Israel is very tense this afternoon. There is a concern that the situation in the north could spin out of control and a third Lebanon war might be about to start.

On Tuesday four rockets were fired from Syrian territory at the Golan Heights. The missiles caused no damage, and Israel responded by destroying a Syrian army emplacement.

This morning two Israeli armored Humvees patrolling the border were attacked by Russian-built Kornet anti-tank missiles from Lebanon. Seven Israeli soldiers were in the two vehicles when they were attacked; all were either killed or wounded.

Israel responded with immediate artillery fire. However, it is expected that the full Israeli response will be greater. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed back to Tel Aviv to army headquarters to discuss the response.

Israeli soldiers carry a wounded comrade on a stretcher near Israel’s border with Lebanon on January 28, 2015. JINIPIX/ReutersThe attacks were a response to Israel’s strike on a convoy of Hezbollah and Iranian officers last week near the border. No one in Israel believes that today’s attack was the end of the story, but most likely it was one of a number of retaliatory actions that Hezbollah and Iran are planning.  

This attack is one in a series of events that have taken place in the past few weeks, seemingly changing the public agenda from its focus on domestic issues to focus on issues of national security. Over the past three weeks, Israelis have witnessed the terror attacks in Paris, watched the attack on the Hezbollah/Iranian convoy in Syria, experienced the terror attack in Tel Aviv and been embroiled in the controversy over Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress on Iran, scheduled to take place a little over one week before the elections in Israel.

While that speech has been widely disparaged and may be, for the moment, hurting the prime minister’s standing, it has still brought back into the public’s consciousness the question of whether Iran will be able to get nuclear weapons.  

All of these events should have strengthened Netanyahu’s position in the upcoming elections. However, recent polling suggests this has not been the case. In fact, the lead that Labor has over Likud seems to be growing. Polls publicized for the first time on Tuesday night indicate that the center-left wing has a slight advantage over the right wing, and that if elections were held today, it is more than likely that Yitzhak Herzog would be the next prime minister of Israel.  

Of course, the elections are still seven weeks away, and pollsters in Israel have been notoriously unsuccessful at predicting last-minute surges. That seems to happen in every election, as the undecided finally make up their minds and vote.  

It would be useful to try to understand why Netanyahu, who is considered by most Israelis to be the most qualified to handle security matters, is not being helped by the supposed shift in public discourse. It should be noted that the same polls that show him most capable of handling national security matters also show him nearly the least capable person to handle the public’s socioeconomic concerns.

A number of factors appear to be at work at the moment. First and foremost, although the news media has been dominated by discussions on security matters, the Israeli public still seems determined to cast its votes based on its socioeconomic concerns. Over the weekend, a poll came out showing that despite the events of the past weeks, over 50 percent of the Israeli electorate believes that economic issues will be key to voting decisions.

Hezbollah supporters wave flags of the militant Islamist group on January 28, 2015, in celebration in Beirut’s southern suburbs after the group fired a missile at Israeli military vehicles on the border.Khalil Hassan/ReutersNon-Israelis are sometimes astounded by this factor. After all, those looking at us from afar most certainly wonder how people who live in cities that were attacked just this summer by barrages of missiles—a country whose destruction is still being called for by some—can worry more about economic issues than issues of survival.

The answer to that question holds the key to understanding these elections. To most Israelis, our security situation is just the way things are, almost like the weather. You can talk about it, but you really can’t do much about it. So if many Israelis believe that, for the moment, there is no way to really affect the issues of war and peace in any meaningful way, and if Netanyahu is seen as more capable on the issue of security, then those issues are ultimately not that important at this time.

This summer the conventional wisdom was that the war would push Israelis further to the right, but that does not seem to be the case. Rather, this past summer’s war has pushed Israelis more toward an apathetic view regarding issues of security (i.e., this is our fate and we will just have to “soldier on”).

Of course, a further factor molding the current pre-election climate could be the rampant number of corruption and sexual scandals that have enveloped the government. Likud has held power for most of the past 38 years. After its nearly four decades in power, voters may be feeling that, despite whatever misgivings they might have about the opposition parties, it’s just time for a change.

If the attack from Lebanon spins out of control, it’s not clear how the election campaigns will be affected. Much can happen in Israel and the Middle East in the next six weeks, but however events unfold, the situation is not likely to be boring.

Media historian Marc Schulman is the editor of historycentral.com. An archive of his recent daily reports from Tel Aviv can be found here. 

At first glance, the numbers seem staggering. Global mobile phone penetration is 96 percent.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where 47 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, mobile data use is expected to grow twentyfold by the end of 2019, according to a mobility study by Ericsson. It is predicted there will be 930 million mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2019—nearly one for every resident. In India, 28 percent of citizens use a mobile phone, with an average of 2.54 devices per user.

But such massive numbers can be deceiving. Mobile phones are often seen as a panacea for improving economic opportunity and public health worldwide. But in reality, we have a long way to go.

According to a Pew Research survey of 24 developing and emerging economies, only two countries had a critical mass of people using mobile phones to make or receive payments: Kenya (68 percent) and Uganda (50 percent). The report writes that “making or receiving payments is one of the least-used cell phone activities,” with only 11 percent of the 24,263 people surveyed saying they use mobile devices for that purpose. Likewise, only 15 percent of respondents use mobile phones to get information about health and medicine.

And while mobile adoption is high, Internet use is low. Only 40 percent of the world’s population has access to the Internet. This is important, because research links Internet use to economic growth. For example, according to one 2010 report, a 10 percent increase in per capita GDP is associated with a 21.5 percent increase in Internet users per capita.

A couple of years ago I wrote about a young man named Stephen Ondieki, who lived in Kenya’s second-largest slum. While his neighbors were earning less than $1 a day, Stephen was earning $8 a day running a computer repair shop. Stephen’s success would have been impossible without a reliable and affordable broadband connection, which allowed him to take classes that prepared him to repair computers. For Stephen and others in developing countries, broadband connectivity is a powerful catalyst for economic and social advancement.

Around the world, 4.2 billion people are not online. In developing countries only 31 percent of people are online, and in the world’s 49 least-developed countries, it is less than 10 percent, according to the International Telecommunication Union’s 2013 Measuring the Information Society Report. Smartphones, often a more affordable bridge to Internet access, are still rare in emerging economies; while 59 percent of 18 to 29 year olds in Uganda own a mobile phone, only 7 percent own a smartphone.

What are the obstacles? In many parts of the world, high-speed broadband access is simply too expensive. This may be due to a variety of factors – such as a lack of competition, poor infrastructure, widespread poverty or regulatory hurdles.

Basic mobile phones can circumvent lack of broadband access, but only to a certain extent. Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world,” yet use of mobile for education (m-learning) is still in its infancy and focused on basics like literacy. For example, the nonprofit Worldreader delivers books on mobile devices for free, using a compression technology to achieve high speeds even on low-bandwidth networks. The service is available across the developing world, with high use in sub-Saharan Africa and India.

Yes, mobile is powerful. But can it deliver the robust, specialized training needed to fill in-demand jobs around the world—many of which involve IT skills—and put 75 million unemployed young people to work?

None of this is meant to dismiss the global problem-solvers who are doing amazing work with mobile technology. The high mobile payment rate in Kenya can be attributed to Safaricom’s M-PESA, a system initially designed to facilitate mobile microfinance loan payments but expanded for broader use. Over 17 million Kenyans use M-PESA and around 25 percent of the country’s GNP flows through it. Another example: Micro-entrepreneurs with Living Goods use mobile phones to market low-cost health and hygiene products in their communities. They earn a livelihood while improving public health.

But the reality is, while mobile phone use is widespread, it is not a silver bullet for economic growth and individual livelihood. We must all work together on two fronts: 1) capitalizing on skyrocketing mobile adoption by developing and advancing truly transformational mobile tools that promote health, financial inclusion and skills development, and 2) improving access to high-speed broadband for all the world’s people.

By “we,” I mean corporations, governments, nonprofits and academia. For example, Worldreader partnered with Australian application developer biNu to deliver its smartphone-like experience to low-end mobile phones. Through its AppLab Incubator, the NGOs Grameen Foundation partners with private sector companies like MTN Uganda (telecommunications) and CARD Bank in the Philippines to develop, deliver and test mobile financial products for poor households.

In a rural, isolated corner of Africa, Cisco partnered with USAID, local Internet service providers, and several NGOs such as NetHope, to bring high-speed Internet access to the world’s largest refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. Thanks to this network, humanitarian organizations are saving money on communications and better serving the camp’s residents, and refugees are getting educational and vocational training online at one of five community centers inside the camp.

When one person’s livelihood changes, it can impact an entire family, then a whole community. When something effective takes hold, it can change the world. Whether through a mobile device or a desktop computer, connectivity and creativity make it all possible.

Tae Yoo is Senior Vice-President of Corporate Affairs at Cisco. This article first appeared on the World Economic Forum website. 

Russia is planning to strengthen its presence in the arms dealing market across Asia, Africa and Latin America, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin who addressed members of the Kremlin’s commission for military cooperation with foreign states at the commission’s first annual meeting in Moscow last night.

"Today, new factors and threats necessitate many countries in the world to change their military doctrines and to modernise their national armed forces,” Putin said.

“Russia is going to expand its presence on budding markets such as the Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean basin,” Putin added, also telling the committee that Russia will “use its reputation” to leverage deals with new partners.

In what could be seen as a swipe at France, Putin said Russia’s reputation as a supplier is that of “a reliable, predictable partner, that does not shirk to fulfil its commitments regardless of its strategic or political preferences”. France has halted the sale of two Mistral warships to Russia, agreed in 2011, in view of the conflict in Ukraine.

“Russia competes absolutely fairly with any other arms suppliers in the global market,” Putin added, highlighting that over the last year Russia had exported arms to more than 60 countries in contracts worth a collective sum of almost $14 billion.

Meanwhile the Russian leader also told the Commission that the government had spent in excess of $15 billion on arms production in 2014, as its defence budget has continued to rise despite the financial crisis in the country as it is anticipated to hit an all-time high record this year of $81 billion.

Putin also estimated that in 2014 Russia had conducted “business partnerships in the arms industry sector” with “over 80 countries”, although he did not give details on the nature of these partnerships.

Andrew Smith from the UK-based NGO Campaigns Against Arms Trade (CAAT) expressed serious concern at the Russian president’s announcement.

"Russia is already a major arms exporter, and has a history of selling weapons to some of the most oppressive regimes in the world, including Syria and Iran,” he said.

“If Putin is looking to expand sales into Africa, Latin America and Asia then there is little reason n to think this will improve. Arms sales do not just provide military support for abusive regimes, they also send a sign of political support,” Smith added.

Putin has used Russia’s position on the UN Security Council to block any initiatives against the oppressive Bashar Assad regime in Syria and the Russian minister of defence Sergey Shoygu has confirmed Russia has embarked on a military partnership with Iran. There have also been frequent reports of Moscow arming North Korea.

South Korean broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported last year that North Korean government officials had been spotted ‘shopping’ at a Russian arms fair outside Moscow last spring.

In response to this CAAT added: “Arms companies will sell weapons to almost anyone that is willing to pay for them, and Putin is implying that he will support them in doing so.

“Arms sales can never be apolitical acts, which suggests Putin is looking to build stronger political and business relationships with these countries too.”

Qatari investors have successfully bid an impressive £2.6 billion to buy London’s Canary Wharf. After months of negotiations it was announced today that the Wharf’s majority owner Songbird Estates had begrudgingly accepted the bid put forward by that Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), along with U.S. group Brookfield Property Partners.

The path to today’s acquisition has not been a smooth one. An independent valuation had initially priced Songbird Estates at 381p-a-share in November and they last year rejected an offer of £2.2 billion (295p-per-share) to buy a majority stake in the company, telling its shareholders to follow its lead. In accepting the bid today Songbird Estates have settled for the offer of 350p-a-share, emphasising in their statement that they still believed this was an under evaluation: “The offer does not reflect the full value of the business, its unique operating platform and its prospects.”

While Songbird Estates owned the majority stake in the Canary Wharf Group (CWG) - which owns the Docklands estate - Brookfield owns 22% of CWG and QIA owns a 28.6%, making it the company’s biggest shareholder.

After a three-month back-and-forth, Songbird have today urged their three other shareholders -  Glick, China Investment Corp and Morgan Stanley Investment Management - to accept the offer. This would mean QIA and Brookfield would command over 85% of Songbird’s shares.

The new acquisition further expands Qatar’s London property portfolio. Starting in 2008 the al-Thani royal family and the country's various investment arms have snapped up some well-known properties in the UK capital including luxury department store Harrods and the entire Olympic village in Stratford. Other locations include most of the Shard skyscraper and half of the world’s most expensive apartment block, One Hyde Park, located in Knightsbridge.

Other purchases in recent years include over a quarter of the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain, 8% of the London Stock Exchange and almost 7% of Barclays bank. 

British healthcare remains “amongst the poorest of Western European countries”, according to an annual report presented in Brussels on Tuesday that compares healthcare systems of 36 countries in the continent. The UK dropped from 14th place in the rankings in 2013 to 16th in 2014. The Netherlands has the best healthcare system in Europe, followed by Switzerland and Norway.

The fifth annual Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI) published by the Swedish NGO Health Consumer Powerhouse (HCP) used 48 indicators to rank healthcare systems in Europe, including patient rights and information, accessibility (including waiting times for treatment), outcomes, range of reach of services provided, prevention and the availability of drugs.

The Netherlands earned the top title five years running, securing 898 of the possible 1,000 points in 2014.

However even the UK’s score has been improving over time. The UK received 650 out of 1,000 points in 2008, 682 in 2009, 721 in 2012, and 718 in 2013. Last year the EHCI described British healthcare as ‘“amongst the poorest of Western European countries”. Britain’s score remained unchanged in 2014.

Scotland has been separated from England in total scores by the HCP since 2013 and spends 10% higher per capita than England, but the scores remain almost identical.

Despite UK’s poor score, HCP chairman and head of research Dr Arne Bjornberg said that healthcare is improving across Europe. “In spite of slightly reduced spending on healthcare in many countries, overall healthcare performance keeps improving,” Bjornberg said in Brussels. “The initial measurement in 2006 awarded just one country with more than 800 out of maximum 1,000 points. In 2014 there are no less than nine such high-performing healthcare systems.”

The Netherlands spends £3,458 (€4,632) per capita on healthcare - 11.8% of GDP according to OECD figures - while the UK spends just £2,268 (€3,038) - 9.2% of GDP.

However, there are also other factors which may affect the quality of healthcare in the country. Patients have the choice of many different, competitive insurance providers, but healthcare decisions largely include patient co-participation, closing the gap between patient and professional. “Financing agencies and healthcare amateurs such as politicians and bureaucrats seem farther removed from operative healthcare decisions in the Netherlands than in almost any other European country,” the HCP report claims. “This could in itself be a major reason behind the Netherlands’ landslide victory in the EHCI 2014.”

The Netherlands has also excelled at providing accessibility to patients, setting up 160 primary care centres which have open surgeries 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The future of the NHS has emerged as a major election issue in the upcoming 2015 elections in the UK, with voters ranking it as more important than the economy in deciding how they will cast their vote. The opposition Labour party has pledged to train 10,000 new nurses.

For reasons perhaps clear only to the man himself, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has given us a dramatic reading of an Onion article mocking Bill de Blasio. The mayor read the story aloud to reporters on Tuesday, then tweeted a link to the recording on SoundCloud:

Mayor de Blasio just performed a dramatic reading of The Onion snow story in Room 9. @deBlasioNYCpic.twitter.com/IjWQ8hXevU

— Mara Gay (@MaraGay) January 27, 2015

In which I perform a dramatic reading of The Onion: http://t.co/AGAy7mPIJA

— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) January 28, 2015

The Onion article, which spoofs New York's dramatic overpreparation for this week's snowstorm, is headlined "NYC Mayor: 'Reconcile Yourself With Your God, for All Will Perish in the Tempest.'" It continues in that apocalyptic vein, quoting the mayor urging New Yorkers to "clutch your babes close to your breast and take small comfort in knowing that they will howl for but a few hours before death becalms them forever."

De Blasio's reading, though, sounds more bemused than frightful:

Elsewhere, the mayor has said that he has "no regrets" regarding preparation measures for winter storm Juno. "You do the best you can," the mayor told the Today show. "Where we all agreed was safety first."

Last week, for the first time in 59 days, the sun rose over Europe’s northernmost city. The official end of the morketiden – the murky time – means a party: “A lot of people put on yellow clothes, and have a drink or two. The children eat sunbuns – doughnuts with a custard centre,” I am told. Festivals and feasts to celebrate Soldagen – sun day – go back to the Bronze Age. It’s always been a relief to see the sun again. But, apart from one teenage Goth-satanist, everyone I met insisted they loved the winter.

I loved it, too. My days on Sommaroy, “Summer Island”, an hour west of Tromsø city in Norway, were washed in blues, pinks and indigos. At midday, a gleam of copper and gold on the horizon showed where the sun was biding its time. It was icy, still and clear. Lit by the snow-glow, the mountains were veined marble, rendered in high definition. Even when it got dark, at about 3pm, it wasn’t black. Rather, we swapped the luminous twilight for a deep blue velvet sparkling with stars  and the occasional green skidmark of the Northern Lights.

The weather in Troms province, is not often so benign. But it was far lovelier than the average January day in Edinburgh, where I live. “It’s a great time,” says Stine Ivesen, a businesswoman. “In December it can be pretty dark. But once the snow arrives, there’s lots of reflected light. I love to cross-county ski so I get lots of exercise, and when we’re indoors, we make sure it’s cosy and full of log fires and candles. That’s important: you can love winter if you embrace it.”

“Don’t people get depressed?” I ask. They certainly do in Scotland. “What about Seasonal Affective Disorder, whose symptoms include low mood, sleep-addiction and a lack of interest in life? What about Ibsen, the playwright whose portraits of soul-wringing, neurosis-laden northerners gave us our favourite stereotype of Scandinavians?”

Sommarøy is a popular tourist destination due to its white sand beaches and scenery.Teri Pengilley

“I think that some newer people might get sad,” says Kristjon Bergmundsson, originally from Iceland. We were motoring out into the glass-calm fjord to put lines down for cod. “And lots of the fishermen make sure they get some winter sun – the Canaries or Thailand. But I’m genetically adapted to tolerate the dark.”

There may be something in that. For all the stereotypes, Norway and Sweden’s suicide rates are close to European averages, and lower than Britain’s, studies of communities in the far North generally find fewer cases of SAD – the syndrome that tends to hit people between January and March – than in normal urban populations. Fewer antidepressants are prescribed per person in Norway and Finland than in UK (though the highest use of antidepressants in the whole of Europe is in Iceland).

Some of the people I met in the north did complain. Not about depression, but about interruption to normal sleep. This is a well-known phenomenon when the nights get longer: in the 1970s academics speculated that sleep disruption during the morketiden might be associated with “radiation from outer space”, or the magnetic distortions that cause the Northern Lights.

But now, there is a cure that satisfies most people: “When I use the light box for 20 minutes during the day, I sleep like a baby that night,” saya nurse Unni Lorentzen. Many workplaces and Tromsø University are equipped with these gadgets: a box with full-spectrum bulbs powerful enough mimic sunlight. Forty-five minutes in front of a multiple light source emitting at least 10,000 lux is prescribed. Using single “daylight” bulbs is not enough.

Mimicking sunlight doesn’t work for everyone. Alex Livingstone, a hydropower businessman who lives in rural Scotland tells me. “Light boxes don’t work, 12 sessions of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) might. They mainly gave me a headache and a vague sense of agitation without any real energy. But then, by the end of February in Scotland, you couldn’t recognise happiness if it bit you on the nose.”

There are other solutions. Our fishing trip produces a box full of vast cod – not just any cod, but skrei, the “wandering cod” that, lean and muscular, are a wintertime treat in northern Norway. They come up on the fishing line nearly as long as my leg. (These aren’t the only giants around – there are humpback whales just a few boat lengths away, fishing just as intently.) The skrei is cooked and served up to us in a traditional Norwegian fashion – boiled. Slices of snowy white skrei flesh lay on the plate alongside boiled skrei roe (eggs) and boiled potatoes. This is cheered up with a sauce of skrei liver, nuggets swimming in the cod’s own oil.

This is delicious – even to someone who gagged at cod liver oil doses as a child. It is also a key to another way of dealing with the darkness: diet. Most of us who live in the North eat nothing like as much fish as our ancestors did – for many communities in Europe it was the main source of protein until the 20th century. Fish contains the amino acid tryptophan and a lack of it is blamed for under-production of the hormone serotonin – and that in turn is connected to lethargy, aggression and depression. Trials have shown tryptophan supplements to be amazingly useful for helping 10-year-old boys with a tendency to be quarrelsome.

When the sun finally rises above norther Norway, children and adults celebrate Soldagen with a day off. Roald, Berit/AFP/Getty

Most interesting of all are the problems associated with shortages of Vitamin D, which the body naturally makes when it absorbs the ultraviolet rays in sunlight. That process is so important to good health that children whose parents over-use sunscreen have been found to be severely deficient in Vitamin D, to the extent of developing the wasting disease rickets. For those, like the far northerners, who cannot make Vitamin D naturally, a key alternative source is oily fish – and most of the Tromsø people I meet do take cod liver oil or Vitamin D supplements in winter.

The importance of Vitamin D in children’s growth has been known for decades. It is habitually added to milk in Denmark, the US, parts of France and Canada. Scotland’s unexplained high rates of multiple sclerosis are one issue that has been linked to low Vitamin D, because people born in late winter are more likely to develop MS. New research suggests that lack of Vitamin D may have a role in autoimmune diseases, asthma and also nervous system disorders including autism, Parkinsonism and dementia. Some academics now believe that growing up with less than an optimum amount of sunlight may be a cause of schizophrenia.

The return of rickets – a disease associated with Dickensian poverty – has shocked the British medical establishment. There is a growing campaign to put it back into the diet; the retailer Marks & Spencer now adds it to milk, though in amounts that are probably not significant.   Oliver Gillie, a writer and scientist, believes the UK should fortify all milk and cereals with Vitamin D. He says that in winter 90% of adults have lower levels of it than they should – even in summer the figure is 60%. “A great advance could be made by providing all pregnant women and babies with higher dose Vitamin D supplements. And a programme reaching 80-90% of people, as modern vaccinations do, could greatly reduce, if not eradicate MS, depression, type 1 diabetes and several autoimmune diseases. I think we must do it.”

So the recipe for getting through the dark times, is to swallow the vitamins, eat oily fish, turn up the lights and – perhaps most important – make winter a pleasure. A friend who has just moved to Denmark after 20 years in sunny East Africa is impressed by Danish devotion to wintertime hygge – a word that means being cosy, happy and convivial. Norwegians have a similar concept, Scots, tellingly, do not. “You create an atmosphere – candles on the window sill, tables, everywhere. Log fires, wine with friends, homemade food, board games with the children. That’s how the Danes get through the long winter nights. There are worse ideas than getting as comfortable as you can.”

New York City all but shut down late Monday and Tuesday in anticipation of a “crippling”nor’easter that never showed. Schools around the city announced a snow day on Tuesday for what ended up being a manageable amount of snow. Historically, the city’s schools shut their doors only once in a blue moon—only three times between 2000 and 2009 and five since, including yesterday.

Last year’s particularly harsh winter—and a controversial decision by the newly appointed Mayor Bill de Blasio to keep schools open on February 13, 2014—spurred a pint-sized documentary filmmaker to dissect the issue in Anatomy of a Snow Day.

Zachary, a seventh-grader at NYC Lab School, began shooting winter scenes with his father, a lawyer, who also edited the documentary, and asking questions to find out what goes into the snow day decision in a city with roughly a million children in its public school system. Zachary’s family asks to withhold his last name because of his age; Maxwell is his middle name.

“As a seventh-grader attending public school here, there has always been something that bothered me. Even though our area will probably be pounded by snow, it is likely that our Mayor and Schools Chancellor will keep schools open,” Zachary wrote in an essay on Quartz in November, just ahead of his documentary’s premiere.

“I wondered how the City made these decisions. Since I couldn’t find any clear information on the Internet, I decided to investigate the issue myself.”

The 41-minute documentary had its world premiere at the 2014 DOC NYC on November 15. “Anatomy of a Snow Day marks the fest debut of a born storyteller,” wrote Kurt Brokaw, a senior film critic for the Independent.

“It’s funny to edit a project that was shot over six months when your voice is changing,” the young filmmaker said at the premiere.

But Anatomy was not the 12-year-old’s first foray into documentary. He previously worked on shorter docs such as A-D-Something-Something (a film about ADHD) as well as Yuck! A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch (screened at the Manhattan Film Festival), Last Letter to Santa and Blockbuster: Prelude and Pitch.

“Instead of just sitting back and complaining,” Zachary wrote, “kids should get involved, stir up some trouble, and seek out the answers themselves.”

Zachary shares his answers about New York City snow days, including interviews with de Blasio, meteorologist Bill Evans, Department of Sanitation Assistant Chief Edward Grayson and Commissioner Joseph Bruno from the Office of Emergency Management, in Anatomy, which can be viewed in full online.

What’s the strangest dinner party you’ve ever been to? Whatever went down, it probably pales in comparison to the revelry and revelations in Patrick Brice’s hysterical slapstick indie comedy The Overnight.

It’s the tale of an uptight, 30-something couple who have recently moved to Los Angeles, Emily (Taylor Schilling) and Alex (Adam Scott), unsure of their place in the city and how to meet like-minded people. One afternoon, they take their son to the playground and unexpectedly meet the freewheeling Kurt (Jason Schwartzman), who invites them over to his palatial home for dinner and arranges a play date for their sons.

What starts out as a wine and pizza party with Kurt and his wife, Charlotte (Judith Godrèche), turns into an increasingly strange night involving breast pump videos, dance parties and bongs. As the night stretches into morning, both couples are forced to confront challenging questions about their relationship, and themselves, and reevaluate how they connect to others. The Overnight, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival last week to overwhelming applause (when we weren’t crying in laughter), and was recently acquired by The Orchard and is slated for a wide theatrical release in late 2015.

We chatted in Park City, Utah, with Scott and Schwartzman about The Overnight, what it was like donning prosthetic penises, swinging culture and the precarious nature of making friends when you get older.

A central plot point in The Overnight involves one of you donning a comically large prosthetic dick, and the other a near-micropenis. What was it like getting those elements together?

Scott: My wife [Naomi] and I helped produce the movie, and so we kind of got to see the early images of the prosthetics [the prop] guys put together. There was a lot of debate: The big one should be bigger and the small one should be smaller, and I feel like we got this—kind of the perfect place with both of them. I think that the smaller one is not quite...a micropenis? I don’t think Patrick [Brice] wanted to be that extreme with it. You know, Patrick chose the ones he thought were most representative.

Schwartzman: Yeah. I guess it’s going to be such a moment to talk about in the story, when these things are revealed that there’s a really small and a really big one, and the two of them next to each other.

Sounds like it was a blast to film that scene when you two are dancing naked by the pool.

Scott: Yeah, super fun.

Schwartzman: It was great once we’d been naked for a while. I’m pretty shy.

Scott: Me too!

Schwartzman: I’m a modest person, I’m not…

Scott: Yeah. But I felt weirdly comfortable out there. Like 15 minutes in and you think, Eh, whatever.

Schwartzman: I mean, I’m the guy who will not take his shirt off at a party. And my wife walked on-set and was like, Who is this guy? Is that my husband? Prancing around like a little pony? I was just so extremely naked in front of all these people. But it was not scary anymore.

One of my favorite lines in the film comes when your character, Adam, is finally able to be comfortable with his body and says, “I feel like I just gave birth to myself!”

Scott: Yeah, it was kind of freeing!

Schwartzman: I feel like my character is just kind of “Take it off!” and then it’s like, “Whoa.” The night is going to...this. [Adam’s] is like a powerful pull-out-the-grenade moment. Mine is more of a shocking “Oh my God, these guys are getting naked!” I like that it establishes that.

Given those naked scenes, it’s interesting that as a viewer you don’t feel quite like a voyeur.

Schwartzman: Yeah, but that look on Judith [Godrèche]’s face in the massage parlor is a look...I don’t want to see that look a lot.

Scott: A very provocative look.

Disturbing, even.

Schwartzman: Oh my God. You know one of my favorite lines in the movie happens around that time...when Taylor is driving Judith and asks, “Why am I driving your car?”

Scott: That’s funny. Originally in that scene Judith was driving, but Judith is such a terrible driver, and we started shooting this scene, and everyone was too frightened. So we had to get Taylor [Schilling] to drive and had to switch the lines around.

How was it like seeing this on the big screen at the premiere? 

Scott: You know, I was surprised by how people were laughing so much that they were missing important lines of dialogue. Which is just a terrific problem to have. We’re just so happy about that. But there were some parts that I was like, “Shut up, shut up!” because they’re either missing an important character point or the setup for another joke.

The dialogue has quite a few good one-liners. Did you work entirely off the script or was there any element of improvisation there?

Scott: I mean, we did improvise a lot on the set, but that was more to kind of get into a rhythm together. There wasn’t an insane amount. Patrick wrote a great script, so it’s pretty much all scripted. But we did mess around a bit.

 Schwartzman: Sometimes you’ll say a few things, but that was just sort of nice of Patrick to let us go. But most everything in the movie is in the script. Because it is a delicate...thing.

The film is funny, but it also taps at something more serious as well: how hard it is to make friends and connect with strangers when you’re older.

Schwartzman: That’s what I loved about the movie. I mean, [Adam] has two kids that are a little older than my two kids, but my daughter, you know, goes to school and has play dates. And I think about it all the time—it’s hard to meet people and open up to people. When do you connect with people, you know what I mean? And also, Where are you at in your own life and your partners as well? I really related to that.

How did you prepare for the role? Did you watch any documentaries about sex culture or comedies about swingers?

Schwartzman: We just kind of went into it. It’s got some moments of like, we’re going to kiss, but not a lot of that.... It’s not really a swinger comedy. Oh, have you ever seen that swinger movie called The Lifestyle, though? There’s also one called Swinging in America that’s pretty wild.

 Scott: Huh. And it’s a documentary about swingers?

 Schwartzman: Yeah, it’s about swinging culture in America. Basically, there’s a house that’s, like, the designated swinging house. There’s rules and etiquette about how you do it, but it’s a documentary, and the camera’s going in different rooms, and couples are just having sex….

Scott: On HBO’s Real Sex there was a lot of that kind of stuff.

Schwartzman: Sometimes when there’s a tense moment of silence I like to say, “Real Sex, that’s a wrap!” [Laughs.] I remember watching Real Sex as a younger person and sometimes thinking...This is hot.

Scott: Oh God, yeah.

Schwartzman: Where there’s some like unicorn mud-bath circus….and not to make fun of people’s fetishes, but there’s a moment when it stops being erotic.

Both of you are married. What was going through your head during these tense scenes where your characters realize the confines of their marriage are loosening and they are considering seeing other people?

 Scott: I don’t know. I think it’s about two people who have never really taken the time to consider that, how they feel about that with a pretty boxed-in, limited sex life and have kept their horizons pretty cut off in terms of how they view the world and themselves. And this is the first time they’ve thought about themselves as desirable people outside their own marriage. The fact that they don’t see [the other couple] that way as well, it’s blowing their minds and freaking out.

Schwartzman: I love the scene when Judith is like, “But if we weren’t married, would we do this?” That’s a terrible position to put someone in.

Scott: Terrible!

Adam, I couldn’t help but wonder if your character and Taylor’s, since they are so repressed, watch porn?

Scott: Hmm. They don’t seem like it to me. Why did you wonder that?

I was just thinking about how wildly different people express sexual desires, even people who are admittedly sexually frustrated, like Alex and Emily.

Scott: I would imagine maybe they do it in private, but I think they’re pretty innocent. That’s a good question. I would say everyone watches porn in some capacity, but they’re definitely not the kind of couple to watch it together.

Schwartzman: [In a French accent] I think we need to ask the question: What is porn? I was talking to someone once about porn recently, and they were like, the last great porn I saw was Blue Is the Warmest Color.

 Scott: Hey, that’s not a porn!

That’s a great film.

Schwartzman: [In a British accent] That’s a great fucking film!

The story goes that Alan Ladd, a huge star in 1946, complained to the producer of a war picture that was about to start shooting: “Just for a change, can I have a finished script before I start? I’m tired of having 30 or 40 pages thrust at me and being told I’ll get the rest.” When assured that he would have what he asked for, Ladd thanked him and added, “An actor likes to know what wardrobe he’s got to have.”

The annals of Hollywood are filled with such gags told at the actor’s expense—and they’re usually told by writers, since they write everything and often get the last laugh (if not the money and prestige). “It’s the Pictures That Got Small”: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilderand Hollywood’s Golden Age (Columbia University Press) is filled with such jokes and characterizations. Brackett, a producer and screenwriter best known for his collaborations with Wilder (The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard) used his diaries (1932 to 1949) to cast a light on the life of a lowly movie scribe (albeit one of the most successful of his time), while catching the scenery around him in all of its sparkle and shadow.

“His work in recording the day-to-day working life of a Hollywood studio is comparable to that of Samuel Pepys in the seventeenth-century documenting a crucial period—the Restoration—in British history,” writes editor Anthony Slide in his introduction. “Like Brackett, Pepys had wide-ranging interests, with his diaries mingling the personal with the impersonal.” So we get the rumblings of the age off-screen (the Depression, the buildup to America’s involvement in World War II, the Hollywood blacklist) and the author’s impressions of stars such as Ginger Rogers (“She hasn’t a very good brain but insists on using it”) and Charlie Chaplin (“as repellent a human being as I’ve ever been in the room with”) and literary figures slumming for money like F. Scott Fitzgerald (“He seemed burned-out, colorless, amazing when one remembers the blaze of his youth”) and Aldous Huxley (“Frankly, I detest this writer, whose work I worship.… ”). Starting with his arrival from New York, where he wasThe New Yorker’s first drama critic and a novelist of some renown and had a seat at the Algonquin Round Table, Brackett’s diaries read like a funnier, better-paced version of Barton Fink.

But he saved his best stuff for his relationship with Wilder. Life magazine called them, “The Happiest Couple in Hollywood,” and their union yielded 12 movies (and many more, unproduced scripts) but like many such partnerships, it wasn’t easy. “The comparison of Brackett and Wilder to husband-and-wife writing teams is not a wild one,” writes Slide, “for in many ways the two men functioned as husband and wife—agreeing and disagreeing in their relationship as much as would any married couple.” And when they finally parted company, after the struggle to make Sunset Boulevard, Wilder said “something had worn out and the spark was missing. Besides, it was becoming like a bad marriage.”

The two couldn’t have been more different. Wilder, an Austrian-born Jew who fled Germany during the rise of Hitler, was politically liberal and a tireless womanizer. Brackett’s father was a New York state senator and his family traced its roots back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was a Republican WASP, casually anti-Semitic in his jottings, unable to write about his wife’s alcoholism and (perhaps) a closeted homosexual. He despised the faux proletariat in tinseltown, sniffing of Elia Kazan, when he won a best director Oscar (for Gentleman’s Agreement) in 1948, “he hadn’t the grace to wear a dinner coat. Social protest, I presume.” And when Brackett won an Academy Award in 1946 for co-writing The Lost Weekend, he records “a compliment from [gossip columnist] Hedda [Hopper] which went right down to the dark springs of snobbism and pleased me mightily, something to the effect that ‘it’s so wonderful you should have overcome the advantages of gentle birth and come to this.… I looked at all the other people on the stage and there wasn’t another top drawer person among them, male or female.’”

Brackett and Wilder were contract writers at Paramount in 1936 when they were thrust together to work on an Ernst Lubitsch comedy,Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. Their styles were different but ultimately complementary. “Brackett wrote repartee,” wrote Maurice Zolotow in Billy Wilder in Hollywood. “He hated story conferences. He hated talking out imaginary scenes with directors and producers. Wilder loved those moments. The burden of story conference strategy fell upon his glib tongue.”

Screenwriting team of director Billy Wilder and producer Charles Brackett work in their office at Paramount in 1944.Peter Stackpole/Life Magazine/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Lubitsch was considered the master of the lost art of the screwball comedy, and Bluebeard belonged in an equally extinct subgenre Zolotow labeled “the UFF, or Unfinished Fuck” picture in which the heroine (Claudette Colbert), “a compulsive virgin,” frustrates the amorous hero (Gary Cooper)—even after they are married. To convey such a story under the strict code of the Motion Pictures Association of America of the time, when even married couples slept in separate beds on screen and no one kissed with their mouths open, was the first challenge the two faced and the results were deemed such a success that soon everyone wanted that Brackett-Wilder touch.

Their writing styles, too, were completely divergent. “He is a hard, conscientious worker, without a very sensitive ear for dialogue, but a beautiful constructionist,” Brackett writes of his partner in September 1936. “He’s extremely stubborn, which makes for trying work sessions, but they’re stimulating.” By November he has learned of working with his “temperamental partner.… The thing to do was suggest an idea, have it torn apart and despised. In a few days it would be apt to turn up, slightly changed, as Wilder’s idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives were simpler.”

Soon the pair were known for doing the impossible, as they collaborated with Lubitsch again on Ninotchka (1939), the story of a humorless Soviet apparatchik (Greta Garbo) who falls in love with a Western playboy (Melvyn Douglas) in Paris. In Hollywood at the time, you were called a “social fascist” or a “Red baiter… if you didn’t admire Joseph Stalin or ridiculed the USSR,” writes Zolotow. This was before Stalin’s pact with Hitler, though rumors of the show trials and mass executions taking place in Russia were already the best way to start an argument among show people. How, then, make Garbo (somebody not known for comedy) a sympathetically funny figure—though not a figure of fun?

It was Wilder’s idea to take the tale to Moscow, where they could depict in semi-realistic fashion the living conditions of Soviet citizens at the time. Ninotchka shares an apartment with a cellist and a streetcar conductor; the love letter she gets from Douglas has been completely redacted; and when three friends come to have dinner with her, each brings his own egg. The contrast between her life there and the Champagne and caviar dream of Paris spoke volumes.

Despite their skill for comedy, Brackett and Wilder wanted to push themselves. It was Wilder’s idea to translate Charles Jackson’s 1944 novel about an alcoholic writer in Manhattan to the screen, a subject for which Brackett initially showed little enthusiasm. “Nowhere in the diaries is the word alcoholism used to describe [his wife’s] condition, nor does he attempt to detail her depression,” writes Brackett’s grandson, Jim Moore in his foreword. “At most, he will mention that she has gone back East, where a Western Massachusetts clinic took her in for care.”

And it didn’t stop there: One of Brackett’s daughters became an alcoholic, and married one herself. She died after falling down the stairs, while he died in a fire after he’d passed out. And Wilder, who, like his partner was not much of a drinker, was mystified by the behavior of one of his famous collaborators, Raymond Chandler, who worked with him on Double Indemnity (1944). “[One] day he was living in reality and the next he would fall into a spell of morbid gloom and become incomprehensible to Wilder,” wrote Zolotow. “Billy Wilder made The Lost Weekend to explain Raymond Chandler to himself.”

Much has been written about the making of the film (Blake Bailey wrote an entire book about Jackson, a somewhat pathetic figure whom Brackett delights in tormenting), and Brackett confines his notes less to the difficulties of capturing such grim material and more to the pressure outside forces, from AA to whiskey distilleries, tried to bring to bear on Paramount—and the inevitable inanities of the censors after it was made. “There was a great flurry from the Censorship Department about Jane Wyman’s wearing a white sweater which they claimed was too revelatory,” wrote Brackett on December 26, 1944. “One of the censors said it looked as though Wyman was trying to cure [Ray Milland] off the bottle by the nipple.”

Whatever its subliminal messages,Lost Weekend swept the Oscars the next year, winning awards for the writers, Milland—and Wilder, for the first time, as director. Much like the alcoholic foreswearing drink, Brackett repeats (and repeats) that he will never work with Wilder again (“After all, an Oscar one night a year is agreeable, but is it worth looking at that face and listening to that ego all the other days in the calendar?”)—only to be brought back together. Though Wilder had other writing partners after he and Brackett broke up (most notably I.A.L. Diamond, who co-wrote Some Like It Hot and The Apartment), the tension of their collaboration was unique and Sunset Boulevard was their fitting finale.

The original idea was Brackett’s. “We’re pretty well set on the raddled old picture star who is keeping a young man, probably a writer,” he notes in August 1948. He envisioned a comedy but Wilder was pulling the story in a darker direction. “As writers—which was what they still considered themselves—Brackett and Wilder had reached the pinnacle of success,” writes Zolotow. “They were at the $5,000-a-week salary level, individually, and that was the highest scale in 1948.”

But the war, and the Communist witch hunts that followed, made the already jaded Wilder even more cynical, success or no. Brackett’s wife, Elizabeth, had died a year before and the entry for June 7, 1947 is one of the most heartfelt in the book: “I held my dear girl’s hand and, very quietly, more quietly than drifting to sleep, the breathing stopped and I was left with a sharp sense of aloneness, of realization of how I’d depended on that wise, ill woman, how she’d meant home and refuge from the foolishness of this foolish town.… ”

Despite his loss, Brackett still wanted to make people laugh and the joke of having a dead writer tell the sordid tale of his doomed affair with a washed-up siren was the kind that appealed to both him and Wilder. Casting was a bitch—the old film stars they approached, including Mae West and Mary Pickford, resented the implication that they were has-beens and Montgomery Clift, the hot actor of the moment, bagged on them at the last moment. “I could swear someone he loves has said to him, ‘You mustn’t play that dreadful part,’” Brackett wrote in his diary—and indeed, the legendarily gay Clift “had been for some years in the grip of a romantic obsession with a woman about 30 years older than he was—Libby Holman, the famous torch singer of the 1920s,”  according to Zolotow. “Libby Holman had threatened to kill herself if Montgomery played such a role in this movie.”

Which was how, with the accidental luck of many of Hollywood’s great films, they ended up casting William Holden and Gloria Swanson (“Sic transit Gloria Swanson,” was the one-line review of the film offered by one wag). Little else was left to chance, from the selection of the house in which she hides (actually at Wilshire and Irving, a few miles south of Sunset Boulevard) to the close-up Brackett insisted upon when Swanson uttered her most famous line: “I am big—it’s the pictures that got small.”

Brackett was equally adamant about casting the great silent film director Erich von Stroheim in the role of Swanson’s chauffeur. Von Stroheim added humor of his own when a makeup man approached him for a scene in which he sets up the screen on which Norma Desmond watches her old films.

“Are you going to make up my ass?” von Stroheim asked him. “Because that’s all that’s being photographed.”

There is a “palpable” threat of acts of terror being carried out at the tournament after the recent Paris attacks, according to the president of the Euro 2016 organising committee, Jacques Lambert.

The attacks, which saw radical Islamists target the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery, have heightened fears that the football tournament will be targeted because of the opportunity for terror groups to present their cause to a large audience.

"The terrorist risk was present from the beginning," Lambert told AFP news agency.

"When I wrote the host bid in 2009, the terrorist threat was part of the 12 risks identified as major at an event like this,” he added.

"What the events in January have changed is that a theoretical risk has become a tangible risk, palpable, since it was carried through.”

"It doesn't probably change much for the security professionals regarding preparations of the event."

"But you see that for everyone, public opinion, media, teams, it adds a special intensity," he said.

Henry Wilkinson, head of intelligence and analysis at the global risk management consultancy Risk Advisory Group, said that French authorities would have already planned for a terror threat “as high as it is now or higher” in spite of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

“Major high-profile international sporting tournaments, where you’ve got lots of different agents competing and the whole world is watching, will immediately be attractive to terrorist organisations who are obviously looking for opportunities to publicise their cause and create a higher impact,” he said.

The security measures implemented at stadiums in order to mitigate against the heightened terror threat will be routine, according to Wilkinson.

“They will be carrying out threat-based risk assessments on associated events as well. Obviously, in sporting events the venues are relatively easy to secure, you can subject people to going through metal detectors or checkpoints.”

However, Wilkinson believes that French authorities will be more concerned about the threat to events related to the tournament, such as large gatherings.

“The main areas of concern that they will probably have are high-profile events in unsecured areas such as bars and pubs and big-screens in public places,” he claimed.

“Other potential targets that terrorists have struck before, such as mass transportation networks, are where you would expect to see increased levels of police presence and surveillance.”

“It’s oriented around risk assessing what the most likely targets are and putting adequate risk mitigation in place,” he concluded.

While both Lambert and Wilkinson claim that the Paris attacks will not change the preparations of security services for international sporting events, Dr Florian Otto, head of Europe at global risk analytics company Verisk Maplecroft argues that jihadists with European passports returning from Iraq and Syria have altered “the security situation significantly”.

“The issue of European nationals travelling to Syria and Iraq, becoming more radicalised, gaining combat experience and returning to their home countries has led to a significant increase in the risk of terrorist attacks taking place in Europe,” he says.

Monitoring group International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) estimates that up to 1,200 French nationals have travelled to Iraq and Syria since the start of the Syrian civil war to fight for radical Islamist militant groups.

“Even if only a fraction of those is actually ready and determined to commit an attack in France, it alters the security situation significantly, and monitoring ‘returnees’ will place significant strain on the security services for years to come.”

The two brothers who carried out the Paris attacks, Cherif and Said Kouachi, travelled to Yemen via Oman in 2011 and returned to carry out their assault, which killed 12 people, on behalf of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Otto says that “the Paris attacks serve as a reminder that the threat [from foreign jihadists] is multi-faceted”.

“Home-grown radicals, as well as externally directed groups continue to represent a very real threat, even if – until the Paris attacks – they have not received a lot of public attention recently.”

There were also fears of the tournament becoming a target at Euro 2012, hosted in Poland and Ukraine, following a series of bomb blasts hit the city of Dnipropetrovsk just months before the tournament kicked-off.

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

The speaker of the Russian Parliament, today announced that if Russia ‘annexed’ Crimea, then the West ‘annexed’ eastern Germany in 1989. Sergey Naryshkin put forward a motion in front of the parliamentary committee for international affairs which would condemn the German reunification as an annexation.

The proposal originally came from Russian MP Nikolay Ivanov who had taken great offence to comments made by Anne Brasseur, the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, when she referred to Crimea’s controversial decision to join Russia as an annexation, earlier this week.

“I suggest the following step - we prepare a statement condemning the ‘annexation’ of the German Democratic Republic by the German Federation in 1989,” Ivanov told Narishkin and other parliamentary colleagues.  

According to Ivanov, there is even greater case for eastern Germany to be considered an annexed territory, as opposed to Crimea, because: “Unlike Crimea, there was never a referendum in eastern Germany.”

“97% of Crimean citizens voted to join their homeland - Russia,” Ivanov added, referring to the unrecognized referendum held last March in the region. Although the results indicated that Crimeans wished to leave Ukraine and join the territory of Russia, neither Kiev nor any Western government has recognized the result.

The speaker of the Russian parliament has decided to pass Ivanov’s motion towards the relevant parliamentary committee, which will now decide whether Russian parliament will agree to the term or not.

There is currently no set date for the decision but Narishkin has urged the committee to take Ivanov’s motion and “dwell on it specifically”. Narishkin himself expressed a similar line of argument on Tuesday, during his visit to the Council of Europe on Tuesday.

In an off the cuff reaction to Brasseur’s comment, Narishkin said “originators of this kind of logic can also hold that western Germany annexed eastern Germany.”

However Narishkin had given no indication he would support such a motion, prior to today, saying that he simply believed the term should not be used in reference to either Crimea or the German reunification.

President Obama flew out of Delhi yesterday after a visit spread over three days that, as he put it, was “rich in symbolism but also in substance.”

The symbolism included choreographed meetings and hugs and embraces with Prime MZAinister, Narendra Modi, and the substance included a potential solution to a long-awaited deal on nuclear power projects plus other trade, business and climate change initiatives carrying a $4 billion tag.

With private talks like the one above, and several public meetings, the overall impact of the visit was greater than had been expected. It has reset relations between the two countries on a firm progressive footing, and it has also demonstrated the apparent close rapport between the two leaders.

The biggest combination of symbolism and substance however came yesterday morning when Obama, having broken free from Modi’s embraces, addressed his first meeting on his own and implicitly condemned the pro-Hindu and anti-Muslim policies of hard-liners in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its umbrella organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

I was in the large concert hall where Obama spoke with rare passion and in measured tones on religious freedom, combining that with references to Bollywood and the many ways in which the two countries could move on from being “natural partners” (the usual slogan) to “best partners.”

To succeed, India needed to be “unified as one nation” he said, adding that India’s and America’s strengths came from their diversity and that they should guard against any efforts to divide them along sectarian lines or any other lines. “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith,” he declared.

When Obama came on his first visit to India, in 2010, he said it should play a larger and more positive role in world affairs, specifically by joining America’s boycotts of Iran and Burma (Myanmar). That lecture was ignored because it was against India’s interests, but this time he has struck a popular chord with his appeal for religious tolerance.

What he said runs counter to recent mass Hindu conversions and other pro-Hindu policies of government ministers, but it chimes with widespread fears about Modi’s long term Hindu-nationalist aims—though his remarks will also be resented by many people as interference in India’s affairs.

With words that dominated news bulletins as he flew off to Saudi Arabia (having canceled a visit to the Taj Mahal at Agra to meet Saudi’s new King Salman), Obama said that “every person has the right to practice his faith without any persecution, fear or discrimination.”

A close-up view of Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi's dark pinstripe suit, repeatedly embroidered with the words "Narendra Damodardas Modi," as he talks to U.S. President Barack Obama while walking through the garden at Hyderabad House in New Delhi January 25, 2015. Jim Bourg/Reuters

Listing the world’s religions, including Hinduism and Islam, he added that “we are all god’s children,” and then quoted Mahatma Gandhi: “The different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden for they are all branches of the same majestic tree.”

The two leaders’ first joint engagement involved watching yesterday’s annual Republic Day parade for two hours, initially in heavy drizzle and including displays of largely Russian defense equipment. With his wife Michelle, Obama applauded some of the colorful tableaux and motorcycle acrobats, but he was widely criticized for chewing gum. That looked undignified at such a formal event, though it was said later that he has recently given up smoking and the gum contained nicotine.

But if Obama was regarded as behaving uncouthly, Modi was widely ridiculed when photos appeared in the media of him wearing, at an earlier meeting with the American president, a formal pinstriped suit with the stripes made up of his full name Narendra Damodardas Modi. The prime minister frequently wears colorful headgear and smart jackets, but this egotistical extravagance led to speculation about who pays for his voluminous wardrobe, which he presumably cannot afford on his own.

The proposed nuclear projects stem from a 2006 initiative by India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh and America’s president George W. Bush that led to a 2008 deal that freed India from sensitive technology import embargoes and opened the way for U.S. and other companies to build nuclear power plants.

That came unstuck, however, in 2010 when India passed a nuclear liability law that broke with international convention by making the foreign equipment supplier as well as the local operator liable for compensation after a nuclear accident. It also made the supplier responsible for plant defects.

That stemmed partly from India’s experience after the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak disaster at Bhopal where the American company (and Dow Chemical, its present owner) have refused to accept responsibility. The U.S. and other countries’ companies would not accept the Indian law, and there was stalemate till the two sides agreed last week to have a $122 billion insurance scheme, which, however, could both add to project costs and prove inadequate. The U.S. also dropped demands for tracking the use of nuclear material.

Much now depends on the details of the agreement and the willingness of companies such as GE and Westinghouse to try to make it work.

The growing rapport between the two countries seems to have rattled China, whose foreign ministry warned yesterday that “external countries” should not cause trouble in the region. Modi will now have to ensure that his earlier efforts to draw close to China have not been upset.

He will also have to deal with the fallout from Obama’s religious freedom remarks, which have been eagerly quoted by the BJP’s opponents in a current election campaign for Delhi’s state assembly. That has upset the campaigning advantages Modi’s party has gained from him hosting the American president.

John Elliott’s new book is IMPLOSION: India’s Tryst with Reality (HarperCollins, India). He can be read at ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court is set to make a decision that could, for the first time, legally acknowledge that the oil and gas industry may have something to do with the swarm of earthquakes the state has experienced in recent years, the Tulsa World reports.

The case, brought by Prague, Oklahoma resident Sandra Ladra, centers around a 5.7 magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in the state, that struck the region on November 5, 2011 amid a series of similar quakes, destroying 13 homes. The quake caused pieces of rock to fall from Ladra’s fireplace and chimney onto her legs and lap. She was treated for injuries in an emergency room.

Two years later, a peer-reviewed paper in the scientific journal Geology concluded that the quakes were induced by three injection wells in the vicinity, which perform a step in the fracking process—the disposal of vast volumes of salty, chemical-laced wastewater by injecting it deep into the ground.

If the court sides with Ladra, the disposal wells in Oklahoma could “become economic and legal-liability pariahs,” attorney Robert Gum, who is representing one of the oil companies named as a defendant in the suit, said to a lower court in comments reported by the Tulsa World.

A second oil company, Spess Oil Co., is also named as a defendant. Both have asserted that their activities did not trigger the quakes. The court is set to hear the case in the coming months.

The rate of recent earthquakes in Oklahoma is a clear deviation from the norm. From 1978 until 2008, Oklahoma averaged only two earthquakes over magnitude 3.0 per year; by midway through 2014, the state had registered 230 quakes of that strength, surpassing California as the most earthquake-prone state in the country.

Jones City, Oklahoma, a small town an hour from Prague, was the epicenter of a spate of recent earthquakes, but state representative Lewis Moore is skeptical that they were caused by fracking wastewater injection wells.

“The Earth, and the science of how everything works, is so big. We are so minute,” he told Newsweek in August. “For us to think that we have so much to do with these things is almost ludicrous.”

Texas, Arkansas and Ohio have all also seen recent spikes in earthquakes in the vicinity of wastewater injection wells, and the seismic geology community has begun to takeupthe question of links between disposal wells and quakes in recent years. One 2014 study, published in the journal Science, blamed injection wells for the more than 2,500 earthquakes that hit Jones City since 2008.

Photographs of a rare snowstorm in January that flattened refugee camp tents in Lebanon and Jordan brought new attention to the plight of millions of Syrians driven from their homes by nearly four years of war.

Since March 2011, fighting between troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad and opposition forces, coupled with brutal violence by the militant group ISIS, has resulted in a mass exodus that shows no signs of reversal. Surrounded by violence on all sides, half of Syria’s prewar population of around 22 million have abandoned their homes, including 3.8 million refugees outside Syria and 7.6 million internally displaced. With their savings dwindling and unable to work or attend school, many of the refugees are living in dire poverty.

More than 95 percent of the refugees who have escaped Syria are in Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey, and thousands more have sought safety in Iraq and Egypt. Faced with social services stretched to the limit, Lebanon recently started requiring Syrians to obtain a visa at the border before entering the country.  

Around 209,000 refugees have sought asylum in Europe, more than half of them in Germany and Sweden. Germany has granted asylum to the most Syrian refugees of any Western country, 3,788. The United States has so far not received many applications for asylum, according to Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. He expects to receive more applications in the coming years, and between 1,000 and 2,000 refugees are expected to be resettled in the U.S. this year.  

The vast majority of Syrian refugees, however, are waiting to go home. Representatives of Assad’s government and some rebel groups met in Moscow for peace talks this week, but the chances of a breakthrough look slim. In the meantime, it’s cold in the refugee camps.  

Marshawn Lynch has not been enjoying the Super Bowl press coverage. The Seattle Seahawks running back spent an entire event answering questions "you know why I'm here," today. 

Lynch, who notoriously hates dealing with reporters, spent yesterday's Super Bowl Media Day replying to all inquiries "I'm just here so I won't get fined." He was fined $100,000 earlier this year for skipping out on press questions and now that the league mandates he talk to reporters, he gives them as little as possible to work with. 

"Ain't nothing changed from yesterday. I'm still the same person I was yesterday, and I got the same thing for you that I had yesterday," Lynch said before launching into his rapid-fire "You know why I'm here" replies. He stayed on the podium for only the required minimum five minutes.

The Super Bowl defending champion has managed to make it through entire press conferences saying "Yeah,""Nope" and "Maybe," and after a Carolina Panthers game in January replied to press with only "I'm thankful" to every inquiry.

While some reporters laugh off Lynch's replies, other reporters have faulted Lynch for his lack of interest in media coverage, and today one reporter asked "Why do you have to be a jerk to all of us?" Lynch did not reply to the reporter's inquiry: 

Marshawn Lynch does not have time for you. He's busy winning Super Bowls and starring in Skittles commercials.

Depression is one of the most common mental health problems, affecting about one in 10 Americans every year. And it remains difficult to treat; As many as 50 percent of people don’t respond to typical medications.

It used to be widely thought that depression was caused by a “chemical imbalance,” and antidepressant drugs still primarily target the neurotransmitter serotonin, seeking to increase its activity in the brain. But new research in the past two decades has uncovered more and more information linking the illness with inflammation, the process the body goes through to fight infection or heal trauma. But inflammation may be present in excessive or harmful levels in depressed people, perhaps triggered by an illness, stress or for some other unknown biochemical reason.  

For example, many studies have shown that depressed patients have higher blood levels of cytokines, compounds created by the immune system to promote inflammation and kill pathogens. Another example: When cancer patients take a drug called interferon-alpha, which increases cytokine levels, depressive symptoms often emerge.

But these studies have mostly looked for signs of inflammation in the blood, and not necessarily at the time of a depressive episode. A new study, published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found significant increases of inflammation within the brains of people who were depressed at the time.

Using a PET scanner, the researchers looked at levels of a protein that is produced by glial cells during neurological inflammation. These cells help support neurons, providing them nourishment and protection from infection, by secreting cytokines and other chemicals that lead to an immune response and inflammation.

The scientists found that the 20 depressed study participants had a 30 percent increase in inflammation in multiple areas of the brain, compared with the 20 participants who didn’t suffer from depression, says co-author Jeffrey Meyer, an expert in the neurochemistry of depression at Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

This is “really a breakthrough” when it comes to identifying brain inflammation in depressed patients, says Yogesh Dwivedi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who wasn’t involved in the study. And it definitely shows that “inflammation is the cause of depression in a certain subset of the population,” he adds.

What to do now? Meyer’s previous work suggests that between 30 and 40 percent of people with depression have increased levels of inflammation, and that these people are unlikely to directly benefit from typical antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, that don’t have anti-inflammatory properties, he says. So they may benefit from something that directly treats inflammation.

It isn’t currently known for sure what existing drugs may treat this type of neurological inflammation, Meyer says, though many groups are looking into it. He and his collaborators plan to test the effects of minocycline, an antibiotic that has the secondary effect of reducing glial inflammation, at least in rodents. And other researchers are looking at other anti-inflammatory agents, such as a chemical called celecoxib.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be feasible to scan every depressed patient for inflammation, since PET scanning devices aren’t available at many hospitals. Meyer hopes that an equivalent blood test could be developed, which might be faster and cheaper than a PET scan.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a motion in federal court on Tuesday night in an effort to block the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from retrieving all the copies of the committee’s full, unredacted report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program.”  

Last year, the committee, then headed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, distributed copies of the 6,900-page report to the White House and various federal agencies. But earlier this year, the committee’s new chairman, Senator Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, demanded that all copies be returned.

“I consider the report to be a highly classified and committee sensitive document,” Burr wrote a January 14 letter to President Barack Obama. “I request that all copies of the full and final report in possession of the Executive Branch be returned immediately to the Committee.”

The motion by the ACLU is the latest move in the group’s ongoing FOIA lawsuit to have the full version of the CIA report released to the general public. If Burr is able to retrieve all copies, it won’t be accessible through FOIA, as congressional records are not covered by the law.

“The full torture report is critical to a full and fair public conversation about what the CIA did and why it continues to defend its unlawful torture program,” said Hina Shamsi, the lead attorney on the ACLU’s case.

“One of the stated purposes of the Senate’s investigation was to help the government ensure that it doesn’t make the same mistakes again, and the Obama administration should reject any cynical efforts that would keep the report and related materials from both the public and the parts of the government that could learn from it.”

Last year, the committee released a 500-page summary of the report, which describes the agency’s “enhanced interrogation program” as brutal and ineffective. The report also said the agency lied to Congress about the effectiveness of its methods. (The CIA has long denied these allegations.)

The White House has not yet commented on Burr’s request or said whether it believes the full CIA report should be made public.

Feinstein, Burr's predecessor, disagreed with the move by the Republican senator. “The purpose of the Committee’s report is to ensure that  nothing like the CIA’s detention and interrogation program…can ever happen again,” she wrote in a follow-up letter. “The realization of that goal depends in part on future Executive Branch decisionmakers [sic] having and utilizing a comprehensive record of this program, in far more detail than what we were able to provide in the now declassified and released Executive Summary.”

As the Huffington Post reported, most of the federal officials who received the unredacted version of the CIA report have yet to read it.

U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s nominee to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, endured her first day of grilling by members the Senate Judiciary Committee today. While Republicans chided the president’s executive action and flagged the IRS targeting controversy, Lynch kept her cool and offered a frequent refrain that this was a new day and she looked forward to a cooperative relationship with Congress.

Lynch was often noncommittal as she fielded questions posed by Republican members of the committee, including committee chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas.

Lynch chose her words carefully when it came to illegal immigration. Responding to a question from Grassley about Obama’s executive action, which effectively stopped deportation proceedings against a huge swath of immigrants, she would not say whether she believed the president’s actions to be unlawful. “You raise a very important issue of how we manage the issue of undocumented immigrants,” she said. “Certainly I was not involved in the decisions that led to the executive actions that you reference.” However, she added that the administration's argument that prosecutorial discretion would allow prosecutors to prioritize deportations of undocumented immigrants with criminal records or who otherwise pose a threat to public safety seemed “to be a reasonable way to marshal limited resources to deal with the problem.”

Senators raised other controversial topics, but Lynch seemed unfazed. Asked by Graham about the issue of surveillance by the National Security Agency, Lynch said she thought it was “certainly constitutional and effective.” Asked by Graham if she supports the death penalty, Lynch said, “I believe the death penalty is an effective penalty.”

Loretta Lynch testifies during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing to become U.S. attorney general.Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Senator Dianne Feinstein questioned Lynch about provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act designed to help law enforcement fight terrorism set to expire in June 2015. Lynch said she supports those provisions. Feinstein also asked Lynch if she would be willing to release certain reports drafted by Eric Holder’s Justice Department which outline the administration’s reliance on the so-called State Secrets Privilege, which allows the government to exclude evidence from a legal case on the basis that allowing such evidence to be included might compromise state secrets.

Asked by Grassley whether waterboarding constitutes torture, Lynch said, “Waterboarding is torture.”

“And thus illegal?” Grassley replied. “And thus illegal,” Lynch responded.

Several members of the committee made clear their disdain for Holder; Cornyn, in particular, was adamant to have Lynch explain how she would perform her duties differently from the current attorney general. “How do we know you’re not going to be another Eric Holder?” Cornyn asked.

“Senator, I will be myself, Loretta Lynch,” she replied.

On the anniversary of the 1986 Challenger disaster, revisit Mike Pride's tribute to teacher Christa McAuliffe, who perished in the explosion. This story was originally published in the February 10, 1986, issue of Newsweek.

In the journal I keep, the entry for July 20, 1985, begins: "Yesterday was an incredible day to be editor of the local paper." The day before at the White House, Christa McAuliffe, from my hometown, Concord, New Hampshire, had been named the teacher in space. Near the end of my journal is this quotation from her: "I think the students will say that an ordinary person is contributing to history, and if they can make that connection, they are going to get excited about history and about the future."

It is assumed in our society that people who capture the nation, as Christa had, go on to fame and fortune. Those who knew her best knew that Christa had no such intention. She would have used her celebrity to advocate causes she believed in, but she could hardly wait to get back to her classroom at Concord High. She had chosen the profession and chosen Concord, and her selection as teacher in space had done nothing but affirm those choices.

If Christa liked Concord, Concord was crazy about Christa. It made her the grand marshal in a parade. It gave her a day. Her high school sent her off to Houston with a banner that read, "Good luck from the Class of '86...Mrs. McAuliffe.... Have a blast!" A committee made big plans for her homecoming. New Year's Eve, the city featured ice sculptures of rocket ships and stars on the New Hampshire State House lawn.

Bob Hohler, our paper's columnist, became Christa's shadow, sending back dispatches from Washington, Houston and, finally, Cape Canaveral. Her beaming face graced our front page countless times, floating weightless during training, dwarfed by the Challenger before an earlier launch, grinning with her husband, Steve. Her story always seemed too good to be true, and too American. No one is really the girl next door. No one rides in a parade down Main Street on a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon. No one equates a modern venture with the pioneers crossing the plains in Conestoga wagons.