarkable outcome of Labor's primaries was the success of two of the protests most notable leaders, Stav Shaffir and Itzik Shmuli. In the last Knesset, to which they were both elected, they both stood out as hard-working, disciplined and skilled parliamentarians, despite their youth.

Shaffir, in particular, has become known for her vocal and uncompromising battle against backroom deals and hushed transfers of state funds in the finance committee, of which she is a member. Although still in her 20s—one of the youngest Knesset members ever—she has, backed by an army of volunteers, outperformed many of her seniors in the Knesset.

Via Livni's party, the Zionist Camp will also include Manuel Trajtenberg, a famous economist who led a governmental committee tasked with addressing the concerns of the social protests. He will ostensibly be the party's candidate for finance minister. The list also includes another (far more leftist) economist, Yossi Yonah, who had advised the protesters and was a fierce critic of Trajtenberg's committee, which he saw as a fig leaf for the government's policies.

While Labor's competition from centrist parties for the domestic agenda is fierce, it has successfully positioned itself as the voice of a left-leaning economic agenda. Among young middle-class voters in particular, this appears to be paying off (a recent poll shows the Zionist Camp as the leading party among Israeli college students, who also cite social-economic issues as their top concern).

From Labor and the combined Zionist Camp's perspective, the more salient the economic debate and the clearer the differences between the sides, the better they hope to fair in the elections.  

3. The left must present a credible, centrist alternative on national security issues, where it is electorally weaker.  

A shift to a domestic agenda would help Labor considerably, but Israeli politics are still defined, fundamentally, along a hawk-to-dove axis. Since 1967, "right wing" in Israel means, in fact, hawkish on Arab-Israeli relations, while "left wing" tends to mean dovish.

In recent years, the "left" brand has been deeply unpopular. Gravely wounded by the Second Intifada, which to many Israelis seemed to disprove a Palestinian desire for peace, leftist views have come to be seen as naïve, even reckless, on security. This was a central consideration for Herzog in aligning with Livni, a former Likudnik herself, who gives the joint list a more centrist veneer.

To counter this weakness, even before Oslo, Labor has relied on candidates with strong security credentials. Yitzhak Rabin was a general, chief of staff of the IDF during the 1967 war and a former hawkish defense minister. Ehud Barak was similarly a former IDF chief of staff and a famed commando officer.

Herzog's father was a former president of Israel was a general (chief of military intelligence) and his brother is a brigadier general (in the reserves) and now a well-known analyst of Israeli affairs. But Isaac Herzog is known primarily as a lawyer and politician. In demeanor and experience, he brings no security credentials to the campaign. The Labor slate, moreover, includes only one notable former officer, Omer Bar Lev, a colonel who was a notable commando officer and also the son of a former IDF chief of staff (and Labor minister), Haim Bar Lev.

Not coincidentally, Netanyahu's camp has gone on the attack; the Yisrael Hayom publication, funded by Netanyahu's main U.S. donor Sheldon Adelson (and known to many as the "Bibipaper" the Bibiton), reacted to the primaries by calling the slate "leftist."

Herzog will likely try to remedy this situation with the extra-primary appointment of a former military figure to the list, quite possibly Shaul Mofaz, the former defense minister from the Likud and Kadima, or Amos Yadlin, currently the director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel and another son of a Labor minister.

4. The left must have a credible leader to capitalize on the right wing's decline

All this—a weak incumbent and a favorable campaign—is not enough to tip the scale for Labor; there must be a viable challenger to pick up the pieces, a role Herzog hopes to fill. Herzog's alliance with Livni has allowed him to advance considerably in the polls, though he still suffers from a perceived gravitas-gap with Netanyahu.

In all polls—during the full term of this Knesset and its predecessor—the left wing and Arab bloc has fallen short of the 60 seats necessary to block a Netanyahu coalition (in the previous election, the combined bloc, if one counts Yair Lapid in it, came very close with 59). While Labor hopes to draw voters from the center, it will almost certainly need the help of other centrist parties, and in particular the new party of Moshe Kahlon, a former Likud minister, and perhaps even of Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu's controversial foreign minister.

Indeed, Herzog is dramatically more popular than Netanyahu among his fellow politicians, including many in the center and among the religious parties, which gives him hope that he can form a coalition across bloc lines. But this advantage may not be enough to overcome the political realities and coalition arithmetic of the next Knesset.

Natan B. Sachs is Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings His work focuses on Israeli foreign policy, domestic politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S.-Israeli relations. He is currently writing a book on Israeli grand strategy and its domestic origins. Follow Natan B. Sachs on Twitter @natansachs

[1] Under Israeli electoral law (a "single district, proportional representation" system), voters do not elect candidates or regional representatives but rather choose one national list, a set list of candidates offered ahead of the polls by a party or an amalgam of parties. Each list that passes a minimum threshold (recently raised to 3.25 percent of the vote) is then awarded seats in the 120-seat Knesset, in proportion to the number of votes it received, nationally. The result is a highly representative—but highly fractured—party system. After the elections, the president (who is not up for general election), consults the elected factions and tasks one Member of Knesset with forming a government that can garner support of a majority of the Knesset (this need not be the leader of the largest faction, merely the MK with the best chance of forming a governing majority). In a party system as fractured as the Israeli one, this invariably entails forming coalitions among various factions in the new Knesset.

[2] Right-wing voters in this poll likely include Ultra Orthodox voters, whose representatives are not part of the coalition and who likely oppose government policy for different reasons than those on the center and the right.

Video footage purporting to be from a soon-to-be unveiled 24-hour Islamic State news channel has gathered momentum in jihadi forums and on ISIS social media, prompting speculation the Islamist group may soon amplify its already high-budget propaganda.

The two ‘teaser’ videos, both of which are in Arabic, show polished stills of what is allegedly a TV channel called ‘The Islamic Caliphate Broadcast’, with one showing screenshot images of what appear to be different programmes.

One of the teaser videos previews a still image from a programme called “Time to Recruit” which, according to Haaretz, is expected to provide guidance and instructions on the process of recruiting young Muslims into the ranks of ISIS. The show is advertised to be broadcast on Wednesdays at 5pm “Islamic State Time” (GMT+3).

Also notably one of the stills features British captive John Cantlie, the captured British photo-journalist who has been used as the most frequent English language voice for ISIS in their propaganda videos, last appearing in one earlier this month. He has previously said that he is appearing in the videos under duress.

The Independent has already speculated that the web address for the new channel was initially supposed to be khilafalive.info, however the website was taken down on Saturday after reportedly showing a holding image for the TV channel.

Although ISIS have become renowned for their high budget propaganda efforts, including online video outlets, social media campaigns and an English language magazine called Dabiq, questions have been raised about the authenticity of this latest venture.

Neither Newsweek nor the anti-radicalization think tank, the Quilliam Foundation were able to trace the footage to an endorsement from any official ISIS channels.

According to online extremism analyst and Brookings institution associate J. M. Berger, there was little evidence that the planned TV channel had any official ties with ISIS.

“There is currently no indication the TV channel is official, although that could change later. It is also not currently functional, if you look at the web page,” Berger said.

Since overrunning the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in the summer, ISIS have been able to broadcast their own radio station and have made at least two attempts to start their own TV station. When asked about these events, Berger confirmed there were such attempts made in the past, but the outlets had since dropped off radar.

“There have been a number of ISIS TV efforts in the past, including a satellite TV station that was broadcasting out of Mosul in June and one out of Sirte, Libya, in October,” Berger says.

“I believe they were at one point rebroadcasting ISIS video propaganda already released online, but I don't know if there was also original content.”

Although these media ventures were primarily in Arabic, ISIS have managed to capitalise on their online capabilities, putting out numerous videos, including a propaganda series called ‘The Flames of War’ on YouTube and other video sharing platforms.

“ISIS also has an official video sharing site similar to YouTube, but it's password protected, so it doesn't get a lot of press,” Berger says. “Even if this station turns out to be official, it won't be all that unique.”

Once Upon a Jihad, an in-depth ebook on British jihadists by Alex Perry is available now from Newsweek Insights.

Warning: this story contains graphic images. 

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the masses and with his wife Coretta led marches on Washington, and from Selma to Montgomery; he is also remembered for his mugshot, the number 7080 hanging across his chest. All these images paint a picture of King, but a commemoration of the man must also include the images of suffering that drove him toward action. King was reacting against America’s history of segregation, racism and civil unrest.

The following photos portray daily life in segregated times that were fraught with overt racial tension. African-Americans are seen going about their daily lives while walking through separate entrances or occupying back seats. Also seen are acts of opposition, like sitting in a “white seat” or drinking from a “white fountain,” and marching through the streets with signs declaring protest.

It’s easy to forget that these photos aren’t from the distant past; King, who was murdered in 1968, would be 86 years old if he were alive today. As was illustrated last year in places as far apart as Ferguson, Missouri and New York City, we still live in an America at odds with itself and its views on race. This photos show what we were, and what King dreamed we’d become.

A man drinks from a "colored" designated water fountain in the Oklahoma City streetcar terminal, circa 1938. Buyenlarge/Getty

A crowd gathers to witness the killing of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marrion, Indiana, August 7, 1930. The poem “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol was inspired by this image. The poem has been put to music in various forms by singers such as Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, and more recently, mixed into a song by Kanye West.Lawrence Beitler/Hulton Archive/Getty

A newsboy at a bus stop sells papers reporting that there has been little change in the habits of passengers regarding the bus companies' instruction to discontinue enforcing segregation, April 1956. Though the high court ruled bus segregation laws as unconstitutional in November of 1956, the law was not immediately adhered to. Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Two African-American students are harassed and followed by a large group of students on their way to school, in Little Rock Arkansas, 1957. Burt Glinn/Magnum

African American demonstrators attempting to swim in the Atlantic Ocean, on a 'white' beach are confronted by stick wielding opposition, in St. Augustine, Florida, June 1964. Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty

A crowd protests familial segregation, in New Orleans, 1960. Paul Slade/Paris Match/Getty

A flag hangs outside the headquarters of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) declares 'A Man was Lynched Yesterday,' circa 1938.MPI/Getty

A woman passes a commonly seen "mammy" doll outside a shop in New Orleans, 1963.Leonard Freed/Magnum

African American children are attacked by dogs and water cannons during a protest against segregation organized by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, May 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

John Lewis, second from left, and others, demonstrate at the Cairo pool, which did not allow African Americans, in Cairo, Illinois, 1962. Lewis, who currently serves as the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, was a key player in the American Civil Rights movement, and a strong advocate for non-violent protest. Danny Lyon/Magnum

Leonard Freed photographed this man “being forced aside by police,” in 1963. Freed’s 1968 book, “Black and White in America” contained his documentation of the civil rights movement in America. Leonard Freed/Magnum

A man breaks down during a protest against segregation organized by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, May 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

National Guard soldiers escort Freedom Riders along their ride from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, 1961. Bruce Davidson/Magnum

The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has poured cold water on the Conservative’s campaign to create a ‘Northern powerhouse’ as a new report highlighted a worsening divide between the affluent South of England and the rest of the UK.

Paul Johnson of the IFS said he did not believe that such a turnaround was possible in one parliament, while Northern Labour figures accused the Conservatives of failing to understand the needs of the North.

A report by UK-based thinktank Centre for Cities, published today, found that the gap between the between the best and worst performing cities in the UK has dramatically increased in the last 10 years, with Northern cities losing out. It found that between 2004 and 2013, for every 12 new new jobs created in cities in the South, just one was created in the rest of the UK.

The report comes just 10 days after UK prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne kicked off their tour of the north-west of England, reiterating the Conservative Party’s plans to create a ‘Northern powerhouse’ if they win the May election - promising investment, tax credits for research and development and improved transport links.

But Johnson said that they were overestimating what could be done in the short run. “Realistically a northern powerhouse would be a 10- or 20-year project and is not something that can happen without consistent policies on it throughout this time,” he said. “You would need a consensus.”

According to Johnson, who has previously worked at the Treasury, the Department for Education and the Financial Services Authority, many of the key economic measures have little to do with the short-term economic policies that make headlines. “We hear all these things about inflation or unemployment being reduced in the last year or so but the effect of economic policies take a lot longer to see and happen than that. That’s why sometimes it’s as much about changing the institution as it is about economic policies.”

David Cameron launched his northern tour by giving a speech in Manchester in which he declared that he wanted a UK where “economic might [is] not just held in one city but spread right across our country”. He continued: “We need a strong London, but we need a northern powerhouse too… When you get that critical mass of people it amplifies jobs and ideas and businesses. The cities and towns of the north of England can have that critical mass.”

The north-west is home to many marginal seats, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that Conservative election co-ordinator George Osborne was keen to show his party’s solidarity with the northern regions of the UK, insisting that £7 billion would be spent on investment there.

Today the chancellor continued the offensive, when he officially opened a new science park at the University of Chester, saying: “Science is a key part of the government’s long term economic plan and lies at the heart of our plan to build a northern powerhouse”. Last week Osborne issued another statement in which he said: “Rebalancing our national economy, ensuring that the economic future of the north is as bright, if not brighter, than other parts of the UK, is the ambition we should set ourselves.”

Richard Leese, the leader of the Manchester City Council said that previous Conservative rhetoric had not changed into a reality, but was more optimistic for the future adding: ”I would say that the support the chancellor is now putting in for investment into infrastructure is right and what we’ve been arguing for for years.”

Leese, a proponent of creating greater transport links to create a “a virtual northern super city”,  is clear that whoever wins the next election he wants to see “investment in infrastructure, in research and in skills… across the north.”

He is also keen to push further devolution of his city in the wake of the new tax and spend powers being handed to the Scottish parliament. “We’ve made our first steps of devolution and these are big steps we’re talking about. In the future I want a greater ability to do what I call place-space budgeting where regional services are organised around where people live, not divided into departmental silos. And I want more responsibility for raising and spending money which means decided taxes - a proportion, not a totality though of course,” he said.

However, many remain unconvinced by the Tory’s promises. A spokesperson for Simon Danczuk, the MP for Rochdale lambasted the idea saying: “This northern powerhouse thing is meaningless - so far they’ve just given a few powers to local councils. I do think that the Tories look at the UK in terms of winners and losers, that’s the harsh reality of it.”

He also said that the Tories did not understand the needs of northern Britain: “When the Tories came into power they introduced enterprise zones in the north, but they put them in all the wrong places - they put them in places that were already doing OK. It’s because a lot of Tory MPs aren’t from these area, so they don’t represent these areas. There’s a long tradition of the Tories not particularly liking the North.”

Leeds councillor James Lewis who is chair of the Transport Committee has a more outlook on the Tory’s plans but is clear that there is still a long way to go. When discussing the imbalance in spending on transport between the north and south he said: “I think we’ve heard the right words but now we need  a long term commitment to funding these things. In terms of HS2 for example the government need to put the money in to match their commitment.”

Lewis, like Johnson, was also clear that it would take more than one government to establish equality across the UK: “Realistically it’s going to take the length of more than one parliament to fill the infrastructure deficit in terms of transport. We’re talking 20 years ahead, so it will take three or four governments to deliver this. There needs to be a cross party commitment, for both the current and future governments, to make sure the the funding imbalance between north and south is equal in terms of transport.”

Newsweek contacted the Treasury but they did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

TROMSØ, Norway -- People don’t generally think of China as a polar power. But they might think again after listening to the head of China’s national oil company, who came all the way to the Arctic Circle here Monday to make the point.

“China is prepared to assist” in oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, Sun Xiansheng, the director general of China National Petroleum Corporation, told an international conference on the future of the region in Tromsø, a bustling, if frozen city of 72,000 people 217 miles inside the Arctic Circle.

Beijing’s interest in the far corners of the world, including the Arctic, should not surprise anyone, suggested Sun. He reminded his standing-room-only audience at the university here that China has been involved in world trade “for 600 to 700 years,” most famously with the Silk Road and Marco Polo.

Now it’s heading north.

“China may consider the use of Arctic resources for the promotion and diversification of oil and gas imports,” Sun said at the opening day of the 2015 Arctic Frontiers conference on climate and energy. The conference has drawn 1,400 people from 37 countries, including diplomatic representatives from as far away as India and as close as those circling the Arctic—the United States, Canada, Russia and, of course, Norway and the other Scandinavian nations. International media also thronged to the conference, with 120 journalists and camera crews from 15 countries braving the Arctic darkness—the sun won’t peek over the horizon here for a few more days—and frigid temperatures reaching near zero Fahrenheit.

“China’s cooperation with Arctic countries is gradually expanding,” Sun said. “So far,” he said in a response to a question after his talk, it has no plans for independent exploration, much less drilling.

“We don’t have any,” he told Newsweek. “We will cooperate with other companies if there’s a chance….We are just starting.”

China has much the same interest as the other powers, big and small, currently nosing around the Arctic. But its declaration last year that it was a “near Arctic” state took some by surprise.

“Its companies are exploring for oil and resources that can be mined, its diplomats are making friends with Nordic countries—with the notable exception of Canada—and its yuan are paying for polar research projects in the Antarctic and Norway,” Toronto’s Globe and Mail noted a year ago.

“Most importantly, Chinese vessels have nosed into the ever-more accessible Arctic waters of the Northeast Passage, slicing an icy path across the top of Russia and Scandinavia that stands to alter the way commodities flow to Asia and manufactured goods return to Europe.”

On Monday, Sun sought to portray China’s state oil company—worth $378.4 billion in 2013—as a good friend to have.

“PetroChina's international investments benefit local residents and promote economies and social development,” he said, claiming the company had created 100,000 jobs abroad. Its “investments benefit local residents and promote economies and social development,” he said, citing the construction of hospitals and schools.

But China's debut on the polar stage has not been entirely smooth. Questions have been raised by its unusual, outsized presence in Iceland, for example, where its embassy staff is twice the size of all other foreign diplomatic missions combined. China's relations with Norway have also been in a deep chill since Oslo awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.

Many observers worry that the competition for resources in the Arctic could lead to military confrontation, but China, Sun insisted, is not antagonistic.

“With whom?” he asked, responding to a question from Newsweek after his talk. “No, no, no. The Russian president is close friends with China’s president. America and China, good friends.”

Correction: This article originally referred to Tromsø as being on an island.

The trial of a British doctor accused of performing female genital mutilation, which began Monday, is the United Kingdom’s first prosecution since the practice was outlawed in 1985.

Dr. Dhanuson Dharmasena, 32, allegedly performed FGM, sometimes referred to as female circumcision, in November 2012 on a 24-year-old woman soon after she gave birth to her first child at North London’s Whittington Hospital. Hasan Mohamed, 41, is accused of encouraging or assisting Dharmasena to perform the procedure.

Mohamed’s connection to the patient is being withheld in order to protect her anonymity.

Both men appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Monday and have pleaded not guilty, the Guardianreports.

Dharmasena is charged with carrying out FGM contrary to a section of the United Kingdom’s Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and if found guilty, could face a prison term of up to 14 years. Mohamed is charged with one count of aiding, abetting, counseling or procuring Dharmasena to perform FGM, and another count of encouraging or assisting someone to carry out an offense of FGM contrary to the Serious Crime Act, Reuters reports.

FGM typically falls under four categories, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Type 1 is the partial or total removal or the clitoris and, in rare cases, the clitoral hood; type two is the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with the possibility of removing the labia majora; and type three is the more extreme narrowing of the vaginal opening by removing and sewing together the inner or outer labia, which may or may not include removing the clitoris. Type four is “all other harmful procedures,” which includes pricking, piercing or cauterizing the female genitals.

Short and long-term health consequences from FGM procedures can in some circumstances include hemorrhaging, infection, psychological trauma and death. Advocates against the procedure say there are no medical benefits, but those pushing for FGM to end in the countries where it’s most popular face an uphill battle against thousands of years of a deeply ingrained cultural practice.

The practice is typically performed by traditional midwives and, increasingly, trained doctors and physicians. In many of the communities where FGM is prevalent, there is a belief that young girls are not marriageable without the procedure.

The woman in the U.K. case, referred to as “AB” in court, reportedly underwent FGM as a 6-year-old in Somalia, when a section of her labia was sewn together, leaving only a small hole for menstrual blood and urine but too small for safely giving birth, according to Reuters.

Defibulation, or re-opening the vagina, is commonly needed for FGM survivors about to give birth, and was required in AB’s case during delivery, the court heard.

But AB allegedly underwent re-infibulation, or sewing the labia together again after giving birth. The stitching or re-stitching together of the labia is an offense under section 1 of the United Kingdom’s Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.

Prosecutor Kate Bex told the jury the details of the trial might be different to typical depictions of FGM, the Guardianreports.

“If you do know a little about FGM, you may be expecting to hear that the offense took place in a back street clinic by an unqualified and uncaring person on a young child. This trial is quite different,” she said, because the incident took place in a hospital, and was performed on an adult woman.

For activists and groups who have worked for years to bring forward prosecutions under the FGM law, the trial is a historic moment.

"The trial is a major step in the right direction and a watershed moment for organizations that have been working on eliminating FGM for several decades,” said Mary Wandia, FGM program manager at Equality Now, an international human rights organization, in a statement emailed to Newsweek. Equality Now advised the Metropolitan Police in their investigation.

“It sends a very strong message that FGM is not only against the law, but also that the law will be effectively implemented. It also illustrates that FGM does indeed still happen in the U.K. and that girls and women continue to be at extreme risk.”

Wandia added that the U.K. still needs more support and availability of “safe spaces” for women and girls who have survived or are at risk of FGM, and more health professionals need to share information on the practice.

In July, Equality Now and London’s City University released figures showing 137,000 women and girls who had undergone FGM were living in England and Wales in 2011. The figures were published during the Girl Summit, held in London last July, which mobilized efforts to end FGM and child marriage, two practices that often overlap.  

In many parts of the world, FGM persists at extremely high rates; 91 percent of girls and women in Egypt and 98 percent in Somalia have undergone undergone FGM, according to UNICEF. In addition, a recent report by Religion News Service showed that the medicalization of the procedure could be leading to higher rates of FGM taking place in some African countries.

However, Al Jazeera America recently reported that an unintended consequence of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been declining rates of FGM in one of the hardest-hit countries, Sierra Leone, after concerns that midwives who traditionally perform FGM could transmit the disease.

Hash oil, a form of concentrated THC from cannabis plants that is created using liquid butane, has been linked with dozens of explosions in Colorado, where marijuana use has been legal since 2012. Similar explosions have been reported in California and Washington state.

In the predawn hours of May 16, 2014 in Manitou Springs, Colorado, an explosion ripped through the apartment of 23-year old Audrey Horowitz and 18-year old Michael Austin. According to an eyewitness speaking to local TV news station KRDO, the blast was strong enough to rip the door from a refrigerator. The couple was taken into custody on suspicion of first-degree arson, reckless endangerment and child abuse (Horowitz's 3-year-old daughter was in the home at the time) and later released on bond. No one was hurt in the explosion and friends deny the couple were doing anything illegal, KRDO reports. 

According to police, evidence collected at the home seemed to indicate Horowitz and Austin were manufacturing hash oil in the apartment. Colloquially called honey oil, dabs or earwax, hash oil is a concentrated form of THC, the active constituent of cannabis. Smoking the oil creates a more potent high than marijuana does, but producing the oil requires the use of certain explosive chemicals, an increasing number of home chemists, many of them in Colorado, may have discovered.

Hash oil explosions are becoming more common in Colorado after the state approved a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012. As The New York Times reported Sunday, at least five people were hospitalized in the state’s 32 hash oil explosions in 2014, and 17 received treatment for severe burns. But now that cannabis is legal in Colorado, so is hash oil, in theory at least.

Hash oil is created by drawing liquid butane through a tube stuffed with cannabis. Resin from the cannabis that contains THC is caught in the butane as it passes through the tube. The butane-resin mixture then enters a glass vial where the butane turns to gas, leaving behind only concentrated THC resin, which is then lit and smoked. The resultant butane gas, however, is highly flammable.

Officials quoted in the Times say that regulated, controlled hash oil manufacturing operations are legal—but homemade hash oil is still against the law. Pot advocates disagree, with some telling the Times that legal weed means legal weed, in all its sundry forms. Hash oil explosions should be treated as accidents, not crimes, they say. They welcome regulation, not prosecution.

Legal authorities in Colorado are largely unmoved by these arguments. A judge in Mesa County, Colorado, recently ruled that laws prohibiting the production of concentrated hash oil are not unconstitutional under the state’s new marijuana laws.

As the world warms, glaciers around the world are rapidly hemorrhaging ice and threatening catastrophic sea level rise. But melting glaciers also pose another kind of menace: the release of vast amounts of stored organic carbon into waterways.

Florida State University assistant professor Robert Spencer and his colleagues have spent nearly a decade researching this overlooked aspect of glacial melt. In a paper published Monday, the team presented the first-ever estimate of how much carbon is due to be unlocked as the glaciers disappear — and just how little is known about what that might mean for aquatic ecosystems and the fate of surrounding fisheries.

By 2050, roughly 15 teragrams of dissolved organic carbon is due to be released into waterways from melting glaciers, the team estimates. For context, one teragram is a trillion grams, and fifteen teragrams is the equivalent of half the dissolved organic carbon that flows through the Amazon River each year. Put another way, it’s a whole lot. Robert SpencerRobert Spencer/Florida State University

But what happens when waterways become inundated by glacial organic carbon? Spencer says that scant research means scientists are not entirely sure. But they do know that glacial organic carbon is a very good food source for the carbon-eating organisms at the bottom of the food chain—much better than other types of organic carbon, which usually gets into waterways from forests and wetlands.

“So the microbes at the base of the food web would use this carbon much more readily," says Spencer. "It’s like putting a cake in front of them. The effect cascades up the food web, to insect larvae, then fish, then birds, and so on.”

This might initially result in a more productive ecosystem. Fisheries may see fish populations go up. But it won’t last. Once glaciers disappear or decline to the point where their contribution of carbon is negligible (an outcome Spencer says is now inevitable) the nutrition source will disappear for good. Plus, without glacial freshwater feeding into streams, water temperature will go up, potentially harming habitats for certain fish that need cold water to survive.

“In the short term, we’ll see more productivity. But it’s a short term boom for a very long term loss. It could be a double edged sword. [When] glaciers decline, they’re not coming back,” Spencer says. He emphasized that much more research is required to fully understand the relationship between glacial organic carbon and fisheries.

Robert Spencer/Florida State University

Glaciers across the globe are melting. Already, 40 percent of the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau are projected to disappear by 2050. An ice sheet in West Antarctica is shedding a volume of ice equivalent to Mount Everest every two years. The Mendenhall Glacier, a popular destination for visitors to Southeast Alaska, has retreated roughly 1.3 miles in the last 50 years. When Spencer returns to Alaska each summer, he says he can clearly see how much the glaciers have shrunk since the summer before. “It’s an ongoing story of misery,” he says, likening the speeding rate of melt to an ice cube on a countertop. It begins to melt slowly. For a while, you still have something that looks like an ice cube. But at a certain point, it begins to melt very fast. Suddenly, you have a puddle.

“You’re going to reach a tipping point in the quite near term. We’re talking about major loss of glaciers in our lifetime.”

If his hands didn’t still hurt, Kevin Jorgeson might not believe he and fellow climber Tommy Caldwell had made it to the top of the Dawn Wall, Jorgeson wrote on Instagram Sunday.

But after nearly three weeks, the two climbers summited the El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park Wednesday, making history as the first to ever complete a free climb of its steep wall.

Scaling the Dawn Wall has been Caldwell and Jorgeson’s goal for years, but climbing has been a lifelong pursuit. Jorgeson, 30, can’t remember a time when he wasn’t climbing on something, he tells Newsweek.

“My parents tell me I’ve been climbing since I was born, just scrambling all over couches and trees and fences. I definitely remember as a kid climbing on top of roofs and ladders,” he says. When a climbing gym opened in his hometown of Santa Rosa, California when he was 11, he discovered rock climbing. “I went to the grand opening and I’ve been climbing ever since.”

Caldwell, 36, began climbing even before his buddy was born. “My dad was a mountain guide, and it’s just what we did as a family,” he says. His father convinced him to go on his first real climb when he was 3 by taking a kite to fly once they reached the top, he recalls. “It really is a lifestyle for me,” he explains, one that gives him a view of nature he wouldn’t get as a tourist and has helped build lifelong friendships.

“It’s a great way for me to explore sort of the limits of what I think is possible,” he says.

Many people, including Caldwell and Jorgeson at times, thought a free climb of the vertical, 3,000-feet-high Dawn Wall was impossible. They spent years mapping out routes on El Capitan and practicing individual maneuvers to figure out how to ascend individual pitches, or segments of the wall. The sequence of movements required to reach the end of a pitch without falling—which would mean starting that section over again—is highly choreographed, Jorgeson says.

“You really need to be in the right mindset in order to climb these pitches and that requires you to be pretty quiet up there in your head and pretty calm and confident,” he says, calling the climb as much a mental battle as a physical one. “That whole stretch of 19 days was for me way more of an emotional roller coaster and stressful mental battle than purely physical.”

During their down time at “camp”—tents suspended from the face the wall—Caldwall tried to keep a light attitude to counteract the intensity of difficult pitches. “If the whole thing gets too heavy, it kind of crushes me a bit,” he says.

The two climbers and a film crew that spent time on the wall with them joked around, listened to music, talked, huddled together during storms and made food. Despite their unorthodox dining circumstances, Caldwell and Jorgeson were well stocked to eat vegetables, sandwiches and even Indian food in addition to the more traditional camping staples of Clif bars and trail mix.

“I feel like food tastes better on the wall, every experience is just heightened a bit,” says Caldwell. “It’s one of the things I love about it,” he says. “We’re just on this vertical ocean of granite and we’re in the middle of Yosemite National Park. … It’s a very very inspiring environment.”

Besides sharing the adventure with one another—Caldwell says having a partner in crime was key—they used social media to let others in on the experience. As they progressed from pitch to pitch, they posted updates, reflections and photos on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

“This climb provided a pretty unique opportunity in that we got good cell phone service on the side of the greatest granite wall in the world,” Caldwell says. “We had to share the experience for all the people that don’t get to experience it themselves.”

While Caldwell’s wife blogged from the ground and photographers and filmmakers documented their climb, the two protagonists tried to give a firsthand window into the process. At one point, about one third of the way through, Jorgeson held a live Q&A session on Twitter from 1,200 feet up El Capitan.

Part of the reason the story got so much traction, he guesses, is that people can relate to elements of the journey. “It’s a big dream, it requires teamwork and determination and commitment,” says Jorgeson. “And those aren’t climbing specific attributes. Those are common to everybody, whether you’re trying to write a book or climb a rock.”

The specific objective is irrelevant, he says, but he and Caldwell hope their objective might inspire others to tackle their own, to ask themselves: “What’s my Dawn Wall?”

What would Martin Luther King Jr. think of America in 2015 if he’d lived to see his 86th birthday? No doubt he’d be pleased by the legal and political advances of black Americans, crowned by the election and re-election of President Obama.

But King would be disturbed by the stubborn race gaps that remain, especially in opportunity, tarnishing the idea of the American Dream. In terms of opportunity, there are still two Americas, divided by race. Five facts show how far we still have to go.

1.       Half of Black Americans Born Poor Stay Poor

Upward mobility from the bottom of the income distribution is much less likely for black than white Americans: 51 percent of the black Americans born into the lowest fifth of the earnings distribution remain there at age 40:

2.       Most Black Middle Class Kids Are Downwardly Mobile

Downward intergenerational social mobility from the middle to the bottom is much more common among black Americans. Seven out of 10 black Americans born into the middle quintile fall into one of the two quintiles below as adults. In some ways, this is an even more depressing fact than the poor rates of upward mobility. Even black Americans who make it to the middle class are likely to see their kids fall down the ladder:

3.       Black Wealth Barely Exists

Race gaps in wealth – already wide – widened further during the Great Recession. The median wealth of white households is now 13 times greater than for black households  – the largest gap in a quarter century, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. Black median wealth almost halved during the recession, falling to $11,000 in 2013 from $19,200 in 2007:

4.       Most Black Families Are Headed by Single Parent

Black children are much more likely to be raised in a single-parent household, and as our own research suggests, family structure can play a large role in a child’s chance of success in all stages of life:

5.       Black Students Attend Worse Schools

The school system remains highly segregated by race and economic status: Black students make up 16 percent of the public school population, but the average black student attends a school that’s 50 percent black. Our colleague Jonathan Rothwell shows that the average black student also attends a school in the 37th percentile for test score results, whereas the average white student attends a school in the 60th percentile:

There are race gaps in almost every conceivable social and economic dimension, many of which we have discussed on these pages before: incarceration, early learning, parenting, schooling, attitudinal racism, employment -- the list goes on. There has been progress, too, of course. But one thing is clear. An inescapable requirement for building an opportunity society is improving the life chances of black Americans.

Richard V. Reeves is Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, and Policy Director, Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. This article first appeared on the Brookings Institution website. Follow Richard V. Reeves on Twitter @RichardvReeves

Mali is officially free of the Ebola virus, government authorities and the World Health Organization announced on Sunday.

Forty-two days have passed since the country’s last potential Ebola case tested negative on December 6 2014. Ousmane Kone, Mali’s minister of health, declared the outbreak over on Sunday, but said the public should remain vigilant as the risk of Ebola in neighboring countries remains.  

Mali saw its first case of Ebola in October after a two-year-old girl contracted the disease in Guinea, one of the three countries worst-hit by the virus. She began showing symptoms typical of the disease, including bleeding from the nose and shedding bodily fluids, on a 600-mile bus journey back to Mali. Afterwards, the virus spread, infecting eight people and killing six.

The end of the disease in Mali “is a historic milestone in the fight against Ebola in Mali, Africa and the world,” Dr. Ibrahima Socé Fall, head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) in Mali, said in a statement. To ensure Ebola does not return to Mali, Fall said the country’s public health systems need to be strengthened.

“Ebola is a terrible disease and continues to pose a threat to peace, security, the economy and the very existence of our society. We cannot let our guard down. The fight continues,” he said.

Ebola continues to infect and claim lives in West Africa; 8,594 have died and 21,614 have been infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, according to data from the World Health Organization.

Cases do appear to be declining. On January 14 2015, Guinea reported its lowest number of weekly Ebola totals since mid-August 2014 and Sierra Leone announced a decline in new cases for the second week in a row, according to WHO. Liberia reported the lowest number of weekly cases since June 2014. 

Pope Francis will visit New York City and Washington, D.C. in addition to Philadelphia during his visit to the United States this fall, Archbishop Bernadito Auza, a member of the organizing committee for the trip, said Sunday.

Francis’s September visit will be his first to the United States since he was elected head of the Roman Catholic church in March 2013.

Speaking to the Catholic News Agency in Manila on Sunday, where the pope recently wrapped up a week-long visit to Asia, Auza said Francis planned to arrive on the 22nd of September and leave on the evening of the 27th. “It’s really a full six days, plus the travel, so it’s really one week,” he said.

The Vatican last year announced Francis’s intention to visit Philadelphia for the 2015 World Meeting of Families, a religious conference for Catholics on the topic of family life which will take place from the 22nd until the 25th of September. In Philadelphia, Francis will be hosted by Archbishop Charles Chaput, who was recently chosen by his fellow American bishops to attend a synod on the family later this year in Rome.

The exact dates that the pope will be in New York and Washington have not yet been confirmed.

New York is home to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, whose influence some church watchers think is waning under Francis; Philadelphia, meanwhile, is overseen by the conservative Charles Chaput, who once refused to speak to reporters from The New York Times for six years after he claimed the Times misquoted him. Both New York and Philadelphia are home to many Catholics; Washington D.C. has fewer, but has pride of place as the nation’s Capitol.

Before the announcement that the two additional cities would be added to the pope’s itinerary, watchers expected Francis’s Papal mass in Philadelphia to draw at least one million churchgoers to the city. The Vatican has not yet said whether he will celebrate additional masses in Washington or New York.

Around 7 million people were estimated to have attended Francis’s open-air mass in Manila on Sunday, capping a busy two-week trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines where he was received enthusiastically by the region’s Catholics. It was his second trip to Asia in five months, his inaugural visit a trip to South Korea in August last year. 

If you ever spent time at a roulette table, then you instantly recognized what went down during Sunday's NFC Championship Game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks. In one seat you had Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy, laconically sipping his club soda with lime and methodically placing one chip each on four numbers, i.e., cornering his bets, playing each turn of the wheel for higher percentages and lower returns.

Seated at the far end of that same table was Seattle coach Pete Carroll, ordering two fingers of tequila and flirting with the prettiest girl at the table. He tossed a few chips at the croupier and barked out numbers that correlated to his children’s birthdays. Betting as recklessly as he was – Did Carroll really just put $200 on “00?” – you hoped the garrulous gambler had another shirt back in his room because he was about to squander this one.

Whenever the wheel favored McCarthy, he betrayed no emotion. Whenever Carroll won, he laughed and high-fived passersby. When he lost, he roared even louder.

This was more than an approach to coaching football on display at Century Link Field. This was a philosophy of life (Who Moved My Cheese? in IMAX for poor Green Bay fans).

The Green Bay Packers kicked five field goals in Sunday’s contest. The Seattle Seahawks did not attempt any (although they did line up for one – and got six points out of it).

Seahawk quarterback Russell Wilson threw four interceptions, all while targeting the same receiver, Jermaine Kearse, and Seattle committed five turnovers altogether. Aaron Rodgers, the superb QB for the Packers, tossed two interceptions, the adverse effects of which were instantly obviated by the Packers picking off Wilson on each ensuing drive.

Seattle had no business winning Sunday’s game, but it did. Green Bay, which held a 16-0 lead at halftime and allowed just one gimmick touchdown through more than 57 minutes, had no business losing. But it did. And at the center of the outcome was each coach’s approach to winning. And, as it turns out, losing.

Mike McCarthy, 51, was born and raised in Pittsburgh. His father was a firefighter, and a police officer… and a bar owner. McCarthy is admirably and inexorably working-class, a man who always dresses as if he is about to shovel his own driveway.

Pete Carroll, 63, is a son of northern California with a serious Peter Pan disorder. Now in his seventh decade, Carroll still has cool hair. He still has hair. Whereas some men seem to forever walk beneath a cloud, Carroll lives in Seattle, a gloom-shrouded, Pacific Northwest city, and serves as a thin beacon of sunshine. He is unflaggingly optimistic, which would be comical if that attitude did not continually serve him so well.

The Packers forced two first-quarter turnovers and each time advanced the football to the Seahawk one-yard line. Each time, McCarthy opted for the safe bet, taking the gimme three from reliable field goal kicker Mason Crosby.

The Seahawks, trailing 16-0 in the third quarter, lined up for their first field goal try at the Packer 18. Carroll eschewed the three, trusting instead that a 33-year-old punter named Jon Ryan, who was the holder for this kick, would either outrace All-Pro linebacker Clay Matthews for a first down or loft a pass over Matthews’ head to a six-foot-six, 302-pound backup offensive lineman named Garry Gilliam, a rookie who went undrafted last spring. On these two men Carroll pinned his team’s postseason hopes.

“You want to put it all on ‘00’ again, sir?”

“Let it ride.”

The play worked. Cut to Carroll, a bemused smile on his face as if to say, Well, of course it worked. We had faith in it working.

If this were a script, Seattle would proceed to ride that momentum shift to victory. This contest followed no rules of screenwriting, or of plausibility. It was as if the Seahawks saved the cat and then tossed it right back up into the burning tree.

Nearly 15 minutes of regulation time, or an entire quarter, after Ryan-to-Gilliam had raised the hopes and voices of Seattle’s renowned “12th Man,” the Seahawks had yet to further encroach upon the Packer lead. In fact, Green Bay had added to it courtesy of – you guessed it – another Crosby field goal.

It was now 19-7, Packers, as Wilson targeted Kearse for a fifth time and, for the fourth time in five tries (one pass fell incomplete), had his pass intercepted. Morgan Burnett picked off Wilson’s errant throw and then did a curious and yet prudent thing: with at least 10 or more yards of open turf before him, Burnett slid to the turf untouched and cradled the football.

Morgan Burnett was not about to risk relinquishing the ball.

Up in the FOX television booth, play-by-play man Joe Buck and analyst Troy Aikman lauded Burnett’s wisdom. Would this be a good time to note that a preponderance of the advertising that accompanies NFL telecasts is paid for by insurance companies?

Burnett did not actually commit a blunder. It was not as if he muffed an onside kick, as teammate Brandon Bostwick would three minutes later, a play that will remain etched in the minds of Wisconsinites long after the season’s first thaw arrives. However, Burnett’s unprovoked choice to play it safe was redolent of a franchise and a coach who preferred it that way. At least on Sundays.

You know the rest: Seattle rode running back Marshawn Lynch’s legs and Beast-mode to a pair of touchdowns in the final 2:09. An utterly impossible two-point conversion pass that soared over the Space Needle before falling into the arms of tight end Luke Wilson happened. And then, in overtime, Wilson targeted Kearse for only the sixth time all day and finally completed the pass...for the game-winning 35-yard touchdown reception.

Seattle’s 28-22 overtime victory at Century Link Field on Sunday should and will be analyzed by NFL denizens for a long time. From a sports-history vantage point, it was the first NFL playoff game decided by a touchdown in overtime since the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants at Yankee Stadium. Whether or not that game truly is, as Eisenhower-era types like to suggest, “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” (at the time, it probably was) it is the contest that put the league on the television map. Even though NBC’s national telecast was blacked out locally, i.e. in New York City, i.e. the nation’s largest television market, it still captured 45 million viewers.

A little more than 56 years later, the Packers and Seahawks partook in a game that was no less epic. And while many of us who watched may not be around in 2071 to compare its historical significance relative to Colts-Giants, the legacy of this game should not be the outcome. It may not even be that the Seahawks would become the first NFL team to repeat as Super Bowl champions in more than a decade.

No, the legacy of Seattle 28, Green Bay 22 should be this: one’s approach to playing a game is inseparable from one’s approach to playing the biggest game of all. How do you want to play it?

The wheel is spinning. Place your bets.

People do a lot of drugs at music festivals. Then, people pee them out—and it could be messing with aquatic life.

A recent study published inEnvironmental Science & Technology found that during and directly after a major pop music festival in Taiwan, levels of party drugs like MDMA (also known as “molly,” and the main component in “ecstasy”) and ketamine rose in a nearby river. Caffeine, acetaminophen and pseudoephedrine levels in the river spiked too.

American Chemical Society

The combined partying efforts of the roughly 600,000 people who turned out for the 2011 “Spring Scream” festival dropped a sudden, heavy chemical load on the river, and researchers worry it and other events like it could do lasting damage to coastal ecosystems.

Sewage treatment plants aren’t equipped to fully remove “emerging contaminants” like recreational drugs, medications and personal care products from water before it is discharged back into rivers, oceans and other bodies of water. The researchers warn that as populations grow in the coming decades, the environmental threat posed by these chemicals could reach dire levels.

“The widespread occurrence of these contaminants in freshwater is potentially a major problem with consequences that are yet to be fully understood,” the researchers wrote. “Although some of the compounds have been proposed to be included in regulatory lists, there is relatively little information on their ecotoxicological effects, and until now, they have escaped regulation.”

The field of sewage epidemiology, or the study of chemicals present in human waste, is growing rapidly as a means to understand drug habits across populations. Testing for drugs in public water supplies has already revealed several interesting trends. For example, a study last year found that amphetamine levels in the wastewater at a Washington college campus “go through the roof” during final exam time.

KIEV (Reuters) - Pro-Russian separatists renewed attacks on Ukrainian forces at an airport complex in the east on Monday after Kiev launched a mass operation to reclaim lost ground there that Russia called a "strategic mistake".

Ukrainian officials said three soldiers had been killed and 66 wounded over the past 24 hours, during which they said they had returned battle lines at the airport outside Donetsk to the status quo under a much violated international peace plan.

Russia expressed concern at what it called escalation by Kiev and published its own peace plan on Monday in the form of a letter from President Vladimir Putin to Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, which it said Poroshenko had rejected.

"It's the biggest, even strategic mistake of the Ukrainian authorities to bank on a military solution to the crisis," Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin as saying. "This may lead to irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood."

In Kiev, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said Ukrainian intelligence had confirmed Russian cross-border arms deliveries to the separatists were continuing.

"Tanks, howitzers, Grad systems, Smerch, Buk," Yatseniuk told a joint news conference with Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, listing Russian-made missile systems which he said were being channelled to the separatists.

"Radio-electronic surveillance stations are not on sale in the Donetsk market - they are only to be had from the Russian defence ministry and Russian military intelligence," he said.

In Kharkiv, a big eastern city well away from the conflict zone, an explosive device went off near a court house, injuring at least 14 people in the latest of a series of mysterious explosions in the city, police said.

Markiyan Lubkivsky, an adviser for the state security service SBU, said on his Facebook page the incident was being treated as a "terrorist act".

Ukrainian officials have insisted Moscow sticks to the 12-point peace plan agreed in Minsk in September, which they say was not violated by its airport counter-offensive, launched after troops had appeared to be pinned down inside the complex.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the situation was still very tense around the airport, which has symbolic value for both sides, and separatists continued attacks on government forces there and elsewhere in the east.

Since plans for another round of peace talks last week were abandoned, fighting has flared up again in Ukraine, whose Crimean peninsula was annexed by Russia in March last year, prompting a crisis with the West, which has imposed sanctions.

The World Health Organisation says more than 4,800 people have been killed in the conflict.

SANCTIONS TO STAY

In Brussels, European Union foreign ministers said now was not the time to ease the economic sanctions against Russia despite conciliatory proposals from the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

"In light of the current events in eastern Ukraine, no one had the idea of loosening the sanctions," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters after talks among EU ministers.

Apart from calling for a ceasefire, the Minsk agreement called for the withdrawal of armed groups and foreign fighters as well as military equipment - meaning, for Kiev, weapons and rocket systems which it says Moscow is supplying to the rebels.

Despite what Kiev and the West says is incontrovertible proof, Russia denies its troops are involved or that it is funnelling military equipment to the separatists.

Putin's letter called for urgent moves to withdraw large-calibre weapons from the conflict zone. "This is now an absolute priority," said a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry hit back, calling for Moscow to show its readiness to comply with the Minsk agreement by signing a timetable for implementing its main points.

"It is very important that a concrete plan is signed for fulfilling all, without exception, the points of the Minsk agreements, and not just those that Russia or the terrorists like," Foreign Ministry spokesman Evhen Perebynis said on TV channel 112.

Orthodox Christians across Eastern Europe, including conflict-plagued Ukraine, celebrated the feast of the Epiphany on Monday by taking a dip in freezing cold water, regardless of the subzero temperatures outside.

The feast of the Epiphany is traditionally dated January 6 when using the more generally-used Gregorian Calendar. However, according to the Julian Calendar used by most Eastern Churches, the date translates to January 19, The Daily Telegraph reports. The feast of the Epiphany, also known as the Theophany, marks the day God manifested himself in the human form of Jesus, according to the Orthodox Church in America.  

The celebration comes amidst continued fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian seperatists, centered around Donetsk airport. In the past 24 hours, three soldiers have been killed and 66 wounded, according to Ukrainian officials. EU foreign ministers said Monday they are not yet ready to lift the economic sanctions against Russia as violence continues in eastern Ukraine.

Fighting between the Ukrainian military and rebels supported by Russia is causing refugees to flee the country and has trapped more than 275,000 internally displaced people inside Ukraine, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR). 4,800 have been killed in the conflict, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).  

Epiphany celebrations and the traditional jolt of icy water may have provided a welcome distraction for some Orthodox Christians in Ukraine after months of conflict. According to believers, the water spiritually becomes the river Jordan where Jesus was baptised by John on the day of the Epiphany; people hope their plunge into the water will bring them health and happiness, the Kyiv Post reports.